I Also Know Many Pertinent Facts
Living here, it can often seem as if Evan knows everything.
This is a good thing. Certainly he knows everything relevant to living here as a scholar, though I do not. His knowledge of Indonesia is encyclopedic. He isn’t quite fluent, but he’s more than adequate. He’s got that commanding beard. Much as I’ve liked it here, I’m not in my element & probably never will be. It’s an odd asymmetry of power & knowledge to have going on for months & months. I am the dependent.
Today he looked up from the paper & asked me, “Where’s your ulma?” And I felt this minor elation that I could answer this, that the ULNA, with an N, is a bone in your forearm. Ha!
But this didn’t seem very important. When I asked him about the communist massacre in the 1960s here, he talked for about 45 minutes & it was so interesting—seriously—that I took notes. It is never a good idea to compare one’s knowledge with a professional scholar’s in their territory.
But this is okay. This is his specialty, not mine, & I’m used to it. Until the balance flips again on May 24th, when I leave for Singapore & Sydney, I just sort of cede control & let myself get towed along on the dinghy behind the ship, exclaiming & pointing out interesting stuff along the ride.
The finest point of this imbalance, however, happened to me last week when we were inside the arts complex’s Documentation Center. With its crème colored linoleum tile floor & crème walls, years-old magazines & clunky art, this looks like a 1960s public school library room, but with all the books in a musty room behind the counter. It occupies a humble second story & has an actual card catalog filled with crispy, typed cards, documenting Indonesian literature in its various forms from the late 1960s (naturally excluding anything done by artists with Communist affiliations).
That is: it’s filled with print records of modern Indonesian theatre.
Evan has spent hours here.
I have some suspicion that he is duplicating this entire archive & bringing it home with us.
While we waited for E to order his latest Xeroxes of…everything…cousin MF & moseyed around this room, trying to muster interest in the little acting & art awards, homely portraits & plaques set up along the undusted card catalog. I was able to identify a few faces of Indonesian theatre artists & authors on the wall—“This here is W.S. Rendra, Evan spent time at his artist’s compound in 1996…this is Asrul Sani, we saw a really dull play of his, his wife cast herself in the lead role…this is Pramoedya, he was imprisoned for 15 years & a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature…” & I even knew that this one dusty trophy for acting was fashioned in the shape of a bamboo angklung—the onomatopoetic name for the musical instrument.
This was like being able to name the flowers in an English garden. Neither useful nor interesting, but quaintly satisfying in that my command of one taxonomic group (in this case: Indonesian artists’ names & faces) was faintly improving.
The thing that got to me, though, the thing that really put a fine point on my level of knowledge here, was seeing the rodent droppings in the box propping up a trophy & instantly accessing the word for mouse poop.
Mouse poop. That’s what I can say in Indonesian. I included it in my 5 cent tour, “Here’s a finger painting of Jose Rizal Manua, the guy who runs the book store down there & directs everything on that stage, while in THERE you’ll see what the Javanese commonly refer to as kotoran tikus....”
Oh yeah, boy, I know all kinds of good stuff.
This is a good thing. Certainly he knows everything relevant to living here as a scholar, though I do not. His knowledge of Indonesia is encyclopedic. He isn’t quite fluent, but he’s more than adequate. He’s got that commanding beard. Much as I’ve liked it here, I’m not in my element & probably never will be. It’s an odd asymmetry of power & knowledge to have going on for months & months. I am the dependent.
Today he looked up from the paper & asked me, “Where’s your ulma?” And I felt this minor elation that I could answer this, that the ULNA, with an N, is a bone in your forearm. Ha!
But this didn’t seem very important. When I asked him about the communist massacre in the 1960s here, he talked for about 45 minutes & it was so interesting—seriously—that I took notes. It is never a good idea to compare one’s knowledge with a professional scholar’s in their territory.
But this is okay. This is his specialty, not mine, & I’m used to it. Until the balance flips again on May 24th, when I leave for Singapore & Sydney, I just sort of cede control & let myself get towed along on the dinghy behind the ship, exclaiming & pointing out interesting stuff along the ride.
The finest point of this imbalance, however, happened to me last week when we were inside the arts complex’s Documentation Center. With its crème colored linoleum tile floor & crème walls, years-old magazines & clunky art, this looks like a 1960s public school library room, but with all the books in a musty room behind the counter. It occupies a humble second story & has an actual card catalog filled with crispy, typed cards, documenting Indonesian literature in its various forms from the late 1960s (naturally excluding anything done by artists with Communist affiliations).
That is: it’s filled with print records of modern Indonesian theatre.
Evan has spent hours here.
I have some suspicion that he is duplicating this entire archive & bringing it home with us.
While we waited for E to order his latest Xeroxes of…everything…cousin MF & moseyed around this room, trying to muster interest in the little acting & art awards, homely portraits & plaques set up along the undusted card catalog. I was able to identify a few faces of Indonesian theatre artists & authors on the wall—“This here is W.S. Rendra, Evan spent time at his artist’s compound in 1996…this is Asrul Sani, we saw a really dull play of his, his wife cast herself in the lead role…this is Pramoedya, he was imprisoned for 15 years & a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature…” & I even knew that this one dusty trophy for acting was fashioned in the shape of a bamboo angklung—the onomatopoetic name for the musical instrument.
This was like being able to name the flowers in an English garden. Neither useful nor interesting, but quaintly satisfying in that my command of one taxonomic group (in this case: Indonesian artists’ names & faces) was faintly improving.
The thing that got to me, though, the thing that really put a fine point on my level of knowledge here, was seeing the rodent droppings in the box propping up a trophy & instantly accessing the word for mouse poop.
Mouse poop. That’s what I can say in Indonesian. I included it in my 5 cent tour, “Here’s a finger painting of Jose Rizal Manua, the guy who runs the book store down there & directs everything on that stage, while in THERE you’ll see what the Javanese commonly refer to as kotoran tikus....”
Oh yeah, boy, I know all kinds of good stuff.
posted by Anne E. Campisi at 12:49 AM
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