Honor Your Parents

One of the Ten Commandments listed in the bible is – infuriatingly – to unconditionally honor your parents. God expects that for the sake of virtue, as unworthy of honor a parent can be, his son will manage to delude himself and emulate artificial respect for that sordid creature.

I’ve never had a great relationship with my father. From the pits of my memory, I can recall having always favored my mother greatly over that man. But I also recall ancient days when I still had remote bits of love for him - like I actually enjoyed his presence. Now that love has been replaced by a nauseating feeling of disgust for my kin, and a bitter longing for that man to disappear from my life.

Over the past years, I have grown to feel underappreciated. My overall great academic life, talents in music, and indisputable practicalities for this household has been left unheeded for him. Instead, he criticizes me for what he considers to be fatal imperfections.

You see, I am the complete opposite of him. Unlike him, who is social, aesthetically distasteful, sickeningly inartistic, ancient, mathematically adept, and stingy, I am socially inept, aesthetically tasteful, musical, well-informed, mathematically average, and capable of enjoying luxuries. Somehow, the man expects his son to be a reincarnation of him – for his choleric personality requires everything to agree with him. And so, with my being the complete opposite of his wishes for a son, he expresses his disappointment with endless, unjustified, moronic denigration.

Worse of all, he blatantly displays his severe incompetence as a parent by comparing me with my sister – who he worships as if she is godsend, despite her clearly obvious faults. It’s probably because she’s more like him – musically inept, mathematically-inclined, and interested in sports – than I am. Ironically, even she, who fortunately spends most of her time away from him, can’t stand him.

When treated with endless belittlement, a person would either be saddened or annoyed. The latter applies to me, because among many things, the only trait I share with him is stubbornness. Over the years, he has become more and more of a nuisance – probably because over the years, he sees more and more that I am unlike him. So now, I avoid seeing his gorilla-like face in dread of the itching irritation I experience whenever I argue with him. And whenever I am stuck in an argument with him in the car, I deafen myself with my iPod and my earphones – my lifesavers – and allow him to express his parental ineptitude to himself.

I suppose, like Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the man deserves some sympathy. His son never turned out to be the way he quite wanted him to be, and the daughter he is so proud of doesn’t share mutual feelings for him. But I am not sympathetic for that incubus of familial calamity. Desensitized, I have been, by the ceaseless infuriation that man had caused me.

I know he loves me, but like my sister, those feelings aren’t mutual. Oh, the horror.

If only I was witless enough to be tolerant of lunacy, then we could be one happy, harmonious family. How unfortunate it is that I am not; that my honor for him is nonexistent; that I am stuck in this spiraling deathtrap of familial discord.

renascens fruori: To Reawaken Joy

This is going to sound overdramatic. The feelings behind it, though, aren't characterized by 'anguish', 'disappointment', or 'rage'. More like 'lethargy' and 'ennui'. Born out of a general listlessness and expressed with a deadpan look and a half-hearted yawn.

The things I used to enjoy and the things I was interested and enthusiastic about; the things I found myself willing to give time and effort for--they have become irrelevant and, well, petty. Almost hollow, even. It's not the kind of thing that would plunge you into the deep dark pits of depression, but it's the kind of thing that makes you think what now? (Yes, I say that a lot, don't I?)

After all, it's important to have something to love and enjoy and aspire to, and when you don't have that, it's hard to keep a grip on other things; like your enthusiasm and outlook on life in general. Maybe I'm not the only one thinking this way? I got off the phone with a friend a few minutes half hour ago, who shared my sentiments. Even then, we only discussed it in passing. That's just how little it matters now.

I think I used to be passionate about this. I used to love stringing the words together into phrases, phrases into sentences; sentences into entire narratives and articles that reflected my thoughts and opinions. My contribution to the world.

Now when I run my eyes down the page of a book I acknowledge the presence of something missing. Perhaps it was the way I used to revel in the words and the phrases; how I would find myself smiling as I turned it over in my head. Maybe it was the giddy rush I used to feel when I turned the next page. Maybe the unbelievably real anguish I used to feel for the mishaps of the fictitious characters. Now when I run my eyes down the page of a book I register the story word for word inside my head, and it sits there, piled up and undigested; experienced but not enjoyed.

What do you do in a situation like this? Even books like my all-time favourites--Smoke and Mirrors, Water Babies, Joy Luck Club--are difficult to enjoy. Even the beautifully strung poetry of Sapardi Djoko Damono only manages to float feebly about in my head, and even then, only in passing.

It's also difficult for me to write (apparently this is also an alarming problem for other people I know). There are increasingly longer pauses where my hands twitch above the keyboard; where the pen floats a hair's breadth away from the page; where inspiration lingers just out of reach. Like right now.

What's happened to us? (Us this time, and not just me.)

A possible reason someone proposed to me just today is that our heads are full of a lot of other things that are "more important". Due dates, projects, essays, tests; the rigid lines of routine that had never mattered before as much as it does now. I'm not proposing to throw all that by the wayside and do what I love regardless of anything else. Especially because if I'm being honest, I have a lot more time on my hands than I'm willing to admit.

In my defense, that handful of time flows past unnaturally. It feels like there is some gigantic, gaping mouth into which huge chunks of that time are tossed. But this insatiable black-hole of a mouth is a messy eater, and leaves us with small grains of hourglass sand that tick by torturously slow; five minutes that are too brief for us to use for anything meaningful--too long for us to ignore and let slip.

One of these days I'll learn how to appreciate these crumbs of time. One of these days I'll finally find it in me to place them on my tongue (the way you do a snowflake or a drop of rain) and taste the fragile, fleeting sweetness of stolen time. Isn't that the kind of life you would love to live? The kind of life lived from moment to moment; loved for the mere experience of it and treasured for the memory of it.

That's the way I hope to restore my love of words and poetry and prose; suddenly, unexpectedly, with the kind of infant joy that awakens itself at the sight of falling snow or the whisper of long-awaited raindrops.

Sutiyoso's "Brilliance"

You, the reader, would most probably view me as someone of most ardent cynicism and hatred. You’re probably right. Disappointingly, I remain in this state of abhorrent lunacy – more so after the recent reduction of roads in West Jakarta and the resultant gridlock of this dung-hole.

A quick google search of Sutiyoso – governor of this great labyrinthine maze of urban garbage we call Jakarta – reveals admirably positive publicity. The man is blindly regarded by the press as a great pioneer for Jakarta’s infrastructure.

The busway, they say, is our city’s “brilliant” answer to public transportation. True, the provision public transportation has been improved over these past seven years. But something meant to ease the congestion here has, in fact, done the exact opposite.
Sutiyoso’s brainchild has taken up about one of three lanes of virtually every major thoroughfare of Jakarta. Roads, already underprovided, are taken up to give room for a bus lane that is barely functional. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the fastest growing market in the world for motorcycles, and what is left of Jakarta’s roads are infested by these ridiculously reckless two-wheelers. Tragedy befalls us - the growth of the market for cars here is no less substantial.

It would help if the busway was, at the very least functional. At peak hours, one must queue for fifteen minutes before being able to enter the overcrowded busses of claustrophobic suffocation. So while commuting on the busway itself is fast, the queue counterbalances this. While these underprovided busses can only carry about forty people at a time, the bus lane is virtually empty with no only one or two busses in sign, with the remaining lanes in gridlock. Even at full capacity, the amount of people traveling per hour in the busway is considerably lesser than a lane’s potential capacity if cars were allowed to make use of it.

Sutiyoso plans to expand his busway network by adding about seven more lines. Meanwhile, it’s taking us ten years to finish only a twelve kilometer part of the Jakarta outer ring road. Jakarta further decays to excrement each year and they call it progress.

Yes, the poor are somewhat advantaged by this testament of blind idiocy, but at what expense? Our commute times are doubled; we waste petrol on road-queuing while the fuel market climbs upwards as Indonesia faces double digit inflation.

True that the busway is much cheaper than say, a subway, or some other actually effective mean of public transport. But why resort to a cheap failure? Wouldn’t the finances be put to better use if an effective subway line – one that actually reduces congestion – was built, as opposed to five busway lines which only makes things worse?

Even more ridiculous is the corruption that obviously reeks in these “one billion rupiah busses.” Reading the promotion of these “advanced busses” costing over “one billion rupiah” in our newspapers numbs me with constipation.

What will our metropolis be reduced to when Sutioyoso’s dreams are realized? Ineptitude and immorality plagues our bureaucracy, that “progress” is negative that despite Indonesia’s rapid economic growth, unemployment and poverty figures are higher than ever.

I hope that the people whom we entrust our tax money in will someday, God knows how, actually be capable of advancing this rancid nation. But I’ve come to realize that it has been ten years since the 1997 monetary crises and still we remain lamentably pathetic. Prospect is faint; who do we turn to?

On Fear

Some people walk with shadows wrapped around their ankles. These are the people who keep throwing looks over their shoulder at the teeth and claws only they can see, reaching out of the shadows. They walk with small, scared steps that make no sound on the floor but echo like earthquakes inside their own heads. They will give you a quick, (self-)reassuring smile as they pass; trailing shadows and imaginary monsters.

They walk either with backs painfully straight or hunched, because fear can choose either to drag a slimy, cold finger down your spine or shove its clammy fist right into your gut. It whips out a handkerchief and binds your jaw to your skull so you can't say help me; and the only sounds you can produce are a pathetic little whimper and an apocalyptic shriek. Fear laughs in your face as you scream your heart out when no one hears.

Fear makes mocking gestures as you sit stoned in your chair, when the timer begins to tick dangerously close to zero. It marches its cold, smoke fingers across your test page and makes it hard to read the words. Fear holds a magnifying glass right against your eye so all you can see is the first three words of that question and nothing else. Fear wriggles its fingers around your heart and (just for fun) drags it down into your bowels to see how far down it can plummet.

Fear tells you that that hallway to your left was not there before. It says that you failed your exam--you know, that one; the one that ultimately decides your future? No, even more, your life and death?

Fear takes the strands on the edges of your imaginative tapestry and spins it just a little further. It laughs in delight as it forces you into dark corners and pushes tears out of your eyes--even tweaking embarrassing squeaks and sobs at the occasional freaky moment.

Fear waves goodbye and slips out the door. And just when you sigh in relief, it whispers boo from behind your shoulder and sends you shaking and trembling down the same roller-coaster ride.

Enamoured, Infatuated

To: Pillow
From: Pink
Subject: Sing It If You Can

I'm usually very good with words, but I found a better way to tell you how I feel. I borrowed some lyrics from a few songs. They're not just great; they're perfect. Sing it if you can.

I don't know what it is that you've done to me,
but it caused me to act in such a crazy way. 
You're the kind of guy, whose hand in mine
sends shivers up and down my spine.
Something's telling me it might be you.

Watchin' lovers walkin'
hand in hand they pass me by.
Wish I was one of them.
Wish I had somebody.
I wanna feel how it feels to be
Somebody's somebody,
Someone's someone,
Some sweet lover's lover.

Nothing to lose,
your love to win.
Hoping so bad that you'll let me in...
I'm at your feet waiting for you.
I've got time and nothing to lose.
There are times when I believe in you,
these moments when I feel close to you.
There are times I think that I am yours,
though many times I feel unsure.

I'm going through hell, thinking about you with somebody else...
Always thought someday you would notice me.
I wish you'd look at me that way,
your beautiful eyes looking deep into mine.
Telling me more than any words could say,
but you don't even know I'm alive.

Can I trust the way I feel?
'Cause my heart's been fooled before..
Am I just seeing what I want to see,
or is it true, could you really be
Someone to have and hold
With all my heart and soul?
I need to know, before I fall in love.
Someone who'll stay around,
through all my ups and downs.
Please tell me now, before I fall in love.

Somebody wants you,
Somebody needs you.
Somebody hopes that one day you will see that somebody's me.
I still feel the warming glow
shining somewhere in the future
shining not so far away.

Hey, I'm hopeless, I know. At least you know how I feel. But that's not exactly true either. You don't know how I feel. You'll never know unless I tell you. And I won't. There is the tiniest flicker of hope in my heart. Ignite it.

Pink

METROPOLIS: The Masterpiece

SPOILERS AHEAD (marked in red)

The days have slugged past, and I, without realizing it, have slowed down along with it. I haven't gotten much done over the past few days of the holiday (and as I am writing this I owe monochromaticRAINBOWS two posts) but I've been sitting back and taking my time with everything, which, in hindsight, is probably not a very good thing. That was my revelation late last night, so this morning I woke up early and made myself useful--I even plucked up the willpower and the inspiration to write this post. :)

Only this is going to be a little different from the stuff I've been doing. Today I present to you a review of a movie I recently got a hold of. Sounds boring? I hope not. I honestly hope I'll be able to do the movie justice through this review. The movie is an animated piece, and in the past has won over the favor of various movie critics for the art as well as the storyline involved. It is the brainchild of a Japanese genius of animation by the name of Osamu Tezuka (known for the widely popular Astroboy) which ranks up there along with Howl's Moving Castle (ranked #13 by IMDb), and Spirited Away (ranked #1 by IMDb).


Some people may consider animated pieces of work not worth their time; especially since the aforementioned works all fall under the category of 'old-school' 2D animation. Further yet, these masterpieces of fine art are seriously stereotyped for falling under the category of Japanese anime--along with the likes of Sailor Moon and other 'ridiculous' pieces of 'rubbish' (I say these in quotation marks because opinions differ, and I will personally suspend judgment in the matter). These issues came to mind because I myself was at first disinterested. One, because I assumed Japanese anime could only go so far so well as a movie, despite the wildly positive reviews. Secondly because I am finicky when it comes to how things look, and I didn't like Osamu Tezuka's knack for putting gigantic lashes on his characters.

Just a few days ago I set aside my ridiculous 'prejudices' and watched Spirited Away. I thought that I would just grin and bear it; and if it turned out to be lackluster, so be it--I was just trying to spend time.
Perhaps it was because I expected so little that I ended up being so impressed. I wasn't exactly willing to admit I was wrong, so I thought to myself that it wasn't so bad. I personally cannot believe it took me so long to discover something this great.

I went on ahead and tried to find what other all-time animated movies ranked high up the list (Spirited Away is ranked #1 by IMDb!), and came across Metropolis through another ranking list. Watching Metropolis, I discovered a newfound respect for Japanese directors, animators and writers. There are times when I would watch a movie after reading a review on it and I would think that it fell short of the expectations the review had set me up for; but METROPOLIS is nothing like that. Even after reading reviews by movie critics on the movie, I still found more things to appreciate in the movie; details that suggested a certain sense of intricate dedication in the making of the film.

So what, exactly, is the movie like? Why is it so good? One of the reasons (which I myself actually hadn't noticed at all) is that the movie has been hailed as a great achievement in animation for smooth transitions between slides, as well as the quality of production and attention to detail in the character, building, and background designs. The other reason (which I thought could make it good materials for an English blog post), is that METROPOLIS is truly a literary treasure, presented in the silver screen, meaning that instead of proceeding as a mindless transition from opening-to-problem-to-solution, the plot and characters have backgrounds and political, spiritual and cultural settings that attach a unique kind of value to them.

METROPOLIS tells the story of a fictional metropolis (duh?), which is dystopian and also plutocratic--stereotypically indicational of good literature in my ears :). A plutocracy is where the power and the benefits of a good life are contained only within the affluent and high social class; the rest of the population is left to flounder, and more often than not is made to support the cushy lives of the high and powerful. This is also true of Metropolis, where there is social laddering not only in humans; but it is further complicated by the presence of robots, which humans insist do not have the right to have human names (trespassing on the territory of exclusively human rights), among other things.

The story begins with the announcement of the completion of the Ziggurat--a reference to the biblical Tower of Babel that eventually fell to ruin and caused the scattering of peoples to all corners of the earth--and the supposed coming of a new dawn for the city as a leading force in technology and a powerhouse of all might and wealth. Involved in the upcoming application of the Ziggurat is a recently completed robot superbeing by the name of Tima, who is rescued by an unknowing Kenichi from the ruins of the lab after her creator is killed. Over a few quick hours Tima develops a deep attachment to Kenichi, especially after being manhandled, carried, dragged, and driven in a rickshaw by him to get away from Rock, a member of the Marduk party (Marduk is the head honcho in the Babylonian gods' hierarchy) who serves Duke Red and is jealous of the attention Duke Red (as a father-figure to him) is pouring on Tima (who was modelled after his deceased daughter).

Eventually Tima is captured; Kenichi tortured and reduced to a limp puppet, and having discovered she isn't human like her beloved Kenichi, Tima proceeds to take her assigned place at the top of the Ziggurat on a 'throne' from which she will control the whole world for Duke Red (or so he assumes).

Things, however, don't go according to plan. Tima's 'unstable energy' (the way Duke Red explained her emotions to her) led her to decide she had no need for humans. Using the Ziggurat she takes control over the world's technological weapons and aims them at human population hotspots around the globe, and also arranges for the creation of a biological weapon to annihilate all mankind. Kenichi snaps to; just in time, and follows Tima into the darkness of the Ziggurat's heart. He wrenches her from the throne, but the Ziggurat has 'completed' her programming and she doesn't remember him anymore. At the end, the entire Ziggurat falls apart as a result of the overwhelming data provided by Tima, killing Duke Red and Rock (who meant well when he pressed the button of the superweapon used to destroy robots, but it resulted in the destruction of the entire monolithic monument).

Even through that not so brief synopsis it is not difficult for us to perceive just how much detail goes into METROPOLIS as a literary piece. Osamu Tezuka indeed even drew his inspiration from other works that helped shape his wondrous fantasy universe, including, among all else, the silent movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang, which also involved a female robot and is said to have given birth to the idea of Tima. There is also great detail in its art--for me especially, the architectural designs of the city of Metropolis and the Ziggurat are eye-candy and demand some sort of recognition from its viewers.

Of course the movie is not perfect, and indeed has its shortcomings. Most prominently is the way the entire story ended. Kenichi looks through the debris to try and find Tima, but has to face the fact that she is gone, as robots (who have returned to their senses) crowd around him, each cradling a part of Tima, most notably a robot named Fifi who helped them earlier in their escape from Rock, holding Tima's heart (a human heart, as she is made out of both human and non-human parts). Kenichi walks away with the robots, and the screen changes to a shot of Tima's treasured radio, which she obtained around the beginning of the story. The radio crackles and asks "Who am I?" the first words Tima said, and the movie ends. The problem with this ending is that Tima, who seemed to have been slowly developing an identity of her own, is apparently incapable of defeating the greatest stumbling block; her human/robot nature, and apparently falls into oblivion never having resolved the issue. It doesn't do her as a main character much justice, and it further complicates the tangle of loose ends that the story leaves off with.

In the original Japanese version, the movie ends with a photograph of Kenichi in front of a store named "Kenichi and Tima Robot Company", while a figure that is heavily reminiscent of Tima stands in the display.
It isn't clear if Kenichi put her back together, or if the figure indeed is just a figurine. This doesn't do the story much good, plot-wise.

Despite the disappointing ending (it leaves off enough loose ends for us to be able to expect some sort of sequel, I suppose?), METROPOLIS overall is a marvellous piece of work as a movie, and in that, as a highly interesting and well-composed literary piece. I'd recommend this movie for anyone willing to put their brains into gear and explore the many open-ended questions you'll be faced with throughout the entire movie. My synopsis doesn't explain it as well as I hoped it would, so you have more to expect from METROPOLIS than any review can ever tell you; that is, if you're ready to chew it over yourself.