The Afternoon Matinee

Thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk
bang babangbang bang... babababang bang
pow tchiiii-thunk

Blood pulses quickly from the gunshot wound, and I keep jogging, my feet padding along the path, thunk-thunking. Somehow I keep running, neither towards nor away from the violent scene. The CIA operatives were attempting to disarm some Muslim extremists, and they started shooting right in front of me during my daily run -- on a treadmill at the posh Jogja Plaza hotel.

A major perk of working out in the hotel's gym is the projection screen in the cardio room.  Everyday, as I jog, I'm anesthetized by premium American television: HBO, Cinemax, and E -- except when the remote is wrested away and the channel is changed to the local news, which, mimicking Jerry Springer, seems to focus on weird outbreaks of girl-fights in high schools. The American shows and movies are a welcoming respite from Indonesia's slapstick humor, though the quality oscillates, and only on lucky days am I delivered engaging cinema.

I've been fortunate to catch some intense movies, which have provided surprisingly great running-entertainment. Yet, the movies I appreciate aren't universally enjoyed in the gym. It was difficult to watch the violent shooting scenes of No Country For Old Men amongst my fellow cardio-fanatics. I couldn't watch without wondering how the film might be accepted as a representation of life in America, and, thus, if any of the story accurately portrays the experiences of real people. The relatively slow, intense tempo, which for me is oddly similar to certain gamelan music, doesn't seem to be a natural workout stimulant, but I maintained my tight, anxious, neocolonial grasp on the remote control.

Similarly, earlier today, I watched The Kingdom as I jogged. I wasn't familiar with the movie prior to my workout, and was a bit surprised to find an action/drama dealing with terrorism in the Middle East. Indonesia has an active film censorship board, and some strange things get cut out of the viewer's consciousness. I wasn't sure how the portrayal of Islamic fundamentalism-related terrorism would be received in Indonesia. Although the government takes a staunch anti-terrorist stance, usually siding with the US government and military in the "War on Terror", I imagined that an Islamic-majority nation might be concerned with vilifying Islamic conservatism.

Indonesia experiences its own rare expressions of irrational violence, which is quickly rationalized as religious-fundamentalist terrorism. While there are factions of extremist, conservative Muslims in Indonesia, and some may resort to violence, the government -- with its odd, long history of friendly relations with the US -- is often quick to categorize violence as a terrorist act, and to further classify it with the "enemies in the War on Terror".

Now I'm just a kid from the suburbs, so I'm not privy to the same documents as the FBI, CIA and Indonesian Military. I must bow to their exclusive knowledge, and hope that they are portraying things as accurately as possible. In a way, I need to keep the representations created by the government separate from those crafted by Hollywood. As I run on my treadmill watching anonymous Islamic fanatics shoot and bomb Americans -- harbingers of Democracy or Neocolonial-Totalitarian Militia? -- I can focus on the quality of entertainment and stop thinking about the complexities of the society in which I find myself daily.

Killing Them Softly (Part of the "Secrets We Shouldn't Share" series)

 Two dark, hollow eyes stared at me -- well, one open mouth stared at me, and two dark, hollow eyes stared out, one to the east and one to the west. Like the remora to my whale shark, I thought that our symbiosis was simple -- I maintain a relatively soap-free environment in the water basin, and the beta fish eats any foreign matter that falls, jumps or wriggles into my bathing water. But looking around the sharp edges of its hungry mouth into the sorrowful corona of its convex eyes, I realized it needed more out of our relationship -- namely, a more consistent source of food.

I know, it seems so obvious: feed your fish. But I bought this sucker because I had an infestation of larvae in my basin, and when I was told to buy a beta fish, no one told me that it would greedily eat all of the larvae, leaving itself in an isolated, foodless environment. I don't want my fish friend to go hungry, but manufactured fish food does NOT smell good, and there is noooo way that I'm sprinkling a new, chum-scented cologne into my bathwater. My dislike of antiperspirants provides enough of an olfactory challenge in my daily life -- I don't need to also smell like a dingy aquarium shop. And so I watched my fish get skinnier and skinnier, until I could no longer plead innocent obliviousness. Fish? What fish? Skinny? What do you mean? Well, slender, maybe... but, really? Too skinny? I don't know...

Determined to feed my aquatic-friend, and unwilling to purchase and release additional mosquito larvae into my water basin, I've taken up an unsavoury practice:

murder in the form of insecticide.

It is rainy season here, and there are a lot of mosquitoes buzzing around. I'm going to kill some anyway, as I attempt to stop the theft of my blood. Rather than wiping away the remains, I tenderly nudge them with the tip of my finger until they stick, hanging loosely. I walk into the bathroom, careful not to shake loose the corpse, and tap the tip against the meniscus, simultaneously loosing the body onto the surface of the water and sending out the Morse code for "Dinner's Ready". For a moment, I feel like a daring Paleontologist hired to hand-feed goats and sheep to the Velociraptors* in Jurassic Park -- except that I am feeding smashed insects to a scrawny fish in my boarding house bathroom. Rather than resembling a bronzed, rugged scientist, I've developed a pale, nerdy-likeness with Rick Moranis's Seymour from The Little Shop of Horrors -- his doppelganger in an Indonesian alternate universe.

Now, I do have some standards for this process. It is, after all, still my bathwater, and while I may let a fish swim through it, I won't throw just anything into the water. Two laws guide my practice -- the insect body must remain intact, and it must be a dry kill. We've all had that moment where we catch a mosquito during -- or recently after -- a feeding, and the smack of the palm is met with a bloody splat. And while I have accepted that my bathwater might not be so sterile, I can't bring myself to drop a blood-soaked carcass into the water. So the second rule keeps foreign fluids out of the water, and the first minimizes the number of legs and wings floating around in the aftermath of a feeding.

And now for the scariest details: Having watched my fish regain its health through our continued feedings, I am determined to maximize these feedings. Thus, I've softened the impact of my slap against the mosquitoes, hoping to minimize the number that are smashed or that splurt blood. It is with a newfound tenderness that I hunt the mosquitoes across my bedroom, seeing them not as pests or enemies, but as tiny teammates who sacrifice themselves for the health of my fish. Cue the bongos: I've entered my own twisted version of The Lion Kings "Circle of Life", where I encourage mosquitoes to enter my room so that I may kill them softly and feed them to my beta fish, ensuring that he will live on to eat any of their larvae, should any of them survive long enough in my bedroom to reproduce and violate my water basin with their squiggly young.

*Can you believe that the spell-check function disagrees that this is a valid word?

Structural [Dys]functionalism

{ERROR}
Page unable to load {ERROR}

For a moment, blinking at the screen, frustrated and cloudy-minded, it is as if the maelstrom of ideas and disjointed schedules in my mind escaped through osmosis into the hotspot ether, tempering the quality of my connection to the internet. Webpages will only half-load before failing, or offer up an error message before continuing to load in a plain text version. The less structured my world becomes, the more rigid my body becomes, tensing in its stress response.

Drivers here are often described as passive, since they seem to flow, relaxed, through the streets, seemingly as unconcerned with traffic signs as with schedules. The drift of motorbike traffic undulates, floating in a rapidly shifting current, around cars, horse-carts, rickshaws, and conversationalists who stop their vehicles to practice their skills. Amidst the chaos and pollution, peoples' faces seem placid, if not serene.

To contrast, I sit rigidly on my seat, shoulders tense, gripping the handles of my bike with anxious intensity. I speed not so much to keep my schedule, but to weave my way through the mass as fast as possible. Struggling to get around the clusters of passive motorbikes, puttering down the avenues, my eyes seem to register the same messages typed across their backs: {ERROR} {
ERROR} {EFFICIENCY COLLAPSE}

Only after arriving at my destination, tense, pulse-beating -- with only a marginal sense of success at having navigated my way as efficiently as possible -- that I realize the {ERROR} message is in my mind. I may be driving effectively, ensuring a better schedule and minimizing my participation in what I have seen as chaos, but the stress incurred on my body is my punishment.  It is because of my inability to accept the roads as they are and just drive as another passive motorist that I will actually take years off of my life.

I don't have to love erratic internet service and chaotic traffic, but I must at least learn to accept it. If I can stop myself from tensing-up, and learn to relax a little, I can slowly shut down the remnants of my Nationalist, Xenophobic character.
So, no more : "This wouldn't have happened in America", or "In America, it would function this way..."

Up the hill?

It has proven tenuous, my situation within this training. When Megan mentioned the multifaith workshop on supporting LGBT individuals and people living with HIV/AIDS, I wasn't sure how to feel. I was nervous about the combination of the two communities, and I wanted to make sure that the workshop did not replicate earlier cultural narratives about LGBT as illness, HIV/AIDS as Gay diseases, and HIV/AIDS as death sentences. At Haverford, I was able to take courses on Gender, Queer Movements, Identity and Representation, as well as courses on HIV/AIDS. My experiences in Cape Town increased my awareness of the two topics, so I decided to offer my perspective, and hope that I could contribute something that isn't already over-represented.

The workshop takes place in Kaliurang, a hill resort town nestled on the side of Mt. Merapi, the volcano that puffs away on Yogya's horizon. The workshop consists of six days of lectures and discussions, followed by four days of live-ins where the participants move in and live with LGBT individuals and people living with HIV/AIDS. I am responsible for a series of presentations about gender and queer theory, and I've spent too much of the last week preparing powerpoint presentations (I HATE POWERPOINT). Yesterday, after stopping in the office, I grabbed a change of clothes, my toothbrush, hopped on my motorbike, and drove straight north, going up and up and up and up. The drive is beautiful, exiting the heat, traffic and pollution of Yogya, heading further into forest. Finally, after a grueling hour ride (for my bike! it wasn't so bad for me!), I pulled into the driveway for the Inn and stumbled into a room full of motivated, young activists representing the six government-approved religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Confucianism).

Coming to the end of the second day, and knowing that I will leave in the morning to head back to my life in Yogya, I'm exhausted yet happy to have met some interesting, engaging individuals. It has been interesting watching them grapple with social-constructionist theories of sex, gender and sexuality, and it will be a relief to return to my research, which feels much calmer in comparison.

time time time

time for an update. proof that I'm still pitter-pattering around Yogya. I've reached an apex of local responsibilities, and haven't seemed to manage the writing and energy required for these projects in balance with the writing and energy to narrate my experiences to friends and family. I've greatly appreciated the time people have shared in reading my blog, and doubly appreciate any responses. Selfishly, I'm trying to maintain this as my most substantial mode of contact with the people I care about in America, so as to minimize time spent re-writing update email, or mass emails which gather odd response branches in my gmail inbox.
Wah. okay, so in this brief excuse-post, I'm already accumulating some stream-of-consciousness gravity.

final note (before I return later to compose something more thoughtful):
I've been missing:
friends and family!
good beer!
crispy french fries!
falafel
all-you-can-eat vegan dimsum
Philadelphia!
bicycling
farmers markets
costume parties
fromageries (philly cheese heavens!)
spring-summer-fall in the city
transbridge buses from frenchtown to Oli
the Lovin' Oven
local yogurt
philly art

But I still love here:
$1.50 current movies at the super-nice, fancy theater
TEMPE
my motorbike
extensively-intellectual city (academics and students over-run this place)
$1.50 haircuts, including pre- AND post- washes and scalp massages
new friends
workouts with Lolly at the Yogya Plaza gym (including swimming and laying by the pool)
rolling my R's
the Arrrrt Arrrrrchives!
getting paid to do rrrrrresearch!
endless summer and a smoking volcano on the horizon
Milas and everything on their menu!
Conferences and trying to compose abstracts
marrrrtabak telurrrr
yogya art

wow. feeling slightly split-personality right now.

Separation, Re-connection

It's the last day of an 8 day visit, and we are relaxing in Ubud before my parents fly to Melbourne. We visited a Hindu temple surrounded by monkeys, clutching the cliffs at the Southern tip of the island, and we had drinks surrounded by people in bikinis and speedos at Tommy Suharto's (the son of Indonesia's former military dictator) new development project carved out of those same cliffs. We were harassed by con-men in a dismal Lombok port, and had a run-in with a sea snake. We visited a town flooded with egrets who are considered to be the reincarnation of victims of the mass killings that took place in 1965, and then we had a family spa day. Everything seemed to work out, and we had some great meals and plenty of rest in some snazzy hotels.

It is a privilege to receive the funding and support to live abroad, and it is always interesting to share this experience with my family. I'm sad to see them leave, since there is always more that I want them to see, but it is also time for me to focus on my research.

Resolutions

No more:
-visiting schools here. I'm done with performing in front of classes and being begged to "be our native [-english speaker]".
-eating an entire, deep-fried martabak telur by myself. eek.
-impulse-buying clothes! ahhhh.
-eating an entire roll of oreos. eek.
-being afraid to put myself first.
-feeling sad when I see curious people staring at me with angry faces.
-speaking English

More:
-photography
-talking to strangers
-speaking Bahasa Indonesia
-Going out when I feel tired and just want to lay in bed.
-eating fruit -- especially jackfruit!!

Jalan Jalan

In a community where it is polite to ask everyone you meet, even if just passing by, "Where are you going?" or "From where are you coming?", it isn't expected that one actually delineate all of their daily activities. And as a Bule (literally "albino", but in common use it refers to foreigners -- Caucasian foreigners or Japanese in particular) with skin that stands in contrast to the masses, I receive an excessive amount of attention. With this attention comes what feels like an oppressive number of inquisitions about my comings and goings. This polite expression of curiosity and concern begins to feel like surveillance -- especially if one still feels as if he must respond comprehensively to each. One of the earliest and most-practical phrases a person can learn in Bahasa Indonesia is the generic jalan-jalan, which literally translates to "pathway-pathway" and carries the same meaning as "hanging out" with a touch of "wandering". And it is a perfectly acceptable answer with minimal demand for further information. When I first arrived in Indonesia in 2004, I was overwhelmed by the questions, but the words "jalan jalan" seem to escape my mouth before the inquisitor even finishes his "Mau ke mana?" (Where do you want to go?) or "Dari mana?" (From where are you coming?).

While I welcome the phrase as a brisk response, in a city full of students, it takes on the character of a casual, aimless lifestyle. As I meet more contacts for my research, and people ask me what I am doing -- and this time they are really asking -- I want more and more to say something that expresses the opposite of jalan-jalan. I want to say, "I'm being productive", but that isn't really something one can say without explaining how one is productive. And rather than experience the mangling of a foreign language as I attempt to explain that I've been, haha, studying the language, reading important texts that aren't available in the part of the world from which I came, and gathering contacts, I feel the shy, insecure urge to mutter, "oh, jalan-jalan aja" ("oh, just hanging out, here and there").

Tonight, at a book launch for an Australian academic who translated and edited her BA thesis on a "radical", local art collective into an Indonesian text, I bumped into a researcher from PUSdEP, my sponsor institution. He had been a member of the collective, and as someone familiar with the artists, curators, critics and academics present, he was happy to walk around introducing me to everyone. While it was inspiring to meet such interesting, intelligent individuals, I felt a pressure to reciprocate those qualities of character and to exude them while explaining my presence. Yet, as both a critical thinker and a prisoner of humility, my initial desire is to say, "I'm just a kid trying to catch up and figure things out here". Gradually, I'm getting better at quelling my desire to belittle my research and reduce it to an extended jalan-jalan, and I can explain that I'm carrying out extensive literary and ethnographic research on the topic of public art as an attempt to understand how "public space" is created and understood in Yogyakarta, and how it reflects local, complicated, multiple "publics". Even when explaining it in English, it can sound confusing or useless. While people from academic backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences tend to grasp the importance of understanding how a "public" is created in the image of a universalistic ideal, which often overshadows a reality plagued with exploitation and marginalization, I've drawn quite a few blank stares, asking "what is the point?".

At this moment, I cannot adequately delineate the point. My hypothesis is that a number of inequalities exist, latent in the various productions of a "public" in Yogyakarta, and I hope that my analysis will lead to a critical awareness with the use of the term "public" and the potential for greater equality in the creation of public spaces. We will see if my jalan-jalan-ing leads to any of this...

The Spice Route to Cancer City

Visiting Ika in Welahan, a small town that functions as Jepara’s Chinatown (hence the Confucius Temple), I forgot how close we would be to the hipster holy grail: Kudus, the birthplace of the Kretek (with a sharp rolled-“R”). In Indonesia, clove cigarettes have an onomatopoetic name, and with that crisp, crackling of the burning clove oil, my white-Anglo skin tingled with colonial desire (okay, so the Irish were on the Colonized-end of things… let’s just ignore that for effect). I needed to follow the clove-smoke-wisps to the origin of the industry here in the Spice Islands.

In reality, the “Spice Islands” refer more directly to the Maluku Islands to the east of Java, which were famous for their density of spices – cloves and nutmeg in particular. But as far as my History and Social Studies education stretched in High School, the whole of Indonesia was the “Spice Islands”, and apparently Indonesia’s history ended with the inventions of Mrs. Dash and Refrigerators. So in the Middle Ages, when Marco Polo and his posse of Crusaders (or Monks… was Gregor Mendel there?) went in search of spices, he would have landed in the Malukus. For modern day Colonist Posses in search of clove cigarettes, they will land in the town of Kudus on the North coast of Java.

Driving through the streets, past the Djarum factory (Djarum Blacks were often the Hipster clove of choice before the US Government banned the import of clove cigarettes back in August or September of this year) and some of the smaller, local brands, the air is filled with a heavy scent of fresh clove, in contrast to the common scent of clove cigarette smoke. Winding past the factories, we opted to visit the Kretek Museum and get a little more history rather than take a factory tour. The simple and donation-based (FREE) museum consisted of a few awesome dioramas depicting the rural, cottage-industry kretek production and the modernization of the industry into factory-based production. Highlights include a Wall-of-Fame for influential individuals in the invention and industrialization of the kretek, as well an extensive display of special packages, including Djarum packages which were created just for Indonesia’s President and Vice-President (since we wouldn’t want them smoking cigarettes out of the same packaging as the lumpen, or even the proletariat for that matter…).

Inspired by the displays, we decided that Ika’s future children should be named Nico and Tiana, which combine to commemorate the genus of that nicotine-breathing plant we know as tobacco. The scary thing is that the names would actually work pretty well here with the local languages. I was satisfied with the museum, and we opted out of searching for the local, filter-less clove cigarettes which are still hand-rolled in corn husk. My lungs are appreciative.

Wall of Fame:

Cigarette boxes:

President's and VP's Boxes:

a few photographs from North Java

We went to the Clove Cigarette Museum in Kudus, where clove cigarettes were invented in the 1880's Century. Kudus is home to the Djarum company, which is a huge producer of clove cigarettes.

We also visited the city's famous mosque, which was built in 1549 -- supposedly on the site of an older Hindu-Buddhist temple.

In case you can't tell, that is a human tooth. Woops.