Folk Medicine

Recently, while entertaining the stomachache phase of my cold virus, and having exhausted all other means of cure or balm provided by modern medical science, I finally turned to the top cupboard in the kitchen where my wife keeps her Indonesian remedies.

These foreign pharmaceuticals are most often in the form of oils of varying color and acridity, though there are also some lozenges. But for the most part we're talking about syrups and lotions.

Here among other potions was a bottle still wrapped in tissue paper, just off the boat from Jakarta (my mother in law had brought it back from her most recent trip).

Minyak Kayu Putih.

That's what the label on the bottle read. Oil of white wood.

And then in diminutive lettering on the side:

Sakit perut, perut kembung, rasa mual, gatal-gatal akibat gigitan serangga.

For stomachache, flatulence, nausea, and skin rashes from bug bites.

My lucky stars! Here, except for the part about bug bites, was exactly the thing I had been looking for, no matter what the language.

Next question, though, was how this medicine was meant to be administered. Do I drink it? Do I mix it with water? Surely it is not another of these deadly injectables--those are found only in America, right?

I decided the most prudent thing to do would be to ask my wife.

I entered the bedroom, holding the bottle forth.

Oh my God, you didn't drink that, did you!

Though I had not tasted even so much as a sip (the smell of the stuff is enough to deter so rash an act), I was chilled nonetheless by the alarm in my wife's voice, the instant blanching that overtook her face. What if I had? Would I be lying on the floor now, seizing, foaming at the mouth? I felt that I had just narrowly escaped the most gruesome sort of accidental death. I felt like crossing myself before some sort of shrine, blurting out a prayer of thanksgiving.

However, as no shrine was readily available, I simply answered that no, I had not consumed the deadly oil nor yet applied it in any manner.

Whew.

The oil, as it turns out, is to be rubbed directly upon whatever area is causing ones current discomfort--in my case, the stomach.

Oh come on. You mean to say that you just rub in some of this stuff and your stomachache goes away?

Yes. But just a drop, she warned.

Hmmm.

And so I rubbed.

As for the smell of minyak kayu putih, I am pretty much at a loss for words of description. I guess the closest thing I could compare it to would be the smell of camphor oil, and yet the similarity even here lies only in the acrid quality, a sharp medicinal, pungent character. Ether might serve as another example along the same lines.

I finished rubbing. I returned the cap.

Wash your hands, the wife said. Use lots of soap.

Now . . .

You all are not going to believe this, but minyak kayu putih works. I swear to it even as I live, though my disbelief be equal to that of the greatest skeptic on earth. It works!

Within minutes my stomachache had disappeared, just as if my magic. My flatulence went completely flat, as flat as a punctured bicycle tire. From here forth and forever after I will swear by the oil of the white wood, and turn my back to Tums and Pepcid, Pepto-Bismol and prilosec.

Amazing.

I wonder if they have anything for myelin damage . . . .

My Mind Is A Nose

I wonder if any of you has ever had a text message argument. You know, the kind where you enter peeved little snippets into your cell phone keypad and before you know it the thing is buzzing you back again with a return barrage similar to your own. Wtf!

Maybe this is the perfect kind of argument for modern times, fitting to the character of our society. A communication style composed of abbreviations and cliches, epithets and acronyms.

How many of you have or have had a daughter or a son whose every other word was whatever? Or how about this alphabetical invention: This is an A and B conversation, C your way out.

We have compressed language and communication into a chattering of syllables and single letters, and what is finally communicated begins to adhere to the same format. Okay? Okay. :)

**

One thing you can count on from life, if you happen to be living mine anyway, is that it just gets a little more ironic all the time. As I approach the third anniversary of my marriage to a woman twenty-four years younger than I, who said on our wedding day that she hated me, which itself was because of a lemon meringue pie, I begin to appreciate, in this august moment, how odd a thing it is for my sense of humor, which often depends upon an intimacy with language, to have been dropped into association with people who either primarily or only speak Indonesian.

Here, for instance, is what one lovely girl stated in her Facebook share post:

It's time to work on my garden. Ohhh I miss home when I smell of dirt.

I kindly replied with a brief grammar lesion, explaining that what she had said in essence was that she smelled like dirt, and moreover had implied that Indonesians in a general sense smell like dirt, since it is this odoriferous quality (according to the sentence) that has caused her to miss home.

She took my word for it, and changed the sentence.

"You must be a very down to earth sort of person," I said.

"Yes, I am, " she answered. "But that's a good thing, don't you think?"

**

My mind is a nose. This is the point my head cold has come to, as there is little to differentiate the general stuffiness and congestion of my thought processes from the struggles of my nose toward breathing.

The onset of this cold was so swift that I thought (or dreamed) at first that it might leave just as swiftly as it came. Symptoms that more commonly would have been spread out over a period of days marched in one after another all in one night--sore throat, snuffly nose, fever, body aches, you know the drill.

Far from assembling, however, for a lightening blow, it soon became apparent that they had merely been settling in, getting comfortable, the way one might do on a winter's night in his easy chair before the fireplace, with a thick 19th century British novel at hand.

I would have the reader appreciate, therefore, that what has been written above has been accomplished all in fits and starts, by sentence, by word, during those periods wherein I would dribble miserably out of the bedroom to the dining room table and the laptop.

It's been about five days now, and I'm guessing that I'm about halfway through. Lets call it page 400 or so of Bleak House.