The Fascination of Ruins: Photo Portfolio from Angkor

“It feels as if it’s been taken off into another plane, another world. . . . It doesn’t feel at all like destruction.”

That's what artist Andy Goldsworthy says in Rivers and Tides, as he regretfully watches the driftwood igloo he spent all day constructing, float gracefully away as the tide comes in. The igloo-like sculpture slowly begins to float, spiraling out into the deep water where it starts to come apart. The delicate structure, held together only by balance and gravity, is still beautiful as it decays.

We aren't normally aware of the dimension of time in art, or we don't want to think about it. The time frames involved may be beyond our comprehension; what we call forever is really just a period that won't matter to us because we or our children will not be around to see it anyways. That's long enough. But, like everything else in nature, our works will decay. And it's a good thing.

As artist Matthew Buckingham (http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/7/sixgrandfathers.php) has demonstrated, in 500,000 years Mount Rushmore will again look like the ""Six Grandfathers" as they did the Sioux Indians before an American sculptor carved the face of our presidents into the granite.

As our buildings and monuments erode, they tell a different story. One we don't often get to see. That's left to future civilizations. There are many way to tell these stories. Andy Goldsworthy calls it the dimension of Time. There you see the workings of higher powers like wind, rain, oxidation, and gravity. The processes of the earth which will remain forever as our art and architecture comes and goes. Everything we think is true, our philosophy, science, cosmology, religion, will over time, dissolve. Or so it seems, as one walks through the ruins. That's a deeper truth and there is beauty in it. Even the earth will not remain forever as we see it now.

One can try to imagine what these temples looked like in their prime, and what the intentions of their builders were. They must have been stunning beyond imagination. Some say the monuments of Angkor were meant not only as temples, but palaces for the gods to dwell on earth. That and emblems of the power of the god-kings of the ancient Khmer civilization. But that is not the entire point.

To me, wandering alone through these sites a thousand years later, they were becoming more beautiful with time, as they slowly fall apart. Built of sandstone to a monumental scale so as to replicate the mythical mountains of the gods, the temples of Angkor still erode just like the sandstone canyons on the Southwestern US, where I live. The temples are slowly taking on natural erosional forms, losing all traces of human art. They are becoming mountains, canyons, and ridges. There is a beautiful interplay of the masculine and feminine, form and dissolution. Sometimes I felt oddly at home there as I walked through the side canyons and climbed the steep mesas and buttes of this man-made terrain.

This June I made a trip to Grand Canyon in Arizona. I have it before. But this time I was particularly entranced with the way the mesas and buttes of the canyon were eroding to look more and more like temples. Even the early explorers gave these massive formations names like Vishnu Temple, Brahma Temple, and Deva Temple. The temples are eroding into mountains and the mountains are eroding into temples.

One more personal note. Although I wandered the temples by myself, I always had Mr. Sitha, my driver, 24 years old, waiting for me at the other side. I'd climb on the back of his motorcycle and we'd be off again to a new site. The whole We spent enough time together that week to become friends. He invited me to visit his family and I met Mr. Sitha senior, his dad, who is visible suffering from tuberculosis, which is epidemic in Cambodia. TB is a tough disease to beat and it requires hospitalization in specialized medical facilities. This costs a lot of money. In this case, money is the difference between life and death.

Therefore, I will donate 100% of the profits from these or any of my other prints from Cambodia, to the Sitha family for their medical bills. I make all the prints myself on my Epson giclee printer with UltraChrome K3 inks on Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper. For this special edition I am printing them at 11 x 14.5 inches.

$75.00 USD plus shipping costs is my special price for an 11 x 14.5 inch print. Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.

Mr. Sitha Sr.

See my Angkor Portfolio

Cambodia trip photo album

I've been back from SE Asia for ten weeks now. My trip journal has been sitting on my desk all this time, waiting, as I attend to other things. But my week in Cambodia is still fresh in my mind. Like water dissolving limestone, drop by drop, the memories sit and percolate. Eventually there is an opening and, in the dark, you would know each one by feel. It's almost time to write about it. But first come the pictures.

I started by going over my Cambodia photographs. They sorted into two camps: a trip album and a portfolio of gallery prints.

The Cambodia trip album.
http://paulmirocha.com/webalbums/cambodia_07/

One Bee Tree: $1,483.44

In a new article today in The Star, my question, "What is the bee tree worth in Malaysian ringgits?" that I asked in my previous blog entry is answered. A bee tree is worth about 5,600RM. That's 1,483.44 US dollars.

___________________________

Nation
Thursday March 29, 2007

Dept. probes illegal logging in Pedu rainforest

Story and picture by TUNKU SHAHARIAH

SUNGAI PETANI: The Kedah Forestry Department is investigating illegal logging in the Pedu rainforest.

Department director Kasim Osman said he believed loggers were taking advantage of the trans-eastern hinterland highway being constructed through the forest alongside Pedu Lake to transfer the sawn timber out. The highway links Durian Burung to Baling.

The logging came to light after honey hunters found three trees chopped down and a century old tualang or honey tree marked for felling in the forest reserve.

“Only the highway contractor is given a permit to cut down trees which are in the way of the highway alignment. However, we found that trees have been felled some 400m from the highway construction area,” Kasim said.

He added that the trunk from a tualang tree was worth RM5,600 in the market while the other three trees, including a sepetir tree (sindhora), were estimated to cost up to RM20,000.
Under Section 15 of the Forestry Act 1984, anyone found guilty of cutting down trees in the forest reserve will face a fine of RM500,000.

The Star reported on Thursday that honey hunter Salleh Mohammed Noor found a 100-year-old tualang tree dying and saw a deep axe cut on the trunk.

Salleh, 78, had been collecting honey from the tree for 15 years.

Malaysian Nature Society president Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Mohd Nor urged the department to bring the culprits to book and to ensure the rainforest was not compromised for the sake of development.

....

An illegally cut tree near the road through Pedu Lake Forest Reserve.

Honey hunters examine the damage to a bee tree at Pedu Lake
(photos by Shukor Ayub)

Steve's letter to The Star

Steve Buchmann and I both wrote letters to the editor after reading The Star's article "Honeyman feels the sting" of March 22. Steve's letter was printed in the Opinion page of The Star, largest English newspaper in Malaysia, last Wednesday, March 28, 2007.

I'll quote it here:

The buzz about Kedah’s bee trees

IN FEBRUARY, I spent two weeks in Malaysia, including several days in a special place, a steep rainforest hillside above the Pedu Lake in Kedah.

This place, incredibly far from my Arizona home, has become more than an eco-tourism or scientific destination. This trip was my eighth to see a giant tualang bee tree (Koompassia excelsa) and share camaraderie and bee tales with friends “Pak Teh” (Salleh Mohammed Noor, from Jitra, and colleague and fellow bee/pollination scientist Datuk Dr Makhdzir Mardan of Universiti Putra Malaysia.

My travelling companion was Arizona artist Paul Mirocha. Regrettably, my co-author and long time bee collaborator Diana Cohn of Sausalito, California, could not come this time due to other commitments at home.

She travelled with Paul to see the bee tree and witness her first honey hunt at Pedu Lake in 2004.

Part of our February trip was spent in the pleasant company of Wong Siew Lyn, a freelance journalist who wrote about the honey hunt (Sunday Star, March 4).

Together, Diana, Paul and I researched the writing and illustration of The Bee Tree over a period of several years.

Ours is a children’s book about Pak Teh and his grandsons, following the millennia-old traditions of Malaysian honey hunters. It is a coming-of-age story, a tale of moonless nights spent 36metres above ground in the gentle yet strong embrace of the bee tree.

The allure of the sweet rainforest tualang honey from the native Asian bees (Apis dorsata) is strong.

We knew that Pak Teh had climbed and been harvesting honey from this very tree annually since 1965. Each time I stand under a tualang tree, I am caught up in its spell, dwarfed by its size and trying to understand its crown from ground level – an impossibility. These are forest giants, the tallest trees in all Asia, rising to neck-craning heights of 75 metres to 84 metres!

During the February trip, it was our high honour to travel with Pak Teh and Makhdzir to Alor Star where we were introduced to the Sultan of Kedah. We presented the Sultan with copies of our book and Paul’s artwork.

Our raison d’ etre for the trip was to launch The Bee Tree in Malaysia ahead of its official publication date (April 1) from Cinco Puntos Press (El Paso, Texas).

Along with Paul and Diana, I was shocked to read “Honeyman feels the sting” (The Star, March 22) by Tunku Shahariah about recent threats to one or more of Pak Teh’s bee trees in Kedah.

Two weeks earlier, just after our departure from Malaysia, he visited one of his bee trees. It bore a wicked 15 cm deep cut from an axe. We had heard during past trips that even in areas being selectively logged, that tualang trees were usually spared because the honey crop was so valuable to the local community. Maybe things had changed now.

I’ve seen expressions on the faces of people witnessing their first Apis dorsata honey hunt at Pedu Lake, heard them gasp in awe at the pyrotechnic display of falling embers, and sounds of tens of thousands of beating bees’ wings.

For many, that experience becomes a tipping point, a life-transforming event as it was for Diana, Paul and myself.

I’ve spent my career working with European and Africanised honey bees, but nothing could prepare me for the physical strength and courage of the climbers, nor the roar of the bees leaving their nest en masse chasing the “falling stars” the rain of sparks floating lazily to the ground.

“Tak kenal, tak cinta” (you can’t love what you don’t know) is a lovely Malay proverb. The value of all bee trees should be considered in the context of cultural Malay bee craft traditions, age-old ones, recalled in the legend of Hitam Manis, descriptions dating back as far as the Rig Veda.

These magnificent trees, and the honey hunters, should be valued in terms of their aesthetic and cultural attributes, not solely dependent upon short-term monetary gain and lumber calculations.

Bee trees attract bee-loving tourists, birders and scientists, generating sustainable revenue over many human generations.

They bring income to local communities.

Tualang trees are keystone species, literally “Trees of Life”, providing food and homes for hundreds of rainforest plant and animal species.

Without tualang trees, Malaysian rainforests would be much diminished places, with rips in the bio-fabric of forested nature, ones that might never be repaired.

The trees, and the honey hunters themselves, should be considered Kedah state, even national, treasures and heroes; at least they are to me, a bee scientist from a faraway place.

I look forward to the spectacle of future Kedah honey hunts as told in our tale of The Bee Tree for children and their parents.



STEPHEN BUCHMANN,

Co-Author, The Bee Tree

and Letters from the Hive,

Tucson, Arizona, US.

The saga continues: more news from Pedu Lake

Emails from Steve and I to Tunku Shahariah, the reporter who wrote the Star article "Honeyman feels the sting" about the endangered bee trees of Pedu Lake produced a gratifying response. She had already gone personally to Pedu Lake with the local forestry director, Kasim Osman, and Pak Teh to inspect the damage and this is her report.

No, the [bee tree] in your book is safe for now. Only one tree, located about 400m deep into the forest from the lakeside was marked for felling but after discovering that it is hollow inside, the culprits just abandoned the idea of sawing it down. However, Pak Teh claims that the bees are highly sensitive and have abandoned the tree after their habitat is disturbed. the others are still ok. That is according to Pak Teh. We have to rely on feedback from these honey hunters as the trees are located quite deep inside.

They now suspect the contractor building the hiway through the Reserve may have gone out of the surveyed boundaries to steal a few valuable trees. To cut the trees and get them out of the forest requires heavy machinery and the road crews had that. Several other trees were cut illegally. One of Pak Teh's tualang trees, 400 meters from the road, was damaged and may not live. He says there is only one colony there now. Last year there were 20-25 hives there.

That's all that is known for now and Sharie promised to keep us posted. We drove through that area last February and saw the widening of the old road to Pedu Lake. There is a swath of cleared land on either side of the road, but it does not extend deep into the forest. That is the danger, we think. Once the road is built, it will be easier to take advantage of it for good as well as for poaching valuable trees.

Highway cutting near Pedu Lake as of last February.

Further Conversations with Makhdzir

The day after our meeting with the Sultan of Kedah, Makhdzir and I were driving together to Alor Star. We dropped "The Steves" off in the forest to do whatever scientist guys do out there. As you might guess by now, Makhdzir and I had another interesting talk.

We were on our way to pick up free-lance writer Siew Lyn Wong, who was flying in from KL to interview Pak Teh and witness the honey hunt with us. You can read her articles that came out a couple of weeks later in the online archives of The Star, the largest English newspaper in Malaysia. English is her first language, but she can converse fluently and intelligently in two dialects of Chinese--Hokkien and Cantonese, as well as Bahasa Melayu, while making a good personal connection. People she has not met before will tell her things. Siew Lyn's writing is as professional as any native English-speaking journalist I have read, silently contradicting my earlier comments on the often poor attention paid to grammatical details of the English language.

"You know what the first question the Sultan asked me was?" said M. "Why is your name not on the cover? Everybody seems to ask me that."

Makhdzir explained his thinking about the Bahasa Malayu version of the book that he was now clearly expected to produce. Clearly the Bahasa version would have to have his name on the cover as co-author to be accepted. Everyone we met on this trip was impressed with our book: it was beautiful and most of it was amazingly correct from a local standpoint. But it was still designed for a North American audience. The issues of creating a multicultural book would turn out to be fodder for many discussions in the future.

According to Makdhzir the Malaysian edition would have to be more than a simple translation. It was going to be a tricky business. Makhdzir considered making two major changes to target a Malaysian audience, primarily of school kids. First include both boys, Nizam and Shukor, as inheriting the honey hunting tradition from their grandfather, instead of the single boy named "Nizam" in our story. Second, add humor.

He wanted to rewrite about 20% of it and have me do some more art. They'd pay me. There would need to be more pages because he wanted to include the English as well as Bahasa, so it could have the added advantage of use as an English textbook. Bahasa takes about 150% more space that English to say the same thing. A lot of the words are just longer in Bahasa. I said I could do that. The art was all painted digitally and I archive the layered photoshop master files. There are a few places I could even add the second grandson. I could do new art.

Originally both boys were in the book. Our North American editors and advisors over the years had encouraged us to simplify it: focus on one boy and his heroic conquest of his fear of not being strong enough to climb the tree, his fear of heights and of the dark. When we first started researching the book, we had the impression that only one boy was going to carry the torch for Pak Teh, continuing the family tradition of honey hunting. This was reinforced by the interview with Nizam recorded by NPR/National Geographic engineers in 1998, for their program "The Honey Hunters of Malaysia", which broadcast on NPR's "Morning Edition". In this interview Nizam said, "It's a family tradition. My brother is not going to do it..." M. told us that the translation might have been unclear. The word for "cousin" and "brother" were the same. Nizam might have been referring to his brothers who lived in Kuala Lumpur, now city dwellers.

Still, I remember always seeing them together with Pak Teh. Wherever one of the three were, the other two were not far away. Now Shukor felt unfairly left out in the book. Whatever the history really was, the fact was that the two cousins worked as a very close-knit team now. We were to witness that is a dramatic way in a few days during the first day of the honey hunt.

Makhdzir explained that, to Malaysians, the close-knit bond of friendship, teamwork, and kinship between the two cousins was more impressive and in keeping with their values than the single heroic individual that appealed to American audiences.

Makhdzir also wanted to introduce humor. It had not occurred to me up to then how serious our book was in tone. But upon reflection, it was. My first sketch of "Nizam/Shukor" standing triumphant in front of the village showed a huge smile on the boy's face. The designer vetoed that as not in keeping with the seriousness the character had previously in the book. I had to agree. Shukor, the main model for the character of the boy was a rather quiet and serious guy. Or seemed that way to me. So a slight smile was more in character.

I remembered that indeed humor was a major element in our relationships with Malaysian friends. They made us laugh a lot. I remember our friend and other host, Roslan, manager of Desa Utara Pedu Lake Resort, our home while working on the book. I once asked him if there was a beautiful woman on his staff that would be willing to pose for me. I wanted to use her as a model for HITAM MANIS, the beautiful girl who, killed by a spear through her heart, became the spirit of the bees in the ancient legend told by Pak Teh by lamplight at the forest camp in the "story within a story" in our book.

HITAM MANIS became a running joke for years to come. Roslan teased me endlessly about it. On each visit, Roslan would tell me that he had staged a beauty contest and had found yet another even more beautiful woman for me to use for HITAM MANIS. There were insinuations that I might want to marry her followed by peals of laughter. Each time he brought me a new female model, I did draw her. My crowning moment was when Roslan convinced me to be the "groom" in a mock wedding ceremony staged at the resort for a traditional Malaysian wedding feast held as a cultural event for guests at the resort. It was hilarious to see an anglo like me dressed in traditional garb sitting with Roslan's latest beauty queen in a little decorated house, my hands on a pillow, receiving gifts. I think he enjoyed this spectacle more than anyone else.

After the grisly story of HITAM MANIS and her lover, the prince who is cut up into little pieces for using a metal knife to cut honeycombs, Makhdzir wants to tell a humorous firelight story, this one told about a real event. A honey hunter had climbed up his tree only to be surprised by a honey bear, who had also used his ladder to more easily climb up and get to the combs. When they saw each other at the first branch, they both screamed, and each ran in opposite directions. Except the only escape was down the trunk. The human climbed as fast as he could down the ladder and the bear slid down on the other side of the huge trunk using his claws for traction. The story ends with the honey hunter eventually going back up the tree feeling like he won out over the bear. This is made more funny by M,'s pantomime of the parts of the bear and the man. It also adds another natural element, the Malaysian honey bears, who also play a part in the larger story of wild rain forest honey.

We agreed, however, that the book was correct to come out first in it's foreign edition. The market is just too small in Malaysia to justify the expense of publishing such a book, which was much more likely to turn a profit in North America. Makhdzir will have to find grant money to supplement publishing costs of his Malaysian version. It was to be targeted towards the primary schools in Kedah in the Pedu Lake region. From there, it could go throughout Malaysia.

"Your illustrations are the key." said M. "No one else could have done this book. There are few illustrated children's books in Malaysia and nothing like The Bee Tree."

"Well, I've seen a number of beautifully illustrated nature books by local artists."

"Yes, there are a few, but we'd have to pay them!"

Ha. I thought. Yes, I was working on passionate interest, the chance to travel, obligations for friends, and a small amount of money for all the hours I'd spent. In fact, even after my advance, I was still paying on my credit cards for the opportunity to work on this book. He didn't have to rub it in. These local artists were better businesspeople than I was, right?

But I knew what he meant. Of course the local artists would want to be paid. So do I. Illustration is how we make our living. But, in this case I did the book mostly on my own time. It's not the kind of project you can pay someone by the hour to do. It involves a personal investment in the project. True, I was on a royalty contract, so I would benefit from any success the book would enjoy. But if it does not sell beyond the original printing, I still survived the process. They fed me well at Desa Utara. And looked at as a whole, the 8 year book project was its own reward. I simply had to look at it that way.

All of this continues to provide food for thought. We'd meet Nizam and Shukor soon at the honey hunt.

The forest around Pedu Lake

The bee tree: should we cut it down?

JUST A FEW WEEKS after our trip to Malaysia to hand out printed copies of The Bee Tree, I received an email from my friend Prof. Makhdzir Mardan in Malaysia saying that he had gotten a worried and upset call from Salleh Mohammed Noor, our friend, the hero of "The Bee Tree" affectionately nicknamed Pak Teh. Someone was trying to cut down the bee tree! My first reaction to this note was that it must be a mistake. How could anybody want to cut down this particular tree, in a protected area. And how could this come out just after our book promotion tour for a picture book focused on that tree? Inconceivable and absurd. That tree is famous. It's sacred.

Well, absurd things do happen. Last night I received both a text message from Mardan and an email link from my friend, journalist Siew Lyn Wong, directing me to an article in The Star, the largest Malaysian English newspaper, titled "Honeyman feels the sting". There is a photo of the bee tree and of Pak Teh. The article mentions Prof. Mardan as well as our book.

Salleh said he started harvesting honey in the Pedu forest in 1968 after getting approval from the Kedah Sultan.

“Honey hunters need permission from the Sultan as the honey belongs to the ruler. I will seek an audience with the Sultan to inform him of the tree’s fate and that of other tualang trees in the forest soon,” he added.

Kedah Forestry director Kasim Osman said he would investigate the matter and question the timber concessionaire in the area.

Universiti Putra Malaysia’s professor of apiculture and pollination biology Datuk Prof Makhdzir Mardan urged the Government to draw up a policy to protect tualang trees.

The tualang trees of Pedu and giant honeybees that nest there are mentioned in a book called the The Bee Tree, published in the United States.

Salleh and two of his grandsons are mentioned in the book, written by entomologist Dr Stephen Buchanan and environmental consultant Diana Cohn.

Dr Buchmann's research on Salleh’s honey showed that it was among the best in the world as the bees in Pedu gathered nectar from 180 species of flowers.

--The Star, Wednesday February 21, 2007

Of Bees, Bears, and Tualang Trees

Bee trees, locally called "Tualang trees" are the third tallest tree in the world. They can reach 250 feet, about 30 stories, in height, emerging above the rest of the forest canopy. They grow only in primary tropical rain forest.

Tualangs, Koompassia excelsa to botanists, are in the legume family, related to the tiny pea. Their ability to grow so large is partly due to the partnership legumes have with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. Nitrogen, an essential nutrient to all living things, makes up 80% of the earth's atmosphere, yet nitrogen is inert and unusable by all except for a few kinds of bacteria, who can metabolize it into a form usable by other life forms. These bacteria make life as we know it possible on Earth and legumes are smart enough to provide little nodules in their roots for these bacteria to live. That's a major advantage in nutrient-poor rain forest soils.

The giant wild Asian honeybees, Apis dorsata, love the tualang trees and they come back to them every year as they migrate in huge swarms, following local flowering periods. I imagine the tualang is easy to find, sticking up above the other trees. The smooth slippery bark of the tualang discourages the Malaysian honey bear from climbing up the hundred feet to the first branch. The horizontal branches are perfect for attaching their huge six foot long parabolic honey combs, covered with 30,000 inch long, highly protective bees resting in several layers over the combs.

You don't find forests of tualang trees. They are solitary giants scattered throughout the forest, sometimes miles apart. There are 6 or 7 tualang trees in the Pedu Lake forest preserve that Pak Teh harvests every year in February and March. Pak Teh says that there used to be 100 colonies on a tree. But now there may be as few as twenty hives in a tree.

Even in forests cleared for agriculture, tualang trees are often left standing. Besides being so hard that they require a special saw blade to cut them, the tualang is considered more valuable for its honey production than for wood. The wood also lacks natural resistance to termites and wood boring insects and needs to be treated. However, as other hardwoods become harder to find, tualang trees are now being cut.

I had a first hand premonition of this when I was shopping for wood to replace the floor in my old house. I looked at the label on one sample called "kempas" and was surprised to see it identified as from the genus Koompassia. It wasn't even that expensive. Should I buy bee tree wood for my floor? No, although I may be guilty of cutting down a few oak trees, I could not walk on wood from a bee tree. I now use the wood sample from the flooring company under my graphics tablet to raise it up to a more ergonomic height on my computer desk. I like being near that wood.

Koompassia wood is ranked as 26% harder than red oak, and is considered by the timber industry to be suitable for all heavy construction, like posts, beams, joists, heavy duty columns, piling, railway sleepers and power transmission poles. Untreated, the timber is suitable for heavy traffic flooring, panelling, mouldings, heavy duty furniture, high-impact tool handles and plywood.


How Many Ringgits is The Bee Tree Worth?

To conservation biologists or nature-minded people, the tualang is a keystone species in a forest that is 70 million years old. A keystone species is defined as an organism that plays a role in it's ecosystem analogous to the keystone in an arch. The keystone organism may not be particularly abundant, but its absence would create a dramatic shift in the whole ecosystem, just as the removal of the keystone causes the collapse of the arch.

To Pak Teh, it is part of his livelihood. The tualang tree produces some of the most valuable honey in the world. But even to him, it is more than that. It is a hobby, a family tradition, an obsession, part of his identity. It's a sport that tests a man's strength, endurance, and courage. The honey hunters are respected like any local athletes. In Tucson, it's probably like the regard given to a member of our Wildcats basketball team.

To Prof. Mardan, the stories about the bee tree contain a traditional knowledge that can be transmitted to school children so that the decision-makers of the next generation may have a feeling for the economic value of an intact, wild forest, balanced with the uses it undeniably has as timber.

To me it is a sacred tree. That's the simplest way to say it. I've produced countless drawings and photographs of it and other trees in the Pedu Lake area. It is beautiful and grand and evokes an emotional response in anybody who takes the time to walk up that that mountain to stand beneath it. It is the focus of traditional honey hunting rituals mixing Hindu and Islamic symbolism. It is the home of Hitam Manis, the beautiful dark lover of an ancient prince killed by the Sultan's soldiers and still living now as the spirit of the wild honey bees; a story that comes from the Hindu Rigvedas, between 3-4 thousand years old. Several times, while in the Pedu Lake forest, I have gone to the bee tree just to calm and ease my mind. It is a fellow being of great strength and power that deserves respect.

To the timber industry, the bee tree is worth a certain amount of money and its wood could be used to construct many useful things. I am curious to know what the value of the bee tree is in Malaysia ringgits. The decision to cut it down is a serious one and I would not want to own the burden of that responsibility. I do not dispute the validity of cutting timber. I live in a wooden house. But is money the only consideration? I don't think so.

In the mean time, I wrote a letter to the editor at The Star. It pretty much follows the outlines of this blog article.

Please read the article online and write if you feel moved by the story and wish to support Prof. Mardan's call to preserve the bee trees of Kedah. International attention can help in these cases. The bee trees are not the only trees in question. But they are an example and may turn out to be the heros of the story. Still a keystone species, the tualang trees may stand become representatives to us from the other species in the forest. They may inspire humans to use the creative thinking abilities given to our species to make wise decisions about our resources.

In 1935, 80% of peninsular Malaysia was covered by forest. After decades of clearing for rubber and oil palm plantations, and for timber, this number is closer to 45% today. Soil erosion and environmental degradation due to logging is recognized as a major problem. National and State laws, as well as logging guidelines, already exist to promote sustainable forest logging. But guidelines are not always well implemented nor laws enforced. Several non-governmental organizations, like the Malaysia Nature Society, and Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth, Malaysia) have become increasingly active in bringing public and government attention to environmental issues, creating a network of nature preserves, and promoting a rational conservation policy. These groups have had a positive effect on conservation of the remaining forests.

The area around Pedu Lake is a watershed for Kedah agriculture downstream, the so-called "rice bowl of SE Asia". As such it is protected as a the Pedu Lake Forest Reserve. Nevertheless, we had seen new logging and its resulting erosion, in the area. An new road is under construction now, which may open up the area for more logging as well as more ecotourists.

Biologists who have visited the Pedu area have noted that it is still an intact virgin forest. One may observe the complete natural food chain there, from honey buzzards down to the bees and the plants they depend on. In order to protect a forest, one has to save everything.

The decision whether to cut or to conserve the tualang trees of Pedu Lake Forest Reserve is a serious and weighty responsibility. Whoever makes that decision must answer to all of us.


....
Letters to the editor of "The Star" may be addressed to editor@thestar.com.my.

Going Solo

I USUALLY WRITE "HOLIDAY" on my immigration card in the blank that asks for the purpose of my trip. It's not a lie, but it is not really true. I have a secret mission. I'm not necessarily laying on the beach or sitting in bars sipping margaritas. Although I might be. I am there to gather intelligence. For one thing, it's part of my job. That's what I tell the IRS and it is true. As an illustrator it might be my business to know what almost anything in the world looks like. I might have to draw it some day. And the things I see while traveling do come up, in an uncanny way, months or years later in my job. So I leave as many footprints as I can and I make lots of drawings and photographs. I want to see what the world looks like and what it is doing. I travel to learn.

I think of it almost as a spiritual responsibility, like going to Mecca for a Muslim, except it does not really matter where I go. It's an instinct to just go somewhere. Even if it's in your own town, to a neighborhood where you've never been before. Traveling, especially alone, breaks things down, and breaks you down, in a good way. You slowly give up your cultural assumptions, control strategies, and false beliefs partly because they no longer work where you are. Nobody notices the concepts you try to project about who you are, the ideas you want people to have about you, like: I'm the famous but humble author, the involved working super-mom, the good and kind person, really, the fearless boat captain, the laissez-faire hippy, the philosophical traveler, the whatever. None of it is true.

Unless you can afford to stay in the best hotels and take taxis everywhere, and are able to insulate yourself from where you are, you will probably run into some challenges to your personal reality. You don't have to, but the opportunity is there. If you do become honest with yourself, then you might have to treat others with the same openness and compassion you have for yourself as you come apart. You are likely to pay great attention to chance encounters, words, and conversations. You have to attend to very small details. You have an itinerary but are not too attached to it. The virtues one nurtures while traveling are those of a spiritual exercise.

Thoughts that occur to me has while traveling, especially out of the country, are worth a lot to me. I want to remember them before I get sucked back into the powerful gravity field of America. I may sink back into forgetfulness once I am captured again by my own cultural bubble of reality. So I carry a sketchbook and I take notes.

I don't guarantee any of it except to say that it is an accurate and truthful record of what I experienced and saw. That is enough for me.

Photo album from Malaysia trip 2007

See a photo album from my Mayalsia trip, 2007. http://www.paulmirocha.com/webalbums/malaysia_07/




Coming soon: a Cambodia trip journal and aphoto album from that trip.

I'm also working a photographic portfolio of exhibition prints from the temples at Angkor.

The Honey Hunt

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007, Sunset
The bee tree: somewhere in the forest near Pedu Lake, Kedah


SELAGI ADA HUTAN
SELAGI ITU ADA PEMBUREAN TUALANG
"As long as there is a forest, there will be honey hunters"
--Pak Teh

Nizam (in green) and Shukor (in blue) at the base of the bee tree, raise the first section of the new ladder

SUDDENLY, THERE WAS SILENCE among the humans standing under the huge bee tree. The forest, a very noisy place around sunset, continued with its cacophony. The seven honey hunters, PEMBURU MADU in Basaha, led by the two cousins, Nizam and Shukor, stood quietly together, looking at the ground, at the base of the giant tree, all holding on to the KAYU PENANJAK, a 20 foot long piece of wood cut from the sapling Penanjak tree and forming the first piece of the long ladder that was attached to the massive trunk, its finned trunk rising 220 feet above them like a rocket ship. The makeshift, but reliable ladder leads up to the first branch, 120 feet above, and then onto the branches themselves, leading to the huge colonies protected by a blanket of several layers of giant wild Asian honey bees. The existing ladder was built for the honey hunt last year. It consisted of a central axis, made of the penanjak trunks, with rungs of smaller branches spaced at about shoulder level when you stood on the previous rung; all lashed together and nailed to the tree trunk. It was replaced every year to make sure it was sound. The climber's lives depended on it.

Here at the base of the tualang tree, one of the tallest trees in Southeast Asia, we were in deep shadow. High above, where the foliage stuck up above the other trees in the rain forest, the last rays of the setting sun were lighting up the bee colonies hanging from smooth horizontal branches. A buzzing like a far away airplane told us that drone flights were starting.

The band of honey hunters looked like they were praying. Later Makhdzir explained to me that, yes, they were. Each was holding on to the KAYU in symbolic solidarity with each other. Throughout this night and the coming nights of the honey harvest, the success of their mission, and sometimes their lives, depended on this sense of togetherness and cooperation. They prayed for safety, good fortune, and for the cooperation and generosity of the bees. I had watched "Flags of Our Fathers" on the flight over here. The raising of the KAYU PENANJAK reminded me of that famous photograph taken at Iwo Jima.

Over the next four hours, the two young men, barefoot and dressed in overalls, performed a feat of athleticism that I had never actually seen before during all my previous visits to the honey hunt. Together, they replaced, with new wood, piece by piece, the very ladder that they were standing on, in pitch darkness, working from the ground up to 120 feet.

I pressed myself more firmly into the ground I was sitting on just thinking about it. I had once climbed up to to the second rung in daylight, about 10 feet up, but came down immediately--I have a fear of heights. Makhdzir had told us earlier that he had climbed to the first branch. We were impressed and asked him about that again.

"No, I meant the first rung of the ladder! It's made out of a branch. Maybe I used the wrong word" Makhdzir laughed. He had done his doctoral dissertation on the biology of Apis dorsata and working with Pak Teh's honey hunting band. So not even Makhdzir had climbed up to the top of the ladder!

Flashlights flickered on and off, so as not to attract the bees. There was a regular call and response of shouts back and forth between the two climbers on the trunk and the ground crew with long periods of silence as they worked on a new rung of the ladder. Each exchange ending with, "BAIK!" That means "good" in Bahasa and it's local Kedah usage for "OK!" or "Roger and out!"

Climber: "Hoist up the ANAK CANUNG (ladder rung)"
Person on ground: "BAIK!"
Climber: "There's no honey!"
Ground: "BAIK!"
Climber: "I sure feel safer up here than driving that bus to Alor Star! Those drivers are crazy!"
Ground: "BAIK!"

Indeed, the whole spectacle reminded me of two astronauts up in the air and their ground crew below providing support and materials that went up and down on a rope. The urgency of the communications and the precision with which each member did his job certainly reflected the seriousness of a space launch. Nevertheless, there was also a lot of laughter and joking. Despite the danger involved in the work, there was a feeling of lighthearted companionship between the men. I think this helped take the edge off of the danger involved. The banter was that of people who knew each other very well; in fact most of them were related by family. They were more than co-workers. If one of them was hurt or killed, others would have to take care of his family. No one ever made any mistakes.


From the corner of my eye I sensed motion overhead. I turned to follow the slow gentle movement of a flying squirrel as it floated over the clearing around he bee tree and into a neighboring canopy. I could see that there were two of them still scampering about in the silhouette of the tree. I had never seen even one flying squirrel before. So they were not in the book. Makhdzir also saw it and said he suspects that they fly past the colonies with their mouths open, collecting the stingless drones, the males of the colony, as they swarm out of the nests in clouds at sunset, trying to mate with virgin queens. It was mating season and for Apis dorsata, sunset was their cue.

Some of my flash photos captured bats around the bee tree, perhaps eating bees, but maybe hunting the swarms of flying insects of all kinds that also made little white spots like dust on my photos as the flash caught them.

As the sunset faded into twilight and the sky turned from yellow to orange to pink at the horizon, it was dark where we were. I listened to the sounds of the forest. It was more like a symphony. As you focus your awareness on different frequencies, you hear new sounds in each octave. On top of everything is the sunset cicadas, sounding like a hundred cell phones going off, all with different electronic ring tones, or make that a block of car alarms. I think a pack of bicycles all going downhill with worn out brake shoes, metal on metal, describes this screeching sound best. It's all part of their love song. Steve explained that what I at first thought were birds chirping from above and all around us were tree frogs. A hornbill chuckled. Earlier, I had seen one flying across the clearing. They have such an odd shape, a little too long with that large bill, as they flap their wings.

We, the observers sat on the higher ground beneath the bee tree were we would be out of the way of the honey hunters. We were still sweating from the humid hike up the mountainside to the tree. The air was now close to body temperature, thick and comfortable, close like a light blanket. Some of us dipped in and out of light sleep, waking up to see the climbers higher up the great trunk of the tree. Or the constellation of Orion and the Pleades that had moved a little farther behind the bee tree.

Even after dark, the moonless tropical night sky sought by the honey hunters for their work was still luminous. The trees around the clearing showed as black silhouettes against it, black on black. I don't know if it is all the humidity scattering the little light there was, but it was not dark. I stared up into it, trying to identify color. In my painting in the book I used a deep purplish blue for the night sky. This was not really accurate, being inspired by Steve's original time exposures on slide film. The deep beautiful blue was caused by something called reciprocity effect that affected long exposures on film. Anyways, the eye does not really see color in this dim light. Still, I could subtly shift it from indigo blue to purplish blue in my mind, depending on how I wanted to see it. People said that my painting expressed the feel and sense of color of the tropical night perfectly, as no photo could record it. I should have put more stars in it.

Steve pointed out to me a luminous click beetle flying high above the clearing. There were fireflies, also beetles of course, flying low, glowing an intense blue color. A gibbon in a nearby tree started to sing, adding it's voice to the human calls in the darkness of the forest. One of the honey hunters called back to the gibbon and they carried out a conversation. Neither understanding the other. Or maybe there was no need to interpret. That's what primates do. We shout and sing to let each other know we are there.

Sometime during the night, I walked to the edge of the huge pit filled with tangled underbrush down slope from the bee tree and tossed out a tiny box filled with the ashes of Cinda Lauffer, daughter of my friend Rhod Lauffer in Tucson. The same Rhod that Pak Teh mistook for his enemy in my illustration for The Bee Tree. This month was the first anniversary of her death at 36 of cancer. This narrative will also go into the album that Rhod is creating of text and photos as friends travel over the world scattering her ashes as they go.

After a while, Pak Teh walked up from the base camp a hundred or so yards down slope, sweating, to join us beneath the tree. At 80 years old, he had climbed the tree as recently as last year. But his two grandsons, were clearly in charge here now. There had been a long gap before these two boys, now 28 years old, each the son of a different daughter, could take over Pak Teh's responsibility as leader of the honey hunting band. Pak Teh had had only daughters and the honey hunt was man's work.

Pak Teh said something and called up to his grandsons now high up on the trunk, and laughed. M. translated.

"He says he is trying to resist climbing up there with them!"

It was after midnight when they called down that the ladder was finished and they were going to rest. They rested up in the tree.

Climber: "Send up the PALONG (leather honey bucket)"
Person on ground: "BAIK!"

Soon I saw the leather honey bucket with the attached bone knife going up into the tree, silhouetted against that night sky that was just not black. They were ready to harvest the first colony.

After a few more calls and responses between the tree top and the ground crew, I saw the first cascade of sparks as, somewhere above us, Nizam or Shukor rubbed his honey hunters torch on the branch above the first colony. The tiny glowing red embers made little spirals as they floated slowly, gently down towards the ground downslope from the great tree. I had a tripod set up and wanted to record a time exposure, but it proved too much trouble for me in the pitch dark. I put the camera away and just watched with my eyes, the only way to really observe the honey hunt.

As required by tradition, one of the ground crew, an uncle I think, chanted from the base of the tree. His call carried throughout the forest.

"HITAM MANIS. TURUN DENGAN CAHAYA BINTANG!

TURUN DENGAN LEMAH-LEMBUTNYA"

("Hitam Manis, Dark Sweet One, Come down with the falling stars
Come down gracefully.")

"SEDAP! SEDAP!" (Tastes good) I heard Nizam's voice from above. He was tasting the honey.

Art from The Bee Tree, by Paul Mirocha

As planned, the highly defensive bees were confused by the falling embers, considering them to be the threat to their colony. In the dark, the honey hunters are invisible to them. So despite the poetry sung by the honey hunters, the bees are angry. They follow the embers to the ground and rest there until morning. There were bees buzzing past us in the dark, even in the safe area where we sat.

"OWWW! DAAAANNNN..." I started to curse and yell at the people around me to turn their flashlights off. But I stopped in mid-sentence.

I identified the pain. I had been stung in the thigh. That's when I remembered HITAM MANIS, the beautiful woman who, ages ago, fell into forbidden love with the Sultan's son and was killed by the Sultan's soldiers. Cause of death: a beautfully decorated silver spear through the heart. She flew up into the treetops with her girl friends and lived on as the collective spirit of the wild bees. Because of this, tradition forbids using metal tools in collecting honey, and suggests using terms of endearment towards the bees, as you would towards your lover. They may be, after all, superior beings, not to mention the spirit of a beautiful woman who was wronged. Certainly bee had talents and powers beyond what we humans can comprehend and humans did well to treat them with respect. It was bad form to even use harsh language around the bees--they might not return next year.

The honey hunters do get stung. But their immune systems have given up reacting to the bee venom. I remember when I used to sit below this tree when Pak Teh was still doing the harvesting. I'd hear him laugh up there in the dark. I knew then that he had been stung. He called the stings tickles or kisses.

"My fine friends. My darlings! You have tickled me. Ha. Thank you!"

That bee kiss was to stay with me for the rest of my trip. A reminder of my relationship with Hitam Manis, sweet and dark, the feminine spirit of the bees.

When the bucket came down full of honey combs, honey, and bees, I went down to the base of trunk to watch. One of the older men took the first piece of honey comb and wrapped it in foil. This was a gesture of respect towards the unknown. The honey hunters traditionally throw the first bit of comb into the forest as a gift for the "Unseen Owner". No one speaks about who this is exactly--it is not important to know or not knowable. Whenever he entered the forest, Pak Teh would touch his heart and say "Assalamu'alaikum" as he would upon entering a house as a guest. He was entering the domain of the "Unseen Owner" of the forest.

He then wrapped up another piece. I do not know what the purpose of this second piece of comb was. Like so much else I don't know, I left it at that.

He carried the honey bucket up to where Pak Teh and the rest were sitting and we all tasted it.

"MAKAN, MAKAN!" said Pak Teh,. "Eat eat!." He knew we understood that word. We had learned it from him. He always said that to us because he was always feeding us.

It was sweet and watery. We chewed the combs like chewing gum. Pak Teh said the honey tasted different this year. It tasted like Shorea flowers, one of the giant Dipterocarp trees on the forest around Pedu Lake highly prized for their hard timber for building and often used as a substitute for teak. Also highly prized by the bees for making honey. Amazing. I'll bet Pak Teh can talk about honey the way a waiter at a French restaurant talks about wine.

"MAKAN, MAKAN!"

In the honey hunter's camp after the climb

We Meet the Sultan

Sunday, February 11, 2007
Alor Star, Kedah

"The Koran says that mankind is the steward of the natural world. SInce he has with his brain the capacity make decisions for right or for wrong action. He has the power to chose to do or not to do something. So therefore mankind is responsible to the frogs, the stones, everything."

--M. Mardan, in conversation over breakfast

"AMPUN, TUANKU!"
"APON TANKU!"
"No, it's: AMPUN TUANKU! And make sure you do this hand gesture right."
"Don't do it like this." He pantomimed putting his hands together in a kind of "hurrah" gesture and broke into laughter. "you put your palms together, fingers together, thumbs downward, touching them to your forehead and point them downward like this. You guys are not going to embarrass me are you?" We didn't want to do that in front of the Sultan.

"That's all you have to say. Let me do the rest of the talking and just do what I do." said Makhdzir.

"What does it mean?"

" AMPON" means, like I'm sorry, or excuse me, and Tuanku means like your highness."

We practiced. I wrote "AMPUN TUANKU" on my hand. Makhdzir lampooned someone putting their hands in the correct position at their forehead, hesitating for an awkward second while they lifted their glasses to see the writing on their palm. "AMPUN TUANKU!" We all laughed now.

"You make the gesture and say AMPUN TUANKU when you enter the room. Make the gesture before you shake his hand and when we leave. Say AMPUN TUANKU before you address Him during your conversation, without the hand gesture. Don't ever turn your back to him. And don't hand anything directly to him. An attendant will have a platter and you put the gift on the platter." explained Makhdzir seriously. "Can you remember that?"

The proverbial "silver platter". Now I know where that phrase comes from. We assured him we would practice saying "AMPUN TUANKU" 100 times.

The day before, in Kuala Lumpur, we had bought silk batik shirts at the market at Putrajaya near the government center in KL. We got black songkoks (Islamic hats) at a department store. We should have had black pants, but M. was trying to make it simple for us. I wore my darkest travel pants. Contrary to local custom, we had to wear shoes to meet the Sultan. We looked passable.

"What are you going to tell him?"

"What do you mean? Do we have to have something to tell him?" We are just signing books for him as a formality, I thought, because he owns the bee tree. Makhdzir set this audience up for his own reasons, and whatever they were, it sounded like fun. It was enough for me to have an excuse to dress up in formal batiks and wear a SONGKOK.

Makhdzir explained that we might want to have some content. After all, the Sultan is a busy man and agreed to see us. Most people come to ask him for something. I didn't really know what I wanted to say. I started making up a little speech.

How about something like, "AMPUN TUANKU. I want to thank you for the opportunity to draw your bee tree and all the other cool things in your forest and I hope you preserve the forest from being cut down..." We had acknowledged him in our book as the Sultan of Kedah State, His Royal Highness Tuanku Sultan Haji Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah ibni Al-Marhum SultanBadlishah for his protection of the forests, their flowers and the bee trees.

Makhdzir told me that the Sultan already knew that the forest should be preserved. It would be best not to come off as condescending to the man who once was king. Anyways, we didn't need to ask his permission to go into the forest and draw. The Sultan knew he had to harmonize conservation with the needs of his people. He had to think about both. There is a lot of sensitivity about North Americans, who already cut down their own forests, being heavy handed in their criticism of developing countries. After all here we were, in their country. I remembered the I Ching's advice: "The traveller is modest and reserved. He should not be gruff or overbearing, nor lend himself to jokes and buffonery."

To illustrate this sensitivity, Makhdzir told me about his initial conversation with the man from the State Tourism Office just before the "Visit Malaysia 2007" press conference we had been in the previous evening. The official was questioning Makhdzir about us because he had once had a bad experience with the World Wildlife Fund. Tourism Malaysia had helped support a documentary that WWF was doing about Kedah. It turned out that WWF shot a lot of footage of logging and cleared forest, giving it a sinister look, like that is what is going on. Whereas TM was concerned with bringing ecotourists to the state. Ecotourism is one way to show that people can gain income from having an intact forest. WWF had a different goal of rousing world public opinion against the logging. It would be natural for the local administrators to want to have control over the content of a documentary that they funded. At the same time, it is also quite shocking and ugly to see clear cut forests and easy to spin a story with pictures of ecological doom.

So, we need to work with, not against local government, but also be truthful with the rest of the world about reporting the problems involved with conserving the forest. It's not simple or easy to do.

As usual, Makhdzir had some ideas of his own. "The emphasis of the meeting is to promote and conserve indigenous culture and see how the state tourism can contribute together with you guys." he said. "I imagine the schoolchildren around Pedu Lake or in Kedah reading The Bee Tree book. There could not be better people than the children of Pedu Lake to hear the stories of their peers. They will value the forest with deep respect."

We had seen some recent clear-cutting on the way to Pedu Lake, the preserve where the bee tree was. It made Makhdzir as angry as it did me. Tree cutting was legal, but controversial. There was some corruption involved in the getting of permits to cut trees and still a prevalent mentality that connected intensive natural resource use with development. Often the contractors would go further than they were supposed to, even into the preserve. Already one could see the erosion occurring on the steep, naked hillsides. It was ugly and yet they were trying to promote this area to eco-tourists. All the interests did not coincide, but maybe they could, so we reasoned.

Makhdzir explained that the task should be to educate local people first, that to destroy the forest was to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs". There was value in leaving the forest intact for both humans and nature alike. In fact, there were values already in the Malay culture that encouraged conservation.

Makhdzir pointed that this was what The Bee Tree was about. As Pak Teh said, "As long as there is a forest, there will be honey hunters." Pak Teh knows that if the honey hunters are destructive in their methods, the bees will not be able to migrate hundreds of miles as they do, and they may not return next year. There are strict traditions that have been preserved through many generations in Pak Teh's own family that ensure that the honey harvest will be abundant while bees will not be harmed or even insulted. Children who read books like this might grow up to be managers and politicians. They might have a different consciousness about the value of nature than the current generation.

Apis dorsata, the giant wild Asian honeybees, are an integral part of the tropical Asian rain forest--they are its main pollinator. In that sense they are a keystone species, helping to maintain the genetic diversity of the forest, and thus ensuring the setting of seeds and the ongoing evolution of the flowering plants there.

The honey hunters know that the fact that their honey comes from the wild is crucial to their economic benefit. The mystique of this wild honey, not to mention the danger and extreme athleticism required to procure it, is a major factor in the price they can get from it. WIld honey is one of the oldest traditional medicines, Women secretly buy it for their husbands, to "make them strong". It brings a high price.

Apis dorsata can not be domesticated. It requires an intact, living breathing forest for it's livelihood gathering pollen and nectar and for finding a nesting site to its liking. To the true connoisseur, each batch of honey is different. It tastes like whatever the dominant flower was that year. It's like liquid gold, and has an almost mystical reputation among honey tasters. Pak Teh gets some of the highest prices in the world for his honey because of his reputation for quality and authenticity. He gets 100 ringgits per kilo bottle, that's about $28 US.

Makhdzir recalled how on year he was with another biologist under the bee tree watching the honey buzzards soar high above it. "This is an intact forest," said his companion. "The honey buzzard is the top of the food chain. Seeing them here tells a lot about this forest."




Pak Teh's House


WE DROVE TO THE VILLAGE OF JITRA where Salleh bin Mohammed Noor, affectionately called Pak Teh, "Grandfather" and leading character in The Bee Tree lived with his family. This was the first time Pak Teh had seen the book. It was sweet to see his surprised smile when we handed it to him. He had no idea we even had the printed books. He called to Nizam ands Shukor to come and see it. Makhdzir told me later that there was one thing Pak Teh wasn't happy with. He pointed to the second to the last spread where neighbors are coming to Pak Teh's house for the honey feast at the end of the honey hunt.

"I don't like this guy. Why is he in the book?" said Pak Teh. M. explained that Pak Teh had problems with a certain guy in his village and the guy shaking the boy, Nizam's hand looks like him. It was the same element Makhdzir had criticised for showing the old man bowing to the boy. I protested that all of the characters in the book were fictitious. It states right on the back cover: Children's Fiction/Ecology/Asian Studies. My best friend Rhod had modeled for that scene and I had made his beard longer and changed his features to make him look somewhat Malaysian. I told him I'd send a photo of Rhod to prove it. It's not that guy. It's not anyone.

After some thought, I could understand Pak Teh's confusion about what was fiction and what was real. All the paintings of Pak Teh, the grandfather in the story, are real life portraits of the man himself. There was just no way to improve upon him as a model. The character of Nizam, the single grandson in the story, is a conglomeration of the two real-life grandsons--he is called Nizam, but I used Shukor mostly as the model.

The house in the story was Pak Teh's house, exactly as it was. And this is a sad point. There had been a flood since we last saw the century old traditional timber house I painted for the book. Pak Teh was concerned that the water had weakened the wooden supports. He worried about its stability and the safety of his family. So the house, that was an historic museum piece, was taken down and rebuilt with a ground floor and concrete block. Thankfully, they used the most beautiful parts of the old carved wood windows in the new house. But it had lost something in the transition. After that I noticed many Malay houses that seemed to have gone through the same process. The old space under the house was walled in with block and the result is a kind of hybrid of old and modern.

Pak Teh's house in 2004 (left) and 2007 (right)

Makhdzir pointed out to me another of the architectural losses that I hadn't noticed. The old house had a small porch and a "receiving room", where Pak Teh used to sit and eat with us. It was a place to meet guests without having to invite them into the living space. It is important for the kind of community in that village, M. explained, to make it easy for people to stop by and visit, chat, exchange information. It was traditional to build the old timber houses with that floor plan. Now some of that meeting space is gone. When you walk in the front door, you are in Pak Teh's bedroom.

Perhaps the ubiquitous cell phone now fills that function of the "meeting room". You no longer have to stop by in person if you want to converse and it's faster, more in the moment. I think about this in relation to American society. That change happened long ago, yet I still value the occasional friend who is in the area and just stops by to visit. The act of stopping by in person is an act of trust in your neighbor or friend; you know they value your friendship and that they will stop what they are doing and be present for a few minutes it takes to be a good host.

In Asia, there is a particular sensitivity about meeting someone in person. It shows respect. If you simply fling off an email or a phone call to get some business done, you might not see any major results. But if you spend the time, like we were doing on this trip, to come in person. It is so greatly appreciated in ways that we might not even notice. It shows your extra effort to make a personal relationship and that open all doors here in Asia.

left to right: Nizam, Pak Teh, Mak Teh, and Shukor

We had lunch with Pak Teh and his wife Mak Teh as our hosts before all of us got dudded up in our formal Malaysian attire for our visit to the Sultan: Pak Teh, his two grandsons Nizam and Shukor, Makhdzir, author Steve Buchmann, Steve Petersen who we invited along as official photographer, and me.

...

MAKHDZIR GOT A CALL ON HIS CELL PHONE from the Sultan's people informing us that we were not to visit the royal palace, as we had expected. The Sultan had decided to meet us at another of his office buildings where he had a meeting room used for less formal audiences. I think this was just more practical for him. So he wore a western suit while we were in our best batiks. He was being casual. I expected to see him in his impressive traditional garb, as we saw him on billboards arouns Alor Star. He probably did this so we would feel more comforable and less underdressed. We did.

The Sultan struck me as being gentle, gracious, and a good listener. After all, that must be a large part of his job: receiving people and allowing them to feel listened to. We gave him so many gifts: 2 copies of The Bee Tree, A copy of another children's book I had done with Bee Tree co-author Diana Cohn, Mr. Goethe's Garden, (in symbolic acknowledgement despite her absence on this trip) and a 6 foot tall saguaro poster that I had painted that would not fit on the platter. Two of us had to roll it out on the floor to show the Sultan. He replied that he had been in Azizone. It was in the 60s and he did not elaborate, but he had seen a saguaro. Steve gave him several of his own published books about bees and honey. The Sultan talked mostly to Makhdzir in Bahasa. We all sat around wondering what was going on and what would happen next, glad Makhdzir was doing the talking. It was a slow and quiet affair. After the hour was almost up, he calmly asked us if there were any more gifts. Thankfully, we were done. He had to leave so the next groups could be ushered in. We were there about 50 minutes.

Steve and Paul give The Bee Tree to the Sultan of Kedah. For the photograph
he dispensed with the usual protocol of handing things to him on a silver platter.

Afterwards we all went back to Pak Teh's house for another luxurious lunch of nasi goreng and exotic fruits. Pak Teh told Makhdzir that he had been so worried that we would not do the salutation correctly that he forgot to do it himself! He laughed.

Pak Teh's smile on first view of the printe book, and showing The Bee Tree to his youngest grandson, Hafizi

"Visit Malaysia 2007!"

Saturday, February 10, 2007,
Sungai Petani, Kedah

or "The Accidental Book Launching"

TAK KENAL, TAK CINTA
" Without knowledge, there's no love."
--Malaysian saying


In the end we will conserve only what we love.
We love only what we understand.
We will understand only what we are taught.
--Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

"PAUL, YOU STEP OUT THERE NOW AND SAY SOMETHING," whispered Professor Makhdzir bin Mardan. My friend, recently knighted as a Dato by the king, fixed that unblinking gaze of his on me and motioned towards the limelight, smiling slightly. I hesitated a few moments. I had been in the country for only about 24 hours. Back home in Arizona it was 4:30 am. I knew something was happening here and it involved me, but my comprehension was still fuzzy.

The room was small, intimate, dimly lit except for four people sitting in chairs at the front under lights. It was crowded with people listening intently and taking notes. One person was buried in a video camera pointed at the scene at the front. Strangely, many people were dressed as pirates, yes, with fake mustaches, eye-patches, hand-hooks, and the like. They smiled too. I realized that the speakers speaking English, but I could not understand them at first. It was simple, though, and sounded improvised, like grade school students who had to make a presentation in front of the class but had not really prepared anything. The air conditioning droned loudly. They were speaking ENGGERIS, my native tongue, but I struggled to understand what they were saying. I'm sure it was my foggy brain, not there English.

Nobody owns the English language, least of all the English; it has gone off on its own. It is the common language used to communicate among the many languages of Asia. Everyone speaks the same language, but with their own accent or idiosyncratic version. A native speaker like me has to learn that accent. Often no one bothers to edit grammar or spelling; as long as they understand each other, anything is ok. I can understand phrases like " We can always joy and love wherever our eyes land." It's actually kind of poetic. But what about "Make the green in heart?" I use that for meditation.

A woman had just finished speaking. She held up a book, titled "The Guide to Malaysia". Emphasis on the "The" (I always wanted to use that phrase). Was it a book report? No, she wrote the book and was explaining that finally there was a guidebook written about Malaysia by Malaysians rather than outsiders and it had everything in it. At the moment, Steve Buchmann, my fellow American, and one of my two authors on our book, was standing in front holding up The Bee Tree and turning the pages to show my lavish illustrations of Malaysians at home, in the forest, telling stories by lamplight, doing traditional things. He was speaking English too. Did anyone understand him? I'm not sure I did.

I got up and spoke to the crowd. I don't remember what I said, but it might have been something like this.

"Uh, ladies and gentlemen. Dudes! Such an excellent forest you've got here. This is my 6th or 7th trip here to your lovely country and we've spent literally weeks, no, months here! I have a piles of sketchbooks I filled up on these trips and a million or so photos. We have made some good friends here. We've come to give them copies of printed books before it even comes out in America. And I hope everything in the book is right. Really, this is such a beautiful nature place. Do you all think so? I mean I hope what I painted is all correct."

Nobody there looked at all like the Malaysian villagers I had painted. They looked like they had shopped in the stylish malls and boutiques of uptown Kuala Lumpur. Most of them wore the traditional Malaysian golf shirt. I found myself taking fashion notes from them. Suddenly the number of people in the room seemed to have doubled. They were from all different nationalities and were all standing now, pointing their cameras at arms length towards Steve, Makhdzir and me. I had my camera in my hand, and the view from where I stood was so fantastic that I almost took their picture. But I thought maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. I still have the image in my mind.

We are told we might be on TV. I never found out if we were or not. There was an article a few days later in the Star, the largest English daily newspaper in Malaysia. It mentioned everyone in the press conference, except for us.