This is something we will be hearing a lot about in the next few weeks -- the so-called “apology” of Bali mastermind bomber, Umar Patek, followed by a court verdict for that act in late June. You will read about it dozens of times -- perhaps dozens upon dozens, depending on how much you read and of what variety and origin -- and much of what you read is going to say the same thing that I’m about to say. But that’s okay. It bears repetition if only to guarantee that the truth remains louder and nearer at hand than lies.
But lets start with Kip Kinkle. As a teenager in my old home State of Oregon Kip Kinkle decided one day to murder his mother and father. After that he went to his high school with a rifle and shot a number of students, leaving two dead and 22 injured. He was apprehended, tried and sentenced to 111 years in prison without the possibility of parole. The State of Oregon does not have the death penalty. Kip is now incarcerated at the Oregon State Correctional Institution.
Here’s the point: Kip said he was sorry, I and believe that he was. How do I know Kip was sorry? I know this because I saw the news video shot from outside his cell just after he was arrested. In the video recording the viewer can hear Kip screaming in emotional agony -- tortured, unworldly screams and groans of inexhaustible self hatred. “Just kill me,” Kip shrieks through uncontrollable sobs. “Please just kill me; God please kill me.”
Here is the voice and the visage of a young man who has come to a full realization of exactly what he has done, here a young man suddenly buried beneath the unbearable weight of his crime. He has killed, murdered in premeditated cold blood, without passion, without mercy, and without reason other than the notion he had suffered that his parents might be disappointed with his grades for the term. And now Kip was sorry, truly very sorry -- for he understood that what had been only thoughts, fears, ideas and imaginations had somehow driven him to unthinkable action, and that he had crossed the line between infantile fantasy and enter a world of sheer horror and regret. The features of Kip’s face were twisted in extremis, rendered barely human by the stranglehold of sorrow and guilt that shook his slight frame. There was no going back, ever, and he knew it.
Kip Kinkle made no excuses. Though a mere boy, he faced the full import of what he had done. Was Kip insane? Maybe so. And yet he forewent a plea of insanity, for he must have felt that payment for what was inexcusable was only proper. Which in itself seems a pretty sane conclusion.
Now lets take a look at Umar Patek -- the man with the silly, toothy grin, the man in the self-conscious religious garb, the man who brightly smiles and shakes hands with the jurors and lawyers as if he were some kind of sheepish celebrity. What are you smiling at, Umar? Do you fail to understand, even now, that you are being tried for the murder of 202 human beings? What have you to say?
Well, Umar has apologized. He says he’s really quite sorry, and offers a number of excuses and conditions. He says, for instance, that he had never been in favour of blowing up people in a Kuta nightclub. Apparently, in his mind, it would have been better to blow up people somewhere else. Is he sorry then for the act of murder? Obviously not. You see, there are right people to murder and wrong people to murder, and Umar is merely sorry he murdered the wrong people. He adds then that he thought preferable victims might have been found in Israel or Palestine. Oh, ok. Now we understand.
Yes, we understand. We understand that Umar Patek is not sorry at all. We watch him speak with dispassionate composure, and spin an outrageous tale of absurd justification. No tear is shed, no groan of regret uttered. For a decade Patek crawled and slithered about various crannies and hovels, saving himself, planning new murders, unsatisfied with those he had already committed, until finally he was shovelled out of hiding and arrested. And then someone told Umar that it would be a good idea to apologize at this point. Say you’re sorry. It plays well in the Indonesian courts. You might get out alive. You might get off with just ten years or so. Heck, you might even get a slap on the wrist along with an order to behave in the future.
And so he forces out the words which should from the outset have forced themselves from the mouth of any sane or worthy human being. I’m sorry, he says. I’m really very sorry. And it doesn’t mean a God damned thing.
Visits
Monday, May 21, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A Fly in the Ointment
One of the best things about Bali is that there are no horseflies here. Not as far as I’ve seen anyway. It strikes me that this may also be the case in locales other than Bali, and so I should preface any further remarks with a description of the horsefly and why its general absence is to be preferred, such that the otherwise happily ignorant reader will understand what I’m on about.
The horsefly is a special sort of fly, in the order Diptera, family Tabanidae. It is, according to Wikipedia, the world’s largest “true” fly. Whether this means that there are other bugs flying around that only pretend to be authentic flies, or whether something is conveyed herein about some basic sincerity in the character of the genuine horsefly, I am not sure. For all I know, there may be pompous flies among us who, like government ministers for instance, make a lot of noise but are bereft of legitimacy, and there may be honest-to-God flies of integrity and honour, not to be mistaken for blowhards and pretenders, lest you discount their presence and feel their sting.
But I wander.
The horsefly -- which, by the way, does not proceed from a horse -- is known to be extremely noisy during flight -- rather like a flying horse might be. This was the case also with the World War II era Stuka dive bomber. The Stuka’s noise was intentional. The plane was built that way. The object was to strike terror into people on the ground. In like manner, as I suspect, the noise of the horsefly is also intentional, designed to terrorise, confuse and demoralize its targets whilst diving to inflict the actual sting. We should say, so as to avoid putting the cart before the horse, that the Stuka must have come after the fly, and that it is the fly that should be credited with the original concept.
How often indeed are we humans, like the counterfeit fly, found to be merely pretentious. The Blackhawk helicopter, for example, is not at hawk, but merely named after the hawk. A phantom jet fighter is not a phantom, and in fact is anything but a phantom. The horsefly on the other hand is what it is, and has proven itself quite inimitable. There is no helicopter, no plane, no rocket, no missile named after the dreaded horsefly. Not to date, anyway. And God forbid that there ever shall be. The fly itself is perfectly sufficient.
When I was a boy I spent every summer with my family in the high Cascades of Oregon, where we would hike and swim and fish and play. They were wonderful times, those summers, almost idyllic. But for the horsefly. For the horsefly itself spent its summers there too, and seemed ever committed, with unmatchable fervour, to attending our every activity. Whether we were swimming or fishing or sunbathing or climbing, the horsefly was there as well, harassing, pestering, injecting vexation to our every pursuit, the proverbial snake in our garden of simple contentment. Why, I wondered? We were not horses, after all; nor did we bother the private peace of the fly. And yet the thing came loudly buzzing, circling the head, crawling on the neck, landing on the naked back at that exact point which cannot be reached by the hand. It was the closest thing I knew, as a boy, to evil -- that which terrorizes and harms without reason.
I learn however, in these more tolerant years, through the employment of the modern magic of the internet, that the hated horsefly, so long thought merely malevolent and unreasoning, does in fact have a purpose in mind. It is the female of the species which bites animal flesh in order to extract a ‘blood meal’ before she can lay her eggs. Whether the male does not bite at all, or bites just for the hell of it, I cannot find. But in any case, in order to lay eggs and thus produce further swarms of noisome bugs, the female horsefly must have blood. There seems to be something of essential meaning in this, although I cannot quite put my finger on what it is. And though this elucidation of reproductive habits does not fill me with new compassion for the horsefly, an understanding is yet imparted, and a faith in a reasoning creation renewed. Moreover, a certain encouragement and sense of thankfulness attains, given that like bloodletting is not needful in the human female. I don’t say that it doesn’t happen, merely that it is not required.
I have said that there are no horseflies in Bali, but I should amend that I do not know this for a fact. Perhaps it is too hot for them, perhaps too oceanic; and yet it seems just possible that if I were to go looking for horses I might find also a horsefly or two. And perhaps in an equitably measured dose some nostalgic pleasure might arise in the sight -- for the bad has a way of remembering the good, and the good the bad, being both so inextricably entwined in the fabric of this worldly life.
The horsefly is a special sort of fly, in the order Diptera, family Tabanidae. It is, according to Wikipedia, the world’s largest “true” fly. Whether this means that there are other bugs flying around that only pretend to be authentic flies, or whether something is conveyed herein about some basic sincerity in the character of the genuine horsefly, I am not sure. For all I know, there may be pompous flies among us who, like government ministers for instance, make a lot of noise but are bereft of legitimacy, and there may be honest-to-God flies of integrity and honour, not to be mistaken for blowhards and pretenders, lest you discount their presence and feel their sting.
But I wander.
The horsefly -- which, by the way, does not proceed from a horse -- is known to be extremely noisy during flight -- rather like a flying horse might be. This was the case also with the World War II era Stuka dive bomber. The Stuka’s noise was intentional. The plane was built that way. The object was to strike terror into people on the ground. In like manner, as I suspect, the noise of the horsefly is also intentional, designed to terrorise, confuse and demoralize its targets whilst diving to inflict the actual sting. We should say, so as to avoid putting the cart before the horse, that the Stuka must have come after the fly, and that it is the fly that should be credited with the original concept.
How often indeed are we humans, like the counterfeit fly, found to be merely pretentious. The Blackhawk helicopter, for example, is not at hawk, but merely named after the hawk. A phantom jet fighter is not a phantom, and in fact is anything but a phantom. The horsefly on the other hand is what it is, and has proven itself quite inimitable. There is no helicopter, no plane, no rocket, no missile named after the dreaded horsefly. Not to date, anyway. And God forbid that there ever shall be. The fly itself is perfectly sufficient.
When I was a boy I spent every summer with my family in the high Cascades of Oregon, where we would hike and swim and fish and play. They were wonderful times, those summers, almost idyllic. But for the horsefly. For the horsefly itself spent its summers there too, and seemed ever committed, with unmatchable fervour, to attending our every activity. Whether we were swimming or fishing or sunbathing or climbing, the horsefly was there as well, harassing, pestering, injecting vexation to our every pursuit, the proverbial snake in our garden of simple contentment. Why, I wondered? We were not horses, after all; nor did we bother the private peace of the fly. And yet the thing came loudly buzzing, circling the head, crawling on the neck, landing on the naked back at that exact point which cannot be reached by the hand. It was the closest thing I knew, as a boy, to evil -- that which terrorizes and harms without reason.
I learn however, in these more tolerant years, through the employment of the modern magic of the internet, that the hated horsefly, so long thought merely malevolent and unreasoning, does in fact have a purpose in mind. It is the female of the species which bites animal flesh in order to extract a ‘blood meal’ before she can lay her eggs. Whether the male does not bite at all, or bites just for the hell of it, I cannot find. But in any case, in order to lay eggs and thus produce further swarms of noisome bugs, the female horsefly must have blood. There seems to be something of essential meaning in this, although I cannot quite put my finger on what it is. And though this elucidation of reproductive habits does not fill me with new compassion for the horsefly, an understanding is yet imparted, and a faith in a reasoning creation renewed. Moreover, a certain encouragement and sense of thankfulness attains, given that like bloodletting is not needful in the human female. I don’t say that it doesn’t happen, merely that it is not required.
I have said that there are no horseflies in Bali, but I should amend that I do not know this for a fact. Perhaps it is too hot for them, perhaps too oceanic; and yet it seems just possible that if I were to go looking for horses I might find also a horsefly or two. And perhaps in an equitably measured dose some nostalgic pleasure might arise in the sight -- for the bad has a way of remembering the good, and the good the bad, being both so inextricably entwined in the fabric of this worldly life.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Amazing Rootless Tree
I was reading something recently on Indonesian government and the ideology of Pancasila. I was skimming it, really. Skimming is something I learned to do at University about a hundred years ago, an acquisition of the intellect necessitated by the assignment of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and the Brothers Karamazov as the reading material for one term in Russian Literature, a cruel affront both to the harried student and the masterful efforts of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and yet a needful one for the turning out of graduates who know just about nothing about just about everything, which in itself is the essential business of higher education.
Skimming is the art of putting three-quarters of the brain on autopilot while leaving one-quarter watching the various flight indicators and keeping generally quiet unless something seems particularly amiss. The main point is for the plane to plummet forward as relentlessly as possible, and yet not fail to take note of potentially important blips in the airspace -- a mountain peak, for instance, or oncoming air traffic.
So it happened in the course of the skimming at hand that something flashed as it passed by, a bit of turbulence irritated forward progress, inspiring that one-quarter of the brain to sit upright, come to attention, apply the brakes
The Indonesian government, I read, formally recognizes six religions. They are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Confucianism.
Beep, beep, beep, says the autopilot unit.
At first it is not clear. The mountain peak is still in the fog. Has a major character died? Or fallen in love? Or fallen out of love? Or jumped in front of a train?
I read the passage again, and again. I’m hanging in midair, suspending forward progress, losing altitude. Something is missing, something has happened, something is wrong.
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism . . . And what? What?
Hold the phone! What happened to Judaism?
And so I read the list again. The fault must be mine, and not the book‘s. Yes, my eyes are surely bleary, my attention yet impaired. But . . . hmm . . . no matter how many times I read the sentence, Judaism is still not there.
Well then, it’s a misprint, a copy reading error. I decide to consult the internet, just to reassure myself, despite the fact that valuable skimming minutes are ticking away.
“Recognized religions of Indonesia.” I read the list. The list is the same. The omission is not only real, but intentional. And so has a country once again shown itself to be ridiculous to the core. Because here’s the thing -- if you deny Judaism as a religion you must do away with Islam and Christianity as well. Their appearance on the list becomes perfectly meaningless, as impossible as a table that stands without legs. It’s like trying to make a loaf of bread without using any dough.
Christians trace their roots through Isaac, Muslims through Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael were the sons of Abraham. Abraham, called “the friend of God,” was the father of The Chosen People, the Jews. It’s simple, really. Both the Bible and the Qur’an incorporate the Torah (the five books of Moses) along with the Psalms and others -- in a foundational manner. Both Christianity and Islam arose from Judaism, as surely as Isaac and Ishmael proceeded from Abraham. If you subtract Judaism, you subtract Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, David, the Torah . . . in short, you subtract your own faith from itself.
Did we of Jesus or we of Mohamed branch off and grow toward different slants of shade and sun? Yes. But did we spring up and grow in thin air, without soil, without water, without light. Impossible! God forbid that we should make ourselves so absurd.
The Apostle Paul stated the thing clearly enough in the book of Romans: “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”
Got it? You can’t have branches without a tree, and you can’t have a tree without a trunk.
How then can Judaism fail to be a recognized religion in Indonesia? It’s impossible. It’s absurd. And it’s hilarious in its own sad way.
Sad? Yes sad. And why? Because it is painfully clear that the chief ingredient in this particular cookery is anti-Semitism. They may as well have begun their list by declaring from the outset that theirs would be an anti-Semitic nation, the only other option being a formal acknowledgement of hypocrisy.
Dear folks in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, dear friends of the Indonesian government, I fear you’ve been skimming a little too blindly. Better slow down, go back, read your course work again -- and take care to pay attention this time.
Skimming is the art of putting three-quarters of the brain on autopilot while leaving one-quarter watching the various flight indicators and keeping generally quiet unless something seems particularly amiss. The main point is for the plane to plummet forward as relentlessly as possible, and yet not fail to take note of potentially important blips in the airspace -- a mountain peak, for instance, or oncoming air traffic.
So it happened in the course of the skimming at hand that something flashed as it passed by, a bit of turbulence irritated forward progress, inspiring that one-quarter of the brain to sit upright, come to attention, apply the brakes
The Indonesian government, I read, formally recognizes six religions. They are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Confucianism.
Beep, beep, beep, says the autopilot unit.
At first it is not clear. The mountain peak is still in the fog. Has a major character died? Or fallen in love? Or fallen out of love? Or jumped in front of a train?
I read the passage again, and again. I’m hanging in midair, suspending forward progress, losing altitude. Something is missing, something has happened, something is wrong.
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism . . . And what? What?
Hold the phone! What happened to Judaism?
And so I read the list again. The fault must be mine, and not the book‘s. Yes, my eyes are surely bleary, my attention yet impaired. But . . . hmm . . . no matter how many times I read the sentence, Judaism is still not there.
Well then, it’s a misprint, a copy reading error. I decide to consult the internet, just to reassure myself, despite the fact that valuable skimming minutes are ticking away.
“Recognized religions of Indonesia.” I read the list. The list is the same. The omission is not only real, but intentional. And so has a country once again shown itself to be ridiculous to the core. Because here’s the thing -- if you deny Judaism as a religion you must do away with Islam and Christianity as well. Their appearance on the list becomes perfectly meaningless, as impossible as a table that stands without legs. It’s like trying to make a loaf of bread without using any dough.
Christians trace their roots through Isaac, Muslims through Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael were the sons of Abraham. Abraham, called “the friend of God,” was the father of The Chosen People, the Jews. It’s simple, really. Both the Bible and the Qur’an incorporate the Torah (the five books of Moses) along with the Psalms and others -- in a foundational manner. Both Christianity and Islam arose from Judaism, as surely as Isaac and Ishmael proceeded from Abraham. If you subtract Judaism, you subtract Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, David, the Torah . . . in short, you subtract your own faith from itself.
Did we of Jesus or we of Mohamed branch off and grow toward different slants of shade and sun? Yes. But did we spring up and grow in thin air, without soil, without water, without light. Impossible! God forbid that we should make ourselves so absurd.
The Apostle Paul stated the thing clearly enough in the book of Romans: “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.”
Got it? You can’t have branches without a tree, and you can’t have a tree without a trunk.
How then can Judaism fail to be a recognized religion in Indonesia? It’s impossible. It’s absurd. And it’s hilarious in its own sad way.
Sad? Yes sad. And why? Because it is painfully clear that the chief ingredient in this particular cookery is anti-Semitism. They may as well have begun their list by declaring from the outset that theirs would be an anti-Semitic nation, the only other option being a formal acknowledgement of hypocrisy.
Dear folks in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, dear friends of the Indonesian government, I fear you’ve been skimming a little too blindly. Better slow down, go back, read your course work again -- and take care to pay attention this time.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
A 2nd Excerpt from Everyone Here Is Jim Dandy (the Book)
When one discovers he has a disease, one of the first things he learns about life thereafter is that no one really gives a damn.
You discover for the first time, or at least more clearly than ever before, how completely enclosed people are within themselves. Your disease will get a lot of lip service from casual acquaintances. It will be a conversation starter, yet will cease to be the subject as soon as the conversation gets off the ground. They will show their concern by asking after your disease, as if it had been an estranged child or a sickly mother, but will quickly change the subject as soon as things threaten to become specific. One wants to reveal himself as a caring human being, without having truly to care. Perhaps they have been praying for you (they say). Perhaps they saw something on TV. Perhaps their cousin’s friend ran the last race for the cure (it matters not for which disease, for diseases are all of one type of circumstance).
Very often they will have a suggestion.
Mangosteen, they will say.
Fish oil.
Exercise.
Vitamins and minerals.
Or worse yet, they will have a cure.
Stem cell therapy! It’s done wonders for my arthritis, and at 50 bucks a bottle, it still beats the money these pharmaceuticals and your doctors want. Kickbacks, that’s what they’re all about.
They are all well intentioned, of course. Just trying to help. Or are they? Perhaps they are really just selling something—doing good, while putting a few bucks in their own pockets. Ya think?
I heard on the radio the other morning that if people would consume 30 percent less fat in their daily diet they could add perhaps 25 years to their lives. You could, for instance, live to be 115 instead of 90.
Is that a depressing thought or what?
In any case, I’m adding fat, not cutting it. It is the natural balm, or so I hear, for most all illnesses, especially MS. Fish fat, that is. Ever wonder why you don’t see so many fat fish around anymore? It is because MS has made a fish-fat-sucking industry out of the poor critters. Involuntary liposuction.
And then there is the fat from flax seeds, which I also guzzle. I have never seen a flax seed in person, but I am picturing that it must be a heck of a big seed for any significant amount of oil to be sucked out—maybe something the size of a tomato, or even a watermelon.
I wonder what the flax itself looks like? Seems like all you ever hear about is the seed of the flax and the oil thereof.
The apostle Paul, speaking in II Corinthians regarding the resurrected body, does mention that the fruit will bear little or no resemblance to the seed (like the zucchini seed as opposed to the zucchini or the pumpkin seed as opposed to the pumpkin), and so I imagine that if the flax seed looks like a tomato, the flax itself may look something like a space station or an alligator. Who knows?
The fact is, I may be overdosing on a combination of oils and other disease modifying lubricants—fish oil, flaxseed oil, peanut oil, Oil of Olay, the oil from Popeye’s Chicken. I have this curious swimmy sort of feeling. My lips habitually make a puckering shape, as if I’m trying to suck up air rather than simply breathe it. The only oil I have not tried yet is motor oil. Seriously.
I find myself darting about rather than simply putting one foot in front of the other. I am suddenly fascinated by flies and other small insects. They make me feel . . . hungry.
The other night my wife accused me of flopping about in the bathtub rather than properly bathing. I swear, I stayed under water for perhaps thirty-five minutes!
I have noticed a strange, unsettling desire to lay eggs, thousands of eggs. I want to spawn. I cannot stop thinking of water, and yet I am not thirsty in the least.
I see a pan on the stove and I am compelled almost beyond stopping myself to jump in and simply fry.
Countless vitamins and supplements are also swimming through my veins. Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, sublingual B12, Mangosteen, potassium, calcium, cinnamon, pumpernickel, snickerdoodle, apple schnitzel. My electrolytes are vibrating, humming like bumblebees.
Someone runs up to you—a friend, an acquaintance, a family member—to tell you about a miraculous new cure for MS he has found in a magazine or a newspaper, or has heard on the radio or seen on the TV. A pill, an herb, an oil, a potion.
It has happened to me often enough. And I can’t help but ask myself the following questions:
1. First off, do you really think, what with me being the one who has MS, that I haven’t seen and looked into all these miracle cures?
2. Do you imagine that I’m just being stubborn? That I like being ill so that people will feel sorry for me?
3. Do you think if such a cure truly existed that doctors might be interested in it too?
4. Do you imagine that I am merely a poor dupe of greed, unaccountably sticking with expensive medicines when I could procure a better by mail order for $21.95?
5. Do you think I’m simply too lazy to read about and research my illness? Hot dang, the cure was right there in front of my nose all along!
Good grief.
Yes, I know they mean well. And that’s part of the problem. What is one to say? Do you first force your lips into a callow smile. Wow! That’s amazing! Tell me more. Lemme see that article, dude! Do you buy the potion in which they so enthusiastically believe (having taken the time, after all, to read a four paragraph article in the newspaper)? Do you tell them that you’ve already heard of this bullshit and run the risk not only of alienating a friend but being labelled as bull-headed and obstinate for not even trying? Do you tell them that it is they who are in fact being duped by the miracle cure as seen on TV, pills containing nothing of any more substance that birdseed, peddled by people who attend ITTL seminars (I take the lead), and who know that $19.95 is just as good as $1000 in the bank if it is turned over enough times. Why is it, for instance, that stem cells cure so very many maladies? Could it be because there is so very much money to be made in multiplicity?
Not wanting to appear recalcitrant or stubbornly unwilling, I actually tried the stem cell cure. I’m not sure what they actually put in these pills, but I’m pretty sure it is not stem cells, although admittedly I did not open any capsules to see. Perhaps I was afraid of what might wriggle out on the countertop. In any case, I was apparently not injured in any way. When I mentioned this to my neurologist, however, he advised that I quit the pills right away, on the off chance that something might actually happen.
“Given that your autoimmune system is already over-excited,” he said, “why would you want to excite it any further?”
Good point, I thought. I quit the stem cells and declined further purchase from the nice lady at church who had initially made the offer (or offered the cure).
"But you have to give it time,” she said.
I shared then what my doctor had said.
She frowned. There it was. That sad old American faith in the corrupt medical establishment.
My Robert was on them for three months for his depression, and now he’s happy as a lark. You have to give them at least three months.
I thanked her again, of course. I said that I wished they had worked as well for me as they had for Robert.
Well then, enjoy your MS. We’ll still be praying for you.
Because the thing about you is that you just don’t want to be better.
Prayer.
Faith healing.
Fish oil (squeezed fresh from the living fish, of course).
Yoga.
Judo.
Jogging.
Cinnamon bark.
Garlic.
Mind over matter.
Benny Hinn.
A milk free diet.
No red meat.
A shit-load of legumes.
Flaxseed oil!
Stop your sinning—repent and be saved!
You discover for the first time, or at least more clearly than ever before, how completely enclosed people are within themselves. Your disease will get a lot of lip service from casual acquaintances. It will be a conversation starter, yet will cease to be the subject as soon as the conversation gets off the ground. They will show their concern by asking after your disease, as if it had been an estranged child or a sickly mother, but will quickly change the subject as soon as things threaten to become specific. One wants to reveal himself as a caring human being, without having truly to care. Perhaps they have been praying for you (they say). Perhaps they saw something on TV. Perhaps their cousin’s friend ran the last race for the cure (it matters not for which disease, for diseases are all of one type of circumstance).
Very often they will have a suggestion.
Mangosteen, they will say.
Fish oil.
Exercise.
Vitamins and minerals.
Or worse yet, they will have a cure.
Stem cell therapy! It’s done wonders for my arthritis, and at 50 bucks a bottle, it still beats the money these pharmaceuticals and your doctors want. Kickbacks, that’s what they’re all about.
They are all well intentioned, of course. Just trying to help. Or are they? Perhaps they are really just selling something—doing good, while putting a few bucks in their own pockets. Ya think?
I heard on the radio the other morning that if people would consume 30 percent less fat in their daily diet they could add perhaps 25 years to their lives. You could, for instance, live to be 115 instead of 90.
Is that a depressing thought or what?
In any case, I’m adding fat, not cutting it. It is the natural balm, or so I hear, for most all illnesses, especially MS. Fish fat, that is. Ever wonder why you don’t see so many fat fish around anymore? It is because MS has made a fish-fat-sucking industry out of the poor critters. Involuntary liposuction.
And then there is the fat from flax seeds, which I also guzzle. I have never seen a flax seed in person, but I am picturing that it must be a heck of a big seed for any significant amount of oil to be sucked out—maybe something the size of a tomato, or even a watermelon.
I wonder what the flax itself looks like? Seems like all you ever hear about is the seed of the flax and the oil thereof.
The apostle Paul, speaking in II Corinthians regarding the resurrected body, does mention that the fruit will bear little or no resemblance to the seed (like the zucchini seed as opposed to the zucchini or the pumpkin seed as opposed to the pumpkin), and so I imagine that if the flax seed looks like a tomato, the flax itself may look something like a space station or an alligator. Who knows?
The fact is, I may be overdosing on a combination of oils and other disease modifying lubricants—fish oil, flaxseed oil, peanut oil, Oil of Olay, the oil from Popeye’s Chicken. I have this curious swimmy sort of feeling. My lips habitually make a puckering shape, as if I’m trying to suck up air rather than simply breathe it. The only oil I have not tried yet is motor oil. Seriously.
I find myself darting about rather than simply putting one foot in front of the other. I am suddenly fascinated by flies and other small insects. They make me feel . . . hungry.
The other night my wife accused me of flopping about in the bathtub rather than properly bathing. I swear, I stayed under water for perhaps thirty-five minutes!
I have noticed a strange, unsettling desire to lay eggs, thousands of eggs. I want to spawn. I cannot stop thinking of water, and yet I am not thirsty in the least.
I see a pan on the stove and I am compelled almost beyond stopping myself to jump in and simply fry.
Countless vitamins and supplements are also swimming through my veins. Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, sublingual B12, Mangosteen, potassium, calcium, cinnamon, pumpernickel, snickerdoodle, apple schnitzel. My electrolytes are vibrating, humming like bumblebees.
Someone runs up to you—a friend, an acquaintance, a family member—to tell you about a miraculous new cure for MS he has found in a magazine or a newspaper, or has heard on the radio or seen on the TV. A pill, an herb, an oil, a potion.
It has happened to me often enough. And I can’t help but ask myself the following questions:
2. Do you imagine that I’m just being stubborn? That I like being ill so that people will feel sorry for me?
3. Do you think if such a cure truly existed that doctors might be interested in it too?
4. Do you imagine that I am merely a poor dupe of greed, unaccountably sticking with expensive medicines when I could procure a better by mail order for $21.95?
5. Do you think I’m simply too lazy to read about and research my illness? Hot dang, the cure was right there in front of my nose all along!
Good grief.
Yes, I know they mean well. And that’s part of the problem. What is one to say? Do you first force your lips into a callow smile. Wow! That’s amazing! Tell me more. Lemme see that article, dude! Do you buy the potion in which they so enthusiastically believe (having taken the time, after all, to read a four paragraph article in the newspaper)? Do you tell them that you’ve already heard of this bullshit and run the risk not only of alienating a friend but being labelled as bull-headed and obstinate for not even trying? Do you tell them that it is they who are in fact being duped by the miracle cure as seen on TV, pills containing nothing of any more substance that birdseed, peddled by people who attend ITTL seminars (I take the lead), and who know that $19.95 is just as good as $1000 in the bank if it is turned over enough times. Why is it, for instance, that stem cells cure so very many maladies? Could it be because there is so very much money to be made in multiplicity?
Not wanting to appear recalcitrant or stubbornly unwilling, I actually tried the stem cell cure. I’m not sure what they actually put in these pills, but I’m pretty sure it is not stem cells, although admittedly I did not open any capsules to see. Perhaps I was afraid of what might wriggle out on the countertop. In any case, I was apparently not injured in any way. When I mentioned this to my neurologist, however, he advised that I quit the pills right away, on the off chance that something might actually happen.
“Given that your autoimmune system is already over-excited,” he said, “why would you want to excite it any further?”
Good point, I thought. I quit the stem cells and declined further purchase from the nice lady at church who had initially made the offer (or offered the cure).
"But you have to give it time,” she said.
I shared then what my doctor had said.
She frowned. There it was. That sad old American faith in the corrupt medical establishment.
My Robert was on them for three months for his depression, and now he’s happy as a lark. You have to give them at least three months.
I thanked her again, of course. I said that I wished they had worked as well for me as they had for Robert.
Well then, enjoy your MS. We’ll still be praying for you.
Because the thing about you is that you just don’t want to be better.
Prayer.
Faith healing.
Fish oil (squeezed fresh from the living fish, of course).
Yoga.
Judo.
Jogging.
Cinnamon bark.
Garlic.
Mind over matter.
Benny Hinn.
A milk free diet.
No red meat.
A shit-load of legumes.
Flaxseed oil!
Stop your sinning—repent and be saved!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
What Is It Like (an excerpt from Everyone Here is Jim Dandy -- the book)
What is it like?
It is not suffering as such that is so deeply feared but suffering that degrades --Susan Sontag, AIDS and its Metaphors
In May 2007 I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
I woke up one morning, May 1st I think it was, and I could not feel the toes of my right foot.
But could not feel is actually not right. It’s not that I couldn’t feel the toes, but that they just felt wrong. They were numb, starting in the big toe most profoundly and then spreading on down to the pinky. They were numb, like toes get when you’ve been out too long in the snow, only they were not cold in the least. It was, after all, the beginning of the summer season. They were numb and they were tingling—again, the way it feels when you have been out in the snow and then have come inside and begun to thaw out.
“I can’t feel my toes,” I said to my wife.
“Hm.”
“This is weird. I can’t feel my toes.”
“Walk around,” she said. “You probably slept wrong.”
Slept wrong, yeah. Or it’s all in my head.
But no, not only were the toes numb, but the numbness was
growing worse by the minute. Soon the numbness, the tingling, had begun to spread onto the top of my foot, and then it jumped over to the left foot as well, one toe tingling, then two, then all.
I shouldn’t have let my feet get so close to one another. Good Lord, now my right foot has infected my left.
Well shake it off then, just like a football player. Walk around, jump up and down, massage those muscles.
What? Toe muscles?
By the time another hour had passed, my right leg was numb to the knee, and the tingling that had begun in the left big toe had conquered the whole foot and pressed on into the ankle.
“I can’t feel my right leg,” I said.
“Well, what did you do? You must have done something.”
What indeed? I had been fine when I went to bed the night before. I had slept through the night, just the same as usual. So what had happened while I slept? Perhaps I had been bitten by some sort of deadly arachnid. I checked my feet, my legs. No welt. Perhaps I had been bitten by a poisonous snake. A ridiculous notion, that.
Then what?
“Honey, my crotch feels weird. My ass feels weird. I mean, I just now went to the bathroom and—“
“Call the doctor,” she says. “Spare me the details.”
So that was how it started. An MRI and a lumbar puncture later I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
The funny thing, as I was to find out soon enough, is that the problem was not in my toes. It is in my brain.
*
What is MS like?
Having MS is like suddenly having to go from DSL to dial-up.
It’s like trying to do internet research on a laptop with a virus. The damn thing keeps freezing. Your brain becomes inexplicably wedged between one thought and the next—trapped in an endless loop—little hourglass on the screen—thinking, thinking, but never arriving.
Eventually you have to give up and reboot; which is to say you have to take a nap and hope that a little rest will restore a few of the washed out bridges.
MS is like trying to write a book on a stone wall with a dull three penny nail.
I am the man in the iron mask. The birdman of Alcatraz. I am tunneling to China, tunneling to eternity. I am locked in the Tower of London. Off with his head! What head? What hand, what foot, what leg? I am the man of adamant, turning to stone. I am a phantom pain, the itch in an amputated limb.
What is MS like?
It is like starting life from scratch, every day, every hour. It’s like taking one step forward and twenty steps backward. It’s like bobbing for apples in a barrel of applesauce.
It is like going to sleep at night and then waking in the morning to find that you’ve begun to turn to stone, starting from your toes and then climbing up your calves and thighs like some kind of malevolent cement.
And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.
So said Daniel in his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.
Did Nebuchadnezzar have MS?
Your legs have turned to stone as you slept, and yet they ache to the bone. Your kneecaps feel as if they been bruised by a hammer and your feet feel as if a spike had been pounded through fiber and bone.
A primitive sort of fear crackles through your body, dancing like exposed electrical wires. What if this is it, the revelation in real time of the ever present lurking fear, the fear that you will wake up and find you are unable to walk?
You pull your legs up. You place your feet on the floor. They may as well be bricks or doorstops or potatoes. You slap your skin, massage your calves. Then you get up quickly, lurching toward the nearest handhold—the table, the coat rack, the unsuspecting Labrador.
And you walk—not well—but you put one foot in front of the other, weaving like a child’s sand-filled punching bag, and you walk.
*
In brief, omitting the medical and anatomical gobbledygook as far as possible, multiple sclerosis is a neurological disorder, one of these increasingly popular autoimmune diseases wherein the enemy has been found and turns out to be us. The immune system, originally designed to destroy foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses, suddenly has the notion that ones own cells are invaders, and so sets out to destroy them. It is all perfectly wonderful, a completely conceived and executed science fiction!
How fearfully and wonderfully I am made,” said David.
Man, he didn’t know the half of it.
Now, above I have used the term originally designed in reference to a corporeal system of the body, and this, I suppose, betrays a prejudice in as far as it presumes the existence of a design, and therefore of a designer.
How very many things there are that we cannot even begin to talk about without agreeing first, in the most essential way, on the existence of a creator. In order to talk about what has gone wrong, we must begin with what is supposed to be right. Without this—the presumption of design and intent, and even more, the absolute faith in the same—there is no disease, no malfunction, no disorder, because there is no order in the first place.
One of the things I love most about multiple sclerosis is how it crosses so readily back and forth from science to philosophy to faith to humor to all things the lie in between.
How shall we know what is right if there is nothing wrong?
And what can be more perfectly wrong than a process wherein the parts of the host seek to destroy the host itself? It is apocalypse and Armageddon. No one comes out alive.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Untying the Balinese Knot
“Divorce,” as Felix Unger said in the 1960’s movie The Odd Couple, “is a terrible thing.”
“Oh! It can be,” was the punch line rejoinder, “if you haven’t the right solicitor.”
There is always a punch line.
From Robin Williams we have: “Ah yes, divorce . . . from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.” Zsa Zsa Gabor said “I’m an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” She said as well that getting divorced because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married because you do.
The quotes available are almost endless (just look it up on Google); and new quotes will be added every day, from here to eternity, as new voices arise as witnesses to mankind’s second most popular pursuit -- silly people that we are.
So my friend, Mick, is getting divorced. A prince among men, an Englishman from the midlands, a man acquainted with both success and failure in this long life, Mick will soon race at least one marriage and divorce ahead of me. Life ends and begins again. You get better at it every time, or at least less surprised. You learn the ropes. You cut your losses and move on. It’s sad, isn’t it? Almost as sad as marriage itself.
I’m being facetious, of course. I’m just feeling cranky because I’m about to lose my best friend. Never mind the marriage and the Balinese wife, who never liked me anyway because I smoke and smoking is a nasty, disgusting habit. The result, in purely careless and self-absorbed terms, is that I must soon find myself divested of a chunk of life in Bali as I have known it over the last two years. Mickey the chunk. He’s going back to England, has already booked the flight, after five years of life in Bali (most of which, as he now claims, was spent stuck in traffic).
We are neighbours, Mick and I, out in the Biaung boonies, and every morning he will walk down to my house and sit, unless it’s “pissing down rain, “ at the table in the yard where I generally do my writing, to visit for a bit -- always a welcome interruption -- over a nasty disgusting cigarette or two -- a modest bit of luxury disallowed at home. I think that it was ultimately this sort of disallowance that drove the marriage to dissolution -- not just of the occasional “fag,” as he would put it, but of . . . well, of just about everything that is truly rewarding -- tobacco, alcohol, the internet, Facebook, Farmville, loafing in a lazy beach café, flirtations with strange women. You know what I mean.
But I grow facetious again. It would be truer to say that Mick, for most of his adult life, had been a man in charge of himself, married or not. He was a boss at work, managed other people, made the decisions, determined outcomes. And so had life been for his wife as well. Two people, both in charge. It’s the most common ingredient in explosive marital outcomes. I suppose they should have known better. But perhaps one, or both, had played a part for a time -- during that period in which silliness results in marriage. Perhaps façade had altered the plain visage of fact and led in turn to blind roads and false hopes.
It has often been said, within my hearing anyway, that Indonesian women are difficult to live with. They are bossy, controlling, hard-hearted, sharp-tongue, greedy; sweet on the outside, bitter within; stubborn, pompous, intolerant, unkind, argumentative, hot-blooded And so on. They are never wrong; and if proven wrong, it must have been you who had misunderstood from the beginning. I make no sweeping judgment of the Indonesian woman. Being married to one, I need to be careful. I will simply be swift to note that my own wife, a perfect sweetheart, must surely be an exception.
Mickey came here for life, and that lasted five years. He’s on his way home now, back to the old country and the familiarity of friends, back to one language, one culture, one convention, leaving in Bali only memories and anecdotes: Mick, who once stormed into an Apotek demanding to see their selection of condoms along with demonstrations of the same; Mick, who asked the middle-aged woman on the beach, a purveyor of younger women’s flesh, whether she could find him one without teeth (for whom he would pay a possible fortune); Mick, the proverbial bull in a China shop; Mick who would try to sell watches to watch hawkers and rides to taxi drivers, the consummate rib-jabber and leg puller. Straight talking, hip-shooting, no bullshit Mick -- reliable, trustworthy, “sound as a pound” Mick, who would give you the shirt off his back, repair your stove, replace your front door, fix your motorbike, install your tap, re-route your electric, watch your dog -- a Jack of all trades, a man for all seasons, a world traveller who nonetheless never once left home -- both a simple and a complicated man, and therefore not unlike the rest of us; a product of his time and culture and country, as much as his wife has been of hers.
Bloody Mick. I’m gonna miss ya, Matey. Cheers.
“Oh! It can be,” was the punch line rejoinder, “if you haven’t the right solicitor.”
There is always a punch line.
From Robin Williams we have: “Ah yes, divorce . . . from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.” Zsa Zsa Gabor said “I’m an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” She said as well that getting divorced because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married because you do.
The quotes available are almost endless (just look it up on Google); and new quotes will be added every day, from here to eternity, as new voices arise as witnesses to mankind’s second most popular pursuit -- silly people that we are.
So my friend, Mick, is getting divorced. A prince among men, an Englishman from the midlands, a man acquainted with both success and failure in this long life, Mick will soon race at least one marriage and divorce ahead of me. Life ends and begins again. You get better at it every time, or at least less surprised. You learn the ropes. You cut your losses and move on. It’s sad, isn’t it? Almost as sad as marriage itself.
I’m being facetious, of course. I’m just feeling cranky because I’m about to lose my best friend. Never mind the marriage and the Balinese wife, who never liked me anyway because I smoke and smoking is a nasty, disgusting habit. The result, in purely careless and self-absorbed terms, is that I must soon find myself divested of a chunk of life in Bali as I have known it over the last two years. Mickey the chunk. He’s going back to England, has already booked the flight, after five years of life in Bali (most of which, as he now claims, was spent stuck in traffic).
We are neighbours, Mick and I, out in the Biaung boonies, and every morning he will walk down to my house and sit, unless it’s “pissing down rain, “ at the table in the yard where I generally do my writing, to visit for a bit -- always a welcome interruption -- over a nasty disgusting cigarette or two -- a modest bit of luxury disallowed at home. I think that it was ultimately this sort of disallowance that drove the marriage to dissolution -- not just of the occasional “fag,” as he would put it, but of . . . well, of just about everything that is truly rewarding -- tobacco, alcohol, the internet, Facebook, Farmville, loafing in a lazy beach café, flirtations with strange women. You know what I mean.
But I grow facetious again. It would be truer to say that Mick, for most of his adult life, had been a man in charge of himself, married or not. He was a boss at work, managed other people, made the decisions, determined outcomes. And so had life been for his wife as well. Two people, both in charge. It’s the most common ingredient in explosive marital outcomes. I suppose they should have known better. But perhaps one, or both, had played a part for a time -- during that period in which silliness results in marriage. Perhaps façade had altered the plain visage of fact and led in turn to blind roads and false hopes.
It has often been said, within my hearing anyway, that Indonesian women are difficult to live with. They are bossy, controlling, hard-hearted, sharp-tongue, greedy; sweet on the outside, bitter within; stubborn, pompous, intolerant, unkind, argumentative, hot-blooded And so on. They are never wrong; and if proven wrong, it must have been you who had misunderstood from the beginning. I make no sweeping judgment of the Indonesian woman. Being married to one, I need to be careful. I will simply be swift to note that my own wife, a perfect sweetheart, must surely be an exception.
Mickey came here for life, and that lasted five years. He’s on his way home now, back to the old country and the familiarity of friends, back to one language, one culture, one convention, leaving in Bali only memories and anecdotes: Mick, who once stormed into an Apotek demanding to see their selection of condoms along with demonstrations of the same; Mick, who asked the middle-aged woman on the beach, a purveyor of younger women’s flesh, whether she could find him one without teeth (for whom he would pay a possible fortune); Mick, the proverbial bull in a China shop; Mick who would try to sell watches to watch hawkers and rides to taxi drivers, the consummate rib-jabber and leg puller. Straight talking, hip-shooting, no bullshit Mick -- reliable, trustworthy, “sound as a pound” Mick, who would give you the shirt off his back, repair your stove, replace your front door, fix your motorbike, install your tap, re-route your electric, watch your dog -- a Jack of all trades, a man for all seasons, a world traveller who nonetheless never once left home -- both a simple and a complicated man, and therefore not unlike the rest of us; a product of his time and culture and country, as much as his wife has been of hers.
Bloody Mick. I’m gonna miss ya, Matey. Cheers.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
One Man's Garbage is Another Man's Island
My wife tends to get restless on weekends. It’s a spill-over from the restlessness that besets her on weekdays, a rising of energy that is usually expended at work, but now suddenly finds itself with nowhere to go, like water at a boil or un-slurped foam on a newly poured beer. She tends to spill all over the house.
She has no idea of how to relax, you see. In fact, she considers relaxation a waste of time. This can make for difficult days in our marriage, for I just happen to be an expert at relaxing. It’s something that comes to me quite naturally, quite without effort. You might say that I’m a sort of idiot-savant where relaxing is concerned. I cannot explain how it is done, and I certainly can’t teach it. It’s just there. Some people, inexplicably talented, can sit down at the piano and play Liszt and Rachmaninoff (and yet remain unable to tie their own shoelaces). Some people can glance at a jar of toothpicks and tell you how many are within. Some people memorize dictionaries. In the same way, I find in myself a certain genius for doing nothing, and loving it. I am the Rain Man of relaxation.
But she must move -- either that or reach a critical state of elemental imbalance, which in turn can be hazardous to anyone within 50 feet or so.
I remember reading a book once. It was part of the course material for a class at church. How to understand your mate and succeed in marriage. This was sometime during my second marriage. According to the book, men are naturally inclined toward “fixing” a problem, whereas women mean only to “state” the problem -- to get it out in the open, to air their feelings, to express frustrations and grievances. They’re not necessarily looking for a fix. Certainly not from their husbands anyway. Given, therefore, the true dynamics involved, an understanding man may learn a few key phrases. “What the hell do you want me to do about it?” is not one of them. Rather we should say (and softly so, with a meeting of eyes): I understand what you’re saying,” or “What I hear you saying to me is this--” (at which point you should tack on the words she just finished saying (which necessitates, of course, remembering the same).
“We never go anywhere,” my wife says. “All you want to do is drink coffee and read books and . . . drink coffee.”
To me, this sounds like a full enough life. But I do understand what she’s getting at, so I ask her where she wants to go.
“Anywhere,” she answers.
“I hear what you’re saying,“ I answer (with feeling), but can you narrow it down just a bit? Anywhere is kind of . . . big.”
“How about Singapore?” she says. “How about New York City?”
In the end we decide upon the Mangrove Forest, just up the Bypass near Sarangan. Poverty is a bitch. You’ve got to cut corners. Sharp ones at that.
Just before the entry to the Mangrove Forest my wife noticed a mountain of garbage off to the left, and shoved my shoulder so that I could swerve and see it too. “Mountain” is really too small a word. It was magnificent, like nothing I had seen before. This mountain, this pre-eminence, looms majestically over the forest itself and, as we discovered, contributes liberally to the streams that wind through the park.
Upon arrival to the park proper, we found that visitors must pay to walk the mangrove path. Moreover, we found that Bules must pay three times the price for Indonesians. This seemed less than fair -- and yet miraculous in its own way, in that it, like the mountain of garbage, was ridiculous, and therefore something fresh and new where the expectations of an American are concerned. Imagine if we in America tried to charge three times the white price for brown people, for instance. Is it not astonishing? What country is this in which I now live? What planet?
After negotiating with the woman in the guard booth, wherein I was careful to express a keen understanding and appreciation of what she was saying -- repeating her words back for full effect -- it was concluded that I should either pay the Bule price or sit outside the park entrance while my wife and her camera went in.
And so it was. I cannot say that she was delighted by the sights, but the walk did serve to expend some energy, and later on at home she laid down for a nap.
As for myself, I talked to a woman in the warung across the road, I drank a strawberry Fanta, I smoked cigarettes and wandered in lazy circles. Lastly I stood on the small bridge that spans the river oozing into the mangrove forest. As I stood there, gazing down at the sluggish waters, I saw all manner of things admitted, where I myself had been disallowed -- paper cups and wrappers, plastic ware, Styrofoam, dresser drawers, diapers, someone’s shirt and bra, bike tires -- all the world in one stream, a perfectly miserable sort of microcosm. I could not help but be amazed. How much more might I have seen, I wondered, had I swallowed my parsimony and paid the fee?
Singapore and the Big Apple may have wonders a-many; but there’s nothing, I think, to equal Bali’s own brand.
She has no idea of how to relax, you see. In fact, she considers relaxation a waste of time. This can make for difficult days in our marriage, for I just happen to be an expert at relaxing. It’s something that comes to me quite naturally, quite without effort. You might say that I’m a sort of idiot-savant where relaxing is concerned. I cannot explain how it is done, and I certainly can’t teach it. It’s just there. Some people, inexplicably talented, can sit down at the piano and play Liszt and Rachmaninoff (and yet remain unable to tie their own shoelaces). Some people can glance at a jar of toothpicks and tell you how many are within. Some people memorize dictionaries. In the same way, I find in myself a certain genius for doing nothing, and loving it. I am the Rain Man of relaxation.
But she must move -- either that or reach a critical state of elemental imbalance, which in turn can be hazardous to anyone within 50 feet or so.
I remember reading a book once. It was part of the course material for a class at church. How to understand your mate and succeed in marriage. This was sometime during my second marriage. According to the book, men are naturally inclined toward “fixing” a problem, whereas women mean only to “state” the problem -- to get it out in the open, to air their feelings, to express frustrations and grievances. They’re not necessarily looking for a fix. Certainly not from their husbands anyway. Given, therefore, the true dynamics involved, an understanding man may learn a few key phrases. “What the hell do you want me to do about it?” is not one of them. Rather we should say (and softly so, with a meeting of eyes): I understand what you’re saying,” or “What I hear you saying to me is this--” (at which point you should tack on the words she just finished saying (which necessitates, of course, remembering the same).
“We never go anywhere,” my wife says. “All you want to do is drink coffee and read books and . . . drink coffee.”
To me, this sounds like a full enough life. But I do understand what she’s getting at, so I ask her where she wants to go.
“Anywhere,” she answers.
“I hear what you’re saying,“ I answer (with feeling), but can you narrow it down just a bit? Anywhere is kind of . . . big.”
“How about Singapore?” she says. “How about New York City?”
In the end we decide upon the Mangrove Forest, just up the Bypass near Sarangan. Poverty is a bitch. You’ve got to cut corners. Sharp ones at that.
Just before the entry to the Mangrove Forest my wife noticed a mountain of garbage off to the left, and shoved my shoulder so that I could swerve and see it too. “Mountain” is really too small a word. It was magnificent, like nothing I had seen before. This mountain, this pre-eminence, looms majestically over the forest itself and, as we discovered, contributes liberally to the streams that wind through the park.
Upon arrival to the park proper, we found that visitors must pay to walk the mangrove path. Moreover, we found that Bules must pay three times the price for Indonesians. This seemed less than fair -- and yet miraculous in its own way, in that it, like the mountain of garbage, was ridiculous, and therefore something fresh and new where the expectations of an American are concerned. Imagine if we in America tried to charge three times the white price for brown people, for instance. Is it not astonishing? What country is this in which I now live? What planet?
After negotiating with the woman in the guard booth, wherein I was careful to express a keen understanding and appreciation of what she was saying -- repeating her words back for full effect -- it was concluded that I should either pay the Bule price or sit outside the park entrance while my wife and her camera went in.
And so it was. I cannot say that she was delighted by the sights, but the walk did serve to expend some energy, and later on at home she laid down for a nap.
As for myself, I talked to a woman in the warung across the road, I drank a strawberry Fanta, I smoked cigarettes and wandered in lazy circles. Lastly I stood on the small bridge that spans the river oozing into the mangrove forest. As I stood there, gazing down at the sluggish waters, I saw all manner of things admitted, where I myself had been disallowed -- paper cups and wrappers, plastic ware, Styrofoam, dresser drawers, diapers, someone’s shirt and bra, bike tires -- all the world in one stream, a perfectly miserable sort of microcosm. I could not help but be amazed. How much more might I have seen, I wondered, had I swallowed my parsimony and paid the fee?
Singapore and the Big Apple may have wonders a-many; but there’s nothing, I think, to equal Bali’s own brand.
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