The porter looked at me quizically, but nodded his Peci covered head in acknowledgement and let us through.
I had just apologized in clumsy Bahasa to the doorman of my hotel after bumping him. Like the other locals I had been using my newly learned vocabulary on, he seemed surprised. Probably unused to polite bule (Caucasian), I thought.
It was my third week in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Very early I had noticed the casual arrogance of many Westerners in this developing country, and it shamed me. I was determined to be different. For weeks I had been ferreting words into my mobile phone, and referencing the growing list. When people spoke to each other, the burred tones unfurling from their lips like batik swirls, I listened carefully. When a friend bumped into an old woman at the top of an escalator and blurted a surprised apology, I took note.
The first perkataan greedily collected had been those most useful in showing respect and consideration. "Thank-you", which came in several forms, was first. I had particularly sought out "Please" which even locals didn't use often. "Sorry", to my pride, I had picked up in context without help. My grammar was non-existent, but after only a few weeks I could almost make my way without falling back into sign language.
"What did you say to the doorman?" my Indonesian friend and incidental tutor enquired, when we reached my room. "He looked at you strangely."
"Oh, I bumped him and said sorry." I was unable to keep some pride from touching my voice.
"Who taught you that," my friend asked. "I don't remember teaching you that."
"I heard you say it in the mall when you bumped into that old lady last week. I've been using it a lot." I repeated the word in Bahasa, careful to get the pronounciation correct.
There was a pause. Then came a howl; a long husky note, like a shocked cry of pain, that started high and descended into gurgling, staccato madness. My friend fell to the floor in breathless hysterics - literally rolled onto the bed, and then to the floor. It was gut-busting hilarity, and it took minutes to subside.
"What! What's so funny!" I tried to be heard over my friend's raucous delight. "What!"
"That... doesn't mean Sorry," through gasps and more helpless laughter. "I was swearing... that's Bahasa for dick."
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Feng Huang Lu
I had been drunk for weeks it seemed. Days and nights merged into each other carelessly, smoothed by the coercive hand of hedonism. I should have felt seedy, or guilty, or contrite, but I didn't. All I felt, as I watched the stars fade and the sun slink slowly up from beneath the dark neon earth, was euphoria.
I spoke my thankfulness out loud to the sky. I lifted my arms in gentle exaltation and chuckled. With the fresh cool of early morning brushing my face, I let my head fall back and smiled, and thanked God for the moment.
It was 6am as I strolled unsteadily along a quaint Shenzhen alley towards my peaceful apartment, slowly sobering and happy. More intoxicating than the alcohol I had thrown back earlier during uncounted rounds of Chinese drinking games, was the freedom I had discovered here. No-one knew exactly where I was. No-one knew what I was doing. I had no responsibilities and enough money to cover an extended period of Asian living. It was beyond privileged, almost decadent; I knew this. What I was experiencing very few people ever could, and I was blissfully thankful.
Being a white man in China brought all sorts of advantages, economic and social. But that was not what had me singing quietly as I passed through the black iron gates guarding residential apartments that towered like massive stucco anthills over the center of Feng Huang Lu. For the first time in my life the future was irrelevant; I had let it go. I had given up the lie of living for a hope that would never arrive. All I cared for was the moment I was in, and the liberation was giddying.
Waking hungover the following afternoon, there would be time for the return of angst. Wounds from deep loss and brutalization do not heal in so short a time as between aching sobriety and grinning drunkenness. But each evening they could be released anew to lose voice within noisy, gaudy nightlife. And perhaps one day, they would never return.
I spoke my thankfulness out loud to the sky. I lifted my arms in gentle exaltation and chuckled. With the fresh cool of early morning brushing my face, I let my head fall back and smiled, and thanked God for the moment.
It was 6am as I strolled unsteadily along a quaint Shenzhen alley towards my peaceful apartment, slowly sobering and happy. More intoxicating than the alcohol I had thrown back earlier during uncounted rounds of Chinese drinking games, was the freedom I had discovered here. No-one knew exactly where I was. No-one knew what I was doing. I had no responsibilities and enough money to cover an extended period of Asian living. It was beyond privileged, almost decadent; I knew this. What I was experiencing very few people ever could, and I was blissfully thankful.
Being a white man in China brought all sorts of advantages, economic and social. But that was not what had me singing quietly as I passed through the black iron gates guarding residential apartments that towered like massive stucco anthills over the center of Feng Huang Lu. For the first time in my life the future was irrelevant; I had let it go. I had given up the lie of living for a hope that would never arrive. All I cared for was the moment I was in, and the liberation was giddying.
Waking hungover the following afternoon, there would be time for the return of angst. Wounds from deep loss and brutalization do not heal in so short a time as between aching sobriety and grinning drunkenness. But each evening they could be released anew to lose voice within noisy, gaudy nightlife. And perhaps one day, they would never return.
Friday, July 22, 2011
China
Somewhere in the untidy space between joyful marriage and bewildered divorce, Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn infected me. Driving back to Brisbane from a night at the Gold Coast, tipsy and strangely empowered, Don Walker's haunting narrative of shiftless middle-aged dislocation rattled inside me like a stone in a bucket, and landed with a clang. I was seized by a potent desire to lose myself in Asia; to disappear from everything and everyone I knew; to vanish.
Two years later I sat on the cool tiles of a tiny 15th floor balcony watching my first Chinese dawn rise over a corner of Shenzhen. I wasn't completely lost. My friend and his Chinese wife slumbered in an air conditioned bedroom just beyond the small neat living room I now called home. But I was half a universe away from everything I knew. The dawn and I were both grey, and it was good.
I had arrived in Shenzhen at the end of a complicated, life altering journey. Crazy holidays in Macau and Indonesia had led to 18-months work in Arizona, and then several more months in Jakarta and Dubai. Like the listless protagonist in Chisel's faded folk tale I had finally surrendered to brokenness. It had taken 40 years and more than one brutal broken heart, but it had happened. I had no plans, no more dreams, and no clue.
In the few hours since crossing the Chinese border, the musty magic of the Orient had filled me with a creeping wonder. Everything felt different, from the mundane script describing colourful laundry powder packets to the acute, quirky clothes worn by beautiful Chinese girls populating the streets and buildings. All was alien, and invigorating.
I should have been exhausted following the overnight visa run through Hong Kong and the two hour van ride to the apartment from the Shenzhen ferry, but I was too wired to rest. The Lam Tsuen mountains beyond the slow sliding causeway and far to the south were ancient, but from my balcony looked alive. I felt as if I was in a movie, and played the reality of where I was across my consciousness until fatigue blurred me.
It was over an hour later as the sun rode high up a hazy, unfamiliar sky that I stretched onto the couch and shut my eyes, my nose and ears already filled with Asia.
Two years later I sat on the cool tiles of a tiny 15th floor balcony watching my first Chinese dawn rise over a corner of Shenzhen. I wasn't completely lost. My friend and his Chinese wife slumbered in an air conditioned bedroom just beyond the small neat living room I now called home. But I was half a universe away from everything I knew. The dawn and I were both grey, and it was good.
I had arrived in Shenzhen at the end of a complicated, life altering journey. Crazy holidays in Macau and Indonesia had led to 18-months work in Arizona, and then several more months in Jakarta and Dubai. Like the listless protagonist in Chisel's faded folk tale I had finally surrendered to brokenness. It had taken 40 years and more than one brutal broken heart, but it had happened. I had no plans, no more dreams, and no clue.
In the few hours since crossing the Chinese border, the musty magic of the Orient had filled me with a creeping wonder. Everything felt different, from the mundane script describing colourful laundry powder packets to the acute, quirky clothes worn by beautiful Chinese girls populating the streets and buildings. All was alien, and invigorating.
I should have been exhausted following the overnight visa run through Hong Kong and the two hour van ride to the apartment from the Shenzhen ferry, but I was too wired to rest. The Lam Tsuen mountains beyond the slow sliding causeway and far to the south were ancient, but from my balcony looked alive. I felt as if I was in a movie, and played the reality of where I was across my consciousness until fatigue blurred me.
It was over an hour later as the sun rode high up a hazy, unfamiliar sky that I stretched onto the couch and shut my eyes, my nose and ears already filled with Asia.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Mexico
He was thin and unkempt, with an unusual meekness about him. He had been telling me his story, how he had lost his wife and his family, and spent time in a Mexican prison - all results of a relentless drug addiction. In the middle of a sentence he paused and lifted his face to look over my shoulder.
Tinny praise music was coming from somewhere in the house behind us. Surrounded by the casual bustle of aid workers making a late breakfast amongst the mess of a suburban back yard, I hadn't noticed. But he was transfixed. His eyes glazed slightly, and his face softened with wonder.
After some moments he looked back at me and apologised. Since becoming a Christian in prison he had listened to praise music constantly. When released into the custody of a local church rehab centre, the music continued to sustain him. During the most desperate time of his life it became his lifeline. Now, even in this mundane setting, a thin line of audio emanating from an old plastic tape deck was irresistible. I could see as much as feel its effect upon him. Too distracted to continue, he excused himself and shuffled toward the house to warm himself at the music's source.
Entering the beginnings of middle age, he had nothing. Even his ill fitting clothes were borrowed from friends in prison. He was estranged from his loved ones, and penniless. Yet, amongst the score of aid workers who had taken weekend furloughs away from lives in Arizona to make early morning drives across the Mexican border with food for families living on a city dump, he alone had responded to the music.
It is a strange paradox that broken people are often the most spiritual. As he passed out of view I felt a prick of Godly envy and knew that of us all there, at that moment, he was richest by far.
Tinny praise music was coming from somewhere in the house behind us. Surrounded by the casual bustle of aid workers making a late breakfast amongst the mess of a suburban back yard, I hadn't noticed. But he was transfixed. His eyes glazed slightly, and his face softened with wonder.
After some moments he looked back at me and apologised. Since becoming a Christian in prison he had listened to praise music constantly. When released into the custody of a local church rehab centre, the music continued to sustain him. During the most desperate time of his life it became his lifeline. Now, even in this mundane setting, a thin line of audio emanating from an old plastic tape deck was irresistible. I could see as much as feel its effect upon him. Too distracted to continue, he excused himself and shuffled toward the house to warm himself at the music's source.
Entering the beginnings of middle age, he had nothing. Even his ill fitting clothes were borrowed from friends in prison. He was estranged from his loved ones, and penniless. Yet, amongst the score of aid workers who had taken weekend furloughs away from lives in Arizona to make early morning drives across the Mexican border with food for families living on a city dump, he alone had responded to the music.
It is a strange paradox that broken people are often the most spiritual. As he passed out of view I felt a prick of Godly envy and knew that of us all there, at that moment, he was richest by far.
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