tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18078862024-03-08T02:36:17.924-08:00A Jersey girl's journey through time and space.joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-48186779295480683982009-09-17T00:22:00.000-07:002009-09-17T09:40:09.198-07:00

In San Francisco, I earned eleven dollars per hour and was supporting both of us on that, so we ate a lot of cabbage, eggs, and red adzuki beans. But oh! He’d grind the spices in a black volcanic stone mortar from the Singaraja market, in that tiny Victorian kitchen in the Western Addition, standing there wrapped in only a maroon ikat sarong tied around his small waist, light reflecting off the

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-607861892895315252008-07-11T13:05:00.000-07:002008-07-11T19:26:44.855-07:00

The travel guidebook claimed it was a fine swim from one Gili island to the other, and I knew I was a strong swimmer. Every day in Bali I plunged into the Java Sea, and swam far out from the black sand beach to where I could float, and from the gently swaying water gaze at the green hills of Kayuputih rise above Lovina and the solid purple peaks of Java pierce the sky to the west. I swam to

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-73721546659351023572008-06-12T02:05:00.000-07:002008-06-12T02:57:45.089-07:00

The village of Panji, which is Pasek's father's home village, will hold a group cremation on July 7th. When I was first there in 1990, the rice farmers of Panji still carried corpses to the cemetery gently in their bare calloused hands. The next year, they carefully wrapped their dead in batiks, placed them in the backs of Jeeps and drove them to be buried.Three years ago Pasek's father died.

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-90286258103915388882008-05-28T22:34:00.000-07:002008-05-28T23:37:10.337-07:00

We sit at the Lucky Coin Casino on the 101 with plastic buckets of red and black chips clutched between our legs. I'm not a gambler like you. I usually lose at backgammon, I pick up abandoned pennies on the street, I don't like to waste. I won't do anything for a hundred bucks. I'm not plotting every relationship ten moves in advance. I miss the microtwitches and reddenings of a face that a good

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-79827455701615153352008-03-31T23:40:00.000-07:002008-04-01T00:29:47.608-07:00

From the top of the whitewashed fort, I can see the glittering blue waves of the Atlantic, softly swelling, pierced by painted fishing boats lined up on the beach. I stand on flat taken ground, cement.Up here was where they prayed, the masters who hadn't yet succumbed to malaria or typhoid. Reverent, they looked up to the wide sky, to their maker, and then they looked down, through a square hole

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-41160748877324895212008-01-19T02:11:00.000-08:002008-01-19T02:38:18.339-08:00

Memek tilts her head in the red brick door frame. She keeps her full lips closed over her orange teeth out of shyness, but when she sees me and the nurse approaching the wooden gate of the kubu, her mouth bursts wide open."Maee," she urges, motioning us to come with her fingers.She sees that my sarong ends at my knees, and comes over to pull it down to my ankles, as is proper for a young woman,

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-83832068241052629432007-12-07T23:18:00.000-08:002007-12-07T23:49:09.157-08:00

We walk on the black pavement, blurry with heat. The nurse and I turn right at a mud path bisecting flooded rice fields. I have been this way before. Pasek's cousin looks up from planting green shoots and raises his eyebrows. We turn left, and the jungle grows silently around us. We walk, and an entire family scoots up the trunk of a coconut palm, and we could drink young coconut juice if we want

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-55059790568650453622007-11-03T08:28:00.000-07:002007-11-03T08:48:50.403-07:00

The per diem nurse’s name is not Lisa or Diane or Stella. She tells me her name and I make no special effort to make it stick in my brain, instead focus on chewing the rice. The love letter from Suki is folded in her shirt pocket.She will be gone in a day.A group of shirtless boys from Bhuana Sari walk by on the way to the beach, shouting their hellos. They hold folded banana leaf triangles, nasi

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-81013180823278325402007-10-29T20:42:00.000-07:002007-10-29T21:45:50.257-07:00

I am sitting with an American, a nurse who works per diem, from Miami. Travelling around the world. She has long wavy blonde hair and we are eating nasi goreng at Suki's restaurant. It is okay but kind of bland, made for the tourists. Garlic but not enough chili. Not the original Balinese rice, which is expensive to buy in the market these days.I haven't wanted to talk to fellow Americans in

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-77166212313551244292007-07-24T21:52:00.000-07:002007-07-24T23:07:53.464-07:00

The rest of Bali is tangled green but where we are, on top of a high ridge, is flat and brown, and we can see from a distance the rice fields stepping down to the Java Sea.To get here, we walked through the jungle, by a river, up and down mud paths that seem to twist and turn into a labyrinth's center. The path led us by the gently roaring water, past coffee bushes, under shady leaf canopies. We

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-86504318329302218732007-07-18T23:18:00.000-07:002007-07-19T01:08:31.818-07:00

Luh's doctor told her she needed daging (meat) removed from her uterus, she is telling me as she bends and empties a bowl of yesterday's rice onto the ground to feed the black pigs.Sakit, she says, grimacing, holding her belly and bending forward, then backward again.A sow and two of her piglets rush towards the rice and snuffle through it with their snouts.Luh has bad cramps every month when her

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-13087826690617678982007-07-05T21:05:00.000-07:002007-07-05T23:11:13.196-07:00

My Aunt Ruthy and Uncle Paul took me abroad for the first time.Before I left, my hair stylist tried to cut a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut, but it didn't work with my hair.It made me look like a boy.I had flown before but not that many times. My mother was afraid to fly, but I wasn't. I sat on the plane and looked out the window just over Italy. It surprised me how much Italy looked like it did on the

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-44075802295873205572007-07-05T19:43:00.000-07:002007-07-05T21:11:41.855-07:00

I missed the last three weeks of fifth grade.That was when we learned percentages. My teacher Miss Fornin let me sneak out of Ocean Township Intermediate School without any trouble because she liked me, and we both had read Coma. She had black hair and red cheeks and a pointy nose. Every week in her class I read a new segment of my SuperChicken series to all the kids. I would be a little scared

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-37425374752519109842007-06-30T00:05:00.000-07:002007-06-30T00:20:14.082-07:00

My mother's labor pains come six weeks early. Grandpop and Daddy carry her out of the house on a chaise lounge that has been sitting out by the pool. It is a warm June day and the Jersey shore air tastes of salt.The floor of the hospital room gleams. My mother's torso contracts. The sheets get bloody.I am tiny.I fit into my father's big square hand. He has crooked eyebrows and his nose slopes

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-46644549431945949092007-06-26T13:17:00.001-07:002007-06-28T16:50:11.296-07:00

We sit at a blackjack table in Reno. I am not a gambler but here I am anyway, and now I await each hand from the dealer. Pasek is looking at his nine and seven as intently as if he were looking at his prize rooster flashing his sharpened spur around his neighbor's chicken at a cockfight in Banyualit. A cacophony of electronic noise buzzes and pops around us from the slot machines.Across from us a

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-42880526477665334832007-06-25T19:56:00.000-07:002007-06-26T13:16:52.453-07:00

The sun was going down and his little sister named Putu and I were walking in the gorge and she kept lighting one match at a time, pop, that would illuminate a foot or two of muddy ground at a time. All the green faded into grey and black. I would feel like I was losing my balance, and then remember how Pasek walked looking not down at the ground immediately in front of him, but look to a point

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-89802977580970922862007-06-24T21:09:00.000-07:002007-06-24T21:37:41.345-07:00

I wake with his hand in my hair.A mosquito coil has burnt to ashes.I still can see gold in his skin, but also yellow and brown and red.His mouth is a perfect bow, and his hand says, you knew but you did it anyway.I knew.His eyes bear traces of this archipelago’s trade routes and conquests, waves of peoples in his eyes. A Majapahit conqueror sweeping a Bali aga off her feet, an Arab bringing a

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-64019455818923542962007-06-23T17:28:00.001-07:002007-06-23T18:28:28.835-07:00

This was thefirstbirthdayhedidn'tcallme. He has called every birthday for ten years since we split up. Sometimes I didn't answer, but usually I did. He called me from the airport to say goodbye the first time he left. I was home alone just curled into a ball on the floor. For nights I dreamed of glass walls separating us, saw red crab claws tearing at flesh, woke to screams.When he called me on

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-16541868077041469202007-06-21T22:52:00.001-07:002007-06-22T21:24:15.545-07:00

It's my fortieth birthday and I wake up on the floor of a loft above a hundred giant stone Buddhas with hands folded in their laps. There are little scratching noises from behind the wall. Mice don't bother me. The toilet only flushes with a bucket of water poured down it, and the bucket sits in the shower. There is no hot water, so I am quick to wash my face, armpits, and crotch. I am glad I am

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-22827298153383679652007-06-02T03:51:00.001-07:002007-06-02T04:44:52.061-07:00

The Taoyuan International Airport was packed with people and smelled of garlic. For the first time in my life, I felt tall. It was Double Tenth Day, the national day of the Republic of China. On the eighteen-hour flight from New York, Dave and I had moved beyond xie xie, and could now also say "you're welcome" and "excuse me" in Mandarin.We took a bus into downtown Taipei. I looked at the street

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-43602227019062117062007-06-01T02:14:00.000-07:002007-06-01T20:15:36.179-07:00

Yossi was number two in karate in Israel, and he was saving money to go to Japan and study Zen meditation. I didn’t let myself really get to know him, so instead he was my spy, my security guard whom I seduced to stop guarding the youth hostel for a few dark moments under the moon, my Jew who looked like an Arab, an Indian with something Eastern European about his eyes, more religious than I was.

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-66258819752307536372007-05-21T22:22:00.000-07:002007-05-21T23:05:24.488-07:00

The coconut husk fire glowed not far from the mound where corncobs were tossed for the pigs and people went to squat. The smoke curled around the tin roof before trailing upwards toward the purple sky. A cow tossed her head near the front gate, clanging the metal bell around her neck.Waiting for the rice to be done, we all sat in a circle on a rattan mat. Agus rested on his haunches like a Hindi

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-23780323098625040412007-05-15T00:46:00.000-07:002007-06-02T04:59:42.292-07:00

I was messy and he was beautiful. It wasn't junior high but it felt like it, in that despite my ugliness, the ugly both inside and out, I was beautiful too. But the shine on my face felt like sweat in the coconut humidity, and I looked down and followed and followed on the mud path between the watered paddies shimmering with the reflected blur of a thousand single green shoots.Then we were in a

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-1166072536369103502006-12-13T20:50:00.000-08:002006-12-13T21:02:47.973-08:00

When I was five, my grandmother and grandfather moved five blocks away. My grandfather hid pennies in his hands and recited a spell, eichl meichl peichl he would say, and the penny would magically jump from hand to hand -- where would it be? How would it get there? One of his arms couldn't unbend all the way, and the reason, he told us, was that he had been struck by a bullet in some war, which I

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1807886.post-1166071662437205102006-12-13T19:47:00.000-08:002006-12-13T20:49:16.990-08:00

Pasek was seventeen when his father walked him down from the mountains to the beach.In their bamboo kubu on an arid ridge, the beds were turned so the pillows faced toward the holy peaks, and the bottom of the mattress toward the sea, full of black magic, where people could hit their heads on the coral and never come up again. It was dry up in the mountains, but the green bean and corn grew well,

joyfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235437841324350150noreply@blogger.com1