Wayang golek puppets

On the way to Skælskør the other summer, something wonderful happened. We were driving through a road with fields to one side and houses on the other, and one of them — a farmhouse, actually — had put out a couple of tables covered in knickknacks, with a sign that said “Loppemarked” (flea market in Danish). At first glance it seemed to be the usual unwanted stuff that people set out in the summer — mismatched china, little figurines, smallish African masks. But lashed to the branches of the tree above the table, some things that were colorful and shaped like dolls. I cried to Vagn, “Stop!” and he pulled over. I scrambled out excitedly. A truck thundered past and the car rocked. I dashed across the road and ran my fingers distractedly over the figurines. I was searching for dachshunds; there were none. Stop collecting kitsch, I told myself.

Then the owner came over and Vagn stuck his head out of the car window and called, “Ask him how much the puppet costs”. And I looked up and saw what hadn’t registered at first because sometimes my brain stalls when I’m staring at amazing things right in the face. There were four wayang golek puppets lashed with wire to the tree branches, and they all had price tags unglamorously stuck to their beautiful heads. Each cost 25 Danish crowns. I wondered how many zeros were missing. But the man assured me that that was what he was selling them for. I looked in my wallet and it contained exactly 100 Danish crowns. I asked the man for help to loosen the wires and take them down. He said “This is the best one,” pointing to the large white-faced puppet with the wings.

But I wanted all four. I handed him the bill and he piled the puppets in my arms. I was smiling like a child. They had come, he said, from a woman friend “who had travelled a lot long ago” and brought them back to this farmhouse in the middle of Sjælland, and that these were the actual figures that were used in wayang performances and not some cheap knockoffs for the tourists. But I already knew that. The batik fabric of their costumes was faded in places, as though they had been standing by a window for decades. I thanked him and returned to the car. I couldn’t stop grinning. I was still talking about them when we drove into Skælskør.

This winter, I bought some modelling clay, the kind that is sold in 2-kilo cylinders and that only emerges in shops at the end of the year, when people start to make their own Christmas table decorations. I used some thick serger thread to cut the clay into four thick disks, then eased the sharp end of the bamboo stakes that run through the puppets’ bodies as far into the soft clay as they would go. Each stake end was shaped differently. When the clay dried after a couple of days, each puppet had its own stand, and I didn’t have to set them in glass bottles to display them.

Who could they be? Which characters? The pink-faced one is a demon – but who? Who is the large male with wings and a bird on his head? Maybe someone can tell me.

 

Cold and dark but alive

One thing I’ve been painfully aware of as of late is the rise in electricity prices. In Denmark it’s possible to see how much electricity costs per hour (we have this kind of arrangement with our provider; an alternative is to pay a fixed rate). We’re going through a cold spell, with temperatures below zero for several days now. The air is still, there is zero wind. In a country that draws on wind energy to keep its homes and buildings powered, this is bad news. Photo (a screenshot) shows the hour-by-hour cost of electricity today. Just a few weeks ago, during a particularly windy period, electricity prices were next to zero. Free electricity, at least for a few hours in the day.

Not that I’ve had the chance to enjoy the cold spell, vinterbarn style (winter child: taking long walks through a frozen landscape, camera in hand). I’ve had a bad cold since Sunday; something I must have picked up at Friday's Christmas party at work. I’m popping paracetamol to check my fever, swallowing spoonfuls of cough syrup to make myself sleep, resisting the impulse to take sumatriptan knowing it won’t make a difference. I’m not good for any writing or drawing at the moment, nor any school-related work, nor outdoor exercise, nor any exercise for that matter.

 It’s a bleak and dark December: we turn off all the lights in the house except where we are sitting/working. So do the neighbors. On our street, the Christmas fairy lights are conspicuously absent. And although we do what we can to save on electricity, we still have to pay the exorbitant cost of heating, which has just about doubled this year over last.

Yet this, from a December 12 article in Time magazine: “… at any given moment at least two and as many as ten million Ukrainians have no power, heating, or water because Russia is systematically targeting Ukraine’s utilities—its nervous system—with rocket and drone strikes.”

A bad winter this.

Got in touch with Daniel Keller (Hornet's Nest boy actor)

Daniel Keller (left) as Tekko-Paolo and Mauro Gravina as Carlo, Hornet's Nest (Il Vespaio), 1970

Things Bing did in 2022, #20.

Got into an email conversation with my CRUUUSH! My crush when I was 11 and then 12, that is. He was my favorite among the Hornet’s Nest boys – Daniel Keller, playing a character called Tekko in the credits but who is referred to as Paolo in the dialogue. In an attempt to find out more information about the film and its young actors, I sent him a long and heartfelt email – and to my elation, after a few days was rewarded with a reply. You can read about him here: https://www.dan-keller.com/ -- he is a registered nurse, app developer, computer programmer, jazz bassist, fabulous and articulate writer, and so many other things besides. 

I got his permission to use his Hornet’s Nest images, and in turn gave him permission to post our email exchange online. Read our emails on his Il Vespaio webpage (scroll to the bottom) https://www.dan-keller.com/photos/1969-Vespaio/ and check out some fantastic behind the scenes photos and more info about the production from Dan, whose memories were likewise awakened by my questions. (Hornet's Nest on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065850/ )

Fans of Hornet's Nest will remember him as the "Hey, capitano, give us a cigarette" kid.  Back in the day I wasn’t in the habit of over-thinking, so I just referred to Paolo/Tekko as “cute”. Now I would say it was his mischievous look, his vitality, that got me. The straight, fine, messy brown hair. And the smile. Throughout the film, the boys look mournful, or hard-eyed and dead serious, or laugh and jeer at the enemy. Paolo/Tekko is the only boy who really smiles.

Oh my god, seriously, how many tweens get to meet their movie actor crush, albeit on-line, but fortunately 42 years later (53 years later in his case) at an age when young people are finally able to handle it? 💓

100 Faces in 300 Days project, part 1

The aim of this project was for me to draw 100 faces in 300 days in my spare time. The cardinal rules: no grids, no tracing, no projectors, no lightboxes. I went out and bought a nice A4 sketchbook bound in black, and have used different materials so far: graphite seems perfect for the paper (Hahnemuhle D&S), but pastel (Rembrandt), charcoal, dry sanguine and sepia seem to work as well. Wax crayon, not so much. The subjects, for the most part, are people I happened to photograph on my travels, off in the margins of the photos. Blurry faces, to which I've added or strengthened detail. The objective was to study bone structure and how the features of a face reflect light. Regarding the ethics of the project, these pictures were taken years ago, when it was more common to take broad shots of a scene and include the people therein. The likenesses are not all that exact, and I doubt the incidental subjects would recognize themselves. I'm at Face 44 to date.

Bing did these in 2022

In a few weeks, we’ll start getting the Christmas letters, in the mail, typewritten single-spaced on three sheets of paper, and will be sending out our own. My husband writes them in Danish then translates them, and I proofread his English. There is space in each year’s letter for a few paragraphs recounting my year, but the project is on the whole his. He belongs to a different generation, one that still sets a store by newsletters like these, unlike mine, which has come to rely heavily on social media posts with their subservience to algorithms. A meme I found on Facebook, cobbled together by a Gen Xer like myself, probably, called such lengthy Christmas letters the annual humble brag. 

Okay then. Here is my very own “humble brag”, a run-down of the things I did that mattered a lot to me in 2022. Be warned: I’m inspired and might just elaborate on a few of them in future posts.

1. Began a “100 faces in 300 days” challenge: drawings on A4 and A3 paper of people I found in the margins of my travel photos dating back 10 or 20 years.  

2. Taught English to Ukrainian refugees.

3. Thought a lot about war and visited what had once been a war zone (Sarajevo). Rewatched two movies about boys bearing arms – Taps (1981) and Hornets’ Nest (1970)– both of them improbable, both resident in the realm of fantasy, yet with interesting similarities.

4. Edited a book written by my father.  

5. Visited my Philippine home two times. I went through my old drawings and stories, opening a box that hadn’t been touched in more than 20 years and looking at stuff I hadn’t seen in 40 years.  

6. Found the Hornet’s Nest boys as they are today (most of them, anyway) and was finally able to match faces to character and actor names, but for two or three. If you were a kid in the Philippines in the early 70s and early 80s, you will know exactly who the Hornet’s Nest boys were. Made a promise to myself not to post their current photos online unless with permission (that goes without saying, but I thought I would stress the point early on). Have not established contact with any of them.

7. Wrote my second novel in about six weeks, off and on. The best parts were tapped out while in a cabin with a view of the sea, on the island of Bornholm. No sightseeing was done on that week-long vacation, though Bornholm had originally been my idea.

8. Filmed myself speaking in Tagalog and Cebuano for a campaign video, a joint effort of Philippine writers in support of Leni Robredo’s candidacy for president of the Republic of the Philippines. But it was Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who ended up in Malacanang Palace.  

9. Began to wear pink. Again. For too long I had stayed away from this color, preferring black, maroon and navy, in an attempt to age myself and look “professional.” But in 2021-2022 pink took on a courageous new meaning in the Philippines – that of resistance against the vilification and belittling of women, including those with an excellent track record in public service.   

10. Served on a team that proctored the Medborgerskabsprøve and the Indfødsretsprøve, two high-stakes exams taken by those wishing to obtain permanent residency or citizenship in Denmark respectively.  

11. Visited Italy again. My husband and I went to Bologna and to Rome; last year we were in Sicily. Travelled to the Wadden Sea (the western part of Denmark) and from there to Germany. Visited the former Yugoslavia and  Malaysia as well.

12. Made new friends and kept old ones. A surprising number of these interactions occurred on Facebook.

13. Finally resumed my study of Spanish and took the first faltering steps into Italian. All this courtesy of Duolingo and Google Translate.  

14. Taught English to learners (mixed nationalities) at the A1 level.  A1 in the Common European Frame of Reference designates people who are “Beginners”. For some it is the first time they are shaping words in the Latin alphabet. It was an insights-rich experience. Prior to that, most of my students had been in the B1 to C2 range, C2 being the highest level in the CEFR.

15. Completed and delivered portraits of the 14 deans of the Silliman University Divinity School in time for the D.S.’s centennial celebration, and which were unveiled at the Silliman Founders’ Day celebration in August.

16. Got CoVID. On a bus heading to DTU (the Technical University of Denmark) of all places. I’d assumed that with three vaccinations and a recent trip to Italy behind me to test their efficacy, I would now be Covid-proof and that what I had was no more than an annoying cold. I slept on a mattress in the living room so as not to bother my husband with my coughing, and continued to work from home, even on days when I felt like shit. I only discovered what it was when, after over a week, I still had symptoms (albeit diminished) and so took a test to clear myself for a 12-hour workday helping to administer a Cambridge exam. 

17. Had my blood tested as part of a University of Aarhus study on the presence of Covid antibodies in the vaccinated. I’ve been a part of this study since March 2021. I feel proud to hold out my arm and brace myself for the prick of the needle in the interest of medical research.

18.  Lost 8 lbs without trying. I didn’t diet, but in the period right before I started writing my novel and during the writing itself, I couldn’t sleep and had no appetite. Ran on empty. Regained 3 or so lbs eventually, especially after the second visit to the Philippines and then on to Malaysia, but now I know what to do when I want to do it. Corollary: began to eat far less (and less meat!) than before. Let’s see what surprises the scale will have to offer, though, especially after the December chocolate orgy.

19.   Several times took a deep breath and disengaged myself from people and situations that required unfair self-sacrifice. Learned that it isn’t worth it to smile and endure. Took rejection in stride. Learned to say “no.”