starbucks djakarta theatre at 18:19

absolutely dog-tired. look at the french horloge. black pollutants under my fingernails. jakarta looked late afternoon in the ’80s all day today. pollens rained down from trees and hit my neck, exposed under half-face GIVI helmet. cheapest model on the market. the pollens hurt. i imagined them boring into my neck. blood splurting like engine oil from under my vespa when it had its 1000k check up the other day. nothin wrong with it just that i brought her in at 1591k. thats a bit cruel. so said the mechanic. who was a young man in YAMAHA uniform. but The Book is ready. few minor imperfections. annoying as hell, but the hell with it. i feel like steak tonite. like sacrificing an animal to the gods of mestizo lit. aimé fernand césaire, ezra pound for pound my fave of all time, saut situmorang. i felt like killing someone in the past few days. some men can be such boys. some boys can be such boys. some boy. but its been 4 years and not too many months since i sat outside, a few yards from where i am now and realised that i didnt love someone as much as i thought i did. i loved myself more. and the infinite possibilities of my ideal self (R C TM jessie wallace). now im happy. the three of us. the unitary indivisibleness of a kind of walking on air contentedness. one of a kind. i look forward to things. more of me being born into this world. her hands in my jacket pockets. us slicing thru this citys warm night air. not unlike a hot couple thru butter.

tante sophie

around the same time i decided to publish The Book, i bought a new vespa too. and by ‘bought a new vespa’ i meant buying a vespa that is new. 2007 issue. but the newness is not the point. what is the point. off all this shit. the shit is the relationship i had with this city, capital city of oompapa. ive always caught taxis, and other forms of public transport all my life. taxi is not public transport you stupid ass. ive never got my feet on the ground. my heels are shiny and spotless, like my new azzuro lx150 with red italian leather seats (treated with natural wax) and red aluminium handgrips (in my dreams). but now im ready. as never. a wife-in-training for a pillion. a zen still space between a waste disposal truck and a mayasari bakti. P06. get into it. and out as quick. The Book is a sort of Honda Astrea ‘86 in a gallery of New Mios. a couple of Royal Thai Finos thrown in. its a 2-stroke wonder aberration in a world dominated by 4-stroke killing machines. head-check! left. right. crash into yr afterlife. death. thats what im prepared for. preparing for. death by slow whirring of National Library of Australia-approved air-conditioner-cooled air, leaning at 35 degrees on Maïakovskiis magnum opus (whichever one that is), untouched by human hand since its mechanical appropriation by a nit-picking buyer from the Australia Indonesia Institute.

quit whinging.

QUIT WHINGING as the new QUIT SMOKING.

youve had quite a nice life. unlived thats true. but on Tante Sophie* anything, even the examination of an unexamined life is possible. so said not socrates.

drifters are not cool. easy, vesperino.

*Tante Sophie Hortense Cecile Doblijn, née De Pauly, the full unexpurgated name of my standard azzuro LX150 with factory-issue leatherette blue seat, also the name of the sullen matriarch in Breton de Nijs’s Vergeelde portretter: Uit een Indisch familie album.