“He has invented the insult for himself”

“The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill–he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.”

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov by *spoonybards, from http://spoonybards.deviantart.com/art/the-brothers-karamazov-141566235

The Effervescence

It is easy to be forgotten. It is easy to be lost in the crowd of memory. And if you ask me if it’s easy for me to forget things, yes, indeed it is. Whether I like it or not.

Perhaps it is this lightness that I love about the transience of life. The transience of goods. The transience of memories. Even the transience of people.

My oh my, we can be forgetful of that effervescence, that lightness. I am unburdened.

Yesterday was a thousand years ago.

So what do they mean then, these things people hand you, uninvited: pathetic pleas, abrasive comments, vulgar ugliness, shameful aggression?

They are what they are: pathetic pleas, abrasive comments, vulgar ugliness, shameful aggression. They are the reflections of their owners: pathetic, abrasive, ugly, and shameful.

What are these attacks then? What are they, when you easily forget them? When instead of resenting them you barely realized that you’ve passed them.

Nothing, if you ask me. Because I believe in beauty, and the lack of beauty. Everything else is transitory, everything else is insignificant.

The effervescence is in me.

- RN

Graffiti Buddha by Kolja Massenberg, from http://www.seenby.com/kolja-massenberg/grafitti-buddha

 

 

The Victory of The Truth

Have you ever just reached a moment of truth that is most completely and privately just yours?

She was thinking about an episode with this man. A person whom she allowed some time to get to know but never quite gotten anywhere with.

Love is indeed subjective.

A desire of love that is unfulfilled can instantly turn into hysteria and rage. A longing so chronic and yet acutely felt can imitate love, or the subjective interpretation of love.

What was so mistakenly interpreted by the man as love that night, her surrender to her emotions?

She thought about it for a bit before coming to her conclusion. The problem was that she had never surrendered her story to the man. She had never addressed her soul to the man. She was simply addressing her soul to herself, to her superficial self. That night, she was allowing herself an honest confession, she was letting her body meet her soul and utter its truth. It could have been any man sitting with her that night, but the moment of truth was hers alone. She had failed to share it with anyone, even when she was with another person who happened to be that man that night, and therefore, the victory of this truth belongs to her alone.

He, of course to his disappointment with further rage, had nothing to do with it. As she stated what she wanted to say, she was looking far away. He was there, but she was not with him, she was with herself, with the present moment.

What was trivial and amusing was the fact that her friendliness, not even friendship, was hysterically being read as love by the man.

But how could you ever feel deeply connected, when you’ve never invested anything in the first place? Let’s not get overwhelmingly dramatic, but when one is not responding, one is simply uninterested, so she thought.

She hates drama, she has enough of it on most days. She does not add complications to her lives, her energy was better spent elsewhere. The days go on with passion, or with tedium; regardless they’re still hers. She has people inside of her life, and she has some outside. And at the end of the day, it’s her decisions, her truths. Love is indeed subjective, and the victory of this truth is hers alone.

 

RN

*Quiet evening, never ending torrent download, and the discovery of Milan Kundera.

Guilty

“…neither a pure and merciful heavenly being, nor a wise justice who watches over the interests of society and the State, neither a saint nor a righteous man -but a miserable, dirty sinner who has been crushed by Fascism, who has himself experienced the terrible power of the State, who has himself bowed down, fallen, shrunk into timidity and submissiveness. And this judge will say: ‘Guilty! Yes, there are men in this terrible world who are guilty.’”

Vasily Grossman

Quote on lethargy

“But here in the desert people were simply apathetic and lethargic. It was as though the officers were convinced there was nothing for them to do, nothing for them to be concerned about – after all, these sands would be exactly the same tomorrow, the following day, in a year’s time”

- Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman

Lethargy, is worse than death itself.. it only shows the lack of life, purpose, effort. It is laziness dragged through time. When a group of people experience this disease chronically, stay away!

A little rush of high

I’m just a little rush of high for you
I make you feel better
I make you think the world is better
When you wake up I’ll be long gone

I get that you live in the ditch
Because that’s where you belong
So shoot me up in your vein babe
I’ll take you to the pedestal

I’ll give you that pink cloud baby
I’m just using your flesh babe
I’ll run fast in your blood
You’ll fly before I slam you back down

So I’ll run inside you
I’ll run, I run fast and hard
I’ll fly you deep into the ground
I’m just a little rush of high for you

Don’t forgive me
I’m just your delusion
I made you like yourself for a while
I’m just your false glory

What do they call this
When you’re addicted to me
I’m your little rush of high
But I’m the one abusing you

Remember me when I’m gone babe
All your pain and suffering, anger and hate
You always thought you could own me
I’m just using you for fun babe

I’m sure you’ll hate yourself
Cause how can you hate me
I’m just your little rush of high
you’re just the broken you that you’ve always been

- RNT

*in the name of heroin, cocaine, and anything self-disguising as pleasure: some people deserve what they get.

*art is “Love Addiction” from http://www.504whatstyle.com/art.html

Quote: Anak Semua Bangsa

“Kalau Tuan segan menerima banyak angin, jangan jadi pohon tinggi”

Anak semua bangsa – Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Quote: Bumi Manusia

“Dan begitulah aku pun mulai belajar merasai panasnya dendam.”

Bumi Manusia – Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Book Review: Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk by Ahmad Tohari

Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk by Ahmad Tohari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first heard about the book from my high school teacher more than 10 years ago. Only last year I started reading more world literature in the Netherlands and thought that I would start reading Indonesian literature. From the first few pages I already realized how shocking it must be for Indonesians in the 80′s to read this book. It’s one of the most important Indonesian book to read in my opinion.

The way I see it, this book portrays clearly how women (and young girls) are exploited and objectified by authority figures around them. If you look under the layers a little bit, perhaps you will also be disturbed by how Tohari in the end clearly showed that the female ronggeng is the victim, but how the male soldier Rasus is clearly the male hero and rescuing the female victim (albeit too late). Maleness and femaleness is only explained in the context of sexual (and hierarchical) relationship.

I don’t think I can ever write a proper book review, but here are some things jotted down in my book journal when I read this book:

Narrated in combination of 3rd person and 1st person as Rasus, the male protagonist, the book is somewhat imbalanced in its views.

Sexuality and eroticism is the only empowering essence and identity of Srintil because it’s the only thing she’s ever known. She had been convinced by others that she’s meant to live the life of a ronggeng, an entertainer who dances and prostitute herself to some extent (to the extent that certain men with certain wealth could afford her), when she was only 11. In my opinion, the character of Srintil in the book is still a female character portrayed by a male writer in the Indonesian 80′s.

Up to page 230, Tohari did not explain how the stupidity and poverty of the villagers were due to the fact that they’re uneducated. Repeatedly, also in 3rd person, they described their belief and attitude without adequate portrayal of their uneducated state. This all-knowing and insightful narrator seems to think that everything is the result of their valid belief system. Later in the book, at the end in fact, that the uneducated state of the villagers was acknowledged by our tragic hero Rasus.

Repeatedly there are words like “anak kandung keluguan alam”. What I’m confused about is that this is the way he wrote it in 3rd person. If he insisted continuously being sentimental and portraying the nature of the villagers and their ignorance as innocent and all good, nothing can be criticized about it.

I am disturbed by some sentences, for example in page 231, “ronggeng adalah keperempuanan yang menari, menyanyi, serta kerelaan melayani kelelakian”. So many things can be criticized in the sentence:

1. Which femaleness? Keperempuanan yang mana? The one that is repeatedly enforced to be taken upon by receiving threats, violence and abuse? The one that is not based on free will due to the lack of knowledge on it?

2. Kerelaan? Free-willingness? It wasn’t free will, it’s forced and imposed upon with violence by her own family and support system.

3. Kelelakian? Maleness? even here maleness is only explicitly depicted as sexual maleness.

To throw in this sentence as if it represent femaleness is wrong.

The question of what is femaleness, what it’s supposed to be, was never explored in the book besides that it only involves weakness, state of being exploited, servitude of the sexual needs of men (described as maleness), and only by this sexual services that one (femaleness) affirms the other (maleness), vice versa.

Perhaps this is femaleness as understood and seen by the writer.

- RN, Semarang, 19 November 2011

Book Review: Arok Dedes by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Arok Dedes by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Arok is not portrayed completely in this novel. Pram avoids intimacy with Arok’s character writing, as opposed to Dedes. We get a complete picture of Dedes a human being with feelings, lust, even her desire and satisfaction of power, and her fear and sadness of losing it to Arok. On the other hand, Arok’s depiction is only of how he tried to obtain control and power, never without internal motive, but not completely without.

The novel is written in a way that readers will be absorbed in history. In the end I just wanted to know what happened next. But this is as far as Pram would ever tell the story. The book is funny and contemplative, and what I like is that some things are described quite explicitly, like how Kebo Ijo became the one person that everyone used for their own purpose (because he’s stupid, easily lured by promises of power and weak in character).

There’s repeated message of how people of different religion should respect each other, that everyone has their own right to worship whomever they want (in this case, they are Buddhist, and either Shiva or Wishnu worshipper), and that common people, the lowest in caste has the right to be a leader in the government.

It’s refreshing to see how lust for power is depicted so explicitly in this book. It is today’s reality reflected in a novel set in the 13th century Java.

-RN

The painting

The painting, it doesn’t just remind me of you, or us. It reminds me of me. It reminds me of the road I’m taking and the spirit I need to keep going with.

Maybe you never thought about what it means when you chose to give me this particular work of art. Maybe you thought I’d appreciate the colours, the richness of the colours. I was certain that you said something like, “we went to an exhibition together and I found out that she liked art” as you were about to give me this print on my birthday party, while everyone was watching curiously.

And so it was, a beautiful, magnificently coloured print. You explained to me, “this is the work of a Dutch artist, Gertie Janssen, you can look it up”. You’re a real friend, you’d known that I would look it up. “It’s written here, the 55th of only 200 prints they produced”.

I never owned any prints before. Posters are more suitable for my budget. Prints are something else, it’s luxury. And a print from you, a gesture so personalized and full of understanding, a sort of loving kindness, is beyond touching, it’s inspiring. We’ve gone far beyond the day when we first met, I only was a student sitting impatiently for my first lecture in a foreign country, you were a curious teacher. Somehow it has gone much beyond that line to what now is a maternalistic friendship on your part, and puzzled amazement on my part of how we got this close.

Today the print is neatly framed, hanged on my wall. A sober creature, head held up high and looking straight ahead, elegant and determined. Her feet on the move, striking  forward they seem. Red for bravery, yellow for liveliness, blue for the calm force that moves all things. Sunrise II by Gertie Janssen. The sum of my experience this year, the marking of a new beginning ahead.

Everything moves you, and that’s when you know that it’s a beginning, that you are in motion. Embrace the sunrise.

Book Review: Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“when they write poems or sing songs in the West, they speak for all humanity. They’re human beings -but we’re just muslims. When we write something, it’s just ethnic poetry.”

The idea of the book is the confrontational fonts of east and west, of western secularist and the so-called political Islamist, a term I agree to since their Islamism is shown in the book as a political expression, not a spiritual one. In fact, the book does not speak about Islam as a faith per se, but as a symbol of resistance against oppression and ideas imposed on others.

For me, the obvious tone is how the “west”, represented by Germany, the new land of the political exile Ka, seems to be the most righteous while Islam is an identity that needs constant struggle to justify its existence. This is a story of how a little town is stupor to the abuse it receives from all kinds of political figures (shootings and murders are tedious events for the residents of Kars); of how people are drowned in their own little existence and forgotten by the rest of the world.

In Kars, Islamic politics in the book is seen by the state as a barbaric movement of subversion. However, maybe they are that way precisely because they are being oppressed by the state in the first place. Can’t you take refuge in the fact that your faith and religion is yours, and that only in your heart rests the fire that enlighten you? It’s yours, punto! I supposed the more your existence is denied, the more it needs constant affirmation.

As a muslim reading this book I’m not shocked at all by how the Islamic politics is portrayed. This book is a caricature of how any concept (religion, jargons) is merely a vehicle for political and power ambitions. Be careful for people not familiar with Islam, this is not your guide to the actual (and sometimes shocking) diversity of the religion and its people.

The book for me comes down to one fascinating fact: that politics is merely a theatrical act (the aim is the performance), with its uselessness, pathetic collateral damages inflicted, and the absolute lack of substance for humanity.

-RN

http://freedocere.wordpress.com

Steady and Quiet

“He who hates not light, nor busy activity, nor even darkness,

when they are near, neither longs for them when they are far;

who unperturbed by changing conditions sits apart and watches and says,

‘the powers of nature go round’,

and remains firm and shakes not;

who dwells in his inner self, and is the same in pleasure and pain;

to whom gold or stones or earth are one,

and what is pleasing and displeasing leave him in peace,

who is beyond both praise and blame,

and whose mind is steady and quiet;

who is the same in honour or disgrace… this man has gone beyond the three.

And he who with never-failing love adores me and works for me,

he passes beyond the three powers and can be one with Brahman, the One.

For I am the abode of Brahman, the never-failing fountain of everlasting life.

The law of righteousness is my law;

and my joy is infinite joy.”

- Bhagavad Gita

Book Review: 1984

1984 by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The truth of it lingers even after you finish the book. The most impressive part I thought was the language, the only one with less words every year to limit the range of thought. Orwell was beyond his years indeed. The idea to discuss the relationship of language and thought in this book is brilliant and truthful. I keep reminding myself of common words in some “institutions” that express parts of an ideology and force them upon the proletariat.

Last words: impressive and memorable.

RN

Book Review: Kafka on the shore

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As always, reading Murakami is like entering a dream-state that you don’t really want to get out of. Don’t try too hard making sense of everything, they won’t. Just enjoy the narration, and you’ll get through the book in one piece, finding some characters not just amusing, but also comforting.

Murakami seems to be preoccupied with having his characters having sex with older women. The bizarre point in this book for me is that the character considered the girl as his sister, and then still being portrayed as being unable to NOT have sex with her. This got me wondering about the nature and culture of sex in Japan regarding the norm of the “courting” ritual.

A nice review is available via google search, written by David Mitchell http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan… (he referred to the promiscuity of the teenage Kafka as the imagination of how middle age male writers would have wished to be when they’re younger).

Three stars will have to do. It’s still a reading pleasure though. I particularly love the description of the library, its intimacy the book managed to portray.

NT