Time is Flying -- Expectations are Rising

Today is the first of June, and I've now been living in Yogya for well over seven months. I've become increasingly aware of how little time I have left in my grant, and the next two and a half months.

While my research remains scattered, I have to salvage it with diligence over the next few weeks. I've been invited to present a paper at the first International Conference on Civic Space to be hosted by the University of Indonesia and the University of British Columbia. It will be held from August 3-5 on the campus of the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, and the conference's theme is "Space, Culture and Power: Identity and Civility in the Post Authoritarian Urban Asia".  I submitted an abstract based on my research, which I titled "Re-Inscribing the City: Public Art, Graffiti and Urban Subjectivity in Yogyakarta", so now I have a three week deadline to convert that abstract into an articulate, meaningful paper.

In addition to drafting my conference paper, I have agreed to contribute a chapter to a book project that my sponsor, Romo Baskara, has arranged with a local publishing house.

And I've starting working on a third paper relating to consumerism, iconography and violence. It will be a meditation on two troubling occurrences which are seemingly disconnected -- the intense debate over visual representations of the prophet Mohammad and an increase in depictions of Adolf Hitler on t-shirts -- but which I analyze in the context of Yogyakarta's "Copy Culture", relating to issues of copy write, replication, iconography and the social/psychological value of images. It is kind of messy, but hopefully I can rope it in and discipline my ideas into something worthwhile, which I would then like to share at IVAA, the Indonesian Visual Art Archives.

Ideally, I will be able to complete each of these three pieces in a satisfactory manner before I leave Indonesia. These are my current goals.

Kalimantan Trip: Derawan middle

Our first evening on Pulau Derawan had already captivated us, from its tiny size (appearing as a dollop of palm trees floating above turquoise water) to its crisp, three lane town and abundance of sea creatures which are disappearing from the rest of Indonesia's coastlines.

Wandering in search of nesting turtles in the moonlight, we were given a peak at the extensive, winding sandbars leading out from Derawan, sinking and rising to form tiny, islands exposed only during low tide. I was excited to explore the sandbars, so after breakfast on our first full day, Megan and I crawled along the beach towards the sandbar hook extending out into the sea. 

During high tide, the sand in the foreground is underwater all the way up to the sinking cement strip, which appeared to be an old helipad destabilized by erosion. The night prior, we watched the turtle lay eggs just 30 meters to the right of the red-roofed building in the photo.

Winding out along the sandbar, we encountered giant, colorful, spitting clams with creepy mouths and amazing aim, starfish of varying colors and sizes, schools of tiny, flesh-nibbling fish, and even the odd anemone housing  black and orange clownfish.

Eventually, about a half-mile from the island, the end of the sandbar grew near.

Looking back, the island seemed separate from us by the watery horizon, even though we still had plenty of time left with the tides.

Peneliti Tamu

While searching for the mailing address of my sponsor institution, I stumbled upon my photograph and inclusion on the list of Staff as a Visiting Researcher: http://www.pusdep.usd.ac.id/en/staf.php
They do a good job of trying to professionalize me.

I would identify more as a common guest/coffee drinker/wifi borrower/gossiper.

So, ever since the shift to Dry Season, its been raining every afternoon from 3PM onwards. Dry?? Come on!? I demand the old, distinct seasons back!

I've included a few random photographs taken along the street in Yogya -- the top show's the street running along Pasar Beringharjo, Jogja's central market. Below, there is a random painting and a portrait of a becak/rickshaw driver with whom I had a brief conversation about getting married to and having babies with a woman from Yogyakarta. When I made it clear that I'm not interested in either of those things, he decided that we should focus our time and energy on creating a portrait.

Last night, I saw Green Zone. It was difficult to watch, and particularly upsetting to watch amongst an Islamic-majority audience. Indonesians have a particularly difficult time applying for visas to travel to the US, and although many people have a positive outlook on the future of US-Indonesian relations (largely due to the election of Obama, or Mas Barry as they know him), there remains a deep skepticism about the level of tolerance towards Muslims in the US. The complexity of the US military intervention peaks when a US military officer successfully protects a controversial Iraqi General from assassination by fellow US militia, only to see the General murdered by a fellow Iraqi whom the US officer had recruited to be his interpreter. In response to the look of shock on the US officer's face, the interpreter explains, "You  shouldn't even be here, these are not your decisions to make" (or something to that effect).

So, while the film emphasizes the enormous mess the US military made in Iraq, the film suggests that, with or without US intervention, Iraq would have been a mess. The US may have just made it messier and killed people faster and to a greater degree.

Hopefully the environment-compromising move to open oil-drilling along our coastlines will help us avoid more stupid actions in the Middle East in the future.

And I'm just hoping that Green Zone doesn't amp-up anti-American sentiment amongst the less-critical viewing population in Indonesia, who could easily take the film as an indictment of all US citizens.
At least for a while, it was getting easy to be an American living abroad...

Rasa Extreme, or the troubling of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika

In typical scattered fashion, a loose union of places, times, driving routes, and should-be-sent-text-messages orbited my brain as I collected Lolly and puttered out into the crisp Yogya evening (Still hot and a little humid, and definitely not crisp in comparison with a Fall night in Pennsylvania, but crisp for Yogya standards). With a line-up of gallery openings and public theater, I did not imagine that I would have my first run-in with religious fundamentalists.

Opting to start at the opening of the somewhat controversially-titled "Re:Horny95", an exhibition of current big names in Jogja's art scene, at the Jogja National Museum, Lolly and I wandered around the southwestern section of the city. Without an address for the museum, I relied on my memory of previous visits. The magnetic coordinates in my wrists guided us straight to the museum, with a necessary stop by a bakpia bakery. We arrived early and sat for a few minutes on the back of the motorbike, eating the sweet, dense, buttery biscuit/cookies. After a quick run-through of the exhibit allowed by an errant security guard, we were escorted back outside, and while waiting for the actual event to open, I received a series of text messages from a friend who coordinated our next intended destination.

She was upset because her event had been wrecked and disassembled by a group of haughty, slow-moving police. Having coordinated a series of plays and songs as the end of a week of anti-homophobia activism, she had gathered a series of pro-LGBT communities in the Alun-Alun kidul -- the southern public park of the city. Upon arriving, they were greeted by an aggressive group of men dressed entirely in white, with their heads masked by black and white keffiyehs. Although the only people aware of the planned events were the local police, someone had alerted the Front Pembela Islam, and a group from the FPI arrived to disrupt the events.

Worried about the safety of the participants, she asked if Lolly and I could drive around the park and determine whether the FPI group was still there. Tracing the square road bordering the park, we came to face the gathering of rowdy men in the southeastern corner. Lolly snapped a quick, blurry photo (see above), and we drove off to find our friend, her community of lesbians, and members of the various pluralist/anti-homophia communities in Jogja.

The FPI, or Islamic Defender Front, is a fundamentalist group which employs violence to deconstruct businesses, communities and events that are considered to be anti-Islamic. Within the last two months, they effectively shut down two other events. They surrounded a hotel in Surabaya and threatened the lives of the participants of a conference for the International Gay and Lesbian Conference, causing the local Police to revoke the permission they had previously provided to the conference organizers. Following this, they attacked a community training of warias (a male-to-female transgendered figure common throughout Indonesia). They forcibly entered the room, threw chairs and bottles at the participants, and wounded many of the warias.

A trend is developing. Members of the FPI are intimidating and attacking people while the police and military watch. And although the national motto is Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or Unity in Diversity, the police and military seem satisfied to remain spectators as the unity of one portion of the population is enhanced through the forcing of others to the margins. It is difficult not to implicate the police and military in the increasingly structural violence against LGBT-idenified individuals, Christians, Ethnic Chinese, and anyone deemed too liberal. Is it getting easier to be cast as "anti-Islamic"? It is certainly easy enough for members of the FPI to intimidate and use violence -- intimidation and violence which is seemingly validated by the lack of legal repercussion from the State.

Shaken up by the aggressive and somehow ghostly presence of the FPI in the carnival-like setting of the alun-alun, Lolly and I sat with the community members in a restaurant not far off. With unease, we chatted, as if to create a new purpose for gathering -- we weren't displaced from the park, but had gathered instead to hang  out and socialize. And while it was nice to chat with new individuals from various communities, I couldn't help but share in the disappointment that so much preparation and energy could be denied its deserved outlet.

The night served as a reminder that while Yogya feels like a bohemian city with space for everyone from any kind of background, its openness also allows for the existence of (often invisible) of hard-headed, narrow-minded groups riding on Fundamentalism's moral high-ground. 

Kalimantan Trip: The Derawan Islands

We climbed into the tiny speedboat and puttered off towards slightly-more-than-sandbar islands. Our ride lasted about 45 minutes, and we cruised along the beach, looking at each of the hotels built out on piers over the water. The driver quickly maneuvered us along the dock of our hotel of choice, and we climbed up, tossed our bags into a room, and settled into deep relaxation.

After catching our breath, Megan and I wandered around the island -- literally. The island is tiny and requires about 30 minutes to circumnavigate.

Because of our curiousity, the sun began to set as we curved around back towards our hotel. Each time we ventured out along a pier, we encountered numerous sea turtles drifting along, gracefully searching for evening snacks.

Back at the hotel, we sat down with the other guests to eat dinner, and Jeanette, a frisky and elderly French woman, introduced us to the local employee of the World Wildlife Foundation. Yusef's job is to monitor the nests of sea turtles, and to relocate the eggs to a secured area where the eggs can incubate without the risk of being dug up and cooked. Apparently turtle eggs are quite tastey.

The full moon guaranteed that eggs would be laid, and we set out with flashlights, following Yusef to the popular parts of the beach for egg-laying. Eventually, we heard the scraping and huffing of a digging turtle.
She panted and groaned as she whipped sand out of the way with her flippers, eventually filling back over the hole after depositing about 50 eggs. She seemed to collapse, her head and fins laying lifeless on the sand. With a raspy gasp, she lifted her head and began her painful, syncopated scramble back towards the sea.
We followed her, mesmerized by her size and movements, each of us willing her closer to the water. When the tide finally lapped up over her fins, we all breathed a sigh of relief, and watched her sway out into the waves.

After following Yusef to re-bury the eggs in a safe location, we wandered back to the hotel along the beach, lit up by the moonlight. Maybe it was the warm breeze, but it was hard to control the shivers traveling down my spine as I tried to record every second of my visit to the island in my mind.

Kalimantan Trip: To the islands

When our friend and fellow researcher, Desmond, told us about his research plans in Samarinda, a city on the East coast of Kalimantan (Indonesia's claim on Borneo, representing roughly the Southern two-thirds of the giant island shared with Malaysia and Brunei), he suggested that Megan and I arrive and travel with him. Inspired to visit the island to the north of our home on Java, we discussed the geography and decided on thee main points of interest: the Derawan Islands, Banjarmasin, and Tanjung Puting National Park. Due to Samarinda's proximity to these sites, we purchased airfare to fly from Yogya to Balikpapan, the largest city on the East coast, and then for a smaller flight from Balikpapan to Berau, the airport closest to the islands. On Monday, the 26th, we boarded our Sriwijaya Airlines flight and landed in Balikpapan, where we wandered around until we found a hotel with a suitable price-quality ratio. Desmond contacted us to let us know that he was asked to give a presentation and wouldn't be able to join us, so it would just be the two of us on the trip.

After an uneventful night along the city's waterfront, we boarded our first KalStar flight -- a small airline flying propeller planes between cities in Kalimantan.

The flight was pleasant, and after arriving in Berau, we found a ride in a car traveling to Tanjung Batu, the small port where boats leave for the Derawan Islands. It was a relatively smooth trip from Plane to 4x4 vehicle to boat, and before we knew it, we were cruising towards the small chain of islands that are famous for sea turtles, a rare lake full of sting-less jellyfish, and manta rays.

Paintings and a visitor

Here are some pictures of the paintings which I bought a couple of weeks ago:

I bought the freaky rabbit one directly above the window (it is green, yellow and red), and the small, rectangular one on  the bottom left side.

I got the blue one with the reference to the Cure ("Boys Don't Cry"), but it says "Boys Don't Pray", a statement about gender and religiousity in Indonesia.

And here is a blurry close-up of the small rectangular painting from the first photograph.

And this is the freaky giant, jumping spider that was in my room.

Jakarta-Bandung-Yogya-Kalimantan-Bali-Yogyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Last friday, I went to Jakarta to see Peaches, a crazy Canadian singer, perform, and I visited with Megan (the other Fulbright researcher based in Yogya) and Desmond (a Fulbright researcher based in Jakarta). I stayed in Desmond's swanky apartment in downtown Jakarta, and Megan has been staying with her friend Yuyun in the same apartment complex, in the adjoining tower. I headed straight from the airport to meet Megan in Jakarta's classiest mall, where we drank coffee and browsed designer clothes which cost more than our 10 month research grant. After dropping our stuff at the apartments and cleaning up, we grabbed dinner at a pancake restaurant in FX Lifestyle Center, an absurd mall with bars, lounges, a few shops, and a 10 story slide in the middle. It turned out that a receipt for a purchase of 50,000 rupiah (about 5 bucks) gets you a free ride on the slide, and our combined dinner cost just enough for Megan, Desmond, Yuyun (who met us at the resto) and me to ride for "free". Of course, we didn't figure this out right away, and had to descend back to the ground floor to ask the restaurant staff for a copy of our receipt.

The slide, which kids fly down every few minutes, terrified me. Helmet and safety jacket strapped on, I plummeted to the bottom, where I was greeted by a series of flashes. The whole thing is photo documented, and we had a few group shots taken to memorialize our infantilizing traumatic experience.

Afterwards, we went to Indochine, the giant club complex at the top to linger with Jakarta's avant-garde hipster kids -- metallic bat-wing ponchos, black tights, black framed glasses, mini-bubble dresses, and asymetrical bowl-cuts abounded. Peaches appeared in a giant fur-suit, which she quickly shed for raunchy outifts to match her obscene lyrics. There is an amazing novelty seeing Peaches perform songs like "f*** the pain away", while wearing a leotard with a light glowing in her crotch, in a country home to the world's largest Muslim population. Was I worried about police shutting it down, or Islamic extremists attacking the venue? Mildly. But it was refreshing to see these crazy, funky hipster kids go wild.

The next day involved a few galleries and malls, and early Sunday morning (10AM, haha, sigh), I set off to the train station to ride to Bandung, Java's style capital. I will try to write a little about it later.

I got back to Yogya on Tuesday, and Megan and I gathered to plan a trip to Kalimantan (the southern 2/3rds of Borneo which are Indonesian territory -- the northern 1/3rd is split by Malaysia and Brunei). Desmond alerted us in Jakarta to a research trip he is taking to the east coast of the island, and asked if we would want to meet him there for some traveling once he finished his research.

So, on Monday, Megan and I fly to Balikpapan, where we will catch a propeller plane to Berau, a bus to some boondock coastal town, and a boat to the Derawan Islands. After a couple of days, we will travel back to Balikpapan, where Megan and I will get a plane to fly down to Banjarmasin on the southern coast. From there, we'll fly on a prop plane to Pangkan Bun to hire a boat to go into the jungle. I'm torn about this segment -- a few-day boat ride into the jungle so that we can see orangutans will involve wayyyy toooo much wildlife for me: crocodiles, leopards, pythons, and all things evil/dangerous. Megan seems confident, and I know that I'll appreciate the experience. Once we are back in Banjarmasin, we will check out the city before flying back to Yogya, where will get clean clothes, and then go to Bali for a week for a Fulbright event.
The next few weeks will be crazy.
Deep breathes.

Down the hole...

As I sat on the stiff seat, tense springs pressing against my body, I struggled to keep the pages of the weekend Jakarta Globe stiff against the shaking and vibrations of the old train. I was heading east on my way from Jakarta to Bandung, a city in West Java, and given some extra time in Gambir Station due to a delay in the train, I picked up a copy of the newspaper to avoid explicitly productive reading. It was my first time on the Parahyangan line -- the budget line between Jakarta and Bandung, and as I began to process the length of the journey (the mountainous terrain and the track's dangerous curves require the train to crawl for most of the trip), I wondered who takes this train?

Answering my question, an article on page two of the newspaper explains: very few people. The line is a big loser for Indonesia's train company, and to cut their losses, the company is cutting the Parahayangan line just two weeks after my trip. Sure, the seats are awful and the pace is mind-numbing. But as we crawled through the mountains, crossing numerous towering railway bridges (I try not to think about their stability), the windows of the train look out over West Java's most beautiful landscapes. Physics-defying, terraced rice paddies are wedged in steep valleys, and volcanoes bite down on the horizon like Java's sharp, black teeth. I didn't even try to take a picture through the age-worn plexiglass windows, but did snap a shot of the rocks beneath the train made visible in the hole of the toilet.

Cafe_Street_Cafe

Grabbing a table and settling into the hard, weathered, geometric-wooden seat, I scanned the room while restlessly opening and closing the menu. Lolly and I had arrived at the cafe early enough to catch the DJ's warming up for their scheduled hiphop performance necessitated by the street art exhibit opening in the cafe that night. It seems as though you cannot have a gallery opening without the complete package of food, jesters and fireworks -- live musical acts are the standard at gallery openings in Yogya. Openings also offer free catalogues, posters, stickers or even odd plastic trinkets. Thus, an early arrival guarantees the best selection of loot. Lolly and I scanned the room, registering the usual European backpacker clients, common opening snacks of crispy cassava chips and glutinous rice cakes, cluster of baggy-clothes-clad hip hop kids, and recognizable LoveHateLove paintings filling the walls.

For the show, LoveHateLove, the most prolific graffiti artist in Yogya, turned his spray and brushes to mobile, salable surfaces and filled the walls of ViaVia with pieces to make some income. Graffiti, Murals, or vandalism -- whatever you prefer to call it -- doesn't usually lead to income, so an artist/vandal cannot continue without some source for money and supplies. ViaVia, an institution in Yogya that is part of a larger chain of Belgian "traveler cafes", has long supported "alternative artists", so it was no surprise to hear that they would host LoveHateLove and a crew of hiphop musicians.

So, as I considered ordering something from the cafe menu, I also scanned the walls, wondering whether one of LHL's paintings would be my loot for the night. We noticed Boy, the curator/organizor of the event, who confirmed that all of the paintings were for sale and that the numbers joining each piece was in fact the cost in Indonesian Rupiahs and not US Dollars. Stimulated by the low costs and lack of buyers, Lolly and I scanned the rooms for our favorite works and informed Boy that we wanted to purchase them. Once the red-dots were permanent, I stepped back to re-evaluate the $80 worth of paintings which will have a new home in my boarding house. Perhaps I went a little overboard by purchasing three canvases. There were two random paintings which I wanted to buy together as a set -- one with the face of a young man with four eyes, with the text "Boys Don't Pray", and one with a rabbit with the same four eyes, reading "Going to Logos". The third is a smaller piece with some printed-images pasted on, which in combination with paint create an intense, energetic composition.

It was a strange experience to purchase paintings, which I associate with wealthy individuals and either a kind of investor-consciousness or a romanticism for a kind of aesthetic purity. My motives were completely selfish in buying the paintings -- they are awesome keepsakes to remind me of Yogya's streetscape, a material link to  the past. But if I'm not a collector of Indonesian art, how does this transaction reflect on my identity in Yogya's artist communities? My funds for art are limited, and I make no promises about a safe or accessible storage facility -- in my possession, art will have a limited lifespan.

More details and maybe even some images will come soon! I'm still re-adjusting to the new digital environment of my back-amongst-the-living laptop with its new version of Windows. I'm still something of a tourist in Windows 7, having yet to accept that it might be permanent on my computer, and that I might just settle down with it, living a Windows 7 expatriate life.

fizzle pop

this week, I'm trying to take it easy and pick up the pieces of my life here in Yogya. Starting just over two weeks ago, I developed a messy ear infection, and then Windows died on my computer, rendering me deaf and laptop-less. Thankfully, the kind folks at Computa helped scavange all of my important image and text files.

I was in Manila for a mid-term Fulbright Southeast Asia researchers conference from Wednesday night, the 17th, through Saturday morning, the 20th. I was feeling exhausted and overwhelmed about preparing a presentation without a computer or access to my digital files with weird pressure and pulsing noises in the right hemisphere of my head. My presentation went fine -- it was a bit scattered, but I was able to open my flashdisk on a friend's laptop and arrange some images to take attention away from my circuitous and confusing language.

The three days were filled by the conference and an absurd amount of eating at Heat, the hedonist restaurant in the hotel.

I wish I had more time to see some of Manila, but I am thankful that the trip at least inspired some interest within me.

Day trip and juicy ear

I've been living in haze for the past few days, as the right side of my head feels swollen with an ear infection. It isn't visibly noticeable, but the pulsing, fuzzy pressure in the right hemisphere has off-set my balance and compromised my already-troubled hearing, so understanding a foreign language has become doubly-challenging.
Thankfully, I brought medicated ear drops with me, so I've already started the juicy, humbling, healing process.

In other news, I received notification from Irvine's anthropology department that I've been admitted with five years of funding: a combination of a tuition fellowship and a teaching-assistantship to cover my stipend and health insurance. YES. Health insurance! It is an amazing privilege to have the opportunity to continue my studies with the guarantee of health care.

Additionally, on Sunday, I joined some of my peers and my sponsor on a trip to visit my sponsor's family in the rural northeastern part of Central Java -- a town called Purwodadi.
It included a stop at a bizarre, belching mud pit. wooo.

Spin, Bule, Spin!

On Thursday night, caughing, wheezing, and crawling on tippy-toes through jammed traffic-lines towards the beams of light and the peak density of Jogya's gathered people, we sought one final sip of the night fair. The month long fair, often described as an event for the rakyat -- the people, as a bottom-up category that often insinuates the prioritized perspective and experiences of the lower classes -- came to an end on the Javanese holiday which took place on Saturday. The final few days offered free admission, so crowds amplified, vibrating and overflowing from the giant alun-alun (public square) out through the streets and walkways. The lively crowds were an aspiring politician's dream and a public health figure's epidemiological nightmare.

Lolly, Megan and I sunk into the current of bodies and flowed through the fair, gawking at snacks and objects for sale. We settled on ice-cream and donuts, and as we passed a shallow, dark pool of water with giant clear beach balls, I stopped. They looked like inflatable, human-sized gerbill-balls. A childhood filled with 80's and 90's American television provided enough American Gladiators viewings to plant the seeds for a particular dream: I would rise up like Nitro, Lazer and Viper to plow my way through a gauntlet in the trappings of bubble. And while theirs were cast out of metal and padding, I was offered a soft, floating, plastic version.

The ride was dark, lacked participants, and had the manager seemed listless. Pushed forth by my Gladiator-ambitions, I asked the manager if the ride was still open, and his slow nod confirmed that I would have my cake. I paid the dollar entrance fee, he tugged on a rope, reeling in a large, clear orb. Standing awkward and unsure on the platform above the pool, I watched as he unzipped the ball, releasing all of the air, and motioned me to climb in. I folded my body up and wriggled into a situation which seemed too close to the "child's head in a plastic grocery bag" scenarios that haunted parents in the '90's.

Refilled with air, I tumbled around inside, coating myself with grit as I thrashed and bounced. The space seemed to light up, and people gathered to watch and laugh.

Graffiti

How to Raise a Voice: A Metonymic Approach to the Private/Public Dualism

Twee screams of children echoed throughout the locker room, and after the pain in my ears calmed, I traced the intensity to the shower stall next to the one which I occupied. The screaming continued, gaining layers and volume as the father contributed complementary chords. It shocked me that rather than creating a “teachable moment” by explaining the difference between “indoor” and “outdoor” voices, the father seemed to revel in the play of testing out the strength of one’s voice. Had he no shame, awareness, sympathy, or concern for humankind?

The experience -- showering in silence while accosted by the radical, aural experiments of my neighbors – inspired me to think back to my youth. If it was not a teachable moment for my neighbor, rather than begging for mercy, I decided to re-evaluate my own perception of socially-appropriate noise levels.

I wasn’t the quietest child, nor was I apprehensive about speaking to strangers. Yet, the flustered responses of my parents and random temporary guardians imbued in me the value that public spaces are shared spaces, and it is disrespectful to those with whom we share the space if our voices compromise the peacefulness of the space. So while I might not always withhold my passive-aggressive judgements of strangers' behaviors, I voice my expressions is a manner where at least the volume can be described as unoffensive.

Remaining silent, I began to think further about the experience of growing up in a household often filled with silence. We were never one of those fabled singing families, and as I accepted the silence, growing to appreciate prolonged moments of silence, I've struggled internally to negotiate my love of conversation and shared social analysis with my discomfort at breaking silences. While listening to the child scream proudly from the stall next to me, and his father seem to encourage his child's voice, I wondered whether my discomfort with speaking out and singing is due in part to something inherited from my family and community. We are not afraid to speak out about our social concerns, but, perhaps, we also do not find comfort or joy in the sound of our own voices. My talkativeness is symptomatic of my curiosity, but it has never filled the vast space of my family's home.

Having grown up in a house that provided private spaces for each member of the family, my comfort with silence is bolstered by my appreciation of personal space. We often moved through the house quietly, crossing each other's paths. Here, as soon as I drive into the entrance of the boarding house, the children who live at the front shout my name, "Om Colin!" (or Uncle Colin), and the guys hanging out by their rooms ask where I am coming from and what I am doing. They ask out of politeness, and the polite chit-chat has a way of affirming our concern for each other. Already comfortable with the continuous conversation, they lean in  the open doorways of the rooms as they relax, while I quickly shut my door and soak up the silence and stillness. Despite my immersion here, the closeness and intensity of noisy bodies continues to challenge me.

Indonesia's quickly growing middle class is providing more spacious, private, family homes, where children and parents are experiencing new kinds of silence in urban spaces. But traditionally, children are raised without much -- if any -- private space. They are always with at least one adult or a pack of peers, and the presence of such companionship is enhanced by physical affection. Holding hands, draping arms over shoulders, and rubbing arms, backs, and thighs are common ways of expressing friendship and they are carried over into adulthood. It felt odd when an acquaintance massaged my shoulder while inquiring about my experiences in Jogja, and I was initially shocked when a friend grabbed my thigh to get my attention while listening to live jazz and drinking beer with a group of friends.

In contrast to my expectations for privacy and silence, the vast majority of my friends here grew up without privacy or silence and find comfort in physical and sonorous contact. Standing in my stall, in the gym where I usually find respite from the chaos of Yogya's streets, I was reminded that the financially-exclusive gym is still a public space, despite the sense of privacy I derive from the quiet, calm atmosphere. I associate my intolerance of closeness, touching, and noise with the degree of privacy which I was given as a child, and I think there are links between exposure to bodies and noise and the degree to which one is part of a "public". And maybe this is a problem, because I'm suggesting that a public only exists beyond a critical mass -- there must be a certain number or density of people to require a management of shared spaces to a degree where individuals lose privacy and must compensate with tolerance for those around them. A shared enjoyment of voices and physical affection will make life easier when one does not have access to private, personal space, but that does not mean that everyone who lives without privacy is comfortable with constant noise and touching...

As I am confronted increasingly by social inquiries by voices which demonstrate their strength over the constant growl of motorbikes, and unexpected physical affection, the difference between private and public is articulated as being able to escape the contact of others versus tolerating -- or maybe even learning to appreciate -- the contact of others. To me, a public space offers an unlimited possibility of interactions with individuals from every possible background, and I contrast it with private space where I am allowed to be alone and offered as much calmness and stability as my mind will allow. Standing alone inside the shower stall, the screams of the child tore down the four walls around me, re-situating me outside of a private space. Although I wanted to shower, change, and get ready to go back out into the heat, traffic and noise in silence, I challenged myself to tolerate and maybe even enjoy the liveliness and potential chaos of a public space.

Blizzard or Monsoon??

Once I'm on my motorbike, I have a stubborn momentum which will not be re-routed. As the rain intensified, dropping in what felt like solid sheets, I stayed the course. I had scheduled a meeting with colleagues at the Center for History and Political Ethics, and I won't let the weather control my schedule. If my colleagues were in the same position, they would never have left their home. It is a fact here that the chill and dampness accrues against and within our bodies as we travel through a rainstorm. Thus, the decision to go out is paired with the fate of "catching one's death", a "cold", or "masuk angin" -- the entering wind. When the wind enters one's body, it results in chills, a fever, sniffles, and fatigue. Countless meetings have been cancelled because of rain; nobody wants to risk being vulnerable to that wind. I often feel like the only risk-taking individual with the audacity to challenge the wind.

The ride quickly grew dangerous as the roads filled with water. The backed-up drains burped up brown waste, and water began flowing across the platform on my motorbike where I rest my feet. Anxious about the height of my tailpipe and the rapidly rising floodwaters, I accelerated, sending waves across the street. The water continued to rise as I approached the campus, and the large speed bumps served to slow the current of water as it reached the height of each, eventually spilling over into the next low section of macadam. Dropping off each elongated speed bump felt like diving recklessly from a sandbar into an unknown depth of water.

I made it safely to campus, and 3 hours later, I'm still sitting in the office, listening to the rain.

I can't wait for dry season!