My Fishpond

I had built a pond and an island, with shallows, as wide as possible in my small back garden,

The very thin, very low wall border was done by very patiently  cementing not smoothly, but by spoonful cementing 100% cement, like building a mini Great Wall of China, working for days, and so must I build also a wall around my island. 

These should be very strong even when you stand on or kick it and it’s still strong today after more than 20 years out of use. 

Imagine when there would be a leakage, how to rescue so many fishes, how to find the leaking spot? Did that occur to you?

I made emergency outlets, cemented barriers in case of a big rain or leakage and so I became a bit of a water engineer, Ha.ha.

Not a landscape artist, I had Nature be the artist and do the work.

There were many kinds of water weeds from the marshes, growing, in or floating on the water. They thrived and became a water paradise but after a long time, only some, many didn’t survive as perhaps the strongest water weeds changed the water quality to suit them, killing the others.

I planted the  Yangliu (Chinese willow) in the garden,  there is the Waringin, a bird nested and bats visited.

I had fishes from the marshes, which I took home from my running travels in the country, most have I succeeded to save from drying ditches during a dry season or when villagers were catching fish by poisoning a ditch or pond.

Such kind of fishes were not displayed, sold by aquarium-fish sellers, no one would buy them. They were regarded as ordinary, worthless: the cupang, sepat, beunteur, tigerfish, julung-julung, cenang-cenang, freshwater-shrimps, a sawah frog, snails, ...

They’re watchful, on guard. In the beginning, they live peacefully, prosper, multiply without having me to feed them and I had a lot then.

The young generation today haven’t seen them. You almost never would see them again now and I have no pictures of them.

My sawah frog, a superb jumper, grew till it “quacks”, my cenang-cenang  are skilled jumpers, jumping out of the pond in a hard rain.

I had a spider weaving her web above the pond, a stray dragonfly laid her eggs, her pupea looks very frightening and was very ferocious too.

My wild white water-lily bloomed.

I had a water plant that had their flowers on the floating leaves, the touch me not, planted near the pond became a mini Flamboyant tree, with its branches stretched over the water, ...

The maanvis (moon fish) parents, an aquarium-fish in  natural surroundings, were watchful brooding, herding, guarding their brood and as they grew, seeing them swimming together as hundreds of aero planes was an enchanting sight,

But as my tiger fish, so innocent before became so big, ferocious, I lost  almost all my cupangs, all my shrimps and was forced to free it in the kali Ciliwung including the snails from the Bogor Botanical Garden which I succeeded to hatch, they became a serious threat razing, grazing my waterplants.

See, watch them swim, eat, fight, make love, brood, ... see them live. I could enjoy learning, love almost anything were I to have the time.

Not only Nature, but also Mathematics, Astronomy, Languages, Geography, Oceanography, History, Music, Art, ... and most of all, Life’s Philosophy and learn it by watching, hearing, playing, singing,  painting, doing, investigating, ... it live, not in a hurry, without burdening, torturing your brains.

You can never enjoy, eat, learn  more than what is within your capacity unless you want to be sick, stressed. You can’t hurry, speed up your life. Life is too short, even thousand years, would you learn it all, yet am I content and happy with the little I achieved, know, am capable of.

On Conducting

Should I conduct the way it should according to the rules it would deaden my feeling for music, kill beautiful music.

It’s the music prompted me involuntarily. My hands, feet, moving, dancing, inviting, my eyes conjuring my choir.

What a joy is conducting without having - a baton - to beat time, to observe the rules.

What A Joy Is Learning

After my school, student’s years I’ve raised myself to be my own teacher. 

Oh, what a joy is learning and it still is. To take your time to learn without being oppressed as a horse to run faster and faster.

I could learn and would like to learn even all the subjects what I did not like before and I could master the exercises without having recourse to formulas and learning by heart now. 

I would remember it, master it for as long as life if only I have the time to learn it. I think, If Gershwin could compose a song within a minute; I gladly would do it in a year and be content with less.

“Don’t be greedy” I warned myself, “ unless you want to spoil the joy of learning. Take one or two at a time not a lot at the same time.”

Without a teacher have I learned myself to run the marathon, to improve my voice and those of my choir members of age, how to conduct, to provide myself with my own studies in harmony, to furnish my own analyses of a Volley Ball match, to be a volley Ball coach, … 

I never could be a good student of a teacher, of a professor, never be a good disciple of a great spiritual teacher or spiritual leader, in order perhaps that I could enjoy learning, have my self esteem and be myself.

I’m grateful God created me thus.

Ade’s Kerst Geschenk

We zouden voor Christmas Eve zingen, Berceuse van Lehman uit onze Noel Cantate toen, en God So Loved the World van Stainer.

Twee van mijn sterkste sopranen konden niet mee-doen. 

Net een uur voor onze warming up, telefoneerde Ade, mijn beste, sterkste sopraan dat zij ook niet kon komen, haar stem was niet in orde en nu was haar knie opgezwollen, kon haast niet lopen en gemakkelijk opstaan. Nu verlies ik drie van mijn sterkste sopranen.

Ik heb nog twee sterke sopranen, maar niet zo safe.

Ik denk, niet wanhopen, al zal het niet zo mooi zijn als wanneer wij kompleet zingen, apa boleh buat (laat maar lopen), ik moet me niet laten vloeren, ik maak het beste uit ze en vraag hun straks meer dan honderd procent te zingen, want het is zo hoog voor ons oude lui en men moet relatief lang kunnen aan houden.

Tijdens de warm up was ik zo blij verrast. Ik zag Ade ondanks haar pijn, langzaam, voorzichtig de kerk binnen lopen of waggelen. Wat een heerlijke verassing, ze zong toch mee.

Na de dienst zei ik tegen Ade, “hadiah natal Ade ini paling indah, entah, untuk Tuhan, atau untuk kita.

“Jouw kerst geschenk is het mooiste, dat is, dat je nog komt ondanks de pijn in je benen, misschien voor God of ons. Het koor zong met vuur. Wij danken jou, wij waren in hogen nood. Ik ben je zo dankbaar, De gemeente zeker ook daar we anders niet zo goed gezongen zouden hebben.” Dat zei ik in het Indonesisch.

Zij lachte, ik geloof dat wat ik zeide niet tot haar doordrong, dat zij zo goed was. Misschien gelukkig niet en juist goed dat ze dat niet wist. Ze had het zelf uitgestreden en overwonnen.

Dat was haar heerlijk kerst geschenk die ik nooit zal vergeten.

December 2004

Forcing A Good Custom Is Good

I always thought that freedom was best. Yet, I believe, forcing a good custom, a good rule, is good.

Forcing your family eating together, yet I’d rather like that it was done freely, willingly without being forced.

And I thought of the happiness of a mother chicken and her baby chicks following her, eating together, sleeping together under her wings.

Rules forcing us driving left, or right, to come or leave on time, to come regularly, ... What were it free, do, act as you like? Then it occurred to me that it would be chaos.