The seedling of a thought for rumah ikan ricochets off a concrete reefball across the intertidal zone up the streams and creeks to the mangroves. Resonates through the nipah fronds sends them quivering releasing terpenoids and benzenoids at the thought of submersion, resounds off the bakau trunks, vibrates in the guts of mudcrabs. An experiment places logs together, threads long nipah leaves with rope, a gesture from one alam to another -
This Tanjong or tip - the stone here is different from the other capes - you can use the stone here to make your knife sharp or in malay "batu pengasah parang”
Your old map is from Tj. Belinsak to Tj. Datu
A correlation. A second geology paper offers an earnest cross-section of beach deposits in 1969, at a depth of 0-9 inches -
pale brown (10YR 6/3), medium sand with fine shell fragments, loose, single grain structure, bits of organic matter (depositional), fine roots present, slightly moist, clear, abrupt change to:
(9-15 inch) pale brown (10YR 6/3), slightly courser sand than 0-9, dry, no roots, shell fragments and bits of organic matter (depositional) present - 4
Nothing about the sharpening of parangs. Shifts of access and types of images insist on a verticality, on strata: boring downwards through sand, shell fragments, rock
with an eye sideways for bauxite deposits, antimony
April 2021
In the middle of the night I’m looking at a handdrawn map of the area from a 1950s geology paper. Pak Uning sends me a video from the precise location I’m staring at on the map - a collision of time and space, perspective and the space between. He on his boat I with the birds eye map. I zoom in on his pixellated photos of the rocky cape at Belinsak and the sea, as I send back the map
- Is it gunung Tj Datu?
- O...o...you can be a boat captain too, you can tell the direction from a photo 🤣 I’m going to check the nets, hoping there are fish 🐟🐟🐟🐟
