Flores, Indonesia
October, 2016
Strung off the east end of the island of Flores there are small islands where men still hunt whales. I’ve heard that they go to sea in small boats and that men take turns standing on the bow as it rises and falls with the waves and when they are close enough they leap into the abyss. I’ve also heard that these islands are covered in the bones of whales and dolphins and turtles and other sorts of things that come from the ocean and can be eaten. I’ve never been there.
I have been to other parts of the island. I have been to the crumpled up parts that sit near its corseted waist. I’ve heard that this part of the island looks like a discarded ball of tinfoil, land that didn’t suit the creator and was cast off—a do over. To me, though, this part of the island looks like it rose from an ancient ocean like a submarine, crushing through the arctic ice—forced ridges and cracked earth. I close my eyes and imagine it bubbling up out of a sea of just boiling water, dashed with salt and spice.
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The road from the mountains to the west coast winds and snakes its way for ten hours before it reaches the port city of Lubuan Bajo. The small vans that transport people back and forth drive with their accordion door open and you can sit in the doorway and watch the world pass by—a chromatic study in green, occasionally interrupted by flashes of red and pink.
Lubuan Bajo sits on the western tip of the island where the ocean has separated the mainland from the exposed peaks and sunken valleys of dozens of islands that now sit just offshore. Lubuan Bajo has a magnetic appeal. Muslim fishermen from Java mix with the Christian locals and sell their catch to tourists who come to see where their food comes from. Like so many port cities in Indonesia, this place is beautiful to a point that ceases to impress.
Offshore there are little scorched islands where dragons dig holes and eat their young. Manta rays move like flying carpets between the little exposed peaks of baked earth and at night the sun gently pours out a 64 count box of crayons and melts them over the reefs and fish before gently slipping behind the ocean.
Maybe someday I’ll see the Indonesian Cayo Hueso and see where the sun first rises over the island of Flores. Maybe I’ll see its entire arc as it cuts along the median of the island of flowers. Maybe I’ll see how the eastern part of the island flattens and stretches as it pulls away from the slim waist. Maybe I’ll see a piece of eight nailed to a wooden mast and see Queequeg’s legacy leap into the unknown and then sleep in a house of bones. Maybe I won’t.
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Once though, I slept in the heart of Langa. I climbed a tiny ladder and crossed through a magic portal into perfect symmetry. The floor was bamboo and had a spring to it, like a trampoline or professional wrestling ring. In the corner sat three magic stones that you can send messages to loved ones far away, they are also useful for cooking. Smoke filled the room and mixed with the delicate fragrance of sautéed greens and soured moke before slipping out through the cracks in the walls. The enormous slabs of wood that made up the room were hunted in the volcanic hillsides.
I slept on the floor next to the man who was married to the woman who owned the house. We shared a green comforter that was synthetically filled and printed with ladybugs. I brought a pillow from my room in their house. The fire had gone out and the mosquitoes flew out on the last wisps of smoke. In the dying light I could see the smears of sacrificial blood that he had wiped on the walls and as my eyes slowly closed I could see the shimmering contrails of love and food and time slip through the gaps in the loosely woven basket that hung from the ceiling.
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I recently read somewhere that the earth pulls on us harder in some places, that gravity is not an evenly weighted blanket. Before this I had always imagined gravity to be something similar to the lead apron that they give you at the dentist before they zap you with radiation.
I recently read somewhere that the first European explorers who made it into the Indonesian archipelago thought that some of the islands were, in fact, upside down and that tree roots and the bottom parts of rocks stuck into the air. I read that they were often too afraid to go ashore for fear that they might be beaten up or eaten or made fun of for their cable-knit sweaters or their metal jackets. I read that they would often bring along prisoners from European jails so that they could send them ashore and watch from the boat to see how they faired. I read that if they ran out of prisoners, they would sneak ashore and make a pile of their dumb trinkets and beads on the beach and wait to see how many nutmegs would be left in their place.
When I am lost below the equator, where the land is a foreign as the languages I start to worry that gravity might stop working—that the lead blanket might fall off or maybe the radiation will zap right through it and scramble my insides.
Often, I have to remind myself that the earth is still spinning and so is still firmly tugging at the cuffs of my jeans. I am grateful for this because some days I’m afraid I might float away.
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Some mornings I wake up early and walk up to where you can see the ridges of foil and the fossilized masts that once cracked through the ice. On the slow climb up and out of the village I can feel the weight and pull of the earth creeping up my legs, past my waist and it pulls at my chest and burns my lungs.
Some nights, I sneak out and walk behind my friend’s house and listen to the impossibly tall bamboo stalks creak and rattle as they sway in the gently breeze. When I go back to bed I lie awake and patiently wait for the thick air and heavy clouds to crawl into bed with me.
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Children, dressed in brown, walk down the volcanic hills toward the ocean with thudding feet and even the rocks here are different. Whetted and shining, scattered in an endless span of turquoise. Some are thinned and smooth, having been pushed onto the edge of the ocean and polished by the tumbling waves that gently crash before receding back toward some forgotten place. I’ve walked up and down the beaches collecting them at random so that I can spin them back in to the ocean and watch as they skip, splash, and jump the rolling tide.
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Things here are quiet and calm. People farm small plots of land and eat the food that they grow. They weave beautiful cloth. They worship. They commune.
Here music is written and scored in laughter. It spills out of the houses and runs up the ridges and hides among the clouds. The sun sets in a flourish of pink and orange. The green is impenetrable. It shimmers in flux as you climb the tiny roads that twist among the peaks. Nothing here is flat. Everything is alive.