fragments #1

There are things I want to tell, worlds I want to portray, people of whom their lives suppressed by judgments--of close friends, families, strangers, societies, judiciaries, governments; these are stories that I want the world to know about. At least that is what my little ambition is, as a writer (or so I thought I am), or as one who is very much awed by the littlest, often seem insignificant, encounters in everyday life.

I've always been aware of anthropology, yet I never had the courage to really delve into it. Even now. My encounters with anthropology were limited to bits and pieces, readings that I took halfheartedly just to fill in the gaps whenever I stumbled upon things that I couldn't make sense of, with my limited theoretical understanding and lack of depth on the world.

The closest I've ever been was when I dabbled, pretty much on the surface, with phenomenology, of Heidegger to be precised. But Heidegger was hard to comprehend (and still does!), and it was merely a hobby, so I left him. Another thing was because of my greed. I was not satisfied with just a theory that explains little things as what they are, theories that only attempt to explain the small scale of events, little units that very much unique thus limiting them to a particular time-space constriction. I thirsted for a grand narrative that could explain everything that is happening anywhere, anytime. In physics, it is often called a theory of everything.

For me, theories as such only hinder further understanding of our world, they distract us from our sole quest for the purest and the most authentic condition; the origin of the world. Thus my construct and how I comprehend the world lacked depth. I couldn't appreciate the smallest gesture; smiles I received, thank yous, or apologies whenever someone brushed me off on the streets. I thought of them as a given, a norm, obligations with functional basis to allow the society to operate, to maintain the social order. There is no agency, for we are all trapped in the clutch of the ideological.

I was very ambitious. Life goes on, moments drifted by, people leave. Ambition is terrifying; it fills you with impatience, and with this, comes rage.

As rage subsided, so did my ambition for a grand, unifying, all-encompassing theory of the world, of reality, of being. Perhaps, this is the closest I've ever been to the truth. I'm satisfied with these little things I'm working with, and I do hope that they would someday grow into things that matter, meaningful enough to touch the hearts of people, however unsympathetic they may be.

monologue on suicide

Suicide is a complicated matter. It is not so much the legal concern that disturbs the society; it is immoral, and unethical to commit--or to assist--such act. Yet, suicide should never be viewed in a binary.

Truthfully, I myself am not sure. There is both good and evil involved in choosing to kill oneself.

It is immoral to kill oneself for suicide is a despicable act similar to fornicating with a family member. It is unethical for the unnaturalness of death that suicide brought upon; it goes against the law of nature, of god. However, I feel that I--we--don't have the right to say that they should live for the sake of the people around them, especially not for the society.

I feel sad thinking about the good times that she have yet to experience, if she chose to keep on living; it does feel regrettable. It is a sad conclusion, but to label her entire life as unhappy and miserable is wrong; and it is unethical to do so.

There were definitely times when she was happy, and I think those feelings weren't a lie. They were genuine happiness emanated from a life cherished by others.

That's why, I think, if she was able to come across feelings strong enough to force her to burn her life away, couldn't you say she had lived a wonderful life?

hidupku adalah desas desus
yang mampir dan berlalu
tanpa ada jeda di antaranya

of thoughts and instinct

It is not so much of the matter regarding the heart that we should be afraid of: its hunger and desire for everything that is impossible to hold. Yet, it is not the heart that we should be truly afraid of, but the rational mind, which we must be aware of its demands, its thirst for recognition, its conscience; the "I" that always pretend.

Heart does not think, for it is the act of thinking that hinders the heart from unleashing its utmost potential: to be unconditional. In a distant forgotten past, where humans were still too human, and nature was the other half of them, reasons were expressed, not spoken. It was this genuine gesture that allowed humans to endure his day without regret.

hal-hal yang lewat

Dalam menjadi dewasa, perlahan-lahan kita mula belajar tentang kewujudan pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang sebaiknya dibiarkan tidak terluah; lebih-lebih lagi apabila pertanyaan itu bersangkutan dengan hal-hal yang telah lewat.

Sudahnya kita tinggalkan saja pertanyaan itu berhujung dengan tanda tanya, tanpa ada noktah yang menuntaskannya. Kadang-kadang, ianya merupakan jalan terbaik. Noktah selalunya tidak terus mematikan pertanyaan, bahkan melahirkan pertanyaan-pertanyaan baru yang melelahkan.

Namun pertanyaan yang dibiarkan akan terus tinggal sebagai pertanyaan--bergentayangan di siling asbestos ini, jika tidakpun, ikut sama berpusing mengikut kipas. Sayangnya, kipas tidaklah punya upaya untuk menghalau pertanyaan itu. Tidak seperti angin yang melarikan daun-daun tua yang luruh.

Di siang harinya, pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang terpendam itu mungkin saja dikambus kebingitan seharian; dihambat tugasmu selaku seorang warga yang harus berdepan dengan masyarakatnya. Ia melelahkan, tetapi jika tidak ada persinggungan, manakan pula makanan hendak terhidang di atas meja.

Tibanya malam, ketika kamu bersendirian di dalam rumah kosong ini, pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang awalnya tertimbus itu meronta-ronta keluar.

Ia mengheret bersamanya sebuah ketakutan; menghalang kamu untuk menyoal pertanyaan itu walaupun secara diam-diam di dalam benakmu. Bimbang kalau-kalau waktu terleka nanti ia terlepas dari bibirmu. Dan kadang-kadang, pertanyaan itu tanpa persetujuan terpacul sendiri dari raut wajahmu.

"Ada kesepian yang terpancar dari wajah perempuan itu. Tidakkah kau nampak?"

Pernah sekali kawanku membangkitkan pertanyaan itu. Kami berpandangan sesama sendiri dan cepat-cepat menoleh ke arah lain. Pengakuan tanpa rela, lewat kecurangan tubuh, tidak harus diperihalkan dengan kata-kata. Ia perlu dipulangkan kembali dan disimpan rapi oleh empunya badan.

Aku bimbang juga jika kawanku perasan badai yang menghempas pesisir hati ini. Mungkin sepertiku, dia juga buat-buat tak nampak. Mungkin sepertiku, dia juga bimbang jikalau ada yang terlepas dari wajahnya.

Dan mungkin, seperti aku, dia juga diam-diam bertanya: apakah bibirmu masih bergetar ketika namaku mencuit cuping telingamu?

the order of chaos

I've read somewhere, it's related to the fine arts tradition: there was a movement, perhaps by the postmodernists, that retaliated against the orderly formalist tradition with patchy, eclectic forms. From the formalist's' point of view, such works were nothing more than a chaos--without any proper form, nor do it fulfilled basic requirements for an artwork. And the formalist was disgusted by the fact that these so called artists who have the gall to call their works as arts.

Then there was a critic, half-accepting half-cynical, saying that in this new form of--what we could consider--'arts', such chaotic and disordered style, with frequent repetition and slowly establishing itself as a form of arts, was not much different from the older tradition--one that it retaliated so valiantly so.

If you carefully observe, there is order within the chaos. For chaos that repeatedly emerges on the canvas requires a certain rule and direction for the canvas to be recognised as an artwork. It is order that gave a form to the chaotic strokes of brush.

endeavour

Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.

- Kundera, Identity

I had a long 'pillow talk' with Nj last night. And I was constantly reminded of Nd. Nj is, after all, Nd's relative. 

To steal Kundera's word, Nj is a second mirror that I selfishly created in an attempt to weigh my entirety of being thus far. A reflection of reflection; a double portrayal that became necessary, even just by its fraction. You see, memory works in a wondrous way. The body itself need not necessarily be present. The body leaves traces and trails, scattered in a multitude of forms and portrayals: a place, song, habit, photograph, book, person, etc. which reminds us that the body used to be there, in our lives; and to see its presence after it ceased to be there means, amongst other things, that it holds significance in the entirety of the self.

I cried when my grandpa died. Death is touching, but it holds no emotion. That is why there are people who celebrate or weep over the death of a person. Death never has any emotion. It is a promise, that we certainly believe, to be fulfilled. Tears shed over a person's death is not meant for that person but for the one coping with the loss. People cry to soothe themselves. And what triggers the tears is the sense of loss found in traces and trails in the event of death. It proves to us that the body holds meaning to the wholeness of our self over our encounters with the body. We may move past it, but we never forget.

My encounter with Nd goes a little more than five years back. Our relationship was, to put it into a single word, abrupt. Like a thrill before a man first learned of a lady's body; and it was already over before he knew it. A person's meaning to another could not be measured by time for love owes no obligation to conventional time. A meaningful moment, however fleeting it may be or however insignificant it may seems to others, lies in the profoundness of the encounter. And such intensity is born through the willingness to expose oneself, the trust to stake one's worth to another.

I could only remember a moment, so pure that it begs doubt on its authenticity; a rainy day, sharing umbrella, and a long walk. There was a lot of talking through words, smiles, and each time our arms brushed another's. Memory gives no emphasis on details. It feeds on the event as a whole, or to put it another way, the abstraction of the event dictated by the impression it imposes on the one who is remembering. The weight of a memory, as I said, comes from the profoundness of the encounter where one finds (and reflects) one's entirety of self in another.

Reminiscing is a quest to find and situate oneself in the present by contrasting it with the past. There is the danger of one being deluded into making another as a vessel for the lost body or lose oneself in the failure to make peace with the past. And the cautious ones use it as a means to gauge its growth through traces and trails left by the loss, teachings that only reveal itself through the absence. Finding traces of another in oneself is a proof of humanness for what we are today is the accumulation of encounters with the others.

My ego whispers that I am partly responsible for where you are nowadays; whether it is good or bad is yours to decide. Know that there are kind people out there who will not hesitate to be the pillars supporting you, whichever turn the future may take.

of here and other thoughts

I have not been writing for quite a long time. At least, this kind of writing here where I am not subjected to any scrutiny; nor do I have the obligation to be responsible for it. This is where I write to myself, and probably to some of you who still have the interest to read this.

I have many thoughts, yet I am not able to pour them out. It frustrates me. I am very cautious with my words, obviously only in writing; for they are always written for the basis of consumption. Thus, the habit of self-editing as I go paragraph by paragraph. A fifty-page academic article took me a year to finish.

Whether it is academic, popular, or just a 800-word book review, they were all for a measly amount of payment (or prestige, if you would be so kind not to judge me).

It is truly where the medium becomes your first concern when it comes to writing. 'What should I write' is dictated by 'where would I want my writing being published in', or specifically, 'who is the person I want to impress'. 

"The medium is the message," as coined by McLuhan. It truly is, indeed.

In this turbulent time, you are shaped (and define yourself) by the medium that you use. You identify yourself with it, along with the circle it nurtured. It is practically the same with the phrase 'you are what you consume'. Not in a narrow sense of food, of course; but in the consumption habit that you developed in formulating your own identity.

However, we should extend the phrase, with a little tweak: 'you are what you portray yourself to be'. This is the kind of zeitgeist we live in now.

We have way passed the age that contemplates art against the condition of infinite reproduction through mechanical means. This is the age where, to steal Benjamin's phrase, the works of arts are conditioned by its most primordial setting: the medium where it is portrayed to be.

But the holy place of art today is very much different from the way it was back in the Victorian age (in a sense, the Western art). A painting in a gallery or national museum, that is a high art. A wall painting on the street, that is street art or common art. Now, the latter was supposed to be, during its inception, a statement inspired to break down the wall built by the Modernist that is formalism. The Dadaist took refuge in their 'playfulness', and the contempt they slipped in their works as a manifesto to pave a new narrative for art. But now it is pretty much just a shape (or scribble, or doodle, or whatever it may be) that does not have any form, accompanied by whatever gibberish the artist wishes to put in the catalog as a justification for his/her work of art.

Without a proper form, there would not be any meaningful essence. For in the form lies the very tradition where such and such works of art were to be made upon.

***

I am currently nibbling a bit here and there on photography, mostly for an assignment purpose. And of course, it does not concern anywhere near the  technique, composition, or so and so.

What comes before the digital is the ability of one's 'eyes' to capture one's reality. 

What it means by "one's reality" and not the definite article of Reality? Simple. A photograph is kind of a statement from its photographer that persuades us to gaze upon what he or she deems worthy to be looked at. It is not an invitation, but a declaration that my reality is worthy of your attention.

In photography, however much the technology has advanced, the eyes of the gazer is an intrinsic ability that would immediately inform us whether this person is a genuine article or just a poseur equipped with a gadget(s).

***

Agitation often comes from an uncontextualised statement, whether it is a conscious provocation or blatant stupidity. The latter proves to be more dangerous.

Truth can only be found in the most banal condition of reality that requires our consideration on its historical, the context in which it resided in.