pagi tadi

Pagi ini saya dikejutkan dengan paluan kompang yang datang dari kejiranan perumahan berhadapan flat kelas rendah ini. Ia begitu membingitkan sehingga saya hampir-hampir menempik dari tingkap bilik, 'Wei pukimak diam lah!'. 

Hampir. 

Namun, kesusilaan masih utuh dalam diri saya. Jadi saya menekupkan bantal ke telinga dan cuba untuk menyambung lena saya sebentar tadi.

Selepas hampir dua puluh minit mencuba, saya akhirnya berputus asa. Paluan kompang sudah sepuluh minit berhenti, tetapi ngilunya masih mencucuk telinga. Saya cuba bangun dari katil; dan ketika itu, bermula semacam suatu perdebatan eksistensial yang aneh antara saya dan katil usang itu.

Seperti magnet yang kuat, ia menarik tubuh saya ke dalam dakapannya semula. Saya bermati-matian cuba melepaskan diri. Dakapannya sungguh kuat, dan memandangkan saya belum selesai menguasai keseluruhan tubuh saya selepas bangun, ia jadi beban yang luar biasa renyahnya.

Setiap kali kita bangun dari tidur, ia akan dimulakan dengan sebuah pergelutan: antara tubuh dan kesedaran. Tubuh dan kesedaran merupakan dua hal berasingan, dua individu yang hampir sepanjang masa tidak sependapat tetapi masih mampu untuk bertolak-ansur antara satu dengan yang lainnya. Ketika kita dalam keadaan jaga, tubuh dan kesedaran bekerjasama sebagai satu kumpulan. Kedua-duanya perlu didamaikan terlebih dahulu kerana jika salah satu daripadanya enggan ikut serta, keadaan jaga kita akan jadi suatu pengalaman yang memeritkan. Namun ianya jarang-jarang berlaku, melainkan apabila salah satunya dihinggapi sakit.

Tidur merupakan waktu yang sentiasa ditunggu-tunggu oleh tubuh dan kesedaran. Pada waktu itu, kedua-duanya dapat melepaskan diri dari tanggungjawab yang dilalui dan kembali mendiami ruang masing-masing sehingga kita memasuki keadaan jaga kita semula. Sementara tubuh diam-diam berehat, mitos mengatakan kesedaran akan keluar bersiar-siar--sudah tentu ia tidak terbatas oleh pemahaman ruang dan waktu sebagaimana yang kita fahami--ke daerah-daerah yang diam-diam kita pendam tanpa pengetahuan tubuh. Atau boleh jadi juga, arah tuju kesedaran itu adalah lewat jejak-jejak ingatan yang ditinggalkan oleh tubuh dalam keadaan jaganya.

Dan pagi itu, dalam perdebatan eksistensial antara saya dan katil, tubuh dan kesedaran, di luar pengetahuan masing-masing, berhajatkan hal yang sama. Tubuh masih memberontak kerana saya tidak cukup tidur pada malamnya, manakala kesedaran masih belum selesai menikmati kelazatan daging naga yang diulitnya. Tanpa pengetahuan mereka, kedua-duanya menginginkan waktu yang lebih untuk berdiam di ruang mereka.

Saya menyumpah katil di hadapan saya seraya membayangkan penyesalan yang akan hinggap pada diri saya kemudiannya. Lalu saya kembali tidur dan bangkit ketika matahari sudah tegak di atas kepala sambil memikirkan alasan untuk diberi kepada bos.

the first string/the overture

1

"If love has a face, it would be yours."

I wrote the phrase myself, but I wonder whether you realize it or not, it is written in a form of quote. I find it very strange indeed, to quote myself, but again, I wonder. Is it not strange for people to think that theirs are authentic? All of us are thieves, plagiarists if you allow me.

If each of the word that we utter can speak for itself, we would have been damned by now. As you came to a realization now, I wonder, what is authenticity itself?

For a long time, I was deluded by the interpretation of authenticity. I thought of it as a form of originality. Thus, upon my belief, I disembarked on a long, exhaustive genealogical journey to search for an origin, in its most primordial state. I thought of it as a soul-searching adventure. An idiot, I was.

Pardon my foulness.

After a long while, with all the devastation and disappointment, I was slapped by a strong blow of realization. History is a foul creature. It lingers around you, circling you from above like a vulture waiting for its prey to take its last breath. History always shows itself. It reminds you that it has always already been there: walking beside you, clinging to your arm like a girl who's madly in love; or creeping behind you, like a man who's madly frustrated from a rejection. History will not let you walk past it unnoticed.

But history is also ashamed of itself. Often than not, it would conceal a part of it, peeling its skin bit by bit onto the forgotten; and the repercussion that comes after that will cast us into oblivion, too deep to recuperate. Thus, the shame of the history will always remain shrouded, if not secret. In doing so, it leaves us a child to raise: a historical burden!

As we write our path accordingly to the narrative that history allows us, we must be aware of the lost narrative that it conceals; for history was never born, it created itself from the womb of a barren god. Life is a death sentence itself. We keep on living by forgetting; and as we grow old enough, too immersed with the memories to forget, history will throw a dice.

Almost!

I have to pardon myself once more, for I was too emotional and almost trapped by history's strongest weapon: memory. Where have we got off just now?

Ah, yes. I was devastated.

By shattering my belief, I was thrown into severe madness. It is normal, I think. Human needs something beyond their comprehensions, too great for them to achieve, an ideal, or a projection of a being that they can never be. Human is a submissive creature that bows to anything they could not comprehend. They admire it, fear it, and reproduce it in a form of obligations.

It is normal, I am sure of it. I had lost my god.

Losing my reverence, I came to disrespect myself. You see, faith is the essence of a human, and without it, human will stop itself from existing. After some excruciating periods, I had once again found my faith. It was darkness that handed god to me.

For the love of god, my god, that contains me and contained by history; nothing has an origin. As literal as it sounds, I'm afraid it is not what you think of. The quest for an origin had long distracted human from its most genuine task, that is to live. It is a trap set up by history in order to compel human to stay in a regretful dismay, to loath their fate, while history holds its dice and laugh upon us.

Be very aware. History is flux. It created itself, remember? Something that is created from nothing is never immortal. It needs to fix itself occasionally. Thus, at a certain juncture of history, there will be a rupture; and at that particular moment, the door for the lost narrative will be opened.

Since nothing is authentic, sentences, like history, are all but mere structures. Structures that persist themselves as immortal, yet malleable. Bend them with words if you must, twist them with prepositions, for you are an alchemist of yourself. Authenticity is deemed by you. It is an interpretation, and for an interpretation to sustain itself, it must be distinct with others; and what is authenticity but a mere representation of uniqueness? That human, and all other things that exist, have their own notion of existence.

As Kundera opposed the established norm of a tradition, in his reply to Roth's question, who asked it on behalf of the perplexed people, "There is enormous freedom latent within the novelistic form. It is a mistake to regard a certain stereotyped structure as the inviolable essence of the novel."