Magic?

Monica Hunter-Hart, Arts Extravaganza in Paninjauan, 18.01.14

On the last Saturday night of our trip, we went to an amazing arts extravaganza in Mbak Jeni's village. Groups from her village and neighboring communities came and performed, including our favorite, now-familiar talempong players. One performance of particular interest to us involved a few men and four girls, who smashed glass bottles on the ground in the middle of a blanket and then danced on the pieces, rolled in them, and rubbed them all over their bodies. At the climax, we watched one of the men take a knife and stab himself five times in the stomach! As far as we could tell, despite this injurious behavior, all participants were unharmed at the end of the performance. They said that it was because man with the knife had said a prayer at the beginning to protect them all. On the way home we debated various scientific ways to explain what we'd just seen, although others of us felt uncomfortable immediately dismissing the villagers' own explanations. The night made some of us wonder whether magic really is real... and also what defines "magic," anyway.

 

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Mt. Merapi's Incredible Power

Maurice Cohn, Mt. Merapi visit, 23.01.14

To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be looking at, confronted with pile after pile of rock partially visible from inside a thick fog. Having never really ridden off road before, touring Mount Merapi in a Jeep was a new experience on several fronts. The volcano exploded quite disastrously in 2010, the ensuing damage killing well over a hundred people and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands. Having ridden up the side of Mount Merapi a ways, we parked the Jeeps and walked around the rock piles, leaving me, again, at a loss for direction. I don't know that much about volcanoes, and the reality of where we were standing hadn't really hit me.

The beginnings of a realization came when our guides explained the steam coming from some of the rocks – rocks that were still cooling off more than three years after the pyroclastic flows destroyed the area. In my head, though, where we were remained nothing more than a glorified construction site, with piles of rock waiting to be moved by the yellow machines parked just over the hill. It wasn't until we were close to leaving that I asked one of the guides what was here before the eruption. It was a village. I looked around again, trying to see something in the gray mounds that said “society,” or even “life.” As we were driving out, I started to see it – the slightly terraced form familiar now as rice patties – and I began to realize what we just saw.

I think the destruction caused by volcanoes is some of the hardest destruction to grasp, because of their incredible power to reshape and recolor the landscape. There was no debris, no ruins, no abandoned homes – just rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Even now, a week home, the Jeep tour remains one of the most sobering experiences of the trip for me, and one of the most eyeopening.

 

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