Muskrat

In the beginning, after the great flood, it was a muskrat who helped remake the earth.

--The Night Watchman, Louis Erdrich 

There, you see? Even the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians had a flood story. In fact, nearly every native culture around the world has an ancient flood story/mythology at the core of its identity which has endured through the ages. It seems to me nothing more than logical assumption that some such sort of worldwide event did indeed occur and was ingrained in universal memory both as a real event of cataclysmic destruction and as a miraculous regeneration of humankind in the aftermath. In the Chippewa myth, it is the muskrat (wazhashkag) that ushers in this new area of reformation/reimagination/regeneration. In other tribes it is a crow; in others a coyote; in still others a human being; each creature endowed with powers that are salvific and wisdom that is otherworldly. This is the way the world works, this is the way time works, and mythology is the record both of real event and numinous import.

Neuropathic Itching

 I have a new MS symptom to report.  Yipee, right? 

Especially of late, I have had a sensation of itching in one or another spot on my body, and yet when I go to scratch the itch, it cannot be found. It is both everywhere and nowhere. I direct my hand to the place that seems to be itching and do not enjoy the desired result. I take the hand away, and the itch is still there, wherever it is. And to make the thing more bothersome yet, this typically occurs at night when I am trying to sleep. How can you sleep when you have this itch that can't be scratched? 

Well, this is called neuropathic itching, and of course it has nothing to do with the skin itself. It is due, as all things with MS are, to the process which destroys myelin and interferes with the proper functioning of the nervous system. In fact, there is no itch. The itch is a lie. Not surprisingly, this symptom is sometimes falsely put down to psychosomatic itching, but this is not at all the cause in the case of MS. It is a result of nerves compromised through damage to myelin.

The good news is that this is not a debilitating sort of issue. It is simply annoying. Although I suppose it could be debilitating if it were to result in too much sleep deprivation. 

I read that this itching sensation is most often an early symptom of MS, so I don't know why it has waited so long in my case. I read as well that it can be treated to some degree with an anticonvulsant medication, which I already take in the form of Pregabalin. I may simply have to take a second dose at night if the problem worsens. 

Confusion

 Gosh, these Indonesian COVID rules are confusing. 

Yesterday, I went to Sanur and found one of my favorite coffee shops open as usual, and yet today I note that some of the others are closed and that the beaches are still closed. And yet a friend of mine tells me about visiting the beach just the other day. 

This evening, I went out to Starbucks and found the tables set up again and people sitting inside. 

"Oh, we can drink here now?"

"Yeah, it's okay. Take as long as you want, Pak Will." 

"As long as I want? What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, technically you can't stay more than half an hour." 

"Half an hour? But gee, I just ordered a grande. Do I gulp it." 

"No, no. Ha ha. Don't worry, Pak Will. Take as long as you want." 

The benefit of being a regular customer, I guess. Rules don't apply. 

And here's another thing I can't understand. Although I am 1) old and 2) have a preexisting health condition, I am not eligible to get the vaccine (because I am old and have a preexisting condition). Shouldn't I be first in line? I mean, I am the most likely to die, right? 

Oh well, go figure. 

Open and Closed

 Upon driving down to Sanur for my takeaway coffee and pastry this morning, I found that the cafes had reopened in advance of the previously announced date for the conclusion of lockdown, which was supposed to have been August 1st. Cool, except that having believed the original schedule, I had not brought a book to read or my cigarettes, and of course without these there is no point in staying at the cafe. Tomorrow I will make certain to remember these necessary items, though who knows, perhaps I will find the cafes closed again. That's what I love about Indonesia. The organization! Terrific! 

I was looking through the "coming soon" section of the Netflix screen this evening and noticed one titled "Brand New Cherry Flavor". Hmm. That sounded familiar. I realized, after some cogitation and just a bit of googling, that not only had a read this novel some years ago, but that it was written by my high school acquaintance, Todd Grimson (which is a pen name for Todd Spillum), which I why I read the book in the first place. Ah, it all begins to come back to me. I remember for some reason reading at least part of the book by a swimming pool, though I cannot remember whether this was in the US or in Bali. I remember being impressed with the writing itself (for if nothing else, Todd was (is) an accomplished stylist. I don't remember the story, which is not at all unusual for me. 

At Washington High School, Todd was the boyfriend of the girl who would later become my girlfriend, and then my first wife. Even then (I was 17, he 18), Todd was interested in becoming a writer, and had not a little bit to do with me trying my own hand at it. He was also interested in classical music, as was I, and we would share these interests, both before, during, and after the girlfriend changed hands. Ultimately, one of us succeeded in becoming a successful writer (Todd has three novels and a book of short stories to his name), and one of us got the girl. 

And now he has a Netflix movie? Go Todd!

The White Tiger

 I was some fifty pages into The White Tiger, a novel by Aravind Adiga, before I realized that what I was reading sounded quite familiar. I had forgotten altogether having seen the movie version of the novel not very long ago; partly, I suppose, because I was now reading the Indonesian language translation of the story and partly just because of the state of my moth-eaten memory.

In any case, I found this, as I read to the end, to be quite an engaging novel about a subject not often spoken of in the realm of popular literary fiction--that being the sad state of the poor in the rather heartless caste society of India, those who are born in the kegelapan, as the Indonesian has it, the darkness--born in a societal cage and fated to live out their existence in that cage, essentially the slaves of those who are above them. 

But there is a way out, as protagonist Balram discovers, and it is right in front of one's nose from the beginning. He finds the key in a line of poetry, in a dog-eared book he happens to pick up from a table in a market place serving lesser folks like him, located behind the market for the higher class. There is a way to freedom, self respect, independence, although it is, by the way, bad news for the masters!

This is a well written novel, both enlightening and disturbing. I recommend it. 

The Catcher in the Rye

I'm beginning to feel here like the catcher in the rye where all these little neighborhood dogs are concerned. 

Holden Caulfield put it this way in the novel: 

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - and mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." 

So yeah, who else is gonna keep these little dogs from going over the cliff? Why are they at my house all day?  Because I don't want them to starve. I don't want them to go over the cliff. Who else is taking care of these dogs? How are they eating? Where will they go to get out of the rain? Whose dogs are they anyway? 

Someone recently said that most of these dogs were going to go to some "dog shelter", but that turns out not to be so. A dog shelter in Bali? Yeah, right. They're just going over the cliff, or headed that direction anyway. 

And so they wander into my one room apartment one-by-one, arrange themselves atop the single rectangular space rug, not much more than a doormat, really. I saw one of them up on the main road today, stopped my bike, scooped him up, brought him back to his own street. Stupid dog. You see? There you go, running off that cliff. And why must I stop? Why must I bring him back. 

Because I am the catcher in the rye. 

Never Have I Ever

It occurs to me that one of the best ways one has of understanding that he has outlived his time here on earth is to watch one of the many Netflix flicks geared toward teen audiences. 

Take the series Never Have I Ever, for example. In this coming of age love story, the young daughter in an immigrant family from India spends her sophomore year in high school investigating the various ways in which she might manage to trespass against the traditions and morals of her native culture, not to mention my own native culture, and ultimately, sooner rather than later, lose her virginity. 

Having sex as soon as possible is depicted as something quite normal for the average American female teen--and that's because it probably is. See? That's how out of touch I am. I'm actually sitting here feeling scandalized by a plot element that has become nothing more than perfectly common, a no-brainer. Of course the 15 year old lead female's most pressing quandary is how to get laid before the end of the month.

You see, when I was a young teen, we kind of thought more about how soon we should try to hold a girl's hand. Something like that would of course lead to going steady and getting engaged and getting married, so it was kind of a big deal. 

The general attitude in this series, and in all these sorts of series and movies, is not just that anything goes, but that anything and everything is both generally quite okay and generally recommended; and I can't decide whether this is a faithful representation of culture as it is among the young, or whether it is a stealthy sort of social conditioning from the halls of Hollywood. Is this life imitating art or is it art imitating life? 

That said, I am enjoying Never Have I Ever, which strikes me as kind of cute and funny once one blocks out nagging voice of the generation gap (or is it two generation gaps by now?).