Missing Southeast Asia

Despite the troubles I suffered while traveling, there are many moments when I miss traveling in Indonesia and even Malaysia-Singapore.

This picture, taken by a linguist investigating very unusual languages such as Colloquial Riau Indonesian while filming a movie, reminds me of what I miss - and much of the reason I'm moving back to rural New England soon: life in communities that are still aware of their intimate contact with the non-human world. Places where people aren't drowned in completely humanised constructions like Western cities, where the world is less than tame, is a great pleasure to me.

I'm not quite a luddite; I'm more a misanthropist. I lived in Indonesia long enough to have a very personal appreciation for modern amenities and for the dangers and difficulties of living this way. The fact of the matter is that living in the false cotton batting and shiny paper of the Western city is not worth it to me. I'd rather lose my internet and television for the opportunity to live somewhere semi-wild, where every direction isn't people's faces. I always like extra blankets over sealing the windows and turning up the heat, walking through the snow to curbside housing, and a home where things are made and managed with care and repair over cheap but effective plastic Walmart-ware.

We can have our cake and eat it too. It's merely a question of rearranging our "regions" into communities; we removed these ideals when we invented "city planning" and we've suffered ever since. Modern sanitation and healthcare does not require we live in poorly-designed concrete beasts with no interface with the environment.