Lillies of the Fields

I happened to watch the old film Lillies of the Fields last night. Showed up on my YouTube feed for whatever reason. I remember enjoying the movie when I saw it many years ago, but it was interesting to watch it again from the perspective of present day ideas and peculiarities. 

Lillies of the Fields stars Sidney Poitier, one of America's first popular black Hollywood stars, but it is not in any way about race. That's the interesting part. It seems that nowadays if a movie features a black actor in the starring role, it must be about race or racism or racial tensions. It must have an ax to grind. 

Bur Poitier's character, Homer Smith, has no ax to grind. He is a drifter, a jack-of-all-trades, a man like any other man, and is the man whose car radiator happens to boil over, which happens to send him down a lonely country road to the doorstep of a nunnery. Providentially, it just so happens that the Mother Superior at the nunnery had been praying for someone to show up and help with what she sees as God's plan for the nunnery--the building of a chapel. She has no money to pay for this, only her faith that it will come about. 

I suppose that contemporary critics would find much to criticize about the story. Just the fact that race is not made the central issue would bother them--as if all black people are first and foremost about race, and only secondarily human beings. We are so accustomed now to obligatory racial awareness that we automatically anticipate it. When Homer walks into the local diner, we automatically think Oh, here we go--they're going to refuse to serve him. He will be stared at and shunned. But no, all that happens is that he orders a breakfast. 

Lillies of the Fields is a story about faith, about character, about pride and charity, about personal growth. Homer could be any color, the nuns could be any color. The important thing is that they are all human beings. 

Quake

We had a fairly good shake here in Bali this morning--things falling off the shelves, room rocking back and forth. Takut the dog was tottering around like a drunk, 'what the hell?' look on  his face. I haven't heard yet how it rated on the Richter scale, but it was actually a bit scary. Not long afterwards, one could hear the sound of ambulance sirens. I sure wouldn't have wanted to be driving a motorbike at the time! 

Elderly

I seem to have grown old over the last year, and especially the last six months. Most notably over this long period of illness, which yet persists. I look in the mirror and see new vertical wrinkles on my forehead crisscrossing with the old horizontal ones. Looks like a map of the canals of Mars. Dark racoon-like circles beneath my eyes. I go for a coffee in the morning, which, actually, has turned to tea or some other substitute given my stomach's newfound inability to tolerate coffee, chat a moment with the Barista, and then say, 'I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name.' 'That's okay,' she says, 'you're pretty old.' At a later point in the day, I am explaining the problem I'm having with my stomach to another young woman and she says, 'That's okay. You're pretty old.' I seem to have crossed a dividing line between seasoned and elderly. And I suspect there's no going back. 

Eskimos

My little buddy Viana returned yesterday evening from a month long stay in Kerangasem and upon seeing me came running from the end of the street, eyes asparkle, smile like a bright crescent moon.

"Meester!"

This afternoon she shows up at my door with two friends, Feby and 'Whats-her-name'. Each of the girls is wearing mittens and a jacket with the hood pulled over the head, like little Eskimos. 

"Jeeze, are you guys cold?" I ask incredulously, considering the balmy temperature of about 28C (82F).

"Noooo," they sing out in unison. "Hot!" 

"So why are you wearing jackets and mittens?" 

"Be-Cause!"

Hmm. Okay.

"If no coat, masuk angin," Viana explains. 

Ah yes, the dreaded masuk angin, 'entered by the wind'. The cause of pretty much any illness suffered in Bali. 

"Also," she adds, "Don't want skin be black."

Of course--the second great dread of Bali--that one's skin will become too dark. The lighter the better, and the reason many Indonesian women use whitening cream. As far as I can understand, the reasoning behind this is that it's a class thing. Dark skin marks you as lower class, a field laborer. Apparently they have not yet heard that black is beautiful.

"So, where are you girls off to?"

They are off to buy ice cream, Viana says, and then all three sit down together on my doorstep. A strange place to look for ice cream, I'm thinking. But of course I know what they're up to. 

"How much is ice cream?" I ask. 

"Lima ribu." 

"Wow, that's not much at all!" It's less than 50 cents. 

Smiles. Silence. Whats-her-name is poking Viana and whispering something.

"Lima ribu. Let's see … that's fifteen altogether, right?"

Nods of confident affirmation. 

"You guys have that much?"

"Tidak ada," Viana mutters sadly. 

"So how are you going to buy ice cream?"

Rapt attention. Raised eyebrows. They're waiting for me to unravel the puzzle. 

"How about if I give you the money?" 

"Yes!" They're up, they're ready, they're clapping their mittened little hands. "Thank you, Meester! Thank you!" And they're off into the sweltering south Bali afternoon, all bundled against the blizzard of heat. Oh, I know they're mercenary little brats, but so was my own little daughter, once upon a long time ago. 

I'll take love and gratitude wherever I can get it these days.  

The Return of the Bocah Nakal

It seems that the bocah nakal weren't using the villa wifi after all, as they are present in the parking bay just the same as ever, regardless of the password change. You see now, this is the unfairness set in motion when someone begins to make false accusations which have arisen entirely from his own presumptions and prejudices. He creates a convincing narrative which nonetheless ultimately collapses around its own paranoid core.

I suspect that these boys have chosen the villa parking bay as a cozy sort of personal clubhouse, its most alluring feature being no doubt that it is out of the sun--and believe me, finding a spot in the tropics that is out of the sun is a pretty difficult thing to do. 

One remembers being a boy himself by watching the neighborhood boys. As I watch, I remember lost things, things long since engulfed in the obscuring tide of time. I remember how my friends and I would choose out places that seemed somehow inviting and make them our own nooks, far from the madding crowd, so to speak--away from parents, away from the prying, uncertain world, away from rules and supervision. Our choice became whatever we might choose. It was the platoon HQ, it was the marshal's office, a time machine, a box canyon, a frontier post. I remember a spot in Oakland, California, an old brick fireplace in a little dip of the land in my great uncle's sprawling back yard. This was central headquarters of our international spy agency, the place to which we spies reported when we returned from our far flung foreign missions to the neighboring block. And again, I remember the unused driveway and garage of a neighborhood residence, a submerged sort of area that once served as a bay for loads of coal back when folks still used coal to heat their homes. Here we could hide from boys we did not want to play with, or from bullies known to be on the loose in the neighborhood, from the world's ears and eyes and unreasonable expectations. We could talk for  hours, play the most ridiculous sort of games, agree on extravagant plans of conquest, or discuss the intriguing and often inaccurate particulars of female anatomy. We could search the pages of the latest forbidden bodice ripper and read the best paragraphs over and over again, and then hide the scandalous volume under the cover of the coal chute before leaving. Whether in the city or the forest or at the seashore, we found such a place. There were countless such hideouts in our own seemingly countless years of youth. 

I suppose that present-day boys don't pretend so much as we did back then. Now their cellphones do the pretending for them, and they enter a pretend world that has been fashioned for them. Nonetheless, I think the basic pattern is the same. Home away from home means the very same thing now as it did when I was a boy. 

The Last of the Bocah Nakal

Well, the bocah nakal have pressed their luck too far, as I warned them would happen, though of course they chose not to listen. The villa management has now changed the wifi password, and so the boys have no more reason to hang around in the parking garage, where they were using the close proximity to get online, courtesy of the villa. Can't say that I'm sad to see them go. Unlike my little friend Viana, who always visited only briefly and always asked if she could enter, these boys spent most of the day in the garage and didn't really care to leave even when I asked them to leave. Their grave error, though, was to actually enter the villa itself late at night and hang out in the pool area out back. 

An interesting bit of information, however, has arisen from the incident. It seems that this is where the boys got the password. Apparently it had been written down on a calendar or notepad back there. This was a welcome bit of information for me, proving as it does that it was not I who gave them the password (my word on the matter having apparently been insufficient). Nor did I give it to Viana, who in any case has been many miles away in Kerangasem for the last month and could not have been using the wifi even if she had the password. 

All young folks have a cellphone here (hape they call it). Few have the wherewithal to get online. 

Unwelcome Companions

I was sitting out on my porch yesterday evening, just after dark, when suddenly a rat (yes, a rat) came strolling out from behind my chair and between my feet, not in any particular hurry at all. 

"Whoa! Hold on there, buster. What the hell?"

He looks to the right, he looks to the left, he looks up. 

"Oh, sorry, I didn't see you there." Still in no particular hurry. 

"You didn't see two giant feet about three times your size?" 

"Oh, are those feet?" he says skeptically. "I thought they were potatoes."

And with this, he walks on, still in no hurry. 

What's become of rats nowadays? It's outrageous!

This reminds me of a time when I was eating at an restaurant down in Sanur with my friend Adam. As soon as our food emerged from the kitchen, rats emerged from the bushes and street gutter. And these were big rats, nearly as big as cats. Certainly much bigger than potatoes. They were also bold rats, arrogant rats, much like the rat of this evening. They literally strolled about freely, unperturbed, mere inches from our feet. 

Adam was quite vocal in his horror and indignation. 

"What is this? Rats? You can't have rats in a restaurant. Someone ought to do something about this. Someone ought to complain. In fact, I'm going to complain right now. Mbak! Mbak! Ada tikus di sini! Dua, tiga, empat tikus. Tikus besar!"

The waitress dutifully appears and scrutinizes the rats. 

"Iya, Tuan," she says. "Sudah tahu."

As in So?

"I can't eat with rats!" 

"Do you want to order something else?"

"I didn't order rats in the first place!"

Well, that was the end of dinner. How can one eat with rats? Like children, they no longer know their bounds.