Phantom Deli

Sketches

Emails

Journal entries

Instant Tyrants

2000

Check out:

This April Mob

The Most Ridiculous Riot in Indonesian History.

It is so easily done, that the Department of Employment would not acknowledge it as a job. Tougher occupations like shoe-polishing and insurance-selling are recognized as something you do for a living, but when you do tyrannical things and not much else then you are, strictly speaking, very much leisured. That could be why tyrants almost always think that they deserve charity.

Because a tyrant be, not just do. You be you and you do sell insurance policies to the bunch of the beguiled. "I work as a....." versus "I am a.....".

It is so easily done, that nobody noticed that we all are instant tyrants whenever the climate permits. Mobocracy means not much else.

Ojai Blue
(Analysis Of Pain)

2000

Check out:

First Rain

You know what it is like. Something inside howled so loud you were afraid somebody already called the cops.

As if it mattered. Because it simply did not. Pain is a big banyan tree with roots so deep nothing could bring it down. It was not the pop-song pain. Time heals not, time certainly heals not, and you were inside the Pandora box, you could not open the door and kick it out.

It is the pain that is alive and kicking.

You know what it is like. Laying down in the darkest of all nights, it hurt you so much tears could not swim down your eyes. You were pain itself. It took you over. It became a universe, it held you tight like skin and it swallowed you up at the same time. You have stopped wondering what was it all about. Was it the clown that failed to make you laugh was it the sonofagun that left you out was it the passing of the chilling memories was it what.

As if it mattered. Because it simply did not. Whether you ceased enquiring or continued the asking pain was there and it would not hear your brain. Nothing would ever cure the wounds you have got along the way into that day. It was not that you were bleeding or something. It was a century old scar that never got dried.

It is your soul that is drained.

You know what it is like. Once in a while you wished for someone who knows that too. You went searching half-heartedly and only at the wrong nooks of planet misery. Empty-handed you came back home, empty-headed by the time it was twelve hours after noon. It added depth to the well of pain, you hardly could mention its name again.

As if it mattered. Because it simply did not.

Yet one night out of the millions you heard that sound, the windowpane rattled and a ghost slipped in. It followed the scream you screamed, it knew where to look. You asked it to dance and the phantom sang. It was a clear little song, you saw your fears and sorrow died down, and as the ghost went out the window at dawn you realized that your soul too was gone.

Joyride Underground

2001

Check out:

Soul Tattoos

History of Indonesian Literature, Fine Arts, Movies & Television

When I was, like, six, a weekly magazine called Bobo catered to the needs of junior citizens of my country (ID). It still exists now, but the format has radically changed into something that resembles leaflets I got from the shopping mall. Anyway, those days there was a story put on the back cover of the magazine, a chronicle of the life of an earthworm. Yuck. Sure. But this was a pink earthworm, wearing a black hat and half of a tuxedo.

The worm's house was of course underground. He has a nice living room with a fireplace and Dresden porcelain statuettes. His kitchen was ideal, his bedroom was dreamlike, and he rode a small red Corvette through the underground traffic.

I have never told this to anyone (because nobody before you prompted me to), but this worm had made my dream house. At the peak of my childhood fantasy was this dream: one day perhaps an underground highway and small roads and such would enable underground creatures to occasionally connect with each other. The advent of the internet has in a way made it happen.

I was made to love my home. This doesn't mean location, this doesn't involve geography, this only necessitates the procuring of an address. Anywhere is the same as long as it is my place. 'Home' is, as you have known, any place you dwell in for some time.

That guy who called himself Largo Winch [can't be but a pseudonym; 'Largo Winch' is an American comic book character] talked long and winding about 'the underground living' last Friday -- funny that it got me into this today while I didn't really listen to him.

Living underground is, as you can easily see, not a threat to any society (don't mix terrorism up with this; there is a limit).

So what is this underground thing?

It is a life based on being at home in both senses. An underground life doesn't know your sentences like "I'm going home next weekend", "My parents are at home", "I left the wallet at home". Those are 'home' in its literal sense. This life doesn't know "I wish I were home" either - it can't be at all if you don't feel at home.

Do worms and moles leave the society above the ground? Unfortunately they still can't though some of them really want to. So they also work to earn money, because money keeps this home alive. But these entities work at home (literally), and the division between 'home' and 'work' doesn't exist there underground.

Contact is minimum, in consequence compromise is also minimum. Fashion doesn't mean a thing. Mainstream means only the river's.

They dig (inward) rather than fly (away), this requires a high degree of being at ease and at peace with oneself. If you hate being alone because you don't want to confront the things within yourself that you hide in the crowd from, underground living is not your thing.

I have to underline this requirement again: the mentally-troubled is not welcome.

The underground people might be eccentric but they wouldn't be there for long if they are either depressed or insane.

I don't see anyone as having the right to ask me to proof anything; I don't campaign for votes to sustain my way of life. But just for the sake of an argument consider the fact that I can live (and have lived) above the ground and above the clouds, yet my option is underground. No one forces me to do it, and this includes myself. A conman on the lam is forced to go underground, you see; a moron fearing mental hospitals do, too; you know what I mean. Some others hide from themselves there.

Yet, only the sane stays underground, and why, because they have what it takes to overcome problems by themselves. They might need human companions, too, once in a while. But they don't push it.

And what I have already said a million times before: there is a vast difference between 'alone' and 'lonely'.

Only Fire Flies
In Manhattan

2001

Footnotes:

Titled after Umar Kayam's best book, A Thousand Fireflies In Manhattan,
published in the early seventies. Kayam is an Indonesian author, native Yogyanese.

SMS: Short Messaging Service - instant messenger via cellphones, enabling texts to travel that way. In 2001 it was a fashion to most people rather than a useful service it was intended by God to be. So they kept sending anything anytime and cellphone servers were consequently often jammed and even broke down overloaded.

Jack Kerouac: American poet of the so-called 'Beat Generation', a movement spurred mainly by artistic exponents of the Greenwich Village in the seventies.

Check out:

Indonesia & the aftermath
of 9/11

Patriots (and Scuds)

Earth, Wind, Fire & Flood

Indonesia & the U.S. of A

I, Too, Maybe
Sing America

Dreams Ain't Made of
What Is

Blitz

It's too creepy even for me. Only less than two weeks ago I got mad at being seen as 'the Talibans' by someone who didn't even know where Afghanistan is; then all of a sudden the Talibans got so in vogue that even the most geographically-challenged wouldn't be able to stay ignoramus - I'm still coping with this 'premonition' and I will need some more time to digest the change of season.

Nine times a night have passed now. On September 11, in bed, in the dark, I got a phone message from PR: "Guys! Turn on the TV, they blow up the WTC!". He, albeit having passed the fortieth birthday a few years ago and having been so highly perching on the ladder of art-selling success, used to annoy me by his indifferent dispatch of SMS jokes to all people whose numbers are registered in his cellphone - so I deleted the message and wondered if he'd ever grow up. This was reckless of me, but PR didn't only watch the flop Godzilla but also loved the gigantic summer blunder - how do you think I was to believe such a creature?

Then E called me and asked which TV station was that because she did turn hers on and got nothing about the World Trade Center at all. Only then I did the same and of course none of the upset receivers of PR's message could have been knowing that he told the truth: he's the only one rich enough to get hooked to the CNN.

Hours gone by before the late news came on our Indonesian stations - they keep replaying the scene over and over until today. The most horrific live reporting I've ever seen. It is bad enough without Mom's impromptu senility in asking me if nobody got hurt there in (God knows how heartbreaking Mom was) Missouri.

Our domestic tranquility (which has never been to begin with) was undone completely by these terrorists - my sister is going to live exactly there after new year, while now the picture gets increasingly scary between us and the USA. I wonder if they'd let her enter at all - not impossible, a cancellation of the visa; if you are American I guess you can't get too cautious after this.

People that I know (and all that I don't) have earnestly grieved for the country that they never before could symphatize with. Too much was lost, and death is death even if it's American - that's perhaps what they have thought. And it is America for God's sake; if New York turns into rubbles what can possibly befall the rest of us here?

Now I'm groping my way through the emotionally oppressing week and the road looks so bad ahead. Some have already given up mourning and let the sudden solidarity evaporated into what it was before this calamity; the son of George Bush has virtually given them no choice. With the preparation to invade Afghanistan he had turned on the alarm in our minds. I forced myself to get up and went with E to some borrowed time online; I met some people both in and outside my list of cyberpals and they're just as distraught.

The German SW said he was in the U.S. on September 11. He told us how amazing the aftermath was - "For the first time in my life I saw Americans being nationalists." I suspect that he had rather enjoyed that.

FG was in L.A., he was on vacation before the next assignment and actually the WTC and Pentagon hit didn't impress him much. I was a bit mad at him for that. Of course for a man who's probably been witnessing scores of Africans dying in battlefields in vain civil wars and as refugees in sorry camps out of the lack of basic services violence must be nothing new and it has lost the power to shock - yet this was America (oh, I will keep saying so) - can't he get just a little more humane to get surprised at least?

The online conference was new to me (the first after a long time of absence there) because of the topic that got stretched into international politics and that against my wish I have agreed to V's suggestion to invite people we didn't know at all - as a result of her passion to invigorate controversies, there's an entity who said he's a Jakartanese and got into a nasty exchange of words with someone from Idaho. His English was good, which made me disbelieving that he is Indonesian though his views clearly are trade-marked here. So maddening sometimes, the inevitable anonymity on cyberspace.

I'm not interested in the political implications of the Black September - not now, while my head is full of personal effects it might generate. I left the room, V said she would save the discussion transcript and send it to me soon.

Indonesians have been going to Manhattan since time immemorial; I have no idea where the money came from but it's surely none of the domestic purses. Artists, writers, assorted intellectuals and cranks and crackpots must have been there still on September 11. Several distant cousins and such of my Mom's are American citizens and have been living in the crevices of New York even after their addiction to Jack Kerouac has waned - them alone and the fact that one of the planes that grilled the WTC carried an Indonesian passenger makes this event our business. My uncle Paul works for the NYPD. I don't want to imagine what would happen if the infuse of nationalism there gives birth to random retaliation directed to inhabitants of foreign origins, whether they have green cards or just a limited validity of visas - since the Indonesians there, except my Mom's DNA-sharers, are Muslims. Religion wouldn't mean anything though as long as you got the distinct non-caucasian physical characteristics - this would be the scariest development.

It wouldn't take long for the whole world to churn when Bush's troops land there in Afghanistan. The right-wingers of the Muslims would promptly dig up the tomahawk, the moderates would condemn this as wrong diplomacy, the rest would only get scared. Now about me - what about me? The European Union had never differed from the USA in fundamental issues. While some of the tentacles of terror were discovered being nowhere else but Hamburg -- the spot I got everything to do with! I'm really mad at these inconsiderate terrorists! Couldn't they just spread themselves over some zero-populated arctic area?

I'm not certain of how this would affect me personally, but I got to get restless from here on since paranoia is with those caucasian nations a habit even if unprovoked. While now they have every reason to be so.

Or Else
You Wouldn't
Call It A Rose

2001

Footnote:

Marlies Spiessbürger: not her real name. It's a fictitious name I always use to call a paragon of wholesome ugliness, stupidity or anything just as bad, in my essays. 'Spiessbuerger' is a German word that means, more or less, 'shallow'.

It really tickled the worst in me to hear that Marlies Spiessbürger dragged her colossal hips and anxiety larger than life to the court to keep her last name after the divorce.

Names. Beautiful subject. I don't want to get redundant, but obviously I sometimes have to: maiden name, last name, family name, there is no such a thing for a good many people in the world. Now for the rest of the population it has been around for ages.

But even to them I would say this: there's a man in Hong Kong that has legally changed his name to Dot Com. Why? He's never liked the name he had to sign credit card slips with. Why? He wasn't the one who named him that. Why? He was a mere eleven inches long protein-based life form when he was named. Just peek a bit. Other people gave us our names. Not ourselves. It is practical, alright, it keeps the bureaucracy tidy, certainly, but does it make sense as far as individuality goes, as far as personality goes, as far as the ego roams, no way. We are deprived of the right to name ourselves. Of course we can change that, but only later in life.

Now, what if you were christened Adolf Hitler? You, exactly the second you were born, have already been caged by your legal father's name -- a name that he might resent himself. That's about the so-called last name. If he hates your biological mother enough, he could get a great chance to release by naming you something utterly disgusting. That's the so-called first name. What can you do, at the time? Nothing. Nothing about your first name, nothing about your last name. Then you grow up. You marry a man. You take his last name.

See where it's at? An arbitrary process ends, i.e. the so-called maiden name, another arbitrary process starts, i.e. the so-called "new family name".

Last names signify a sense of belonging, alright. It's the mark on the cow's butt. When Miss Dorky X gets married and becomes Mrs. Dorky Y, nothing changes from this point of view but the letters. Even if she simply be Dorky, period, still it's not her that Dorky-ed her so-called self. Only if she chooses to name herself Porky this case ends. Online ID, which functions like the so-called real name, on the other side of the plate, are the thing that should be applied in the so-called Real Life.

For the sake of practical legal-bureaucratic stuff I accept the practice of naming persons like we have now. But at the core of it, this verbose part is what I really think of it. Who said anything about originality? My word is authenticity. Let's get pop. Madonna first. Ronaldo in planet football. Now tell me that you don't get what I'm trying to say and I'd have to shoot myself.

Enter Sandman

2002

Footnote:

Gaius Caesar Augustus Caligula (12-41 AD),
one of the worst Roman emperors.

It is beyond me why, even if you can't live without commonplace romanticism, you invariably choose to victimize the most prosaic thing of all - sleep. This perfectly natural state of being, respectfully distanced from the unnatural disorder of poetry, has been made one of the cultural products that I believe should have been spared for only the creatures deserving capital punishment.

"I want to wake all night watching you sleep", said zillions of pop songs; echoed by every pseudo-communication that is horrendously mistaken as statements of love, through the ages.

If I have assassinated every President of the United States, or submerged the entire chunk of Australia, then I probably deserve hearing such trash so often in all languages - although that kind of verdict is debatable and as a matter of justice everybody ought to get saved from hearing it in German, no matter for what crime.

A sleeping human is the most unpleasant sight on earth, except perhaps some nuclear dumpster. And not content with saturating nice, clean pillows with uncouth saliva, the sleeper would also be unresponsive to any remote-controller - you can't push the 'mute' button to end the snore.

And if you have ever let yourself get punished for nothing to happen to see an undersexed Polish lunatic sleeping, you would, I'm sure, share this view that is now still of a minority.

This should be added to the collage we call human rights. A sleeping cat is blissful to glance at - a sleeping human is a blessing not to have even heard of. I can understand why Caligula wanted so much to make his horse a consul.

Fevernova

2002

Footnotes:

Fevernova: The name of the ball used at the World Cup 2002 (May-June) hosted by Korea and Japan. Adidas won the right to be the official
supplier over Nike.

Luis Figo: FIFA's best footballer worldwide in 2001, Portuguese striker.

David Beckham: Second best footballer worldwide in 2001, English midfielder and captain of the team.

Raul: Third best footballer worldwide in 2001, Spanish striker. Full name Raul Gonzales, one of the myriad professional football players who have discarded last names on the field - a reasonable fashion. The first practitioners were naturally the most well-known and/or universally said as best. Virtually all Brazilian players only use their first names. Other examples are Portuguese striker Nuno (Gomes), Turkish goalie Rustu (Recber) - half of his country's national team do the same - and the ones that never get anywhere: every Indonesian footballer.

Iker Casillas: Spanish goalkeeper.

To begin with, Adidas was stupid enough to call the ball Fevernova -- a giddy overall impression is what it emanates, and nothing whatever else. This might be because Adidas is German. But if being German is a valid excuse for everything ludicrous, we would be left with no use of the word 'idiot'. I wouldn't have that.

I've been watching the ball used everyday in every occasion of this 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan. Luis Figo was unable to handle it upon tackling, David Beckham couldn't control it in freekicks, Raul found it difficult to keep it aground when challenged, Iker Casillas often got it slipping off his clutch. This ball is definitely too bouncy and its only merit is it flows on heavy torrent of rain - but this is catastrophic for half of the players on the pitch. That Fevernova behaves better when it comes to the Korean and German teams is obviously a demerit for the rest of the human race.

Gosh, I've never ever imagined that I could so agree about anything with Nike!

School Kittens
2002

PICTURES: YOGYA & JAVA

SEE ALSO:
Real-life schooling in Indonesia (with pictures)

I am happy today for something that has nothing to do with me: the people of Sawur village, Sawahan, Ponjong sub-district, Gunung Kidul district, Yogya, had bought 75 tables and 152 chairs for their own Elementary School. They got the money from the collective piggy-bank since March.

This is nicotine money.

The students' parents who smoke had cut two dollars off their budget for cigarettes each month (on average they used to spend around ten bucks). So while there is an NGO working there (the Global Education Partner) and some fund was gotten from General Electric, the people had apparently given grants to themselves, too.

C is a native Gunung Kidul person, and her kid enters Elementary School this semester. The 7 year-old girl refused to go to school in the mother's village, "It is dirty and looking bad!". So C paid 25 dollars to enroll her into a public Elementary near here instead.

The Sawur village is a backwater (more precisely waterless) spot perching on stone hills. Most of the populace are dry field farmers, shepherds, and commuting construction workers. Highest monthly income is less than US$ 50.00. A pack of cigarettes means 30 to 50 cents.

I'm thinking about K's boy - who turned 7 last April but can't go to school because his dad is literally homeless and his so-called mom can't get customers if the kid is around - I talked about this with C this afternoon and I told her I'm afraid if the boy doesn't go to school this year he would stay out of school forever - this will form a habit, not going to school, even if one day K could afford to pay for the tuition.

Yet I'm not the Queen of England and it is insane to expect K to stop smoking.....It is the only joy in his life for all we have known.

I'm still happy but I frown.

Phantom Deli

Email, reply to Betsy Clark, 2003

MY JOB

Footnotes:

A 'ghostwriter' is someone who writes for someone else, about what this other person wishes to say, whose end result will be published under his or her name. The ghostwriter's signature will be nowhere in the finished essay or book.

Examples of this sort of arrangement are too many to count; the practice might have been initiated by the Medieval times' moneyed patrons of arts. Actors and actresses, statespersons, or simply anybody who wants to pseudowrite something he or she can claim as his or her own, and are willing to pay for it, are sustained by ghostwriters. Just one instance, Hillary Rodham Clinton hired a ghostwriter for 'her book' It Takes A Village.

Ghostwriters are not employed just for 'auto'biographies -- even books on education, social sketches, etcetera are common projects to them. The only genre I have never heard of is poetry -- perhaps because it's unimaginable to pay someone else to compose 'your' poems for public perusal. Yet, in interpersonal cases, often for romantic reasons, people have been hiring ghostwriters to make 'their' poems dedicated to some objects of affection.

Check out:

My job or so

How I write

I know how filthy this might be in some circles. You've tried your very best to coat it, but, well -- darned if I couldn't read you after these long long years! ;-P

Mr. X was not the first and wouldn't be the last. It simply is a matter of cheques that I cater to this species' need of turning out something 'their own' via my keyboards -- life, my dear, is a dense badly written essay. I need cat food.

But I never take just any client for ghostwriting. Really. It's not a quickly concocted alibi.

Mr. X, for instance -- he does have some ideas, stuff of which I can call his own, even if this only comes because I don't recognise the sources he might have mined for those. And he does not possess the tools to construct something out of and around those ideas. These two are basic elements to need a ghostwriter. I will never, ever, take a client who gives me nothing but his vacant head. I swear this to you and push me into the Thames if I break it.

In January 2002 I forced him to write something by himself, which he finished in 7 weeks, an essay two pages long, and I really couldn't see the head nor tail of it even after the twentieth reading or so. I got a long talk with him then, after which I wrote down what he had in mind, 10 pages of this and that and so on, which I finished in 4 hours or so. Now the process has become simpler. Since I always require some written input from him, Mr. X gradually got the thing going towards intelligibility -- today I can just rewrite the essays he wants to publish, without having to pester him for "what, actually, do you try to say here?!!"

What stands between a common writer and ghostwriting is simply Pride. But to me it is largely misapprehended.

My pride lays in the fact that I can write and Mr. X cannot. That's why he hires me, to begin with. Mr. X, as you know it, is 46 year old, a respectable name in fine art, a successful dealer and sharp-eyed curator -- his only weakness is he can't explain why he chooses this or that artist and so and such artworks -- a fatal weakness for a curator. So, it's almost an 'honor' to make things up to cover this weakness -- my, no matter how you might despise it, job.

Some people I know find it outrageous in the way you see it so; they keep asking me "But how do you feel when he got all the credits for what you write? How can you let that?"

I happen to be, today, in that sort of happening. Mr. X's 20 pages of fine art, published just the other day, receive louder appraisal than usual -- and he lets me know whenever someone said "It's really a good writing" -- a line delivered by hordes of journalists, fellow curators, gallery managers, artists, and authors he's been meeting. He, I think, wants me to feel it as also my writing; as a sort of collaborative work, or such, just between him and I and the gatepost, although my name is never in there. A noble gesture, this. I appreciate it. But I told him, "It's your essay. I'm glad they like it."

Because, it is his essay, although probably I would have refrained from saying so before the cheque got into my hands. It is not my writing. I have no interest whatever in talking about how to manage a contemporary art museum, or what makes a certain artist's works good! Mr X does! So, how can it be mine?

I assign no exaggerated value on my ghostwriting outcomes. Even less than how I view my own works, for the reason I've just outlined. Whatever I have written is no longer of any significant meaning to me, once it was launched; you can imagine how utterly gone is an essay I wrote for someone else to sign.

And, I repeat, I only take likeable clients. I know how presumptuous this sounds, but -- yes, I aim at 'teaching' them to write on their own.

Mr. Y, for example, has done his own essays by himself since March this year, after being my client for 3 or 4 years; I'm happy about that.

Even some keyboards for hire has other sources of satisfaction besides the money. I hope this vindicates me.