How little we know...

Yesterday was my father's birthday. Had he lived he would have been 106, worthy of a mention in a local newspaper and a visit by the mayor—the Queen, or under current conditions the King, no longer sends birthday wishes to those over one hundred years of age.

Thinking about my father I suddenly realized how little I know about him. I lived in his house for some 20 years and saw him occasionally thereafter, but about the years before my birth and after I left the house I know virtually nothing. He studied economics in Rotterdam but dropped out... when and why I don't know. I have a photograph of him sitting on a horse, posture of a cavalry officer—he dreamt of becoming one, I was told but never was enlisted. His horse riding days were cut short by his father for reasons unknown to me and he never managed to learn how to drive though the family was wealthy and possessed several cars. With a friend he had started an insurance brokerage firm. I met him in his office sometimes when he took me for lunch. And when it became obvious that I was interested in girls he told me that there were girls to bed and girls to wed. The last time I saw him he was in a rehab-centre sitting on his bed in light blue adult nappies, trying to put his trousers on. He didn't know me anymore, asking my mother whom I accompanied on the visit: Who is the gentleman with you?

His father I might have met ten or twelve times in my whole life, and his older sister less than that, I called her "Madam" when meeting her for, what I thought, was the first time when I was 12 or so. Grandmother had died long before I was born; even my mom had never met her. She had a colonial background, I was told, probably a bit mixed in lineage, but that was not talked about as it was considered a blemish in their societal stratum.

My mother, on the other hand, had kept diaries since she was 12 and had kept them all. When living in her beloved Dordogne she re-read them and worked them into 110 typewritten pages of her life, that is, her life till she was pregnant with her first child, my sister. We found this document among her papers when she died at the ripe old age of 98. I took it with me and translated it from the original German into English to make it more accessible to my five children who do not have enough German to be able to appreciate it.

When I think about my mother I always wish I could have read it earlier, when she was still alive. It is a window on her past and a clear indication that as an adolescent she had been lost and lonely, misunderstood and forced into a role she did not want. She was sent off to keep her grandmother company. The grandmother who still lived in the 19^th century and who did not allow her granddaughter to follow a secondary education that would have given access to university. Instead she was groomed in social skills for an early marriage.

During the last decades of her life she often mentioned to me that she had not been a good mother; my vehement denial she would gratefully accept, but it did not convince her. With the hindsight provided by the diaries, I can see that most of all she had craved to be loved... If only I had known, how much more could I have shown her that I did love her and that she was a great mother?

Knowing-not knowing is of course not single directional. The question can also be asked: how much did my parents know about me, or my sister? I was a difficult adolescent, for sure. I hid from their view, did not express myself, except in opposition. And I stayed that way long after puberty.

This unprovoked rambling is partly the result of realising that a long time ago my father had passed away, and that I had never really known him. But it is also caused by some questions about my previous blog where I mix up periods and people and a bit of fantasy; is that true, how come we never knew, was the gist of the reactions. 

An Upbringing among Generations

My auntie, the younger sister of my mother, died a few days ago. This is for her. She would understand why. 

There he was, brought in by the nurse, wrapped up in a soft white towel, only the face visible. His grandmother took him, ignoring his mother's outstretched arms. His grandmother was the mother of his mother, who kept quiet, having submitted herself to the old lady's wilful authority since she was old enough to be told, she was in no position to object now. He was the first boy for two generations—his mother was an only girl and his grandmother had two sisters. His father sat in the chair next to the bed, a bit unsure of what to do, expecting recognition as the provider of all this, but none was coming, certainly not from his mother-in-law who disliked the fact that he was from a four-boys-and-no-girls family. She took it as a personal affront and had made sure that he understood her dislike the moment he had shown an interest in her daughter. Unfortunately, she could not possibly refuse him, after all he was from a respected and well-to-do family, but it riled her, four boys!

This was a rather unexpected aspect of the normally liberal woman. She was a fairly gifted artist whose paintings had been sold widely. The painting her grandson would inherit, Girl in the Reeds, showed a beautiful nymph-like girl. Many years later, when he saw the painting consciously for the first time, he had asked: "Grandma, is that you when you were young?" As his grandmother had never been that beautiful, the question earned him a nearly inexhaustible amount of goodwill.

Girl in the Reeds by Selma Gutzkow

"Hello, g'day everybody, top of the morning... Ahh, there he is, my grandson! Here, let me hold him for a sec"

This was his grandfather, the father of his father, self-assured, a bit too loud, but charmingly playing the country lad he was not. His grandmother reluctantly let him be taken from her. She silently hoped that he would start to cry but her wish was not granted. Men...!

"And what do we call him, have we decided yet?" That caused quite a little stir. His father had insisted that he be called after him but was overruled, even by his own wife. Grandfather had promised to set aside a fund for his education when called after him, but was rejected although nobody dared to tell him so. And his grandmother had insisted that he be called after her father, once a writer of local fame, but that was before the war, WW-I that is.

"Well, whatever they will eventually call you, I'm sure you'll make an excellent third-generation manager of our proud family firm." His grandmother was inhaling deeply in preparation for her undoubtedly snide reply, when his mother made herself heard asking for her baby...

"It is my baby, I believe, and you keep him away from me, squabbling over names. And if I'm not mistaken by the signs, the educational issue is coming up in a minute! So why don't you all leave me for a while, have a coffee in the canteen, I need a rest and so does my beautiful wee little lad."

They all tramped out, but before the door was closed the grandmother was heard voicing her opinion on traders—she called them tradesmen even though the company his grandfather had referred to was a multi-million business in tropical produce and oils.

The issue of the name would be settled within a few days. A victory for his father it was. His mother had given up, she was tired out by the delivery and did not want to keep on arguing. But, she would never call him by that name. I married one, she would say when asked, that's my contribution to the ugly names society, I don't have to further support the lack in aesthetic judgement of the family. So she called him Little Lad, which when he grew older was shortened to L-L.

She was a kind and soft-spoken woman who abhorred arguments and disharmony. Her contribution to his upbringing was concealed in the bedside stories she told her Little Lad. They always started with: Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten... which, she had explained, was the opening line of a beautiful poem by Heinrich Heine about the Lorelei on the River Rhine, and also that she would take him there one day. It meant I do not know the meaning... and then she would weave a tale of kindness and love ad tolerance, and nature full of beautiful animals and flowers. It was their little escape from the family fights and arguments...

The endless discussions about his education would drag on for years, forever it seemed. Grandmother wanted schools with strong arts sections, and grandfather came around with registration forms for the public schools of his choice, pressing for a quick decision to secure a place. In the end he went to a primary school at walking distance from the house, and for the secondary school his parents opted for the school the parents of his classmates had chosen, too. He was intelligent and gave teachers no problem. And as he also was fairly lazy he had quickly discovered that he could freewheel on sixes and sevens with a minimum input, leaving him lots of time to pursue other things. Although not very athletic he liked sports, especially the ones related to water—he was a good sailor and in university he was on the varsity rowing crew. After a failed attempt in mechanical engineering—mainly to get away from the MBA dangled in front of his nose by his grandfather—he switched to humanities and eventually became a much appreciated teacher, whose banner read: Each Child its Own Dream at its Own Speed! This, of course, was not his original thinking, but an adaptation of the theories and practices of a whole range of educators, from Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel to Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner. He had studied them all and taken the bits and pieces he liked. And unknowingly (perhaps) he had fulfilled his mother's dream.

  

References:

Family secrets

and thanking you, Heinrich Heine

JAKARTA JAKARTA… the Great Durian!

From my tenth floor balcony I can see eight cranes in operation. The ones that are used to construct some high-rise buildings: office blocks, apartments, or yet another shopping mall. Time will tell.
I read in a recent Jakarta Globe that the demand for cement soared by 15% in January 2013.
Conclusion: the indicators for Jakarta's economy are pointing nowhere but up.

So, brace yourself for more cars, more motorcycles, more congestion, more and longer gridlocks, increasing rates of soil subsidence and a higher frequency of floods…

But still, such a great place to live…

Of course, you must love durian, 

    the fabulous sunsets... 

and dramatic skies. 

In the pas it was known as the Queen of the East... 

but now it's better.

OPINIONS AND BELIEFS

A friend of mine recently moved house. With his wife carrying their first child, the studio apartment had become too small. He had moved to a fairly recently built area, at some distance from the old haunts, not yet a satellite town, but getting close. When I asked him how it felt, and especially about his daily commute, he stated that the extra travelling time was not that serious, Jakarta traffic, after all, is a pain wherever one lives. He did not have a full picture of his close neighbours yet, he added, but they seemed quite all right. A bit further down the street, however, the people seemed a bit coarse and rowdy. On two consecutive nights the police had been called to sooth tempers during a neighbourhood quarrel. They were Madurese, he had heard. And he said it in a way that indicated his displeasure with having descendants from that island living in his neighbourhood…

Hold on a moment... where have I heard that before. Batavia, one hundred-plus years ago. Dutch literature from and about the Netherlands Indies—Louis Couperus, The Silent Force… If I remember correctly, the town is put on alert when the rumour spreads that the Soemeneppers are coming? They are the inhabitants of Sumenep, a regency in East Java Province and the most eastern part of Madura island. Apparently, in the old days, roving bands of them would descend on Java and survive by stealing valuables from houses, and crops and livestock from the fields. Lock your doors at night, was the warning, better still, double lock your doors!

And my fountain of knowledge, Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Martinus Nijhoff 1917, also has some (harsh) words to say about the Madurese. The term ‘politically correct’, in its modern connotation, had then not yet been coined. A spade was called a spade, and everybody was convinced that the top of the monkey-rock was reserved for white Protestants. The Encyclopaedie thus describes the Madurese as: (Vol II, page 639)

energetic and independent which, however, often results in a coarse and ill-mannered attitude. The average Madurese also has an urge to contradict, is curious and cocksure. He is, however, faithful, and his promise can be relied upon. Probably due to the poor soils of the island, the resulting low yields and harsh life, the Madurese is almost miserly thrifty. Revenge for real or alleged insults or underestimation often results in heavy wounds, manslaughter and murder…

I'm sure that most of us harbour a set of "opinions", either as a result of how we were brought up, or inspired by more recent experiences. It could take the mild form of jokes—Irish jokes for the English, Belgian jokes for the Dutch, and Dutch jokes for the Belgians, to give a few examples.

It could, however, also take the shape of deeply ingrained "thou shalt not…", or even hatred. Romeo did not get his Juliet, and a friend of mine was rejected by the family of her boyfriend on religious grounds… and when she agreed to convert, she suddenly was of the wrong tribe. In a similar but rather playful banter, albeit with an undercurrent of unease, the GIs (US Army) during WW-II were described by the British as: oversexed, overpaid and over here.

Here in Indonesia more vicious forms of hate have recently resulted in evictions, arson and manslaughter… for no other reason than a difference in belief! Read that once more: for no other reason than a difference in belief!

A blot on the nation… it was said.
In need of purification… and they did!

And another sports centre had to be converted into a refugee shelter.

SILLY SONGS FROM A LONG TIME AGO

This one was for skipping rope, the long rope, that is.

                la-mus-ieur-de-mei-sjes-bùkken
                la-mus-ieur-hallee-hallo

on bùkken you had to duck and let the rope pass over your head, and it went on till you tripped up.

And this one is from Germany after the war, WWII that is. At least that is when I heard my cousins sing it for the first time, they had just come out of Germany.

But now I read in Wikipedia that the verse dates back to the Thirty Years' War of the 17th Century, in which Pomerania was pillaged and suffered heavily. Since World War II, it is associated in Germany also with the closing months of that war, when Russian troops advanced into Eastern Germany.

Maikäfer flieg                                                                    Cockchafer fly...

dein Vater ist im Krieg                                                    Your father is at war

deine Mutter ist in Pommerland                                Your mother is in Pomerania

Pommerland ist abgebrannt                                       Pomerania is burned to the ground

Maikäfer flieg                                                                    Cockchafer fly

dein Vater ist im Krieg!                                                  Your father is at war!

Max and Moritz shaking cockchafers from a tree

And the best is that the cockchafer also crops up in Max and Moritz (Wilhelm Busch), the naughty boys who in the end are ground up with the wheat and eaten by the village ducks… good riddance. 

Mind you, that was a children's book to teach the wee ones to behave, or else... 

RAFFLES – another side

…and the walls came tumbling down. That is the last line of the gospel song Joshua Won the Battle of Jericho. Remember, after circling the walled city of Jericho once each day for six days, and seven times on the seventh day, the wall came tumbling down.

I couldn't get those lines, and the bit of melody I remember, out of my head after attending the book launch of Tim Hannigan's Raffles and the British Invasion of Java.

Only recently had I written an article for the Jakarta Expat expressing approval and admiration for Thomas Stamford Raffles, the Lieutenant-Governor of Java, the visionary and enlightened administrator. Raffles the one who, during the British Interregnum, ended slavery and freed the indigenous people from the oppressive yoke that had been imposed by the Dutch. Raffles who had been told of the existence of a huge monument deep inside Central Java and who sent a survey team that brought back the first account and sketches of Borobudur. And of course thanks to Raffles we have his famous work, The History of Java.

And now the pedestal is crumbling and the hero has been reduced to a rather nasty man blinded by his insatiable ambitions. He also stands accused of inciting the massacre of the Dutch settlement in Palembang, the destruction and looting of the kraton (palace) in Yogyakarta, profiting from questionable proceedings of the sale of government land in Cianjur, and the introduction of land reform that, contrary to his grandiose plans and proclamations, did not result in higher government revenues, while it moreover reduced the farmers of East Java, where the scheme was tested, to penury. Such a shock…

What I find so astonishing is that in spite of many written complaints by compatriots and colleagues about his actions and behaviour, for instance from Colonel Rollo Gillespie, the military commander during the first years of the Interregnum, and a real certified hero at that, his image remains that of the visionary torch-bearer of a new class of colonial rulers, and the founder of Singapore.

On his return from the East the Directors of the East India Company did, however, decide that he would not get his pension of £500, and would also have to reimburse the Company the £22,000 (more than £1 million in current terms) received as salary while not on his post, and other unsanctioned commissions. It was their way of telling him that his actions had not really carried their approval.

Upon his death it was his second wife, Sophia, who set out to restore his reputation. Her Memoir and the Life and Services of Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles was published in 1830 and was based on her husband's letters and the replies he had received… heavily edited, that is, leaving out, erasing and eliminating any and all criticisms or doubts about the righteousness of Raffles' actions.

Tim Hannigan's book is the first to highlight the other side of the Raffles myth. It's a good read and I highly recommend it. Soon available in Europe and the US.

FOUR SEASONS, pressed into one week

Everyone of course knows that in the wet tropics there are but two seasons in a year: the wet or rainy season and the dry months, when it rains a bit less.

But then I noticed that a tree across from my apartment was rapidly losing its leaves, and I mean rapidly, it took not more than two days till nothing but nude branches remained. It reminded me of a European autumn in miniature as it affected just one tree in the neighbourhood.  What had happened? Maybe someone had ring-barked it, or a disease…

I had taken a photo when the leaves had turned brown and were falling. That was on September 22.

Can you understand my surprise when a few days later new leaves appeared, and that shortly thereafter the tree was covered by a full, light green canopy again.



Autumn,  22 September 2012





Spring-Summer,
30 September 2012



 

MEMORIES, BELIEFS AND THE PERSONAL MAP OF REALITY

My memory of summers in Europe is the smell of smoke from a coal-fired locomotive; the endless ra-tà-ra-tà-ra-tà of the wheels on the rail tracks; the grey poverty and desolation of the German post-war railway stations (so many of them on the trip from my home in the Netherlands to my grandmother in Switzerland); getting out at the borders and lugging the suitcases past customs and back into the train; and finally the wooden benches of the slow train of the last stretch, so hard but so clean… this was Switzerland where the railways had been electrified, food was not rationed and my favourite Lindt, Caillier or Toblerone chocolates was freely available—depending of course on grandmother's willingness to buy it for her brood, grandchildren alone there were six, two from Holland and four locals, that is, originally from Germany but they had moved in with my grandmother the moment they got travel permits after the war.

After rereading the above paragraph I wonder what happened to all the summers I enjoyed after I stopped going to Switzerland… camping in Yugoslavia and Corsica; driving a Vespa all the way to Barcelona only to find the hotly pursued girlfriend in love with someone else; or the summers I didn't go anywhere because I couldn't afford it, but still enjoyed the long lazy days…

So why Switzerland and the train journey through post-war Germany? I'm talking here about WW-II, not the more recent ones such as Iraq, or even Vietnam, which, as far as I have observed, already fades from our collective memories. What makes those Swiss summers stand out?

Uncomplicated happiness of a pre-adolescent boy, and not only pre-adolescent, but also highly impressionable, is most likely the number one explanation. Endless days with so many exciting activities that even the chores, strictly assigned by grandmother, like picking cherries and red currants, weeding the flowerbeds and mowing the lawn, were nothing but minor ripples on perfect summer days. The imprints those summers left on me have clearly outshone and outlasted all subsequent ones, even the summer when, on a Swedish beach, I made love for the first time. That was at a later age, still adolescent, but not so impressionable anymore.

The capacity to be easily influenced, is something one loses with age, and the older one gets, the less open one is to new ideas, opinions, beliefs. Stated differently, the window through which we look at the world is getting more and more opaque over the years, which thus directly affects our capacity to observe and absorb new impressions and new views. Although I implied as much in the previous sentences, it is important to understand that it is not an age-related process like facial wrinkles, but results from our growing desire to protect the self, and our fear of change and inborn laziness.

From the moment we are born we are subjected to a continuous flow of data which we store in our memory bank where it is processed. The resulting information is then entered on our (Personal) Map of Reality, which is our personal representation of the world around us. This map thus contains the information that was instilled into us, especially during our impressionable early years, by parents, teachers, role models such as sportsmen, actors/actresses, authors or even fictional characters, together with joyful or traumatic past experiences, knowledge, traditions, and our own thoughts and reflections. Some of these map entries might even be hardwired into our system, as the following example suggests.

In an interesting study, primary school children in Germany were shown a picture of three zebras standing in a group with their heads together, a fourth zebra was standing apart and this fourth one was not striped vertically like the others, but horizontally. Asked for their opinion, the children unanimously stated that the fourth zebra was bad and not allowed into the group… because it was different.

Although strongest during the formative years, the process goes on. We constantly make, adjust, distort and discard beliefs and update our vision of reality. Without the beliefs and the resulting map we would not be able to navigate our world and/or take action.

However, the map is but a representation, not the territory! And as anyone who has ever used a map will ascertain, maps are full of errors, or at best incomplete. In other words, many of our decisions and actions are based on faulty information, and thus will lead us up the wrong path.

Think of the following illustrations. Until in 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay reached the summit of mount Everest, it was believed that it could not be done and the foolhardy few who tried and failed, proved the belief. Nowadays it is almost a weekend excursion—in 2007 over 600 climbers made it to the top. A similar belief occurred in respect of the four-minute mile. Nobody, it was said, can run a mile in less than four minutes. That is, until Roger Bannister accomplished the feat in 1954. Since then it is no longer very noteworthy, as even high school students have managed to do so. And how is it that Denmark, a country with a population of less than 6m, continuously produces top badminton players, while Indonesia's 240m are barely scraping by. It looks to me that Danes are born with the belief that they are top players, while Indonesia has lost faith, the same way that Tiger Woods does not believe in his supreme capabilities anymore.

The above leads to the reversal of the statement seeing is believing. The correct sequence is believing is seeing (or doing for that matter).

The lesson here is that we are unquestionably able to change our beliefs, our Map of Reality, and thus our actions. Once we see that our personal maps are imperfect, our old beliefs are being challenged, and we are presented with an opportunity to change our map and the underlying beliefs. Check for yourself, what do you think of, or how do you rate, the various ethnic groups around you, and what are your general views on religion—sectarian, non-sectarian or secular? And have any changes recently taken place in your beliefs, that is, have changes been forced upon you from the outside world, or are they a result of your own observations and analysis?

Look at it like this: if you have observed the world through a pair of green-tinted glasses you will not have been able to see the colour white, as all colours will have had a green hue and white was therefore greened-out. Now imagine what startling changes you would observe if you were to lose your glasses. The primal reaction would probably be to run and get another pair… But wouldn't it be a perfect opportunity to adjust and update your beliefs!

This would not be easy—remember our fear of change and inborn laziness! And most of all it would require complete personal honesty and willingness to admit our (green and other) biases. Wow, that hurts.

Would it then be suitable for a government sponsored educational programme? I'm afraid not, as it would result in a standardised curriculum to be presented (or force-fed) by teachers who themselves would not necessarily believe in the need for a cleansing of the old maps and updating our database of beliefs. They would be poor teachers and the wrong role models, and certainly not suitable to bring about the necessary changes.

So what then? The promised Age of Aquarius (some of you readers might remember the 1970s and the musical Hair) has till now not materialised, yet. Do we just wait a bit longer, or is there anything we can do while waiting?

I don't know. But if you have an idea, please let me know.