Garuda Birds and Flowing Fire (2)

((Back to Bali and 1986.))

May 18

Night. Rick and I have just returned from a long, hot, and harrowing day spent driving much of the island with three young women, our neighbors from across the garden. (Pleasant enough, I suppose, but truly spoiled daughters of the upper middle-class: too much money, leisure, and "social" drugs.) We repeated whole chunks of the Besakih tour, but this time the mountain was enveloped in clouds: peak hidden, views conscribed, the experience less magical.

But I did get to watch old women and tiny girls piling heavy rocks atop their heads and then balancing these up the slopes for repairs to a part of the temple. And I spent a good half hour talking with some gamelan players and temple guards; though the complex stays empty, the area around it serves as a kind of community-hall gathering place for area villagers.

Later we prowled among ornery bearded monkeys worshipped in a nutmeg forest: tumbledown ruins, creeper vines, nutmeg seeds scattered. Rick and one of the women got nipped trying to cuddle up with the little beggars; I used a stick and kept them honest. Had more trouble, in fact, with a persistent guy at the parking area who wanted my shirt in exchange for a keris knife with a carved-wood handle.

Then we drove back down to the southern coast, to a much-favored temple beside the sea, to watch the Bali sunset come on; scores of curious schoolchildren and older believers were in attendance too, but the clouds never parted.

(Earlier on, we had passed a village where a Hindu cremation ceremony was about to begin. We saw the flower-bedecked procession route, the waiting platform, and the happy family and friends, but didn't stay for the burning--which I think we'd have been welcome to attend. Worth observing someday, I guess, but a bit ghoulish just to sit there as curiosity seekers. At any rate, Bali is still buzzing with talk of the festive cremation day a few weeks back: some regional prince, a venerated, almost holy ruler, died at last, and 500 of his followers, people already dead and buried, that is, were dug up and burned along with the prince. There were flowers and funeral pyres, parades and pyromaniacs, all over the island!)

The "harrowing" part of the trip came after dark, driving back to Kuta. It was my shift in the four-wheel-drive rental, and I quickly discovered that the headlamps didn't work at all! So there we were with no car lights, no streetlights along the way, the moon obscured by clouds, and 45 kilometers of pitted road to navigate. With five pairs of eyes staring and five different voices shouting warnings, I sped along, weaving in and out among the nearly invisible pedestrians and bicyclists, pounding on the horn--which beeped only intermittently--perspiring frantically, riding the brakes but also trying to keep our speed at about 35 m.p.h. so we could get the car back before the agency's closing time and thus avoid paying a whole second-day's rental fee.

I hit branches, spun the tires in rocks off the side of the road, and drove down a one-way street the wrong way at the end, but we made it. Drenched, gibbering like one of those damned monkeys, I got the car part-way into a cramped slot and then the engine killed. "Fuck it," I said, and walked away.

I haven't spoken to any of the others since. Whatever else happened, I've just been finishing my South of Bali poem, riding on the adrenalin, burning out...


Sunset at Kuta Beach

The sky breathes red and gold, a Balinese dragon
consuming the dregs of the sun.
To the west, Java seethes with volcanic change;
each night, chaos remains.
But at Kuta, the last Australian surfer drags
his board past the beach flags,
the multitudinous native masseuses and stubborn
sun-worshippers who yearn
for a few more hours of fragrant oil. Baked
bodies are rewrapped, naked
caramel breasts tucked reluctantly in sarongs.
The South of Bali belongs
these days to tourists and jet-setters, a president
whose posh, rent-out residence
goes for more per night than one Indonesian
can make in four seasons
of farming, and locals who've become most adept
at chivvying rupiahs kept
loose in these travellers' well-padded pockets.
Kuta's sky late at sunset
cools into shapes of garuda birds and flowing fire,
as sun-drugged desire
reawakens to evenings of more fleshly pleasures,
and lager-Fostering tours
of the flash, Aussie-catering watering holes.
The sky's glowing coals
are scattered thin, dyeing through twilight's batik
into indigo and black.
The evening kecak dance, staged for paying
customers only, rings
out in percussive rhythm and chanted monkey cries.
That trance may be a lie,
but part-way up Mt. Agung, where lava still rumbles,
above the Mother Temple--
the island's beating heart--a scimitar of moon
has hung by a thread since noon.
And now it falls. But no one bothers to notice,
neither hedonist nor Balinese.

((It occurs to me now that my chastising and moralizing tone, and the imagery chosen, isn't all that far removed from the words of our terrorist enemies today... But it's only a poem, folks, really.))

Venus Reborn

Feeling the pressure of new year necessities, so today I've decided to return to the saga of Down Under, 1986 (see two previous entries)...

When I got back to Sydney from the West of Australia, my love and soon-to-be-fiancee Sandie arrived for a two-week reunion as we sought to determine whether we were a couple that could survive lengthy separations (yes, we were) and whether we could travel together (we could and did, with Sandie rejoining me in Europe a few months later, for another lucky 13 months of adventures).

But first we experienced some other parts of Australia. We explored Sydney's galleries and nightlife, for example, flew into the Outback to climb Ayers Rock, and dodged the bats flitting nightly about the town of Cairns--where I bought a brilliant and brilliantly colored t-shirt showing a sort-of swinging bachelor wombat lazing in a hammock, with pen and postcard in hand, and caption reading, "Weather is here. Wish you were beautiful!"

Prior to Cairns, heading northward on the continent's Eastern coast, we had some lovely and solitary days on the beaches of Queensland. The following poem dates from that time, as we enjoyed both weather and our beautiful, reunited selves...

Botticellian Song

Languidly my lady goes,
Accepting what the sea
Bestows, froth of waves
Lapping at her heels, surf
Slapping at the rocks beyond.

The ocean is the bond
Between us here, forgiving
All that we bring each other
For cleansing. Lithe still,
She leans looking down:

The sucking sand absorbs
Each splash of tidal wash,
Reflects her peering face
And the flash of naked
Limbs scissoring across

Liquid space—a treasure
Of radiance, and grace
Beyond measuring. She bends,
Hesitating, where the foam
Ends, her hand reaching

Down to mirrored hand
To pluck a scallop shell
Tossed to sand by the roil
And ruck of tumbling water.
O Aphrodite’s daughter,

Child of sea and earth,
I see you rise holding
Out your prize to me,
Birth of Venus reversed.
In your eyes I see myself

Revised: handsomer: a lad
Of golden summer again—
The magic of this beach
After squalling rains
Linking us now, each

To the other, and removing
Age’s stains, here where
The land’s reach falters
And drains, as a woman
Alters, spent after loving.

Blasted Outback

((Returning on the Indian-Pacific train, heading back from Perth (this time to dip south for visits to Melbourne and Adelaide), we again had to cross the Nullarbor Plain, again much of it during the night. On the first trip, the train had stopped at a waterhole/non-town named Cook for 40 minutes, but the train cars had been locked tight, so I couldn't get out to view the stars and Halley's Comet. On the return, when we stopped in Cook the second time, I found a door unlocked, so I climbed down and headed away from the lights to look skyward.

I walked out a couple of hundred yards and stared up at the heavens... After several silent minutes I decided I wanted binoculars; I was about to go back for them when I heard... the train already pulling away! Panic-stricken I ran over to and along the moving train, pounding on locked doors and car sides, convinced I was about to be abandoned in the wasteland Outback, just another fool tourist caught short...

The rest of my bonehead experience and what I made of it can be read in the following poem. The Nullarbor piece I had started and put away suddenly had a reason to exist and a, sort of, resolution.))

Nullarbor Plain Song

All day we drive deeper, wheel-shafts
muscling the Outback’s Long Straight
of steel-rail track. Granite disappears,
and red-ochre dirt gives way,
till west of the road north to Alice,
the Indian-Pacific skims limestone
dust like ash: decayed salt-flats
of a Cretaceous seabed upraised.

The annihilated fastness grows
no trees—five hundred miles
of Nullarbor desolation. Yet life
holds hard here, living parched:
scrub grasses grip scorched ground;
salt-bush, myall, and mulga breed
hordes of insects, that lizards may feed
on this sun’s anvil; and predator hawks

hunt gallah and shrike, hammering
day down into night… Past midnight.
Roused by the train’s rude couplings,
I come awake at some battered
watering station—no town, a rough
cluster of tin roofs; most buildings
deserted, but a few housing mates,
Bruces and Sheilas coupled or un-.

The train cools down, waiting. I walk out,
restless, away from the work-lights,
to gaze up at myriad flickerings,
the patterned grid of translucent dark:
unknown creatures, strange constellations;
aboriginals Dreaming their ancestral trails
through nightmares of whitefella creation…
Kangaroos made radioactive. Goannas

that glow in the dark. Wombats mutated
by decades-old bomb-tests… No moon
and no sound. Yet night’s unseen motion.
And somewhere overhead, flashing
fire and ice, Halley’s veiled face. In this
cold, burning universe, where is the omen?
where the heaven-breaking response?
What sense can track the comet

through all its hard foretellings,
or prepare us for some radiant dawn,
past the terror wastes of Maralinga,
in a world of Nullarbor Plains?
Where lies the way out or back…?
No answer. Nothing. I am unused,
the still clapper in this silent,
arching bell of cosmic blackout…

Yet, almost imperceptibly, a faint form
stirs on the horizon of consciousness:
possible… immanent… shimmering…
Shattered by hissing, by the sudden
clack-clack of steel wheels slipping;
and I am panic-running, chasing
the stuttering sleepers, their doors
locked, train rolling faster and

faster, last car passing, going,
and I’m collapsing by the track,
but… a crewman’s hand grabs me—
boosted up and in, adrenalin
jumping, synapses overloaded,
rocketing with the car… as all
the lights go out: rail system
shutdown; braking, to, a… halt.

Perspiring here in starless black,
stalled in Australia’s blasted Outback
on a gone-dead train to nowhere,
now and for the rest of my journey
through these ashes, as terrified
as any ancestor who looked
to the heavens, transfixed
by mystery—and was answered.

Train Time

((The sad demise of American railroads and current sorry state of AmTrak versus some embarrassingly excellent trains still zipping and chugging their way around the world... well, that's a topic on my mind as the year 2008 begins. Everyone complains about airport delays, but friends of mine had passenger train screwups and stuck-on-the-track delays this past year lasting eight and thirteen hours.

True, I've ridden some hellbound trains (more loco than motive) in Southeastern Europe and Burma, but I can also remember wonderful trips I experienced in decades past--across the Midwest, around New York State, from Chicago to Seattle several times, up and down the West Coast, and so on. These days I wouldn't ride a U.S. long-distance train even if someone else was paying. But line me up with a Eurail Pass, and I am yours for life (or at least the month); what a brilliant way to zip back and forth across the Continent! And that's pretty much a separate matter from the bullet-trains operating with great success in Japan and France. Where would Britain be without the Flying Scotsman and The Great Train Robbery? or France minus the Orient Express and that exciting WWII adventure film simply called The Train (definitely one of Burt Lancaster's best roles)?

Considering our own railroads' significant history--from construction of the Trans-Continental Railway to hobos riding the rods; from beautiful Art Deco travel posters to blues songs like "The Panama Limited" and "Love in Vain"; from the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the City of New Orleans, and the Yellow Dog, to the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe; from North by Northwest and Once Upon a Time in the West to Strangers on a Train and Sunset Limited; from the sad trains transporting Lincoln's body (or the Kennedys more recently) to the victory expresses filled with happy politicos or football fans; from Singing Brakeman Jimmie Rodgers somewhere "Waiting for a Train" to the tragic heroics of John Henry and the engineer of Old No.9; from Gravy Trains and Midnight Specials and certain others "bound for glory," to the "A" Train and "The Golden Rocket" and Elvis riding his "Mystery Train"... well, almost anyone over 30 could list page after page of train lore.

Anyway, I wanted to celebrate trains past and present this time. They used to, and maybe some still do, take you to faraway places and strange folks. There's a famous and remarkable railway that rolls straight across the Outback of Australia, from Sydney to Perth. It's a train I was glad to board; and here's the relevant section from my 1986 around-the-world journal, with most details likely still similar today.))

******
April 6

The steel wheels are rolling, and the steel rails humming, as the famed "Indian-Pacific" hurtles west. I decided I had to see Perth--and this train--even though it means a three-day trip across the full width of the continent. And even though I'm sharing this roomette with a young virologist from Edmonton, Alberta, who seems a combination of nerd and know-it-all. (He probably dislikes my grumpy taciternity too.)

Spent the morning and early p.m. wandering Sydney's main museum and rambling expanse of park. I learned about the Aboriginals, peculiar flora and fauna Down Under (dangerous spiders, for example), the continent's geological history. Most fun was a film and exhibit on the dubious duck-billed platypus, which I hope to coax into a poem sometime.

So far we've chugged up and over the Blue Mountains, which feature 3000-foot peaks, winding valleys, sharp escarpments, and lots of bush, with the population of Aussies getting scarcer by the mile.

April 7

Dawn. My lands, what we are seeing: burning sky, a lake of dead trees, sheep and cattle stations in flat scrub-growth stretching for miles, a flock of flamingo-like birds in flight (some kind of heron maybe), a herd of kangaroos bouncing away from the onrushing train, and a pack of panicky, bobbing emus. The other early risers around me are burning off camera film at a fierce rate.

Later... We stopped for an hour at Broken Hill, a major mining town (silver, zinc and lead) on the border between Aussie states New South Wales and South Australia. I trudged around in the surprisingly chilly air, admired some interesting turn-of-the-century architecture, little else.

Then on across mostly wasteland, with even the animals tucked away somewhere else. And this was the easy part--the desolate Nullarbor Plain still lies ahead. Another late-afternoon stop gave us a quick taste of Port Pirie, a slightly sleazy seaport a few notches up the southern coast from Adelaide. Otherwise, on and on, into the night. No lights or sign of what's out there, but we'll hit the Nullarbor about 3:30 this morning.

April 8

In the heat of mid-day the Nullarbor seems little more than a dreadful desert plateau--not sand, but rock scrabble, with minimal bits of grass, a few 'roos and emus (seen early morning only), and nothing else. Certainly no trees; thus its Latin-derived name. The plain features one stretch of perfectly straight train-track 478 kilometers long!

Anyway, you look out, see nothing but dusty white plain--no land features; a patch of moisture mirage perhaps. Go 20 kilometers on, look again: exactly the same. Perversely beautiful.

I started a poem during the night. Brief stops and side-shuntlings kept waking me up, so then I tried to sneak outside in mid-Outback to see Halley's Comet. But every door was locked tight. Frustrated, I picked up the pen again.

Later... Ten hours after rolling into the Nullarbor, we finally begin to see taller vegetation and then a few trees again. Some huge hawks, birds called gallahs, scrawny cattle, scrawnier weather-hardened Aussies. Braked to a stop about 6 p.m., in Kalgoorlie, in the gold mining region of Western Australia. With a couple of hours to wait, I walked out "downtown" with my meal-mates, a mother and her two children, bound home to Perth from Melbourne.

But only three kinds of places were open: pubs catering to locals and passers-through; the single still-in-operation gold mine, which runs organized tours timed for this train break; and Kalgoorlie's infamous Egan Street, which offers still-functioning bordellos--quasi-legal, or at least ignored by the authorities. Unfortunately (or do I mean fortunately?) not in walking distance.

I've shelved the Nullarbor poem for now--too gloomy. More useful might be a belated description of some of the characters I've been "training" with: roomie Hans and his sister Marguerite, he thin and with a silly gigolo mustache, she stout and aggressive, both of them staking out the club car, holding forth for hours on end. Another peculiar pair, Arthur and his Mum, are too amazing to ignore--hirsute and stout, a bit bandicoot-like; him shy and lonely and awkward, her whining after him, again and again, "Arthur, Arthur..." More charming, but in a gruff way, are "Athos," "Porthos," and "Aramis," our three Kiwi musketeers, country boys heading for farm jobs near Perth: one skinny, one rock-like, one rotund, and all three spending endless hours guzzling beer and telling incomprehensible jokes.

The Aussie capacity for drink has been well-documented, but in person it is truly, shall we say, staggering. Red-faced men, tiny old ladies, young hellraisers, rowdy "sheilas," all with can after can pyramiding up around them--Foster's and Swan, Emu Export and "XXXX," and "Another round here, mate. No worries!" The train toilets, which flush directly onto the tracks, have left a rather wet trail across the, er, wastes.

April 9 and after

Continuing yesterday's brew-haha, I neglected to mention the outlandish number of pubs and pub-hotels, t-shirts extolling beer-swilling, and even best-selling books that picture drunken Aussies partying, puking, and passing out.

I had a sampling of all those cultural wonders as I wandered the streets of Perth today. A happier city than Sydney, I think--smaller but still quite international in its ethnic mix, its shops and restaurants and arts on display. Located on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Perth is actually closer to Singapore than to many of the cities in Oz... full of stately homes, well-tended parks, burgeoning skyscrapers, lovely suburbs arrayed around the sprawling Swan River Estuary, white-sand beaches leading up and down the coast, sparkling sunshine and bustling energy. Its lively spirit derives from strong regional growth, booming oil fields, the America's Cup Challenge going on at nearby Fremantle, and the land's western vantage looking out on a watery frontier. I could live here for sure: the size is still manageable, the folks' outlook confident.

Everything here feels charged up, like Chicago in the days when Sandburg called it "City of Big Shoulders"--a buzzing, brawling, beautiful chunk of urban excitement. The bus driver yesterday could be both cynical and nostalgic for the old days, the Western Australia of farms and towns he grew up in. But to a newcomer, Perth feels like the future.

This is the edge--the edge of a huge continent, of a wide-open ocean, and of a dangerous blade called Progress. Sydney with its sprawl and Metro trains and busy ferry system runs like a well-oiled machine, a New York not yet out of control, while Perth still struggles, experiments, makes mistakes. But is going for it!

((The train trip back across Australia delivered a strange, one could even say mystical, post-midnight moment, which I'll regale you with next time.))

Whose Zoo's Who's?

In the fondly remembered days of record stores and bootleg albums--those produced for fans rather than outright illegal copies of regular releases--the single best label for boots was called Trademark of Quality, and a friend of mine, William Stout (comics illustrator, film designer, and dinosaurs/Antarctica painter extraordinaire) was the man who illustrated most of the best jackets, for (in)famous releases featuring the Beatles, Stones, Led Zep, Neil Young, and many others. (Bill also did work for the beginnings of now-giant label Rhino Records--which kinda relates, as you will see.)

But he outdid himself fashioning full-color jackets (now very collectable) for double albums by the Yardbirds and the Who. I've reproduced one jacket as a brief introduction to the Art of Bill--more about my pal in postings to come--and to offer a serendipitous visual for the two poems I'm offering up today, both of which grew from zoo experiences, the first down under in Australia (where a plaque memorializes the slightly comical, long-ago visit there by Eleanor Roosevelt), and the second when Sandie and I were living across from the Seattle Zoo, right opposite bison, wolves, and many birds.

So today, after too many meaty mini-essays, maybe, I choose to be short and simple, which is of course what age does for you anyway: you get simpler (mentally) and shorter (physically). I hope someone enjoys the break...

Rhinocerudes, Sydney

In the midday heat, three rhinos
Lie collapsed, as indiscreet as winos
In their concrete habitat. Iron
Bars hold them back from the siren
Rumble of a lumbering breakout—
Boulder-massive even sprawled about.

Two of them sport gray-black
Convict stripes where their rack
Of ribs pokes out from inside
The topographic map of hide.
(One’s eyes twitch, and pigeons
Instantly hurl themselves to regions

Far removed from all rhinocerudes
With rough, unpredictable moods.)
Their ears curl up without fuss,
Scroll-like and cornucopious
Around the double horns—one nub,
The other sharpened by the rub

Of life, years before this prison.
But look! the third has risen,
A slow and cumbersome climb,
Lurching itself erect in time
To stand bemused, wondering
Where to go when, then blundering

Around the yard, through the slops,
A battle-worn Triceratops
Exiled from some prehistoric veldt.
A certain Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt
Once scrutinized two such corrugated
Beasts, struggling as they copulated

In this bleak, unaesthetic hole,
Then blurted, "Bless my soul!"
Inspired by the President’s wife,
Reformed by their penal life,
These model rhinos more and more
Are aging to resemble Eleanor.


Zoo Morning

Without malice, in ecstasy
of the day, the grey wolves
across the way are scattering
seagulls in a pinwheel flutter,
trotting to and fro amid
the glitter of wobbling wings,
dazzle so bright both gulls
and wolves flare nearly white,
sunlight firing the trellis
of nobby twigs and fencewire,
each dazed and glazed thing
chiming that spring impels
the sap of running and budding,
flapping and climbing--wolves
churning, birds spiring, great
wheel vibrantly turning
another notch today in always,
tattered white peacock
needing no cloak of light
to screech his word of praise.