When Baba was a boy, he used to chase kites with his brothers and buddies in Djatibarang, a nearly-remote village in the center of Central Java. One day, their kite chasing was cut short by a group of people looking upwards, to the purplish-orange evening sky.
Have you noticed how, when you see people looking to some direction, you'd involuntarily look in their direction too? Mass media in its simplest forms, I tell ya!
As they looked up, at the height of a full-grown coconut tree, a Gestaltian process of giving comprehension to the senses slowly gathered and formed this collective memory to all who looked at the stunning view of the long figure, with the majestic strength, glimmering in red from the aging daylight.
They were graced with the magnificent and indeed rare sight of an Asian Dragon.
Back in the days, when nature was true and undisturbed, man muddied their feet for food, dug the ground for water, bathed in the rivers, and breathed from mountains and seas. Back in the days, when the human body and spirit were integral parts of nature and balance was maintained in reverence to all of its elements, the dragons and dwarves and demi-demons peregrinated the lands and skies and caves and waters, visible and audible and touchable even to the common child that my father was.
I often look up to the very skies that my father looked up to as a child and I wonder where the dragons have went, if not deeper into a child's imagination or drug induced hallucinations. I wonder if, in my lifetime, I could touch the edges of purity, in body and mind and surrounding, that would grant me the glimpse of a true dragon, just like the one that my father and his village-kin fleetingly witnessed hovering that evening, years ago.
I gather these story crumbs trying to piece together my own Gestaltian memory of a dragonless life that is (at least) less ordinary, less disappointing, than the way I have always perceived it.
It's not the dragons that is worth seeing or writing about, it's their magic and wisdom and benevolence that is worth working on in each of us. Whether or not dragons are real, whether or not god or demons or faeries exist, it's the ideas that we caress and coddle and nurture that will eventually shape the roads we walk on.
I wish us well.
8 afterthinkers:
Another great post!!! Hning i'll see if i still have my thesis in my files. It's entitled like "Images of the Asian Family as Portrayed in Contemporary Asian Novels."
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm gonna miss Dotsson!!!!!!!
I'm gonna raise my mourning veil for just a little while and maybe sound like an ungrateful twit here, but it's totally not the intention: Why do you think of that post any good?
I don't care how mean you wanna sound, I really would love any sort of criticism to my writing. Srsly. :)
And yeah, dottie totally did us all wrong, didn't he?
*Hning solemnly lowers her mourning veil for dottie's passing*
Well I had to read your post more in depth for that. You've got the gift of imagery here and you've got a way with words. You actually "paint" with them. When you described Baba there and his friends when they looked at the spectacle of the dragon I found myself agreeing with the statement
"Have you noticed how, when you see people looking to some direction, you'd involuntarily look in their direction too? Mass media in its simplest forms, I tell ya!"
I also liked the concept of "dragons" or their characteristics as the things that could shape people. How Asian! Dragons are truly very Asian symbols.
The statement
"I gather these story crumbs trying to piece together my own Gestaltian memory of a dragonless life that is (at least) less ordinary, less disappointing, than the way I have always perceived it."
really strikes a chord. I just thought, "My God, isn't this what we grown ups sometimes try to do, try to pick up buts and pieces of a past and a relatively happy one at that? Only the happy bits. Nothing scary."
I better stop here before I sound like a term paper in Literary Criticism. I think Arundhati Roy somehow influenced your writing. At least I think so. You have a gift for writing here.
As for Dotsson, wasn't November 1 a creepy date to end his blog? All Souls Day.
oh so you want the punches too? Hmmmmmmmm... lemme see... I think you could use a bit of arrangement when it comes to describing things. I was left with a rather ngarled impression on the paragraph
"Back in the days, when nature was true and undisturbed, man muddied their feet for food, dug the ground for water, bathed in the rivers, and breathed from mountains and seas. Back in the days, when the human body and spirit were integral parts of nature and balance was maintained in reverence to all of its elements, the dragons and dwarves and demi-demons peregrinated the lands and skies and caves and waters, visible and audible and touchable even to the common child that my father was. "
Well for the average reader, your images may be rather difficult to decipher really, but then who cares about what the average reader thinks? If you can express yourself and feel better after writing, then keep the ball rolling. After all, at the end of the day, we've got only ourselves to be pleased with!
I'm grateful.
And I shall be licking...err...flaunt my bruises for all to see, with pride.
This is so much more than what I was hoping for. Seriously, thanks a bunch. I'll definitely start working on it. :D
Coral,
I think that you're so lucky to have gone through English Lit. I would have loved to go through that, and have actually spent all of my off-major credit hours on English Lit criticism and Shakespeare (the last one was tacky, and I had a killer Prof., and I almost failed, but it totally was worth the risk).
And I think that was also the time when I realized that being really good at conversing in one language gives no indication that she may be good at the language as whole.
I do agree with your statement that my imagery is a bit twisty. Not to mention my grammar or spelling (typos!). I didn't even know what imagery is until you mentioned it, and I had to dig Wiki to figure that out...But hey, turns out that I do have a whole bunch of that here, don't I?
I wish I could see words and paragraphs and statements like you do. It woulda been much easier to correct myself in the process of proof-reading on the 73rd time.
I laid in bed last night thinking how long "You're Three!" took to write and edit and post and edit again and repost again, and I cringed: An Entire DAY! Either that I'm that obsessive, neurotic, generally really suck at it, or all of the above.
I hope you're feeling better about Dottie's passing.
It's 07:30, Djatibarang time, post-election day. and wish you a lovely morning, Coralbead.
THis is not actually my story ,however, i have been told this story exact story by three seperate people. My fiance and two of his friends were driving in his car one day and a dragon flew over it. They stopped the car because they were on a gravel road and watched if fly until it was out of sight. (No Kidding)So that leaves me with the conclusaion that dragons are still around, and still fighting to servive in this day and age.
Anon,
I too believe that dragons still exist in hiding. The trick is to go beyond the fascination stage and in figuring out what purpose that information can serve in everyday conduct. What lesson can the dragons teach you? How does their magic make you a better person?
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