• I am good with knives.
• I make up for my suicidal tendency by doubling up the homicidal inclination.
• I can spot a lie in a flash, and punch the spotted place at once.
• I can lie better.
• I am never intimidated by power, prestige, money, looks, height, weight, or anything else but myself.
• I am misanthropic but once in a while nice.
• I am neurotic but always forget that I am.
• When I am mad, the noise I make can beat a rock concert.
• I keep some first-aid kit within reach, to assist those people who dare to interrupt me while working.
• One junior nurse of a Balinese hospital in 1970 told my mom that I have an indescribable nose "that tends to be almost pretty".
• My publisher thinks that I can write.
• I never eat.

My bad points are these:

If this first attempt to get a soulmate fails, I might either be a nun or/and take up the career as a serial killer.

2

The upside of adhering to whatever astrologers say is, I have just found out, you'd get an instant personality to which you put yourself in -- something my sister surely understands very well, being in a mission of converting credit cards into shoes. Cute shoes that don't fit serve as a perfect analogy to this process of astrology-dabbling (MZ's 'It's not you? But it must be you!') [Click here to know what it's all about.]

It is most convenient when you find yourself in some nondescript situation of trying to write a personal ad. B and I were in there this afternoon, and we, even jointly, had virtually no idea how to start. We even argued about whether we would name a gender or not (that was her argument; mine was whether we would name a species or not) as the target consumer of the ad. So the attempt ended up in midair going nowhere. But I'm still thinking about it. I mean, what is it on earth, except anything scientific, that I can possibly not write of? The candidate of an answer to that is, as cliche goes, myself.

Personal ads are, as far as I can see, written for some peculiar audience whose average combined IQ's is supposed to be a little lower than a pair of turtles'; you are required and demanded and urged and pulled and pushed to dish out unpalatable inconsequential tidbits -- sites that cater to this need dub it 'practical data'. So 'scented bath' found its way in, so did 'YSL glasses', and 'fried noodle without tomatoes'; the ads written by various sorts of people that I and B have scanned today for a clue were like that. It was colossally enlightening -- I would never have known there has been a lot of people out there looking for fellow snail farmers.

Either we were just too dumb to compose simplest lists of what we think we are, or the opposite, our failure today told us how inadequate we have been equipped for condensing the unspoken truths (or lies) about ourselves, no matter how fluid B is on classical literature or I on street brawls.

So B proposed to resort to astrology -- something to which we are both as close to as ants are to the moon -- and I guess that's an executable idea, because it is so common. But when I read what my sign is said to be, all particles of my mind rioted -- it is so funny! It's like getting back to Advertisement Class in college -- sugarcoating stuff so heavily that the remedy would never find a breakthru once it is swallowed, and thus the germs persist.

See this for instance. It says I (my sign) am 'supportive'. That's the advertisement industry's lingo, replacing the correct adjective, i.e. 'pushy'. I am also 'passionate', which is another way to say 'maniacal'; 'forceful', twin of 'dogmatic'; 'loyal', that means 'fanatical'; someone 'consequent', namely a 'clinger'; 'emphatic', the same as saying 'melancholically wordy'; and, of course, 'self-confident', whose other name is 'smug'. The beauty of advertising is that it holds on fast to what is right over what is correct. I just don't see how am I to sell myself with this doggedly nagging conscience.

Meanwhile, B re-wrote what she (and anybody whose sign is Gemini) got: "I do well in situations which require analytical ability. I am looking for long and successful relationship. I win the affection of many friends. I keep my friends' secrets well, and I am looking forward to enjoy spiritual and magical treasure together with the right man."

Whatever that means, I think she will get loads of response to the ad, since it is so stupid.

 

 

Just Some Tea-Time Bull

[ Email to Mary Grubbs, 2000. e.e. cummings, who used to write his own name in lower case letters, the American novelist, essayist, dramatist, diarist, travel writer, poet and painter (1894-1962) was one of the most prominent Grrenwich Village artistic exponents.]

the first of all my dreams was of a lover and his only love,
strolling slowly (mind in mind) through some green mysterious land
(e.e. cummings)

So you are thinking of that crazy little chaotic thing called love. And I am thinking, why do roses matter? Because of the time we spend fussing over it. The journey from seed to seed is what matters. Journeys are. Destinations are not.

Love is nowhere near any characteristic of a destination. Love is a voyage. That is why it is amazing. That is the reason for taking it as enchanting.

In this dysfunctional, this tragic, this break-neck-speed tabloid time, it is hard to take love seriously. A needy few do, though. People say they are nuts. All who dare to take anything that is not ending anywhere seriously are nuts. Or so the world says.

This world says what G.K. Chesterton once said. "The way to love anything," he quipped, "is to realize that it might be lost." But you know sanity is statistical. You know a thing is not true merely because there is a million people who are ready to die for it. You know more often than not a truth is too ridiculous to be believed. You know a true alibi does not make sense sometimes.

What if I say you cannot lose anything you love? Because you really cannot. The serious nuts who take love seriously and ended up being nuts to the world say so to the world. You cannot lose it because you cannot have it. You cannot own it like a chair like a lamp like a mug. You can only more or less have it like a rose in a pot like a cat on a fence like a book on a lap like air. Love is despite whatever. Love is beyond whatever. You can only be whatever. You can only have whatever.

There was a woman once upon a calendar, once upon a map, a French map, her name is George Sand. She wore pants everywhere while everybody else was wrapped up in laces and choked by girdles. She was a chainsmoker, a guttersnipe, a society vixen. But she knew what love was. She had been there and done that. She wrote of love, her manuscripts of mediocre romances were piling up, she needed the bucks, that was why she wrote at all. The circumstances were as idyllic as romantic as a microwave oven. But Chopin was there, he was the sweet smell in the night air, he was the first green grass that came up in spring, he was the beautiful music that rode the wind, he was the sun the moon the stars to her, he was love. About this love Sand could not write a word. On this her eighteen-hundredth pen stayed put. About this love, too, Chopin could not compose a note. On this his eighteen-hundredth piano kept silent.

Love is like that. Something that is. Simply is. You cannot capture it like butterflies and dry it up and hammer a nail on the living room wall to hang it for guests to marvel at.

We know people who are forever in love with themselves. They are living the supreme monogamous love-lives. We envy them, actually. They are planets in themselves. Yet we, the alleged majority of mortals, are telling them that they are sinners for that. We know we are wrong yet we cannot do but go on.

Love is, when we take off the pretense, something within and go into the interior. The best gift we could ever give to ourselves is loving someone, something, to the realm of beyond - it is not him, it is not her, it is not it, that takes the benefit of our love; it is us and merely us and nothing but us. That is why giving is getting. That is why we could never lose anything by handing it to someone or something.

So you are loving. And I am wondering. So many people claim to have suffered from this kooky little thing. Yet so many people are registered on Michael Bolton's fan list - this must mean something.

Once again numbers are numbers, period. They are not incontrovertible. Love is not the sounds produced in hi-fi. Love is shadowy, love is an unorchestrated choir. You venture a step toward it and you are fogbound. If you see a clear marked road ahead, beware. It could not be what you want it to be. If love is a book, you may think that you have it understood. But the truth is, we can only get the flyleaf, nothing more is revealed. And good readers never mind what is on the dust-jacket.

"The course of true love never did run smooth," warned Billy Shakespeare some five hundred years before you were born. Think about it. What is the course? What is true? What is love? What is smooth? The course is as plural as drops of water in the oceans, truth is a myth, love is impossible to be dictionaried, smooth is a state of mind.

Just forget every word on the above and beyond. Love is love or there is nothing at all.

 

 

 

Don't Need A Witch To Know

[ Email. Reply to Fritz Stahl, Tristan Weiss and Phyllis Schmidt, 2001.]

Let me get this perfectly clear: you don't mind that I am not just an unrepentant racist but also specializing in disliking anything made in Deutschland? No? Really? Gosh, you all must have been tailored for Heaven, or kookfests, whichever comes first. But vielen Dank.

So!

It will all get a lot easier if people just be themselves online, I agree. Rather than be themselves uglier - the selves be by horribly protruding through all the cracks in the facades they are so unskilled to properly erect. It doesn't need a sorcerer to make the layer of pretense collapse. It is all the Berlin Wall. If you really can spot anyone claiming to be from Lübeck but ain't , just by a few words exchanged, that is indicative of some not just sound method but instinct.

About personalities.....I need to say here that being judgmental isn't the same as judging - I have no idea how many times have I elaborated this.

You simply can NEVER avoid judging people from the first minute you met. You MUST categorize people to tidy up your internal management ("I won't lend X a farthing. But I will let Y to borrow five thousand grand").

You automatically judge thus, whether you are conscious of it or not, doesn't matter whether you want to or not.

If you are judgmental, you are conscious of it all the time and got so dogmatically possessed by the trait that nothing, not even the truth, would dissuade you to leave your previous judgment alone.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'my favorite personality' - and I can't judge whether so and so are 'good' or 'bad' for all mankind; I disbelieve rather severely such a notion of universality.

There is a common ingredient in all human societies' norms, so it is possible that a good thing to some Northern Americans is also a good thing for the big bulk of the Chinese - but all else are very much local. Aren't the Bavarian ways alien enough to the rest of you, and will certainly meet loud refusal if they are to get enforced to apply to all Germans? Rules that apply to all is our only tool of management in cross-cultural enterprises; there are no detailed commandments.

I don't know if you know the Japanese history, but I'm recalling some episodes there now while I'm writing this.

When Japan was churning in continuous, contagious arson and killing among warlords since the 16th century onwards, there were three men who would lay the foundations for modern Japan today - the first whose vision of the country is of one nation-state. They were to rule Japan in succession.

Oda Nobunaga, warlord of the province of Owari, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of his generals, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the lord of Mikawa, Nobunaga's junior ally.

Oda Nobunaga [1534-1582]	Toyotomi Hideyoshi [1536-1598]	Tokugawa Ieyasu [1543-1616]

 

ALL STORIES & PICTURES OF ODA NOBUNAGA, TOYOTOMI HIDEYOSHI & TOKUGAWA SHOGUNS CLICK HERE

Nobunaga was, so they said, extravagantly handsome and flamboyantly dressed. But a part of the characteristics was perhaps a tactical maneuvre -- in his early years in his dad's shoes people called him "Lord Fool", then all of a sudden he took the whole Japan in his hands via brilliant victories in battle. Hideyoshi was called by friends and foes alike "Mr. Monkey", and this nickname stayed until the end no matter how great he did in politics. On the other hand, Ieyasu was unobtrusive. Both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi were conspicuous - one for the good looks and brawlish manner, the other for physical deformity and emotional halo. Ieyasu was short and gaining weight day by day without being really noticeable.

Nobunaga lavished his teasure on himself, Hideyoshi was beyond penny-pinching at times and wholly prodigal in other times, Ieyasu was always frugal.

Both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi could give themselves to instant inspirations and unplanned actions. Sudden wrath or burst of joy could drive Nobunaga into such courses, while for Hideyoshi it were sentimental outbursts. Ieyasu was virtually immune from all of those and it can be said that every little move he made was meticulously planned.

Their backgrounds were different from each other. Nobunaga was born a lord and was raised as one, Hideyoshi was an orphan and his late father was a landless farmer, Ieyasu's pedigree was as noble as Nobunaga's, but he had been kept as a mobile hostage by the clans which had defeated his father, since he was only 5 year old.

So during the formative years Nobunaga could afford everything he needed, Hideyoshi worked like a slave for different masters, and Ieyasu constrained under enemies' roofs. When they were forties and in power, all the stuff they were made of had come to show irreversibly.

Nobunaga committed suicide when attacked by Mitsuhide from the clan Akechi, his own vassal (it was virtually Nobunaga alone versus the whole army of Mitsuhide's, he was ambushed when having some days off in a temple). Hideyoshi avenged his death and took over almost total control, continuing the job of uniting Japan under one rule. Ieyasu kept his clan and province independent, restraining himself from major invasions to other places.

They said this about the three: if a bird refused to sing, Nobunaga would have thundered "Kill it!" or without a word cut it to pieces. Hideyoshi would have said, "We're gonna make it want to sing." Ieyasu would have waited.

Three personalities.

In Japan in their time, war and peace depended on them, so was how those were gotten. Eventually history told us that it was Ieyasu who got his clan reigning for a long time, by a shogunate revered and feared.

Nobunaga's son already squandered the inheritance just a blink after the father's death. Hideyoshi didn't have any. Ieyasu's offsprings were there with a tighter grip.

When something had become history, we used to wonder if there was really no one who knew it would have happened. But non-historians and non-rulers were not asked for their opinions; I think ordinary people actually did know what would be their community's fate. They got to read the available rulers like books; they got to judge. They knew how each personality exercised power upon them. They knew who would have cut their heads.

So I guess they knew that Ieyasu's patience, controlled emotions and firmly tactical mind would have paid off.

They said Nobunaga only knew two emotions: anger and disdain. But an extreme personality like his surely would have also been characterized by overjoy; nothing is like an explosive man when he is in a good mood. Nobunaga respected none, or seemed to; if not an ally or underling then one must be an enemy to slain.

Hideyoshi was mushy. His eyes were moistened by all sorts of emotion so often that earned him distrust at first by his own vassals. He cried whenever he missed his mom; he cried when her letter came; he cried writing his reply; and so forth. He was cunning and actually believing in diplomacy, resorted to arms as only the last try. He was also loyal beyond doubt to a few figures he respected the most; he had never even said anything against Nobunaga until the end.

Ieyasu was unfathomable. Living as virtually a prisoner of war for a long time (even his own wife spied on him for her own clan), he had understood the virtue of silence, and appeared to be unmoved by anything.

If we only look at each man's own lifetime, from the day they were born to the end, they were all successful (Nobunaga's death was when he was at the peak of his career, and I'm sure you know the code of honor among Japanese warriors to see that in his case the suicide was a combat thing).

So this means all sorts of personality (at least three) has the same chance.

No one would be able to install the best of all three Japanese rulers inside him or herself - a personality isn't coming from distant courses or fat books, no matter what the pop culture tells us. A personality is born. Even if we take another angle to see the three men, it will still be so.

Nobunaga could have been a hothead accustomed to easy living where everyone did what he told them to. Hideyoshi's humbler origin might have made him regarding enemies with respect. Ieyasu maintained his cool by practice and later on habit. Yet, if Nobunaga were Ieyasu and Ieyasu were Hideyoshi or any other switch, the man resulted from it would have been different from what already had been. I mean, Nobunaga would have gotten himself in trouble if detained as a hostage. Ieyasu would have taken a very long time to achieve what Hideyoshi did in a few months, and Hideyoshi would probably not taken up arms at all if he were born a ruler's son - he might have been a tricky civilian diplomat.

Things we have done, said, listened to, thought of, ruminated, brood over, contemplated, fantazised, and so on, made us. That much is true. But there must have been a soil for any seed to grow upon.

Experiences fall into our soul that has already been there since Day One.

Say, a peaceful postman one day turns a bomber, but if he was born a peaceful man, the bombing episode wouldn't change anything. It requires a wholly drastic internalized experience to change a personality 180 degree to the opposite.

A man totally righteous, turned criminal because of his thuggy friends - impossible. Not everybody would forge a cheque even if daily hanging out with petty thieves. Within him must have been the right soil to plant such a deed. No respect to other people's belongings, complete disregard towards justice, cagey, wily, habitual liar, and the like - unless he endured some catastrophe that made the circumstance ready for the crafty crime. Yet 'circumstances' cannot get the blame all the time.

That is what I believe. But I am no shrink. Even they have been very wrong. That way goes my redemption.

 

Complete biographies: Oda Nobunaga Toyotomi Hideyoshi Tokugawa Ieyasu

 

 

 

Oh, Really.

[ Email. Reply to Keith Vyse, 1999. His question was "Can you name any reason why you hate basketball?"]

I don't care about basketball, 'American football', baseball, rugby, racing, scuba-diving, swimming, baywatching, tennis, badminton, fishing, golf, and a good many things in the world except what I love and what I hate.

'Don't care about' is not synonymous with 'to hate', is it? That's only normal, I believe. I don't know why I even bother to answer this question. But it is possible that I love you. So here is what basketball is, to me:

 

 

Did You Say 'Wired' Or 'Weird'?

GETTING ONLINE IN INDONESIA: The Truth by Which You'd Be Forever Grateful for Wherever Else You Are

[ Email. Reply to Richard Wolf, Claude Mathis, Jasmine Bellamy, Roy Junod, Veronica Baran, and Myrna DeFries, 1999. Later also sent as a reply to Christopher Fouts, Garrett King, Margie Laplace, Jan Koschinsky, Andri Kurniawan, etc., 2000; to Tristan Weiss, Phyllis Schmidt, Leif Kjensli, etc., 2001.]

Origins of rainforestwind	Personal memo about online friends
Personal news & events of friends	Pictures & links to personal homepages

 

I don't make any distinction between offline and online stuff. Humans are humans whether in kilobytes or kilograms, although the latter snore like bombers.

Friendship, love, enmity, hatred, distrust, disgust, and so on, are the same exact things no matter where they occur or start.

I recognize the problems that you have mentioned about cyberlives. They are all true.

But consider this - lies, sham, fake identities, bullshit in general, verbosity, silence, sexual harassment, etcetera, happens in the so-called real life every single second of mortal lives.

In the cyberspace these might have been enhanced, not in quality but just in frequency.

A bad lie is a bad lie. Do you seriously want me to believe that such an untalented liar then all of a sudden becomes an expert, subtle deceiver, online? Come on. That notion is against all the principles of evolution.

There are such things as a very quiet offline person who can't shut up online, but this is rare. Really. If you want to use the word 'always', it only applies to the movies.

Outside the probability of technical problems - viruses, getting my computer jammed, and the like - I have to say that nothing online scares me. Not the entities there, certainly. I can positively say that since I haven't been hanging out in communities where stalkers and rapists and such might be present in hordes.

Online communities are not some invincible perfect webs as in a stupid science-fiction story. Virtually all of them are clear statements. No one could force you to enter if your thing isn't what the particular club, list, site, group, caters to. They are not to blame for any cluelessness that infects certain surfers.

I'm not coming from a technologically advanced nation, and here in Indonesia no more than a few percent of the population had ever gotten wired. I only started to have what you call an 'online life' in 1996; not a long time by any standard. But I think I can say that, based on what I have had, you could tell the difference between one cyberperson from another. That is not an inapplicable theory. Isn't the only way for you to know that X isn't a reliable person and Y is honest in 'real life' is something that you come to know from experience? This principle is at work, too, online. After a while, just by their first sentences you would be able to determine the entity's personality. The way they open a conversation or what topic is it that they choose would tell you what they are. Often this first knowledge is gained simply by knowing their online ID. For example, I automatically block access or close the communication line when someone named 'teenclitorissnm' opens a chat. According to my experience, rather naive ID's ('naive' here means real name, place of dwelling, month of birth, numbers attached in their license plates or front doors, etcetera) usually belong to someone stupid or greenhorns. Meaningless or unreadable ID's often belong to introverts or chronic liars trying to hide from their wives.

But careful here. Certainly it takes one to know one, just like it is offline. A friend of mine, for instance, immediately shuns someone named 'wilde_s_infanta', thinking that this entity must be a nymphomaniac or something, because he doesn't know (Oscar) Wilde - English author - and consequently never heard of 'The Infanta' - one of Wilde's masterpieces. Similarly my utter disgust at baseball (sorry to be honest about this) had once prevented me from a virtual handshake with 'babe_yankees'. As far as I'm concerned Babe Ruth doesn't exist.

Cranks and crackpots, criminals and adventurers, the mentally deranged and the insane, are of course swarming there like tropical mosquitoes. But I don't think any of them is smart enough to fake everything for long. Just suspend trust for a while, but to distrust entirely and indiscriminately is, I believe, very unhealthy.

Even lies tell something about the liars. The great things in life happen offline and online alike. I believe that.

To me both worlds are parallel.

It is known that they, too, at times overlap and merge into some other thing.

The opposite is of course also there. Just stay conscious and don't use office computers too much to download nude Lolitas. Pornographic sites always find a way to tracelessly stalk you back home. Really. Bon voyage.

 

 

 

Defense Not Needed

[Online posting, 1999. A fierce polemic over Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, American authors c. 1920's. Slobodan Milosevic is the Balkan 'ethnic cleanser', enemy of the Bosnians. Noel Coward is a celebrated British dramatist.]

It goes without even thinking that your taste in reading is yours truly, and that the United Nations currently doesn't assemble the powers of the world to form a tribunal of crimes against such an inalienable right (Slobodan Milosevic might have been one of the perpetrators) doesn't mean no one deserves harassment for what he or she does or doesn't read.

But to dislike what anybody else reads is also a right.

Please don't get so evasive whenever you encounter the question. Wanting to look oh-so-wide (as in horizon), to appear unquestionably all-encompassing, to sound very learned and tolerant and wise - all of these are in my humblest opinion very unwise. We are only human. If we are capable of one emotion we surely can feel exactly the opposite. Even the Nobel Prize, even the Pulitzer, literary merit is something human - being human means judging with the apparatus called brain and feelings - those are subjective.

It doesn't matter if 5,000,000 subjective opinions that happen to be the same is against one subjective judgment; number doesn't intimidate those who don't attach any particular value in it. I happen to be a member of this league.

X's message here at the club's board, which surprisingly has incited so many angry replies from other members, is against me, too, if we identify ourselves with whatever and whoever we like. But not only he was rightfully doing it; he was, in a way, also right. Deification is a dangerous business, ladies and gentlemen, anywhere at all, in any subject. The authors we might have revered so are not without flaws. Moreover, X didn't criticize them - he merely said what we, actually or should, have known to be facts.

Did I say 'revered'? If so, I would have been a complete outsider. I only like the authors. I like Parker because she is likeable by mammalian instincts of my inclination - she's a sharp, smart, cynical, sad, comedienne. Benchley isn't my sort of reading but the two shared the same atmosphere and mainstream. They are not 'high reading'. The subjectivism employed by literary judges we have accepted the authority of has delivered that verdict against them. They are, in a sense, mediocre. I like Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, English jester), and Noel Coward does, even though we know he is even obscurer than Parker. I like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., whose novels are to X 'subway reading'. I like Roald Dahl, against people's insistence that he should have only written for children. These authors, like Parker and Benchley, don't need, no matter what we think, defense. To me all of them have the command upon linguistic so inimitable by me, and that is enough to consider them good, but in any occasion I would not defend them against something which was not even an 'attack' as some of us have taken it to be, but a laddling out of some old facts.

Even if you deify the authors, I would like to say this: fanatics and fundamentalists and other such wackos always insist that God cannot even defend Himself. They kill to ensure His safety from infidels. And this kind of war isn't just against other people, but also against commonsense.

 

 

 

Colors of the Collars

[ Email. Reply to Kenneth Sand, 'Angelica', and Chris Chapman, 2000.]

SEE ALSO: My Job How I Do It

True, I have never known what it is like to get paid for manual jobs. I have never waited tables, washing dishes, peddling vacuum cleaners, painting fences, assembling cars, etcetera, for a wage or salary.

But I also have never woken up to go to an office in the morning. I have never known the feeling as one personnel among two hundred in a small cubicle.

Frankly, I am tired of explaining what I am. But I will once more try.

First of all, to use the common categorization, you were right: I am a white-collared worker. That means I don't do things literally with my hands, like, for instance, sawing planks. I call activities like that a hobby.

What I do is reading, typing, and yelling on the phone. SERIOUSLY. I read seriously, I type seriously, I yell seriously, so everybody must take this seriously, too, to be fair to me.

When I say my job is, basically, around writing, automatically it means something different from the line "I work in a Sony factory".

How?

Even when and if no one pays me to write, I write. A person whose job is to glue together some parts of a walkman stops doing it when he or she is no longer paid to do it.

A writer, painter, sculptor, singer, songwriter, dancer, and so on, are my 'colleagues', i.e. we share the similar condition.

So there is a problem, because I can never say - and those persons of my league can never say either - whether I am or I am not "working". It is a bit complicated in my job, because I write and I also translate and edit other people's manuscripts - the latter parts are what I call 'a job'. Someone pays me to do it on a regular basis. While writing essays and so forth are my - WHAT? Life. There is no other word, my friends.

The person who solders the Sony walkman parts can't say that is his or her life. A part-timer, for instance a poet who also be a waiter, and a songwriter who walks people's dogs for pay, cannot claim the same, either.

I have told you how miserable financially to be an artist etc. in my country today. True. But I can live. My buddies, painters and such, can live.

How?

Because we have a life. So we live. If you are good, at least in this country you can live like us. I and the nearby artists sometimes get really stone-broke. But always a time comes when someone needs us. We don't go out from door to door offering services. We only sit at home smoking and playing with the cats - jobs come by themselves. An artist will get collectors, art dealers, or event organizers visiting the studio or dwelling. Someone like me will get calls to speak in some public discussion, deliver a paper in a seminar, or to write a preface for a book, or to translate something into English or Indonesian, and so forth. If offers don't come, we still do 'work'. We can't help it.

So we always do work and do not work.

A luxury?

Yes, in this prosaic life; but we are only luckier, that's all, to have what usually is called a 'talent'. A 'talented Sony walkman assembler' is something I have never heard of. That's another difference between me and him or her.

Commonly, white-collared workers can imagine what the blue-collared do - but not the other way around.

Sure, if a CEO is put in a death camp and in the meantime told to work in the garage, he or she would get into trouble - but if a carpenter is told to paint or play music or write for a living he wouldn't even know where to start or what he needs.

Just because you have never known someone like me before, doesn't mean I haven't known anyone like me, either.

Please don't get prejudiced. This is an explanatory letter. It is all true. You are very welcome to come checking it out.

Mind you, I will never say the blue-collared jobs are worse than, or lesser in rank compared to, white-collared jobs. The two are merely different. Other white-collared jobs and my job are also only different. I just tried to tell you how different.

 

 

 

Yes I'll Make War For This

[ Email. Reply to Gordon Stanton, 2000.]

I believe in football, which you infidels call soccer. I believe in jazz and rock, which you heathens call obsolete. I believe in animation films, mangas and comic books which you unbelievers call childish. I believe in rhythm guitars as long as it is James Hetfield and Everlast, which you catcallers dub non-playing. I believe in Indonesia, which you outsiders call a stagnant log in a lair - Oh, yes, sir, I'd wage wars for these things and several others.

I believe in love, in destiny and commitments; I believe in talents and not unlimited freedom of expression; I believe in God and occasionally seafood. Well - I know you are smiling reading this, thinking oh poor li'l girl she's so into trivia - but still I'm not going to secede. There is no law that says you cannot love Mad magazine while at the same time talking of politics in a seminar. And I mean loving it, sir - My colleague Dr. D never ceases to say "I love Miles Davis" while all he has ever done was hearing the tunes inside his car transmitted in-between commercial breaks by a radio station - he never listened. Rob B. always says he loves Arsenal Football Club (London's greatest) while he cannot name the usual starters. ('Starters' are the whole 11 players in the line up who are going to play the game from the first minute). Zach H. will always tell us he loves animation films though he never knows Geri's Game, let alone why it won an Oscar; he doesn't even know Wallace and Gromit and who created them. Eileen C. loves Ryan Giggs (David Beckham's tandem in Manchester United) and never knows that he isn't British. Julia L. wrote "I love Indonesia" while she never knows the country is not Bali.

I know what I love, sir, I know what I don't; I'd make wars for those I do and won't use my Uzi against those that I don't without any reason.

I wish everybody are guitar players, animation movie makers, comic book writers, footballers, but of course this runs directly against my belief that probably God exists - so I don't push it.

Remember what Brian said yesterday in the (chat) room? "I'll kill anyone who ridicules Ella Fitzgerald". That is love, but it isn't my kind of love. Because I would listen first to insults before retorting and/or grabbing some weapons heavily nucleared. And I will concede the truths therein.

Take Man.Utd. (Manchester United) for example - if it plays worse than even the Indonesian Best Players, I would say so and won't dispute evaluations to that direction. It does play really bad from time to time. James Hetfield is my idea of a rock singer, but I also will agree to opinions that his voice is 'too light', that he can't play lead guitars and he is almost sinfully shy in public if not singing. I agree that Lee Ritenour (jazz guitarist) is incapable of rendering 'real jazz', Japanese animes are either too violent and/or pornographic, 99% of comic books suck and David Beckham sometimes dresses worse than a bum via being extravagant.

But I will wage war against whosoever thinks that smooth jazz is not jazz, that Man. Utd. cheats when it wins fairly and squarely, that Beckham doesn't have the right to do whatever he pleases with his own hair. I will wage war against whosoever criticizes Indonesia without knowing anything about it.

And all in all I always ridicule whatever and whomever I love, so actually the two jobs are already taken care of by myself at once, and this should have prevented arguments.