Bridges

I've been sitting here for a while now, blank day, blank screen. Alastair and the previous blog still on my mind. Some words are harder to follow, with anything - more words, images, games. So what will I write about? Life outside, frantic as always.

I bought too many limes and now they grow old and hard in the fridge. I discovered mango wraps, dragon fruit and some people with too much time on their hands. Two of these are yummy, one is hot pink and one is, alas, unavoidable.

I walked through rice paddies to a bamboo village and there were whispers and rummagings in the green stalks left and right that said 'One wrong step and I'm waiting, love from large lizard / venomous snake / nameless nasty / monster in your head'.

I learned that there is a species called 'third culture kid', and our kids might qualify, but not M. or I. As if we had brainstormed, studied, schemed and then created two aliens. I've always had that feeling anyway.

All these things are bridges, really. The path is a literal bridge, in a sea of green rice. The limes span all the way from the unpalatable to the delightful. The food takes me from hunger to sleep. And the people? From peace to paroxysm, smile to sneer.

Kids? Third culture or not, the classic bridge through time.

And the noise from the building site next door - incessant hammers on metallic sheets? A bridge from the borderline reasonable (which I was, I was!) to the dementedly insane, which I am now, sitting as I do, on the floor, in the furthest corner of the house, which happens to be a bathroom, with headphones on and a towel wrapped around my head, listening to long loops of Yann Tiersen and Portuguese fado, watching the killer-wasp in the corner build its wax palace and procreate, writing strings of nonsense and then, horror of horrors, sending them into the world like hammer blows to the temple. Ke-boom.

Unday'd

I throw days out of the calendar.

I disown them,

Dis-number and dis-month them,

I will not have them change year and come around again.

March Four, March Seven,

April Twenty Seven

June Twenty One, June Twenty Three,

December Eleven.

Now Alastair has gone and

gathered his great verbs, his skylarks and Scotlands
his silver-vowelled Spain.

folded his dawns

to ride over the mist-imprisoned hill - away, beyond away.

That done,

I too dismantle
September Twenty One.

 

*

And if you really want to know

I’ll tell you ‘how’ the days you think I’ve lost 

return to me:

Minute by minute, that is how;

and memory by memory.

An entire childhood to pick from, long summer days with cousins and berries and song; my lovely Maia who smelled of lavender and quince; who told me that thing about God and I believed her even when I didn’t believe Him. Who needs the measly muscle of March Four and March Seven, beside all this and more? 

That Afrikaans rhyme Ingrid sang in the kitchen, Ingrid in her ball-gown ready for a May ball, Ingrid in her good-girl shoes standing in a queue in London to vote for Mr. Mandela. With these moments – and I have so many - I can build endless April 27s.

June 23? I don't see it. I see only Paulo perched on the roof with a pouch full of tools and red plums. Paulo taking a breaking, squinting the sun, eating a plum, plum juice on his chin and I know he is thinking Gaia, when I throw this stone in the grass below, make a tree grow.

December 11.

Does. Not. Exist.

No room for it.What is a day? 

when Dad fills the Everywhere and the Always

and hides the hourglass away.

And now, September 21, away with you too! Shoo!

Leave me with Alastair: aglow

in the Dominican sun, showing me – in Spanish and in rhyme -

How to make bread,

ride bikes, read books, chop limes,
write poetry.

Morning Bright and Broken

Walking to the end of the road this morning, carrying school bag, water bottle, a brown banana and a great, sloshing sea of sadness about that thing we heard last night. And this is what we see.

.
And it’s so vivid and joyful that I feel the need to introduce it to the other joyful and vivid thing I know. They blaze together for a while:

And this is how I find exactly where the sun lives, with sun-wife and baby suns and sun-mobile and dandelion tea:

And as I contemplate this new discovery:

 Something at the edge of my eyelid says Wooo-hooo, how about me?

We explore and are forced to conclude that commerce knows no rest or end and what they say is true, it’s a dogs’ world out there…

… and I wish I could say that we ran home, all the way - but no, we opened dazzling wings and launched ourselves into another day…

Paradust Paradise

The day started well.

The sky said: 'I am here for you. Now sit down and meditate. Remember: you are now in Bali, where people practice yoga, meditate and then meet their soul mates and fall in love. But all in good order. Stop looking for the charger. You don't need the blue shirt. In fact, empty your mind. It's goooood for youuuu'.

So sudden and surprising was this that I did. I sat down and meditated. In my case this took the form of a silent, furious fight with my own thoughts: the charger, the blue shirt, the people I need to write to and also some imaginary people that live busy, sophisticated lives inside my head, mostly adoring me. I did not get up. I sat there contemplating this inner buzz and traffic with some bewilderment. No wonder I'm so exhausted by 10 am.

By 10am: the neighbour had decided to knock down a wall standing inches from our house. Two scrawny characters were perched on my wall with sledgehammers. Our gardener couldn't keep up: the moment he'd spruced up one of those glossy, wide-leaved plants, they were back under thick layers of cement dust. It was like trying to remove snowflakes from a football field in a blizzard.

Not finished: besides his building initiative the neighbour appeared to have organised a cremation. I became aware of it when black ash started to fall gently on my computer, shoulders and eye lashes, mixed as I was saying with all that cement powder and in soothing rhythm with the sledge hammers. I don't think I could have missed it: in minutes I was blinded, blackened, smoked and choked.

I stumbled to the gate and ran. To the car, grab the keys, to the car. Coughing like a 60-Marlboros-a-day. I put the windscreen wipers on, and they laboured up and down, pushing about hillocks of ash and dust. As I drove away I thought of Pompeii.

Godzilla's Babies

Can you see it? A dark smudge in the top corner? Guess what.

It's a mini hive. It belongs to a mutant wasp this big. It hangs over the bathtub.

Who would like a bath? Not me. So it's free.

P.S. ... and please don't tell Kira, because if you do she will pack and move out.

P.P.S. ... and if it eats me next time I brush my teeth then you'll be free of any blogs-to-be.  

The Genie is a Lizard

What lives inside a lamp, unseen? And sings, still unseen, at random moments, of unknown longing? Or hunger or lust (which, let us face it, is just another hunger)?

I have a confession to make: I am inordinately fond of a lizard-in-a-lampshade. It is, I swear, the funniest thing on earth. It clings to a light bulb and sings to me at night. What more could anyone want?

We sit in the living room - and here you need to stop for a minute and wipe out any sensible 'living room' images you may have collected in your lives. Replace them with a large terrace, a semi-outdoor area with sofas, mirrors, dining table and TV. Also with rice field, water and moon-silver. Feel the breeze. Hear the mosquitoes circling your earlobe.

The Kiwi and I are alone tonight - I come back from the airport dizzy and drained by the mad, mad roads.

Sometimes I feel like walking in the gate and stepping straight into the pool instead of following the path.

(A young guy fell off his motorbike today, right in front of us - and, coming from the other direction, a bus. Miraculously, all traffic stopped in time and long enough for him to pick himself up. I stared at his white cotton trousers, one leg now completely, uniformly black, as if a nursery kid had coloured it in.  Otherwise he seemed fine, only a grazed arm and mild shock. He sat down by the side of the road, swallowed by a wave of solicitous passers by. M., who doesn't believe such accidents happen, had just run across the road to the pharmacy and missed it.)


Where was I? Oh yes: alone, tonight - and dizzy and blue, when I hear a clicking from the corner - it's a sound test, my genie is getting ready, and I snap up from my slump, with a smile. And when he starts his two-note serenade-in-a-lampshade, I laugh out loud.

PS, or Post Scotland

We still write 'UK' in the postal address. Scotland returns to the fold. Business as usual? Every says 'No, it will be different from now on'. How? (and who am I to complain about change? I find it hard to change my toothbrush.)

The change I sense is in the almost-half who voted Yes. What does 'the UK' do with these people today?

Hard to break, attachments: we are attached to routines, other people, small economic advantages, status quo, tranquillity, toothbrushes. We are even attached to kidnappers and jailers, remember? They call it Stockholm syndrome.

Scotland syndrome. After the long, inspiring and arduous road to the referendum, Scotland still said No, sorry but No. We like the hope but we hear the fear. Always louder, the fear.

It's over for now, perhaps for our generation, over and out. We shall live quietly and make the best of it. We shall return to our personal goals and make small changes in our lives - we may exercise more, read more non-fiction, start to floss, save money. We may occasionally sign petitions, or even install a solar system on the roof. Stop using plastic bags and help our children with maths. We may do the ice-bucket challenge of, if we feel extra daring, a parachute jump for charity.

A Scottish friend said she was 'relieved and grieved'. That sums it up beautifully. 

Scotland

'Don't you dare use ME in the campaign' he says.

What does he expect? I write stuff. I'm married to the story-of-the-day. And he's telling me to shut up?

I am using my Scot in the campaign for Scotland.

The debate over Scotland has gone on for long enough - everything that could be said, was said. The arguments grew and matured, unwound and rewound. We are getting latest updates, syntheses, analyses, mind-maps, deep last-minute remarks. The battlefield is ready. Less than 24 hours until Scotland decides.

And all I have is a blog, an undecided Scot and a scene from 24 years ago.

It was June 1990 and I knew shamefully little about Scotland. I was working at the British Library in Bucharest, stacking books on shelves. The Scot walked in, had a brief chat with my boss and I got the job of translating for him. For the rest of the day, trailing from one meeting to another, I made the same, unforgivable mistake: I introduced him as 'English'. People called him 'the Englishman' and asked about 'England' to make him feel good.

'How would I know? I'm a Scot', he would reply with a smile that could cleave a buffalo in two. His blood boiled. His eyes, if even possible, became more blue. 'English', people would call him in polite conversation, and 'Scottish' he hissed, 'Scottish' he said, 'Scottish' he  shouted. I had no idea what his name was, but grew amply aware THAT. HE. WAS. SCOTTISH. Somehow it mattered more.

'Do you realise Scotland is a different country?' he pinned me to a tree and whispered in my face. And me, thinking he was going to kiss me.

I got the message, went back to school, studied Scottish identity, wrote my thesis on it, then married the Scot and made Scotland home. I've always taken homework seriously.

...which is why I feel today like pinning him to the nearest tree to whisper back, in his own words:

'Do you realise Scotland is a different country?' 

The Ant That Lived

Days start with gentle gongs and orange skies, with songs like smoke, incorporeal and omnipresent. Today for the first time they penetrate my dreams and I unfold from sleep smiling and unsure why.

And, now awake, what do I do? I knock an ant off the table. Except I don't: ant is still there like a an ink splodge but live: standing on its back legs, all gnarled and scrabbling at the air. In agony?

I feel terrible and what do I do? I knock it again. Harsh but humane. Except, guess what? Ant shrugs off the killing blow, rights itself and trots off unperturbed. 

In the meantime, the larger universe unfolds its volcanoes.

Ocean-Bound China

While snorkeling I bump into my blue-green fish friend from the Maldives; he must have swam all the way here. I know the markings well. And just as we're getting nicely reacquainted, my pal dashes under some coral, and all I can see is a turquoise fin fluttering in distress. I turn around and detect a shoal of black predators thrashing on the surface.

Hey wait: it's not sharks, but a large group of Chinese tourists clad in identical life-vests, flapping and doing a great job of trying to drown each other in panic. About fifty are clamped to our boat like black, sinister barnacles, unable to swim, suspicious of their life vests, curious yet terrified, stuck.  One has attached herself to the engine, gripping the rusty casing, propellers, wires, black oil, all - and spewing a crescendo of gasps, sea water and incomprehensible pleas.


No one does anything about it. And when one of our party drags her back to her countrymen by her vest - a process that sounds a lot like an exorcism - they all, ALL! remain stony, as if saying 'What? We've got nothing to do with this floating house-of-horrors.

We leave them to it. And, at the next diving spot, we find an underwater landscape that consists of a chrome bar and a forest of black cables leading to the surface, swinging languidly in the current. Attached to this equipment, a long line of bodies. The heads are stuck into large, spherical white bubbles.

There they stand, clutching the bar, weighted down by lead belts. Varicose veins, wide haunches, black Speedos. Pale torsos, cosmonaut helmets. Undernaut, rather. Nautilus-Tops. Poseidon Caps. We float above and watch them, fascinated, horrified, struck dumb. They squirt a liquid and their heads are instantly surrounded by clouds of frantic fish. Occasionally one is pulled up and another is sunk. They wait in line on their boat, in their black rubber panties, squinting in the sun. Another group of Chinese tourists.

My pal the turquoise fish from the Maldives is nowhere to be seen. Clever nut. Wish I could vanish too.

Laptop Hill

My computer has been colonised by millions of microscopic ants. As I type they appear from under the keys and climb up my fingers.

They scurry across the screen and make an 'n' into an 'm'. They make this word I'm typing, 'make' - yes, take 'make' - into 'made' into 'mate' into 'date' into 'late' into 'fate'. They write their own things on my screen, possibly the great ant novel - it marches into view, complex, fully formed and swiftly changing, then vanishes all at once under the gale of my breath. 

Wait. Where have they gone? And now, that they've gone, what can I write that's half as good?

P.S. I tell someone about the ants and he says: 'ants? wait for the mold in your kindle'.

Happy Hour

Do you get a sense of the exact moment when things veer into the bizarre? No? Take September 9, sunset at Old Man's beach in Bali.

Surfers, stray dogs, boiled corn with sweet chilli sauce, the usual. I am sitting on a black and gritty rock, learning my ten-words-a-day. Some Australian mothers are playing with their sandy toddlers, throwing balls, flip-flops and encouraging whoops. You get the idea.

A whoosh beyond my left shoulder. I even see the bride - in a merengue dress (95% polyester, 5% salt), shuffling in a man's black shoes towards the water - and go back to the word 'first' which is giving me some trouble at the moment.

Eh-what? Bride? Double-take -she's still there, now joined by an angular groom in black, and a photographer holding his camera on a stick above his head, filming everything they do. And they do this: the man kneels in the surf, and buries his head in the merengue; then he presumably runs out of breath and lifts his face, looking purple, looking stunned. He recites some words to his beloved. She appears impassive but at least she's taken off the black shoes. He gets up and they embrace; a functional, solid embrace you might have filed in your heads as an after-dinner display reserved to stocky elderly relatives.

Then it gets wildly romantic. The groom kisses the bride. On the lips and the Aussie mothers scream in support and teach the toddlers to clap. Strengthened by this display, he looks at the sky - now going suitably pink as the sun leaks into the horizon - and shouts 'I love you'. Shouts 'I love you' in a few languages. Adds, in English, 'very much'. I love you very much.

A few horses canter by, ridden by slim people with helmets. Some children watch the wedding from a shallow pool in the sea. With their bodies submerged, they look like three smiling heads lined up on a murky mirror. The world has turned purple. It's perfect.

And why not start your married life like this? Alone and deliriously happy, at sunset, on a beach in Bali? As you know, they'll have enough talks about electricity bills and lost socks, who's taking Jamie to nursery today and don't drop your good trousers on the floor...

And then they do something that hurls the spectators (me) from their Jane Austin reverie back to the tat and twitter of the age. They take a million pictures of themselves, by the sea, in their wedding nylons, in Bali. They take selfies, they take portraits, arty, posed, smiling, serious, bespectacled, sitting, kneeling, up, down, together, apart and again.

The sun dips beyond the horizon. I can't see the Bahasa word for 'first' any longer. 'Pertama', perhaps? Moona and Kiwi come running back from the sea.

'What have we missed?'

At the Splinter Scene

Kira runs into a bamboo post: WHAM. Small scratch on the forearm. Arrives home, sporting said scratch. Says:

'I ran into a bamboo post.' Adds, as an afterthought:

'There may be a bamboo splinter in my arm'. Adds, firmly:

'I don't want to touch it.'

We do a little dance around her, trying to have a look at the arm. We have a casual dialogue about the importance of getting the splinter out or at least finding out more about it. We make a breezy mention of cool clinics and nice nurses. We resort, by necessity, to doom scenarios and employ serious words like 'infection', 'surgery' and 'blood'.

'I don't want to know', Bamboo Babe declares.

Eventually, some tweezers are produced and sterilised. The surgeon - the only possible... - is Kira herself. She pokes a little and finds the end of the splinter. Moona is holding the torch, I act like my book is more interesting. A dense silence descends.

Kira pulls at the splinter. Pulls some more. More comes out. And then more. Someone's being very brave, and it's not me.

And what's more: see the splinter in the picture? It's not the only one. 

The Lines Around Us

Of course, we meet new people every day, all the time, in leaps and gulps.

(I'm a bit like the hermit dragged to Sunday market. A bit like a lump of lead thrown into the lake. A bit like - well, you get the idea. Except, I discover that it's fun after all and even when it's not, it's still all right.)

Encounters: a woman talks to me standing so close that we practically share one breath. Sentence after sentence I am being choked, resuscitated, choked.... 'Mmh... mmh..' I punctuate her story with small and fading yelps.  I shuffle backwards very slowly, trying to make it look as if a moth might have unbalanced me with the whoosh of a wing. She steps forward with an obliging smile and we're back.

The next woman I talk to (at a comfortable distance) raises one arm between us and makes it as long as her bones and ligaments could possibly stretch. I note that she has grown her nails too, as far as they'll grow. 'Don't come closer, it makes me uncomfortable' - she actually says this. I should introduce her to my other friend.

In another conversation I drop a word that might -might!- be considered offensive if you lived deep in the Bible Belt, or during an Inquisition witch hunt. My interlocutor stiffens as if hit by an icy shower. 'That word, that word (she cannot say the word but mimes something like a gnarled and poisonous garden gnome) please don't ever say it again.'

And then another woman teases me for a little faux pas; I rush to give her a hug - before I even touch her shoulder with a fingertip she shrinks and practically runs away across the lawn as if I were from the DghjnxJ^N2 Galaxy whose aliens, everyone knows, are poisonous and boiling to the touch. I am left to do an awkward half-lunge in the grass, trying to recover some dignity by hugging an imaginary friend and looking delighted with my own charade.

It's all right though. Someone comes over at once, to say goodbye - consisting of a successful rugby tackle, followed by bear hug and wet kisses on both cheeks.


And so we keep going, in this small pond, rubbing against people, finding the lines that make up the others - their edges and boundaries. What makes them tick, what makes them gag. Always a surprise.

And in the process we define ourselves as well. There, reflected in other people's eyes, we catch a glimpse of who we are, what we do. Hug people. Say silly things. And see who stays for more.

Market Moment

Farmers' Market down a small lane further along the coast (don't ask where, ask what). Natural produce, kombucha tea, coconuts, white puppies up for adoption, amazing food and music, beautiful people. The market is dotted around a building that rests on a column of flat stones. They emerge from a stone basin filled with water, filled with green leaves.

People greet each other with small bows and hands united as if in prayer. Light clothes and bleached hair flutter in the breeze. I try the same gesture and manage to look like a rhino experiencing mild alarm in the savannah. One needs conviction (note: work on it). A woman falls into a sudden crouch with her arms around her head - a yogic technique? a human cocoon? hyperventilation? (I won't be trying that - beside looking ridiculous, my knees might pop).

I realise what it is - people look so happy. This place has got an inordinate share of strong, toned, tanned bodies - but that's not all. There's a general smile and an overall friendliness that give you two choices: a) join or b) delve into your own, isolating depression.

I do the happy, floaty impression for a while, sip the coconut, buy the coriander. Then my lord notices that Kiwi has scoffed the whole jar of kombucha all by herself, what? No sharing? A cold cloud descends. Such a small thing and pop, where is the day? where is the man? and where am I? Hmm. I feel like falling into a low crouch, arms tight around the pounding head.

Kiwi is the wisest. She scuttles off to a hanging pod with her book.

Kites

Besides clouds, they have kites.

Kites float across the Bali sky like tethered dragons. Their tails swing in langurous circles, their eyes look bemused but acquiescent - whatever this is, they'll go with it, for now, for a while.

And because I've never seen anything like this, I walk looking upwards, mesmerised. I stub my toes and squash small crawlies. I walk into palm trees and once into the pool. I am a wreck.

Ke Bali

To Bali then. 

(day 3 in Bali and the Moon-man promptly equipped me with a few pages of Bahasa words. Close to the top was Ke,translated as 'to' - could Ke Bali then mean To Bali? Could this be the name of this blog? And why write a new blog at all?)

 

We have veered our entire life, great ship that we are, to Bali.

(Just picture: creaaaak and the galley turns and the slaves row and row… a bumpy sea and a storm or two, sweat and agony then a glittering shore - white, in all dreams, murky-multicolour in reality. We throw anchor...)

Rewind to January 2014, if you please; try telling me that we would soon be off to live in Bali. Watch. I roll my eyes. I gasp - something more like a high incredulous bray. I give you a playful cuff on a bicep, how silly can you get, you fool,  because really, Bali, really…. and words, for once, fail me.

Fast forward to April: a friend tells us about a school in Bali. We owe Kira a good school, after dragging her through silly narrow schools just because they happened to be where we happened to be. We are hooked and follow the line all the way to Green School in Bali. 

(I met our friend again today, and informed her that she changed our lives. Yeah, thanks Mandy. We laughed. She still has no idea.I still have no idea.)

June. We pack our bags, we leave Pakistan. Summer in Europe. We're moving to Bali. Ke Bali. 

September, just arrived in Bali: I still float around with an idiotic jetlagged grin, with surges of joy, with stabs of angst. I imagine a day when everything falls into slots of normality – which is why I need to write about today. Today when everything is up in the air, tumbling and shouting and fizzing and sliding, impossible to touch or tame or name or know. 

I don’t recognize anything – not the grass, not the sand, not the words, not the alien lizard that honks, hidden inside a lamp shade, at the night. Today – day 3 in Bali – is unique, impossible to repeat or replay, crawling with fears, twinkling with gifts and possibilities.

I don't want us to forget this day - and the next mad day and the more hectic next... When Bali becomes 'home' and 'business as usual', we might realise that we've paid for the flat line of normalcy with full oblivion of all this wonder.

And hence this journal: to capture and preserve our road to Bali. KeBali.