An Old Couple and Etc.

Evelyn has been here in Bali for 2 weeks, and we had a cozy, pleasant time as usual, just hanging out, cooking, exploring. It seems that we have become as familiar as man and wife, an old married couple. Which I guess makes sense. We have been together now going on 6 years, per my calculations. But given that we are only able to be together once every two or three months, perhaps we have in this way avoided the familiarity that breeds contempt, as the old saying goes. 

Now she has returned to Central Java and I to such menial activities as arguing with atheists on Facebook or watching mostly substandard movies on Netflix (although I did discover not long ago that one can get lots of old movies on YouTube, some of them pretty good).

I have finished an absolutely intriguing book (if you are intrigued by plague) by Orhan Pamuk (Nights of Plague) and I am now reading Melville's The Confidence Man for the third time in these many years of mine. And finally, astoundingly, praise God, I am understanding it 😂. The prose here is very dense and sophisticated, even for Melville, but if you pay close attention, you get what is going on, beneath the surface, that is. It is, as I suddenly realize, an intensely Christian narrative, although in the cynical, satirical fashion of Twain. But it is a joy to read, and actually quite funny for its startling descriptions and turns of phrase. 

I have begun as well another Pamuk novel, The White Castle. I am reading it in Indonesian, so my progress is somewhat slow, but that in itself can be a good thing, as it tends toward a more careful focus on what is being read. Ironic, isn't it, that it can be easier to miss things written in one's own language.