lately, lately

so here are some random things that have made me smile or gaze in wonder recently that i managed to catch on my awesome (i’m being facetious) camera phone due to SOMEONE’S boyfriend being out of town with her real camera.

1. i was reading a magazine in a cafe in bali, and i found a recipe for hardtack! now, if you are my mom, you might recall that when i was in elementary/middle school, i was obsessed with reading historical fiction books from the pioneer era. if you are not my mom... well, now you know about my childhood love of reading books from the pioneer era. i was also extremely into oregon trail. my brother and sister and i even had an area in our woods designated as our “homestead”, and we would spend hours out there gathering berries and catching fish in the creek to “survive”. so anyways, needless to say, finding a recipe for one of the staple foods of the pioneers made my heart happy. and yes, i am absolutely planning to make it. i have been baking like none other lately. this is next on the list.

2. bus musicians are nothing new. they jump on the bus at one stop, play a few songs, pass around an empty snack size chip bag for coins, then jump off the back of the bus at the next stop. sometimes i pretend i’m asleep so i don’t have to give money to the guy with the cigarette hanging out his mouth or the one who sounds like 15 screeching cats (all in different keys!). but on the last leg of our trip home from bali, the bus from jogja to salatiga, this guy jumped on. and it was love at first sight. it was the cowboy hat. and you can’t see it, but he’s wearing lime green jeans. AND this was the first time i’d ever seen one play a harmonica! oddly enough, since then, i’ve seen like three. and coincidentally, i was sitting next to a really old muslim man, trying my best not to be halfway on his lap AND not trying to block the aisle in the seat made for one WHILE holding all my bali luggage. anyways, we got to talking. and i asked about the scorpion tattoo on his forearm captioned “lion boy”. “oh”, he said, “i got that back in ‘57 in the congo. i bet you weren’t even born yet in ‘57, were ya?” i very somberly replied, “sir, my parents weren’t born in ‘57”. he laughed.

 

3. this was the sky in the afternoon the other day. and it made me happy. because in the background, it was stormy blue. but right above me, there were pretty white and gray poofy clouds. that’s all.

4. i went out to dinner with some friends the other night, and a few of them weren’t feeling 100%, so they decided to get massages. typical in indonesia. it costs like 2 bucks for an hour. but they wanted to go to this special masseuse, mbah dumeri. he is an ancient nerve masseuse. and by ancient, i mean he is ancient, not his art, though it probably is too. apparently, he’s really well known and respected around here, mostly as a horse masseuse, of all things. if a horse injures its leg, he treats it. he can heal it. he knows where the nerves are in the body and how it all interconnects and where to push to make what feel better. crazy. so anyways, we show up at this guy’s house, just down the street from my own, and there’s a giant sign on the front door that says “center for koran education”. ok. so we go into the front room, and a lady says she’ll go get mbah dumeri. so we wait until he finally shuffles in the room and we all greet him with great respect. hotjaga went first. he messed up his back playing soccer last week and missed 3 days of work. i wasn’t really prepared for what was gonna happen. keep in mind that hotjaga is one of the toughest, least expressive men i know here. first, mbah pinched hotjaga’s middle finger. hotjaga almost fell off the couch onto the floor.  then mbah laid his hand on hotjaga’s neck. hotjaga squinched his eyes shut and opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out. this went on for less than 2 minutes, until mbah came back to the middle finger. this time, no reaction. “ah”, said mbah, “you are better, no?” hotjaga said he felt fine. next up.... yohanes. lower back ache. middle finger again. yo screamed everything short of profanities.

mbah was so nonchalant, just gently jamming his fingers into various nerves. and watching the tv in the corner. yo was nearly crying.

next up was atik. headache. mbah grabbed her foot and pinched the middle toe. atik actually kicked him and decided that was enough, it was to painful and she couldn’t take any more. mbah answered with a calmness reminiscent of Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda, “ready or not ready? the choice is yours.” after a minute, atik finally nodded and he continued, getting kicked a couple more times. he did the nerves in her toes, calves, and forearms, then returned again to the middle toe. he got kicked again, so he knew she wasn’t finished. back to the arms. back to the middle toe. no reaction. “ah, you are healed.”

and afterwards, though they had spent two minutes in “sheer hell”, all three of them said they felt perfectly fine. no more headaches, no more backaches.

5. Yesterday was one of the junior girls’ birthdays. Usually, when someone at our school has a birthday, one of their friends will jump up at lunch, scream, “HEY! it’s so-and-so’s birthday, so let’s sing!” and we’ll all sing. yesterday was a little bit different. and you have to understand bree (the birthday girl) a little bit for this to make sense. she is the sweetest, most giving and generous, whimsical girl you will ever meet. she likes old fashioned things and has an adorable style all her own. anyways, at lunch yesterday, one of her friends jumped up and said, “HEY! it’s bree’s birthday, and we have a special song for her!” after that, about a dozen other girls jumped up on the picnic tables and began singing, “i am 16, going on 17...” and sang the WHOLE song. one of the senior boys came over and asked bree to dance, so dance they did! in the pavilion, on the picnic tables, running along the benches, spins, and dips. it was absolutely adorable! and oh, so bree. and it kinda made my day.

ok. that’s all!