Pentas Bebas

Jika betul bahwa hidup adalah pentas, maka segala visualisasi yang hadir hendak menegaskan adanya bukanlah sebentuk ilusi tentang realitas. Pentas adalah tempat di mana realitas diproses dan penonton pun turut dalam arus pembebasan dari ilusi: aktif merenungkan persoalan momentum dalam lini masa sebagai gerak ke arah pembebasan.

(Demi aksen yang terberi pada simbol sosok orang ramai, pada gerak, pada detak, atau justru pada ketidakhadiran.)

Kampanye

Ketika dalam politik ada potensi atau klaim filosofis mengenai pengetahuan tentang realitas politik yang secara ontologis superior terhadap – atau secara epistemologis lebih pasti ketimbang – penampakkan (appearance), maka dalam politik ada klaim metafisika.

Padahal politik ada di dalam era pengakhiran metafisika (the closure of metaphysics), ketika tidak ada lagi klaim-klaim terhadap realitas yang superior dan melampaui penampakkan, sehingga konsep manusia sebagai zoon politicon dapat ditafsir ulang secara tanpa batas oleh manusia itu sendiri, sesuai dengan konteks keberadaannya secara fisik di dunia harian, namun melampaui ruang-waktu dan asal-usul historisnya.

Tetap Muda

And the sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes ironically enough not from the protagonist's defects but from his virtue.

Menyadari budaya yang sakit adalah tidak dengan menjerit, tidak dengan mengibarkan bendera. Dan barangkali sejarah terdiri dari penemuan-penemuan yang separuh benar, separuh salah, sehingga kemajuan terus terjadi.

Pun kita mengakhirinya dengan menyambut, meminjam frasa Pramoedya dalam Anak Semua Bangsa, kehidupan yang lebih nyata daripada pendapat siapapun tentang kenyataan.

Cinta itu subversif.

Pandu

Kenaifan barangkali bukan terletak pada kecenderungan optimisme relatif, karena kecenderungan tersebut bukan ditujukan pada kebathilan di dunia dari mana segalanya berawal.

Kenaifan, meminjam Camus, barangkali berada pada titik moral keterlibatan yang ditekankan, bahwa "lebih banyak yang bisa dikagumi dalam diri manusia", untuk terus melibati berbagai kebathilan tanpa ambisi mencari sebab, untuk terus bergerak dan mengejawantahkan solidaritas. Yang harus diingat adalah bahwa moral keterlibatan dimulai justru dari kesadaran akan kebathilan yang absolut, yang dimulai dari penerimaan akan medan dan penghidupan pemberontakan melawan absurditas, "kematian yang memotong", dan "kejahatan" (ataupun kebaikan yang meleset).

Maka tersebutlah segelintir yang memberontak dengan melibatkan diri dalam absurditas yang hidup, yang dihidupkan.

Kenaifan adalah pilihan atas jalan yang altruistik dalam memandang, menghadapi, melibati kebathilan, yang memang lebih menenangkan jika disebut absurditas, dalam bentuk dan skala apapun. Kenaifan adalah penolakan untuk takluk pada absolutisme kebathilan. Kenaifan adalah usaha untuk mempertahankan greget untuk melawan, hasrat untuk bertahan.

(Photo taken above South Sulawesi, December 2010)

- Happy International Volunteers Day!

Affliction

The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected is something that exists and has always existed; it was not the invention of the philosophers, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic revolution, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of blood and in the salt of tears, and we made our eyes into a mirror turned inwards with the result that they often show without reserve what we were verbally trying to deny.

Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by comitting an evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the previcator ends up being, without mercy or pity, without shame or infliction, either twice or half what he deserves.

Die Schöpfung ist niemals vollendet

Ketika berlarian dengan masa yang memangsa, kau impikan makna yang tidak didasarkan hierarki rasa, melainkan ia yang terbentuk dan terurai dalam jaringan acuan lewat momen suspensi.
Mungkin kita telah dikutuk; the sisyphus digging for the imperfection which would discover the audience, imposing the eventually amongst the actually.

Mari.

Bangkit adalah duduk terdiam, beku, dan merentang mengundang keterkejutan.
Bangkit adalah menjunjung karya, menuntaskannya, pun jika kau memilih membunuhnya kembali.
Bangkit adalah membangunkan malam, mendobrak keterlelapan. Bangkit adalah memenuhi undangan pagi, menyambutnya, atau bahkan menidurinya sebagai yang bukan repetisi.
Bangkit adalah menggilas malumu, malumu untuk mendengar suaramu: dengan lantang mengakui tiap ketercekatan, dengan lega menerima tiap keraguan yang tak terhindarkan.
Bangkit adalah meninggikan pagar menghadang kedekatan wajah-wajah yang tak henti melewatimu, lalu merajutnya sebagai selimut yang bercerita tentang kebersatuan, tentang samudra yang menyelimuti benua dalam hatimu.

Kata mereka kita memang terkutuk, untuk terus berkutat dengan sejarah kita: bangkit, berkejaran dengan perjuangan melawan lupa.

Or perhaps let us forget and get carried away, menarikan penciptaan yang tak usai.

Koja

Kita mengernyit, ini tak sesederhana biasanya. Kita begitu terbiasa dengan dorongan lugas untuk berpihak, membela, memiliki, kasihan, marah, dan hal-hal manusiawi lainnya. Pada hari-hari hitam-putih kita menjentik memilah kami dan mereka, memasakki -mu, -ku, dan -nya. Di tengah momen-momen optimis kita suka berdiskursus tentang sama dan beda, tesis dan antitesis, pun sekuat tenaga kita menghindar dari premis salah dan benar.

Tapi tidak senja ini. Senja ini memerankan gagalnya kita untuk mengabaikan kemelekatan, yang jangan-jangan memang tidak mungkin dilakukan. Jangan-jangan kemampuan untuk melepaskan memang pada akhirnya bukanlah hal yang manusiawi.

Maka pertanyaan "mengapa kita tidak berkelakuan selayaknya manusia?" mungkin tak lagi valid. Bisa jadi yang kini hakiki adalah mempertanyakan kapan kita bisa berhenti menjadi manusia.

"You as yours, me as mine, two before we were us."

-Tori Amos

Archaetypal Waves

In searching of the Divinity, some would rather be lining up amongst a certain degree of festivity: music, colors, scents, and fellowships. We might not find the tranquility as seeked, but surely similarities are ascertained, manifest within the kinds. We might not be wholly aware, or in any way associated, with what we believe in, but together with the throng we feel to have conducted the act of worshipping, commited the part of acknowledging, even if it is being carried out collectively.

After all, isn't it, for some, a mere searching for the feeling of security? To steer clear of seclusion?

(Photo taken in between the Royal Palace and the Tonle Sap, Sisowath Quay, Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, January 2010)

On Proceeding into the Storm

Perhaps strength in itself does not become morality, especially if what we seek is not the kind where we win or lose, neither some kind of surrounding protective wall that will repel the outside forces. Perhaps we are after the strength to be able to absorb the floating powers, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure what life has in the store - unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.


(Photo taken in Yenwaupnor Island, West Papua, December 2009)

The Motionless Movement

Watching the sea and faraway lands right after the morning prayer was truly enlightening and profound. I was (and always have been) on motion, and watched the motionless passing by. It made me dwell in the memory of the people and the world I had passed by during my movements, either enforced by the fangs of time or due to the dream of constructing and deconstructing.

When we move, we are in a way destructured by our movement towards a certain direction; we are both here and at the same time not here as we are already in the process of going elsewhere. To stop destructuring ourselves, we have to stop moving altogether. Either we move and we are no longer whole, or we are whole and we cannot move.

Consequently we journey to the different corners and pause, seeking the motionless movements in the world. If such exist.

(Photo taken on board KM Labobar, while crossing the Banda Sea, December 2009)

Yang Tak Juga Berakhir

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Kau tanggalkan semua
tak lupa secangkir usapan ego
yang terus kau tenggak
"Peradaban ini lucu, lihat wajah ketakutannya,"
dan kau memilih untuk berparodi,
biar mereka menjenggut karena merasa,
hanya untuk berakhir mendapati bayangnya
Namun beranikah kau menyelami bawah matamu?
Tak lekang sebentuk kecerdasan
dengan sadar meminumi beban,
karena beban berarti pengorbanan
Sayangnya tak ada keselamatan
dari ketidakmurnian
Lalu kau meringkuk; kalah, katamu,
lalu bermain mengadakan
dan meniadakan.


- Kebajikan tak kunjung menuai akhir, begitu pula mala, dan kau gariskan pada kebrutalan. Hanya kau dan Tuhan yang tahu.

it is the spectators that art really mirrors

"Optis Jiwa: Kesaksian adalah perihal melihat, karenanya dia visual. ... Karya kemudian menjadi adagium dari dialektika melihat."

- Oscar Motuloh, for the Djakarta Artmosphere program book

I am often mistaken as a hopeless romantic. I maintain plenty of reveries about genius scheme beyond the line of a simply too amazing show, indulge myself in own conviction upon the greatness of minds, regardless how predictable mankind really is. I believe in the power of the middlemen, not due to the number of those bearing such identity badge, but rather to the fact that they lack the aspiration to rule. They just do, and by so doing they project the superior brilliance. They consistently converse, and by so doing they dispense with the small number of floating mass actually really listen and move (their bodies to the music, their minds to the ideas). Trying, moving, as opposed to the self-acclaimed motors who set themselves above the forgiving God. Battling, against the reality always freshly presented.

I suppose I am a hopeful audience.


(To the delight of an all night almost-Leviathan debate with A.A.L., for no matter how you confuted the romantic thesis, we are wearing the Guy Fawkes masks distributed throughout the show.)

Zurück zu dan Sachen selbst

Dunia bukanlah sejumlah benda karena setiap benda dapat menawarkan dirinya dalam ketertentuan yang penuh hanya jika benda-benda lain mengundurkan diri ke latar belakang yang kabur. Waktu pun bukanlah arus kekinian yang mengalir karena tiap-tiap kekinian mengisi kenyatannya hanya dengan meniadakan kekinian yang lebih awal dan kekinian yang lebih kemudian.

(Photo taken at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, July 2009)

implore the fate to truly meet someone

(thanks to A.R. and A.E.F., whom I dearly met at a friend's wedding)

We never look beyond our assumptions, and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others, we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.

rhytmic pattern

I think people would be much happier in a regulated society that had a definite pattern and a unified form - like a folk dance, beautiful and rhytmic. What makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much. Having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe.

(After a conversation with B.T.H., in The Valley area, Brisbane)
(Photo taken in Solo, September 2008)

for the close of our study

All interpretations, psychology, attempts to make things comprehensible require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies; none should omit, at the close of an exposition, to dissipate lies so far as may be in his power. 'Above' or 'below' is already a statement needing explanation, since an above and a below exist only in thought as abstraction. The world itself knows nothing of above or below.

Kigali

"Do you happen to be awake?"
"Luckily I had a bad dream."
"Loss is an odd feeling, even when it's some dream I never knew until it's gone."
"What kind of odd feeling?"
"I don't know really, it's just weird. Reality is weird. I refuse to live in it, I don't want to be attached to it."
"We don't live in it nor attached to it; we impose it."
"How do you gather the strength?"
"I know there's always a price for everything, so I make my sacrifice. But, yes, that kind of mindset often leads me to the brink of bankruptcy, and that's the zero sum game of life."
"To where do you direct your sacrifice?"
"To whatever I'm certain of."

antechamber

When we see the Power as the One that grants our every (apparent) need, we will never get out of the dead end. The cul-de-sac in seeking for the Help.
How about stop asking for (apparent) assistance to fill the loopholes resulting from our incapacity, and instead thanking the Power for forming us as unfinished capacity?
Not finished, as we cannot fool around feigning we are not too small for the vast universe, but not incapacity either, for many of us have seen how the Power has allowed us to see many complexities offered by the universe and our own kind.

charges

I haven't felt my own presence. This always happens when I attempt to be present, in terms of the state of body and mind as a united package, in a couple of places at once. Being the chimpanzee, he said. I was angry when he said that the first time. But on second thought, insult will always be included in the chain of reactions when someone else's words affiliate with the plain simple truth about yourself.
So here I am, scratching the back of my head looking for the sign of treads I thought I had left. In times like these then, life is the effort to operate between the gaps of what is possible, even if it is well-recognized how life is not completely made up of what is possible.

what will grow crooked you can't make straight

*from Thom Yorke's Black Swan

I’d now say that it goes the same way, vice versa. Awkward moments circumscribed the spree. Nonetheless I suppose it’s merely another assertion how there are those who better learn from oblivion, gather the nothingness, and thus originate (or come across) existence (and co-existence). I left with bucket of paints to be splashed on, forgetting that the only canvas I was about to encounter was an eternal sunshine on the spotless mind.
Perceptions are unconscious inferences. The way solitude is consciously remarked, accordingly, is somewhat a sundry.