1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction 2:1 Spring 2014

I seek to live a pleasure twice. What beckons is a dark river and a silent symphony of light. A memory of a night when trees pulsed with a bioluminescent glow. It was 1992 on the Selangor River. West Malaysia.

Flashing on and off in synchrony, congregating fireflies. In Malay they are kelip-kelip.

Now it is nearly twenty years later. I am in Kuala Lumpur and an afternoon bus ride takes me back. At 8 PM, an hour past sunset, I go to the dock at Bukit Belimbing. I buy my ticket under the blare of fluorescent lights and climb down into the boat. The boatman sits at the stern and starts the motor. It is electric and it is quiet. As we pull away from the landing into the darkness, I feel weightless, like a leaf floating on water. The damp air of the tropics holds me like a cocoon. I hear the click of the boatman’s lighter and then the warm clove smoke of a kretek curls around me. Shrill against my ears is the unceasing whine of insect voices—cicadas, crickets? I am not sure, but it is a welcome memory of the sound of night on the Selangor River.

My vision is slow to adjust to the dark. Lights from the nearby town of Kuala Selangor illuminate low clouds. Against them are the lean silhouettes of coconut palms. The river is a dark liquid and the banks are black until I catch a soft pulse of light. The boatman steers toward the glow at the edge of the river. The shimmering takes the shape of trees, rounded and low to the water. Nearer now and the throb resolves into hundreds of sparkles, as if little stars had settled in the leaves. Fireflies, flashing on and off in synchrony.

Fireflies are a bioluminescent beetle. Some are roving, such as those in North America with nicknames like glow worm and lightning bug. In southeast Asia, along rivers in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, firefly species congregate.

Here, along the Selangor, one dominates: Pteroptyx tener. Each is about an inch long. Thousands may gather. The syncopated flashing is communication, a sexy signal four times a second from males striving to attract females.