ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author have begun writing this reflection about home-making in a gubuk, a simple Javanese wooden structure without walls, wood floor platform, and red clay tile roof. This gubuk, however, is not in a rice field but a small patch of forest adjacent to fields of chilies, rice, tomatoes and a small sand mine. Due east is the mouth of Mount Merapi, a volcano that every decade or so ejects boiling hot clouds that descend through and onwards into the lowlands. Houses in the area are often finished with stones from the volcano and the volcanic sand is mixed with concrete into their walls. The volcano is the subject of human projects, ideas and values, but it is also beyond them and irreducible to them. It has an agency and capacity to act that exceeds what humans think or want of it.
