Intimidation of Good
The tiresome of nodding and smiling the eyes to the locals. But there was nothing else that I could do to make my existence here less irritating. Two of my friends seem did not care, they strolled their bikes with their black glasses on.
Smiling the eyes, what is that mean? It means because of the pandemic, we use a mask, and it’s our eyes the only part of our face left uncovered. You are smiling, but others cannot see you are smiling beside the eyes that smile. The eyes change their magnitude.
I posted about my story of this expedition alike, to the easternmost point in Bali in which I believe I wrote it clearly — the unreachable. It was hyperbolic, you can reach it, but you need a boat and a ladder, and literally nobody even cares about the area of the easternmost point, let alone the small pile of land detached.
This story however, is the second time I came down to the place. There is nothing much of difference, besides the rusty and forgetful mind — as I lost the way to the arrival at some points, for it’s been seven months since the last time.
The weather was nice the second time, dry and blue. I noticed something shimmering, it was the lighthouse. The lighthouse was just freshly painted, an elegant white establishment standing out like nothing else in the sight of bushes and terrace land.
There is a spot for those who wants to take a rest, they named it Rest Area Kusambi. We parked our bike and say hello to some locals whose here long before us — and after we went off eventually. The entire face smiling this time for we took off the mask. We just sat down there, and nothing of my friends’ stories interest me. I do not know, is it because they cannot do storytelling, or it just the stories that is really boring.
I gave the onus to the confusion and forgetful mind, I just wish the oceanic view and the gust of wind calm us down into our more contemplative manner thus improve our storytelling. Life is must be understood backward, we must look back and keep rolling the scenery of our past like a running film in our head. That is all we’ve got in our notion of the past, nothing else but these scattered memories.
The same and again, I put the tiresome eyesight on people who always go with the cliché “move on” narrative corny. It can be true, but not always the only way out, but people mostly say it all the time it becomes the general-purpose tool.
We probably sat down for 2 hours. Sunshine was still pretty sharp, but we should go now. It is to my regret, I should have just come down here by myself. It was messy back in the town, and thinking of going back bothers me, nor I want to stay here any longer. Confusion is like drifting at nowhere by point spatial and no time temporal.
That is always the neat part about traveling. Your serenity does not last, nothing lasts, especially your notion of happiness. Your end of a cave, your point of fulfilling, the ammunition of your raggedy mouth. I bleed a lot these days, getting all of this verbal stuff I did not ask.
People annoy me, they annoy me with their boring notions, their boring assessment. They bring with themselves the intimidation of good. These uncritical preacher. These one sided fallen heroes. They sleep at night thinking, “I’ve been wise today, I teach people to be just like me, and I feel good this way”.
People overuse their ability to speak to express themselves to other people, while I always believe expressions are at best when you do it without words. I still train this way of solitude. As if there is no middle ground, a balanced Tao, I easily get to the end of the spectrums of no choice but the obvious antagonist. So be it — for I am none, in the face of thine almighty calculated equitable virtues! The good must be crazy.
Let just live our lives with the idea of knowing each other by appearance, and surface-level impression. I rode my bike and passed again the reckless town. How the lighthouse seems so long…
Karangasem, 2021
