In Montana summers, locals wear these quaint things called sweaters to protect against what seems to me extremely frigid temperatures, the kind of temperatures that would send most of the people I know in Java into some sort of immediate hypothermia. It’s colder today that it has been for me in over a year, and it’s the second day of September. Alas.
I came home from Indonesia in somewhat of a state of shock, which confused me at the time. I think I stared a lot, and when people tried to engage me in conversation no doubt I gave off signals that I didn’t want to talk to them. I avoided doing an interview with a local journalist about my experience until it was too late, and then I was sorry, because by the time it was too late all I wanted to do was talk about my year in Indonesia.
That transition, from something you are doing to something you did, was completely strange. Within 48 hours, I went from a frantic circumnavigation of Singapore seeking my stowed luggage, buying luggage straps in a packed six story emporium, cramming in a last meal in the Little India food court, to sitting on my porch in Montana, and people asking me, “How was it? How was your year?” I can’t think of anything else people would say to me upon my return, so I can’t fault the question, but “how was your year?” for most people under any circumstances is a hard question to grapple with. But it was impossible to understand it, yet, as something that had happened and was no longer happening. I just couldn’t manage the past tense, for about a month, I think.
I was grateful to come home in the summer, not on contract at work, a few weeks to clear brush, get my dog on a fitness program, ride my bike around, spend time with my friends, read, and sleep. For the first three weeks I slept like I have never slept before. I overslept on several occasions, something I believed I was physically incapable of doing. But by mid-August, my lack of a daily agenda seemed to compound the problem of adjustment, and by the time my unavoidable and fairly arduous duties began as the semester commenced – the first thing I had to do was run a week-long workshop for new Graduate Teaching Assistants – I found myself uncharacteristically grateful for the schedule. It was, actually, a turning point for me, a moment when my feet started feeling planted, and I could see my home again, and begin to gain perspective on the year in Indonesia.
The blog, during all this time, was rather difficult to return to. I figured I might write about re-adjustment, but all I could muster were stoner observations along the lines of “Those clouds are amazing.” The culture shock wasn’t organized around any critique of Western excess – I’ve been adept at that one for years now – but around an inability to articulate anything, an inability to describe what it was like being home, an inability to describe what it was like in Indonesia, and the blog seemed absurd then, another occasion to recoil from my sudden muteness.
I had believed, I think, that the year in Indonesia was long enough that the experience would organize itself, on the ground in Java. I mean this: I am accustomed to travel experiences of several weeks at a time, experiences where what the trip meant only becomes clear in the telling, where the narrative finally overtakes the experience, which is really the only possible trajectory, I suppose. But it actually isn’t true.
The other night in my graduate seminar I introduced my students to the phrase “Saya kurang tahu,” a phrase which reflects the Indonesian anxiety to actually use the word no, “tidak.” “Saya kurang tahu” translates literally to “I less know,” which Indonesians use, regularly, instead of “I don’t know.” It sounds less rude, less direct. It’s my favorite phrase in Indonesian, though, because I love the ground it covers. I am home from Indonesia after a year, and I am far from being any kind of authority on Indonesia. But it’s not fair for me to say that I don’t know Indonesia either. So: I less know. Saya kurang tahu. It fits in so many situations, and I think it might be the best phrase to describe that false sense that I know, really, much of anything. Still, I think I might get by, for the most part, on less knowing.
I am not sure if this is a blog sign-off, or if that idea is even a little bit optimistic, given that I perhaps have no readers remaining. But I have stories, and they are sliding back into my head, and I hope I will use this venue to piece through a few of them, to figure out what that thing I did means, in relation to anything, really.
In the meantime, merdeka!
