BADMINTON or BUST!

This is how I handled the inevitably common questions when I returned to the States after 10 months in Indonesia:

"How was your year in Indonesia?"
"17,508 islands."
"What did you do?"
"Farted around."

I didn't REALLY just fart around. No more than usual. It's just a phrase. I had to be careful if a Mexican was the one asking me, because, as Will pointed out, that second reply would translate to "Partied around," "Fought around," "Drunked around," or "Upped around." And, in the case of my life here, these translations would be misleading.

There is no partying, foughting, drunking or upping, because I am a English teacher at an Islamic boarding school, where I also live, sharing the same building with the girl's dormitory, and partying, foughting, drunking and upping are all strictly forbidden by the Al-Qu'ran, the holy text of the Islamic world.

Let me explain: I live 12 hours ahead of America's eastern time zone, give or take an hour depending on daylight's savings time. Living a life in the future, I have learned to become pretty good at freelance divination. In fact, I have become so good at telling the future that I am only able to talk about it as if it is already part of the past. Hence, the confusing (for you) tense of the verbs in this post's first sentences.

I'm in Indonesia right now. I haven't returned yet. I will be here for 8 more crazy months. I am here as an English Teaching Assistant under the banner of the Fulbright Program. I live in Palembang, a the second largest city in Sumatera, the second largest island in the country. Aside from teaching English, I am required to adopt a community project of my own design. My goal is to foster an appreciation of place, landscape and natural heritage among my students. To do so, I am starting a book club in which all the student members will read a science fiction novel that I am writing under the doofy pen name of "Fyodor Gramsci." Makes sense, right? How ELSE would you foster a sense of place and appreciation for natural heritage?

In Indonesia, things don't have to make sense.

Because I am a tall white American male, everyone thinks I look like Tom Cruise, and therefore everyone here loves me. In a way, I AM a celebrity, because I have already been on Sumateran television once, and I have already made friends with the family of a sultan who lives in an indigenous tribe in the interior of Borneo.

I get a lot of emails from students. They have a lot of questions. For instance, this one came today, from a student who signs his emails "Einstein":
"Oh my God you so profesional,may i know how you can be tallest?Do you want share to me how be tallest? - Einstein"
And I answer,
"Einstein, you get tall by eating a lot of pizzas and bananas. Have a good day! -Mr. Keen"

Sometimes they catch me in the hall and ask me questions like this:
"Can I have some money?"
or
"Will you be my girlfriend?"
or
"Sir, tell me, I must know, how to become a success person?"
And to them, I always answer truthfully:
"To be successful, you must be a tall, white American male who is good at taking tests and driving on the Interstate without crashing."

So, what exactly do I mean by "farting around" if I don't mean all the usual translations of the phrase? To put it briefly, I eat rice, think alot, write alot, read alot, sing alot, sleep alot, and travel alot.
Except for the last activity, the rest should come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I usually never eat rice, and I usually never give myself the time to think, write, read, sing, and especially not sleep.
But this is Eric M Keen in Indo N. Esia. UNPRECEDENTED!!! UNPREDICTABLE!!! Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I!

3 summers ago, I had a blog, called "This is what It's Like to Be Crazy." On that blog, I wrote like this:

"Remember: I am not exploding, therefore I am not living. The tenuous mantra of the desperate and disillusioned, yet tragically and inexplicably hopefull and tall! Good thing we have skin, or else we'd be flopping our innards all over the place when we walked!
"Keep in those juices!
"PeAcHeS!
"THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE WORLD! How can I remain calm at a time like this?! Every TIME rears its ugly urgent head. You are my density.
"To you, the adventurous and the intrepid: Ignore the reality of life and your life will be realized. The only things worth believing in are the things worth believing in. (?) ... Re-present the past, keep the present on its toes, and STRESS the future out. I still believe in flying, and (whether I do or not, whether I like it or not) I still believe in love, i still believe in LOVE...i still believe in love. It's hard to make the good times last.
"'He was the only person who ever understood me, and he didn't even understand me.'"
"Two or Three cheers for Indecision! The lion sleeps tonight..." -July 2, 2006, St. Catherine's Island

Three summers ago, I was thrashing. I was wild. Crazy.

Then, two summers ago, I was writing things like this:

"Luke was right when he said the only music that does justice to the Hell Creek Formation in northern Montana is intense opera music, and Jacques Cousteau was right when he said I have no right to deny leading an extraordinary life when I have the chance. Here I sit, tired, smelly, burnt out, lips sunburned, feet sore from too much running and dancing, here I sit in an extraordinary life worried that I don't deserve it, that I am not spending it right, that my investments aren't wise. The Great Misconception of my life: that 'time is a kind of exchange', in which I trade something for some other return, when in actuality I have nothing that I can actually give, and there is nothing to receive, because that's J U S T. H O W. I T. W O R K S." - July 23, 2007, Billings, MT public library

Two summers ago, I was still thrashing, but confused and a little more tired.

Then, this last summer, I was writing things like this:
"My butt REALLY hurts!" - July 13, Ontario, day 26 of my cross-Canada cycling trip.

This last summer, I was way too tired, and my butt was way too sore, to thrash. Still confused though.

And now, here in Indonesia, I have been writing things like this:

"Listen: For the rest of my life, I want my body to be active and my mind to be on food, love, land and community, maybe even in that order, both in an academic and practical sense, all the time. Any other questions?"

Sometimes I miss writing like I did back on St. Catherine's island. Sometimes I want to write like Jack Kerouac. Other times, I want to write like Wendell Berry or EO Wilson. Other times, I want to write like Ed Abbey, other times like Kurt Vonnegut. What I really want to do is find the great compromise between them all, write like a hero and make the ground tremble.

Here's the stuff I want to talk about. Harper already introduced a few topics, here are some more specific headlines that I am definitely thinking about and might write about here someday:
Headlines:
~ "SAVING THE WORLD" REVISITED: Keen turns his back on the question of his life!
~ THE FLUFFINESS OF HOPE, THE AUDACITY OF SOUP
~ WHAT WE HAVE AGAINST 'CONTEXT' AND WHY IT'S A RELIGIOUS ISSUE
~ NATURAL RESOURCE CONTROL AND THE ISLAM WORLD: There's a pattern here!
~ HOW LOVE WORKS IN INDONESIA: An Anthropological Account
~ KEEN CONSIDERING CONVERTING TO ANIMISM! NO FOOLING!
~ "BARACK"IN' N ROLLIN' ON THE INDONESIAN GRAVY TRAIN! Indonesian Perceptions of American Politics
~ KEEN WRITES ARTICLES FOR NATIONAL NEWSPAPER UNDER PSEUDONYM "LARRY JONES!" Just kidding. Just kidding.
~ KEEN PROPOSES WORLD-SAVING SOLUTION: Cut food production by 50% by 2050!
~ KEEN HAS MORE CONTROVERSIAL THOUGHTS ABOUT WORLD RELIGIONS!
~ KEEN'S 10-Step SOLUTION ON HOW TO BECOME MORE LIKE SETH OLSON: Being cool never came so easily!
~ THE 'HOW, THEN, SHALL WE LIVE?' LECTURE KEEN ALWAYS WANTED TO HEAR!


If you want to see the articles to any of these headlines in particular, write a comment and our staff will get immediately to work.

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