Thursday, December 31, 2015

I need this for my resolution.

Imagine a man. If you're tired and not feeling up for it, just imagine an average man; with an average height, an average build, an average job, an average income, an average everything else. When you're done, put either a black top hat or a fuchsia codpiece on him. Hold that thought.

Now, imagine a woman. It doesn't really matter what she looks like, because to the man (from our little exercise before), she is the light of the world. When he sees her, no matter the circumstance, it's as if his life has just been restarted, that everything is new and full of possibilities, and the time before he saw her was just a dim muddy puddle he now can't leave quick enough. It's as if his brain has just discovered that what entered his eyes just then was not mere common light; it was Happiness and Glory herself.

So the man saw the woman, and the sight made him happy. And that was enough, for a while. But after some time, he began to yearn for something more. He knew that the sight was good, but he wanted more, and he wanted better. And he had a curious idea about what "better" meant: he wished to see her smile. For in his mind's eye, she would look better with a smile than without.

At this point, maybe he should have asked himself, why did he want her to smile, and smile for him to see? He probably would have answered that her smile indicates her happiness, and he would be content with this altruistic desire. But of course, it might just as well have been simple addiction to beauty, starting to show that one trait that any addiction has, which is, over time, to want more and more and more.

All this is moot, though, because he did not in fact ask himself any question. He just took the idea that he wanted to see her smile and used it to make a plan of action. He did many things that he thought would make her smile. He did everything he thought she would want. He tried, in short, to make her happy and, consequently, smile.

Did it work? Did she smile? If she did, did he see?

***

But before we can answer that, we must realise one thing first: she is not a machine, simple and predictable. She, like the man, has eyes that see and a mind that discerns. She has desires of her own. And she has the ability, perhaps even responsibility, to decide what she does.

***

Now, it's your turn. Answer me, if you will.

After she had seen what he had done, with the obvious goal in mind, what now? Should she smile? Should she let him see?




********




But what about that silly, silly top hat? Or codpiece?

Friday, July 3, 2015

Not Enough

I read (or thought, or heard, or overheard, maybe) somewhere, that when we are in love, and we hurt, it is the feeling of our soul growing so large that our body can barely contain it. So that when our act of love starts to hurt, embrace the pain. It’s how we know we still live; it’s how we know we still love.
I took it to heart, I took it to mind.
It is true, or true enough. I look at someone I love, and my heart beats faster, and the pounding feels as if it would shatter my rib cage. My blood rushes through my veins, and I fear they would burst through my skin out of sheer force. My fingers and toes grow very cold, until I start imagining them breaking and falling off. My lungs inhale without exhaling, and my throat chokes me with solid, unbreathable air.
It’s how I know I live; it’s how I know I love.
But how our minds play tricks on us! Before long, I started associating love with pain. And I only knew that I loved when I felt pain. Yet I never complained. It got me through many, many instances of unrewarded love and longing. The pain was reward enough.
It was a small enough step to take; from thinking that love is pain, to concluding that pain is love. So when the pain stopped coming, I did not hesitate.
I started small. I used candles. Oh, the sweet agony of dripping boiling wax! The satisfaction of ripping it, solidified, from the back of my red, raw skin! The small spikes of sensation saved me from the horror of unfeeling.
It didn’t last. Too soon, I developed tolerance. So I tried other avenues, and they did not disappoint. I used whatever caught my eye. I saw a fork; I raked myself with it. I saw a pencil; I sharpened some more and pushed them and pounded them onto my skin. I saw a length of shoelace; I bound myself until I was blue. I saw my leather belt: it became a whip. I was pretty cunning about it, too: I left no mark, and my practices were all restricted to the weakest and most rarely used part of my body: my left arm and hand.
The nadir (or is it the zenith?) was when one day I saw my kitchen knife. I decided to relax my rule about leaving marks. I unsheathed it, I felt the cool steel on my skin, and I drew blood. My blood, my sweet, tangy, precious blood.
It was then, with that mark I left, that I realized what I realized with the candles: it, too, would not last. My body would not last. I would again develop tolerance, or my body would waste away: either way, it would not last.
So I stopped hurting my body, and started going for my mind and soul instead.
It is much easier; very few physical forces are involved, and there is no fear of running out of material: my mind happens to be very good at hurting itself. All I have to do is shut my eyes and keep the outside world out, and just start remembering all the horrible things I have done.
Oh, and they are horrible, indeed. Far more horrible than mere cutting and bruising.  I’ll spare you the details. But in these meditations and contemplations, I come to understand that I am evil. And I hate my evil self. And with that, I feel good about myself, and I start to love myself. I can still hate evil; why should I care that the evil is me? Why should I pay any mind to how horribly the act of hating myself hurts?
It’s how I know I live; it’s how I know I love.
So the next time you see me, you most likely will not see anything different. I’ll still smile at you, I’ll still laugh with you. Some of them might even be sincere. But if you’re up for it, try to look harder. And maybe, just maybe, you will see, deep inside and far away, the true me: the maimed and mutilated remains of a soul, ethereal, barely alive, floating vaguely inside itself.

It’s the price I pay for escaping my all too small a prison of a body.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Worlds of Wonder

I miss you.

I have always missed you, even if I was reminded of the fact only after reading a stranger's remark.

I miss you. I love you.

We met at the library. You were quiet. You were quaint. So very different from the others. I hope you will forgive me my jealousy, but back then, I hoped no one else noticed you. I hoped I was the only one that did. I hoped that our relationship was one flush with the taste of an affair: of a secret love so lovely that one can't help but question whether it was not forbidden.

When we met, perhaps you remember, I didn't speak. Neither did you. (It was a library, after all.) But I saw your face, and I could not avert my eyes. And to my surprise, you looked back at me. There we were, engaged in a staring contest neither of us wanted to back out of.

And then you smiled.

And then I smiled.

And the sun was brighter, and the grass was greener, and the air was sweeter.

Can anyone blame us for what we did next? We escaped the confines of the library, and did the thing all lovers long to do: we got to know each other. You told me about yourself, and the universes contained within you. I marveled at your tales of miracles: of a man who sails between stars, of a force of attraction that is more than mundane mass, of a farmer who built a cow, of refugees fleeing from the sun, of the magic that is science and the magical sciences. And I responded the only way I knew how: by loving sighs and smiles.

I didn't want it to end.

But it did end. As I knew it would.

For the sad, stupid fact was that you were not mine. You already belonged to someone else. And what we had, all those glorious nights and gentle days, could never be forever. The universe entrusted you to me, and me to you, for a while, but still -- you were not mine.

I said goodbye to you at the place I met you. I turned away from you and made my exit from the library, with closed ears and heart lest you called at me one more time. No one saw my tears.

Since then, I've walked on my path in this world, hoping that I would meet you somewhere else. Your soul, in another incarnation. But I have not been lucky, and I grow more pessimistic and desperate by the day.

And I can't help but wonder, if ...

If I went back to that library, that blessed library, could I, by whatever chance The Almighty allows, see you again?

I miss you. I love you.



If only books could read.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

I'm still recovering from the heartbreaking impact of Kim Soo-hyun/Claudia Kim's Helen Cho.

It's been just over a week since I first saw Avengers: Age of Ultron. Oh, you haven't seen it yet? Then leave. Leave! And don't come back here before you've seen it! Or, you know, read on, if you don't mind spoilers. SPOILERS!

I'm going to say this first: I liked it, it was fun. It's true for nearly all of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, and it would probably still hold true for a few years more. Sure there were flaws, but I'm not going to write about them here. I don't want to ruin the movie for you, in case you didn't notice them. But, enjoyable as it was, there was one thing in particular that... bugged me.

If you've been watching the end credits of those movies, you might notice the words "[The guy(s) this movie was about] will return." Back then, when it first appeared in Iron Man (I think), it was exciting as heck. Robert Downey Jr. just pretty perfectly played Tony Stark/Iron Man, and they just made GUI awesome again, and we were (okay, I was) just asking for more of that, so the one-line teaser was, honestly, squeal-inducing. But nowadays, lines like that have quite the opposite effect.

Why? Because, while I'm certainly happy with the fact that comic book superheroes get to be in movies, it reminds me of the least enjoyable thing about mainstream American comics, which has been a pretty big barrier for me: they never friggin' end. No. Not even with the death of a major character. Especially not with the death of a major character. And then there are so many reboots and re-imaginings and everything is so confusing. So I was pretty bummed when I realised that, yes, I had been hooked into a movie franchise that might not have a definite end, or even middle.

Fortunately, a solution presented itself almost immediately. A solution which I just realised, one that has been around for quite a while, at least for avid comic book fans (which I'm not, to be honest, at least for the superhero comics), and one that is referred to quite often in the movie itself.

Gods.

Yes. I don't know about you, but I noticed loads of references to gods and religious stuff in AoU. The most obvious one was of course Thor, an actual god from the Norse pantheon. But there are others. Like the beginning of the end credits, which featured a marble sculpture depicting these heroes in battle, just like those classic statues. There was Laura's statement, referring to the enhanced Avengers as "gods." Earlier in the movie, there was the Quinjet's dashboard sticker, saying "Jarvis is my co-pilot," which I think is a reference to Jesus (and the religiousniks who have that kind of stickers). Speaking of Jarvis, there was that one line he said about his being "without form," that reminded me of Genesis. The main villain, Ultron, also had religious undertones: his main base was a church, he called Cap "God's righteous man," albeit mockingly, and he made references to Noah and St. Peter. And lastly, the most significant one for me, when my favorite character in the movie: Vision, said, "I am... I AM."

As I said, this is not new. In comics, there have been many instances where superheroes are called gods (my favorite is DC's Kingdom Come). And even when we talk about the official version of any form of entertainment franchise (say, Star Wars?), what word do we use? Is it not "canon?"

All of these reminded me that these characters are bigger than any one medium. They may have begun in a comic book page, but we can no longer call them comic book characters. So we call them what they are: heroes. But here's the thing: we want our heroes to be gods, and we want our gods to be heroic. That's just natural. Well, so be it. These characters, these heroes, having transcended their starting mediums, also transcend their beginnings, undergoing apotheosis, and are elevated as gods. Thor's just the oldest one in the Avengers. He might even have similar beginnings: a superhero whose stories people tell in order to inspire greatness. Maybe other gods started that way as well, only they had more time to solidify than the more recent gods who, with today's information technology, have shorter and shorter gestation period.

So, with that, I regained my peace of mind. I used to worry that putting Thor with mortals might constitute a religious insult, but I see now that it wasn't the case. They are all gods, new gods from the Avengers pantheon, if you want. Gods are not to be fought over (or for), gods are to be marveled at. Only time will tell which of them shall survive to be in the new pantheons, and I'm not going to worry which version is "true."

Because that's basically religious fundamentalism, right?

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Out of a Closet

Hi. How's your March so far?

I'd like to take this opportunity to write something less personal than usual. I hope you don't mind. If you do, I apologise. Maybe you can browse my previous posts instead? Or just wait for the next one. Whichever is more convenient for you. Or less. Your choice.

*******

Here goes.

I'm ditching college.

Yep. Seriously.

I imagine that you might have some questions. One of those might be, "Why?" Well, maybe it's best to simply say that I felt, and still feel it to be the right thing to do. Finally. Yes, it had been on my mind and in my heart for quite a long while. And because it had had a lot of time to develop, by now it's rather a complex story, and one involving a deceased person at that, so I'm not going to put it all down in writing here. If you're curious for more detail you're welcome to contact me personally through any of the channels I might have provided.

Another question might be, "What now?" As you might have guessed, it's not unrelated to the previous question. Anyway, now? Now I'm going to do what I want, and what I've wanted since long ago: I'm going to make comics. I believe it needs no further explanation. (Of course, my beliefs could very well be wrong. Interested in crushing them?)

For any other question you might want an answer to, or even if you just want an elaboration of the aforementioned answers, find me where I can be found.

*******

So, that's it. Just an update of what's been going on in the background of my little life. For those of you just learning about this now, and especially those who were upset by it, I apologise. Circumstances were such that we were not close enough (physically or otherwise) for me to tell it to you directly. Again, if you wish to ask me questions about this, you are very welcome. It's very likely that I'm wishing to tell you about it, too.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Sorry for this sudden (hopefully short-term) sanity. Seriously.

Today I heard something interesting on the radio. No, not a new song. It was a short discussion about a book, apparently targeted at teens and young adults, about relationships. I have not read the book. I don't even know its title. But I do remember seeing a post about it on my Facebook timeline (yes, sometimes I still look at it, thank you very much).

The discussion seemed pretty one-sided, in that it seemed to unambiguously judge the book as promoting negative values and endangering young children. They invited a speaker from KPAI (Komisi Perlindungan Anak Indonesia - The Commission for the Protection of Indonesian Children (is it?)) to talk about it, I believe it was because it was viewed as necessary to protect Indonesian children from the perils of the book's contents.

What, exactly, was the book's contents? As I've said two paragraphs ago, I have not read it. But the problematic bit seemed to be that the book appears to condone, even promote, premarital sex. From what I remember, the author said that if your boyfriend/girlfriend asks you to have sex with him/her, or vice versa, it's all very natural, and it simply means that you and your boyfriend/girlfriend are healthy human beings with enough energy available to channel into reproductive acts.

Now, I have my own views on premarital sex. But I don't intend to write about them here and now. I would just like to state my opinion that the book probably wouldn't be so controversial if children had gotten proper sex education at the proper time.

Makes sense, right? For humans, who have survived millennia through sexual reproduction, sex is a part of life, like eating or walking or, more recently, working for wages. It's only logical to educate all humans about the very human thing that is sex. If children (human children, remember) have been taught about sex, then the author of the book would look very simple indeed stating that sex drive is a natural thing. It would be like if I were to tell you that humans need nutrition to survive.

I realize that there are people who are against sex education. Unfortunately, I cannot empathize with those people. Maybe they are the kind of people that say, "In real life, you get the test, then you learn the lesson." While the sentiment is very true, those people seem to forget that every test comes with a price, and it's always cheaper to study beforehand, if the option's available.

If children, teens, and young adults have viewed sex as a natural thing, then we can begin talking about premarital sex. Parents, parents-to-be, teachers, teachers-to-be, take note, because this is the part where you come in to teach them about the values you want taught. If premarital sex is unlawful, then inform these students about the legal ramifications. If premarital sex is indecent, tell them about the socio-political capital they'd have to expend. If premarital sex is in bad taste, show them how bad its taste is. If premarital sex is okay, then say it, and remind them of its risks and possible consequences.

Be brave. Be strong. Be honest.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Screw Sartre

Hello! How's 2015 so far? Hope you're happy now.



If you want to know what I've been thinking about lately, it is this:

Hell.

You know about Hell, right? That place where damned souls go to get tortured after their worldly death? People have written a lot about it during the course of human civilization, I think. In detail. Mostly it involves specific punishments (or penances, if the deity's a more forgiving sort) for specific transgressions.

Now, I'm not here to discuss all the variations of Hell humans have told each other about. That would take far more time and effort than I'm prepared to expend. No, I simply think I have an idea that might possibly be an improvement to Hell's function, if it were implemented.

Here's my idea: take Hell, whichever you prefer, and bind it in limited spacetime. More specifically, give those damned souls a queue. Make the damned wait for the previous damned to finish their Hellish experience before they get to go in. Why? Because queues suck.

That way, instead of a wide space with many districts designated to accommodate the damned's various treatments, we could simply have one room, just large enough for the currently ongoing procedure, and a very, very long corridor for the damned to queue in. Simpler. Cheaper. Nastier.

Just imagine for a bit. I'll use Dante's Purgatorio (alright, technically not Hell, but people are still being punished, so what the Purgatory) for this example, but you're welcome to substitute any sort of damnation here. Say the person before you is guilty of the deadly sin of sloth. The penance for slothfulness on Mount Purgatory is to run around at top speed while chanting examples of sloth and of zeal. So, before you get to do whatever it is you have to do because of your sins, you have to wait for that guy to finish running around and shouting. And that is only if you're first on the waiting list.

Oh, I just thought of another improvement. What if, before you're doing whatever it is you have to do, there's a sentencing? But, in the courtroom, there's only one objective judge holding all the evidence? No juror, no prosecutor, no defense attorney. The judge will have to look at every piece of evidence and veeeeeerrrrrrrrryy carefully determine what you'll be sentenced with. Imagine the length of the trial. That would make the queue a lot worse. Which is better, since we're talking about Hell. Heck, if the minister(s) of Hell know what they're doing, the system's probably in place already.

Because, while it probably could be made cheaper from an operational standpoint, why the Hell should Hell be efficient for the damned?







Thanks for reading. Comments are welcome, of course. Oh, and thanks to Mr. Neil Gaiman and his short story, Other People, which inspired this.