jakarta

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

author : DJ Huppatz


a foreign particle with fragile respiratory system surveys from a hotel window the city transparent below through a dull brown wash.  unmasked boys filter into traffic selling papers & water, wait for red lights among flapping warung canvases or beneath the highway flyover. even through glass the incessant drone of circling engines & intermittent horns, furious metallic gamelan rhythms.  an orange dust patch cleared from a vacant lot is a soccer pitch. 

down by sundah kelapa you helped us across the road by walking forcefully out into six lanes of traffic.  your children shout “hello meesta” & laugh & shake our hands.  we reply “selamet siang”, sweatsoaked & humbled by your unforgiving atmosphere heavy with humidity, exhaust fumes & clove cigarettes.  we rode in your boat, a blue canoe among the multicoloured macassar schooners filled with kalimantan & sumatran rainforests.  you helped us ashore, offering your hand & indicating the mossy stone. squatting by a becak you spot a knot on a treetrunk which you will carve into a dragon’s head with blue eyes & blonde hair.  spicy smells fill nostrils & whirl out into an affandi action painting, a frantic cockfight in backstreets.  beyond the glass & steel towers your city sprawls crumbling orange-tiled rooves into caramel mist.


(Tinfish, No. 9, 2000)

Filed under : EDITION  -

ARCHIVES of July , 2005