AM

That intense build-up to a great climax

On Love and Orwell

Orwell in Why I Write takes on a heavy assessment on the cultural identities of the English. A nation that operates under a theme of togetherness and feelings of belonging to another. There is unity, there is closeness. There is a lot of sympathy – see how the NHS gives out free services to the ills. There is love. These characters are the fundamentals of a civilised nation.

What makes one so? Through discontent, through the ‘left-wing intellegentsia’ that the people adopt. They are so against the so-called system that everyone is used to be responsible of their own victories. The English make their own food, their own type of art, of music; their own set of liberty. They spend a lot of time in finding their own fondness towards things – precisely why community clubs and societies are more profound in England than anywhere else in Europe. They make time for hobbies: stamp-collecting, gardening, crossword-solving. They construct their own identities. They are private in their communality. The English are essentially their own person, interlacing themselves with the differences of others.

What makes one so? Through struggles, through the many wars they’ve been, from the Civil War to the Industrial Revolution. The internal class wars and the defeat of France in their Battle of Waterloo. They have been forced to maintain and retain their own independence, defending their own ground, claiming a progress worthy of a national pride. They go through wars for peace.

This is love.

‘The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. The vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos!’

Piste

Quite incapable of malice. All venoms are unintended.

In Praise of The Act of Killing via Underground

I can’t lie. Reading Murakami’s superb non-fictional Underground left me in ways more chilling than watching Joshua Oppenheimer’s 7 years’ worth of work. I know this is an exemplification of endless debate over which is the better-performing literature: in script or in visual? Both Underground and The Act of Killing document the history of genocide, one based in Japan March 1995 and in Indonesia September 1965 respectively. By that account, the two archives possess one common denominator: surfacing untold stories behind a grand persecution.

Underground retells the chronology of the Tokyo sarin gas attack through series of interviews with its survivors, all of them passengers of Tokyo subways, whose daily morning commutes were interrupted by an attack of the deadly chemical substance called sarin. This toxic yet odourless liquid was stored in several plastic bags dispersed along the carriages of 5 Metro lines, which were then punctured by the sharp edge of umbrellas done by five members of Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo. The attack killed 13 people and injured a thousand others. It is deemed to be the most severe domestic terrorism act in Japanese modern history, rightly verified by the hyper-imposing media coverage on Shoko Asahara, the cult’s founder. He was sentenced to death in 2004.

But then what is Murakami if not one for balance. More curious about the survivors than the perpetrators, in 1996 he interviewed 62 commuters to relive their experience. Reading the interviews with the author’s haunting narratives intact really does drag you into a low, dark quicksand. You put yourself in their shoes: imaginedly intoxicated, breathless, helpless, frightened. You relate. One passenger, Soichi Inagawa, said that it was the one and only day he ever took the first carriage, usually sitting in the third, where the sarin bag was located. He survived. You cheered. Through this book, readers are positioned to understand the clear-cutting of “victims” and “executioners”, the black-and-white scenario of the past. The history itself did not change, in contrast to the depiction of The Act of Killing. It is not one that chills; more to astonishments and shocks that facts can be, and have been, served in two plates. Anwar Congo, from North Sumatera, lightly illustrating the killing of a thousand people under the order of Indonesia’s biggest communist party, PKI, tries to relate to viewers in a sadistic manner. Heads cut with wires, necks trampled by the legs of tables and other incisive methods of killing involving sharp knives and machetes were used. His acts are anything but quiet and demure like the sarin gas attack but the visuals leave you in awry, not least because of all the blood and gore but mainly because of Congo’s and his counterparts’ comfortable fashion in retelling the story. As executioners, their guileless expressions are outstanding. This is where we, as audience, are challenged – how much of Congo or Zulkadry can we find in ourselves. I suspect most of us will say “very little”.

Unlike the Japanese, Indonesian media has been far too interested in reporting the victims’ side of the story. The political manufacturing in Pengkhianatan G 30 S/PKI is proven a success, as film such as The Act of Killing breeds a fresher point of view, 47 years after the tragedy. To young audience, any idea of fabrication is unprecedented. Congo’s phrase “I have to kill these people otherwise I will be killed” never have rung closer to ears. As the film is also embedded with myriads of persuasive agendas through the cameos of Yapto Soerjosoemarno, Jusuf Kalla and Sakhyan Asmara, The Act of Killing places itself as the pioneer of the fact-laden work that is much needed in the democracy era. It absolutely changed the history, but almost half a century on, the killers remain free without charge.

This fascinating inverse relationship between Murakami’s book and Oppenheimer’s film bears similarity in voicing the unheard. If someone coming from later generation from the tragedy cannot possibly attain the whole story, something closer to it is always appreciated. Then perhaps the real question is not about at what lengths a work of art can move the audience but how it is unraveled in such an edifying way that the public is entertained, be it from the victims’ or executioners’ point of view. On that note I think The Act of Killing is one stellar, effective production.

Altruism

ORIGIN mid 19th century:
from French altruisme, from Italian altrui ‘somebody else,’ from Latin alteri huic ‘to this other’.

I wanted to save myself, so I thought I’d save a lady. This biased altruism bears semblance to what I asked my prof one lecture. Is what Assange is doing an act of biased altruism? He is trying to do good in spite of all the restrictions, and now that he surfaced the truth to the world out, he is accused of violating the laws and what is proper. If so, how can altruism be so biased? How can measures be so poles apart, standards so deviated? How is it so hard to make a point on filthy truth, on rigged practice, on detrimental fall-out, on possible wrecked fortune?

But clearly I wasn’t to engage in that kind of discussion with this lady. One night in the lake she almost drowned herself, reaching her, I said you’re gorgeous, you’re gorgeous, she looked right up into my terrified eyes, she gave in. Her following steps were my granted intention, my ease. But for some bodyheat offered, some coldness rejects. Wheels off, sirens on, stretcher up, bedridden.

You’re gorgeous. Some philanthropic words said in such an honest manner. This man was like a terror, where every confusion bombarded, every bewilderment charmed. Are you sure? Glances were thrown and: you’re gorgeous, look at you. No I can’t look at myself, I can never do that, I’ve been thinking and contemplating and wanting with every ounce of my God-created limb to see myself in 360 degrees, but: I can’t. You’re gorgeous. Looking right up into the eyes of ice, some just gave in.

If kindness is worth so much in memories, why does it not defeat unkindness? Which part of our brain is gone unused – otherwise how would it fit a new memory, day after day after day, and still not losing any single dire recollection?

So how do we save ourselves? By saving other people too? What about the future, what happens in the future when within our altruistic actions we end up harming ourselves? Will that count too? Discarding transparent balaclavas, downloading carnivals on the most real of commission, lunching on some rapid kisses and sound snow jobs. All through the salvage of this lady, she who almost drowned herself.

To this other, you’re gorgeous, you’re gorgeous.

2011, 2013.

Illusion, Delusion, Paradise

You never really lose anyone. Your ideas of them just change.

Loyalty Card

I can listen to the same music for hours on end, weeks on end, one song at a time on end. I can read books from one author for years on end, I did read just Murakami for a year (2007) on end. I can randomly discover a supersweet mini car in the street and take note of its make and model and then go home to google on that just to find out that it’s Citroen DS3 and shouldn’t be roaming round the city. I did stare and drool at the laptop screen dreaming of driving behind the steering wheel – yup, dedicated forty-five minutes for that today.

I can wash my car, dust its dashboard, wipe the mirrors, remove all kinds of unearthly stickiness and hoover on the tiniest little crumbs on my carpets for buckets on end. I did spend 2.5 hours making time for all that one Saturday morning.

I can talk to the same handful of people, go to the same places, eat the same food, walk the same route, dress the same way, all day every day, for hours/ weeks/ months on end.

Nice things go on a repeat. If this could fit in a loyalty card I think I’d have won that KitchenAid breadmaker machine by now.

Salt

Deep into the untapped ocean lie the streaks of watery wholesomeness and an endless bucket full of chances and winning. Out and beyond the dead sea there were no happy choices, only one less grievous option than the others. Challenges and streams of dying fishes. Fishes away, fishes in, fishes home, fishes out. Except here the fishes aren’t swimming. Here they are kept afloat, swarming through the saltiness of one’s inamorata, the salinity that is a slanted likeness. Same fishes different strokes.

Here the aquanimals are drifting all the same, the waves rippling all the same, breaths thriving all the same. It’s some salty water but not my share of savoury goodness. I just wouldn’t dare tipping the ocean.

Acid

Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.

~ Julien Juju Temp, my hippie stranger

Right-angled

POURRRRRRRR
some little grace on me. row rickety raggy bones down in the spheric of bright eyes. that dude who goes aggro, come on soapbox all that’s left is a pot of hearty gold. back and forth, back and forth, murder your worth. like half of exotic locale and demonic morale we seep in the kinked of royales. groucho groucho were you really macho.

p.s.

as i post this, out comes “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” Gustave Flaubert – on the sidebar. downright funny, cause it cannot be any more wrong. i do nonsense. some i don’t comprehend let alone believe in. discovery. what discovery? writing is creation, a play. it’s after-thoughts, a clay.