Arrogance in Peach-Flavoured Light

Everyday I make my way through the heart of this capital, coursing through the administrative and financial artery of Indonesia. It’s a tiny stretch, really, in comparison to the scale it commands. It is studded with skyscrapers, prerequisites to our dear development. The new ones shoots from the earth like cliffs of glass but its foundations are still the same, a compact of blood and mud. Look at Sampoerna Strategic Square, a bastion of concrete furnished with the Imperialist touches. Perhaps it’s true that behind these fortresses lie panic and emptiness.

Still it’s a pretty sight. And in the morning light, they look like alien sentinels. Morning light has a way to make things more poignant that they should. It hides away the many corners of urban life to reveal something new. I seem to notice different buildings as though they had sprouted out overnight even though the mold and rot tells me it has been there longer than I have been. Today I noticed this beautiful grey cathedral with its ornate turrets rising round the corner. In the peach-coloured light, the ditch turns a glassy bluish grey, like translucent jade. But as the water shifts in eery stillness, it swirls the detritus from its bed and the leaves and the trash seem to sparkle green, orange and yellow. Like opal. Peach flavoured opals. In the army base, rows and rows of dusty green shoulders are awashed in the same soft light, softening hard muscles underneath.

If I have to see too many sunrises, it’s not so bad.