durham fair

The Durham Fair is the biggest in the area. A massive draw for bored teenagers, the fair is a mish-mash of "country" and "hip hop" symbolism, with both cowboy hats and baggy pants visible in the teeming open spaces.

All fairs seem to provide random re-circuitings of things in the larger society. For example, when S and I walked in, we saw that 38 Special was playing that night. 38 Special was a group that had a couple of hits in the '80s. Who would have thought that 20 years later I would hear them play at the Durham Fair? At the distance we were sitting, their age was not too obvious. Though the lead singer's address of the crowd: "yerr a good lookin' crowd!" was more revealing.

Later, as S and I perused the hundreds of snapshots and professional images of the photography exhibition, I paused at a photo of an Arab man in red and white checkered kuffiyah (head scarf). Amidst all the kittens and gleeful babies, it was odd. I glanced at the name, "Janice Karpinski," and a tiny circuit clicked in my brain. The name was familiar. Surely the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (during the torture scandal) had not spent her time since returning submitting photos to contests in country fairs! Further down the wall there was another with her name, of an Iraqi woman looking dully and passively at the camera. When I returned home that night I googled the name, and indeed, it was the same name.

Compared to the Big E, this fair was more compact and more intense. Booth on booth of games batter the consciousness, with ceilings laden with massive dogs and clown fish and pink panthers; whirling machines blinked their Las Vegas lights against the dark sky, strewing the screams of kids encased within across the crowd. With only three days to run rather than the Big E's 2 weeks, one does not sense the unbreakable ennui of the vendors at the Big E, mechanically spooning chili on hot dogs or sitting like statues, eyes glazed over at the swarm of humanity.

The Durham Fair is also on a hillside, making the exploration seem more adventuresome. Durham makes an effort to create activities that go beyond spending money and watching paid performers. Near 38 Special's stage was a hay free-for-all, where anyone could go in and wage war with armfuls of hay. It was more fun to watch than Washington Square Park's dog run at 8 am, with tykes and pre-teens alike spitting out bits of hay. There was one intrepid mother in there as well. Near the cow barn was an oval dirt race track for. . .souped up lawn mowers. It was not just funny, the riders hunched on the tiny machines, it was also fun: watching them bounce around the track one couldn't help imagine doing it. The mowers even had the blade guards still on. After a victory, the winner would take the checkered flag and do noisy donuts inside the hay bale circle in the middle. The "drivers" wore helmets and had painted absurd names on their machines like "streak of fire." Down near the horse pull was a climbing wall, and a trampoline for kids. They sat in a harness with big elastic cords that lifted them high into the air, so the lightest touch of the foot on the trampoline would project them skyward.

There was also the melancholy of the detritus of a culture: those rides and games used beyond their prime, sitting silently under blinking lights. There was a water gun game with rows of grotesque clown faces, mouths wide open. The heads were antique, of wood, and hand painted. They were battered by use, and neglected by the passing crowds. A little knot of kids in black with streaks of dye in their hair leaned against the counter, talking and joking and kissing. Or there were the cars that run in an endless circle. I had not thought of the ride for over 3 decades, but the second I saw the glittery, rubberized surface of the cars, the blinking tail lights, and the steering wheels that spin uselessly, I remembered. And of course there is the sense of vast loneliness one gets in looking at the proprietors of unpopular games, sitting faces fallen, the ones who are no longer even calling out to you. There was a game made cheaply, a ball-tossing game, constructed out of the recycled pieces of an earlier kiddy game, so the back boards were mismatched scenes of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. A sign proclaimed a "ladies special, winner every time," and appropriately horsey and pony prizes.

There was a "Pharaoh's Fury" ship, and an archaic but oddly popular "Kentucky Derby" game with mechanical horses driven onward by successful sinkings of balls in little holes. With every stride the horses made, their tails would lift, making an oddly squirrel-like movement.

There was a whole building for "youth exhibits," which were also hugely entertaining: pumpkins painted as witches or lobsters, "my little pony" collections, cakes plastered into resemblances of Sponge Bob, robots made of kitchen utinsels (beaters for eyes). If the "local" means that which is not industrially produced or professionally performed, the Durham Fair was rich in that: the human touch not ironed out of a perfect surface. Spectators are invited by human scale productions to imagine themselves taking part. One sees the ordinary snapshots, or the missed throws of the baseballs, or the scrawny or overweight bodies lugging at the weighted sled (there was a rowdy "person pull"), and is not reduced into passive observance the way one is in watching professional performances. One is not kept at a distance -- a distance from which desire springs.

A young girl of 12 or 13 cradled the head of one of her sheep in the crook of her arm, casually, as people perused the animals, telling us they were "Shropshires," raised for meat, sheared to show off the meaty shanks. Her other hand gestured, patting the flanks or scratching the sheep's nose. The sheep's eyes were glazed in complacent restfulness, a scene so touching I was too ashamed to blaspheme it with my camera.

linguistic mobilization

Every day linguistic mobilizations are taking place, pulling us in some small way toward war with Iran. Whether it is the authoritative use of the word "terrorist" to describe their government by American senators or news show hosts, or the mundane use of the word "Islamofascist" by conservative men on the discussion boards of political websites, all in some small way contribute, like guns large and small being dragged into position for the bombardment that is sincerely hoped for.

A common mobilization is the use of the word "elite" to describe the Iranian army's Revolutionary Guard corps. I remember this word being used to describe Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard corps in two different wars. Both times they crumbled like the rest of his undernourished army before the hellish winds of American might. I would not be surprised if the word were used to hype up some pitiful unit of Noriega's army in Panama and the "army" of Grenada before those two countries were invaded so heroically by our boys.

My question is simple: why does the media insist on repeating these words that are manifestly not true? Why do they parrot the words of a government that cannot be trusted? And finally, this: is the superior section of a poor army really "elite"? Our media is complicit in these mobilizations, even after the lessons of Iraq became clear. What is clearer is that the propaganda apparatus hums along undiminished, along with the cowardice of the American media in not resisting the effort to terrify the American people with lies. Tell me what is "elite" about these troops. Do they have one tenth the armaments and training of American troops? I think not.

Tell me in what way Ahmedinejad is "Hitler." That government cannot even exercise full sovereignty over its own territory, for god's sake! Tell me, oh "conservative" lovers of war, what nation this devil is poised to conquer with his omniscient stratagems and all powerful weaponry!

Perhaps they are equipped with advanced popguns able to dent American tanks. Perhaps they possess the terrifying balsa wood planes with which Saddam was able to make the people of the United States quake in their shoes.

"Elite" my ass!! The only military elite in the world is American. By editing out this truth, the media is able to keep a straight face about the horrific "dangers" posed us by third world countries. How many times will a fool fall for the same trick? Answer: as many times as he wants (yes, he: the howlers for war in this nation are mostly male).

You can bet your bottom dollar that within a year or two Hugo Chavez's pitiful army will also be found, magically, to possess an "elite" corps. I suppose Evo Morales will be painted in the same way; I predict an elite llama brigade will be identified by our heroes in Washington.

man crooning

I sat in Union Square park in lower Manhattan the other day. Behind the buzz of conversation on the benches and the shuffle of feet passing by there was a voice singing. The voice sang in Spanish without amplification. It wove itself into the aural plate of spaghetti gently, subtly.

Turning my head I saw him standing near the picnic benches. The man dressed poorly, with a black hat on his head, and he was rather old. In his arms he hugged a CD player. He sang on and on to the slow Latin rhythms, resting occasionally.

His voice was rich, low, and pulsing with vibrato. It was an old voice, and the vibrato made me think of the wear of time, of a fragility insinuating itself into strength. Remember Katherine Hepburne's voice in "On Golden Pond"?

His singing infiltrated the air, infiltrated me, draining my tension. It is not the first time a musician has changed the space of the city for me.

the golden age of cities

Last night I watched "The Set-Up," a movie from 1949 about a boxer set up by his manager to lose a fight, in a deal with a mafia boss. Robert Wise directed it, and my younger brother R, a film afficianado (who worked at Film Forum in NY for a while) suggested it to my mom who rented it.

I have often heard that Hollywood's "golden age" came before the appearance of TV -- from the teens to the early fifties -- but I never paid it much mind. Like most people, I have grown up with the cultural cliches of those few oldies everyone has seen -- Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, etc. But only rarely do unknown flicks puncture my blase attitude: like good books, they have to be actively sought out, and since my drug of choice is the news, I am lazy about seeking out either films or books. (I lay back in the jacuzzi of the internet, an endless flow of info-bubbles pushing around me.)

So, last night "The Set-Up" blew open my preconceptions of staid, cliched old films, yet again (my brother's last recommendation, "The Palm Beach Story," was hilarious and pretty sexy). I won't go into the plot or the story itself. What really amazed me was its documentary quality, entirely set in the environment of a single urban intersection: on one side the smoky arena, on the other side the cheap hotels, cigar shops, penny arcades, and dance halls of the city. Rather than just being a background, the camera lingers on each group of people and lets viewers read the signs: one actually can see several of the games in the penny arcade; one can hear a man hawking "revolutionary" ball point pens for 15 dollars; one sees a group of motorcycle youths talking tough.

The late 40s was not just part of Hollywood's golden age, but a golden age of American cities: after the privations of the war and depression, and before the city's lifeblood (tax dollars and rich people) were sucked out to the suburbs, eviscerated by the knife of the highways. This was the age before public entertainment and consumer culture were entirely privatized: films in theatres turning to TVs in the home, parks turning to yards, street cars turning to automobiles. . .the loneliness of private property overcoming the noisy, bustling, spirit of the city.

How can one not be amazed to see old film of real cities like Detroit, with people pouring along the sidewalks, and compare these scenes to the same cities now? True, select cities have been selected by the rich for a return -- NY, SF, etc -- but in the golden age of the cities, even smaller cities (like the film's "Paradise City") were thriving, their light and noise drawing small town dwellers on the weekends and holidays.

The deadly dullness of suburbs has convinced enough people that there is a moderate return of interest in cities, but the suburbs are established as the template for American life. At its barest, the suburb is a class amputation of the wealthy from the poor, an abandonment of public space to the poor and the criminal, and a retreat of the wealthy to private paradises. Watch "The Set-Up" for a little taste of what American cities were before highways and TVs, in their golden age.

See "Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein in October's Harper's, and "A Consumer's Republic" by . . ..I can't remember her name.

I, ghost

March 21, 1994: 2 pm. Goodbye Gunung Ijen and cruel younger brother, Raung [names of mountains in East Java]. Goodbye Java. Clouds hide the mountaintops. Just below the cloud line I can see the cleft between two ridges, otherwise from this far off the slope is smooth and unbroken and flat. But I know better, I know better than maps, as long as my feet remember the mud and my eyes remember the glimpses of golden green ridges slanting up parallel on both sides of me. Somehow I need to carry my happiness in scrambling to Madura. I must not fall for the myth of retreat and defeat, or even static truce, watching time crumble slowly down from the roof tiles every morning and noon until I rise at 2 pm to muster some small enthusiasm for class. Every morning I can walk ten kilometers! Every day I can go to new places! Massa’ [the very idea] I haven’t even been across the road to the southeast of campus! I don’t need to stay the night in a village to hang out in it.

At the ferry pier watching I had already entered Madura, the air was bright and hot as Madura, some indefinable remoteness, quietness lay in most of the people, crouching with their families in humility. I met a little girl who, most rare for a child here, enjoys distorting her face, grinning wide and lowering her eyebrows, hyper – like me. We communicated that way a little while, mirroring each other’s grimaces.

Back to the homeland most fertile for Kyais [local Muslim teacher-leaders]; my ambivalences I carry with me. Back to Perancak and the bright blue bird, to Ikhsan’s valley, to Pasean and its chaotically jumbled houses where at Marghrib time [the fourth prayer, late afternoon] I steal away from people and float, in love in air, ghost that I am.

Note: I wrote this after finishing my three weeks of walking across parts of East Java and was on the ferry returning to Madura to teach.

the high wind of gentleness

On a December night. The roosters crowed. Night itself quiet. Quietly searching books. Imagine history on a rooftop. Vague Diponegoros and Suhartos. Did villagers believe in the Queen of the Southern Sea? Mountainous clouds wait. If I’m healthy I’m happy. Observe the shapes of the roofs. No hurry for sex. It’s a natural thing. . . when I do have it, it’ll feel like I’ve been doing it forever. Change my shirt in the bathroom. Becaks [bicycle pedicabs] dampen social unrest. The commies would debate hard about them. A new spot on my shirt. My white shirt. Its one thing I am not relaxed about. On a train, my clothes dry. There are stately roofs. They’re made of tin. You feel infinite attractions. The undefinedness wells like an unfocused itch. Age is nothing. How is her spirit? Her ears? Her legs? Her laugh? The continuum of appetites is spherical. Not mind-body. There is a singing. Its in me when I eye her. And only partly in my groin. Usually just a symptom of the spiritual/erotic leap. I think of China. Vagueness snagging on branches of fact or anecdote. Will TimTim [East Timor] ever be free? He pauses. Yes. The most fearful regimes are indeed: full of fear. Insecurities harden; then brittle. Falling is easy then. But wow, the sky last night! Openness cannot smother. Girls smile. A little of me runs with them. And evaporates. Klaten, Klaten, Klaten [hotbed of Communist organizing in the 60s, viciously suppressed]. How could you have won, and freed the people’s voices? Workers hold out hats. Their hooting reaches through the windows. Some throw money, West of Cirebon. Seeing is not experiencing. What if I begged? See the similarities and the differences. Her beautiful hands. Muddy water in the fields. And too her feet. Farmers on the road. She’s not been long a mother. Everyone who turns that windy corner laughs. Clothing is whipped. See weather coming. On a ship. December and the high wind of gentleness book: December 3, 1993.

This was the opening page of my journal; I think I wrote it on train and ferry rides.

happy in east java

December 14, 1993: Air -- is whipping through me. I am on the bus. My life in a moment flies heedless of looking into the future – there is only the immediate future of air, and the scents of it. That heedlessness of method means I have just left Jember laughing; the strength of goal, intent means I know exactly what I need, and what I need is the friends I have. My hair, long, affects my thinking. The window must be open.

So when I came out of the WC and saw the bus speed out of the terminal, envisioning the loss of my bag gave me some horror. But it was vague. The imagery of my possessions which flitted before me, like one’s life, perhaps, at the moment of death, was vague; the things were like leaves in the wind. Good leaves to be sure. And enough to get me to Sumatra, but not irreplaceable.

But Dila (an Arab-Indonesian friend), whom I have proclaimed Bupati (a county-level executive) by strength of his own imagination, had been watching my bag. Where was he? Puzzled, I walked out of the terminal. And – seeing him sauntering toward me, lugging my pack, big grin on his scrappy face – filled me with delight. We laughed together, giving me a feeling of great freedom and strength, and I hopped on the next bus.

Life’s very good. Am I repeating myself? I’ll continue it if I can. My excitement for women is at a strong edge, making me hope none sit next to me as the effect would be hard to contain. My eyes, swift vicaries, are voracious for them at the windows.

Saturday I left Kalianget, in Madura, my island of residence. Marghrib (late afternoon prayer time) I arrived at Karangharjo Village in East Java, Muquiet’s house. I was persuaded, easily, to stay Sunday night too. Monday morning I went to Polly’s house in Jember. It was a lazy day and fun night with Yayuk, Dila, Polly, and Mary eating roti baker (toasted bread with chocolate sprinkles and bananas, a snack). (Salvation! Two women hesitate at my seat and pass by). This morning I chatted with Polly (a fellow volunteer), came to Dila’s, and he rode me to the terminal, where we talked expansively of principles and plans.

The “tembok mandi” (bathing wall, a play on bathing room) at Muquiet’s place epitomized the freshness and coolness I felt in being there. I walked into it, for all appearances like a spacious, well-equipped bathroom. But it was so light. I looked up and there was no roof! The sprinkling, half-cloudy sky was above me, as were bamboo and palm. The sun was illuminating the edges of clouds as it went down. I took off my clothes and felt the drops on my skin, scattering over the surface; the laughing and horseplay of girls bathing came over the walls and scattered on my surface. I stood naked and did not bathe a while in anything but air because I was happy.

The way too the Kaeh (or kyai, an indigenous Muslim leader), Muquiet’s dad, was accessible as a leader for all people struck me; its lack is a big disintegrative factor in American society. At no level of society is there an institution by which at any time of day can anyone come and be assured of a cup of coffee, smokes, and talk. I imagine women come to the Nyais (the wives of kyais, they teach women).

I will never forget when Mo the blind man came at night, lacking cigarettes. In entire patience and even affection Muquiet and his dad sat in the dim room into the night and conversed and laughed with the man who prefers to sleep alone by the river, teasing him for his encounters with women (many of whom, and even men, it appears, find in him a sexual out of bounds place where they are free to “play”), giving him more coffee. I hung on his throaty words, trying to catch the funny incidents he related (the women’s thighs “smooth as banana trees”), watching him feel the flame with his fingers to the cigarettes’ tip, admiring how a part of the community he was even in his difference, even in an economically distressed community. And when he left, Muquiet and dad standing together in front of the house as he walked into the darkness shouting “Kiri! . . Kanan! Ya, lurus!” (Left! Right! Yeah, straight!) until he disappeared.

It was a good stay with good people.

I met a kid on the ferry back to Madura with seven nangkas (jackfruit), who lives on Jalan Sampah (Garbage Street) in Banyuwangi. Maybe Dila will join me on my long walk through East Java which even more urgently I anticipate.