Cold

My God, what's the world coming to? Cold in Bali? Yes, it is. 21C, and raining. It looked like just a light sprinkle when I started out on the bike for my morning coffee, but by the time I got here, my clothing had soaked the stuff up like a sponge and I was beginning to shiver. Reminds me of the good old days in Oregon. Except that I had a car back then. I have lost track here, really, of the amount of time people spend back home essentially imprisoned in their houses. But here, you get blindsided by the thing, you have not nearly so many entertainments at ready in the house--because generally you don't need them. When the weather is warm and the sun is shining, as is most often the case here in Bali, it kind of sucks you out into the world. So, anyway,  I'm kind of wishing I'd brought my rain smock. As it is, I'm stuck here in the mall either until the rain stops or until I surrender to the idea of getting soaked all over again. 

Postscript: Two hours later, it is still raining, but my barista buddies take pity on me and bring me a free latte. Truly, we rarely see consistent rain like today's in Bali. More generally, it will rain with a passion for 10 minutes or so, and then cease--but this stuff today has been nonstop since 6 o'clock this morning (and it is now nearly 12:30 in the afternoon). 

Bali Mal Galeria

I had not been out to Bali Mal Galeria in quite a long while, basically because the distance exceeds the extent of my energy nowadays, but, feeling pretty well yesterday, I decided to give it a shot. The main reason for this excursion was to purchase a saddle cover for my motorbike, and I remembered having found one in the past at the large Hypermart store in the mall. Unfortunately, as it turns out, they don't carry these any longer, so I will have to be happy for the time being with my decorative duct tape repair job. 

What I did find, however, is that the planners at the mall have found an ingenious way of making the parking situation much worse than it used to be. And it was pretty bad to begin with. 

First off, they have closed the second entry to the parking lot to motorbikes. That's right, if you go on down to the traffic circle, stay to the left, and try to enter the complex from that direction, you will be turned back. This used to be my preferred entry, as you could avoid the usual traffic jam at the main entrance on the bypass, and also avoid going through the covered, pitch black parking lot in order to enter the bike parking area. (My eyes do not adjust quickly to changes in light). 

But yeah, upon approaching the ticket machine at the far entry, I was instructed that I must go back to the first entry. 

"What? You mean the one way back on the Bypass?" 

"Yes."

"You mean that I have to make a U-turn down the road here, go back again past the mall, make another U-turn and then finally get to the right entrance?" 

"Yes." 

I gaze longingly at the parking lot in front of me, mere yards away.

"Okay, next time, ya? I enter just this once, ya?" 

"No."

So it's back out to the highway, down to the dreadful U-turn, which leads of course to the famous Bali traffic circle of death, back down the highway heading away from the mall, and then another U-turn before the mall finally comes in sight again. 

Here at this end, after poking my way through the darkness of the covered lot, I find that very substantial efforts have also been carried out to render the motorbike parking situation very much worse than it used to be, for they have somehow found a way of taking the same amount of square footage that already existed and making it accommodate far fewer bikes. It is no longer a question of finding an open space. It is a question of finding a sliver of light between two bikes and forcing yours in. It's good exercise, I'll admit, but not really the time or place for that. How they have managed to create this situation, or why they have done so, I do not understand. That's where the genius of the thing comes in. 

So I spend an exhausted time in the mall looking for an item they do not have, return before long to the lot, and of course I cannot find my bike. But I am not the only one, as several people can be seem aimlessly wandering up and down the rows, floating along like ghosts, each looking for his own needle in a haystack. 

I and another hopeless seeker pass one another. 

"I rost my bike," he says. 

"Yeah, I rost mine too." 

"I want to go home," he says, and chuckles. 

"I'll tell you what," I suggest, "I'll look for your bike and you look for mine." 

"Okay." 

It might just work. In any case, it couldn't hurt, for we are getting nowhere in our efforts thus far. 

Replacements

One amazing though less than admirable thing about MS is that it always replaces one problem with another; or maybe this is admirable in its own way, speaking as it does to the incredible inventiveness that lies in the disease processes of humankind. Suffering hates a vacuum? 

Anyway, as the pain in my neck and shoulders generally subsides, becoming more of a grumble than a shriek, reinforcements arrive in the form of other pains and discomforts. Two have lately raised their venomous heads to make certain that I should not rest or, God forbid, feel well. 

The first is a resurgent intolerance to heat. Even though the weather here is not nearly as hot as usual, the problem is that, in MS, the body no longer bothers to regulate core temperature according to ambient temperature. Therefore, as the heat of the day becomes more intense, the system makes no adjustment in body temperature. Instead of saying, "Gee, it's hot outside today", we say "Gee, who lit the damn furnace at the center of my soul!" It truly feels like you've got this roaring fire inside of you, rising to your chest and neck and face. It would be a little bit of a relief if smoke could escape from your nostrils and ears, but of course it doesn't. The only relief I can find is to just get under cold shower water, though the relief is temporary. It's kinda like pouring water on a grease fire and expecting that to really help any. Naturally (or is it unnatural?), the inner boiling eventually results in fatigue and headache, and also exacerbates the pain problem that had been trying to go away. 

The second new, or rather familiar old problem has been in a renewal (is that the right word?) of cognitive dysfunction. This is irritating on a number of levels, but most particularly, in the last couple of days, in that it makes me look stupid or senile. Suddenly, I am unable to find words. All the trouble I've taken to learn Indonesian, and now the language has vanished! Hell, even English is vanishing!  And there's more. I'm sitting here talking to Hendra about our friends and acquaintances who work at Starbucks or are otherwise related to our conversation, and I'll be damned if I can remember their names! It's like, "Oh, I was talking yesterday to … uh … whozit? … you know, the girl … umm …. "

Holy crap. How embarrassing. Poor guy has Alzheimer's or something. Poor old feeble Pak Will. 

Of course, once you get back home, the name pops back into your head. Fat lot of use that is now, right?  

Doormat

I have here at the house a number of old towels--ragged, rectangular things which I have long used as floor mats--and when I was washing these things this morning, I suddenly had to ask myself this question: Why? 

Why am I washing these ragged, chewed up (thanks to the parade of dogs that have hung out at the house over the years), frayed and discolored floor mats? It's not as if I'm going to use one next time I take a bath. Or as if I'm going to use the edge of one as a napkin. What will I be using these for? Well, to step on. Or to wipe water off the floor. Or to keep the entryway dry when it is raining outside.

But here I am filling up the washing machine, dumping in detergent, putting the thing on whirl, draining the tank, refilling it, and even adding fabric softener … Why? Lol. 

Honestly, I cannot give myself credit for this sudden fit of good reasoning--for I had merely noticed, you see, that the maid, who comes one day a week, is in the habit of rinsing the towels in water and then just hanging them in the sun. It was she, therefore, who had exhibited good reasoning, where I had only, and rather belatedly, acknowledged the thing. 

I can't help but wonder how many other pointless things I have been doing as a matter of habit. 

Simplify, simplify, simplify. 

Lost Cause

Yesterday, I bought a computer game about the battle of Gettysburg. Probably a mistake. I have, to begin with, a curious fascination with the battle, which borders on a fixation really. I can't say why. It's just there. Often enough, I will lay awake at night going over the historical details of the battle in my head, with generally a focus on what Lee could have done differently to win the battle. Why do I try to find ways for Lee to win this battle? That I do not know either. 

Someone once theorized that I must have been a participant in the battle in a past life, likely as a Confederate soldier, I suppose. And indeed, I still remember a dream from many years ago wherein I, seemingly a junior officer, was killed whilst leading a charge against a Yankee position. It is the only dream, to my recollection, in which I have died. It was a very vivid dream, and, as I say, it has remained with me all these years. 

Nonetheless, I do not believe in reincarnation, and so I surely could not have died in the battle of Gettysburg (unless, of course, I am wrong about my insistence that there is no such thing as reincarnation). 

More likely, though, this is of a psychological nature, something to do with patterns and struggles deep in the murky soup of my own psyche. Is there within me a deep-seated attachment, a strange bonding to lost causes?  Do I charge over and over against the impregnable hill (as William Faulkner once theorized regarding the character of southern manhood) in hopes that there will be that one time, finally and forevermore, wherein the position is carried and the day is won? 

What is it about lost causes that seems to so capture, urge, torment my soul? I certainly have no affection for the Southern cause, ideologically or historically. In fact, of all the causes in the world, few would seem to have been less worthy, or indeed less reasonable. And so what is affective in the 'complex' would seem not to be its specific application  to history or ideology, but the very essence of its lost-ness, without reference to anything other than lost-ness. 

You see how I get when it comes to Gettysburg? Lol. 

Having played the game before going to bed, I proceeded, of course, to dream of the thing all night long, such that I woke this morning in an exhausted state of mind, aware that I had not so much been restfully sleeping as charging up and down dream ridges against the teeth of musket and cannon. 

Too bad, as Lee himself said at the conclusion of the affair. Oh too bad.

Matahari

Shopping for clothing at the Matahari department store in Denpasar is quite simply and easily accomplished--right up the moment (or rather the hour) when you actually make the payment, at which point you find yourself wishing you had never started. 

Matahari employs a virtual army of young men and women to stand at a distance of perhaps five feet from one another, like a military picket line before the tables and racks of clothing, each one ready to rush forth and assist the shopper. As it happened, I was wanting a pair of jeans, and this, in appropriate size and preferred price range, was found with the utmost speed and alacrity--and off I was sent to the dressing room. 

You do not take this to the cashier for payment, however. You take it to the girl or the boy who found it for you, surrender the item to him or her, and are given a note. This you take to the cashier. 

Notice here the use of the singular: cashier. For whereas you face an army at the beginning of your campaign, you now face a single employee behind a single cash register. Or rather, you don't face her, because you are able to see her only dimly in the distance at the head of an unmoving line of customers, each of whom holds his note in hand--or uses the note to fan himself. 
. 
The cashier, you discover, is apparently using some ancient form of calculation for each purchase--an abacus, perhaps--a time consuming art of calculation that is now lost in the West. There is much manipulation of keys and tagging and untagging and stapling and reams of paper involved in this process. It's quite quaint. 

Upon reaching the front of the line, along about late afternoon or so, I found that no part of the army, formerly so quick and eager, had yet delivered my jeans to the counter. A complicated series of communications proceeded, wherein the cashier summoned a manager via intercom, who then sent another employee to find the employee with the jeans, whom herself could be seen from where we stood at the counter. But everything must be done just so, and I felt it improper, therefore, to muddy up the process by simply waving at the girl. 

My jeans arrived in due time, and after a painfully slow flurry of calculating and cataloging and shuffling and stapling, a receipt about the length of the Constitution and its amendments raveled out of the register and my purchase, praise God, was made! 

I'm hoping that these jeans will last for years. 

A Coincidental Cure

I seem accidentally to have discovered the cure for restless leg syndrome. Perhaps I will soon be recognized by the American Medical Association. Or, then again, perhaps my cure is a matter of coincidence and will be short-lived. All I know at present is that for the last three nights, the RLS has been absent. 

Here's what happened: 

The weather, providing its own sort of coincidence, had been quite chilly for some days--something which had not happened before in my seven years here--such that it actually occurred to me to sleep under a blanket rather than just a sheet. The only blanket in the house happened to be of a quite heavy sort (and why it had even come here with us to Indonesia, I cannot now imagine). 

In any case, being under this heavy blanket, and rather toasty, seems to have ended the nightly dance of RLS throughout my body. What a pleasure it has been to lie down and sleep through the night without suffering the wakeful conniptions of RLS! 

The trouble with this "cure" is that the Bali temperatures will surely return to stifling soon, in which case a heavy blanket will surely be quite as uncomfortable as the RLS itself. 

Moreover, as I have said, the cure may be an illusion to begin with--a product of happy though unsustainable coincidence.

But ah well--even night-long cures are better than no cures at all.