She Reassembles the Threads

Another day of slow recovery.   I don’t remember the recuperation period for giardia being such a lengthy enrollment.  This is the fourth day and I’ve been flat out.  I tried to stare down some work that was looming.  I didn’t get far.  Just too weak to persevere beyond the first lap or two.

Read my current book by Elizabeth Pisani about Indonesia: "Indonesia, Etc."  I’d seen within the Amazon page, I believe, that Pankaj Mishra and given a favorable review and I think that settled my fears that it would be good.  Indeed, I was a bit intrigued, given his scathing critique of Asian imperialism, assuming he’d have only sparing praise for any British writer traipsing about the archipelago.

She’d been in Indonesia twice before and has now returned to write this book.   I appreciated her strata upon strata of experiences each buried beneath the accretion of the next.  Ms. Pisani travels back to places she visited as a Reuters’ reporter or as a health care worker, she has people she’s reconnects with and old yarns she reassembles the threads of.  Reporters often write well and she has me hooked, ready to jump islands with her at any point.  

And from the comfort of my bed in Senggigi, sit down toilet only three meters off, I noticed, oddly for me, that I wasn’t particularly desirous though, to switch places with her.  Not at least just now.  I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to a cramped steerage boat journey that starts eighteen hours late and drops me off thirteen hours later, seasick desperate for somewhere to get properly horizontal.  I bonded with her, surely though, when she has her nadir moment somewhere in the north of Sumatra, and cries, like Mateo Ricci does, like we all do, far from home, where it stops making sense. 

I ate a bit more tonight.  That was good.  My older one who is a vegetarian has challenged us all to join her for this month.  It’s New Year’s and all.  So I did.  Tonight's the night.  I had some gado gado and a veggie soup which seems to have just about done the trick.  I’m hoping it will be well- received by my body this evening. 

Tuesday, 01/02/18