Part Seven

Safety First

Slipping and falling halfway down the wet stairs to my room goes better than I would have expected. No injuries, just a nasty scare. [My feeling as it happened was something close to: “Could this be the end of Milhouse?”] Barely a minute later, a hellish racket starts up downstairs. My landlady has summoned a generic workman from out of nowhere to chisel traction divots into each of the concrete stairs. Problem “solved”. (…?!)

When I get to class on Thursday, my friend Danang [yes, that makes him Danang The Dalang] waves me over, hoping I can settle the discussion they are having about English slang. He says: “Justin! What is a… bulonda?”

“‘Bulonda’? Saya tidak mengerti, tidak tahu ‘bulonda’.” (I don’t understand, don’t know ‘bulonda’.)

He hands me his phone, which shows a list of links or web search results (not sure which). The highlighted line reads: Blonde prepares for anal.

“Ohhhh, blonde! That just means someone has blonde-colored hair. Light, you know, like yellow hair.”

“OK”, he says. After a moment he favors me with a conspiratorial grin. “And… ah-nall…?”

Studies are progressing reasonably well. On days when I have classes (or when I can see a local performance) I enjoy a real clarity of purpose for what I’m doing here. The more I learn, the more possibilities I see for wayang elements that would make sense in what I do. Gamelan and karawitan (singing in Javanese, part of dalang performance) are both challenging and rewarding, also full of possibilities. Days I don’t have classes, I tend to wake up and stare at a wall, wondering: “Why did I come here again?" This feeling usually passes when it is replaced by more immediate matters. For instance: "Right now I'm hungry!"

Anyway, this is a video I made while riding around the city on one of those off days.

On a long walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood after a concert, I spy what appears to be a tomahawk fashioned from a jagged shard of glass strapped to a broken-off broom handle, affixes to a lamppost. My mind races: this crude weapon is clearly displayed as a warning to outsiders of which gang presides over the area. Expecting a group of thugs brandishing similar homemade cutters and bashers to jump out at any moment, my natural reaction is to stumble backwards and utter a low, horrified cry -much to my friend Jeannie's amusement.

On closer inspection the wedge-shaped “glass” blade turns out to be a discarded plastic juice bag (with the straw still sticking out of it) hung from the telephone pole that catches the light in an alarming way. It's a relief that we were not savaged by a pack of Mad Max-style brutes, but now there is some concern about whether I am insane.

On my landlady’s recommendation, I attend a modern dance performance at Taman Budaya. An Indonesian dance company has collaborated with a Japanese dance company to commemorate 50 years of friendship between cultures, the theme of their collaborative dance performance is the passage of time or the beauty of life or some other bullshit.

The first part is OK, with lots of impressive feats of strength and flexibility and what I think were supposed to be metaphors. Things take a turn for the surreal during the finale, when a curtain lowers in reverse (is there a technical name for that?) to reveal a giant flower floating above the stage. The dancers wave their arms and gyrate in reverence to The Flower. A bent old man hobbles across the stage behind them. The curtain lowers further to reveal an extravagant drumset:

A man in a toga enters and begins a long drum solo over the preprogrammed beats. The old man hobbles across the stage again. The dancers work themselves into a climactic frenzy. Rose petals pour down from above. The End. The show is a bit indulgent but it has its moments; altogether not bad for a two-dollar show. My interest in Modern Dance is officially upgraded from "Not At All" to "Maybe, If It's Really, Really Cheap".

Part Six

Wayang Mania


After class on Tuesday one of my wayang teachers invites us to a performance in his village. Since it is a weeknight, I quietly assume it will be a relatively short exhibition (maybe 2 hours?) like the ones I’ve seen at the museum on Fridays. And so it is that I show up completely unprepared for the awesomeness of an all-night wayang kulit show.

We meet at the teacher’s house, on a country road about half an hour outside of town. In place of a garage he has an open-walled building with a full wayang screen setup inside, for practice or small performances. We pile into his truck and he drives us further out, to the village where the real stage is set up and people are starting to gather. We eat with him and some of the other performers "backstage" and then take our positions to the left of the screen.

The show lasts from around 8:00 PM until roughly 4:00 AM. It's a grueling eight hours, but despite still not understanding any Javanese, the performance is incredible and and I am able to stay awake the whole time.

I take many pictures. These are some good ones:

One of the sequences toward the end of the show involves a maurauding giant and the hero's noble efforts to thwart him. The hero fires off a magic arrow [Note: themes that keep coming up in these stories: flight, giants, and magic arrows.] that bounces off the giant, no effect. A clown character (the tall one with the goofy pony tail, on the far right below) produces an unmistakably phallic fish which he throws at the giant. The fish/cock flops through the air along the same path the arrow flew. It buries itself in the giant's side, he is killed instantly. The fish/cock has fucked him to death. Here is the aftermath:


One aspect of the show I found particularly inspiring: Between the dalang, the singers, and the gamelan players, there are about thirty people onstage. A handful of others prepare food, set up/tear down the stage, run sound, etc. But at its largest, the audience never outnumbered the people working to put the show on. By the end, less than ten were left (including the wayang students).

One of the most exciting parts of classes has been the teachers' genuine love of wayang. More than anything else, they just have the best time in the world making it and their enthusiasm is contagious. This performance reinforces that feeling; although it might have be modestly attended and no one here is paid much (if anything), it is still clearly considered a successful show. For the performers, that other stuff is secondary to the show itself. [As it should be! Artistic integrity as a matter of course? Sold!!]


On Thursday night we see my other wayang kulit teacher in a wayang orang performance. [Note: Wayang kulit is the play with leather puppets illuminated against a screen. Wayang orang is the play with human actors. Same stories, same music, but with colorful costumes and the performance lasts about half as long.]

This is the open-air hall where the performance takes place:


There is a recurring joke involving this leering demon king's attempts to copulate with the beams:




The climax of an extended fight sequence between a graceful warrior princess and this pack of (apes? demons? giants?) comes when she climbs/leaps in slow motion up above them...


...and then drives a slow-motion punch down into the middle of them, the force of which knocks them away in all directions. [Wasn't that a Street Fighter move?]


Finally, we saw an Indonesian film called Barbi3:

As the trailer indicates, it's standard teen comedy drek, unremarkable except for the fact that 1) The characters in the movie attend President University, which I found hilarious, and 2) the sequence with the old man in the robes was terrifying on the big screen.

Part Five

Hands Are For Shaking

On the afternoon of October 7^th it finally rains. The days that follow are as hot and dry as any since I arrived, but for a few glorious hours we get some relief from this "tropical weather" baloney.

The rain coincides with my landlady’s son Dali’s wedding day. She is the head of the neighborhood, so this is sort of a big deal for everyone here. Canopies are erected, chairs are brought out, and the dusty courtyard is quickly transformed into a decent reception area. The blonde New Zealander bride in full Javanese wedding garb (complete with black zig-zag hairline makeup) is particularly memorable. Sadly, my camera is unavailable to capture this.

After the ceremony, the young people blast reggae and someone’s uncle produces plastic bottles of local whiskey. It tastes like a lukewarm “whiskey and coke” that was mixed two or three days ago. (In other words, not particularly good.) There must be something compelling about the stuff since, at Susi’s older son Joko’s urging, I put back plenty of it. Joko tells me about the orangutans near his home in Sumatra and I pledge to visit him there while I am more or less "in the neighborhood".


More weirdness on restaurant television: I recognize the background music used during the soccer wrap-up on a rebroadcast of British sports coverage as Soundgarden’s “Fell On Black Days”.

October 10^th: Since Ramadan puts “the kibosh” on live music performances, my first opportunity to see live music in the familiar bar context comes in the form of an affable Indonesian reggae-pop band at Café Bintang (naturally featuring Bintang, the cheapest available Indonesian beer, AKA My Favorite Indonesian Beer):

They're pretty good. Returning home by bike, my enjoyment of night breezes and a Circle K ice cream cone is interrupted periodically by the smell of burning filth.

The Indonesian attitude toward trash is… different. I’m told taxes that would normally fund proper sanitation services instead go toward lining local fat-cats’ pockets. Without serious garbage collection*, garbage cans don’t make sense so garbage is stored in tiny wastebaskets. When the wastebasket is full, they either a) place the contents in a plain metal tub –as is the habit in my house- to be burned in the yard later, b) dump the trash out in a pile on the street and burn it there, c) dump the trash into one of the metal street-side trash crematorium, or d) just toss it wherever, for someone else to deal with.

*I do see garbage trucks from time to time. They're always overflowing and they're always stopped next to a neighborhood trash heap. In these moments they don't seem to be collecting the trash as much as exchanging possibly-edible food matter with feral trash-combers.

Garbage matters are further complicated by the amount of plastic this country uses. Every single purchase, no matter how small, is automatically placed into a plastic bag. Fresh-squeezed juice is packaged “to go” most popularly in a plastic bag with a straw sticking out of it. If not, it’s poured into a plastic cup that is then wrapped in a plastic bag.

[I have wondered if maybe plastic use is seen as some backwards badge of modernity, like “There might be dirt everywhere and the tap water might you horribly sick, but we have all the plastic you could want! See? We’re ‘with it’!” On second thought, they probably just don't think about it that hard.]

That reminds me:

On one of my first nights in Jogja, I bought a roll of square hard candy, roughly the size and shape of old Jolly Ranchers. I tried one and found the texture to be really odd. It had a smooth, waxy surface and a vague fruit flavor that became more pronounced once I worked through the outside layer. Inside, it was crunchy like normal hard candy. I was starting to wonder about the purpose of the weird outer layer when I realized that each candy was packaged individually and I had just eaten the first one with its clear plastic wrapper.

Lastly, this is what my ride to school looks like in fast-motion, set to Animal Collective.

Part Four

Those Aren’t Tentacles; They’re Gentacles

It takes weeks for me to come to grips with a simple fact: If, from time to time, I need my fix of American-style pizza here, it means setting foot inside a Pizza Hut. After thirty-two days I humble myself enough to attempt it and the small pan-crust pepperoni I receive is exquisite.

Of course, paying an unheard-of 55,000 Rupiah for one meal [just under $6 American] leaves me feeling violated. But as a monthly indulgence, when I’m jonesing hard, it's acceptable. For mental health purposes.

And as a reminder of American portions! Indonesian cuisine has generally agreed with me, but nothing here approaches the good old-fashioned American caloric payload.

Ramadan turns out to be much less inconvenient than I had been led to believe. While most folks abstain from eating food during daylight hours, they have no problem preparing and selling it to us godless foreign devils.

The days following Ramadan, however, get a little hairy. Most businesses close their doors for almost a week. This includes the eateries I’ve come to rely on heavily and all available laundry facilities. [ Naturally this coincides with the end of my laundry cycle.] After exhausting the last of my clean clothes I awkwardly attempt to hand-wash some... these items emerge covered in each other’s dirt and a new, decidedly unappealing odor. So that’s a skill I might need to work on...

The ceremonial parade on October 2^nd looks like this:

File under: “Oh, Asia…!” When I finally seek out some suntan lotion, it takes me a while before I can find UV protection that doesn’t promote its powerful whitening properties.

I acquired it before I came here, but with a week of downtime from school, etc. I finally get a chance to listen closely to the Retribution Gospel Choir album. It’s great!

On a similar note... I re-read Dune for the first time in about a decade during my trip to Chicago last year. My memory of things had become clouded by the Lynch film version* and I was blown away all over again by... well, everything I had forgotten that makes it great, especially forgotten how sad it is. The characters' dour formality and introspection makes the kid-pleasing schlock of another outer-space saga like Star Wars seem hollow and limp in comparison.

I was fortunate enough to find a copy of Dune Messiah in a local Money Changer/book shop here and was similarly impressed. It's an old copy, featuring this hilariously inappropriate jacket illustration:

I never really considered it before, but now Paul’s primary agenda –reconfiguring the ecology of Arrakis- seems like a utter folly based on off-worlder arrogance. Can reshaping the planet to make it less difficult to live on do anything other than ruin it (and the Fremen), by robbing them of vital parts of what they are? This and other shortsighted, selfish plans carried out on an epic sci-fi scale seem all the more tragic now.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it.

While eating dinner one night, I catch part of something called Malaikat Kecil Dari Surga (translation: Little Angels From Heaven) on television. Like most shows I’ve seen here, it's some kind of overwrought soap opera. In this case, though, the action centers on children. The children in the MKDS world hold all the power, either through manipulation, Village Of The Damned-style psychic menacing, or because they are literally angels from heaven as the title suggests. The source of their influence is unclear, but adults seem to obey them and heed their advice. This is what I see:

A woman stares off into the distance, crying. She stands in a sunny garden. Her despondent internal monologue is delivered via voice-over. A pudgy little brat in a backpack stomps into the garden and begins shouting at her. It appears that it is time for her to take him to school? She jumps to attention as soon as the kid starts berating her. He seems to be giving her direct orders. They leave together.

Two little girls in pigtails are having a strangely serious discussion in an elementary school hallway. Adults pass in and out of the background, but the camera angle cuts off their upper torso, like the teacher in Peanuts. With their business concluded, the girls go separate ways. The brat with the backpack enters.

Three boys (including the porker from before) are riding in the back of an SUV, evidently getting a ride home from school. A boy and girl (brother and sister?) are walking home along the side of the road. At the boys’ insistence, their quiet mustachioed chauffeur drives close to the edge of the road through a conveniently placed puddle, splashing water onto the walking kids.

The boys then bid the driver to stop, that they might properly taunt the kids they just soaked. As they do, the girl and the brat from the beginning recognize one another. Their eyes lock. Was she his “girlfriend”? The girl looks betrayed. The boy stammers, realizing his mistake. The boys give the sign to go, but the SUV pulls away too quickly, swerves to miss an oncoming car, and crashes into a tree. The crash is punctuated with a primitive computer-generated flame that flares up once from above the hood of the car.

COMMERCIAL BREAK.

The wet kids stare at the wreck, considering whether to help. They jump into action, pulling each of the passengers –all of whom are now unconscious, but otherwise unhurt- from the car. Except for the brat from the beginning! He’s out cold, trapped under a spare tire. Lines of blood run from his nose and mouth. A beautiful young woman appears and starts helping the wet kids move the crash victims. But they are laying them out in a row, parallel to one another, on the pavement. Were they all killed in the crash?!!

…and then the owner changes the channel. The point is: If there is more bizarre programming like this, I might need to start watching TV.