…
as unattractive a backstreet as ever i saw
a higgledy of ungoodlooking buildings
mottled and distempered concrete
bowed wood, bowed metal, bowed stone
wonky balconies
poles with thirty slack wires stretched high but low along
front-ends like back-ends
rusted or ill-painted corrugated iron
broken stone
thrown-out wood and metal in separated piles
...
all dressed coarse and lousy and unappealing
so its
Roget’s Adventures In The Unaesthetic
...
and this short road is apparently called Jl. Gajah Mada
and its in Klandasan Ilir
near Balikpapan Plaza
...
uncared for buildings of one two or three storeys
each different, each ugly
with three small trees
some stone beds of forgotten weeds
and one balcony hint of Islamic ornament
yet with wooden grilles over gutters
potholes
oily puddles
rusted old oxygen tanks
barbed-wire on stone fences
broken windows
peeling plastic
splintered planks, splintered wooden girders, broken fences
with zero showy, no business signs, no advert hoardings
with scrawny cats
bent poles
frayed ropes
mangled truck tyres
with gravelled stone and broken glass and shards of plank
with off-black, off-white, off-sepia, off-yellow, off-brown
with the corrupted, the twisted, the skew
with faded hues
mottled greys
white mould on off-black
and black mould on off-white
with blooms of black mould on pinked red
with no white whites
and where the blackest black is the black of the
black mould
...
quite the ugliest street i ever did see
...
…
of course one simple thing could make it beautiful
and fascinating...
people
lots of people
a market maybe
or any people
where you wouldn’t noticed the broken and bowed and corrugated and bent and sullied
yet there was only a lone motorbike delivery guy bent over his phone
no kids playing, no women selling, no anything
...
so here i am
in yet another country
…
…
i wanted to fling myself into an else
and i seem to have done just that
into this largeish unspecial city
with its superfriendly faces and voices
amongst the busy roads and the traffic growl
the high square concrete
and the low square concrete
where i have no language
and everything is unknown
so nothing is simple
except walking
which is hot, very
...
so its
Balikpapan in Kalimantan
which is Indonesian Borneo
where i’m pretty good with the world
after the family time with the sister
after a long unslept night flown from Sydney
in a journey free of muck-ups
yet filled with the slow samey drabness that is air travel
the muted people
the flatlined unexpectant hours
the commercialised centimetres
the orderedness of shape and colour
culminating in an easy Visa On Arrival
delivering me here
via a taxi ride down a main road of notable unattractiveness
into a proper dump of a hotel
near two busy commercial main roads
into a new world
mine for the wandering
…
...
so
after the easy suburb of south Sydney
its certainly an all change
is a series of soft collisions with the ease-softened head
while its a long time since i was so cast adrift
and by my own whim
so i have that old sense of
the joy of the new
the confrontation of unknowns
for, in India and then Nepal
where i’ve been all year, till Sydney
i knew before i got there how much of it works
and how to need very little
and how to get most of the little i want
...
where my first meal is a cheap and friendly intro
under a stall on the corner
run by a very friendly old bald guy
grinningly happy to be given two Australian cigarettes
each of which cost more than the meal
where the striking newness of the tastes overcomes the low quality
of the rice and tempe and stewed creamy chicken and boiled green veg
...
…
while the online world is not the same as the real real world
and me?
i’ll tell you something you already knew
but it will do you no harm whatsoever to be told again
...
The Online World Is Not The Same As The Real Real World
...
especially here
in a proper unknown
where even food presents issues
while Kalimantan has its own foods
and much of the street food looks great
so the long-learnt trick is to try lots of different places
lots of different foods
and wait for the surprise in the tastes...
as with the grilled fish i just finished
after getting lost in a seaside slum
on gangplanks and poles
where i suddenly felt decidedly conspicuous
in this city where i’ve seen zero foreigners
but do not feel like a novelty
until
the kids
for, when i turned the back corners of this tight waterside slum
i smiled at the wonder of the eye-widening children
some shy, one running away
yet chiefly friendly, calling, question-asking
and where i eventually stumbled out
onto a string of cheap restaurants along the shoreline plankways
and sat at the one with the live-music duo
for half a gallon of iced tea
some decent grilled fish
and an array of side dishes in canteen trays
so i could try a spoonful of seven
where half the tastes came as a good surprise
and three if not four were something
something great
the peanut sauce
the mango
the...
...
…
so i’ve got three days here
before Samarinda
in this ugly concrete mass of sweatboxes on the Straits of Makassar
…
yet i do believe
as i mantra again and again
EVERYWHERE IS FASCINATING
and everything is beautiful
even the uglies
especially in a country i’ve not been to in fifteen years
and Borneo, which i’ve never been to
...
…
so its... broken sidewalks
its... long main roads a slog to walk down
its ...communicating by Google Translate, on their phone
its... a liquid stream of round helmets on mopeds
…
…
while the large square black front is a night-club
Angel Wings
which throbbed bassily all night until exactly 4 a m
oh yes
...
…
so i’ve three days here
where the only real problem is...
the heat
the unaccustomed sweaty sapping heat
33 degrees
for three days
before i head
through the “severe fires”
to Samarinda and the Mahakam River
and an even higher heat...
...
next stop the next stop
...
...
...
...
i’se so lucky i
gets the
opportunity
…
