All I've Energy For

New Year’s Eve has arrived once again.  Unfortunately, I’ve been flat-out sick, lying in this comfortable, king sized bed, the whole day long.  Last night was wretched.  I must have caught something determined.  Fortunately, no one else contracted anything.  My daughter was intrigued, “really?  Maybe I’m sick too?”  But she got bored, waiting for symptoms to materialize and moved on.  I suspect it was that papaya salad that I liked and no one else bothered to touch.  Everything else, last night, we all shared. 

I really should do some work.  Pick something that we can get done.  Accomplish something in the face of this malaise. I had some papers to grade.  I have to get the University's on-line system all properly laid out, understood.  It takes a while.  But in a few hours I’m done.  I consider the list of other things.  None of them are easy to retire.  They'll each take time to initiate.  I’m enervated.  I return to my novel.  That’s all I’ve energy for.   

   

I managed to make it to the gym.  But there was a large man already there on the stair master.  He had short grey hair, was corpulent.  His legs looked miserable.  They were hot red as if they’d been burned, but they had large lesions on them as well, suggesting great pain.  I figured I’d give him twenty-minutes and he’d be off and I could be on.  I did every other thing I could, watched my daughter get off the running machine.  I stared a few more times expectantly.  And then I gave up on him.    

The New Year’s celebration here was rather obligatory.  We paid for it.  They informed us that every other place in the compound, would be closed after 5:00PM.  No room service.  No other options except walking out the compound and down the street.  Fair, on the one side, surely.  People deserve the night off.  And a shame that the only option I have is a full on gala buffet.  I feel like eating nothing, whatsoever.  We sat with two older couples who seemed, to my untrained eye to be Indonesian Chinese.  I smiled.  They smiled.  I said something in Mandarin.  They didn’t pick up on it.  Most of the younger Indonesian Chinese I’ve met have never studied Mandarin.  A short, muscular, Indian gentleman was seated across the way.  He had a young lady with him and he seemed as if he's expecting someone to challenge him.  He and his girl headed off to photograph the band.   

The M.C. they've hired was loud.   "Can everyone here?" she asks  in Bahasa.  And then again English.  No one replies. "The lucky draw is coming.  Put your best photos on Instagram! " And then she's gone and suddenly the traditional Sasak dancing slows everything down.  It is phenomenal.  I suddenly give a shit.  The studied, somber, twirling tone of a Hindu ideological diaspora that inseminated island after island century after century en route from the Decan to here casts a spell on the night.  I lean forward in my chair and crane to look around the pole blocking my view.  Each step by the dancer is deliberate and anchored.  I follow and consider anew where in the world I am. 

Sunday, 12/31/2017