Letter No.4 - The Midnight Train

Wednesday night. Midnight. The exhibition had just opened that day.

I was feeling good. The room looked great, people had come, conversations had been had. I was, by any reasonable measure, a man enjoying the fruits of his labour.

Then Melissa texted me.

She had booked me a train. Departing Thursday, 11:00 AM to Tawangmangu, Central Java. I was to go stay with Mas Subi, the research assistant to Professor Peter Carey, co-author of the 1830 book.

I was to farm. I was to read. I was to, in Melissa's words, decolonise my mind.

Now. What exactly did I do to deserve this. That is a question I cannot answer on the official Tulisan website. What I will say is that I was enjoying life. Possibly too much. Melissa has always had professional reasons ready for personal decisions and I respect the craft honestly. She is very good at it.

What I will also say is that nowhere in the conversation, at midnight, twelve hours before my train, did anyone specify that I could not enjoy my punishment.

I arrived in Tawangmangu the next morning after a long train ride, bleary eyed, bag on my shoulder, ready to apparently become a farmer. The air hit me first. Cold and clean in a way Jakarta never is. The kind of air that makes you feel like your lungs have been lying to you your whole life.

Mas Subi was waiting for me.

I did not know what to expect. What I got was a man who was warm and funny and quietly extraordinary. His family took me in without ceremony. Pak and Ibu, his family figures, treated me like I had always been there.

Mba Riska, his wife, was in the middle of preparing for Independence Day celebrations because she is a teacher and a dance teacher and apparently does not sleep.

I was given a room. I was given food. I was given a schedule that began very early in the morning and involved a significant amount of mud.

Melissa did not tell me I could not enjoy my punishment.

So I did.

The game continues,
Oki - Tulisan