Even arriving at night it was unmistakably different from anything I’d seen before. A different fragrance in the air. The people taller than I thought they would be. Funnier, too.
And this morning, in the light, all the sights and sounds of a new world. Thanaka paste on women’s cheeks. Longyis around men’s waists. Saffron-robed monks. Tiny teahouses tucked away behind bamboo-frond curtains.
I want to be out in it … that’s where I’m headed now.
Stay tuned …
On this trip I’ve seen the coastline of Bali emerge from the blue Pacific and the French twists of Garuda Indonesia flight attendants, who glide down the aisles in native batik, looking like goddesses.
I’ve been jostled and hassled and asked for money more times than I care to count.
It’s been a journey of journeys, of flights and flights and more flights.
Today’s trip is different, though. I’m Burma bound.
From one of the poorest islands in Indonesia to its glittering capital. Two flights yesterday brought me here, to Jakarta, a city of high rises, including this hotel.
Have I ever slept 55 floors up before? I don’t think so.
The noise that reaches this high is indistinct, muffled traffic, a low roar, snippets of faraway music. I look out the window but forgo the balcony. It’s nice to have a thick pane of glass between me and the view.
After days of flying and layovers I’m on the other side of the world, in Waingapu on the island of Sumba, Indonesia.
It’s a lovely, arid place, filled with beeping motorbikes, bleating goats, crowing rosters and an air perfumed with something I can’t quite put my finger on that seems vaguely familiar.
I took a walk this morning before breakfast (which, like every other meal, consists of friend rice … luckily I like fried rice) and saw clusters of uniformed school kids sauntering along shaded lanes.
The older children (who have studied English) shyly greeted me. “Good morning,” they said, and looked down.
I was struck by how universal are morning routines. I could hear the sounds of water splashing, of mothers calling. Yes, the pigs and chickens are not exactly suburban Virginia, but in so many ways, the rhythms of life are the same. They are a window on the world, a world that for me right now is completely and wonderfully alive.
Just a sliver of time this morning, enough to squeeze in a run in the park. Not just any park, though. But this one.
And it felt like so many of the years that have passed did not really pass, and the me that was running, creaky-kneed, through the brisk November morning was just a breath away from the me that lived here so many years ago.
There are morning glories still blooming on the fence that borders the sheep meadow. There are the same gaggle of runners and bikers and baby carriages.
New York City is a well that never goes dry.
Still in a post-election whirl and funk, I board the Northeast Regional for two days of interviewing in New York, the first leg of a long trip that will ultimately take me to Asia and back.
It reminds me a little of Suzanne’s departure for the Peace Corps. Though she was embarking on a three-and-a-half-year sojourn in West Africa, her first stop was Philadelphia, where she’d have a brief orientation before shipping off to Benin.
Claire and I were the only ones in town that day so we escorted Suzanne to Union Station, tried very hard not to cry (and mostly succeeded) and waved as our precious daughter and sister made her way through the low-key boarding gate.
Only later did Suzanne tell us that a fellow passenger had come up to her and said that the size of her suitcase and the reaction of her family made him think she wasn’t just going for a quick jaunt to Philly.
I look at the travelers around me now and wonder at their final destinations. Are they, too, at the beginning of a grand journey? Where will they be this time Saturday?
I’ll be past Qatar, on my way to Jakarta and points East. Still can’t believe it’s happening. A good way for adventures to begin.
(New York City sunrise, October 25, 2016)
This is no “morning in America.” This is more the way you feel when you learn that someone you love has been hurting more than you possibly thought they were. Why didn’t you tell me, I feel like saying. How could things have been this bad, to produce this end?
But they were telling me, telling us, and we wouldn’t, couldn’t listen. Because listening across party lines is not something we do much anymore.
The great rift exposed by this election has been a long time coming, and it will take a while to repair. I’m not a politician, but it seems to me that the best way — maybe the only way — out of this is to pull together. Unfortunately, the campaign has eroded our ability to do the very thing we need to do for our recovery.
In my office now there is much gallows humor, talk of relocating to Canada or some tropical isle. It’s a good time to leave for Indonesia and Myanmar (which I do on Friday). But I’ll be back soon. How much will this have sunk in by then? How inured will we be to this new reality?
I’m reading Paul Auster’s Report from the Interior, a memoir of mind, a book that reconstructs the awakening of consciousness. In the course of doing this, Auster laments the fact that, though he wrote stories as a child, none of his early scribblings remain.
He never much saw the point of keeping a journal, he says. The problem with the journal was that he didn’t know who he was addressing, whether himself or someone else. And if himself, he muses, then “why take the trouble to revisit things you had just experienced, and if it was someone else, then who was that person and how could addressing someone else be construed as keeping a journal?”
I bristled a bit reading this passage. As a longtime journal-keeper I’m hypersensitive to journal-keeping being considered an idle or superficial exercise.
But Auster comes around. Here he is again, writing in second person, as he does throughout this book:
“You were too young back then to understand how much you would later forget—and too locked in the present to realize that the person you were writing to was in fact your future self.”
It’s a trick, this time change thing. In the fall we’re lured with the extra hour. Oh, it will be good to sleep in, we tell ourselves. And who can’t use a little more sleep?
In reality, it’s just a ploy to take our eyes off the ball — the ball being how little light there is to go around this time of year. For everyone who rejoices at the lighter mornings, there are those who decry the darker afternoons.
Yesterday, as a golden day gave way to a lowered-sun afternoon, the reality of it all hit me. It would be darkness at 5. And the sun that slanted so fetchingly through the trees would dip out of sight long before I was ready for it to.
It’s just the way the world turns, I know. But that doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it!
A perfect fall day. The trees have flamed up and light streams into the yard.
