In Between

When N looked at my Goodreads account, he came up with an idea to create a reading list for us to read together, separately at our own pace. As competitive as I was, I wanted to finish everything in a year. But I was so distracted that I couldn’t stick with the list and instead read different titles outside of the list. And now, two years later I finally completed it. The list comprises 3 books from my to-read list and 3 others from his suggestions. It is mixed between fiction and non-fiction books, something that isn’t my preference to read cause most of the time I read novels. Surprisingly I enjoyed all of his books, while some of the books from my collection are not as much fun as I thought. And these are the highlights:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I read some of his books in the past but weirdly I have no recollection at all. Except for this one book called What we’re talking about when we’re talking about running. I like his writing style in that book and each minor thing he told is very relatable to me, as a struggling runner. But my experience with Kafka on the Shore is totally different, especially towards the end. The absurdity he brings to the book is very anime-like, it’s not a bad thing but it’s more like out of nowhere. The female characters are very mysterious and empty, we don’t know their motives until the end. There are explicit scenes that, in my opinion, are disturbing and unnecessary. It was a very interesting journey for sure but I don’t think I’ll give a try for his magical realism book, but I’ll consider it if it’s non-fiction.

Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer by Steven Johnson

This is hands down my favorite from the list and I don’t even expect it. It’s about the development of various innovations that have contributed to the extension of the average life human span. There are various factors such as artificial fertilizer, toilets and sewers, and vaccines. The book is intriguing and easy to read. The qualitative data motioned in the book are astonishing making us even want to dig deep. It’s more fascinating than most fiction.

For Bread Alone by Mohamed Choukri

It’s an autobiography of a Morrocan writer and for some reason, It’s difficult for me to imagine the background is in Morroco. The author described a period after the wars in the countryside and how they experienced many social problems including hunger. He lived on the street in severe conditions, dealing with drunkards and prostitutes. The poor living condition, famine, and brothels were difficult times to live in and were far from today’s conditions. It was written in 1972 but it was not published in its native language, Arabic, until 1982 due to many sexual scenes and obscene words. Despite of that, he told the story with transparency, courage, and boldness.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

I like his humor though I don’t get much after I finished the book. I won’t recommend this book to a first-timer. The essays are too short and you won’t get much of it.

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks

It’s a good book to understand how feminism and racism are intertwined and to know more about the history of black feminism. Some issues are already outdated but it will give you the foundation to understand the roots.

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

This book fails my expectation but I’m still glad to finish it. Maybe it’s because of his first published novel (?). I’ll try to read his other book next time because this is one of my favorite genres, but I don’t think in the near future.

One night, she woke up in the middle of the night feeling confuse and lonely. She’s been the same her whole life but those nights she didn’t feel like herself. There was a big chunk of the puzzle missing in her chest and she didn’t feel like a whole human being anymore. What bothers her?

She misses the presence of having someone to share the things that she never thinks of. The kind of thing that will appear only when she meets, not particularly physical, someone that remotely far removed from her setting. And she realizes she only finds it from him. It’s only been a couple of hours since she talks to him yet the idea of him never leaves her mind. The feeling of the acute and immediate longing and loss that is occurring right now to her is suffocating. What is this deep feeling she has? Why she allowed and let the tremendous feeling of longing someone possessed her?

His existence in her life is like a night sky: a dense white dwarf of the feeble light of a star that she was sucked into gravity field, where her normal self was either shattered or flattened. She must stay within his orbit, otherwise, she would clash with other matters. His presence had turned her into a porcelain doll - fragile, breakable, too fussy to be carried.

It was all started with a small triggering hypothetical question which N always did to me. He asked, “Given there were situations where both of your brothers in danger and you can only save one, would you save your big or little brother?” For those who were closes to me it's quite obvious who would I save first, even though I try so hard that this isn’t an option for me to choose. I have to save them both or sacrifice myself. As N cornered me to answer this, given this is only a “what if situations”, I start to reason who should I save. But before that, I have to tell the story of the relationship between me and my brothers to give some context.

I have two siblings: the big and little brother who has only 1.5 years difference from me. I’ve always told people that instead of having brothers I feel like having friends that you’re growing up with for life. We call each other by names, which is quite odd in my culture where we are supposed to call older siblings by honorary calling such as ‘kakak’ which means older siblings. With such a close gap year between us, it's just natural for us to have those dynamics as friends. We had a very happy childhood by having one another. A big brother who always tried everything for the first time, a baby brother who always follow him around foolishly without thinking anything, and me who always triggered by them making me doing the same thing. We quarrel, laugh, struggle, lie and play around together.

As the middle kid and the only girl in the family, somehow I felt a little left out. The first kid always becomes the center of attention, even though my parents didn’t want to discriminate but having the firstborn gives you the urgency to give the best because obviously, you don’t want to screw up the first kid. The baby of the family usually attracts by, you know… just being a baby: a cute, funny, and sometimes reckless kid of the family. And as someone in the middle, it easily slips from your mind. Becoming the only girl didn’t help either. When my brothers playing sports, they nag me not joining because it’s a boyish thing. One time I insist by kept following them around, the other time I surrender and find my way.

As we grew older, those dynamics shift a little. There were times where I wasn’t live with them. I felt physically and emotionally apart, there was this jealousy of my inability to communicate with them. Although it was just a year, the moments where I couldn’t understand their inside joke were tearing me apart. The shift happened years ahead, baby brother and I were at the same high school, while my big brother continues his university in a different town. It was the moment where the friend's dynamic comes to the surface again even though without big brother. I know most of my baby brother's close friends, girlfriend even we were at the same extracurricular. It continued in the higher degree where we enrolled at the same university. My little brother was such a sweet guy, he attends my first exhibition even when he had no idea what it was about, he drove me to another town to help me research my theses and he always available whenever I asked him to accompany me to watch a movie. One day he got sick of food poisoning, yeah baby brother always becomes a baby. He could do nothing but vomiting all day long. I couldn’t let him go by himself so he ended up spending the night at my place in a girls dorm. Another shift happened after we graduated. There were times where I quit my job and stay home for a while. During that moment my big brother always come back home in between his busy job because my father was hospitalized a couple of times. It was a hard time for us and he as the eldest among us put responsibility within himself by always available and tough. As we growing up, I always had clashed with my big brother. He is overly critical, emotionally unavailable, sarcastic, and has this imaginary great-china-wall all around him. It is difficult to know him sometimes although we had a fruitful discussion about many things since we have lots of similar interests. There was one time when I was insanely mad at him. It was a simple as accompany me in a situation where I don’t feel safe, yet again he chose to stay away. After we were living separately for quite some time and when he coming back home in such a difficult time, I feel this gradual connection to know him more. He wasn’t as bad as I think he was. After all, he is the most responsible older brother anyone could ask for.

The City of S

There was a poignancy about the city of S that is difficult to convey in words - a poignancy that one might feel at driving through a deserted mining town, or visiting the archaeological ruins of a once-vibrant city - and that sometimes overwhelmed my efforts at the nostalgic detachment. Nostalgia seemed to permeate the thin air of the city of S, as pungent as the smell of tea leaves, and it was hard not to succumb to it.

As a place where used to be the memory of my parents’ childhood, it never becomes of my casualties for me to be part of that city. The urban structure doesn’t change as much since years ago. It is almost unlikely for both of my parents not to tell their stories; where they go to the market at weekend, where to swim and have lunch afterward, where their regular shops are, and where their grandparents’ house is. The stories will finally stop till we arrive at our yearly destination: Grandma’s house.

Her house radiated a silent wistfulness for those times: the decor had remained unaltered for decades as if the current inhabitants feared that any change would permanently erase the memory of its heyday. Again the story that had been told was frozen to the era where all the family member was still there. Grandma's house is the reflection of the city of S where change is improbable.

There’s a tendency to romanticize a certain place which gives us the illusion of an emotional bond between a person and space. What is place? How does it differ from a space? It’s the emotional bond, the relation in experiencing a place that changes it into space close to heart. It gives us a more valuable impression that perhaps nobody can comprehend except us. Why do we have to attach someone to something to make it from a mere space to a place, from a house to a home? In a time where each different space offers the same valuable impression to become a place, what makes it special? One place can be easily replaced with another one but the memory, the emotion, and the experience never will.

On Hopes

At the utmost of desperation, it is easy to look back on our past and feel that our life had been meaningless. At that precise moment, we remembered clearly our failures: mistakes that had been made, unfulfilled plans, and bad decisions. We may feel like the unluckiest beings alive. The story of our life can be described as an unintelligible and dispiriting gibberish that leads to nothing.

But the thin line between despair and hope is not bigger than we thought. Sometimes we forget how harsh we are to ourselves to the thought that we don't matter. In today's society, it’s easier to hear what other people think and believe instead of listening to ourselves. We come up with a lot of reasons; that some people are better at wording what I felt than myself, some people have objective thought than we are because of the distance they have, and some others are smarter than us so that we should believe them. But with those justified reasons, we miss remembering that a good narrator, to explain what we've been through, has to be fair-minded and judicious so that lives can be meaningful when it comes to humiliation and lots of failures.

Mistakes can be a sign of how little information we have. Disaster is not a wasted time, it can be a transformative phase for us. Maybe we've been through a successful failed relationship which we still question till today. And maybe we're still in the confusing years of our career paths. These experience were not meaningless, because it is necessary for our later development and maturity.

"But why do we bother if we can talk about the possibility of the future. With the lullaby of the faraway land, the imagined, ideal life we strive to live, and the struggle which we never know what will come. Or we can live in the past too; reminiscing the glory of the youth, the happy days when we were younger, with the lost one who never comes back. Why do we afraid to be in the present? Living in the present is a painful thing. To witness the reality upon us, to feel and to see.”

She was still imprisoned by the past. As she was sitting alone in her room, staring blankly into the wall, she felt cheated by her inability to feel happy like everybody else. It was past midnight, the usual time when she was struggling with her own thought, then she would finally agree that those the past was the only decent time in her life; only by then, with her premature conclusion, she would fall into sleep.

Come to think of it again, what is it that holding her back to fully be happy?

People become more attached to the idea of happiness looks like online. Though these are merely mediations of reality, even deceptive mediations of reality; they are based in a reality, or do they hide a reality, they simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives. But at such a young age, who could refuse such manipulative attraction?

In the night where she couldn’t fell asleep at all, she would pick up her favorite book, The Little Prince. Each different time when she peruses the book, she would find a different part of the book that interests her. The first time she read it, she was interested in the way the little narrator found how odd the adults to put interest in something that didn’t really matter. She would then retold this story to other people, convinced them to read this book. The second time she read the book, she was attracted to the drawing of a boa constrictor inside and outside. This would be her story to retell when she would explain how each person's different perspectives have. And the third time she read the book, she was interested in the story of the roses. The Little Prince owns one rose on his own small planet. The rose is the thing that he treasures the most and he would do anything to keep her alive, even if it’s troublesome. When Little Prince come to earth, she found a lot of roses in someone else’s garden. And it makes him sad that he can only have one and it doesn’t make his rose special anymore. The Little Prince then move to different places and meet The Fox. The mischief fox aided by cunningness and cleverness gave a lot of demands if the Little Prince wants to befriend him. It reminds The Little Prince of his rose that is very demanding. Only the difference is The Little Prince found that The Fox is empty. The Fox continues by saying, "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

On Routine

Back then I always believe that routine works reduces our sensitivity to the surrounding. It’s like we’ve been trapped our whole life like a rat lab in a maze. We were institutionalize since we were born from family to pre-elementary-middle-high-school then another years for university-level education only to wait to become part of corporate. When I was working, routine job means contribute into huge corporate system that our work was not even mater, we were just like sharp-pointed metal pin – a tiny part of a bigger machine. We’ve been through suppressive system which creates a product of a certain demand. We’ve been labeled as a good or bad product. What I believe as a freedom by then, was passing through those system and being radically change into societies value, which mean quit. 

When I talk this over to a dear friend, he gently remind me by saying, “About the job issue... I actually find that almost all of my job experiences are an interesting experiments. It helps me to understand how societies and economics work, so I even likes the routine office work. Sometimes it is the best way to become invisible. Part of the crowd. And it is optimal for studying how people of your country really look like. This kind of exteriority jobs helps me to keep my inner, creative work independent as well.”  It’s the kind of perspective that I’ve never think of. When we see our self as a product we will only trapped by the idea of becoming part of the system, think it the other way around. We may have to remind our self that we have the authority over our life. Generalizing about how meaningless it is to have goals like working and consider it as such trivial things to do, is complete foolish of young angst. Everything we do in live carries spiritual weight, but when I completely writes off the entirety of civilization describing our lives as "repetitive and wasted" it would be such ignorant. We cannot deny the fact that financial needs would become one of our priority. Thus people who demand to fulfill their economic needs would be no less valuable with the people who chase spiritual/ emotional/ any other value.

There was a little girl who believes two dots of beauty marks on the soles of her feet will lead her to a journey in a faraway land, just like her grandmother told her. Just so she believe in the naivety of her grandma’s story, she begin to grow as a curious young women who thirst to explore.

She start her journey to the ocean. Dive miles away under the sea, wonder does the mermaid exist? Does the humpback whales swims in a group? Would it be as scary to be trapped in the middle of them? Can we hear when dolphins sing under the deep water? Satisfied with the magnificent creatures from the down under, she continue to go the land.

Far away to the high away land, some says it’s above the clouds and near the sun. The land above the clouds can only climbed by those who had the innocence, nothing that comes into her mind to explain this. In the gate to enter the land, there was a guide to watch guests. Only those who able to satisfy the guard’s question may enter to the land. In front of the young women, there was 2 guests; a young man and a couple of middle ages. The guard asks the young man, “What is the purpose of your journey?” I am willing to conquer my own self, some people said that only after we reach the peak of the land above the clouds, we’re able to conquer our self said the young man. “You haven’t finish with your own self, you will earn nothing but you. You may not enter the gate”, replied the guard. The middle age come next, we’re getting old and we’re done with our self. We just want to help people in the land above the clouds, some says they live uncultured. “You also may not enter. Your glass are full”, replied the guard. Now the young women’s turn has come, she hesitantly said, “to be honest, I don’t know why I am here. I came here only because my grandma said that two dots of beauty marks on the soles of my feet will bring me anywhere. You can see it here”. The young women took off her shoes and show the soles of her left feet to the guard with no answer. “… Probably I guess this place is an exception”, she continue. The guard stay still and doesn’t say anything. Right after she start to leave, the guard suddenly said, “You may enter”. With full of excitement she run through the gate and start to hike the mountain. On the top of the hill she can see the sky roves beneath her eyes. The sun start to raise and the clouds start to set aside, in her peripheral sight there is a spread of dunes that strange to her eye. That’s where I go next she said to herself.

A thousand miles away from any habitation she finally arrived at the Desert of Sahara. With a very majestic view of the desolate waterless land covered with sand, her mind slipped into reverie. She pondered beneath the reality to the story of the cast away pilot in the middle of the Desert. Will I meet the same little prince that the pilot met? The unbearable heat had finally forced her to come back home.

Memoir will never be my favorite genre despite the fact that I have to wrestle with the memory of others in day to day basis. Archive ranging from colonial era to books and personal notes about a person whom I never know existed. I read it as if it comes from alternate reality, and it satisfy my curious-curious-mind to understand all of the variation in life. But memory is always become such a spiteful elegy, it will sunk us back to the past which we will never experience it again, only the feeling that remains. It’s always nice to visit them once awhile, especially a memorable childhood story. I always remember how free I feel to finally spin my first bike without a handicap, I also remember how proud I am to receive my first trophy for my swimming competition, and of course we all remember the first time we lose our teeth. It’s not all of the nicest thing that we can remember, even something as trivia as losing a tooth can be very nostalgic yet painful for some people. These memory are the things that usually nice to remember, what about the things that we try to forget but turns out is always coming back to us? Such as trauma that you try to heal but never recover back, a terrible accident, a regret about something you did or didn’t do in the past and a person from the past who you miss the most but never once again you’ll see them in the present.

Again, my love-hate relationship with memory will never be clear. As I very much interested in the memory of others, I like walking around in the Museum and I’d like to call it as a “Memory Machine”. Through a photograph, narrative and archive we can see how these reflexes are beyond the person itself. It is a ‘process of production, exchange, usage and meaning’, it bind the viewer to an era and show us to be commemorated as remembering. As I witness each of the display inside of the museum, I realize that there’s a framework of narrative that the Museum try to address. Take a look at the example of Indonesian Bank Museum, where they’re trying to tell a story about changing value of exchange (money), from the early pre-colonial where they trade with goods, then changed with spices, and finally changed with money. Or The Maritime Museum where they exhibited the maritime history of Indonesia and the importance of the sea to the development of present-day Indonesia. Now I think about it each have their story and framework that it’s worth preserving, but how which, whose, and what memory to choose? How about the little story that doesn’t fit into the narrative of the Museum? How about the people who still use goods as trading up until now a days? What about the story of seafaring ethnic groups and tribes who still living around body-of-water around Indonesia? Should we come back to the terms that ‘History is written by the winner’ and ignore these metanarrative?

X: So this is your first time join the workshop? What do you think?

Y: I don’t know, I have a mixed feeling. But I guess exciting is what I feel the most

X: Yes! Every first time is always exciting that’s why I always seeking for a new first time just like this one

Y: So is this first time you’re in Indonesia?

X: Well… no. I mean working with all off you guys. Which reminds me when I first having my first workshop similar to this. The community wasn’t as big as this one but we still need a translator since the Community Organizer was coming from outside of our country. It was so fun to see how they exchange language without mutual language. I guess communication is beyond boundaries.

Y: That must have been fun. Now I wonder after the first time, what’s next? I mean what will come after we experience the first time, how do we expect without any excitement?

X: Oh you shouldn’t worry about that. Let me asks you a question, when you first join this, what do you expect?

Y: I’m not sure, experience?

X: Did you expect something interesting? What if it turns out the other way around?

Y: Of course I do, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be interesting. If it wasn’t then I just leave and let it become a bad experience.

X: Exactly, you will never know what you get until you do. And I am sure there will be many first time waiting ahead of you, just like I do. By the time you grow older, you would appreciate the little things that ever experience to you. It won’t be as a fancy thing like you did when you were little. Riding your first bike was the first joy you had, driving your car was becoming your liberation, and the excitement changes, but what about the next one? Riding a vehicle that you’ve never heard of, like my first becak? You’ve never know.

Y: Yes I guess that’s true

As tiny as a grain of sands, she spread too thinly, run out of energy and even disappear into spaces easily. She was made of the people she had encountered in life, made her to become a grasps of sands that you can create a wall as strong as concrete. Firm and delicate at the same time. To describe her personality as complicated would be an easy way out. She is more than anything that one word can represent. Let’s disentangled it one by one.

As a person who unable to communicate and address her emotion easily, she usually being misunderstood by others. When she was a kid, she cried a lot and her family thought she had an anger issue. It wasn’t really bothers her until one day her mother was outraged with her behavior that her mother wonder how she pick up a personality that doesn’t belong to her parents. As a little girl, she was too afraid to have such thought, that she doesn’t belong anywhere, so that she suppress the feeling. It wasn’t in such a long time for the uncontrollable emotion comes to the surface again. Her curious mind drives to sneak out to find out how to deal with this. She asks a lot, trying to figure out the reason why people feel something, do certain behavior and what drives them to do that. After a long exhausting search the feedback she had expected have come to very little. “Maybe this wasn’t supposed to be answered right away”, she thought to calm herself.

It started in such an early age that I found something tragically fascinating behind an irony. There was a comic titled Say Hello to Black Jack, a story about surgical student who had struggle on ethical work of medication. I was in the middle school at that time, and the only thing that attract me was to find many variation of life that I can be explored through reading comics. I don’t remember the exact name, disease or medication but I remember the feeling and struggle that remains, and the plot goes like this.

One day a young doctor was assigned to treat an old patient. The old guy and his wife come to the hospital to check up, they only have each other so every time the old guy goes to the hospital the wife always come too. Unfortunately, after the examination the old guy suffers a chronic disease. There is no way to cure him completely, the only medication that the hospital have is to keep his life just a little bit longer. At the same time, the hospital been experimenting on a new medication to cure this exact disease, but they still didn’t know about the risk. Therefore the hospital asks to the old guy whether they are willing to participate with this experiment. There was an ethical disagreement inside of the young doctor to the risk of this medication. The financial situation, the impact and the mental healthiness of the patient are all the things that the young doctor worried about. All the things that wasn’t supposed to be worried by a doctor. At the end, the young doctor surrender to the procedure that the hospital gave to him. He offered and assigned the old couple a new experimental medication with only 50:50 chances. Naively the old couple agrees to the offer, they will do everything they can to keep the husband alive. When the old guy first come to the hospital he was hopeful and looked fit. The plot of the story was going on with the struggle of the two with financial trouble, since the old guy have to quit the job. The mental struggle that struck him because of the side effect of the medication. And also the struggle of the hospital too (which If I remember correctly, there were problem on the procedure and politics, on the medication). Until one point, I remember the artist showed us the picture of the old guy, astonished by himself when he looked in the mirror. He was outraged with his own body that changed extremely that he couldn’t even notice himself. The shock was combined with sadness, confusion, regret that he thought he’d rather died peacefully without struggling on a new medication.

When I am reminiscing that story all over again I found this world seems to be hopeless, what motivates people is basically for their personal gain; the hospital’s ambition to take credit for medication breakthrough, the old couple for the old guy’s health (And when it didn’t fulfill expectation, only anger that remains.). Of course we see that the old couple got the biggest damage in here, but we must admit the fact that there’s motivation behind their agreement on the experiment. And then only the pure-motivated person like the young doctor, that relentlessly looking for fairness for the old couple, will only tossed aside. At the end of the story, the young doctor was assigned to another hospital all over again.