Safaris

 I had the pleasure over the last three days, during which time my girlfriend and her sister visited, of taking longer excursions around south Bali than I am accustomed to doing. The observant reader will have noticed that I've placed the word pleasure in italics. This is not to say that their company was not a pleasure. It was. It was the excursions themselves that were less than pleasurable. 

The first was to the Kuta area, where we visited a mall, went to the beach, returned to the mall, and then walked through the driving storm of traffic and crowds and drunkards and blaring music to finally arrive at the monument to the 2002 Bali bombing, lit up in bright flashing lights just like the streetside bars. For some reason. 

Of course, I've seen all this before--but the thing is, I was younger then, seemingly fifty years younger, yet somehow only ten at most. In short, these boots are no longer made for walking. They are made for sitting peacefully in a corner. My ability to walk has deteriorated greatly, and I did not realize just how greatly until called on to do much more of it than usual. At one point, as we stumbled (or rather as I stumbled) past a mini market, Eveline ushered me to a chair outside the door (by ushered, I mean that she acted as a human crutch to convey me to the table and lower me into the chair). At this point, a man in the bar next door, leering over his pint of beer, said "Look at the old man. Ha-ha, that's right honey, you take care of the poor old fella." 

The poor fella would have loved to throw the man's beer in his face and then break the glass over his head, but that would have required the strength and energy to rise from his seat. Instead, he merely became silent and sullen, which did not hurt the man in the bar at all.

On the next day, we took a Grab Car to Bali Safari, out somewhere in the neighborhood of Kingdom Come. Now Bali Safari offers its own exhausting walking experience, and I found my skills unenhanced from the day before, although my right foot managed to display a superb talent for finding and tripping over the slightest cracks in the safari pavement. 

I found this zoo--for it is essentially a zoo, and an incomparably inferior one at that--equally as depressing as any other zoo. The animals lay listlessly in the dust, bored by this miniature world where they had so unnaturally found themselves. Poor old fellas. 

And that was that. A very short visit but a very active one. (I almost said exhausting again, but I don't want to be redundant). They have returned now to Java, and I have returned to writing, which, if nothing else, is less exh-, umm taxing than walking. 

The Idiot

 "Whenever I'm worried about anything," said this guy Ben, "I like to think about China. China has a population of like two billion people, and not one of them even remotely cares about whatever you think is so important." I acknowledged that this was a great comfort. 

The Idiot, Elif Batuman

Well there's a good thing to keep in mind whenever we start feeling too important. Lol. Really, whenever we start thinking anything is especially important, in the grand scheme of things.

I have often found myself feeling surprised, although I don't know why, upon finding that Indonesians have only the vaguest idea about things that are going on in America. I mean, why should they, right? Take our tumultuous political drama, for instance. They are in general quite unaware of it. Nor do they care very much if you attempt to explain it. Why should they? What does it have to do with them?

How aware are we of events and issues in Indonesia? (It's a rhetorical question. No need to compose an answer).

Anyway, as noted above, the quote is from Elif Batuman's unusual novel, The Idiot. I guess it's unusual in the first place that she chose this title, because of course anyone will think first of Dostoyevky's work by the same name. Perhaps Batuman's novel does have some parallel to Doskoyevsky's. I don't know yet. Then again, I have not read the idiot by Dostoyevsky. This may be why I have not seen the relationship between the two 🤪

And speaking of books I haven't read ... As it happens, I first purchased Batuman's novel entitled Either/Or. Here again, this title itself has been taken from another famous book by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Hmm. The plot thickens. The evidence mounts. Perhaps the one has something to do with the other? (I have read Kierkegaard, but it was a long time ago and I'm sure it was gibberish to me at the time. I was a university student then, and university students specialize in gibberish).

That aside, I meant to say that I bought and started to read the second Batuman book before I realized there was a first and that the second was a sequel to the first. Therefore, I stopped reading the second and purchased the first on Kindle. (The second I have in paperback, which I prefer-I mean paperback books, not the book itself, which I cannot know whether I prefer because I have only read a few pages of it). 

The first novel, The Idiot, concerns the career of a young Harvard student named Senin. One does not know precisely what she is studying because neither does she. You might say that she is testing the waters. It is difficult at first to "get" what Batuman is doing. You have read that this is supposed to be funny, but you are not sure why ... until, that is, you begin to remember your own university days and the curious and careful education in nothing that was inflicted upon you. It all becomes clear, or, rather, unclear all over again.

I am reminded here of a quote from Mark Twain: "All schools, all colleges have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge". Or this: "Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty". 

But certain things are expected, not to mention important, in the real world, such as living a meaningful life, making friends, seeking out a love, and so on, and this Senin does in her own faltering, uncertain way, wondering perhaps, as we all do, how she is supposed to know so much when she knows so little. 

Once you get your feet in the water of this book, you suddenly realize that it is quite delightful--as when we say 'Come on in, the water's fine!' 

I'm looking forward finishing this one and diving into the next. 

Atlas Beach Fest

Near the last part of May, Eveline, also known as my girlfriend, visited Bali from Jogyakarta and we spent the last day of her vacation in Canggu at a place called Atlas Beach Fest. I had not been to Canggu in years and found myself gobsmacked all over again. Canggu along with Kuta and Seminyak are what I would call the tourist traps of Bali and indeed they trap hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. The Atlas Beach Fest itself is an enormous commercial complex of restaurants, bars, live entertainment, swimming pools, a shopping center, and God knows what else. Give me peaceful little Sanur any day. That said, we had a pleasant time, along with Wayne and Louis, who drove us there and very kindly paid our way as well. So here are some photos.

Flying Coconut

Coming home from Sanur this evening, darkness having already fallen, a coconut somehow falls off a motorbike somewhere ahead and starts erratically bouncing around on the highway. Just when you thought it was going one way, it would bounce back the other way. This made trying to drive like being trapped inside a pinball machine. And this is not the sort of little round hairy coconut one is accustomed to seeing in America. No, this is a big, green, basketball sized thing heavy enough to knock over a bike or two like bowling pins. Luckily, everyone was able to swerve around it without swerving into anyone else, nor did anyone appear fearful or surprised. Eh, business as usual. 

The Final Time

 My cousin wrote today of being aware some seventeen years ago, standing in a high place in the High Sierras, that he would be seeing the place, experiencing the place for the last time. Never again would he find himself beneath "the wonders of sky filled days and bottomless starry nights."

There is a certain comfort in this, however sharp the regret--like being at the bedside of a dying loved one, perhaps. There is closure, there are words of farewell. 

I enjoyed no such fond departure, because the last time I stood in my beloved mountains I had no idea it would be the last time. I'm not even sure now what year it was. It was 2006, or perhaps 2007. There seemed at the time no need to mark the date in my personal history. 

I had simply decided to take a day trip with my stepson, because I longed to see the place, as always, and because I thought it would surely be a high point of his own young experience. He had never been in the forest, in the mountains and was certain to be dazzled and amazed.

Except that he wasn't. All the way there, he asked glumly 'How much farther?' He did not like the bumpy dirt road that stretches the last 30 miles, objecting to every jarring dip and rise. He did not like the dust, the wind, the mosquitoes, the long grass of the meadow, the ice cold of the lake.  

It was early in the season and the meadow where I had so often pitched my tent was an inch deep in water, making it necessary to skirt the meadow through the woods, which themselves were pocked with puddles. Eventually though we were able to make it to the lake, though my stepson rode the last half of the journey on my back. 

We got in a swim in the icy lake and then I set about to cook some hotdogs I had brought along for a picnic. I had forgotten however to bring a knife, and so I bought one at a little store in Government Camp. 

Who knew that this knife was going to be so sharp? It was just a cheap little thing, and I needed it only to shave the bark off a couple small branches so that we could spear the hotdogs and roast them over the fire. As I stripped the bark off the first branch, I managed to plunge the knife into the side of my thumb, creating a deep cut that pumped out blood like a faucet. 

I tried to continue with our hotdogs but the ridiculous finger just kept gushing blood. How to stop it? 

Well, what I ended up doing was to take off my underwear, wrap the fabric around my thumb and then stretch the elastic, tightly tying it around my elbow. 

Our trip was done. 

Back in Portland, in the Emergency Room of the hospital I worked at, the examining doctor pronounced my bandage/tourniquet "really neat". Quite an inventive idea. 

And that, for one reason and another and another, turned out to be my last trip to my beloved mountains. I don't even count it now in my mind, in my memory. It was a do-over that will never be done over. Sometimes I imagine somehow going there again, and yet must admit that any circumstance that would find me there is perfectly unimaginable. And so I remember only. I remember the feel of the forest floor on the bottoms of my feet, the smell of the pine and fir trees, the glitter of the water when the sun strikes the ripples, the gentle seam that my fishing line makes as I cast the fly one more time just beyond the ridge where the deeper water begins. My final journey never arrives yet never ends. 

Temporarily Disabled

 My apologies for being absent for an extended period of late. I actually had some things I wanted to write down, but was suddenly experiencing pain that was worse than usual in my right shoulder and back--a longstanding problem, but somehow exacerbated. This made the 'typing position' particularly uncomfortable, such that I really couldn't concentrate on composing anything (not that concentration brings such good results even on my good days, but you know what I mean). 

I ended up using a combination of icepacks and Advil to gradually get the pain under control, and I am now feeling pretty much back to 'normal'. Normal for a decrepit old man with various decrepit old issues.

Unfortunately, I have essentially forgotten the things that I wanted to write during this downtime, or if not forgotten, at least lost interest in. 

I did have the chance to read a number of books-- 

In English: The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki; The Secret History, Donna Tartt; Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami. 

In Indonesian: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald; Who Is Maud Dixon, Alexandrea Andrews. I've also started Les Miserables, which I expect will take some time to read through, for it is difficult enough in English, all the more challenging in a second language. 

Of course, I meant to say something about each of these, but my shoulder is beginning to hurt, so never mind. 

Hopefully, you'll be hearing more from me soon. 

Islands in the Stream

 At Pantai Karang, just off the beach, three little manmade islands have been raised atop a naturally rocky rise on the ocean floor, three oblong temple-like mounds of roughly square-cut foreign rock, and on top of the little islands small huts have been erected, open on all sides beneath umbrella-shaped wooden rooves. These serve as sheltering spots for the local fishermen. Alternatively, they serve well as the subject of tourist photos, and on any given day, if the sun is out, one can see the tourists taking the photos.

Generally, a quiet expanse of water intercedes between the beach and the islands, just deep enough for swimming, but this evening the ocean has receded and naked, puddly land stretches from the sand to the islands, exposing shale-like rocks and mucky looking dips and green patches of seaweed, the unseen revealed, stripped of lovely facade.

I've put my book face down on the table and looked up for a time, thinking about the three islands, watching children and adults alike splash about in the moonscape of this new-found no-man's land. It's breezy, wonderfully so after a scorching day, and the wind folds back the covers of my paperback and shuffles through the pages like a deck of cards. I'm wondering if the story will be all mixed up when I return.