hujan

If language is any guide than Indonesia is a starkly bipolar place. Two words, sudah and belum, ‘already’ and ‘not yet,’ dominate conversation, and to a greater extent, how Indonesians digest life. It is an equally beautiful and frustrating delineation of life here.

When asked if you have been married, instead of answering with the simple negation, one answers ‘belum’—not yet. When unable to shake a hawker, a simple ‘sudah’ is often the most effective retort. Our well worn yeses and nos are relegated to bit parts.

Daily conversation is practically built around this partition; whenever you meet someone they can be expected to ask, ‘Have you eaten?,’ ‘Do you smoke?,’ ‘Have you been?’ and you to answer, instead of yes or no, ‘sudah, belum, belum.’

It gets a little absurd when asked things like, ‘Are you in the army?’ or ‘Do you have children?’ or ‘Have you ever lost a limb?’ and my Indonesian teachers can always be counted on to firmly remind me, ‘mas matt. Belum.’ Nearly always, your response ‘belum’ will be sparingly and precisely repeated, rolled back to you, remphasized, by one’s conversational counterpart, as the word itself might fit through a pinhole: in Jawa one shrinks to stare down the infinity of possibility alone, and learns to live with it knocking about in the night.

* * *

The rainy season has been a bit tardy coming to Yogya, and the past week has been marked by the further condensation of collective apprehension (heed, for Jawa) as each day passed without rain. Each day the question, ‘hujan’ (‘rain?’) became a bit more frequent and the answer ‘belum,’ often accompanied by a glance at the canopy, a bit more emphatic. When you only experience two seasons, and this specific changing of the guard is so palpable and—it rains—cathartic, the tension (sparing you the implicit survey of Javanese sexual psychology) gets a bit onerous.

Its funny and a bit unexplainable, because this friction becomes almost communal; I found myself on edge over the status of the rain, mystified by its absence, when rain really only meant buying an umbrella, getting muddy, staring down yet more cockroaches, and looking out for passing buses. Every day ‘sudah’ rolls across Jawa and into the ear of someone you meet: it rained in Jakarta, and heavy rain in Cental Jawa, the volcano had rain last night. In Yogya: still, no, not yet.

* * *

Today, it rained, and it was pure anticlimax. Yet, I could not help enjoy the Javanese accounting implicit in its passage: the sliding of the counter from one column to another, the removal of the blockage, Jawa's metaphysical divide; in an instant ‘belum’ becomes ‘sudah.’

circuses

After mocking Leo Dicaprio in my last post I realized that poor Leo's really just collateral damage to something much more symptomatic of western society. I do not want to apologize (love, after all, is never having to say you're sorry--thank you, Harvard), but instead think about the relative divergence of cross-national issues like global warming.

One of the things that has most surprised me during my time here is that almost every Indonesian accepts global warming. This in itself is unremarkable, and could be dismissed as simply another way to be anti-American, but you see palpable results throughout society.

For instance, every single lightbulb in Indonesia is one of the new wave, long lasting, high efficiency type. Honestly, I have yet to see an incadescent lightbulb in my time here and have slept in rooms that cost $2/night that have them. For a country that is by no means modern this is incredible when compared with how most Americans could not be bothered to change a lightbulb. I understand that if you view conservation as a good, those who can most afford the luxury will be the last to change their behavior, but you would think that in the most developed country in the world we could perhaps count on some non-economic behavior. Moreover, in my short time here, the most popular and public activism and education on global warming has come from the Muslim student organizations, something that I find highly interesting.

It is true that in America a majority of people are convinced that global warming exists, but it does not change daily life at all. People can neither be bothered to change a lightbulb (or buy an efficient car) nor get out in the streets, something far less educated and advantaged people around the world do every day. Instead, glossy magazines offer up glowing profiles of Leo, Robert Redford, and various 'mogul[s] on a mission' to build every more expensive eco-hotels or designer clothes. In short (and I am not the first to say this, as I read somewhere that the figure is near $1 billion/year), global warming is an industry. Dispense the gaudy with one hand, if only to keep people from realizing how little the other hand is doing.

cross national ombudsman

I edged closer to the West yesterday via a surprise one-day return to Jakarta to take care of a few appointments. The trip has been filled with unexpected surprises and I realize how far afield from the West central Java truly is. It was a bit shocking to see the first English newspaper in over three weeks (this is not entirely true, as on the ferry back from Lombok someone tried to sell me a Jakarta Post for 20,000 rupiah, giving me the 'local's price.' When I pointed out that the cover of the paper said its price was 5,000 rupiah he screamed at me in Javanese? Madurese? Sasak? and skulked off) and realize how little I knew about world news.

For instance, I had no idea that Pete Doherty has vowed to kick drugs, that my country is inching ever closer to going to war with Iran, that wildfires in SoCal threaten the homes of not one, but two, members of Megadeath (who played JKT on Thursday night), and that today is the 15 year anniversary of the passing of Vincent Price (why the JP gave almost 20 inches to this is beyond me).

The truth is Indonesia is neither a modern nor developed (sometimes I think -ing) country. I never realized how deeply I take The Enlightenment for granted until this past month. I am fairly certain that people who believe Indonesia is a modern place have a. only come here for a week b. made a great deal of money here c. never left Jakarta (b and c often go together).

Its a strange window through which to glimpse back to the west, and realize things like, yes, that Vanity Fair cover does in fact picture a parka clad, crampon shod, Leo Dicaprio standing atop a slushy iceberg with a forlorn-looking polar bear cub at his side.

Sometimes home even looks a little preposterous.

sailing the high seas

During my holiday travels both to and from the island (I suppose somewhat redundant to point out) of Lombok, I was treated to the Indonesian ferry experience. Yes, for about 5 hours each way, I bathed in the democracy that few things in life can produce.

As you might imagine, ferries are an important means of transportation in the archipelago. As I do not have my figures in front of me at the present time, I can not really qualify (by means of quantification) that statement, but the fact that the route I took had a ferry running every hour and a half, day and night, resonated at the time.

As I have previously mentioned, but for my fair-weather audience, the past week and a half has been Idul Fitri, the end of the Islamic holy month and basically the holidays in Indonesia. By way of comparison, envision a major airport during the Christian holidays, and then put all of those people on ferries, buses, diesel ten-seat minibuses, flat bed trucks, and motor bikes. Multiply the number of motor bikes by some whole number greater than two. Also, I should mention that the average motor bike is carrying husband, wife, two small children, and (choose one) sack of rice, bushel of jackfruit, or live rooster.

Anyways, getting on the ferry is a randomly disjointed succession of pushing, standing, pushing, sweating, and standing under the cloud of hundreds of idling dual stroke engines. When you finally get on the ferry people go in every direction to stake out their claims. You choose between an AC cabin (about 15 Celsius) and the deck (probably around 35 Celsius). I, being a whiner, am really disinclined towards both of these temperatures.

Anyways, afraid of contracting a sinus infection, I choose the deck, hoping for a breeze offshore (Lombok is about 70km from Bali). Once you get on the boat you will not be leaving for about an hour and a half so you get comfortable and sharpen up both your skills of bargaining and rebuffing the hundreds of hawkers who swarm the ship selling everything from bottled water, to pockets of rice, to cigarettes. The first time I took the ferry I was stumped when everyone around me started purchasing newspapers. It was like I was commuting to New York City—there is no way this many people are going to read the paper on the trip to Lombok. My wonder was dispelled when the boat got under way and everyone laid out their papers (people are literally covering every square foot of this boat, not only the seats) and went to sleep. Unable to resist the subtle alternating rolling and gurgling, as the screws rise up out of the water and then back down to catch, I laid down on the floor (sans newspaper) and went to sleep.

When you get to your destination you are not really at your destination because the harbor only has one dock and the outgoing boat at it will not be done loading for an hour. However, this does not stop all the Indonesians from rushing downstairs to fire up their motor bikes (thanks to the credit boom of a few years ago, there are few things the people of this nation love more than the egalitarian activity of idling their motor bikes). There is literally a crush of humanity going down the stairs and for the next hour the whiteys on deck stare at each other with incredulity, serenaded by the near constant revving of motor bikes and bathed in the vapors (along with clove cigarette smoke a near constant smell in Indonesia; at a traffic light, both), while the boat bobs pacifically in the harbor.

airplanes!

A brief chronicle of my return to Yogyakarta from Denpassar (Bali)-

To begin, I was greeted--quite literally--at the Bali airport by day of the week welcome mats guarding the entrance to the bathrooms (because everything in Indonesia is tiled there are mats at pretty much every threshold). This one said "Kamis/ Thursday" and it was right. I really couldn't contain myself thinking about the possibilities: who changes the mats? where is the room where they keep all the mats on their off-days? do they ever use them to disorient beleaguered business travelers? were the ones featuring the Japanese anime characters more expensive?

I didn't have much time to ponder beyond this because I was almost instantly greeted by the fact that the men's bathrooms have tropical fish tanks over the urinals. Its like bathrooms where they have the running water/continuous fountain/white noise contraption, but waaaay better.

This trip was also auspicious because it was my first experience with an Indonesian low-cost airline. Let me tell you, nothing instills confidence in a passenger quite like walking across the tarmac to the plane on which the motto "Fly is cheap" is emblazoned to the fuselage: you're ready to strap yourself in and get down to business.

The flight was pretty uneventful except (as is always the case) for the landing. In order to land from the west (Denpassar is due east of Yogya) the plane has to meander its way around the airport and back. Our pilot accomplished this by performing a series of exceptionally slow banks, the type where you can't help but wonder if the limp sensation halfway through has something to do with the engines being on idle. This suspicion is confirmed when he conspicuously guns the engines just as you are pretty sure the bank is really more of a spiral. This happened several times. The great compounding factor is that the runway in Yogya is one of the shortest I have ever seen and so you have to come in pretty low (and get down on the pavement pretty shortly after it starts). So, we hit the runway, the whole apparatus takes a breath, and then you hear the complaints of fatigued steel cables pressed into action. The plane goes bumping down the runway and comes to a stop much quicker than you could imagine. All in all the fun is over much too fast.

transport? young girls?

The first and final legs of my holiday in Lombok were flights between Yogyakarta and Denpassar (the airport in Bali). Because I had a night flight on my way out and a morning flight on my way home I got stuck stay two separate nights in Kuta Beach, Bali.

I knew that Kuta Beach was sort of the hub of the island in the sense that Bali is sometimes treated by visitors like a playground for adults, but I was not quite prepared for an experience that left me hoping it was my first and last trip there.

(Some of you may recall that Kuta Beach was the scene of the last two Bali bombings.)
I should have been tipped off on the plane by the presence of a few (loud—but I think we can chalk that up to national disposition) sweaty middle aged Australian men talking quite casually and graphically about all the drinking and whoring they were going to do in Kuta.

For those of you not aware, this past month has been Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month. The end of Ramadan, Idul Fitri, is like the holiday season in Indonesia; everyone takes off and travels back to their ancestral homes. The plane was literally filled with Muslims (most devout based on the presence of headscarves) and all of them traveling with children. These three guys talking loud enough so the entire plane could hear them was more than a bit uncomfortable.

Kuta is basically a flashy strip of beach—stuffed with expensive nightclubs and overpriced hotels—crawling with drunk Caucasian and Japanese people falling down in the street. All the locals are there hawking ‘transport,’ rides on motor bikes for inebriated tourists. Once you decline they inevitably regroup: 'maybe, my friend, we find some girls?' Stopped again, they inevitably lean in close and ask in a hush, 'ok, listen, maybe young girls?'

It was really disappointing and kind of disgusting. Coupled with the fact that everything was twice as expensive there than the rest of Indonesia, I was ready to move on.

Pancasila

Indonesia has a national ideology, Pancasila, five principles that Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, instituted as an ideological impetus for the existence of a single and independent Indonesia comprised of parts so geographically, culturally, and (not the least) religiously diverse.

The five principles, which remain, in spite of many years of co-option by Suharto and discourse amongst the people, part of the Indonesian national identity, include: belief in God, just and civilized humanity, ‘Indonesian democracy’ (scare quotes mine) through consultation and consensus, social justice, and national unity.

After spending a little bit of time in Indonesia I believe that Pancasila is not yet complete and needs yet another principle to truly embody this muddle of an archipelago: a firm reverence for the solute/solvent relationship.

My explanation is quite simple: Indonesians have a torrid romance with the concept of dissolving things in other things and then consuming the creation. It is a veritable nation of latent chemists. Literally, any time you can drink something that is made by dissolving something else, that makes it all the better.

For this reason not only do they have and venerate Nescafe (in fact, I often have to specify when I order coffee that I want coffee and not Nescafe, after all I both come from the land where it comes out of water fountains and most certainly would like to partake of the pinnacle of deliciousness) but at least three imitations thereof. When you get on an Indonesian ferry (an experience so rich I will probably follow with an entry on it) every family pulls out a large bottle of water, pours off a draught (onto the floor, certainly not into their small child’s mouth), pulls out a small brown glass bottle, and pours its contents into the water. The result is often the color of what CandyLand characters might piss, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. At any roadside stand there are at least fifteen types of individually wrapped packets you can buy and add to water. Drinks that have gelatin like components are hugely popular, I imagine because you combine two iterations of the process: powder into water to make the gelatin, then gelatin into drink. In fact, I predict that the high school students of Indonesia will make the great patriot who figures out how to sequester helium inside the gelatin bits that goes in the drinks (triple iteration!!) a very wealthy man.

Vive Pancasila

taliwang

Indonesian lessons have been going rather well; almost every day it seems as if my language skills improve. Being able to affect basic strains of communication has helped me feel more confident going about my daily routine as I see fit. Inevitably, however, this overconfidence sometimes results in me getting in a bit over my head.

For instance, returning from my holiday on Tuesday night I was in Lombok waiting to catch a ferry to Bali where I would then fly back to my present home base of Yogyakarta. I had heard that Lombok is famous for the Taliwang style of cooking, involving a dipping sauce made from limes, chilies, and shrimp paste. I went out and found a place and ordered, to looks of incredulity, grilled chicken taliwang. Walking into the warung, I should have noticed the stacks of chickens—twisted and folded such that they would fit rightly in a cigar box—on paint stirrers, but I was too preoccupied with the Indonesian soap opera playing on the TV. My first realization came when a bowl of rice and a bowl (about the volume of a cigar box) of fowl were place in front of me. Having never eaten a whole chicken, I fretted over both my options and the mechanics of the task literally before me.

Thankfully in Indonesia is it completely appropriate to eat with your hands (in fact, at breakfast earlier that day I had delighted the assembled crowd by eating my breakfast of rice and lamb marrow ‘Lombok-style’—ie with my hands) and, taking liberal use of the finger bowl, I managed to claw and tear my way through the meal.

As I was paring through the last of this chaotic web of twisted claws and wings (I didn’t go anywhere near the head) an advertisement came on the TV for a spray on deodorant. The mis en scene is a teenage girl’s bedroom where three girls in boy shorts and tank tops set up a web-cam (the camera’s perspective is that of the web-came, slightly grainy) in front of which they cavort to the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”. Predictably the fun (and voyeurism) can not last forever; one of the lasses raises her arms above her head (I seem to recall this concept done before, except with Michael Strahan in lieu of pubescent girls—tomato, tomatoe; potato, potatoe) and the other two capitulate under the odor (represented by shocks of green).

Of course, when the Spice Girls came on everyone in the warung turns to look at me, elbow deep (later, before I left, the proprietors suggested I use their sink) in my chicken on a paint stirrer, and laugh uproariously. That this advertisement was a commercial during a soap opera in which all of the female characters wore full head scarves brings me to what I originally wanted to write—that this country is a muddle. It is too bad such great literature has already exploited the term.

sweetwater

So, if the fulcrum of society pivots on shower facilities (and I could make an empassioned argument to that effect right now), today I crawled back into the light.

This morning I left Gili Trawangan (also known as Sandals Asia, a full report to come later) and came to Mataram, the administrative capital of Western Nsua Tunggal (and the island of Lombok). I spent 5 days there reading on the beach, drinking local gin, doing some breathtaking snorkeling (I saw 3 turtles and shark), and, most of all, taking 2 salt water showers per day.
The most exciting thing about returning to Mataram (where I am stranded by my crap airline for a day) was knowing that there was a fresh water shower awaiting me, somewhere, somehow.

It occurs to me that many of you might not know what an Indonesian bathroom looks like and that this is the opportunity to introduce them. Basically the bathroom is a tiled square (often baby blue tiles, probably little on this later but interesting nonetheless) with a squat toilet on the floor. The nicer of these have footpads with some degree of relief (for traction, I imagine). Next to the toilet is what is called a mandi, basically a tiled tank about waist high that comes with a spigot and plasitc scoop. The plastic scoop is key. It is with this that you flush (scooping water into the toilet), paper (left hand rule), and bathe (upend overhead). Today I was so thrilled to be fresh water showering that I stood in this bastion of squalor long after I was clean and gleefully dumped scoop after scoop of water on my head. All this for only $3 per night (breakfast included).

Vacation (from vacation)

Thursday marks the beginning of Idul Fitri (the end of the Islamic fasting month) and its a big holiday here in Indonesia. As you can imagine, if God woke you up at 3am every morning for a month with a loudspeaker and then wouldn't let you eat or drink (or smoke) thereafter until 5:30pm, you too might need a couple days off as well. Prices on everything are slashed--as my Indonesian teacher pointed out to me today, "to children Idul Fitri means 'time for new clothes'"--and everyone packs up the kids and heads back to their villages. This being Asia, such an event understandably creates mass chaos and great transportation bottlenecks. As it turns out, a good deal of people are from the part of Java where I presently reside. Moreover, my Indonesian school will be closed down for a week.

So, with nothing to occupy me, I have decided to head to Lombok, the island immediately east of Bali, with a nice Californian lad that I met at my language school (he is using the trip as a stopover on the way to Kalimantan where he will work for an Orangutan NGO). We will be going to the Gilli Islands, a spot noted for its beaches and diving (as well as a nifty right hander that works on high tides and supposedly breaks year round) for a little bit of R&R. A genuinely nice kid, he lacks that jaded and biting sense of irony and comes toting a suitcase filled with John Grisham books. In all seriousness though, I think we will make a pretty good traveling pair, especially because his Indonesian is a bit more polished than mine (and he likes borrowing my ipod). Hopefully there will be gin.

So, if I don't make my wan appearances in this space for a few days, don't worry, I will return, surely with some further droll observations (and self-flattery) with which to fill up the page.

hey mister!

Today, Sunday, is my day off from saying things that make my Indonesian tutors blush. So, in celebration, and after deciding that I could not stay in bed all day, I cracked open the Lonely Planet, found a place called 'The Ministry of Coffee' and headed out.
For the price of four cups of delicious coffee--one of the big perks for me in Indonesia--I spent the entire afternoon poking around their library (The Complete Works of David Lodge!--what heights!) serenaded by the interplay between the smooth sounds of Kenny G. and the lobotomic rythyms of Dutch house. There were a few other honkys there, and a few of them kept making progressively further elaborate laps around the minstry to go by my table. I wanted to say hello, but I felt a bit guilty starting a conversation under the auspices of 'I couldn't help notice your dermis,--we must have so much in common--let's chat.'
There is a great deal of pollution here in Yogya, and while it fails to create dramatic sunsets, the hour or so of slow sinking has a wonderful ambiance which I took in through a second floor glass wall, despite the disorientation of seeing the sun set in the north.
Possibly the most enjoyable aspect of the day was making my way to and from the ministry which I did by way of 'becak.' Becaks are basically a beach cruiser bicycle in the rear (broad cushioned seat, low slung frame) with a one-and-a-half person bucket/bench seat (complete with a retractable sun canopy that, like most things in Indonesia, is built for someone about 6 inches shorter than me) on the front. While they may masquerade as a form of transportation, becaks really exist as a means for literally scores of grown men (purportedly the 'operator' of the becak) to spend their day napping on the side of the road. The best part is if they are awake and manage to see you (the westerner unaware) coming, they quickly try and straighten up in the basket--where they are invariably horizontally coiled, often smoking--and, using the one English cattcall they know, attract what looks like an easily exploited fare. It reminds me of teenagers in the basement trying to give off the impression they were not only vertical, but at opposite ends of the couch when a parent wanders down.
Its hilarious.
Not only that, its a fun way to travel if you don't have anywhere to go (I don't), get a kick out of hard bargaining, and it gives me a chance to practice my Indonesian.

mothering irony

Tonight, after returning from a surreptitious information gathering mission concerning new places to live, my host mother gave me a tin of dutch butter cookies the size of a cement bag (and of similar mass) with the advice: "Here. Maybe you eat these for breakfast."
Not only can this 5'1" Indonesian woman read minds, she knows how to buy off dissent.

Yogya

I have finally landed where I will be studying Bahasa Indonesia for the next trace of time, Yogyakarta, the city of Javanese culture.
I have moved into a room in a boarding house just down the block from my language school on a quiet little street near the city center. Its fine, but I think the 'homestay' that the language school advertised it as is a bit of a reach. My room has an especially virile air conditioner (Christian name, 'ionizer'), a physiological diagram of the ear, three triangles of suspiciously aged watermelon, and a series of scrawlings on the mirror and desk ("'runaway' from home!" and "take chanses [sic]!" being two of my favorites) done in white out pen that have led me to conclude the room was once inhabited by a teenager. The lady that does the cleaning sports an orange t-shirt that says 'Smile if your horny,' (is it suffocatingly smarmy to use [sic] twice in the same post?) further contributing to my legend as the severe foreigner.

what i am reading

in case any one is curious (and because I always appreciate recommendations from others)

Ada or Ardor, V. Nabokov
American Pastoral, P. Roth
In God's Name- an investigation into the murder of Pope John Paul I, D. Yallop
American Studies, L. Menand
One Hundred Years of Solitude, G. Garcia Marquez

Thanks be to Time Life (as seen on TV)

boI spent a few days battling (warrior imagery, trans-continental variety) my stomach ailment in a house outside Yogyakarta that belongs to friends. However, with these friends back in Jakarta, it was just me and the house staff (its kind of a big house) and, needless to say, we can't communicate much more than me saying 'thank you' and 'good morning'. The rest of the day is pretty much filled with smiles and giggles on both sides.
Anyways, I spent most of my time reading between taking meals alone and sleeping. Dinner would be especially eerie because everyone would be out and about in the village after breaking the fast. I would be sitting at the end of a long table eating soup and papaya (enforced as my diet when I was sick). Anyways, last night, I was so touched by the lady who cooked for me (and calls me 'mister'), coming into the house and putting on some American music while I dined--one of those gestures that anywhere else would seem unremarkable. The collection was called 'Sweet Memories, Vol 6' and, as the staccato electronic exhortations from the mosque tumbled across the hard tiles of the house, its saccharine melody carried on:
"There's a kind of hush--all over the world, tonight, all over the world..."

everybody's got something to hide (except me and my monkey)

In Indonesia, a culture of devout smokers (making Ramhadan all the more of a sacrifice--a subject for another post), the government recently made it illegal for cigarette advertisements to contain their product. This results in a pretty interesting culture (the wrong word, but I am running out of cash at the internet cafe) of cigarette advertisements. They have become one of my newest hobbies.
I want to introduce a few of my favorites:

the cleverest, with nothing more to say-
a brand called cappuccino, an ad that consists of a tower of those squat cups (the bottom two in the pillar being sand colored) crowned with a delicate curl of steam off the top. Belissimo.

the newport award for excellence in the use of white people to sell cigarettes to brown people-
a white man in cut offs with various virile looking animals around him (a tiger, monkey, a falcon perched on his shoulder), with the text (translated, by me, so proceed at your own risk): 'a man's taste'

tell the interns to bring pillows and cots to the office, we're issuing a fatwa-
a large table decked out with all sort of sumptuous food, text reading (translated by Rety, so breathe easy--and tar free): 'fast all day, party all night.'

no pain, no gain

I have been sick for the past few days (nothing to worry about; I have been lucky to weather it with a western style bathroom) but it has kept me away from internet for a few days. That in itself has been a truly strange and somewhat terrifying sensation, much more so than trying to figure if my fever, body ache, headache, diahrrea corresponded with the fever, body ache...of malaria or perhaps the fever, body ache...of dengue or simply traveler's sickness. Ive decided on the latter.
Anyways, digressions cast off, more than anything being sick has highlighted the need for me to start learning Bahasa Indonesia:
Consider, when the grandmotherly Javanese housekeeper of my friend's house found out I was sick, her course of action. Before I knew what was happening my shirt was under my chin and my belly was being rubbed with a camphor-like cream. Perfectly pleasant. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and reclined. In the next moment, I am jarred awake by something scrapping down my neck. It turns out that the Javanese (from what I can understand) get colds out by rubbing this cream on the neck and then scrapping, quite vigorously, up and down the neck with the edge of a coin. Unable to stop the whole process, and held down by her surprisingly firm grip, I now sport a necklace of a dozen vertical raspberry-like burns. The seasons hottest accessory, or the byproducts of an unsuccessful hanging. I tried telling them it was only catnip. But, alas, my linguistic shortcomings reared their hydraheads again.