Surrounded by hipsters and scared to be caught in a scene, self-consciousness takes over. A girl in orgasmic tights thrashes on stage. The crowd competes while her screams create a mini-riot.
Masks dot the faces of the people below. Tarts in hooker heels tower overhead. And I am nonexistent.
When the band stops, anxiety kicks in. The DJ muffles lubricated conversations with an eclectic mix of mediocrity. People bounce because of Ecstasy. A drunkard zigzags toward me as a busty blonde barges my shoulder.
Youngsters spew out onto suburban streets. Winter lingers and is ready to attack uncovered skin.
My bedtime has passed. My outfit is no longer fashionable. It is pointless to explain that I have owned my Doc Martens for 13 years — now is the time for self-righteousness.
Everything has become passé.
Everyone keeps saying, in strong Australian twangs, “You’ve come full circle”. And I suppose I have, ending in the very same place I left a year and ten months ago. After a year working in Indonesia and travel stints in Canada and South America, with dread and an empty bank account I returned to my hometown. I was scared that I had changed and more that I hadn’t. I was terrified of Australia and Australians and, in particular, the accent. And so I hid from the quaint, beachside town. I hid from my friends and telecommunication. Locked in a weatherboard house, I dreamt of other places. But eventually cultural cringe subsided and I finally left the house. I became romantic and wistful, and I began to love this sun-drenched country once again. While I thought I would be soon moving on, I stumbled upon employment at a local newspaper. And in an instant my trajectory changed. No more suitcases. No more backpacks. No more coming and no more going. In 2010, I am staying put, under clear skies and amid gumtrees, with sand forever in my bed.
He only left the hostel to purchase Oreos and Doritos from the corner store when he was met with the munchies.
Shifting in the hard, narrow bed he had paid US$4 to spend the night, he thought his thoughts were wasted. A ceiling fan clunked overhead, its breeze unable to kiss his sweaty face. Four single girls in four single beds slept to his right, each girl lay curled in the fetal position, each sleeping in black underwear and singlet tops, their sheets mulled around their middles.
Every morning, the sunlight struggled through the humidity and guilt waded in. Dressed in the clothes from the night before and the day and the night before that, he staggered toward the door, cross-eyed and weak-legged. By the swimming pool he packed a makeshift bong made from a used mineral water bottle, and hit it. Staring blankly into the water, he contemplated a swim and imagined how the coolness would feel against his skin.
The city was already awake. Many of the 24,000 motortaxis screeched and honked and people already packed public buses. The market smelt of rotting meat and rotting fruit. But he would never smell it.
He could be anywhere in the world. But no matter where he wandered, he felt trapped and useless. Isolated. Inebriated. With scattered plans.
He was unsure why he chose to visit Iquitos — possibly because it is the largest city in the world not accessible by road, probably because it takes three days by boat to get there. Three days of lying in a hammock, floating down a river. Three days of watching pink river dolphins frolic before psychedelic sunsets. Three days of not feeling guilty for not having the motivation to do things, to see things.
There were so many things to see in Peru, he read in his travel guide, but just thinking about Inca ruins, jungle trips and treks through the Andes was tiresome. Much easier to never leave the hostel. Much easier to purchase a big bag of weed and will the time away.
On holidays where Mary Jane is cheap, he smoked ten joints a day. He had no interest in cocaine.
Goats started to line the streets in the week leading up to Idul Adha. Tied on short leads to fence posts, and feeble.
The smell of manure mingled with the stench of the city in the heat of the day, as the goats breathed in the spluttered smoke of bajaj, kopajas and other fuel-inefficient vehicles.
The goats disappeared this morning.
I watched 10 goats and two cows get sacrificed in a car park from the safety of my window. My stomach turned. Children held the ropes tied to the legs of the cow to hold them still. It’s educational, I was later told.
The animals’ throats were slit. Their bodies thrashed before dying.
From my window I could see my housemate taking photos of the undertakings. I went down to see the results. The intestines. The blood. Goats tied upside down, hanging from a tree. A cow’s head in a plastic bag. Men tending to the meat, a third of which will be distributed to the poor.
The mosques continued to call the city dwellers to prayer on the Festival of Sacrifice — the day I decided to become a vegetarian again, perhaps for good.
I walked back inside the house. Ibu and her family sat watching TV. They offered me beef rendang. I couldn’t stomach it, but it was rude to say no.
Notes:
This was first published on Om’bak (December 8, 2009)
Triping over my tongue to order una cerveza. Tripping over my toes to dance the salsa. A middle-aged man breaths pisco, while I stare at my feet. I quickly escape presumption.
Cold air, cold beer and drunken laughs. Thieves linger at the edge of darkness along the streets of Bellavista. Unseen. Collecting cameras and credit cards, and stealing into the night. Police swagger to the scene, puff their chest, exhale smoke and look down upon the naive, incomprehensible tourist. A jolly busker plays the pan flute. He is wrongly accused, unknowingly. He scampers toward paying ears.
Two bottles of vino to forget materialism and attachment. A trip to the police station, first thing in the morning. A tussle with financial institutions, later on.
Hungover, the streets are grey and straight, snow-capped mountains hover above the copper-coloured smog.
Efek Rumah Kaca: Insomnia
karena aku masih belum bisa tidur
Should never drink two coffees in one day. A strange mix of unexplained excitement and anxiety brews.
Au Revoir Simone: Sad Song
pour mon amour
parce que tous doivent faire leur propre manière, mais je souhaite qu’ils pouvaient me prendre avec eux
Facebook quiz #863:
Question one of one
Which animal do you most identify with:
(a) A male mouse with large round ears;
(b) A female mouse with large round ears;
(c) A short-tempered duck;
(d) A clumsy anthropomorphic dog that walks on his hind legs; or
(e) A regular stupid dog that cannot speak.
sunday crusin’
Togean Islands, Indonesia.
As of this post, this blog should be titled: Verses of Australian suburbia interspersed with photos of traverses through Sulawesi (and songs to coerce a distant lover and nurse them back to health).
And some more things about Jakarta:
The difference between the rich and the poor is palpable. Completely different worlds coexist (or struggle) within the one tangled city –- different economies, different temperatures.
When the rich are rich they are obscenely so. They make their way from large houses to shiny mega-malls in chauffeured SUVs, air-conditioned, cool, barely needing to step outside into the sweat.
Some people hide from Jakarta. Estates complete with apartments, malls, restaurants, gyms and offices are bursting about. They are cities contained within a sprawling city simply too big to handle.
It costs the same to buy a cup of coffee inside a mall as it does to buy approximately two meals and two iced teas from a street vendor outside.
They are two neighboring worlds –- the inside and the outside.
This is the second part of “Collecting words in a complicated city” originally published in gang re:Publik (2008).
Some things about the place I have recently been:
Jakarta is a series of choked arteries, tangled. Motorbikes weave around stuck SUVs and taxis, while the roads collapse under the weight, potholed and vulnerable.
The city is manic and gasping for fresh air. Smog traps the heat and they swirl together, suffocating the millions below.
But as the city stresses and heaves, its people appear relentlessly laid-back. No one walks, they stroll. Time is fluid; it is rare to find two clocks set to the same time.
It is night when I arrive in Jakarta. In the taxi from the airport I daze in and out, trying desperately to take in my surroundings, but I am tired from built-up anticipation. Back when my naive mind imagined Indonesia, I imagined plentiful weekends away to beaches and forests. Jakarta, in comparison, is post-apocalyptic. Flyovers, massive billboards and skyscrapers clutter my periphery. Orange lights dissipate through the haze. Shanties cluster on canal beds.
We are trapped in traffic and already I long to see green, to see more trees. In two months time I will become even fussier and long not only for green, but for the sea, for open spaces and for crisp air.
The driver turns to me, smiles and says, ‘Macet’ (traffic jam) – my first Indonesian word.
This is the first part of a four-part story called “Collecting words in a complicated city” originally published in gang re:Publik (2008).
