More from Lovina

Aching in Lovina

Spending a few days in Lovina, North Bali, now and generally suffering from the high humidity. I wondered if humidity has a bad effect on arthritis, and so I looked it up, finding on Google that: 

High humidity often has a bad effect on arthritis, frequently increasing joint pain, stiffness, and swelling. Rising humidity can cause bodily tissues to expand and fluids in the joints to thicken, resulting in greater discomfort and flares.

Jeeze. 

Felt like I was being run over by a train all night long, slept very little, and was unable to join Evelyn and other guests for an early morning dolphin watching excursion. 

Oh well, I can see it on their videos 😉

Just coming from south Bali to North Bali entails a trying trip on two lane roads which wind up the mountains and then wind back down again in a constant corkscrewing through hairpin turns. Happily, I don't have a driver's license anymore and have not driven a car in some 10 years, so Evelyn drove and was bailed out at the halfway mark by her daughter Michelle. 

Lovina is much, much less developed than the southern tourist areas and therefore much less crowded, which would be nice if the stifling humidity could be removed from the experience. As it is, I will be glad to be headed back to Sanur.

The Writing on the Wall

Learned a new word today. 

Dermatographia. 

This I learned in the course of searching Google for the cause of instant red streaks on my skin whenever I have an itch somewhere. I mean that after scratching that itch, though not vigorously or anything like that, these bright red lines appear, sometimes with little darker spots along the way, like a modern art painting on a pink canvas. 

The common, non-technical, more descriptive term for dermatographia is "skin writing" . 

My goodness, how appropriate. I've always wanted to be a writer, and now it's as easy as scratching an itch. 

Unfortunately, skin writing presents in some kind of a mysterious code or ancient language. I don't know what it says. 

Yet. 

It is the writing on the wall, and I am the wall.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

The sounds of silence. 

I am a rock, I am an island.

These scarlet lines and doodles appear almost instantly upon scratching an itch and then disappear within minutes. It's like writing a novel without any knowledge of the story you're telling, for it disappears almost as quickly as its composed. 

In the Book of Daniel, chapter 5, we learn that ...

Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

Well, the hand is mine, and my legs are always weak and my knees always knocking, so scripture doesn't seem to help very much in this instance. 

It appears that the book of the scarlet scratches must remain locked for the time being, lacking, as I do, a wise man to interpret the writings. I  do know a dog who is pretty smart, but of course he does not speak English, or any other human language.

But a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries, nor do these scratches hurt or weep,

and therefore am I content to search the mystery whenever I have an itch to do so.

Jude the Obscure (thus far)

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. 

--Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

We writers, even we washed up ones, have a thing about first lines. 

Such as this: 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

And this: 

None of them knew the color of the sky. 

And this one: 

Call me Ishmael. 

I like that quoted above as well, from Jude the Obscure. 

Why? you ask. It's quite simple. It's hardly earth-shaking. 

Well, because it's music. And it echoes throughout the terrain of the narrative. It is the first stitch and all the rest of the garment spreads out from there. 

Why make a point of calling you Ishmael? What's in a name? 

Much.

Why did none of them know the color of the sky? 

Why were people sorry to see the schoolmaster go? 

Anyway, I'm about a third of the way into Jude the Obscure now, inspired by my recent reading of Far from the Madding Crowd to read more of Thomas Hardy. I actually read Jude some years ago (well, many years ago) but I remember very little about the story (which is not surprising, given the decaying quality of my mind). 

Jude is a much different novel from Far from the Madding Crowd, having in common only locale, that region of Wessex preferred in most of the Hardy novels. But other than that, the tone here is heavy and lacking the mischievous humor of Far from the Madding Crowd, although it does pick up a thread (there's that stitch again!) from the former--call it love and disaster😉 That's pretty clear from the quote from the Book of Esdras that Hardy places on the front page of the novel: 

Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women .... O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do this?

What! Misogyny again? 

Well blame it on Esdras. Or on the original trespass. It is in any case a thread that has been often sewn.

A Final Word

"A good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all. Now that's my outspoke mind, and I've been called a long-headed feller here and there." 

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Well that's one way a lookin' at it--and not without cause, some might say. I myself have had seven years now (or is it eight?) of lonely peace, even despite deteriorating health. In fact, it has been all-in-all a peaceful kind of deterioration 😅 Ah but one misses a woman eventually and the chaos and ruin she can exert upon one's comfort. And a cozy companion with whom to sit by the hearth when the struggle of the day is done. 

A Feth in the Damily.

My laptop died for good and all today, God rest it's weary soul. It has been ailing for some time now and has finally kicked the bucket. RIP. So it's just me and my phone now, on which I can peck away with one or the other of my index fingers. I never learned to type away with my two thumbs as I see many people doing these days. It's just beyond me. As President Obama recently said, we all age out at a certain point. The problem is not a case of having two thumbs but of being all thumbs. And in any case, my fingers are always pecking at the wrong letters on the miniature keypad, so I generally just voice type anyway. That does require some proofreading, but it's still faster than my fingers. 

I went to see my neurologist yesterday, just for my usual 6-month appointment, which itself is pretty much only to renew prescriptions. But I enjoy seeing him, and he speaks English quite well, which is certainly a bonus, because the more Indonesian I learn, the less I am able to speak it. Curious that. 

But that is something I talked to him about, in addition to the usual rousing subjects of degenerative joint disease and arthritis and MS and stroke. And old age. 

On the latter line, I mentioned to him my increasing trouble with word searching and with often getting words backwards, not to mention a general haze of forgetfulness and cognitive blunders. But I get words in the wrong order, you know, or mixed together. Like, for instance, Lord help us may become Mord Lelpus. Stuff like that. We discussed the fact that my mother had died of Alzheimer's disease, and he said that yes this was a concern and we should keep an eye on whether current problems progress. 

Progression. That's one thing I'm good at in my old age. In particular, progressive diseases. Nonetheless, unlike my laptop, I live.

Obsession

Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false--except indeed in that of being utterly skeptical on strictures that she knows to be true. 

Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that willful and fascinating mistress who the faithful man even now felt within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

It occurs to me that literary critics, bless their souls, might see something of the misogynist in Thomas Hardy, but I try to avoid such buttonholing in my old age. (Actually, I don't even need to try). Literary critics are, as someone or other said (I'm sure), angry people who cannot themselves write and therefore have their revenge in tearing down people who can. Despite all attempts at deconstruction, what rings true simply rings true. We have our experience in life and the talented author, having the same experience, wields his genius in forming and focusing and then giving back to the reader what he already knew but could not quite put into words--of the foibles and fantasies and catastrophic weaknesses of both male and female in their distinct and separate character. 

Every man has suffered the frustration described in the first quote--what might be loosely called the fickleness of the woman. But it is not fickleness--that is far too shallow. There is a deep archetypal unwise urging in the pit of the soul that presses her on. It is an obedience to the thrust of passion.

It is interesting, and it is something that very often happens, that what one is reading will be mirrored in some secondary source--something else that he is reading at the same time, for instance, or some movie or series that he has tuned into, or something that has happened in his life or the life of someone close to him. I happen to watch while reading this novel a TV series called The Museum of Innocence, from the novel by Orhan Pamuk, a story, like that told in Far from the Madding Crowd, of passionate obsession, idolization. And this brings me in turn to the guy who delivers water to my fiancé's house and who is apparently obsessively attracted to her. This began one day when she was kind to him and spoke to him for a time as he delivered water to her house. He then began texting her and sending videos of himself (though nothing inappropriate). Next, he began following her on his bicycle as she rode home from work on her own. Not speaking to her but just following slightly behind. In time, she asked him to stop doing this, which he did, replacing this with just happening to pop up in the background wherever she went. The point is that these obsessions, in the novel, in the series, in everyday life, are self-contained, self-nourished, self-sustained, having finally little to do with the actual character and soul of the object, the idol. 

The second quote reminds me of Gatsby, that glowing green light at the end of the dock across the bay, somehow symbolizing his love of Daisy Buchanan with the exception that the 'embodiment' is sweet and bright and full of hope--was hope itself. Gatsby loved and adored with confident hope, whereas Hardy's Gabriel Oak loves without hope. 

Hardy, it strikes me, looks forward in literature to Fitzgerald and anticipates also Crane and Steinbeck and even Faulkner in comedic tone. Reading his work has been the purest pleasure and perhaps will become something of an obsession my own! 

Young Arrogants

"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster in a querulous voice. "At the same time ye be no old man worth naming--no old man at all. Yer teeth bain't half gone yet, and what's a old man if so be his teeth bain't gone? Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? 'Tis a poor thing to be sixty when there's people far past fourscore--a boast weak as water." 

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy 

Well there you have it. Such is my feeling about every young know-it-all who presumes to tell me what's what about American life and politics, old age having rendered me unable to think clearly, I suppose. Fie! Away with ye, and a plague upon your house! Lol. One is never too old to understand. One can only be too young to understand.

Two Kinds of Magnificence

 The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill: he had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition.

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Well, I get that. The lack of teeth--or such as mine once were--is not so much a matter of regret than relief. Oh sure, there is the bother of having to apply Polident several times a day, if you care to eat several times a day, but this seems more than a fair exchange for having to brush several times a day, or floss (thankfully not even an option with dentures), or submit to the dentist's drill, or suffer through a root canal procedure. 

And speaking of root canals, I have during the past couple of months suffered through the literary version of the procedure known as The Brothers Karamazov. 

I know this is blasphemy, folks, for which many would see me roasted in eternal fire kindled by the thousand pages of this interminable novel. But there you have it. It is a boring, ceaselessly talky, endlessly tedious monstrosity--not so much novel as philosophical treatise. 

Freud called it The most magnificent novel ever written. Sounds like a blurb on a book cover. Oh wait, it is the blurb on the book cover. Well, you can have it, Siggy. 

I'm glad, or rather relieved to have finished it, so that I too can now say Ah, magnificent, but all in all, I'd rather have hard gums. 

So, I have moved on now to Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. I'm about a hundred pages in and fully in love with this novel, astounded by the artfulness on every page, the careful juxtaposition of the character of nature and the nature of character, the odd cadence of the language that demands strict attention and often sends one backward in order to fully digest what one has just read. I can't believe I am discovering this novel for the first time, but I am aware at the same time that maybe I would not have been able to genuinely discover it before now. It is a book whose time has come. That's how I think of it anyway.

An Epistle from Home

I'm not mad at you. 

Do you need help? 

These are phrases commonly used by domestic terrorists. Or so our government would like us to believe. I'm not mad at you. Do you need help? 

My stepson is mixed, Caucasian / Indonesian. He was born in America, came here to Indonesia with his mother and me when he was about 10, and then some years later returned to the US to finish out high school and enter college. He lives there in Arizona, works at a bank, lives with his father, who is also mixed Caucasian and Indonesian. 

He sent me a message today on Instant Messenger. Said he misses me. Talked about some old memories from his childhood, times and events that I myself have no recollection of. It's funny the things that little children store away in the memory. Things of little matter that somehow do matter.

I said that I hoped that all is okay with him back there in the States.

Not to worry you, he wrote, but you already know that things are less than stellar. What's worse, between you and me, is that my dad is on team red. I always knew he was the way he is, but he is actively rooting for ICE now. 

A lot of my friends are Mexican and I'm worried for them, but he can't get it through his head that my friends might be in danger because of their race.

He simply lacks empathy. 

I'm worried too. I'm worried for my son. In a strange way, it seems like he has never quite understood that he is not white. Yes, his entire reference is America, he dresses like a young American, he thinks like a young American, his culture is fully America, not Indonesia. But he is not white. He could just as well be targeted as his Mexican friends. Yes, he is an American citizen, but so are his friends most likely, or at least legal residents. But we have seen that this does not matter to ICE.

If one of his friends were in trouble, and he came to their aid, what might he say to the assailants? I'm not mad at you? 

What might he ask his friend, other than Do you need help? 

And what might be the penalty for those simple words?

This is the reason you are my favorite parent, he concluded in his note today. 

And he, regardless of parentage, regardless of race, regardless of anything under the sun, is my beloved son. 

Look what they've done. 

Look what they've done. 

Look What They Done to My Country

Look what they done to my song, ma 

Look what they done to my song 

    --Melanie, 1970

"What have you done!", the woman shrieked as she ran across the icy Minneapolis street. "What the fuck have you done!" 

The SUV had already stopped moving, crunching up against a parked car. One bullet had crashed through the front windshield, two others were fired through the open driver side window at point blank range. 

By the time the the horrified woman reached the car, the ICE agent was already walking away, ignoring her screams. On the videos captured, his face appears to show no appreciation of having just taken a human life. 

It's just another day. 

Except for this woman's 6-year-old child. Except for her family members and friends. 

She was well-loved, the background stories tell us. She was unusually kind. She was involved in the community.

A physician on the scene tried to help, but was blocked by ICE agents. The victim was dead before she reached the hospital. She was probably dead before the second and third bullets burst through her skull. Spilling out of the glove compartment in the car were some of her daughter's beloved stuffed animals. The driver's side airbag was splattered red with blood. 

She was a domestic terrorist, we are told by the authorities, out to use her car as a deadly weapon. 

This 37-year-old woman with a glove compartment full of stuffed animals.

Look what they done to my song, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

Well they tied it up in a plastic bag 

Turned it upside down, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

I have seen the videos, and I have heard all the increasingly desperate, obvious lies. I have seen and heard the cold-hearted and stunning utter lack of remorse. She was the killer, we are told, not the man with the gun. 

And I am filled with rage. I am filled with a white hot hatred of those who are telling their evil tales, and of those who are offering their heartless, ignorant, careless comments on social media. Their irresponsible, disingenuous, cowardly excuses. It was her own fault. She had it coming. Good riddance.

I wish I could find a good book to live in 

Wish I could find a good book 

Well if I could find a real good book 

I'd never have to come out and look at 

What they done to my song

Look what they've done to my country.

She had a name, by the way. 

Renee Nicole Good

Murdered January 7, 2026

Love One Another

"I love mankind," he said,"but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons. In my dreams," he said, "I would often arrive at fervent plans of devotion to mankind and might very possibly have gone to the cross for human beings, had that been suddenly required of me, and yet I am unable to spend two days in the same room with someone else, and this I know from experience. No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality crushes my self-esteem and hampers my freedom. In the space of a day and a night I am capable of coming to hate even the best of human beings: one because he takes too long over dinner, another because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose. I become the enemy of others," he said, "very nearly as soon as they come into contact with me. To compensate for this, however, it has always happened that the more I have hated human beings in particular, the more ardent has become my love for mankind in general.

--The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here is a sentiment that Sartre expressed as well, and more succinctly at that, when he wrote simply that "Hell is other people" (L'enfer est les autres). This in turn has often been variously misquoted to read something like 'The only problem with heaven is other people'. But the point is the same. We nurture a cozy feeling of love toward mankind that is assailable only by mankind--not the fuzzy ideal, but the walking, talking, nose blowing critter itself. 

This brings to mind the scripture (John 4:20) which tells us that "If someone says,'I love God', and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he is not seen?

Well, you would be surprised, or more probably you would not be, for as anyone can see in social media posts and counterposts, the world is chock full of people who love God (supposedly) and at the same time maintain a nearly murderous disdain for their fellow human beings.

Ah well, just some things to think about, which have come to mind in my reading of the Brothers Karamazov, a very long, very dense, very talky novel indeed but one that has long been on my bucket list of things I really ought to read.