Wereldnatuurfonds en West-Papua

Het Wereld Natuurfonds en West-Papoea

Het Wereldnatuurfonds is volgens het (eigen) blad Panda al 30 jaar actief in West-Papua en brengt de soortenrijkdom en het landgebruik in kaart. Het bezoekt de dorpen en onderzoekt hoe het land wordt gebruikt en welke waarde dat heeft voor de bewoners. Het zal een plan opstellen zonder dat de natuur of het bestaansrecht van de lokale bevolking in gedrang komen , aldus het blad Panda.

Dit is goed bedoeld, maar wie gelooft dat dit werkelijk mogelijk is? De bestaanswijzen van de Papoea's zijn duizenden jaren oud en geleidelijk ontwikkeld in wisselwerking tussen mens en natuur. Daar is geen plan aan te pas gekomen. De uitdrukking bestaansrecht van de bevolking doet het ergste vermoeden. Wat is het bestaansrecht van een plan, zou je beter kunnen vragen?

Silicon Valley or the Grand Valley in West Papua?

Silicon Valley or Grand Valley?

Who knows the name of the Grand Valley? Who knows where this valley is located, in which part of the world? The American scientist Archbold discovered the valley in 1938. It is called the Baliem valley in West Papua (Indonesia). From his plane, it looked like little Holland, a pattern of tiny fields and dykes, of irrigated crop lands.

Who doesn't know the Silicon Valley? It's the name of the famous IT valley in Northern California. Before the explosive growth of the computer industries, it was a friendly agricultural valley of orchards. Who knows the name of the valley in those days? This Santa Clara Valley was called The Valley of Heart's delight.

In 1932, a Dutch geographer and later professor at the University of Minnesota ,J.O.M. Broek wrote a thesis on the changes of the cultural landscapes of this valley.

I studied human geography at the same university in Holland as prof. Broek. In 2009, I wrote a poetical geography of the Grand valley, called Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei.

I like those coincidences, those interconnections, those airy similarities.

Bij de Papoea's op bezoek

Bij de Papoea's op bezoek

Om de nieuwsgierigheid naar de mysterieuze vallei van de Papoea's te prikkelen. Hier een voorproefje van het boekje 'Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei' dat zo juist is verschenen en te bestellen bij lulu.nl Zie elders op dit blog

Het boekje bestaat uit een 30 tal korte doorkijkjes naar de vallei en zijn bewoners, de Papoeas.


LAND VAN STILTE

Ik was in de Baliemvallei. Ik was er kort. Ik heb geluisterd, mijn stem niet verheven. Ik wist niet op welke toon ik spreken kon. Als een vreemde zou ik spreken, mogelijk zelfs als een verdwaalde stomme mens die geen woorden uiten kan. Welke stem zal ik gebruiken, nu ik terug ben, ver weg. De stem van de hoop, de weemoed, van de moed der wanhoop. De stem van de Papoea’s? Kan ik met goed fatsoen hun stem lenen? Maar ik spreek en versta hun taal niet. Ik begrijp niets van wat ik hoor dat ze zeggen. Ik ben niet de enige. Stel dat ze praten over hun land en je weet niet wat ze bedoelen. Je weet eigenlijk van niets. Zij kennen elk pad, elke bergrichel, elke bocht in de weg. Ze glijden niet uit. Ze weten waar water uit de bergwand sijpelt, welke insecten zoet smaken, wanneer de vlinders zich ontpoppen, ze weten waar hun grondgebied op houdt, de koffie groeit en ze een muurtje kunnen bouwen voor de veldjes met zoete aardappel. Zonder moeite vinden ze de schelpfossielen in de modder van de rivier, de vruchten die eetbaar zijn, het hout voor de omheining, de orchidee in het bos. Welk land, zeg je? Dat van de Papoea’s, dat dáár in de grote vallei, dat land ook
achter de bergen. Hun land, vraag je, alsof het niet hun land is en als ik knik, haal je de schouders op. Het land dat ze al dertig duizend jaar bewonen, bedoel je, dat ze al zevenduizend jaar bewerken met hun handen? Ja, maar dat weten ze zelf niet, denk je. Hoe kunnen ze tellen tot zevenduizend als je leefruimte ophoudt bij het volgende dorp? Hoe kunnen ze de tijd meten als de zwart gerookte mummie van een driehonderd jaar terug de oudste voorvader is, die ze kennen. Ze hebben geen geschriften, geen documenten, geen stenen gebouwen, de archeologie zoekt naar vreemde, onbekende dingen inhun land, zullen ze zeggen. Het zoeken in en om de dorpen maakt
alleen maar wantrouwig, het zoeken in hun grond, die wordt
omgewoeld en mee genomen voor het C14-onderzoek om de
ouderdom van menselijke voorwerpen te bepalen, van zaden die achtergebleven zijn tussen het menselijk en dierlijk afval rond verdwenen dorpen. Zij mogen zelf nog de vindplaatsen aanwijzen, begeleiden als gidsen, de geheimen van de bodem tonen. Meer niet. Dat is genoeg, zeggen de zoekers. Maar wat gevonden wordt, is toch van hun en niet van de vinders, moeten ze denken. Het is hun land ten slotte, waarover we het hebben. Dat weten ze zonder het te zeggen. Daarvoor hebben ze geen C-14 nodig, geen bewijzen uit hun eigen bodem. Ze kennen ook de regenboog zonder de kennis van optische wetten. Ze zwijgen. Dat hebben ze geleerd. De vallei is een
land van stilte, van ongesproken woorden, ongezegde dingen, van doodse stilte. Goed, de wind roert zich, de rivier stroomt, de mensen lopen naar hun dorp. Maar ze zwijgen. Hun land sluimert.

welcome to the visitors

Hello Visitors,


This blog is about my travels. Enjoy the stories and the pictures. Visitors, view my books and get your inspiration. The world is exciting, just see and love it. Leaf through the pages, float on my words and keep cool. Airports are the cathedrals of this time, the forests are our souls. Forget amusement and glamor, listen and hear the silence of the earth.


In 2009, I traveled to West-Papua (Indonesia) and  visited the Baliemvalley in the heart of the island. Up till 1938, it was a white spot on the map of the western world. It still is a mysterious place to go.  I wrote a little book about it, meditations and memories. A new style of geography, an experience of body and soul. (In Dutch)





"Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei"


It is available at Lulu.com (verkrijgbaar bij Lulu.com)
.

Baliem Valley - book (in Dutch)

Hello Visitors,

This blog is about my travels. Enjoy the stories and the pictures.

My last travel led me to West-Papua (Indonesia). I visited the Baliem valley, that was a white spot on the map for a long time. It still is a mysterious place to go. Recently, I wrote a book about it. In Dutch!



"Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei"
It is available at Lulu. (verkrijgbaar bij Lulu)
.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua

1

‘Watch me. I stand alone. No, I do not long for compassion. This is my site, this my position in real life,’ she says. ‘May be you saw me before, perhaps on another spot. (Think f.e. of the water color W. Turner, classical landscape Finberg Complete Collection nr. CCLXIII-189) I am one of the many. I am so different you even don’t understand; you don’t see it either. My dress is made of soft organic material almost like velvet. Feel it yourself. Touch me tender. Out of the fog I am here in a sudden standstill like silence in dramatic music. Nearly a ghost but in a living body as most ghosts are. Emerging from nowhere, I am your scary dream and all of a sudden gone, though still here. I’m the beginning of the forest or the end of the woods, when all trees have gone for ever. Maybe I‘m the last one you should take care of, admire and revere as the old Druids did long ago. Almost a fossil I am, a remnant of the past. I remind you of something you never saw and though has always been present in your mind. A shadow without body, a body with no shadow. Your dream of last night. A dark blue deep sea where life wavers and thrives. Under water, deep down, life without shape or contours, just a density life passes through. But who are you and your camera? You remind me of Marcovaldo, the man of Calvino who left the countryside and moved to the incomprehensible city. His twin brother you are, I mean, who left the town in opposite direction and got lost in nature. Why do you roam this lonely place?’

 She once tumbled down. On this very site she beautifully hides. Like a queen she lies fully stretched and calm and royal. How many years ago she came down, I don’t know. Long enough to let herself overgrown, all over her body, smooth, lovely and incessantly but slowly and unnoticed as life creeps and seeps in her untangled and hideous ways. Mosses, lichens and spider’s webs all over and close to her secret spot everywhere. Her bark is a fine fur coat, a nursery for insects, ants, bugs, beetles. Occasionally bears sniff around for honey from her delicate skin. Look at the colors, the fine tissues and the tiny sprouts from her bark. A micro world of crawling life generation after generation constructing and destroying life she produces in an intense and inextricable symbiosis. A queen for ever in the cloud forest.

 Why is she that impressive and so untouchable real although invisible for the largest part? Imagine her height, all the foliage and the rustling in the mountain wind. She lives in different spheres, layers, up into the sky, the universe. By the way, what will be her age? Count the rings of her trunk inside. Imagine you have to climb her all the way to the top. A trunk that huge and wide as if the roots even want to protect her hidden head like a Buddha I once saw in an ancient city of the past. Growing high up in the sky, the skin hides the flow of life juices underneath. All the way as if there is no gravity, no force to keep her low. One needs high heels to admire her all over her fertile body and is still to short. And tall she is, indefinitely taller she will grow beyond imagination, beyond my time of life. She helps to grow herself by creating darkness around her foot and middle, striving for sunlight at the top. When dogs are still puppies one should look at their feet to imagine how big they will grow as adults. This is impossible for the queens of a cloud forest which cover the slopes of the mountains.

Who built this wide bridge so deeply in the tropical forest. You know the names of Juan, Julio, Sergio and maybe a Maria or Clara? They put the pillars, they layed the fundamentals, they dug into the slope of the valley sides. They got a lot of money or they had no money at all and no alternative as jobless workers. They labored and sweated, they made love not knowing anything of the children of the king who would never reach each other. The valley was too deep. Or a big company brought with loaders the mechanical parts and the mechanics connected the parts and disappeared as if nothing happened here and the birds came back to their nests and the trees restarted their eternal rustling. A cast iron frame under the high canopy, framing endlessly the passageway over the deep valley floor. It reminds me of my toy box and its mechanical parts, I played with for hours. A bridge was one of the most ingenious object to construct. Okay. Is this the end of the hike, the floor of the invisible valley too deep and that wide? What about the echo in this dense forest of the valley? Even the fall of a stone, a real big stone would not be heard. There is no floor? This is a floating world? Or is it the entry, the gateway without name to nothingness hiding under densely overhanging foliage. It is all too close, even your words vanish, the silence is in front of you, starts right at your feet. Maybe it is the beginning of a new life on the other side, the unknown. Perhaps you need wings to fly like angels have.

2

Standing on the windward side of the crater I breathe deeply as one does to prevent hyperventilation or when one feels enclosed in too small a room with too many people. An prescient breath as if to defend one self against an attack. Perhaps as the people did in the subway of Tokyo, when terrorists put poisonous gas in the deep tube. The other side of the volcano crater is closed today, forbidden to climb. It is cheaper to close down a rim side than to pay well equipped rescue workers. Do you hear the sirens? Clouds of sulfur would suffocate all life, yours included. By the way, did you forget that sulfurous openings in the earth and the ocean floors are the primeval birthplace of life? That is where the archaic bacteria thrived and still seem to do. That is where we will be deadly poisoned. Strange whims of nature which disturbs one’s linear idea of evolution of life on this earth. Look how barren these slopes are. Where ever you want to stand on the leeward or the windward side, it always depends on the wind and your love for life.

 A parking place next to the crater of the active volcano. A big place, a unique place for a thriller, a perfect murder in the poisonous air. It will be difficult to remember the cars, the drivers, the passengers one has seen although there are not so many cars today.
The possibilities of unsolved murder, however, are almost countless even apart from the sulfur itself and its untraceable deviling in the air. The volcano a real temptation and a challenge. A trail up the hill in the back to have a better sight on the crater is an escape of last resort. Smoke. All of a sudden the wind turns. People run back to their cars. The murderer is there, misuses the chaos? Do you smell the sulfur seeping into the lungs? Do you feel the tremble of the mountain the animals feel. There are no animals you say?

 Cozy vultures, black and big from close by, on the watch in the wind still trees, near the very top of the trees. They sit together for ever, on the watch but calm and stoic as old philosophers meditating the wind, the sky and the time. Although chased away from their nest on the sandy soil just a moment ago when we climbed to their nests, hiking through long grasses on the rather steep mountain slope. Now, we watch and they negate us as if we are air though their potential enemy, they know. A picture of lamed freedom, wide view. The camera clicks and another time. No movement in the body, no turn of the narrow, weird necks. Soon they will be back on the nest. Out of sight, out of the picture. They trust nobody, maybe Marcovaldo knows more about them, perhaps he is their friend and partner of natural conversation about rain, wind, the heat and the cold, the thin air, their weight and the indispensable vigor of their wings.

 I call you: gardens in the tree etc. No black bird, no early morning, no wind. I call you: beautiful – a variance of a Dutch verse (Jan Hanlo). I call you ghosts in the night, to continue in my way this verse, over which the wind brushes past. Slowly moving beings of the past, here present. Seen at daylight they remind me of Ireland where I have never been.

Prehistoric beings stopped developing, evolution interrupted. Desolated nests of big birds, flown away, disappeared, coming back next year or later. Too much sulfur in the air. I call you: beautiful.








3

A twin sister of the fallen queen.
A fairy tale about a double personality and schizophrenia in the woods, dangerous for nature lovers from the city, who adore indiscriminately everything outdoors. Dreamers, hikers, magicians of their own world. And she with the same age, same miracle of micro life. Twins are sensitive for unseen things, they say, clairvoyant a word for what we cannot see or touch or smell. And so it always begins, nothingness, the invisible and then we speak of creation or a miracle and we call it belief, how would we call it otherwise, nonsense maybe and you think that is really different or even better? A tree never walks away – as long as one does not read poems. Sometimes a tree falls down. Poor queen, poor reader. Marcovaldo does not like to leave the forest.

 Out of the way, a hearse is coming up. Slowly, a kind of full speed ,appropriate for death like music changing from andante to vivace. When I was young the older men would take off their hat out of respect. Respect for the dead, for death? A man, a woman, a child, who knows, that is on its way, going somewhere unknown? See the man on the left, in front of the hearse, half turning away, with his mobile and plastic bag, see the horses and their knitted white blankets, the cab man in his jacket, the mourners, one with his bike at hand. They don’t take off their hat, they don’t wear a hat these days. They are all busy, in touch and think of tomorrow, when this street will be empty or crowded by people who go to the market. Yes, better think of tomorrow when death comes by. Who feels at ease when death is passing along? Life passes too fast. I miss the hats.

 Is it Saint Anthony or a local notable, a man of standing? The saint of the birds, the patron of the sufferers of pestilence? What is the difference, his holiness. Look, the way he listens to what we do not hear. Birds sing, prisoners call or shout, the earth deep down trembles and sighs, that is what he listens to so concentrated and far away at the same time? He holds his arm we do not feel the pain of. He measures the rhythm of life, his body, the sensation of the touch? He slavers the honor of his statue he strived for during his life? And is he happy that he cannot see the sculptured person around the corner? His colleague, competitor, his friend for ever now? He is proud to be in his company, both of them enjoy their own world, status and the people who admire them. Maybe he thinks why do you take a picture of me and not of him around the corner? Something shameless, not that much polite? You are a friend?

They look to be a group of laborers. Do they perform an act for the publicity of the bank? Or are they deliberating and preparing a strike. They smoke secretly, you assume, a cigarette outdoors and talk about the girl last night?


They look tough guys standing strong, shoulders, arms and hands strongly. They stand in front of a bank, white color workers? No women, apart from the living one who sits on the stairs. Maybe also one in the middle and one at the left hand side. Workers at least. Who brought up this idea of a collective statue? An old tradition or a new initiative to support the common people?

4

‘The man on the right side of the wall reminds me of Kafka, the famous author of Der Prozess. I wonder how the mural has been painted. By one man or a collection of street painters, a guild of revolutionaries, on order or free of charge. I did not know Kafka wears big glasses when overseas. Wherever I see him, I’m always jealous of his full black hair. It is his best protection against all odds and the source of his endless writing about man who lost his way in his own human and dehumanized labyrinth. His hair that stands for ever, gives his eyes a dreamlike, absent, almost staring look. No, a dreamlike amazement as if the world will never end and does not show where it begins. Clearly, Kafka is lost and nearly bewildered although restraint just like the fat woman with her shopping bag is in front of him on the sidewalk. Not knowing she is fat and lost. Waiting as the boy and the man in the side alley. Waiting as if nothing happens in town. As if there is no process going on, for decades and even almost a century.

The mural is his dream. A colorful, dynamic and vital dream, turning over and over in his unconscious mind. It is the man on his back on the stone bench beneath the mural who is the core of the picture. He is right in the middle however not intrusive. Look how calm and motionless he lies on the bench. His name and his secret is Marcovaldo? He is lost in his dream of the countryside, the land and the animals. Or he is just tired of his job as a night guard in a ten stories apartment? Soon he will awake, stand up and walk into the street, into the crowd. It will be too hot in the sun, the dream will be over. Who will recognize him, when he enters the big building and says hello to his wife even when she is not at home. He will turn on the music and think of his dream. He will try to remember what the dream was about. When the rain comes down like a drizzle, the paint will drip, the dream be gone?

I see the bells swing in the tower. No, that is a lie. The first thing is the sound of the bells I hear when I walk over the square. Then I see the swing. A man asks me where I come from. I love the church taken too close by and the bells hanging still. Somebody in the tower has a duty to ring bells every hour. He will be deaf or become deaf of the bells. Or he is blind as many muezzin are? The church is too big for the small digital camera? I like the thick walls and the dark entrances which cover the people who come in and will loose their soul for a moment. The dark will veil your sin and open your heart. The holy is separated from the secular by the dark entrance. Will I climb the stairs? I love the paint and plaster coming down from the walls. It makes the church even more solid and absorbs better the sound of the bells. Nobody minds what I think.

They look square as they are. Townsmen, officials, bureaucrats or doctors Marcovaldo would think.
See how they wear their costumes, look at their shoes.
It makes them cool. It is a privilege to look at us, they seem to say. They communicate with each other as they always have done, no emotions and reticent upon common people.
This is a well organized society with a hierarchy of professions and persons, important and less important. We are the intellectuals, we wear glasses. Backs turned to each other, they transform the space into a square and shape their mind and their manners. Gentlemen of standing, impressive and strict. They dislike noisy street life and boisterous men of the street. They are honored not loved, I think.

5

Sunset in town. A market place. One hears the drums from the back streets. Little boys come around the corner and jump up and down.
Time to make music, to earn money, to make the people happy and to forget all troubles of the day.The night will bring music and dance.

The boys bring tall and glamorous ladies to the marketplace. They carry the ladies with care and joy. Well dressed in red and beige, tall as the arch of the church entrance they are. The ladies swing left and right, they go for a dance. They bow and greet the trees and the houses and the church around the marketplace.

 They smile and the birds become silent looking straight into the smiling faces of the dancing ladies.And, please, watch the fine woven window on a secret spot in their dress.The drums grow louder and faster. The tall ladies dance and smile. Innocent, peeping boys?








6

The crowded bus we took you do not see. Neither the reception we got at the entrance of the hot springs nor the troop of young guys and girls tagged to us. We pay an entrance fee. We choose a guide. So, they all guided us, told stories by turns. Here is the mud of sulfur and bubbles, the earth breathes red. The boys and girls jump from hot stone to hot stone. To show they understand their profession and they care for us, our money. They stir with a long stick in the pulsing blood of the earth. Melted, red iron from the stomach of the earth. In the far back a smoking volcano difficult to reach if not impossible.The children still fight to be the only and exclusive guide. The losers start already to curse and use their stick trying to hurt the others. They become angry, shout in frustration. Money is what they want, money they all need. I don’t remember if they all got money or some of them twice.

The bus does not stop for the beach. The bus goes all the way to the end of the small peninsula. We are halfway the afternoon and it is still hot. For miles the beach is on the left behind a row of houses, behind gardens and trees. Sometimes we get a glimpse of the flat, greenish sea. Women step down from the bus, colorful dressed women climb the bus on their way home. The beach is a promise. At this hour, this day of the year there is nobody on the beach. No girls to look at, no guys to play baseball, no bars for a drink or a snack. Are we disappointed? The beach is long and broad, the beach is light to dark sand in front of empty hotels and empty terraces.This is not too bad, it is a privilege. The sun begins almost unnoticed somewhere its setting and all of a sudden we get company on the beach. A lonely swine walks black and slowly on the beach. He enjoys the beach, the sunset, lonely as he is. One never knows about the next day, particularly not a fat swine.

 Miraculous island in the lake. The immense big lake once robbed of its very fish, the name I forgot, by a president who was more interested in money than fish. Fish sold to Japanese for their never stilled taste for fish. However, beautiful lake, I will sing a song, a song of your volcanic beauty and your stillness. Behind the border of the lake, a strip of land is a small pond in the woods. The water shallow and dark. Closed in, a kind of small moor, no a muddy pond as I said. A fallen tree out of sight serves as a bridge to the other side, the invisible trail through the woods to the meadows, the horses and the cows. But, stop and look. Here on the spot. Incomprehensible sunlight between the trees, red and white reflected by the pond, the dark water and a trunk of another old tree fallen down. Secrets of illumination, the breaking of materialized light. Camera obscura and infra red at the same time.

The day ends, the night comes, I happen to be here. No thoughts no worries. A floating house covered with straw on an iron frame.To fish or to live in. Not a living being to see. This is the sea and the shore, endlessly stretching behind what we see. However, no Hemingway or his old man, no Anaïs Nin in her glass boat. Nor my old aunt who lived in a so called living boat during the War. A boat amidst reed, her apartment in the main city an address to hide her beloved brother, my role model as a stoic man who took all pleasure and pain for granted. And she taught me to walk over a narrow foot board, later to keep my balance in life. This is a quiet place. On the left, almost on shore a shining object, a car on its side or an unrecognizable machine. They are part of the scene. They are indispensable. The picture will be ruined when one of the objects will be removed.

7

This reminds me of the paintings of Dennis Hoppper.The clear planes of color, the straight lines, the horizontals of the chair without end. Painting with a stop watch. The magic touch to immobilize and to bring to a standstill the things he paints. The fixation of things and people. The excommunication of movement. All things ready made, smooth, material, finished, unchangeable.
Just there, for ever. It is late in the afternoon, the sky is gray all over the place, the wide open place. The sky is cloudy, fully covered, too damp, we will not get a sunset. This chair on the beach, that ‘s it. Emptiness, okay. A concrete object made abstract, on a lonely beach. Emptiness and a desolate evening. I do not dare to go there and sit in the chair - thin as air. Soon it will rain again, Marcovaldo, you know.

 I interrupt my walk, stay stand still on the trail, left and right under wood and trees. My legs stop, my breathing slows down, my eyes focus. So close to the eye, so dangerously near to the spider. Who is afraid of whom? First I see the green leaf, then the spider and finally ‘spider eats spider.’ An order of observation, an order of the visual, the logic of observation and the mind. That is how it works, without hesitation, spontaneously and surprised. Or the other way around. Curiosity that alerts, registers every movement, opens the eye. A scene of a murderous embrace, sneaky, cruel, tasty or just nature at work? The spider as victim and victor, the endless transformation, mutation, the law of survival and fate. The jungle, they call it and I think of wars and wars. The leaf is eaten and then the next and the next and the next spider.

 A long walk today. We pass a hamlet and another hamlet all different and alike. In the last hamlet we see him. A family in and around the farm.


Tall trees and a grass field in front. A man on a horse rides into the house, the stable where they live together. We greet, wave hands, we pass the farm. Some minutes later. I hear a sound, I hear a trot, turn around and there they are, the young guy and proudly his horse. You see the white blot on his nose, the dead trees in the back. My camera just in time. A living statue. No neighing. Admiration of vitality and daily courage. This is just his start in life. Oh young man. The beautiful years to come and the horses and the girls.

 Be careful, walk slowly and with prudence. It looks to be your trail you walk. Look at your feet, your big muddy shoes. They are invaders, the ants you do not see, will think. You cross their path, spoil their route, destroy their meticulously walked out streets to the other side. Incessantly they march from right to left and back. Or they form two armies, do they build two ant hills? I do not know where the queen hides. It is not plausible there are two queen so close to each other. Hidden behind the leaves, the ants industriously cross the path, our path? Continue to look at them and you will be remunerated: they move slowly, well disciplined, the greenish leaves as their camouflage as long as they move at pace. Soldiers with a firm belief, a strong will, spurred by the scent of the queen. Being on their way to become a hill, food in the storage, child–ants, movers of leaves? Cleaners of the forest, the ground, trails and restless builders of hills. Recycling leaves and life.

 My kingdom for a horse. Incredible. I do not believe my eyes. I zoom in and there is a horse that bends its neck forward, tastes and carefully sips salt water from the almost flat sea. It explores its realm. A new kingdom is born. I feel like an intruder. Imagine. I tell somebody a story about a horse.

Once upon a day a horse decides to go for walk and for a drink to the beach. It took some time, the horse however found the beach all by itself. It tasted the water and said this is exactly what I was after. And the horse established a kingdom and lived for ever along the beach. Nobody would believe it. Look. A small white surf in the back shows a silent, windless afternoon.

8

A rock in the light surf. Black or dark, greenish or dark blue its color depending on the reflection of the afternoon sunlight on the water. An immobile and quiet image. Perfection. For a while I forget where I’m. In Costa Rica, in Thailand, where rocks are scattered along the limestone coast. In no man’s land. No horses, no people, no sails. Below the surface may be fishes swim in circles or straight lines after fishes in circles and lines. Perhaps sea grasses wave forward and backward. A labyrinth to play tag, to keep the fishes in shape and sexy.

 The beach close to sunset. A moment of the day you do not recognize when you consult your wrist watch. I do not have a watch since I do not work anymore. The locals live of tourism or drugs. It depends and makes a difference. It sometimes isn’t needed to repair things anymore. The mind of the last ones in disrepair. This man repairs a hammock. He rents rooms and tells about his travels in the Caribbean. He is an honest man, you see. I like his face and the palm leaves. A serious face and a bit sad, I don’t know why. Even more serious is what you do not see in the picture. Nor you hear the sound, the dim bum on the stony floor underneath the hammock. A man fell out of his hammock. At my age, it takes quite a time to become fully repaired.

 It is the crowded city, the hurry, being on the way. To the market, the office, the church, the cemetery and the circus. Women with bags, civil servants,clowns, priests – I forget the order – undertakers as finalists. Here again the camera as stop watch. Look at the leg of the shopping woman, her foot up in the air, her walk interrupted. She is the example for the statue, made bigger and more inevitable. Unmistakable this is a woman, in bronze and solid from the outside. Big, mighty and vigorous.


No need for helpers, for men, no jokes about emancipation here? A stand in the way for pedestrians or a reminder not to hurry in the middle of life. Look at her breasts and big thighs, her powerful performance. She is untouchable?

 An explosion of the sun, new suns are born, it seems.
The sky mysterious and threatening. What will happen? A volcano exploded and ashes spread over the sky? Right, it rains and is still raining, it drizzles. Fine raindrops on the lens of the camera. The sea in blue horizontal planes and contours stretching endlessly wide and for ever.

Almost a painting thanks to the rain, the digital technique and the clumsiness of the camera man. Photography as art or the beginning of a new art, to double and redouble reality, to color and discolor the world, to fix the flowing and streaming, to cut to pieces and paste collages, to endlessly repeat and re-create, to start anew and then we see again the explosion of the sun.

9

Finally, that’s what we are here for. You forgot, the hike became a bit more comprehensive with all those detours, pictures and words.The blue balustrade to sit on and to turn your back, that is the perfect way to show he is a bit indignant. He would have been really angry if he knew we went first to a natural history museum of frogs and toads. Let me call it a ranolarium.



We were that afraid to miss them. Now he is here, in the wild, on his balcony. Taken in the dark of the night. Flash lighted. We will never know if he was that fast to turn in time. Afraid of the flashlight or of red eyes. May be he slept already or better is still asleep. He is not very interested.

This one is more of a vain character, not afraid and slightly undisciplined.
He doesn’t feel threatened. Now I am here, he says, look at me. My narrow eyes are not regular. They express my inner emotions and my self respect. My skin is well shaped, colored and dotted, sensitive and vulnerable, but tough and flexible. I do not hide here. Admire me and tell a story about my appearance when you are back home. My color is just slightly different from the leaf I sit on. Mark my words. As soon as you leave me, you will hear from me.The night just starts.

It is the last day, an organized tour and rain and clouds on top of the volcano. It is cool. A cloud forest is not a contradictio in terminis although we feel to be at the end of the world, its last, final, end terms. The forest shows its clouds – to honor its name - and not much more. Okay, the trees breathe dampness, fog, mist. We recognize the majestic queens we love so much. Paved roads and pebbles and wooden framed stairs.


Nearby there should be a lake, a famous colored lake. Watch the signs and the information board. Here we are near the crater of the Poas Volcano in a national park not far from San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Read the text. This picture is what I call framing reality.

Hotel Cortez Azul. Last night. One dog, two keys, two locks, many more cast iron bars, one frame? Do you here the early morning frogs, Marcovaldo? Or is it the plane?








Copyright: Photos by Derk Cools and Ivan Nagelkerken

Costa Rica and Nicaragua

My Journey in the Spring of 2004

Do you love frogs? No, I do not mean frog legs at dinner, but frogs in nature, alive and ready to jump. Then, go to Costa Rica, a country with at least 150 of known amphibian species. May be, you will miss one or two, don’t worry, the rest is available but, for sure, very difficult to find by day. And, furthermore, I can assure you, there is more to see. Think of the volcanoes, the cloud forests and tropical beaches. This variety of landscapes makes it difficult to choose where to go, although it is not really a big country. The capital is in the middle, a crossroad of overcrowded highways. So, you can go all directions but the capital. If you are interested in frogs go to mountains, leave the city to consumers, people who prefer to be entertained. By the way, it is a cultural city and offers a lot of things to do, I heard from a lady in Cahuita, who went every weekend to San José for concerts, she said. At least it is a five hour drive, so I guess she stayed there overnight. She was an attractive woman, I remember. And what about Nicaragua, the northern neighbor country, even closer by than Cahuita on the Caribbean shore?

If one really likes history and culture,- and of course you do - one will enjoy the old colonial towns of Léon and Granáda, their small alleys, churches, squares, bars, catholic processions and the little boys who play music and carry giant woman-puppets through the streets. And students show you how they study and the whereabouts of nightlife. Sorry, I won’t talk about the civil war and what it has done to the country, the people. They earn more knowledge, analysis and debate. During the civil war, I did not do anything but reading the newspapers about it and feeling myself indignant. So, I lost my rights here. For the best, it is over now or almost over apart from maybe some far off pockets in the mountains and some vagary groups of former soldiers or other enterprising men. There are still rumors and it is perhaps not  safe in all parts of the  this rugged country . When I see soldiers in countries I travel, it remains difficult to distinguish between the feeling of being protected or threatened. I did not, however, notice any danger or insecurity during my travel by public bus in Nicaragua. I felt at ease. And for nature, the landscape is even more amazing, say tantalizing, than in Costa Rica. A long ridge of active, smoking volcanoes and sulfurous hot springs, in the south a large lake and a marvelous volcanic island called poetically Ometepe. The name reminds me of the word onomatope with a tiny difference of spelling and meaning. Sounds live their own life in the human mind. And beautiful it is, this island. As if one comes back in a small, traditional world of a bucolic rhythm, cows, horses, birds of prey, farmers and fishermen.Take the ferry and a public bus, it is okay. The hostels are picturesque, sometimes still of colonial style.The people are relaxed. Time is fading out.

To be honest I did not really prepare for the travel to these countries in Central America. At least not the way I did when I traveled to Yucatan and Guatemala, along the Ruta Maya. So, no travel guides, no stories, no maps, no friends over there, just a little booklet in a secondhand bookstore. I bought it in the Dog Ear bookshop at the corner of the Valencia Street, a parallel street of the Mission in San Francisco. Outside the store, every morning, not too early, I think about ten o’clock the shopkeeper put some boxes with second/third hand books on the sidewalk.  It is one of the many stores, but a good one, cozy and intimate as a bookshop should be. I remember its name from the brown paper bag I got, a bit too large, for the books. I’m not a lover of dogs neither of dog ears. A book should be stainless even a second hand book. And dog ears remind me of swine ears, a delicacy here on the island of Curacao at Christmas. ( I am vegetarian) The title of the booklet caught my eye ‘tracking the vanishing frogs.’ In those days the topic was already outdated. Frogs came back all over the world – without warning or explanation – from nowhere? All by themselves silently or loud out. The title, however, intrigued me, a memory of the seventies, when the first alarming signals of a world wide expanding pollution became loud, clear and urgent but untidy. Chapter 2 was called the Costa Rica Gold in which a golden toad was charmingly compared to Marilyn Monroe. An exciting comparison particularly for somebody who doesn’t know the difference between a frog and a toad – something for a herpetologist not for a common hiker. I liked the colored pictures of toads and frogs in the booklet and of course the photograph of the golden toad of Monte Verde in Costa Rica and the subtitle: ‘This stunning toad hasn’t been seen since 1989.’ That is what was meant by vanishing frogs. Something strange and mysterious, that triggered my imagination and sense of adventure. Something that sounded like a challenge, possibly a new duty. Tracking the vanishing, a vague similarity to the finding of the Grail. Who would not loose track? A peaceful enterprise, when I take into account that the pacifistic Quakers started the community in Monte Verdi and laid the basis for this Natural Reserve. Do you here the Beatles?

So I bought the booklet, that brought me to Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the spring of 2004. And that was all I prepared for the hike to these two countries. Fortunately, I have a more or less metaphysical mentality and do enjoy all kind of unsolved questions. It helps me to return to a form of basic life free from luxury and solved problems.The travel starts when I start the travel. As the Chinese say a long march begins by the first step.This time I had a digital camera to put my brains to a standstill and to witness at the same time I was hiking in Costa Rica and later on through Nicaragua. Maybe, it doesn’t matter which places I hike. Of more importance is, how I look at the landscape, the volcanoes, craters, cloud forests, towns, cities, statues, beaches, cities, people and horses, swine, vultures, ants and not to forget the toads and frogs hiding by day but caught at night. I like them all as I do dislike them all at times. A metaphysical view?
Too big a word for keeping distance to the world around in order to connect myself intensely, better and even more directly to her. l try to keep my mind open, not hampered by bookish wisdom or knowledge. Rather difficult for a desk man. Implicitly, I hope to feel better equipped for the concrete and the particular, and to stick to that level of experience. I do not turn away from information and knowledge, but I know ‘enough’, I think, to go for this way of traveling. When I show here as a first picture a marvelous tree in the cloud forest, I know of course frogs live up there more safely from predators – apart from snakes - between the water carrying leaves of the hanging Bromelia.

And talking of amphibians, the terrain becomes water and land, their history goes far back to the geological time called Carboniferous.To know this, I admit, makes one even more patient to look for a while at pictures of frogs, animals with amazing back legs which enable them to suddenly jump into a fairy tale or a poem. The best way to loose track?

Anyhow, here I do present a small collection of pictures and a guiding text in a frame in order to make the images autonomous, creating and becoming in this way a world in itself. Enjoy the miniatures and go yourself to create a world of your own. Good luck.

Traveling in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Derk Cools

Central America in Pictures

Zeven Dagen in de Baliemvallei - Derk Cools

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Mr. Cools recently visited Papua New Guinea. He wrote about his visit in Zeven dagen in de Baliemvallei.  

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  (Seven days in the Baliem valley) In Dutch.

________________________________________________________

Uit het boek:


LAND VAN STILTE

Ik was in de Baliemvallei. Ik was er kort. Ik heb geluisterd, mijn stem niet verheven. Ik wist niet op welke toon ik spreken kon. Als een vreemde zou ik spreken, mogelijk zelfs als een verdwaalde stomme mens die geen woorden uiten kan. Welke stem zal ik gebruiken, nu ik terug ben, ver weg. De stem van de hoop, de weemoed, van de moed der wanhoop. De stem van de Papoea’s? Kan ik met goed fatsoen hun stem lenen? Maar ik spreek en versta hun taal niet. Ik begrijp niets van wat ik hoor dat ze zeggen. Ik ben niet de enige. Stel dat ze praten over hun land en je weet niet wat ze bedoelen. Je weet eigenlijk van niets. Zij kennen elk pad, elke bergrichel, elke bocht in de weg. Ze glijden niet uit. Ze weten waar water uit de bergwand sijpelt, welke insecten zoet smaken, wanneer de vlinders zich ontpoppen, ze weten waar hun grondgebied op houdt, de koffie groeit en ze een muurtje kunnen bouwen voor de veldjes met zoete aardappel. Zonder moeite vinden ze de schelpfossielen in de modder van de rivier, de vruchten die eetbaar zijn, het hout voor de omheining, de orchidee in het bos. Welk land, zeg je? Dat van de Papoea’s, dat dáár in de grote vallei, dat land ook achter de bergen. Hun land, vraag je, alsof het niet hun land is en als ik knik, haal je de schouders op. Het land dat ze al dertig duizend jaar bewonen, bedoel je, dat ze al zevenduizend jaar bewerken met hun handen? Ja, maar dat weten ze zelf niet, denk je. Hoe kunnen ze tellen tot zevenduizend als je leefruimte ophoudt bij het volgende dorp? Hoe kunnen ze de tijd meten als de zwart gerookte mummie van een driehonderd jaar terug de oudste voorvader is, die ze kennen. Ze hebben geen geschriften, geen documenten, geen stenen gebouwen, de archeologie zoekt naar vreemde, onbekende dingen inhun land, zullen ze zeggen. Het zoeken in en om de dorpen maakt alleen maar wantrouwig, het zoeken in hun grond, die wordt omgewoeld en mee genomen voor het C14-onderzoek om de ouderdom van menselijke voorwerpen te bepalen, van zaden die achtergebleven zijn tussen het menselijk en dierlijk afval rond verdwenen dorpen. Zij mogen zelf nog de vindplaatsen aanwijzen, begeleiden als gidsen, de geheimen van de bodem tonen. Meer niet. Dat is genoeg, zeggen de zoekers. Maar wat gevonden wordt, is toch van hun en niet van de vinders, moeten ze denken. Het is hun land ten slotte, waarover we het hebben. Dat weten ze zonder het te zeggen. Daarvoor hebben ze geen C-14 nodig, geen bewijzen uit hun eigen bodem. Ze kennen ook de regenboog zonder de kennis van optische wetten. Ze zwijgen. Dat hebben ze geleerd. De vallei is een land van stilte, van ongesproken woorden, ongezegde dingen, van doodse stilte. Goed, de wind roert zich, de rivier stroomt, de mensen lopen naar hun dorp. Maar ze zwijgen. Hun land sluimert.

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A general introduction to the book online (in Dutch)

A general introduction to the book-online
‘With a Hat shading the Light’

To go on line with a book is running against the medium. Something of the past put into the present. That is why I wrote a summary in English of my book in dutch, entitled 'With a Hat shading the Light', written in the year 2000 (translation of the dutch title: "Met de Hoed tegen het Licht").

But I did more.Five years later I went back to South East Asia and this time I took a lot of pictures with a digital camera as every modern hiker does. So, I now present on line a summary of the book, some parts of the text and a small selection of my pictures. A step forward to modernity.

Apart from this, I selected haiku from my book and translated them. This is what is not done. It is like calling a duck a penguin duck as Alfred Wallace mentioned they did on Bali. To ease myself ', I combined the haiku texts with pictures – another 'don’t.' A haiku is a world in itself. It is language, a thing composed of words, no other stuff. Basta.

Why I did this all? It is for the thrill of traveling and writing. Hopefully you’ll feel the thrill of reading.

"With a Hat shading the Light"

At the end of the year 1999, I traveled in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. I had been several times in Indonesia as a civil servant of the Netherlands government. My field of concern in those days was technological and economic cooperation between the two countries. The large archipelago of islands and its many landscapes of desa's and rice fields, of volcanoes and mountains, of its historical monuments had cast a spell on me. Once upon a day, I promised myself to come back and see Indonesia more in private, to have a look behind the screens of formality and diplomatic politeness. This time, I would go for the people and their daily life, their traditions and ceremonies, their works of art, the mysterious ambiance and the beauty of the landscapes so intensely labored by so many people. The Japanese haiku poet Basho joined me as a poetic companion and the Portuguese author Pessoa helped me to better understand the invisible things of life. Two or better, three strangers in Indonesia, experts however in observing, poetry and traveling.

I traveled in central and eastern Java, the flat lands and the high plateaus, the crowded, noisy cities, the lonely mountains and the volcanoes. I visited the tropical garden of Bogor, Bandung with its colonial and Art Deco reminiscences, hotels and shop signs, Yogyajakarta and its the famous but quiet and musical kraton of the Sultan, the nearby Buddhist Borobudur and Hindustani Prambanan monument. Then, I went to the small town of Blitar and its mausoleum of the first Indonesian President, Sukarno, continuing to Malang and its colonial air and impressive boulevards. I visited Jember and its old plantations of coffee and rubber. The island of Java has so many mystery sites and scenic areas. It is a world of contrasts and conflicts, of thriving activity and poverty. At the same time, Java is an island of beauty and the ever singing Muezzin, of overcrowded cities and desa's along never ending roads. Java steals the soul, so I never can leave her behind.

On Bali I stayed at the artistic village of Ubud in the hills, I visited the Pura Besakih, the Gunung Kawi (mountain) and the caves of Goa Gajah. On Lombok it was the Sasak village of Senaru and a Hindu ceremony that brought me closer to the original life of the island. In Sulawesi, I traveled by public bus for miles and miles from Makassar in the south to the northern tip, the city of Menado and stayed for some time in the central region, the Tana Toraja and its marvelous villages from where I went to see the balconies of the dead, the wooden and well dressed-up puppets ( tau tau) high up in the steep cliffs. In Malaysia I traveled by luxury bus and stayed at Malakka with the flavor of old Dutch architecture and colorful Chinatown, Buddhist and Taoist little temples. Thailand I didn’t know, so I was impressed by the forest of Buddha temples and its realm of silence in the big, noisy cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I made day trips to the old capital of Thailand, the complex of temple ruins in Ayuthaya and to Kanchanaburi, the railway across the River Kwae and the well kept war cemetery. To escape the crowds and the loudness I went on jungle trekking for some days and returned after three days to go home, to the little island of Curacao in the Caribbean. This is the topographic side of the medal.

In this booklet, I try to do more than just telling this story of my travel. With the help of Basho I make notes and use the haiku technique to bring together my observations and the wanderings of the mind. So, I write about little things as f.e. a morning stroll in the sawa's (rice fields), the pinpointing of my mosquito net in a hostel, the minibus as a high pressure cooker for passengers, the royal diving of a kingfisher, a horror story ( guna guna) in the night, a canoe and hidden crocodiles, the daily loneliness of a Dutch speaking shopkeeper, gold fishes in a lake, the burning of fragrance sticks in a Chinese temple, the buy of a Buddha image on a market, a stony turtle and a bat, the smoking of opium by an old woman. All short stories or poetic tales, little histories, minor happenings and meditative reflections on the little things of daily life. These stories and tales have their own style and point. Leaf through the book and find your story or poem. Taste the sweetness or the spicy flavor.



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"With a Hat shading the Light" by Derk Cools (abstracts)

Foreword
Nobody travels alone. Always there are other people, always there is your luggage, lost memories, mental gymnastics and spontaneous thoughts. E-mails in tropical internet cafes, a backpack and the mosquito net. Music and immense urban noise. But also the two of you, my companions, not heard in the story, always present in the reality of the journey. And the endless, all inclusive conversation of traveling in friendship. And do not forget, the writers and poets with their books and works. When I am on the road their voices echo in my mind. They disturb sometimes my search to find the way in the Indonesian Archipelago, on the peninsula of Malaysia, in the Kingdom of Thailand. Right from the beginning of the journey the Japanese poet Basho travels with me and also the ‘handkerchief birds’ that fly high in the sky. At times they are lost, they are  however at the end my best help.

Part 1 is a reflection on the still not started journey, a meditation without end. And always again the same question in my ear ‘ why traveling.’ What is it, I would like to find when traveling around? In part 2, the story of the journey actually begins, although the story of traveling is at times lagging behind unknown memories from far back in time. However, it is always the desa, the waterfall or the rice field (sawa), the jungle, the talks in the hostel, which trigger the flow of thoughts. Part 3 is a short epilogue, a kind of confession. Actually, I would have liked to restart and redo the journey.

I would call these notes neither a travel story nor a travel guide. For information about countries and people in South east Asia many excellent guides are available. For the other things of life, I admit, I miss the appropriate language. The right words and the exact translations. The naming after of things. The calling and shouting. That is why it is at times a very quiet story with just a few words as in a haiku. Hopefully, the booklet works out as a tranquilizer for the reader at home, who does not feel at ease. Possibly it takes the place of a placebo for a proper journey not yet made. These are travel notes that live their own life without much concern about the reality, there outside in the field. Somewhere a huge screen hangs out that shows all things seen and written down. You will see shadows, silhouettes and with a hat shading the light you will discover people, animals and amazing things.

On Bali
We go visit Hindu temples on mountain tops, in walls of precipitous cliffs, in caves. We go to the monkey forest, the elephant cave, the Goa Gajah with its numerous niches and later to a colonial museum in Klungkung. The closely woven foliage hangs down from the tropical sky. The rain has painted the walls of the rock in black. Water seeps through crevices in the rock, drips incessantly into black ponds. This is a world dark as the soul. Where ever you go, a local guide will be there although the entrance of the temple is already guarded by a Siwas Pasupati, a big head of a grinning monster or by demons, raksasa sitting behind walls on the inside of the temple. Aren’t we protected against evil forces, or do they slip unseen inside the holy place together with us. Or even worse are we ourselves - not knowing, unaware - demonic figures? In the shade of the holy, evil is always around. However, the guide thanks his existence to you. He is your twin brother, your shadow and eats your soul or trades it off for his local little stories. If you don’t listen or follow his footsteps, your soul will not arise at all to the gods, to heaven. The tourist will for sure loose his soul, gets back the heart of a monkey. And he is everywhere, in the middle of the road, upon the little wall around the garden, on a low hanging branch of a tree, the monkey. He reminds us of the difference between him and us - so minuscule, so little that it is always blown up by us, exaggerated, made bigger than it is in order to chase away the monkey from the forest, from the world as a kind of apotheosis. Empty world full of people.

On Lombok
Further into the mountains at the end of a winding road we reach the traditional Sasak village of Senaru. We make a stroll in the early morning. It is cool and everywhere in the gardens flowers colorfully blossom, perfuming of freshness. In the villages en route nobody shows up – no sign of life. Nobody there? The people labor on the land, look and see, behind the trees in the rice fields. The UNESCO has donated a present to the last small village where the road ends at the fence around houses. A water work and sewerage. Previously the women carried water down from the mountain to the village. Now they stay in the village, the water flows all by itself to their homes. As a counter effort they preserve the village in traditional style. It is fenced with a high fence, poles of bamboo and it is marked as cultural heritage. At the entrance hangs a sign of the generous donor. A guide of the village tours us around. He starts to talk after we have put our donation in a box clearly visible for all people young and old standing around. We write our names in a guest book, a ritual they like to watch. Old men without teeth, breast feeding mothers and little children, they look at it. They are inspectors of the UNESCO who now pass their time in idleness as guardians of the past. The houses form streets and blocks, are built without written draft. The guide shows us the inside of a house on poles and with walls from bamboo woven mats. Inside is a space for rituals and prayers, the extended family lives in the room remaining next to it. Outside we see constructions in which the rice is kept and closed off against the vermin creeping in from all sides. Air tight constructed if not the rats were not that inventive. They gnaw a way through, as everywhere they do in life. They share with the people the storage of rice - without permit. Bamboo is used for everything and here also for the drainage of water from the roofs of the houses. The paths between the wooden houses are sandy and muddy in the rainy season. This way the people live here already for hundreds of years between the rice and the chicken, without water and sewerage. What is in our mind to lock these people in their traditional life? Like in a zoo or is it a prison with free entree? I tell the guide that I learned at school already about the culture of the Sasak and that I dreamed one day to go there. He stares at me and I think ‘of what did he dream when he was a little boy? That once upon a day tourists from far away countries would come along and listen to him, to his story?’ He invites us to come inside where people sit on the floor and eat cakes and sweeties. We tell him that we would like to continue our journey, while we look around to all those men with eye troubles and their fellow men, the half blind and the blind.

On Sulawesi
Not far from the little town of Rantepao in Tana Toraja one reaches the village of Lemo. The bus stops down by the road. We walk uphill. It is early in the morning. A rocky cliff steeply rises over the rice fields, still in the shade of itself. High up in the cliff there are hollows, niches fenced with wooden balconies, a theater where you see well dressed-up puppets sitting motionless on chairs, images of the dead of the village, the so called tau tau. These puppets form an authentic and almost lively community, a peculiar mixture of silence and rigid strictness. Every year the puppets are clothed anew in their favorite death garments. Often in white, the color of sorrow or the eternal life. However, the tropics destroy the tau tau, eat through their clothes, waste the tightly woven threads into worn shreds. And the dampness of the tropics penetrates deeply into the bones of the dead. A bit further away the bodies of the dead or what rests of them, hang loosely with white bones halfway out of their coffins, which are attached highly to the cliff. The bones do not matter any more - the tau tau do - give the impression of being neglected by the living. I do not feel an urge to look with the light of a torch into the niches. The smell of moistness and the rotten is slightly macabre.

Downhill are the rice fields, silvery spots, artistically spanned by a network of wires with shining tins against the glatik, the little rice birds. A confusing mathematics, an arbitrary construction, a brainwave to disturb the birdies. One pull at the wire and the birds fly up. A moment later they are back between the fragile rice plants. As in vain a kite is being launched, day after day, every hour, incessantly a game is played with the god of the wind. However, there is no wind here beneath the cliff, just the sky and the clouds reflecting in the water of the fields between the little dikes. A woman winnows with a sieve the grains of rice. At times she pulls the wire. Admiral sailing ducks – penguin ducks as Alfred Wallace mentions - dive on an invisible sign underwater, disappear and come back to the surface head swaying/ shaking. Between their fatty feathers water dripping pearls. The ducks clean the fields of the young paddi, they open and close ajar lines of dark water. They don’t hear the light sound of the swaying tins neither are they disturbed by the industrious little rice thieves. They do their job and have a good duck life.
In a small cottage on a little dike between the rice fields two young men have their working place, their shop. They carve little images from hardwood, they sell one image to me for the prize of a package of kretek( tobacco of spices). It is the sculpture of a sitting man with an inward looking, sad face. He meditates on his country, on the fate of his fatherland, the carver said. And he thinks of his delicious kretek.

In Thailand (Ayuthaya)
The wind blows strongly and we ride on the bike bent forwardly, fighting the wind. At the entrance of the large temple compound we put the bikes against the wall and lock them. I walk away, look back and see an object of abstract art. A bike in an Asian town. People in motion and on the move. Squares full of biking people. Rolling on, turning around, pedaling. Man on a bike, an on-going insect. We walk through the park of temple ruins and climb the towers and temples, that invite us to mount, to step the stairs. Across the lawn raking women with hats tied with a shawl to their chin lie around and together. Temples become ruins, women carry on life - forever. All of sudden I feel the hand of history, of what is gone but still present. Of the vanity to resist time in constructions of stone. Building temples of stones, not wood as if they can endure time and withstand decay. To erect towers as tokens of sovereignty. Or did the builders already know how beautiful the ruins would be. Did they love stones that decompose as we do, who are here and now biking around? Love for stone that pulverizes as earthwork and fades away into a brown of the earth. Stone that will be overgrown by grasses, where grasses unhindered creep over the foot of the towers, of the temples, of the upward going steps. Where a tree embraces with roots a stone head of the Buddha. And where towers start to slide down due to their age, hanging oblique or crumble down in the grasses. This is a city which becomes earth and grass. Here history breaks down into dust. The DNA survives, the women in the lawn are its witness. Heavy and with a rake in their hands they don’t let themselves sweep from this earth. Without women the city is nothing else than the past. Now the city still lives in stone and grass, breathes and moves in the wind thanks to the women. When we ride back, I stop and step from my bike, buy a very tiny, silvery image of the Buddha.

On Java
Java has become densely packed, a country of more than one hundred million people and innumerable mosques, small Muslim schools, cities, desa’s, rice fields, tea and coffee plantations. In multitude, everything identical, but different and everywhere itself. Hidden and secretly as she shows herself, a historical melting pot of religions, sovereigns and subdued people. Herself repeating everywhere, pearls on a string, one worn out the other shining and at times one missing, an empty place, where the string once was broken or gone loose. And always too the ritual of praying, the singing of the muezzin, chaining the minutes, the hours, the days till the very last day. The praying forwardly on knees in the mosque - the way bamboo bends. Or on a mat, inward looking, alone, inside the house or in the backyard of the compound. In order that nobody will observe, only Allah will hear and listen. Java, one large, extended desa anywhere outside the tumultuous cities with their tentacles, that strangle the countryside. With the feet in the water, hidden under the palm trees, hovering in the valley, lifted over the steep cliff, attached – a nest of little birds, shrieking and swinging, perfuming of bakso’s and warungs between the little straws, the alleys and gangs, the clay of the path to the rice field. The desa, squatting in the land, her imprint in the earth. The gamelan.

On Java near the Merapi
In the mountains we reach two small temples, Candi Ceto and Candi Sukuh. At the background the green tea plantations on the slopes and higher and further away the Gunung Merapi. There are no tourists. Just us. Sukuh with its steep stairs reminds us a moment of pictures of the Inca temples. What is wrong with me? Did I sleep the night with my head on a history book and do I search again and again the wrong pages? Under a little roof, no more than a shelter the god Bima presents himself as energetic as a black hole in heavens. Candi Ceto has a floor of stone turtles laid into a design of a giant bat. This is far from the city, this is far back in history, close to nature. Almost deleted by time, survived outside the hectic of the hustle and bustle of towns and cities. Souvenir and survival, witness and trace. Submerged memory of the ancient India, of pre-Islamic life on Java. So earthly and vigorous, so invincible strong of character and nature. Mysticism survived in stone for whom it sees and didn’t know.

The Borobudur
The Borobudur or how to write the name in this language. Well known, close by, within reach of the bus. Built by hands of humans or angels, taken back by nature and covered up. And then, nature buried the semi divine architects. For centuries turned in upon itself, silently, lost into the earth. Afterward excavated and restored – back to the stone age, sculptured for the eternity of the Now. Monument on the world heritage list, inevitable for the traveler of today. What does he do with his film or photo camera, apparatus to deny Nothingness, to bring the mobile to a stand still and to mobilize the immobile. The Borobudur surrounded by full parking places and a big fair of shops and sellers of strings of beads, images made of stone or hardwood, woven batik cloths and tropical fruits. Hey, there is the entrance and I shuffle to the dollar window for a ticket and the guides loitering around with their detective story of the Borobudur for how many times already? The immense Borobudur, the architectural colossus of stone, the wrapping of earth, with all its water pipes and stony monsters, its endless galleries and sublime stories in sculptured stone, stories under a gray heaven and the Nirwana itself on the highest level, its three circles and stupa’s without sculptures. That is how the enlightenment will be, the restoration of Emptiness, a rotation around Nothingness, and high above the gray sky. And inside, the inner impenetrable, a hill of earth, massive as a sign that also there the human being seeks a mainstay, an anchorage in vain. Under the clouds the temple colossus becomes gray, gets dark folds of the skin, becomes a motionless elephant in the twilight.

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