Another Kampung and Aesthetic Life

On Friday, I walked over to our neighbor Pak Marno's house to see if he would take me on his becak over to the track so I could run. (It had been nearly a month since I had run, with traveling to Australia and Jakarta.) On the drive back from the track, the becak stopped for no apparent reason. I looked back to see if everything was okay with Pak Marno but he was gone! So I just sat there for maybe fifteen seconds, wondering. But soon Pak Marno came running back to his seat behind the cab of the becak. He said something that I didn't understand and then we started moving again. When we got back to the house, I handed him his fare and as I passed the bills to him I saw he had a rock in his hand. I asked him if he had stopped to pick the rock up off the ground. He said yes. I asked him why he wanted it. And he said he just saw it and wanted it. From the glance I got of the rock, it was smooth but not shiny. It wouldn't have been anything special in the desert of southern Utah, but it did seem fairly special among the cement shards of Solo's side streets. Maybe Pak Marno saw the rock and thought it could be ground into a stone for a ring? Or maybe more simply it appealed to his aesthetic sense. (I just saw it and wanted it seems like a classic aesthetic reaction to me.) In any case, on Sunday we went for a walk through some neighboring kampungs, and I took pictures in a general trend toward hitting on some of the aesthetic sensibilities I see here. Not all the pictures here are about beauty and adornment, even if that's something I was thinking about as we walked.

How did roosters get so good looking?

A boy in the street flying a kite.

A wall with some African animals on it

Leftover rice drying on a flat basket on an orange tarp set on a bicycle.

N pointed out a sign about juice for sale for 25 cents.

Entrance to our neighboring kampung

S pretending to be the statue of liberty, standing on a stout post placed in the intersection to keep people from speeding through the little roads.

Glass on a wall

A little toko

A grid of potted plants (or at least the pots) moving up the side of a wall.

We talked to the people who had this bird in the cage. They said it was ayam hutan, jungle fowl.

A circular swing in front of a rainbow fence.

In front of a house that's seemed fairly hardscrabble: busts and a plaque.

Water between two homes

W asked why anyone would put glass along the top of their fence. I thought of a poem I had once heard, a dramatic monologue spoken by a Latin American dictator. In that poem, he said the glass on the top of his wall was placed there to scoop out a kneecap.

S plays with her pink "phone" in front of a purple wall

N pointed out this great metal work casting shadows on the door

We left one kampung and came out onto a main road, with a barbershop, before we walked into the next.

How does a presidential candidate get people to belief something like this? "Jokowi is us."/"We are Jokowi." But I guess that's what every successful candidate has to convince people of on some level.

The stonework tells a story that happened before the story the doors tell.

N stopped to smell the flowers and said they had no smell. S wanted to check.

Bad water in an alley. But the bad water looks nice.

W saw some pigeons on the top of a building.

We walked by a little house, and a little rooster, really pint-sized, walked out of the house with the over-sized confidence of a chihuahua. But it seemed friendly, unlike almost every chicken and every chihuahua I've ever met.

After it approached us, the man who lived in the house came out and pet the rooster like it was a cat or a little dog.

A big wooden bell

N pointed out that we were either on a street or in a kampung called Nusa Indah, beautiful island

As we walked we got closer and closer to an unpleasant sound. It turned out to be coming from a chest of drawers, modified to fit onto a bicycle, and further modified to steam food, cooking it in bamboo tubes. You'll see the metal release valve for the steam on the top left. The steam streaming out of the valve was making the noise.

We kept walking, into another kampung

Nice shade

Nice green wall

After looking at these "flowers" (they were so impressive it hardly seems fitting to classify them with tulips, which are nice but not nearly as impressive, in my opinion), I wondered why this plant isn't planted everywhere.

The man with the bamboo tube steaming bicycle passed us as we walked, riding off into the sunset.

N pointed out this frog

N also pointed out that somehow, the brand No Fear (big in the 90s) has survived, in the crannies of Solo's kampungs, of all the places in the world.

There's something in me that makes me wish my neighborhood in the US was a place where people could be bold enough to paint their houses like this.

N pointed out how the bonsai trees, whose roots grow fat, start looking like animals.

Another wooden bell

We met a man who had a hair salon. He and his wife kept plants all over the place, on their own side of the street and on the opposite side.

W said this broke brick lattice looked like a fish. He suggested we ought to pack it home for our friend Moses. But we're hoping Moses will be satisfied just to see a picture. Maybe he could break some bricks in Utah into the shape of fish.

We met a father and daughter. N struck up a conversation and said she liked the daughter's Iron Man outfit. (I had never known N to like superheroes but I guess she does like them.) Looking at the pic and thinking about Iron Man, I wonder if this wasn't a daughter but a son.

The child shook N's hand and then, as children are taught to do here, he took her hand and put it against his cheek.

Then the father invited us to enter a patio where his friends were (of all things) grinding stones to make rings! Here's a bracelet I took a pic of. The man who made it said it's rare to see bracelets but common to see rings. Based on my own experience, I think he's right.

We were getting close to our own kampung now. Walking along the busy road in front of it. I've been along the road many times but had never noticed this busted up building.

We stopped quickly and looked at a little batik store in our kampung. We had never seen it open before.

Pak Marno and his wife have a sign in at the entrance to their little house. It says "Ngamen gratis," or, "If you're coming around here singing and looking for money for your songs, we won't pay you and you'll sing for free." There's enough of aesthetic life on the streets of the kampungs that people can afford to send ngamen, or traveling musicians, traveling to other doorsteps.