smoke and mirrors

It's Friday night in Manado, and sounds of spirited worship are drifting in through the open window.  Hallelujahs in harmony remind me of the world I've returned to, a world where social life revolves around the church.  It reminds me that I am lucky to have research interests that are so richly present in everyday life here and across Indonesia.  I wasn't fifteen minutes after I landed in Java that I was having an interesting conversation with my cabdriver as we sped away from Soekarno-Hatta airport towards the business sector.  His curiosity piqued by the explanation of my research topic as "issues of religious harmony" (hal kerukunan beragama), he began to explain that his family is divided between Muslims and Christians, and although he himself follows Islam, how inspiring he finds the capacity of Christians to "mengasihi" or to love. What he interpreted as the symbolic characteristic of Christians was love - the capacity to give it, to interpret God's blessing's through it, and to worship God by sharing love with others. This is a common theme in Indonesian Christian's description of themselves.  The results of a small linguistic domain analysis I conducted in New Hampshire Indonesian congregations returned "orang yang mengasihi" a person who loves, as the most common response to a query about what phrase best describes a Christian.  

Religion was not far from political issues in Jakarta last week either.  Following fatwas issued by the Malay Ulema, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) have issued fatwas against smoking, yoga and also one forbidding all Muslims from abstaining to vote in the upcoming federal elections (and furthermore identifying voting for a non-Muslim candidate as haram).  The fatwa against smoking seems to border on the ridiculous, as anyone who has ever been in  public in Indonesia could attest to.  An employee of the AMINEF office was incensed, and pointed out that there was nothing in the Qu'ran that explicitly identifies smoking as haram.  It seems that MUI is out of touch in many ways with the populace's attitude on the application of religious law in daily life, as Al Makin wrote in today's Jakarta Post: 

 

In this reformation era, where Indonesian Muslims have increasing access to information and are ever more aware of democracy, the MUI has lost its role.  Yet the MUI still speak in the austere language of halal (allowed) and haram (prohibited) which is no longer sufficient to properly address the complex problems confronting Indonesian Muslims in the reformation era.  

No wonder that some NU and Muhammadiyah leaders - Din Syamsuddin, Hasyim Muzadi, Masdar F. Mas'udi and Abdurrahman Wahid - quashed the most recent edicts on smoking, and vote abstention. Additionally, some tobacco farmers and traders fumed over the edict on smoking.  

Once again, how could the outdated halal and haram categories be employed to explain people's political manners and choices in the next general election, yoga for health or exercise, and the chemical content of tobacco?

In fact, pronouncing the edict on vote abstention, the MUI took al- Muwardi's interpretation in his Al-Ahkam Al-Sultania (The Ordinances of Government) at face value.  Can language from the 10th century address the political problems facing 21st century people? 

Jakarta Post 

Most Indonesians I know seem to find the idea of any religious authority telling them how, when or in what manner to vote repugnant.  This is not to say that religious issues are not an important concern in choosing to support political parties, or the success of certain platforms. There is a fine line, for many Indonesians, between religion in politics and religion dictating politics.  

The ubiquitous presence of cigarette smoke in most public areas was conspicuously absent in the government offices I spent most of my time in during my few days of transit in Jakarta.  This is where an entirely different kind of smoke reigns - the smoke and mirrors of government bureaucracy.  Although I should have been prepared for the amount the paperwork and money that would generated by my attempts to secure research permits and a temporary residence card, I was still surprised by the relative inefficiency of the process.  In a country where a good portion of the population is online and armed with an array of trendy new communications technology, government offices still operate under the rule

 of the typewriter and the handwritten signature.  Most of my week was spent being shuttled from one office to another, to deliver one letter and get another signed, which would have to be returned to the office we were just at previously to get the document in the first place.  I did have a few minutes to do a little shopping and to indulge in the chaos of Jakarta city streets on Tuesday afternoon: 

and a chance to catch a sunset from the rooftop:

 

Arriving in Manado Wednesday afternoon offered no respite from the bureaucratic race.  With only two calendar days left to obtain the final permits of many needed to complete the official seal of approval on my visit, I was at the immigration office in Manado early Thursday, only to find that my application for the KITAS (temporary stay permit) was, of course, far from complete.  The ensuing eight hours of traipsing across town to the university back to immigration and back again certainly facilitated the return of a) my conversational skills and b) my mental map of the local angkot (public bus) routes.  Thankfully the head of the jurusan antropologi at FISIP (faculty of social and political knowledge) at UNSRAT was kind enough to spend the afternoon painstakingly trying to help me figure out what, exactly, the immigration office wanted in terms of letters and documents.  All the while we watched a terrific rainstorm batter the university grounds outside the door. 

Luckily I managed to get most of everything I needed, and should hopefully be picking up my permit on Monday once I submit the requisite number of mini-photos in various sizes with the special red background and shell out another hundred bucks.  I celebrated with a trip to Gramedia, the most well-known bookstore chain in Indonesia, gorging myself on many lovely language materials - including a long coveted Indonesian thesaurus that has been impossible to get a hold of in the states.  Shared a nice cup of coffee with a Fulbrighter here on a teaching fellowship, and then wandered down to the shore to ogle the larger-than-normal waves hitting the seawall along the Boulevard.  A few remaja (teenagers) high on youthful bravado decided to try their hands at the Manado version of surfing: 

and I drew the attention of some little guys trying to prove their machismo from a safer vantage on shore: 

While Manado Tua stood silent against the storm watching over us all.  

Life ain't nothing but a good groove.....

As my "housecleaning" progresses, I've decided to digitize the remnants of my CD collection that I've been hauling across thousands of miles over the last five or six years.  And by remnants, I'm referring to the nearly eight-pound CD book that contains everything from music I bought in Jr. high to the almost monthly mix-cds that Mr. Chase has been providing with me since I was what...sixteen?  Thank God there is someone in the world that makes sure I don't fall into oblivion in regards to the American music scene.  

The thought of actually getting rid of these CDs does give my heart a tremor.  I have been buying my music digitally for the last few years, but most of the albums I've kept in their physical incarnation have some emotional resonance for me.  I'm sure I won't have to explain this to Mr. Chase, who has lovingly curated his collection through moves and near disasters without as much as creasing the jackets of his vinyl.  I even hear tell that corporate octopus of doom Best Buy, that has long sold music as "loss" merchandise to tempt customers to purchase big-ticket electronics, is going to start selling vinyl again.  Maybe the tides are turning on the digital music revolution.  

Unfortunately for me the rising cost of, well, everything, is capitulating a major purge.  Combined with the sorry state of some of these old CDs (I'm nowhere near as fastidious in my music-keeping as Mr. Chase) it's time to give them over to the computer.  Not really sure what I'll do with the leftover discs...I think a bonfire or some other appropriate death.  I can't think of them in other hands.  I find it a little disturbing.  

So here's my top list of things I haven't listened to in ages that really f*&king rock.  Welcome home, old friends.  

The Adicts: Sound of Music - 

a brit-punk classic.  I once belonged to a short-lived girl gang self-dubbed "the Port-city steamrollers" lifted from the track "My baby got run over by a steamroller."  No joke. 

favorite tracks:  Joker in the Pack, 4321, Jonny Was a Soldier 

Hole: Live Through This - 

I don't care what anyone thinks of Courtney Love.  This album had a galvanizing effect on many women I knew, much in thanks to Courtney Love's unapologetic attitude.  I saw them when they were touring on this album after Melissa Auf De Maur replaced Pfaff as bassist.  Pretty fantastic show, since Courtney dispatched heckling jocks at UNH with her usual venom, and I punched some guy who tried to feel me up in the pit.  I miss those rrriot girl days.  

favorite tracks:  Violet, Gutless 

Face to Face: How to Ruin Everything

I'm not sure I can choose a favorite Face to Face album.  They were never derivative or self-indulgent and always had a clean, tight style that seperated them from the sloppy, irritating and overblown hardcore punk that everyone claimed was so much more authentic than FTF.  I Never bought it.  If you can't write a clean anthem that gets everyone singing, forget calling yourself a real punk.  I still thoroughly enjoy their albums whenever I listen to them.  The time I saw them play at the Middle East years ago makes my top five list of the greatest live shows.

favorite tracks:  How to Ruin Everything, Bill of Goods, The New Way 

Sleater-Kinney: Dig Me Out, Call the Doctor 

"Dig me Out" still leaves me breathless.  That driving, dirty base, Corrin Tucker's plaintive almost off-key vocals and those harmonics that made the trio sound so much bigger than they actually are.  These women had a revolutionary sound that I have yet to hear in any female quasi-punk band approach.  They seem to have a knack to bring their music to the edge, bordering on hysterics without losing complexity of sound.  Although their music certainly achieved some more maturity and finesse on subsequent albums like The Hot Rock, it's hard to match the energy of these earlier works.   I ran into Corrin Tucker at one of their shows when they were touring behind these albums, and almost passed out.  She was just too cool for words.  

favorite tracks:  good things, i'm not waiting, heart factory, it's enough

The Queers:  Beat Off 

Joe Queer (nee King) at his whiny, acerbic peak.  A little cleaner and tighter than Love Songs For the Retarded without sacrificing the sophomoric fun that was the Queers.  This album had also had a few nods to the Beach Boys inspired pop-punk ballads that would come to dominate some of their later albums.    I heard recently that Joe Queer (who is from my hometown) has gotten sober after thirty some-odd years of seducing young girls and living the life of a quasi-rock star.  Seems kind of like the world coming to an end if you ask me.  Can't count the number of times I saw these guys play at the Elvis Room, but somehow those are the formative experiences of my youth...

favorite tracks:  drop the attitude fucker, steak bomb, voodoo doll

The Afghan Whigs:  Gentlemen

The vitriol of broken love and devastation pouring through Greg Dulli's wrecked, growling, plaintive vocals, accompanied with a vicious swathe of heavy guitar.  AW's sinuous bass provides a new orleans creole swagger that is both sexy and somehow disturbing, both tender and tearing.  Piano and violin and weaving into an off key- wall of distortion, with Dulli's voice inflicting damage in a whisper or a scream.  It's the sound of the sweet torture of love gone bad, or better said "please allow me to present you with a clue.  If I inflict the pain, than baby, only I can comfort you."  

favorite tracks: my curse, be sweet, i keep coming back 

Jets to Brazil:  Orange Rhyming Dictionary

I discovered JTB just when I began to get disillusioned with the lack of creativity and scene progression within East Coast punk.  I guess I was looking for a little more musical sophistication without losing the immediacy and raw emotional power of punk.  Or maybe I was just getting old.  Either way, JTB filled the gap with edgy almost emo that was neither sappy or derivative.  Jake Schwarzenbach smoothed the broken, choppy edge of his previous band Jawbreaker's sound and took the musical complexity up a notch without sacrificing brilliant political and emotional songwriting.  Equally talented at turning an anthem or devastatingly good ballad, I still go back to this band for inspiration.  Still bummed that they called it quits after "Perfecting Loneliness." 

favorite tracks: chinatown, starry configurations, morning new disease 

Letters to myself

I've been doing some "housecleaning" lately, sifting through things in storage and trying to decide where my meager possessions should land when I leave for my dissertation research in SULUT (Sulawesi Utara).  Rediscovering old notebooks and crumpled sheets of paper with cryptic sections of writing has been like receiving letters from my myself at various points in the past.  It's shocking how prescient some of these are, how aware of the inklings of change that would that would soak my life with new color.  And yet strange to see how much, and how little, that old self is still with me.  

February 19/20 2002 

To think - after all the wringings of hope and nervousness and expectation...we have flown across the dateline.  We slipped so subtly into the chasm of a lost day that I don't know whether to be amazed or exasperated.  So far from the familiar borne over ice-caps and oceans secluded in the odd and unnatural "non-time" of flying machines.  Would I feel the separation more keenly if I had travelled by boat, slowly mowing over the ocean, only putting distance between myself and home at the speed of waves?  Up here, we are above time and reason, holding our lost (or gained?) hours like the palladin and his pale watch.

The largest dreams of my quiet self reside in this cabin.  I am overwhelmed by how simple it was...21 years of wishful thinking realized by something as mundane as boarding an airplane.  Shouldn't there have been more ritual?  An escort down the stale hall of the boarding tube?  Just one person to honor the momentousness of this long awaited flight?  I shall have to celebrate it myself.  The tears that climbed to the reaches of my eyes were a direst response to the culmination - and fulfillment - of that strange hand that has pulled little fibers of my soul all along, stringing in my house of longing a web even the grandest arachnid would take pride in.  Those wheels left the runway - and something expanded through my chest that had resided in constriction for so long.  Perhaps it was not the heady rush of freedom - for one can never be free of the cumbersome self.  But instead a relief so sublime I have yet to understand what it could mean.  

                                              ****************************

                                             I've been waiting a lifetime - for this 

                                            moment to come - I'm destined for 

                                                          anything at all 

September 8 2004? 

The days now be measured by the undulating waves of prickly caterpillar crests, valiantly displaying their autumn bravado as they cross the cooling streets.  I am always entranced by the approaching chill of this season; always thrilled by the thought of spindly-armed branches, dried and clacking against one another in skeleton repose.  Perhaps something in the dark, cold edges of fall weather appeals to me - I have never thought much of beauty that was not offset by tragedy or enhancing ugliness.  Autumn is a nostalgic, bitter tasting season; an ending of some thing sharply diving into the beginning of others.  

I find my self pondering bones and danker things, undersides of wet leaves and pockets of summer rot.  Eating slows and appetite is dimmed, as of the smooth angles of my skeleton insidiously yearns to show itself, to call to others of its kind who will soon sway from lampposts and decorate squares of window.  I never let the summer blaze of early September fool me - between the azure atoms of fall sky lies the chill of autumn descending.  

Laying my ear to warm pavement I hear the creaking earth for the peaceful interlude that death heralds.  After weeks of riotous conception and painful growth the ground sighs content at the thought of the absence of life soon to come.  I too wish for  covering of leaf-dead blankets to shelter me from the light and usher my flesh to darker places. 

Sometime late 2004 

There is now the sense that I am immersed in waters I cannot control - much like that dream the other night where I sat on the shore and the tide crept over me, to the dismay of those who watched from a distance.  And frightened as I was of the distortions of water, the possibility of drowning, I wanted to feel the salt of the sea against my skin; wanted the water weight even as I trembled, panicked, at the possible consequences.  An embrace that crushed yet leaves me strangely buoyant, I cannot decide if I should be thrashing to break the surface or adopting the elasticity of a corpse; gasp great lungfuls of water and die triumphant in my utter surrender.  Perhaps this is only the logic of those destined to drown, and yet in the pliability one becomes like water, accepting no boundaries by seeming ultimately controllable.  It is the great skill of water to seem benign, unchallenging.  To be forgotten.  But water never waits, as they say, rubbing against the skin of those things it cannot conquer until the essence of those objects is erased by friction.  To be malleable is to consume the essence of your vexations.  But one must have the patience of dark, still waters to endure the passing of centuries under the weight of one's approbation. 

Sometime in 2006 

GEOMETRY 

Loss lives in the gaps 

spaces stretched exponentially

to reflect the distance 

between two points.

What was ours once

What is ours now

these angles breathe, flutter, grow.

Living permutations measured

in occurrence of nothings:

the lack of touch,

silence,

an absence of what once

equaled love. 

haole-ness

interesting article by a British anthropologist who did dissertation research in Hawai'i about the "haole" discourse, which I found cruising Alex Golub's blog 

learning to live like water

It seems that change is something I can't avoid these days, and the universe is conspiring to remind me of this on a regular basis.  The death of a beloved teacher and mentor whose transition from this life to the next came far too soon took me by surprise.  I was also caught off guard by the very visceral anger accompanying the sadness I felt at her passing.  

This anger bore a memory of Ms. Ryder with it, one that I hadn't revisited in many years.

  When another teacher I idolized committed suicide right after I graduated from high school, I went to visit Marcia.  I was devastated by Bob Whitten's decision to take his own life, mostly because having battled mental anguish through my teen years it was terrifying to think that someone I so admired, an adult that seemed to have more control over the world than I, would succumb dark forces of depression in that most final and unarguable act.  

But Ms. Ryder was angry.  I can clearly see her standing in the middle of the art room in her wrinkled denim shirt, pounding her fist on the scarred wooden table.  She was angry at him for not trying harder, for taking himself away from those who cared for him.  After a moment, she paused.  Recalibrated.  Her shoulders fell in a sigh.  "Maybe it's for the best" she said.  She went on to describe his various struggles with mental illness, how he had tried so valiantly to counteract horrors in living with deep depression, to little end.  Ms. Ryder's face stretched into her trademark infectious smile.  "You know," she said "maybe this anger is just for myself.  It may be that he is much happier where he is.  He tried so hard to do what we wanted him to do, to fight.  but in the end I think he didn't want to fight anymore, that he needed another option.  Maybe we should be happy for that." 

Wise and gracious as always, it seems Marcia knew something important: that our anger at death masks a fear, a fear of things not being as they always were, a fear of change.  It's natural to be angry, because anger galvanizes that fear, tides you over the recognition of the great irony of life - that despite all we do to concoct a sense of permanence for ourselves, the truth is that we have no power to control change, that change is really the only truth we can ever be certain of.  

Since I've started practicing Hapkido, the wisdom of accepting change has been brought home forcefully to me (and often in a concrete, physical sense.  Nothing quite communicates the folly of trying to brace yourself against a force moving directly towards you than getting knocked off-center).  The most powerful force in Hapkido is fluidity, and like many Eastern forms of self-defense the metaphor of water is used to describe how movement and flexibility, response to change, overcomes, or better said, avoids and redirects destructive force.  As the creator of Aikido Morihei Ueshiba says in the Art of Peace: 

If your opponent strikes with fire, counter 

with water, becoming completely fluid and 

free-flowing.  Water, by its nature, never collides 

or breaks against anything.  On the contrary, it 

swallows up any attack harmlessly.

How I apply these theories to my life in an abstract sense is harder to grasp.  I want to learn from Marcia Ryder's example, try to overcome the fear and anger that stagnates me every time I'm faced with change.  I want to train my mind and my heart to move like water, to accept the forces coming at me - whether it be an opponent, or death - with grace and acceptance, and even love for the painful lessons that life brings.  Being someone who tends to tenaciously grip not only the past but those things I love in the present to protect myself from loss, I think perhaps this is a principle I will struggle to master through many years, in many incarnations.  Maybe one of my favorite slack key tunes says it better.  It's an older tune by Jerry Santos that tracks the longing for the past through the fear of change and into something hopeful for the future: 

I remember days when we were younger

we used to catch o'opu in the mountain stream

round the Ko'olau hills we'd ride on horseback

So long ago it seems it was a dream

Last night I dreamt I was returning, and my heart called out to you

but I fear you won't be like I left you 

Me ke aloha Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u

I remember days when we were wiser

when our world was small enough for dreams 

and you have lingered there my sister

and I no longer can it seems

last night I dreamt I was returning, and my heart called out to you

but I fear I am not as I left you

Me ke aloha Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u

Change is a strange thing it cannot be denied 

It can help you find yourself or make you lose your pride

move with it slowly, as on the road we go

Please do not hold on to me, we all must go alone 

I remember days when we were smiling

when we laughed and sang the whole night long

and I will greet you as I find you, with the sharing of a brand new song

Last night I dreamt I was returning, and my heart called out to you

To please accept me as you'll find me

Me ke aloha Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u 

- Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u by Jerry Santos (Olomana)

publishing day

After lots of blood, sweat, tears, agony and days spent hunched over a desk...the journal I edit for out of the University of Hawai'i Manoa's Southeast Asian Studies Center is finally in print and up on our online site. We did some big format and technical overhauls this year (props to Anthony and Bryce for spending hours slaving over the technical details) and I'm so jazzed about the final result. Hopefully our companion issue next month will be just as impressive.

So viva la "Explorations" 2007
http://www.hawaii.edu/cseas/pubs/explorations.html

The sweetest measures of success

Graduate school is a game of prestige, and no matter how much we try and convince ourselves otherwise, the shadow of "big names" are always hanging over us. I don't want to imply that intellectual and scholarly merit isn't built through blood, sweat, tears and the dedication to hone your work to (near) perfection. But the truth is that along with all the hours spent in your office hunched over a pile of books, or the years you spend learning languages and educating yourself about a community or culture through precipitously engaging in fieldwork, having the endorsement of a prestigious school, advisor or program can sometimes provide that make-or- break edge in the competitive halls of academia.

Most of the students in my cohort are savvy enough regarding this point that the statement "oh, so-and-so did his grad work at Chicago" (the most prestigious graduate department for anthropological study in the United States) evokes a sigh of awe mixed with irritation. There is just something extremely admirable in the ability to gain entrance and actually survive such a reportedly rigorous program. Yet there is also the annoyingly obvious fact that no matter how brilliantly you perform, people from the top name universities will have an extra kick of social capital that is beyond your reach. Or at least that's how I've felt over the last few years as I've been introduced to the rules of the game.

I have had to reassess these feelings over the last few weeks as I've encountered a number of reminders why I wanted to avoid the "prestigious university" track in the first place. I had never really anticipated graduate school - it was a destination on a long trail of occurrences that grew out of my first trip to Southeast Asia and my involvement with Asian and African diasporas on the East Coast. When it became apparent to me that graduate school was an option, I was determined to avoid the trap of simply talking about the people I studied, but instead wanted to continue looking for a way to talk with them. For me, no scholarly conversation is complete without the input from people who are actually living and experiencing the phenomena we choose to study.

I was drawn to the University of Hawai'i Manoa (not exactly on the top ten list of academic institutions) for its geographic focus on Asia and the Pacific, its diverse student body, and because of the influence of the East West Center, a research hub aimed at improving US-Asia/Pacific relations. One of the wonderful aspects of having the East West Center institutionally affiliated with the university is that a number of scholarships are provided every year for students from the Asia/Pacific region to pursue graduate education. This results in a vital influx of students from many of the areas that are the focus of study here; invigorating and challenging research and scholarly exchange. As white "Indonesianists" we don't just theorize about what is going on in the country in a scholarly vacuum, but instead get to participate in a community where Indonesian and American students support each other in producing new and exciting explorations into what is happening in the region. I'm very proud to be part of such a community, and I wonder what I would have lost had I pursued a university career at a more prestigious university, one in which access for Southeast Asian scholars is difficult due to issues of language, funding and the background necessary to secure a place in such competitive programs.

We're approaching the end of the school year, and the accomplishments of my Indonesian contemporaries here have really brought this point home. I attended a lecture last week where a friend of mine from Sumatra presented her work with Minangkabau women, research that challenges tropes of "powerful females" circulated by anthropologists who have studied in the region, but who may have obscured the political realities that prevent perempuan Minangkabau from exercising sufficient political clout. Another very accomplished friend has been hired as a Professor of Islamic and Indonesian cultures at an up-and-coming university department in California, a real coup for someone just finishing their dissertation. And yet another dear friend just got accepted for graduate study (with funding!) at a great university in the Midwest, after a very challenging year teaching Indonesian here at UH. All of these friends have amazed me with their perseverance and dedication under often difficult circumstances, and it gives me great happiness to know that in another generation the contributions of these students to the scholarly world might make huge differences in Asian-US relations, American attitudes towards Islam, and foster more diverse perspectives in the field of Southeast Asian studies.

To me, their successes substantiate my belief that prestige isn't the only indicator of success, and that there is something to be said for an "earnest scholarship" that doesn't have self-promotion as its very core. I wouldn't trade my experiences, or the chance to be part of the community here, for endorsement of a big name any day. Somehow, I suspect that type of success wouldn't taste so sweet.