I like dogs. It may be that I like them better than I like people. I make no apology. I’ve never been done wrong by a dog, save for the one that bit me in the nose when I was 5 -- though in all fairness, he was an older dog, likely faint of sight, and may have mistaken the nose for a sausage or some sort of savoury biscuit. Aside from that isolated incident, however, I’ve experienced nothing other than companionship and love.
So it happens that I often find myself saddened by the lot that has fallen to Bali dogs. It’s a dangerous place for dogs, is Bali, and they often run afoul of various hazards. One dog I had struck up a friendship with was later poisoned by angry people whose motorbikes he had chased too often. Another more recent friend fell into the unfortunate habit of harassing the neighbouring farmers’ chickens. Well okay, he ate a couple. And now he has quite disappeared from the face of the earth. One can’t help but suspect foul play.
One has to harden his heart. What else can one do?
I had a dog in America. His name was Smokey. We had to leave him when we came to Bali. I remember him now, how he would run in circles when someone came home, his own dance of joy, his expression of love. He was 3 years old and never got over peeing on the floor when he became overly excited.
We tried to find an owner for Smokey before we left, but could not. He was a big dog, a Labrador, with enormous paws and strong wide shoulders, and he laughed and played and ran like the wind.
We took him to the Oregon Humane Society the day before we left for Bali. The people there said that they place 99 percent of their dogs, and if there is a dog that they cannot place, they send him to an alternative home until someone will come and see him and love him and buy him.
I remember pushing Smokey from behind while the woman there in the Humane Society pulled him by the leash in the front.
Don’t do it, Smoky said, don’t do it, don’t make me, I want you, I love you.
And I said It’s okay, you’ll see, it’s okay.
Smokey was my friend. He was the best dog ever. When I was sick, when I was hurt, he was with me, and if I was cold he would sleep with his back against my chest. He was warm, and heavy, and so very present.
Smokey had a brother, a Chihuahua named Coco. It was easy to place Coco because he was small and cute and stupid while Smokey was large and rambunctious and devoted. He used to play so very carefully with Coco, letting the little dog bite his ears and nose. Sometimes he would hold Coco down with his forearm and put the little dog’s head inside his mouth. One time he picked Coco up by the back of his little dog shirt and carried him around the house from room to room as if he had found a pet of his own.
He loved that damn stupid little dog.
And he loved my wife’s ex-husband, Albert, because Albert would walk him two and three times a day, and they would wrestle sometimes, and Albert would buy him large bones from the butcher shop and bring them home in greasy brown paper.
Smokey never barked at people he knew except to say Hello my friend.
When my wife returned to Oregon for a time, I kept asking her to find out about Smokey. She said she had tried but could get nowhere. She said Just believe the best, that he is happy, maybe living on a farm with lots of land for running, with other dogs as friends, and maybe sheep, maybe cows, maybe horses, and children.
And so I called Albert instead. I asked him to find out about Smokey. And he did. And he told me.
Smokey loved children. He always wanted to be part of whatever game they were playing. He ran behind them, tried to join in as best as he understood how, and even when they shooed him and said Go away, Smokey would persist, because he loved to have fun, and he loved the way children themselves were like puppies. This anyway is what I believe.
I believe that dogs must surely go to heaven, although I have heard some people say it’s not so. And yet I believe that if God is love, He must love dogs very well indeed. I believe because I must, and must because any other alternative is unbearable. I believe that Smokey is waiting even now, and loves me still, and with the unquestioning devotion that only a dog can muster.
I dreamed of him after moving away to Bali. I dreamed of him often, and then the dreams suddenly stopped. I dreamed of Smokey running to me, jumping up to my chest (my heart) as he so often had, happy, happy, so large, so strong, so very present. There never was a better friend.
And so I wait now as Smokey waits, to embrace again, and wrestle, and play, and then sleep in warmth and comfort and safety when the day wanes to night and the night to slumber, and neither man nor dog must part or ever again wake to tears.
Visits
Monday, July 2, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Not Everything in the Waste Bin is Garbage
Found a rat in the outdoor trash bin this morning. At first I didn’t know it was a rat, for its body was half hidden within a Chitato bag, just one end protruding -- whether head or ass I could not on first inspection say. Clearly it was not a comely creature. I thought it was maybe a frog or a lizard or part of a snake or a very large cockroach or merely a banana peel (my eyesight is not good), but a brief conference with my wife concluded the thing to be a rat. Or not a rat, actually, but a similar creature known in these parts as a cucurut.
Having been thus identified -- his cover blown -- the cucurut and his Chitato bag began to move, and in this a second cucurut was disturbed and began to move as well, emerging from the deeper parts of the bin in what seemed a fairly lousy mood, such that it felt compelled to pounce upon the first cucurut from the rear. A brief scuffle ensued. I retreated a few steps whilst my wife retired to the living room.
“Should I let them out?” I called back to her.
“Just leave them.”
“Do you think they would bite me?”
“Just leave them.”
“But that seems so . . . hard-hearted.”
No answer.
So I’m standing there between porch and bin wondering how the critters got into the can to begin with. It’s a mystery not unlike another Bali mystery I have written of in the past -- to whit, how small frogs can end up on my front porch when the steps are far too high for them to jump. That, and now this thing with the cucurut, both seem to defy reason. They defy natural science. They defy physics and every other science.
Clearly the mouth of the garbage bin is far too distant from the ground to be attained by a leap from these diminutive critters, and the proof of the same, if it even needing proving, is readily apparent in the failure of their ongoing efforts to jump out of the bin from within -- which is something they are rather vigorously attempting to do just now. They leap, accomplish maybe half a foot in height, and then fall back to the padded floor of their prison, emitting little shrieks of irritation. In this last I note that these Balinese cucuruts are much louder than the common western rat, and that there seems something almost human in the tone of their frustration. Aduh!
So their predicament was not accomplished by a leap. No way.
What then? Tiny ladders they had constructed in advance? Roman-like siege towers? Ah, but where is the evidence of these ladders and towers? Ropes made of vine, grappling hooks, stacked doll furniture, miniature helicopters? Again, no such machinery appears. The bin is about half a foot distant from a stone wall, itself about seven feet in height, from which they may have dropped like paratroopers, I suppose -- but again, how might they have reached the top of the wall to begin with, and how pull off this seven foot plunge without serious injury, barring the use of tiny parachutes? No, a descent from above seems no more likely than ascension from below.
How then? I simply do not know. Perhaps they were deposited by human hand. Perhaps someone else had them at first in his own bin, did not want them, and so transferred them to ours (but that leaves, at the very least, the question of how they first got into his bin, doesn’t it?) It may be, as is the apparent case with the frogs, that they fell from the sky. It may even be some form of black magic.
In any case, the growing fever of these two little guys’ attempts to escape the pickle they’ve got themselves into -- their rattling and shrieking, thumping and scratching -- eventually chases away my preoccupation with the mere fact of their presence, and I begin to wonder again how I might free them, or whether indeed I should free them. It is not such a simple question. There are moral considerations involved. And there are personal safety issues as well. Do cucuruts deserve freedom? Do they even know what freedom is? And if granted their freedom, how will they use it in the future? Have they learned anything from this present experience? Can I myself, morally, ‘just leave them,’ as my wife had advised, knowing then that they must surely perish (unless somehow removed by the same magic that got them there)?
I approach nearby, peer into their personal pit of hell -- that same which must have seemed heaven in the beginning, now become a heartless grave -- and it stirs something in me, tugs a heart string, touches a nerve of commiseration .
Ah, there but for the grace of God go I.
Having been thus identified -- his cover blown -- the cucurut and his Chitato bag began to move, and in this a second cucurut was disturbed and began to move as well, emerging from the deeper parts of the bin in what seemed a fairly lousy mood, such that it felt compelled to pounce upon the first cucurut from the rear. A brief scuffle ensued. I retreated a few steps whilst my wife retired to the living room.
“Should I let them out?” I called back to her.
“Just leave them.”
“Do you think they would bite me?”
“Just leave them.”
“But that seems so . . . hard-hearted.”
No answer.
So I’m standing there between porch and bin wondering how the critters got into the can to begin with. It’s a mystery not unlike another Bali mystery I have written of in the past -- to whit, how small frogs can end up on my front porch when the steps are far too high for them to jump. That, and now this thing with the cucurut, both seem to defy reason. They defy natural science. They defy physics and every other science.
Clearly the mouth of the garbage bin is far too distant from the ground to be attained by a leap from these diminutive critters, and the proof of the same, if it even needing proving, is readily apparent in the failure of their ongoing efforts to jump out of the bin from within -- which is something they are rather vigorously attempting to do just now. They leap, accomplish maybe half a foot in height, and then fall back to the padded floor of their prison, emitting little shrieks of irritation. In this last I note that these Balinese cucuruts are much louder than the common western rat, and that there seems something almost human in the tone of their frustration. Aduh!
So their predicament was not accomplished by a leap. No way.
What then? Tiny ladders they had constructed in advance? Roman-like siege towers? Ah, but where is the evidence of these ladders and towers? Ropes made of vine, grappling hooks, stacked doll furniture, miniature helicopters? Again, no such machinery appears. The bin is about half a foot distant from a stone wall, itself about seven feet in height, from which they may have dropped like paratroopers, I suppose -- but again, how might they have reached the top of the wall to begin with, and how pull off this seven foot plunge without serious injury, barring the use of tiny parachutes? No, a descent from above seems no more likely than ascension from below.
How then? I simply do not know. Perhaps they were deposited by human hand. Perhaps someone else had them at first in his own bin, did not want them, and so transferred them to ours (but that leaves, at the very least, the question of how they first got into his bin, doesn’t it?) It may be, as is the apparent case with the frogs, that they fell from the sky. It may even be some form of black magic.
In any case, the growing fever of these two little guys’ attempts to escape the pickle they’ve got themselves into -- their rattling and shrieking, thumping and scratching -- eventually chases away my preoccupation with the mere fact of their presence, and I begin to wonder again how I might free them, or whether indeed I should free them. It is not such a simple question. There are moral considerations involved. And there are personal safety issues as well. Do cucuruts deserve freedom? Do they even know what freedom is? And if granted their freedom, how will they use it in the future? Have they learned anything from this present experience? Can I myself, morally, ‘just leave them,’ as my wife had advised, knowing then that they must surely perish (unless somehow removed by the same magic that got them there)?
I approach nearby, peer into their personal pit of hell -- that same which must have seemed heaven in the beginning, now become a heartless grave -- and it stirs something in me, tugs a heart string, touches a nerve of commiseration .
Ah, there but for the grace of God go I.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
You Get What You Pay For
My wife believes in the power of money. It is a matter for her of the surest conviction and faith that any problem can be solved, any goal attained, through the expenditure of appropriate (or even inappropriate) funds. I will admit that this may in some cases be true, given a limited scope of predicament and cure. Say for instance that you’ve been arrested and jailed on a misdemeanour charge and bail has been set at five hundred dollars. Or say that you’ve neglected to pay your house mortgage for the last three months and the man from the bank is coming at 5 p.m. on Friday. Or say that you’ve been stopped by the Bali police and you don’t have a license or a vehicle registration or a helmet. In each case money is the answer, at least in the immediate sense. You pay and you’re on your way.
But when it comes to weight loss, I’m not so sure about the efficacy of the dollar to intervene in an equally successful measure. Call me callow, call me naïve, call me a cheapskate, but it seems to me that weight loss is a matter of personal commitment, grim determination, unwavering resolution, and not a little pain. It also helps to eat less. Is it too simple to say that a program of exercise and diet is the obvious solution in the desire to lose weight?
Not at all, my wife says. That’s why she needs that treadmill from Hypermart. That’s why she needs the HerbaLife Diet regimen. Exercise is easy with a treadmill. And it’s not as boring as these common, old-school type exercises, like sit-ups and crunches and jumping jacks. You can watch the TV while you exercise and hardly be aware of the exertion. The weight simply melts away while the CSI team solves another murder or Joan Rivers murders another Hollywood luminary. And the expense of that special, scientifically researched diet, medically approved by Good Housekeeping magazine, supplies its own incentive in the price alone. After all, who is going to pay that much money and NOT lose weight? It’s a matter of pride. It’s a matter of accountability. It’s a matter of responsible economics.
In short then, weight loss is firstly a matter of personal finances, not personal effort. The physical wherewithal of success has first to be put in place. My daughter once stated the case in a similar manner. She wanted a car but did not have a job, and she could not get a job because she did not have a car. One’s ducks must be in a proper row, you see; a foundational groundwork must be in place.
There are so many things in the world that come with a caveat, or so I have learned from marriage and children. As an example, my wife bought a bike a few weeks ago from our neighbour, for the same weight shedding purpose, and yet the bike has stood untouched in the driveway ever since. I wondered about this, and so I asked why. Having but half a brain, I had failed, as usual, to see the obvious. She could not possibly use that bike, I was told, before purchasing proper gloves, lest her hands end up calloused and thick as sweet potatoes. Note that I say “proper gloves” -- not mittens of the sort you see motorcyclists wearing here in Bali, but leather gloves with holes for the fingertips and a Velcro strap at the wrist.
I should say before going any further that my wife is not fat. She’s not really even overweight. She’s merely 35, and therefore fat in her imagination, overfed by the female fear of aging, suffering from the vague inkling that she cannot remain 25 forever, yet encouraged in the belief that there are ways around this dilemma -- exercise, diet, Botox, plastic surgery, tummy tucks, pills, and money. Mostly money.
To make my own point then, in my customary curmudgeonly, parsimonious way, I decided to go on weight loss program of my own. There would be no great expense, and in fact I would save money simply by eating less. If our son fades away in the bargain for lack potable sustenance, well it’s all for a good cause. For exercise my plan is to use my own feet, legs and arms -- this amazing machine I was born with, and quite without cost.
Breakfast is one egg, one chicken bone, and a piece of plain toast, no margarine. The stuff they call margarine here is really only yellow car wax anyway. Lunch is potato chips and five cups of coffee, a combination that causes nausea till well after dinner, thus quelling any desire to imbibe the same. If I hunger by night, I allow high energy snacks such as Snickers bars, cookies, Ritz Crackers and such-like.
Where exercise is concerned I decided to adhere to the good old fashioned sit-up. No better way to tone and flatten the stomach right? But I find straightaway that something is wrong. This exercise was not nearly so difficult thirty years ago. What happened? Herculean efforts result in no more than three successful elevations from the floor, and then I’m on my back for five minutes of heavy breathing. I try again and my stomach muscles cry for mercy.
What does seem readily apparent after two days and two nights of this personalized program is that this is not working out well at all. I’m hungry, I’m in pain, and I’ve gained two pounds. Better to just surrender to the wisdom of my wife and go with that treadmill after all. If nothing else, it will make for a good towel rack.
But when it comes to weight loss, I’m not so sure about the efficacy of the dollar to intervene in an equally successful measure. Call me callow, call me naïve, call me a cheapskate, but it seems to me that weight loss is a matter of personal commitment, grim determination, unwavering resolution, and not a little pain. It also helps to eat less. Is it too simple to say that a program of exercise and diet is the obvious solution in the desire to lose weight?
Not at all, my wife says. That’s why she needs that treadmill from Hypermart. That’s why she needs the HerbaLife Diet regimen. Exercise is easy with a treadmill. And it’s not as boring as these common, old-school type exercises, like sit-ups and crunches and jumping jacks. You can watch the TV while you exercise and hardly be aware of the exertion. The weight simply melts away while the CSI team solves another murder or Joan Rivers murders another Hollywood luminary. And the expense of that special, scientifically researched diet, medically approved by Good Housekeeping magazine, supplies its own incentive in the price alone. After all, who is going to pay that much money and NOT lose weight? It’s a matter of pride. It’s a matter of accountability. It’s a matter of responsible economics.
In short then, weight loss is firstly a matter of personal finances, not personal effort. The physical wherewithal of success has first to be put in place. My daughter once stated the case in a similar manner. She wanted a car but did not have a job, and she could not get a job because she did not have a car. One’s ducks must be in a proper row, you see; a foundational groundwork must be in place.
There are so many things in the world that come with a caveat, or so I have learned from marriage and children. As an example, my wife bought a bike a few weeks ago from our neighbour, for the same weight shedding purpose, and yet the bike has stood untouched in the driveway ever since. I wondered about this, and so I asked why. Having but half a brain, I had failed, as usual, to see the obvious. She could not possibly use that bike, I was told, before purchasing proper gloves, lest her hands end up calloused and thick as sweet potatoes. Note that I say “proper gloves” -- not mittens of the sort you see motorcyclists wearing here in Bali, but leather gloves with holes for the fingertips and a Velcro strap at the wrist.
I should say before going any further that my wife is not fat. She’s not really even overweight. She’s merely 35, and therefore fat in her imagination, overfed by the female fear of aging, suffering from the vague inkling that she cannot remain 25 forever, yet encouraged in the belief that there are ways around this dilemma -- exercise, diet, Botox, plastic surgery, tummy tucks, pills, and money. Mostly money.
To make my own point then, in my customary curmudgeonly, parsimonious way, I decided to go on weight loss program of my own. There would be no great expense, and in fact I would save money simply by eating less. If our son fades away in the bargain for lack potable sustenance, well it’s all for a good cause. For exercise my plan is to use my own feet, legs and arms -- this amazing machine I was born with, and quite without cost.
Breakfast is one egg, one chicken bone, and a piece of plain toast, no margarine. The stuff they call margarine here is really only yellow car wax anyway. Lunch is potato chips and five cups of coffee, a combination that causes nausea till well after dinner, thus quelling any desire to imbibe the same. If I hunger by night, I allow high energy snacks such as Snickers bars, cookies, Ritz Crackers and such-like.
Where exercise is concerned I decided to adhere to the good old fashioned sit-up. No better way to tone and flatten the stomach right? But I find straightaway that something is wrong. This exercise was not nearly so difficult thirty years ago. What happened? Herculean efforts result in no more than three successful elevations from the floor, and then I’m on my back for five minutes of heavy breathing. I try again and my stomach muscles cry for mercy.
What does seem readily apparent after two days and two nights of this personalized program is that this is not working out well at all. I’m hungry, I’m in pain, and I’ve gained two pounds. Better to just surrender to the wisdom of my wife and go with that treadmill after all. If nothing else, it will make for a good towel rack.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Linguishtics
America has been called ‘the melting pot of the world,’ at least in olden time, for its invitation to people all over the globe to immigrate to its happy shores, but for me it can never hold a candle to the variety and variance of cultures and tongues one finds in the sunny environs of Bali. The trouble with America is that people soon become Americans, shedding the uniqueness of their heritage for a new skin, a gray flannel suit of conformity, such that the quirks and traits that made them foreign people soon no longer attain. I knew, for instance, many Indonesians in America, and yet knew not a single one until I came to Bali -- for they had all become Americans, you see? And no one loves America so well as expatriated Indonesians -- its anaemic culture, its disposition toward greed, its worship of money, its love of ‘things’ -- shoes, clothing, jewellery, cars. Charity, community, character -- all suffer under the stress of a rich yet reductive national ethos.
But enough of America bashing for the moment. What I want to say is that here in Bali the Brit stays British, the Aussie Australian, the Frenchman French and so on the wide world of immigrants over -- for in this far flung archipelago a nonnegotiable divide is encountered. The bule can hardly become an Indonesian, and so he must stay as he is, dragging along his cultural and linguistic peculiarities just as surely as his own skin. We don‘t put on airs, or join the PTA, or sit in the seats of government, or reside over Hindu processions. No, we remain perfectly foreign. We are neither consumed nor altered nor absorbed. Our essential frame of reference remains with the culture and character of our countries of origin, and we continue for the most part to speak in our native tongues and to employ our native idioms of language.
Which brings me to this concept of “ish” as employed by the peoples of some western countries to denote some peculiarly uncertain increment of time. It is a strange notion to the American, for we are precise sorts of people. For the American, eleven o’clock means 11 o’clock. Noon means noon. There is no “ish” about it. And yet for the Australian, for instance, and the Englishman and the Frenchman and the Italian, time is not so easily pinned down. It’s fluid, somewhat questionable, somewhat if-ish.
“Coffee at 9-ish,” my English friend says. What does this mean? Something like 9? Two or three minutes before or past nine? At some point during which the general atmosphere of the day seems to resemble 9?
I certainly don’t know, and so I arrive for coffee at 9. And of course my friend is not there. Nor is he there at 2 minutes after 9, or 5, or 10, or 20. I conclude therefore that the term 9-ish has nothing in essential to do with the actual fact of 9 o’clock. I note also that by 20 minutes past the hour I have already finished my cappuccino. Why were we meeting? For coffee, right?
It may or may not be marginally interesting at this point to note that the word “Ish” was one of the first words used to denote a member of the human race, and can be found, curiously enough, in various widely separated parts of the world -- from the Middle East to South America. Adam, in the Hebrew, was called Ish, and in his first words in the Torah he calls the newly created woman Isha. Clearly then, the term has been a longstanding one, and why it never caught on in America, I cannot say. Other well known ishes would include Ishrael, Ishlam, Chrishtianity, Ishmail, Ishstanbul, and Ish-Kabibble. As well as fishes, of course.
Shall we conclude therefore, given the modern use of the term “ish,” that there was something inexact, unreliable, unpredictable about man and the world and the cosmos from the outset? Or is it just the American expectation of precision that is fishy?
In any case, my friend shows up at 9:30 -- ish having meant, in this case, for this day, 30 minutes past the hour. Why did he not say 9:30 to begin with? Why say 9 if you mean 9:30? Ah, but there is that all important, intangible “ish” attached.
“Well hey, Mike-ish. Run into some trouble along the way?“
“No trouble. Why?“
“You’re a bit tardy-ish, that’s all.“
“Not at all. I said 9-ish, did I not?”
“But as you can see, my cappuccino is rather gone-ish.”
“Ah well, have another. It’s still early-ish, ish-n’t it?”
It is agreed then. Next time around I will plan to arrive for coffee late-ish.
But enough of America bashing for the moment. What I want to say is that here in Bali the Brit stays British, the Aussie Australian, the Frenchman French and so on the wide world of immigrants over -- for in this far flung archipelago a nonnegotiable divide is encountered. The bule can hardly become an Indonesian, and so he must stay as he is, dragging along his cultural and linguistic peculiarities just as surely as his own skin. We don‘t put on airs, or join the PTA, or sit in the seats of government, or reside over Hindu processions. No, we remain perfectly foreign. We are neither consumed nor altered nor absorbed. Our essential frame of reference remains with the culture and character of our countries of origin, and we continue for the most part to speak in our native tongues and to employ our native idioms of language.
Which brings me to this concept of “ish” as employed by the peoples of some western countries to denote some peculiarly uncertain increment of time. It is a strange notion to the American, for we are precise sorts of people. For the American, eleven o’clock means 11 o’clock. Noon means noon. There is no “ish” about it. And yet for the Australian, for instance, and the Englishman and the Frenchman and the Italian, time is not so easily pinned down. It’s fluid, somewhat questionable, somewhat if-ish.
“Coffee at 9-ish,” my English friend says. What does this mean? Something like 9? Two or three minutes before or past nine? At some point during which the general atmosphere of the day seems to resemble 9?
I certainly don’t know, and so I arrive for coffee at 9. And of course my friend is not there. Nor is he there at 2 minutes after 9, or 5, or 10, or 20. I conclude therefore that the term 9-ish has nothing in essential to do with the actual fact of 9 o’clock. I note also that by 20 minutes past the hour I have already finished my cappuccino. Why were we meeting? For coffee, right?
It may or may not be marginally interesting at this point to note that the word “Ish” was one of the first words used to denote a member of the human race, and can be found, curiously enough, in various widely separated parts of the world -- from the Middle East to South America. Adam, in the Hebrew, was called Ish, and in his first words in the Torah he calls the newly created woman Isha. Clearly then, the term has been a longstanding one, and why it never caught on in America, I cannot say. Other well known ishes would include Ishrael, Ishlam, Chrishtianity, Ishmail, Ishstanbul, and Ish-Kabibble. As well as fishes, of course.
Shall we conclude therefore, given the modern use of the term “ish,” that there was something inexact, unreliable, unpredictable about man and the world and the cosmos from the outset? Or is it just the American expectation of precision that is fishy?
In any case, my friend shows up at 9:30 -- ish having meant, in this case, for this day, 30 minutes past the hour. Why did he not say 9:30 to begin with? Why say 9 if you mean 9:30? Ah, but there is that all important, intangible “ish” attached.
“Well hey, Mike-ish. Run into some trouble along the way?“
“No trouble. Why?“
“You’re a bit tardy-ish, that’s all.“
“Not at all. I said 9-ish, did I not?”
“But as you can see, my cappuccino is rather gone-ish.”
“Ah well, have another. It’s still early-ish, ish-n’t it?”
It is agreed then. Next time around I will plan to arrive for coffee late-ish.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Much Ado About Gaga
First off, and at the risk of appearing hopelessly out of it, I will admit that up until the recent brouhaha over Lady Gaga’s performance (or non-performance) in Jakarta, I didn’t even know who the woman was. I had perhaps some vague idea that she was a singer, or a dancer, or Paris Hilton’s sister, or Lady Godiva’s sister, or maybe a recalcitrant member of the English royal family, but other than that it was just a name.
Now, thanks to the FPI and the Jakarta police, I and perhaps thousands, perhaps millions of other hopelessly out of touch people young and old have become aware of Lady Gaga to an extent greater than we would otherwise have purposed or desired -- her music, her poetry, her style, her lipstick, along with the threat she has posed to decent society and impressionable young-un’s all over the world. A destroyer of morals, the FPI says. A tool of Satan, a messenger of decadence from the West, bringing blasphemous lyrics, shameless bodily gyrations (similar to those seen in the locally grown Dangdut) to corrupt the innocent mind of youth, tear at the very seams of social order, wile the unwary to the pit of hell. Yes, lyrics such as these:
Oh, caught in a bad romance
Oh, caught in a bad romance
Ra, rah, ah, ah, ah
Roma, roma, ma
Gaga, ooh, la, la
Want your bad romance
and these:
P-p-p poker face, p-p-p poker face
Mum mum mum mah
P-p-p poker face, p-p-p poker face
Mum mum mum mah
Horrors! Sacrelige! Wickedness! Mum mum mum mah!
Really? It looks more like nonsense to me.
Don’t get me wrong. Nonsense has its own place. Consider, for instance, the John Lennon lyrics for I am the Walrus:
Semolina Pilchard
climbing up the Eiffel tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking
Edgar Allan Poe
Or from Come Together:
Here come old flat top
He come groovin' up slowly
He got joo joo eyeballs
He one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker
He just do what he please
But there’s a difference, right? In Lennon’s nonsense there seems yet some kind of peripheral intention lurking just beneath the surface. The language is sharp, infectious, strangely precise in its imprecision, and vaguely dangerous in its invitation to make connections and conclusions (just look at what Charles Manson made of Helter Skelter!).
But what can we say about “Mum, mum, mum, mah?” “P-p-p poker face?” It seems to me that if this woman and her corporate entourage are seeking to destroy anything, it is not the moral decency of youth but the heritage of integrity and ingenuity in the music and lyrics of the true artists that came before her -- The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Credence Clearwater, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, et al.
Call me old again, but these were artists and performers worthy of significant response, be it admiration or censure, devotion or disapproval. Here were lyrics that challenged through commentary and criticism, through involvement in the real world and the social issues of the time.
Lady Gaga is not stupid. No one makes millions in this world by being stupid. Rather, I will wager that Lady Gaga knows perfectly well how silly she is, and therefore how silly the FPI has made itself, their nation and their religion by taking her seriously. Moreover, she departs the country firmly in possession of the high ground, having chosen the sober course of withdrawal over the risk of subjecting her fans to the violence promised by the FPI -- giving thanks at the same time for the elevation of her ‘art’ beyond any measure it could have attained on its own merit.
And she is laughing all the way to the bank.
Now, thanks to the FPI and the Jakarta police, I and perhaps thousands, perhaps millions of other hopelessly out of touch people young and old have become aware of Lady Gaga to an extent greater than we would otherwise have purposed or desired -- her music, her poetry, her style, her lipstick, along with the threat she has posed to decent society and impressionable young-un’s all over the world. A destroyer of morals, the FPI says. A tool of Satan, a messenger of decadence from the West, bringing blasphemous lyrics, shameless bodily gyrations (similar to those seen in the locally grown Dangdut) to corrupt the innocent mind of youth, tear at the very seams of social order, wile the unwary to the pit of hell. Yes, lyrics such as these:
Oh, caught in a bad romance
Oh, caught in a bad romance
Ra, rah, ah, ah, ah
Roma, roma, ma
Gaga, ooh, la, la
Want your bad romance
and these:
P-p-p poker face, p-p-p poker face
Mum mum mum mah
P-p-p poker face, p-p-p poker face
Mum mum mum mah
Horrors! Sacrelige! Wickedness! Mum mum mum mah!
Really? It looks more like nonsense to me.
Don’t get me wrong. Nonsense has its own place. Consider, for instance, the John Lennon lyrics for I am the Walrus:
Semolina Pilchard
climbing up the Eiffel tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking
Edgar Allan Poe
Or from Come Together:
Here come old flat top
He come groovin' up slowly
He got joo joo eyeballs
He one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker
He just do what he please
But there’s a difference, right? In Lennon’s nonsense there seems yet some kind of peripheral intention lurking just beneath the surface. The language is sharp, infectious, strangely precise in its imprecision, and vaguely dangerous in its invitation to make connections and conclusions (just look at what Charles Manson made of Helter Skelter!).
But what can we say about “Mum, mum, mum, mah?” “P-p-p poker face?” It seems to me that if this woman and her corporate entourage are seeking to destroy anything, it is not the moral decency of youth but the heritage of integrity and ingenuity in the music and lyrics of the true artists that came before her -- The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Credence Clearwater, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, et al.
Call me old again, but these were artists and performers worthy of significant response, be it admiration or censure, devotion or disapproval. Here were lyrics that challenged through commentary and criticism, through involvement in the real world and the social issues of the time.
Lady Gaga is not stupid. No one makes millions in this world by being stupid. Rather, I will wager that Lady Gaga knows perfectly well how silly she is, and therefore how silly the FPI has made itself, their nation and their religion by taking her seriously. Moreover, she departs the country firmly in possession of the high ground, having chosen the sober course of withdrawal over the risk of subjecting her fans to the violence promised by the FPI -- giving thanks at the same time for the elevation of her ‘art’ beyond any measure it could have attained on its own merit.
And she is laughing all the way to the bank.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
An Unearned Celebrity
There are not many white people in my neck of the woods, being as it is rather off the beaten tourist track, and as a result of being rare in this sense, I often find that I’m a bit of a celebrity. Not like, say, Brad Pitt or Lady Gaga, given that people neither go into a frenzy at my presence nor violently protest it, but more like a giraffe or a duck-billed platypus. I‘m unusual, I‘m odd. Children cannot help but shout at the sight of me. “Hey bule!” Either that or they shy away, hide behind a parent or a nearby tree. Some of them merely stare, like little deer caught in headlights. The older boys, the adolescents, have learned some English, and they like to employ it whenever opportunity knocks. “Hey Mister! Bintang ya? Obama! Boom-boom!” Honestly, I find it all purely delightful.
I suppose this is because I’m so accustomed to being fairly perfectly anonymous. In America if you are not Brad Pitt or Lady Gaga or some reasonable facsimile, people simply don’t give a shit You may as well be a fire hydrant or a telephone pole. And if you were to pipe up and say “Hi, how ya doin’?“ or “Hey, where ya goin‘?“ the stranger so addressed would more than likely avert his eyes and walk a little faster, taking you for some kind of weirdo or pervert. Either that or he’d flip you the finger if he had enough time to bother.
I’m not saying it has always been that way. It’s more of a recent development, over the last half century or so, a period of time that has seen the division of community into small special interest groups, isolated cliques through which the general society is negotiated with paranoid caution, being considered vaguely dangerous and by and large threatening.
I’m reminded here of a scene from the movie Blast from the Past. In this movie Brandon Frasier has from childhood been sequestered with his family in a fallout shelter since 1950 or so, the father having mistakenly believed the world above had been wiped out by a nuclear war. When finally Brandon emerges from the shelter, sometime in the 1970s, one of the first creatures he sets eyes upon is a black female mail carrier. Aghast, nearly frozen with delight at the novelty of this occurrence, Brandon finally exclaims “Oh my lucky stars -- a Negro!” In the deeply segregated society of the 1950s one simply did not see black people, nor did black people see white people. We knew of each other’s existence, of course, but to behold the actual creature was extraordinary and inspired a certain sort of amazement, a passing enchantment.
So it’s kind of like that. Oh my lucky stars, a bule! And why not? Brandon’s character intended no insult, but merely expressed a child-like wonder at the brave new world he had so suddenly entered. Here was something beyond the pale of every day experience -- the environment of the self-sufficient yet hopelessly remote fallout shelter -- and by extension, the social environment of 1950s America. In the same way, these people who greet me mean no insult nor intrusion. They simply acknowledge the uncommon event and are driven to connect, and thus take part through speech.
The beach nearest my house is not a tourist beach. There are no shops or cafes, no chaise lounges, no sellers or hawkers. From Padang Galak to Ketewel and beyond the sand is black, and hot like smouldering coals. People don’t swim or surf or snorkel here, partly because it’s a rather dangerous sea, and partly because you’d come out looking like a loaf of poppy seed bread. It is local people who frequent this beach, to fish, to collect black and white rocks for sale to the warehouse down the road, to attend a ceremony or a ritual bath; and in the evening they go there to stroll, to chat, and to let the children play in the lake-like shallows left by an outgoing tide.
It is here that my celebrity seems most noted and esteemed. Everyone wants to say hello, they need to say hello. They alter their path to approach nearby, to smile, to wave, to say hello. “Where are you from? Where are you going? Where do you live? How many children do you have?” It is simple, it is the same, and yet newly pleasant with every occasion. I am alive after all, and they are alive, and we are alive together in this one small place, in this huge, nonnegotiable, impersonal world.
“Om, Om,” one man exclaims, calling me ‘uncle’ as he turns his little daughter by the shoulders to face me. “Minta uang dari Om,” he says. Ask for money. And I am slain by the innocence of the thing, the faith of the man, the shy anticipation in the eyes of his little girl. Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened.
Sadly, I am helpless to help them. Silver and gold have I none. My pockets are quite empty, and my wallet as well. But such as I have, I give. Friendship. Kindness. Humanity. Celebrity.
I suppose this is because I’m so accustomed to being fairly perfectly anonymous. In America if you are not Brad Pitt or Lady Gaga or some reasonable facsimile, people simply don’t give a shit You may as well be a fire hydrant or a telephone pole. And if you were to pipe up and say “Hi, how ya doin’?“ or “Hey, where ya goin‘?“ the stranger so addressed would more than likely avert his eyes and walk a little faster, taking you for some kind of weirdo or pervert. Either that or he’d flip you the finger if he had enough time to bother.
I’m not saying it has always been that way. It’s more of a recent development, over the last half century or so, a period of time that has seen the division of community into small special interest groups, isolated cliques through which the general society is negotiated with paranoid caution, being considered vaguely dangerous and by and large threatening.
I’m reminded here of a scene from the movie Blast from the Past. In this movie Brandon Frasier has from childhood been sequestered with his family in a fallout shelter since 1950 or so, the father having mistakenly believed the world above had been wiped out by a nuclear war. When finally Brandon emerges from the shelter, sometime in the 1970s, one of the first creatures he sets eyes upon is a black female mail carrier. Aghast, nearly frozen with delight at the novelty of this occurrence, Brandon finally exclaims “Oh my lucky stars -- a Negro!” In the deeply segregated society of the 1950s one simply did not see black people, nor did black people see white people. We knew of each other’s existence, of course, but to behold the actual creature was extraordinary and inspired a certain sort of amazement, a passing enchantment.
So it’s kind of like that. Oh my lucky stars, a bule! And why not? Brandon’s character intended no insult, but merely expressed a child-like wonder at the brave new world he had so suddenly entered. Here was something beyond the pale of every day experience -- the environment of the self-sufficient yet hopelessly remote fallout shelter -- and by extension, the social environment of 1950s America. In the same way, these people who greet me mean no insult nor intrusion. They simply acknowledge the uncommon event and are driven to connect, and thus take part through speech.
The beach nearest my house is not a tourist beach. There are no shops or cafes, no chaise lounges, no sellers or hawkers. From Padang Galak to Ketewel and beyond the sand is black, and hot like smouldering coals. People don’t swim or surf or snorkel here, partly because it’s a rather dangerous sea, and partly because you’d come out looking like a loaf of poppy seed bread. It is local people who frequent this beach, to fish, to collect black and white rocks for sale to the warehouse down the road, to attend a ceremony or a ritual bath; and in the evening they go there to stroll, to chat, and to let the children play in the lake-like shallows left by an outgoing tide.
It is here that my celebrity seems most noted and esteemed. Everyone wants to say hello, they need to say hello. They alter their path to approach nearby, to smile, to wave, to say hello. “Where are you from? Where are you going? Where do you live? How many children do you have?” It is simple, it is the same, and yet newly pleasant with every occasion. I am alive after all, and they are alive, and we are alive together in this one small place, in this huge, nonnegotiable, impersonal world.
“Om, Om,” one man exclaims, calling me ‘uncle’ as he turns his little daughter by the shoulders to face me. “Minta uang dari Om,” he says. Ask for money. And I am slain by the innocence of the thing, the faith of the man, the shy anticipation in the eyes of his little girl. Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened.
Sadly, I am helpless to help them. Silver and gold have I none. My pockets are quite empty, and my wallet as well. But such as I have, I give. Friendship. Kindness. Humanity. Celebrity.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Sorry Didn't Do It.
This is something we will be hearing a lot about in the next few weeks -- the so-called “apology” of Bali mastermind bomber, Umar Patek, followed by a court verdict for that act in late June. You will read about it dozens of times -- perhaps dozens upon dozens, depending on how much you read and of what variety and origin -- and much of what you read is going to say the same thing that I’m about to say. But that’s okay. It bears repetition if only to guarantee that the truth remains louder and nearer at hand than lies.
But lets start with Kip Kinkle. As a teenager in my old home State of Oregon Kip Kinkle decided one day to murder his mother and father. After that he went to his high school with a rifle and shot a number of students, leaving two dead and 22 injured. He was apprehended, tried and sentenced to 111 years in prison without the possibility of parole. The State of Oregon does not have the death penalty. Kip is now incarcerated at the Oregon State Correctional Institution.
Here’s the point: Kip said he was sorry, I and believe that he was. How do I know Kip was sorry? I know this because I saw the news video shot from outside his cell just after he was arrested. In the video recording the viewer can hear Kip screaming in emotional agony -- tortured, unworldly screams and groans of inexhaustible self hatred. “Just kill me,” Kip shrieks through uncontrollable sobs. “Please just kill me; God please kill me.”
Here is the voice and the visage of a young man who has come to a full realization of exactly what he has done, here a young man suddenly buried beneath the unbearable weight of his crime. He has killed, murdered in premeditated cold blood, without passion, without mercy, and without reason other than the notion he had suffered that his parents might be disappointed with his grades for the term. And now Kip was sorry, truly very sorry -- for he understood that what had been only thoughts, fears, ideas and imaginations had somehow driven him to unthinkable action, and that he had crossed the line between infantile fantasy and enter a world of sheer horror and regret. The features of Kip’s face were twisted in extremis, rendered barely human by the stranglehold of sorrow and guilt that shook his slight frame. There was no going back, ever, and he knew it.
Kip Kinkle made no excuses. Though a mere boy, he faced the full import of what he had done. Was Kip insane? Maybe so. And yet he forewent a plea of insanity, for he must have felt that payment for what was inexcusable was only proper. Which in itself seems a pretty sane conclusion.
Now lets take a look at Umar Patek -- the man with the silly, toothy grin, the man in the self-conscious religious garb, the man who brightly smiles and shakes hands with the jurors and lawyers as if he were some kind of sheepish celebrity. What are you smiling at, Umar? Do you fail to understand, even now, that you are being tried for the murder of 202 human beings? What have you to say?
Well, Umar has apologized. He says he’s really quite sorry, and offers a number of excuses and conditions. He says, for instance, that he had never been in favour of blowing up people in a Kuta nightclub. Apparently, in his mind, it would have been better to blow up people somewhere else. Is he sorry then for the act of murder? Obviously not. You see, there are right people to murder and wrong people to murder, and Umar is merely sorry he murdered the wrong people. He adds then that he thought preferable victims might have been found in Israel or Palestine. Oh, ok. Now we understand.
Yes, we understand. We understand that Umar Patek is not sorry at all. We watch him speak with dispassionate composure, and spin an outrageous tale of absurd justification. No tear is shed, no groan of regret uttered. For a decade Patek crawled and slithered about various crannies and hovels, saving himself, planning new murders, unsatisfied with those he had already committed, until finally he was shovelled out of hiding and arrested. And then someone told Umar that it would be a good idea to apologize at this point. Say you’re sorry. It plays well in the Indonesian courts. You might get out alive. You might get off with just ten years or so. Heck, you might even get a slap on the wrist along with an order to behave in the future.
And so he forces out the words which should from the outset have forced themselves from the mouth of any sane or worthy human being. I’m sorry, he says. I’m really very sorry. And it doesn’t mean a God damned thing.
But lets start with Kip Kinkle. As a teenager in my old home State of Oregon Kip Kinkle decided one day to murder his mother and father. After that he went to his high school with a rifle and shot a number of students, leaving two dead and 22 injured. He was apprehended, tried and sentenced to 111 years in prison without the possibility of parole. The State of Oregon does not have the death penalty. Kip is now incarcerated at the Oregon State Correctional Institution.
Here’s the point: Kip said he was sorry, I and believe that he was. How do I know Kip was sorry? I know this because I saw the news video shot from outside his cell just after he was arrested. In the video recording the viewer can hear Kip screaming in emotional agony -- tortured, unworldly screams and groans of inexhaustible self hatred. “Just kill me,” Kip shrieks through uncontrollable sobs. “Please just kill me; God please kill me.”
Here is the voice and the visage of a young man who has come to a full realization of exactly what he has done, here a young man suddenly buried beneath the unbearable weight of his crime. He has killed, murdered in premeditated cold blood, without passion, without mercy, and without reason other than the notion he had suffered that his parents might be disappointed with his grades for the term. And now Kip was sorry, truly very sorry -- for he understood that what had been only thoughts, fears, ideas and imaginations had somehow driven him to unthinkable action, and that he had crossed the line between infantile fantasy and enter a world of sheer horror and regret. The features of Kip’s face were twisted in extremis, rendered barely human by the stranglehold of sorrow and guilt that shook his slight frame. There was no going back, ever, and he knew it.
Kip Kinkle made no excuses. Though a mere boy, he faced the full import of what he had done. Was Kip insane? Maybe so. And yet he forewent a plea of insanity, for he must have felt that payment for what was inexcusable was only proper. Which in itself seems a pretty sane conclusion.
Now lets take a look at Umar Patek -- the man with the silly, toothy grin, the man in the self-conscious religious garb, the man who brightly smiles and shakes hands with the jurors and lawyers as if he were some kind of sheepish celebrity. What are you smiling at, Umar? Do you fail to understand, even now, that you are being tried for the murder of 202 human beings? What have you to say?
Well, Umar has apologized. He says he’s really quite sorry, and offers a number of excuses and conditions. He says, for instance, that he had never been in favour of blowing up people in a Kuta nightclub. Apparently, in his mind, it would have been better to blow up people somewhere else. Is he sorry then for the act of murder? Obviously not. You see, there are right people to murder and wrong people to murder, and Umar is merely sorry he murdered the wrong people. He adds then that he thought preferable victims might have been found in Israel or Palestine. Oh, ok. Now we understand.
Yes, we understand. We understand that Umar Patek is not sorry at all. We watch him speak with dispassionate composure, and spin an outrageous tale of absurd justification. No tear is shed, no groan of regret uttered. For a decade Patek crawled and slithered about various crannies and hovels, saving himself, planning new murders, unsatisfied with those he had already committed, until finally he was shovelled out of hiding and arrested. And then someone told Umar that it would be a good idea to apologize at this point. Say you’re sorry. It plays well in the Indonesian courts. You might get out alive. You might get off with just ten years or so. Heck, you might even get a slap on the wrist along with an order to behave in the future.
And so he forces out the words which should from the outset have forced themselves from the mouth of any sane or worthy human being. I’m sorry, he says. I’m really very sorry. And it doesn’t mean a God damned thing.
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