An allegory of the Malay Archipelago’s history. It starts as always with the disillusionment of the current kingdom. A brother and a sister flee to start anew, only to find out that there will always be kingdoms that seek to contain them, whether it be Majapahit or ‘the pink man.’ The sister, the observer, goes further: it’s not only the kingdoms seeking out subjects, but lost subjects in need of a place to belong. Each generation seeks somewhere new, new trinkets to worship, starting the circle anew. It is the story of the cost of such cyclic history: fading memories of an old kingdom now lost.
“The exhilarating possibilities I had expected on leaving the Valley of the Maiden are incapable of materializing in such stuffiness. I had imagined a continent, a limitless place where new beginnings could be fashioned with hard work and quick wits, not islands. Certainly not these fragments, covered in jungle, floating in the middle of the sea. There isn’t enough room here to stretch the imagination. Surrounded by salty water and crowded with trees, good ideas only slow down and get trapped in the sticky air.”
“These men could easily board any of the ships that dock at the harbour if they really wanted to return, except that home is less a place than some irrecoverable memory of a life they once led.”
“A man with no kingdom is like a leaf with no tree – destined to fall to the earth and die.”
Mar 23-25
JohannaAirth 