The thrill is, sometimes, gone — but not for good

I’ve been in Indonesia for 2 months now, and since my #7th day, I haven’t stopped thinking why I’m taking a PhD (in Sociology, out of any disciplines). I texted Nik today, and I told them I missed them so badly. I missed our Evanston days, in which we could just run to each other — mostly at their place — and ordered Boba teas, while listening to each other’s crying. They told me they were nervous today, and only chocolates could take them back on track. Fun. I’m somewhere in an undisclosed location in Borneo. Enjoying the weather, but not so much for my dissertation part.

I like working. I do. I just don’t like the force behind my work. I’m owing my field note a two-day report. All I wanna do, instead of understanding local state accounting and fund, is to read Adrienne Rich all day, everyday. Whispering each of her 22 Love Poems to whoever. Maybe enjoying some Mary Oliver’s too by the Kayan river. Two Claudia Rankines’ books on my iPad.

But, here I am, reading about Japanese wetland cultivation. Why? God knows why. Probably because the local govt needed my help. It’s a really great research opportunity actually. I commit to the problem-solving sociology — despite how skeptical anyone/any sociologists I know (except those who establish PS sociology, its workshop participants, etc) are towards the agenda. Here I am, assisting a local govt that wanted to stop palm oil expansion. Sounds great on your grant proposal and academic spaces. It’s fucking horrible IRL. The world doesn’t revolve in economic theories and ASA’s best book lists. Apparently, outliers are no longer a mere outlier on your Stata graph. It’s a HUGE obstacle between these kind local officials and greedy palm oil corps. This is around that time when you cursed yourself for being an ethnographer.

Ethnographic encounter is, definitely, inevitable.

My handwriting, my beautiful handwriting, becomes unruly, getting worse and more unreadable everyday. My head spins around these vague words: integration, development, vision, green growth index; rivers–rivers, where I belong; proposals, collaboration (for the empty jargons). At the end of the day, after all of those endless meetings, I ask myself: the fuck did I just hear? Ah, silly, you just hear the silence — wrecked solitary race. Whose silence, though?

The rainforest, silly. The rivers. And whole packs of crocodiles the local Dayaks call “grandparents.” They all finished knowing*

*From Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a funeral, in my Brain” (340, the 4th and the 5th stanza)