Language, My Dear, Language!

It is admirable, I suppose, that more and more Indonesians, especially in the service industry, are learning to speak some English. At the same time, it is unfortunate, given their accents and their choice of phraseology, that they still cannot be understood. 

Of course, that is partly my own fault, because 1) I'm kind of stupid, 2) I will often enough have trouble comprehending speech in any language (thanks, MS!), and 3) I begin by expecting Indonesian and therefore try to interpret what I'm hearing as Indonesian, when in fact it is English (more or less). 

One major problem that we English speakers encounter in communicating in Indonesian is a native phraseology that is unlike the forms we are accustomed to in English. Or, as my wife used to tell me, 'That's not the way we say it'. One attempts to directly convert English to Indonesian, naturally enough, but it just doesn't work that way. By the same token, the same dynamic would seem to be work when an Indonesian speaker attempts to express a thought, coming from his or her Indonesian head, directly to English. What comes out is at best unusual and at worst gibberish. 

For one thing, everything is backward in Indonesian (or, for the Indonesian, backward in English). 'The black dog,' for instance, is 'dog black'. 'Where are you going?' is 'Want to where?' 'My handsome husband' is 'Husband handsome my'. Therefore, one is looking not only for the plain words in the language but for the order of words proper in that language. 

In the end, though sometimes frustrating, this sort of thing keeps life interesting and challenging, for me anyway. It seems amazing, and somehow delightful, that something as basic and essential as language should remain so elusive.

WEGO

I've posted here today my Wego Nomination for Jim Dandy. To be honest, I wasn't sure what Wego is, so I looked it up:)

The WEGO Health Awards program was created to recognize and honor those making a difference in the online health community. It provides the opportunity for community members to thank and support the Patient Leaders and patient-centric initiatives they admire. Since its inception in 2011, the WEGO Health Awards have proven to be one of the best ways to connect the healthcare industry with top patient influencers. It is the only awards program that recognizes Patient Leaders across all condition areas and platforms, with over 2,000 nominations last year alone.

I would have to say that if I'm making a difference in the health (MS) community, it is rather by accident--but it's a happy accident in any case. Jim Dandy itself started as a blog devoted to negotiating the sudden, life changing manifestations of a disease--understanding it, examining it, interpreting its effect on my life, my health, my future, my frame of mind, and so on. In the years that followed, and especially after moving to the island of Bali, Jim Dandy gradually expanded his outlook and his interests, becoming less focused, yet perhaps more interesting. If my musings have, in all this and in any way, served to amuse or encourage or divert or commiserate, I count this as a happy coincidence. 

And so, as the Aussies here in Bali say, Cheers! 

It Is What It Is

There has been something in the back of my mind for a long while that I have generally resisted giving voice to, because to state the thing outright, to give it form, will mean that I must respond in practice. In short, I must acknowledge a reality that I prefer to ignore. 

Here's the thing. Since coming here to Bali in 2010, I have always made a point of trying to maintain a relationship with my children back in America--my natural son and my stepchildren. I tried to do this through social media, through personal emails, and by phone. Every Christmas, I have called my son to wish him a happy holiday, chat, and so on. And yet what I must admit is that no one has made a point of contacting me in the same spirit. No one calls or writes to wish me Merry Christmas. No one asks after my health. No one has ever said "How are you doing with your MS?" No one has asked whether I would come and visit. No one has expressed a desire to visit me. 

In short, I have been talking to myself. 

When I think back on my relationship with my own parents, this absence of interest from my children seems downright unworldly. I always checked in with my parents. When they became ill, I was concerned, and contacted them all the more often. Although my relationship with my father was often difficult, I was there when he became ill, to sit with him, to talk, to encourage. I was there in the hospital room when he died. I held his hand as he died. I took care of my mother full time during the last year of her life. And, again, I was there at the bedside when she died. 

To me, this is normal. This is what people do. They remember the care they were given, the efforts of their parents, the emotional and monetary expenditures made on their behalf, the love that gave them life in the first place. And so I am quite astounded to have become so wholly invisible.

So, I'm thinking, in any case, that to avoid the simple reality has become a self-destructive pretense. Why any longer write the note that is not answered, or perhaps inspires but a one or two word reply? Why make that call on Christmas? It is meaningless.
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I try to reconstruct the pieces of the past in my mind. How it was when my son's mother left, and he was only 4, and how all we had then was each other. How I devoted myself to becoming both father and mother, and also friend. He was everything, and we were always together. For years, I sought temporary work only, so that I could be at home with him as much as possible. I remember how I rode my daughter on my back, and stroked her hair, and interrupted my work to pick her up at school because she didn't like taking the bus. Playing baseball with my stepson. And being his taxi driver. And playing video games that I didn't understand. Everything. Everything. 

And now nothing. 

I don't mean to sound weak or bitter. I merely mean to be honest with myself. It is what it is, as the popular saying goes. And I no longer see the point in insisting that it isn't. 

Before and After the Fall

I woke up in the middle of the night with a certain phrase floating around in my mind, which went something like this: that it would be both ironic and somehow fitting if the ultimate downfall of America should be recorded in history as a failure to overcome the evils that have haunted the nation from the beginning--bigotry, racism, intolerance, arrogance, selfishness, ignorance. The rise of Trump has come hand-in-hand with a resurgence of all of our futile hatreds, those curses which we have long struggled to free ourselves from. And it did seem, just a short time ago, that we were getting close, that we had the upper hand. But the malignancy was merely dormant for a season and has now arisen again from its cancerous core, invading the body with new vigor. It may be that the death sentence, the stain, was irremovable from the beginning, and that we had only imagined that such evils might be put right. 

First Reformed

Faith Reformed is an agonizingly slow, yet intellectually , captivating film from director Paul Schrader, with Ethan Hawke in the starring role. What is the promise of Christ? Is it the promise of the church--of victory, of peace, of riches, of an abundant life in a fallen world? What, in fact, differentiates the church from the world, other than a handful of fastidious taboos? No, the promise of Christ is persecution, suffering, crucifixion, and, finally, transcendent love. The filming here is sharp and spare, rarely punctuated by sound or color or unmeasured movement. It proceeds from beginning to end in a dark, heavy robe, just like the one worn by the pastor in the central role. And beneath the robe of pretense and ceremony is blood and torment and death--and, incidentally, freedom. 

Church Music

As I entered Plaza Renon this morning, I was greeted by church music--strange, but distinctly pleasant. What A Friend We Have in Jesus. Made me feel inspired to revisit the old church in Sanur, which I have not attended in some, gosh, I don't know, three or four years? My wife and I used to go there (a place called Gateway Christian Center), and although it wasn't like church experiences that could be found back in Portland, Oregon, it was, at least, something as opposed to nothing. Gateway employs the practice of inviting pastors from the US on a rotational basis, which can be a plus in some cases, as one will enjoy varying messages and styles, and a minus in others, as one may face a three month period of a pastor who happens to be either tragically boring or theologically questionable. Nonetheless, regardless of the sermon or the style, it is the fellowship of believers that answers to a want in the soul. I had found in the past that one unfortunate characteristic about Gateway was the extent to which it resembled a white people club amid the otherwise brown masses, and I do think there are those who are there mainly for that company. They are the monied, the comfortable, the culturally inflexible. But hey, you know em when you see em, and it is what it is. On the other hand, there are those who come for nourishment--and I don't mean coffee and cookies. I mean the body and blood of the Lord. 

Pain in MS

I was reading a post this morning from Healthline about pain associated with MS. Although some 50 percent of MS sufferers experience pain somewhere in the range from mild to severe and from occasional to unrelenting, it is not one of the symptoms most often addressed in the literature--which seems odd to me, as it has become the symptom which, in the last two years, I must address (deal with) on a day to day basis. A night to night basis, for that matter, too. Relatively speaking, the symptoms I dealt with prior to two years ago--numbness, gait disruption, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction--seem more like irritants than disabilities. The pain I am experiencing ranges from 5-10 and is relentlessly present. In MS, this arises from any number of causes--malfunctioning muscles, weakened joints, inappropriate neural signals, arthritic responses, and so on. It is also a sort of pain that is difficult to treat, as it is occurring not as the result of something that has gone wrong in a particular body part or function, but from something gone wrong with the inscrutable nervous system itself, arising from a neuropathic response rather than a focused source, such as one would have in a physical injury. 

Aside from being painful, the pain is both physically fatiguing and psychologically depressing. One becomes weary without rest, exhausted. 

And so far, I've not been able to find the funny side of this. Not that any of these banes are funny actually, but I've always found humor, nonetheless, to be an effective say of negotiating the various fires set by our rebellious bodies. You've got to either cry or laugh, right? But pain is a dull-witted, uninventive fellow, stubborn and tedious and humorless. Like certain politicians nowadays.