Once there was a guy who had had enough with women who kept saying, “Men love women because of their physical appearance. The prettier the women are, the more love the men give.” The guy happened to have a beautiful girlfriend whom he loved very much. So when on a dinner a female acquaintance mentioned the same thing, he just couldn't take it anymore and stood up. “There are three things that I want you to remember!" he shouted. "First, those who can choose physical appearance because they are secured and independent are definitely not worse than those who cannot because all they ever care about is to be loved, no matter where it comes from! Second, most women fall into a trap of thinking they can only be picked! The reason the idea stands is only because it comforts and assures them that they will all eventually be picked!” “And third,” he slowed down as he pointed his finger at the beautiful girlfriend. “The reason I love her and why she stands out so much...
is because she's among the few who doesn’t give a damn about the first two things.”
I always think that a great woman is carefree. She’s larger than life, and definitely larger than insecurities or cheap dramatic ideas served only for comfort.
So yeah, I’m not telling the story because I’m a misogynist.
There's a time in every weekday when I close my eyes and shut the world outside. The time varies but the place is always the same. It's a street right beside Jatinegara market. As the bus that takes me home passes it, I will be found cowering, eyes tight until I'm sure I'm well off the place.
Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, didn't believe that we could truly meet someone.
Sometimes I believe him.
Afterall, we are independent beings cut off from the world. What we know for sure is only our very own existence. I cannot tell with the same confidence other people's thoughts and feelings, and I never will.
And again, how could we?
Everytime I meet someone, I don't truly meet him. All I meet is what I assume of him in my mind, and so does he. We may both meet in flesh, but we never truly face each other. All we ever face is our own assumptions.
We never perceive through anything but our own existence. We are private beings, dettached from each other. There's no one in our hearts to talk to, only our voice. Other people, no matter how close they are, remain objects to us. We spend our lives by ourselves. We are truly alone.
Sartre was right.
Truly meeting someone is impossible.
There are other times when I don't believe that, though.
One is when I watch this TV commercial.
Contrary to what I wrote above, stories of encounter, just like the ad, interest me. I guess in part it's because they remind me how at times I do feel in sync with someone, even when I realize that the other part is my own wish of not wanting to believe in Sartre's words.
Either way, people do meet.
Sometimes, they may even take a higher level, just like the commercial. Its characters violently contradict Sartre's words. Not only is the male shown not knowing who he is, he also only succeeds in doing so after looking at himself through the female's eyes.
He finds himself through the eyes of someone else.
Ain't that grand?
A simpler, yet richer encounter can also be found in the film Before Sunrise (yep, that movie again). The characters Jesse and Celine blatantly mention it when they talk about losing oneself.
Jesse & Celine at the Park
Jesse: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. Its just usually its myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, its just they are sick to death of being around themselves. Lets say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way, uh, the way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it made me feel like I'm somebody else. Y'know the only other way to lose yourself like that is, um, y'know, dancing, or alcohol, or drugs, and stuff like that.
And again in numerous ways in the film Before Sunset, one of which is this powerful scene.
Jesse & Celine Embrace
So,
can people truly meet?
I certainly hope so.
Although ironically, and also obviously, it seems we are only able to do that exactly when we lose ourselves and stop being subjects anyway.
Well, as long as we get the chance of experiencing and remembering it, you won't have the slightest objection from me.
South Korean marines fired rifles at a South Korean commercial aircraft flying near the sea border with North Korea, thinking it was one of the North’s jet fighters, but they never hit their target, military sources said yesterday.
The shooting illustrates the level of tension between the two Koreas, still technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, which came close to all-out war last year.
A Republic of Korea (ROK) Marine Corps spokesman said two soldiers guarding an island on the waters off the South’s western city of Incheon fired their K-2 rifles for about 10 minutes at around 4am on Friday.
The plane was later identified as an Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 flying from China making its descent into Incheon International Airport.
A South Korean defense ministry source said the plane, carrying 119 passengers and crew, was undamaged as it was about 500m to 600m out of the range of the handheld K-2 rifles.
Yonhap news agency and other local media said the soldiers believed the plane was flying north of the normal air corridor. Asiana officials told the news agency the plane never left its scheduled course.
“We checked yesterday through the air force and the airport control center to make sure there were no abnormalities such as being off course,” Yonhap quoted a company official as saying.
An airline official confirmed the plane was an Airbus A320, but made no other comment.
Yonhap and other news reports quoted ROK Marine Corps officers as saying troops would undergo thorough training on how to identify civilian aircraft. Airlines will be asked to ensure their planes do not deviate from set courses.
The North denies responsibility in the sinking in March last year of a South Korean warship and says it was provoked in the second incident, the shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong after the South test-fired shells into disputed waters.
The two attacks killed about 50 South Koreans.
The North this month rejected a proposal from Seoul for a series of three presidential summits after a secret meeting of officials from the two countries. The North denounced the South’s call for an apology for the two attacks.
I guess sometimes we are graced with two strikes of stupidity that cancel each other out.
When Waldjinah, the famous singer, took the stage and sang in the 1960s, the place was always full. And when Waldjinah, the singer, went down the stage right after, the place was never less crowded. The people were all waiting for her to do one more act. She was expected to touch them.
Waldjinah is a legend in the world of Keroncong. She rose to fame in 1958 by winning a radio contest that granted her a record deal. In 1965, she won the President Soekarno trophy while seven months expecting. Charmed by her voice, the President went as far as giving a name to the yet unborn child. Kris Biantoro, the famous all round entertainer, also loved her voice, calling her ‘Meteor dari Sala’ (‘the meteor from the town of Solo’).
It was also the same voice that kept the people in their place. They were so deeply captured by it, that they even considered her touch as grace. The pregnant women wished that it would grant their child power to sing, while the mothers with sick babies hoped that it would bring out health. Waldjinah would gladly answer their hopes, touching them one by one before eventually leaving the place.
Had this interesting thing happened 50 years later, it would have been considered a blasphemous act. Especially when we put in mind how the country is now filled with people whose god is so weak that it has to be chosen all the time and put in a constant contest with its own creations.
Thankfully, it didn’t.
It happened in the time when people lived with a very different set of values.
It happened in the time when people wanted their offspring to have a knack for things that, profit-wise, questionable.
It happened in the time when people were able to appreciate the most subtle-and-easily-fall-to-boring-in-nowadays-standards-things, such as Keroncong.
It happened in the time when people were closer to God, in a much more profound way that involved mundane things, than wearing specific attire or screaming some exact words.
And in such a time, Waldjinah shone like a crack in the skies. Through her voice, people were readily taken away, brought to a transcendent connection with the Absolute itself. Simply, when people saw her sing Keroncong, they felt God.
So, surrounded by this kind of beautiful blasphemous realization, the people earlier did what their heart told them to do. They waited for her and asked her to share some crumbs of that once felt connection left.
“Touch your hand to me and my baby, and everything is good,” they said.
Waldjinah would humbly answer their hopes, touching them one by one before eventually leaving the place.
I found a journal I had completely forgotten writing a few days ago. It's only got five entries, so no wonder I couldn't remember.
It doesn't change the fact that I was very happy when I found it, however, because I don't keep notes about events of my life very often (even this blog mostly consists of articles, not private writings). So finding it is like having a second chance to relive a particular moment. I mean, you can imagine how much connection you can have by reading your own writing if in daily basis you already relate to writings of people you don't even know.
Anyway, I'm not going to post the five entries here, just two... Well, one and a half, because one is just the cover. The entry was written on August 31st, 2008. To give it some context: I just graduated from med school, didn't have a clue about what to do in life, and it was a day before I went on a road trip with my best friends. There were supposed to be eight of us, but one female friend, that I cared very much, cancelled at the last minute. Her mother and boyfriend at the time told her not to go.
It shouldn't have been a very special case to me. Sure, it's upsetting but people cancel all the time, right? The only problem was, then, I was so engulfed with her situation. She hated her boyfriend, while her strict mother worshiped him. Obviously, I responded the way an unstable man in his mid-twenties would. I acted like a passionate hero.
Clearly, this ended up with a disaster, a whole year of it as a matter of fact. However, it also spawned a lot of good other things. What happened next was one of the reasons I started this blog, although the aftershocks, which were definitely not smaller in scale, hit me so hard that I left it for a good four months in 2009.
All in all, the journal gave me back a piece of memory I didn't know I still had, about a moment right before a great fall. And now, looking back from the safe and understanding future, I just can't stop saying to myself, "Aw Dude... You don't know what's coming to you."
