In Indonesia I never saw a gecko close-up making "that sound". Come to think of it, it doesn't often seem important to see something making a sound. Hearing it seems more important.
And hearing it was important. I lay there one night in Java, before we got to Solo, on the edge of the jungle, waiting for our gecko to wind himself up and then unravel his seven geck-ohs. Perhaps 20 minutes between salvoes. I tried to record him on my phone but couldn't quite organise it in the dark. However much I waited -- alert -- I was always caught off guard. There was a lethargy that came with the heat. Everything slowed down - walking, thinking, talking, ability to press a series of buttons on my mobile phone to start the audio recording function. I only ran once in 6 weeks and I can't now for the life of me think why.
And hearing it was important. I lay there one night in Java, before we got to Solo, on the edge of the jungle, waiting for our gecko to wind himself up and then unravel his seven geck-ohs. Perhaps 20 minutes between salvoes. I tried to record him on my phone but couldn't quite organise it in the dark. However much I waited -- alert -- I was always caught off guard. There was a lethargy that came with the heat. Everything slowed down - walking, thinking, talking, ability to press a series of buttons on my mobile phone to start the audio recording function. I only ran once in 6 weeks and I can't now for the life of me think why.
There's more room somehow when things are slowed down. More room in the spaces between footsteps and thoughts. When we were practising naming things, I often came back to naming my footsteps. Like this: as my left foot landed I would say "foot" and as my right foot landed I would say "step". This had an odd effect. I recognised my foot as "foot", but then my other foot was not named as the object "foot" but as the movement "step". One is an object; the other a movement. (Although "step" is also a noun, it felt like a verb.)
Then the two together became "footstep", which seemed like a puzzling thing. Perhaps because of being a step-parent and having step-children, I expect the "step-" to come first. There are also shades of goose-step and doorstep, which, in turn, bring with them ranks (serried ranks, obviously) of Nazis and housewives in D.H. Lawrence towns scrubbing their doorsteps in something like the same way that Balinese women sweep in front of their stalls and houses.
Usha lives in a D.H. Lawrence town. Does she scrub her doorstep? [One of the most frequent signs by the side of the road as we drove through Java advertised something variously written at Polis Bode, Poles Bodi and Polis Body. I realised it meant that they would polish the body of your car. In the same vein, I came to realise that the Sock Breaker and Shok Beker signs probably suggested that replacement shock absorbers were available.]
But my point was that there was time, in between speaking "foot" and "step", for all sorts of things to happen. It felt more like the space between waves, when there's time for the first to swirl up and about and between and then drag its way back through the shingle like a cartoon character failing to hold on to a cliff edge by his fingertips before the next one draws itself up to its full height and crashes down like it was the first wave ever to think of doing such a thing.
So, in an odd way, by slowing things down, the heat brought some things into proportion, although my overwhelming feeling was that things tropical were out of proportion.
But I also tried to imagine how the gecko made that sound. Was he rubbing his legs together like a cricket? If he was croaking, how did he make the winding-up noise at the start?
I never saw. Then, home with close-up e-magic, I found that they do it with press-ups, like this:
So, in an odd way, by slowing things down, the heat brought some things into proportion, although my overwhelming feeling was that things tropical were out of proportion.
But I also tried to imagine how the gecko made that sound. Was he rubbing his legs together like a cricket? If he was croaking, how did he make the winding-up noise at the start?
I never saw. Then, home with close-up e-magic, I found that they do it with press-ups, like this:
It looks uncomfortable. As if he's being coerced with a bicycle pump perhaps. But -- though it seems ungracious, having borrowed him to show his method -- that's not the sound I'm after. Here's the sound as I remember it with the double wind-up:
Now I remember that when we went to visit Susannah and her husband in Solo in their marvellous, rickety, inside-out house, they had a house-gecko. They maintained that it gave advice -- or at least maintained a sort of running commentary on affairs in the house. Sometimes they were convinced that it was saying, "fuck-you, fuck-you". At the time I couldn't accept this. A gecko wouldn't say anything like that. Well, it wouldn't say that. Why would it? Geckos are gentle and exquisite creatures, surely? And it doesn't even sound right. The first vowel is definitely an 'eh'.
But then in Bedulu we saw a lovely old lady (well, about my age actually) carrying things to her stall wearing a "FUCK TERRORIST" t-shirt. I wanted to stop her and say, "No, no, you're lovely, I can see you are, do you realise what your t-shirt says? You don't want to be saying that..." But her island was bombed, and geckos slaughter the local wildlife all night.
I think my projections were well out of proportion.
But then in Bedulu we saw a lovely old lady (well, about my age actually) carrying things to her stall wearing a "FUCK TERRORIST" t-shirt. I wanted to stop her and say, "No, no, you're lovely, I can see you are, do you realise what your t-shirt says? You don't want to be saying that..." But her island was bombed, and geckos slaughter the local wildlife all night.
I think my projections were well out of proportion.
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