A letter to my lover – the shadow play of half-won affection

Address:

Sewer number 552

behind the mall

just next to the warungs

in the shadow of some great erection of a monument

to some dictator

or perhaps just To Hope

just down the road from that shiny international hotel

next to the kampong with the barefoot kids

and the hollowed out little men

wearing SBY t-shirts with blue sleeves.

Under the yellow-orange light of the almost-dark

- because it never gets dark here, never -

there lies my Jakarta.

A nondescript afternoon during the quiet of Ramadan 2009, looking out over Bundaran HI with its rigidly hopeful figures symbolising the optimism of tomorrow.

To my Jakarta,

I’m not sure if I ever told you. But I almost left you. A few months back I was offered a job living in Bali and travelling to eco-lodges in some of the most beautiful places in this country – places that are easy to love. When I was offered that job my mind whirred with new possibility. I was so excited I felt like my skin might rupture and erupt with starbursts; I was so charged with hope and opportunity.

My job would have been to inspire people to visit these incredible places, to help them reconnect with what drives them, with what feeds their souls. After living in Jakarta for some months, I could appreciate how important it was to escape to a naturally beautiful place – to appreciate the wondrousness of the world and remember why life is such a gift. I remember digging my fingers into my thighs and emitting a little screech with my eyes shut tight. It was all a little too exciting. I even had to do a couple of handstands to get rid of some excess excitement. Yep, it was like New Love.

And then, there was you. I felt that I had given you a fair go to show yourself to me and it appeared that we were not really hitting it off, and that most likely we would never really hit it off. Every day you muffle my skin with your smog and your heat and trip me up with your broken pavements. You gave me an eye-ulcer, blurring your beauty; you fractured my kneecap so I had to hobble across you, you infested my digestive tract with warring bacteria and parasites and then pumped me full of antibiotics that made me feel that I was dying and eating nails at the same time - but somehow didn’t kill the nuclear-resistant amoeba.

I know you’re trying to tell me I’m not made for this place; that I’m too fragile to exist here. And you’re looking to poison me from the inside out. Last night my stomach warped and bubbled and I threw up black sludge that looked like the rancid stuff that pumps through your sewer canals - your lifeblood, carrying whispers of corruption and unmet expectations across the skin of your city. Well, it’s not my life-blood. My body thinks that stuff is poison and to be honest, I’m inclined to agree. Do you think you’re fooling anyone, pumping poison through your veins every day and pretending it is blood? After a while people can tell poison from blood and they want the real thing.

Sometimes it’s hard to love you. Sometimes I need tequila shots just to get a laugh out of you.

But. We had our moments. Like that time when I was walking home with my idealism dribbling in my wake and I looked up and you’d made the moon full and bright and yellow, and a breeze skipped up my spine and with Feist in my ears you gave me goose-bumps into the thick night. I thought of you fondly then. And that time I was really sick and just needed to get home, and you opened up the magical skyways of the city and flew me home with no macet at all. And all the times when one of your people – one of the 18 million beating hearts throbbing within you – has reached across the chasm between us and handed me a little piece of understanding, with a gaze or a conversation or a brush of fingertips.

I want you to know that I notice. Every time you rustle your skirts and show me a bit of beauty, I’m watching.

But I still want more. I want that feeling of lacing my fingers into yours in the middle of the night and feeling the squeeze around my knuckles which says yes, I’m here. I want to fall asleep with the knowledge that when I wake up your beating heart will be within reach of my fingertips. All this I can see in shadows, like the ghostly apparitions of a wayang puppet show. Just beyond my reach, on the other side beneath your cloaks, where other people make the shadow-play of our almost love story. I’m wondering if you’ll ever make it real. I want it to be and I’m willing to suspend disbelief to make it so.

So here we are. I gave up that job in Bali to be with you. And now we’ve got less than 3 months left together and already I’m feeling the nostalgia of losing you. I look out into the glowing clenched-fist night and feel a swell of clarity. I feel like I’m finally starting to understand you, and I can see your fingers unfurling so I know you feel the same. I like to think of you as one of those songs that I didn’t like at first but then I kept hearing it and eventually I fell in love with it, because it’s not as cheap and easy as a pop song. People ask me if I think we can work it out and I say ... maybe. Clear-eyed Sydney calls me home and makes so much sense, like the boy with the clean fingernails and a full time job. And of course Sydney will win in the end.

But I’ll always look for you, blazing and darkening in shadow movements behind the screen. I’ll sit and watch untiringly through the night like Indonesians do; everyone else will be on the side where they can watch the skilful puppet master and the intricately designed puppets, with the gamelan orchestra creating its nightmarish soundtracks. I’ll be alone on the other side of the screen, watching the silhouettes shifting and stirring and embracing and quivering as they love, fight and betray their way through life. And I’ll make it all real with my belief.

We’re the lucky ones, because we know ahead of time that we are ending; we can say everything we’ve always wanted to say. So let’s just enjoy the time we have left together. I know you’re not big on beginnings and endings (more on that later), but I am – so try to think of something meaningful for our farewell.

Love, (that’s right- love, don’t be malu)

Ali xx