Love That's Repaid With A Slap On Her Behind

Love That’s Repaid With A Slap On Her Behind

Piggy so much loves me. She welcomes me, standing up on her hind legs, scratching with her paws, biting in play but hurts me a bit. Instead, as she so loves me, I threaten her with my slipper, slap her on her behind, not hard and she crawls back, lies down to ask for mercy.

January 2011

On Jakarta's Weather Forecast

On Jakarta’s Weather Forecast

Well, tomorrow I’ve got to water my garden. According to the Weather Forecast on TV, Jakarta would be clouded. The forecast was wrong. Thank you, as an unexpected reward, surprise, it was raining, so me and the Public City’s Park Service of Jakarta was free, on holiday from watering the gardens.

Jakarta by this time had grown so vast as to cause the forecast in certain areas of Jakarta to be incorrect, but I had to water my garden more often as according to forecast it should be raining, on the contrary did not rain.

Only in the rainy- and warm-season the weather forecast of whole Jakarta was accurate. But what’s the use of a weather forecast as everyone knows that it’s going to rain or to be sunny according to the season. Except perhaps when there would occur the opposite, contrary to what is the season.

Not just Jakarta as a whole, the whole island of Java might be raining, for days, causing floods. More over, all the water of rivers, lakes, wells has the rain as their origin.

How easy it is for Nature to water, wet the earth. Without any effort, without means of transport, water-tanks: cubic measures of water is transported so high, higher than sky-scrapers, even high mountains, without any apparatus for distilling water, yet so clear and purer than PAM drinking water. And it did so with such ease as easy and as light as blowing just cigarette smoke, then returns it as rain like a kind of blessing, so free for all the living on the earth.

From Business Indonesia, May 19, 1993

January 2011

Dream House Of The Future

Dream House Of The Future

Wow, how dangerous it is to work or live in a many storied flat or sky-scraper as I remembered the earth quake in Jakarta recently. And Jakarta has to build upwards. How safe are the village cottages compared to the modern towering buildings.

“Were I an architect, I’d design a Dream House of the future.” said Si Upik. “Its floor, its walls, just guess … I fill with air. Small and light. You could easily carry it wherever you like just by decompressing and fold it. In case of a fire you could easily save your self or carry it away. In times of flood as at the time of Noah, the house becomes an ark. It can cope with earth quakes and there’s no danger from being destroyed as a vagrant’s illegal dwelling by government functionaries as you easily can carry it away. Transport and set it up as easily on land on camping, mountain areas as well as on a lake or river. You could save on truck-loads of cement and iron, save on trees being cut down, river-sand and boulders taken from the rivers and a lot more.” So she said.

Yes, it’s a nice thought full of fancy of si Upik. This age is oriented to the small. Formerly the KPM (a large Dutch corporation) has to install the IBM machine in a big room to do the administration. It needs a large hall or many rooms to store its files. Today one could perhaps have just a table with one or two computers to do the same and enjoy, join in the internet. One day people would prefer a small, cozy Dream House. It is flexible in its use, rather than a giant sized luxurious house, which is very costly, has high maintenance costs and is fixed to the same place for ever.

According to Upik’s calculation, if she doesn’t make a mistake, the floor of a small Dream House of 6 m by 6 m as thick as 50 cm according to the law of Archimedes, is capable to lift, carry a weight up to 18 tons or all the furniture of the household and perhaps including a car. What is especially special of this house is, is that it is very cheap, as its main constituent is air which is free and never exhausted or ever will disappear as cement from the market.

People succeeded to create cars with solar energy. Ikaros in the Greek tales dreamt to be able to fly as a bird. Today one can fly a gantole, a sailing vehicle in the air, in the future one would be able to fly as Gatotkaca or Superman.

From Jayakarta, May 24, 1996

January 2011

The Choir Conductor On Performance

The Choir Conductor On Performance

When we know, play, sing the same pieces, even though in the simplified version, could we better judge the masters, the professional musicians, artists. Only those, the very best make the music alive. Often it is dazzling, superb technique, virtuosity, not art.

January 2011

Find A Paradise Almost Anywhere

Find A Paradise Almost Anywhere

Our paradise is forever lost since Adam, laments someone.

Just eating simple fare together with our fingers on a banana leaf, drinking together out of a used bottle of aqua and sleeping in her/my arms in my cart - yet, is there a warmer, cozier bridal couch? -, celebrating our marriage with heavenly light of stars and moon. Right there is my palace, my kingdom, my queen, my treasure, my paradise. So sings a vagrant young man.

Well, a paradise is in our national park Cibodas, said Si Upik.

A paradise is in Roxy’s food-stalls, breathing the delicious foods being prepared, arousing my appetite, said Si Buyung.

A paradise is in an armchair, when tired after keeping myself awake, I fall asleep, said Pak Johan.

Drinking and nestling in my warm mother’s bosom, that’s paradise, says baby.

A paradise is in her eyes or is it in her smile, ponders her lover.

A paradise is in a song when the listener suddenly cannot speak and becomes silent. In a book when the reader suddenly cannot read getting tears in his eyes, says another.

What is an oasis in a paradise? An oasis is a paradise in a desert, comments someone.

I can find a paradise almost anywhere. I saw a paradise in a waste-water basin when a pigeon pair happily was bathing without being ashamed together. In a broken wall with a happy plant, though it had but roots instead of legs, cannot fly as the butterfly nor sing as the nightingale and forever mute, was fixed, bound to the same place for life.

Happy and grateful to the Creator after being granted, seen so many paradises and still many more to come, here on earth. I wouldn’t be sorry even if I wouldn’t have a place in heaven after all. Would you still crave after it? I asked pak Arif. “Well, at least I’ll have seen heaven in a wild flower. That’s what I remember William Blake has said,” he answered.

April 1999

January 2011

Count Our Blessings Or Curse Our Fate

Count Our Blessings Or Curse Our Fate?

How beautiful. a woman’s hair which strays from its comb, how sweet a flower which peeks over a neighbor’s fence. Clinton, the U.S. President, according to the American Press, has strayed from his vows during his marriage. This was the journalists’ Christmas and New Year’s present to Clinton that he will remember all his life.

Despite his marriage, his age, Clinton is still sensitive and not blind to the beauty and appeal of women. And it’s very possible that many beautiful women glance stealthily at him. Even if the U.S. President has never been unfaithful, at least he might have fantasized about having an affair.

Fortunately, he is just a human being, not a superman or a god. Because he is no saint, he knows his weaknesses and limitations well and acts as a human being. How could he understand others if he never faces trials or goes astray because of luring “forbidden apples”? Even a hermit could be tempted by a beautiful goddess.

A poet once wrote:
Since I saw her, I think I have been blinded.
For wherever I glance, I don’t see anything, but her.

Well, life would be gloomy, harsh and not humane at all if police officers, government officials, judges and artists were perfect men or robots.

Forbidding every man from straying is like cutting a branch which peeks over a neighbor’s fence. But cutting the branches doesn’t mean that they will not peek over the fence again. Human beings cannot be framed by the definitions of scholars. They cannot be confined by cultural walls, norms and rules.

It’s sad for President Clinton who is handsome and manly. If only his eagerness, ardor for women weren’t so large and could be limited by the “fences” set out by his wife as his American society requires. If he were a man born in King Solomon’s age, he could have had a hundred wives. Having a love-affair is protested by his community, let alone having ten wives.

We know that planet Earth is full of beautiful, charming and warm women. Have we to count our blessings or to curse our fate?

The Jakarta Post January 8, 1994,
From Jayakarta. Original Title, Bill Clinton And Women

December2010

The Greatest Wonder

Imagine a rose as though equipped with an invisible lab within, processing exquisite perfume, a certain green for its leaves and red or rose for its flowers while each part of the plant is alive. A rose never errs as to have an orchid for its flowers.

And that is so easily processed and in such a short time just out of dead earth, air, water and sunlight, which has no color, no perfume, no wood, no stem at all. This is the greatest wonder. Our foremost labs aren’t able to process and get the same results just out of earth, water, air and sunlight and never will. And what’s even more wonderful, unbelievable is, that a plant, - not just a rose - can propagate new life. An animal, man can procreate a new living individual in a similar subtle way.

Meat is produced in an invisible mini factory within the cow, just by feeding, providing her with grass, water, air, sunlight. Man isn’t able to produce meat in a lab or factory. It’s not man that produces meat and milk, and its bones and teeth and eyes and feet …, but the cow.

From Jayakarta, October 27, 1994

December 2010