Kim Batchelor

Writer of magical realism and other imaginative fiction

Pablo Neruda and a Storm in Small Spaces

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When I am in the midst of a storm I often think of Pablo Neruda.

April is here, bringing promised showers and sometimes with them, tumultuous weather. A few nights ago, a thunderstorm passed us, tearing through the neighborhood, downing trees and severing the connection of thousands of my neighbors to electricity. I cursed my neglecting to charge my phone the night before and worried that we’d be without electricity for so long that my tablet and computer would also hibernate along with the power. While one February we’d suffered through four days without heat or hot water following a snowstorm that dumped several feet of snow on this city unaccustomed to much accumulation, this time the electricity returned after only a few hours.

I have often written of my appreciation of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Storms sometimes remind me of a story from his autobiography, Confeso que he vivido: Memorias, published as Memoirs in English, leaving out the “I Confess That I Have Lived” in the original Spanish title. I learned from the book that Neruda had been a diplomat and had spent a good deal of time in Asia.

On a flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka (what was then called Ceylon) to Rangoon, Burma (what is now known as Yangon, Myanmar), Neruda saw the plane crammed with “turbaned passengers, covered with colors and loaded with baskets.” A tropical storm along the way caused the plane to “shudder” and a darkness darker than true night time edged out the daytime sky. Lightning illuminate the sky accompanied by the booms of thunder, and the plane began to “stagger.”

Rain began to fall inside the plane.The water came in in heavy drops that reminded me of my house in Temuco (Chile) in winter. But ten thousand meters up, those leaks did not amuse me. The amazing thing, though, was a monk sitting behind us. He opened an umbrella and with Oriental serenity went on reading his texts of ancient wisdom.

I rarely fear the turbulence of a flight, unless it is particularly fierce. I occasionally fear the possibility of tornadoes in a storm, a fear I carry with me from my childhood. I have never found myself on a flight or in a storm as frightening as the one Neruda described. If I ever do, I hope I will find enough peace to simply open an umbrella and continue on with my reading.

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Poetry in Shadows: Puppets of the Wayang Kulit

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Ethereal music from bronze instruments plays a tune somewhat discordant to your ears. An oil lamp or single bulb sends out a light projecting images of kings and princesses, clowns and demons onto a white cloth. A dalang is the shadow puppet master of the Wayang Kulit, who, behind the cloth, calls up the spirit of ancestors, following a tradition of more than a thousand years.

The puppets act out scenes from the Ramayana, an epic poem brought to the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali by Indian traders and sailors. Or the Mahabharata, one of the world’s longest poems that also contains the Bhagavad-Gita.

The play will last three to four hours. Careful if you find yourself drifting off. You may find strangers from the play enter your dreams—Semar who is both a clown servant and a god. He serves Prince Rana, reincarnated from the Hindu god Vishnu. The beautiful Sita, Rana’s wife, also appears, as does the magical bird, Jatayu, who dies when it attempts to rescue Sita. Or perhaps members of the Pandawa and the greedy Korawa families play out their rivalry in an epic conflict from the Mahabharata.

No matter the play or poem, you will spend time deep in a forest thick with greenery, filled with creatures hiding where the sun doesn’t linger. The forest is the scene of banishment or refuge.

“All is clouded by desire, Arjuna,” Kresna tells the prince of the Pandawa family. “As a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. Through these, it blinds the soul.”

With one movement of a prince’s hand, giants are defeated.

See my post, Water from the Moon, to find out how I was introduced to the Wayang Kulit.

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Water from the Moon

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“You do whatever you can about the misery that’s in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light.” Billy Kwan, The Year of Living Dangerously

The flickering illumination of a nearby fire filters through a white cloth. Children’s voices accompany the Gamelan, traditional percussive music from bronze instruments. There, on the island of Java, shadow puppets of the Wayang Kulit act out a scene from Hindu mythology.

Click here to watch.

This is the opening of my favorite movie, The Year of Living Dangerously. The shadow puppets come to represent the characters in the movie that stars Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver.

Look at Prince Ajuna. He’s a hero. But he can also be fickle and selfish. Krishna says to him, “All is clouded by desire, Ajuna, as a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. Through these, it blinds the soul.

The movie contains many stunning and sometimes powerful images. The camera hovers over a mountainous landscape of rich greens as a vehicle moves through it. A grieving mother pours water over her lifeless young son, nestled in white lilies.

In the movie, photojournalist Billy Kwan—a male played by the female actor Linda Hunt who won a best supporting actress Oscar for the role—moves between two worlds in 1965 Indonesia. One world is that of his profession capturing images of a beautiful land on the verge of tragedy. He spends brief moments in the other world trying to improve the lives of one family living in extreme poverty.

Most of us become children again when we enter the slums of Asia. And last night I watched you walk back into childhood. With all its opposite intensities: laughter and misery, the crazy and the grim, toy town and a city of fear.

For a time, Billy navigates both worlds successfully. He occasionally joins in the camaraderie of his journalistic peers while also providing monetary support to a mother and her very young son. When the child dies in spite of Billy’s efforts, and he can no longer ignore the callous exploitation he sees in his colleagues, Billy is thrown into a conflict he can’t resolve, except with one last, desperate act.

Between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesians were massacred during what was known as “The 1965 Tragedy.” “Water from the moon,” one of the Indonesians in the movie says before he goes into hiding. “Something you can never have.”

I took that phrase, “Water from the Moon,” as the title of my first novel, a story of “what if.” What if we lost our precious democratic institutions? What if the United States ever found itself under dictatorship? The story was inspired by what happened when the longstanding democracy of Chile in 1973 was replaced with dictatorship. The main character of the novel, Adrienne Dylan, struggles with choosing the best way to respond to the increasingly oppressive situation of her home country. She can live an isolated life or put herself at risk working with those who want to change the situation. She can choose to react violently or nonviolently.

Always in the back of Adrienne’s mind is her late father’s possible role in the overthrow of democracy, and in the increasing evidence that he was responsible for the death of her birth mother when Adrienne was a child.

On a recent trip to Guatemala, as a van carried me from Lake Atitlan to the colonial town of Antigua, I wanted to immerse myself in music to drown out the incessant droning of a fellow passenger. I chose to listen to the soundtrack I created for Water from the Moon. Each song evoked a scene, and I soon found myself drawn into the emotional story I had created years ago. I sometimes looked around at the mountains surrounding the Pan American Highway and found it hard to believe that not that long ago, Guatemala found itself in the midst of a civil war that had lasted decades. Recently, it has arrived at a place where shoots of stronger institutions that are crucial for democracy have started to grow.

Here in the United States, we live now in turbulent times, and the upheaval has many of us wondering and worrying about the future. We have limited ability to know what will come. We seek the answer as to the best road to take. It feels sometimes we are looking for a few drops on our parched tongues from some lunar spring thousands of miles away.

Friends are reading 1984 by George Orwell. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. The Iron Heel, by Jack London. And It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I often consider removing Water from the Moon from the metaphorical bottom drawer and rewriting it for our time. That consideration has never been stronger than in the last few months. Storytelling has great power–to both take us to those dark places and give us the opportunity to ponder what we can do to pull ourselves back into the light.

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In Praise of Small Things

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img_2095Every Christmas I reminisce about Olla Podrida (“broken pot” in Spanish), a small complex of craft and clothing stores in Dallas. Before it closed in 1996, a visit to the amply decorated wooden structure was something I did every holiday season. A store that sold miniatures for collectors and doll houses was one of the most popular spots in the complex. Visitors marveled at tiny furniture and common objects—sofas, rugs, appliances, plates and lamps, pitchers, sewing machines. I’m not a collector and haven’t owned a doll house since I was in elementary school—a cheap one made of metal with sharp edges that sometimes nicked my fingers. Nevertheless, any representation of the ordinary as something small has always fascinated me.

If you read my short stories for children, you know that I have an infatuation with small creatures. From tiny monsters to miniature ghosts, I’ve occasionally brought them into my stories. I like playing with the idea of fearful things that may not be dangerous because of their size. Or at least they’re probably not something to be afraid of.

These days, one of my favorite places to go is the International Museum of Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The museum has expanded from its original mission as a showcase for the collection of Florence Dibell Bartlett who gifted more than 2,500 artworks from 34 countries and the building to establish the museum for the State of New Mexico. On a recent visit, I walked through one exhibit featuring the sacred and another displaying the beautiful clothing and other objects associated with flamenco. My favorite part is still the original collection in the huge main room housing folklore from around the world. The items are organized in themes such as food and heaven and hell, and some are found in small but elaborate displays recreating the markets you might find in different countries. Every visit to the museum, I find something new to study with each exhibit containing a small part of a miniature world.

Maybe it’s because I’m a height-challenged 5’1” that I’m drawn to these worlds. Or maybe it’s that many of us believe there’s something just beyond what the eye can see.

What small things fascinate you?

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The Story of “La Milagrosa”

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la-milagrosa

In a sprawling cemetery in Havana, Cuba, a female figure keeps watch over a grave. She is carved from white Carrara marble. Her right arm is wrapped around a cross, a symbol of sacrifice. Her left arm holds a baby.

The grave belongs to Amelia Goyri and the date of her death is 1903 at the age of 23. Amelia’s story is tragic. While pregnant she acquired pre-eclampsia, causing high blood pressure and other health problems, and following seizures, she and her baby son died. Her grieving husband visited the grave daily and each day he engaged in the ritual of knocking three times. The story told is that when the grave was opened to re-inter Amelia’s and the baby’s bones, as is the custom, what they found was an intact body. A miracle, hence the name “La Milagrosa.”

The rest of the story varies. Some say Amelia was found holding her baby in her arms. One guide through the cemetery said that the baby was found resting at her feet and was later returned to her arms when she was reburied.

Regardless of the truth of the story, Amelia Goyri’s grave has become a revered monument in the cemetery, a place where fresh flowers are always found and where people come to seek miracles of their own.

Touch the foot of the baby. Tap the marble slab three times. Consider your wish. Many say those wishes come true. They believe that from a tragic death comes something beautiful to those with faith who show reverence to this symbol of tragedy.

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