As my wife and I exited the airport in Jakarta, I was instantly greeted by super-heated air whose stale thickness could keep a person standing in place, if one was prompted to give into the immediate need to suffocate from it.

Traveling to Indonesia served a dual purpose - for my wife it was an overdue return to her homeland; for myself it was an opportunity to meet countless in-laws who I had only heard about during the previous years of our marriage. Actually there was a third common reason, that involved having a traditional Indonesian (make-up) wedding so my wife's family could experience our marriage first hand, and so I could be immersed head first into some real Indonesian culture.

A day and another plane trip later we arrived to my wife's tiny island, Belitung, where the airport carries the name of her late uncle - purportedly a notable public figure - along with his statue that is prominently displayed out front with its permanently elated expression; I could only imagine from his apparent fondness of airports. Wow I thought, this family is well connected.

The thirty minute bounce by jeep to my in-law's home revealed a collection of sights, sounds, and smells that came straight out of the most exotic travelogues. It was noting short of island paradise, and it literally took me just moments to get caught up in the feel and loose all pending cares, including the fixation with the relentless heat that seemed to pervade everything including my thinking. I kept saying to myself: it doesn't matter if I look like a sweaty swamp-thing, as well that twenty pairs of eyes are fixed on me at every moment and no one knows what I'm trying to say with the exception of random interpretations through my wife, this is just too unbelievable; just smile and enjoy. And enjoy it I did, immensely.

The remainder of the two weeks spent there was noting short of amazing and in the lengthiest of run-on sentences (aside from those of a much greater literary might proffered by Proust - actually he makes me look as an babbling infant on every level), I will try to encapsulate my experience: The beaches were amazing; the sometimes gullet scorching food was superb; the people were incredible and even though there is an abundance of poverty, the folks were the most genuine, kindest, and family centered I have ever encountered; the wedding was surreal and involved a three day celebration that included dressing up in a sizes-too-small traditional costume that made me look like a giant red smurf, while l laughably danced to traditional music and partook in a cultural event that was beyond surreal that left me with too many indelible impressions to count - while there I continually felt very out of place and was seemingly the only tourist visiting the non-touristy island at the time, to the extent that kids would point and look at me like I was a side-show freak and call me "bulih," which apparently means "lost white dude" or something like that...oh, and did I mention that the beaches were amazing.

I feel very blessed to have been able to glimpse into a culture and experience it from a non-touristy perspective. Traveling is so much more than just seeing - in its most memorable sense it involves mixing it up in the streets and diving into the culture.
And boy did I dive!

Shallow

automatic-animals,

seduced by lust,

gives a fleeting joy,

quick...

then lost.

Sweaty pleasures,

in a stripped-

down night,

where racing

flesh entwines,

while minds

stay off.

Empty embraces,

gripping

ever-absent hearts,

whose wild

palpitations

faintly echo,

as if missing,

silenced by lust.

Veering off the Learning Curve

Once almost too long to remember ago, my sister and I were enjoying an afternoon of being left home alone - which was alright to do back then as well as pistol whipping your children since there wasn't all this proper parenting BS to contend with - and aside from trying to figure out what would be the most fun to do while causing the least repercussions, our only appointed task for the day was to remove the dried-up and nearly petrified Christmas tree that was long past being a fire hazard; I think it was sometime in June.

So we took to the task with a vengeance and what seemed like an easy job, soon turned into a prickly nightmare as we attempted to remove the lights and ornaments that were now fused to the tree, while getting as few pine needles on the floor as possible. This done, we then pulled the tree into the back yard where it was to be cut up and put into the trash. At the time, it was unfashionable to just dump the last remains of one's Christmas out onto the street for someone else to deal with, which we would have readily done; I even have a faint recollection that dumping it over our neighbors wall entered our diabolical little minds.

But our higher selves got the best of us and out came the pruning shears and whatever other implements could be found for a quick and painless disposal, which idea soon got ditched as we found the wood to be much harder then the tender soft-spots on our hands that could endure. What to do, what to do. And in a crystallized moment invented out of necessity, we knew what to do; burn the bloody thing. Since burning it outside would pose a problem and the smoke would attract obvious attention, we decided to do the next best thing and burn it inside our house in the fireplace. Now this was no small tree and it was all we could do to cram it in the fireplace, but cram we did and in it went.

As we lit the match and proceeded to commit the last vestige of our holidays to an unceremonious departure, a twist of fate would soon turn that tree into a veritable yuletide terror since unbeknownst to us, the trap on the chimney closed while we were stuffing it into the fireplace. And not unlike Dante and his Inferno, as our match touched the wood, the tree's own three sins were instantly revealed which quickly erupted in a violent, malicious, and self-indulgent uprising that created a personal hell for us as the dried thing won the moment and menacingly sparked into the greatest of conflagrations. My sister and I watched in horror as billowing smoke regurgitated out of the closed chimney and instantly filled the room, along with great flames that tore rents in the escaping black as it danced its way up to the ceiling, while illuminating the sheer terror on our gaping eyes. In utter fright, my sister froze in one spot and let out screams that could raise the dead - which did little more then give a voice to the fire and thoroughly rattle my nerves - while I scrambled to retrieve a garden hose.

The run to the hose was the longest I ever made in my life, and mere seconds seemed to turn into light years as I attempted to turn on the water and run back to extinguish the fire. Sheer panic collided with images of my family in a relief center without a place to sleep for the night, sound-tracked by the horrified screams of my sister that steadily emanated from the house. I started running and as soon as I hit the patio - which was naturally wet since I was thoroughly spraying it as I made may way towards it - I slipped and hit the ground hard as I turned to enter the house. Without even a moment to spare to wince from the pain, I was back on my feet and spraying down the fire that had already turned the wall and part of the ceiling a nice shade of soot-black.

As soon as the fire was out, my sister regained herself which was not a moment too soon since she was close to passing out from hyperventilating and fear, and we quickly assessed the damage. It thankfully wasn't serious, but would need some serious time to clean up. So we opened every window, fanned, mopped, sponged, painted, sprayed air freshener, worried, sponged some more, re-painted again and more or less spent the rest of the afternoon undoing the mess we had made. No sooner had we finished, our parents arrived home and were met by two kids who were themselves freshly painted in guilt and probably looked as if they had just killed the Pope. The smell of smoke soon gave us away and the story was out, but in the end and much to our surprise, we were praised by the way it was handled and the pistol whipping was spared for another day.