listening to: this must be the place

sometimes we forget the importance of histories of places and the struggles esconced in their untold stories, and we become indifferent.

having gone for the first time to sungeibuloh, it was an interesting sight/site right from the beginning. the initially scared but then friendly stray who escorted our motley crew for most of the 1.5km stroll to the entrance and seeing that the ginormous bird landing gracefully on the crown of the normal looking tree showed signs of the delightful surprises to come. there is no plopping-on-trees nonsense in the aviary book of style.

the magnificence of the birds aside, walking around, everything seemed ordinary, nothing new. gravel-ish paths, check. grass, check. monitor lizard, check. mangroves, check. (although the name of one of the mangrove, barubaru, is seriously disingenous. barubaru? i bet that was what they said the *first* time they saw it. but to make it a name? alamak).

amazing how a small word like ‘aside’ in the previous paragraph can shift the attention to the commonplace things, huh?

but really, it is the commonplace things that make the ecosystem. and the story of place contestations and collaborations between environmental ngos and le big bro, resulting in the preservation of trees, mangroves, the river and its estuaries is oft untold. ok it is always ‘told’ if you take ‘changing scapes of this country’ but to fully appreciate the importance of the place struggles, nothing beats going there.

and i think the visit gave more impetus for the thesis to write itself (naturally, a source of concern) – the continued significance of non-state actors. the continued significance of seeing the importance of the commonplace.

A commonplace life, we say and we sigh,
But why should we sigh as we say?
The commonplace sun and the commonplace sky
Makes up the commonplace day.
The moon and the stars are commonplace things,
And the flower that blooms and the bird that sings;
But dark were the world and sad our lot,
If the flowers failed and the sun shone not.
And God who studies each separate soul
Out of the commonplace lives makes His beautiful whole.
—Anonymous