touching the simulacra

While I am writing for pleasure, I don’t even know or feel the true torrential sadness that actually happens. The failure of conferences in Oslo and Madrid that made Lebanon bombarded of course is not a slump. Systematically drawn from embedded hatred, it is now not only in between the two countries, but between personal identities, spiritualities. When the velocity of identification spread, we will easily fall for either, since in accepting stereotype or slogan people doesn’t need to delve for more. Musthafa A Rahman stated two rivalries in the recent conflict:

*US, Israel, and Arabian countries pro to Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, like Mesir, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordania (better known as non-rouge countries for US, but well, recent terrorists even came from Mesir and Kuwait. I guess label doesn’t show the truth then)

*New power groups that see there is no place for Israel in the middle east (mention a few: Hezbollah (remind you that they are helped by Ahmadinejad’s Iran), Islamic Jihad, and recently Hamas, inherited the struggle of Yasser Arafat who had a Christian wife.)

The ‘stereotype’ that I’m talking about is believing that the first group always be associated to the conservative Republican US and the second one with Hasan Nasarullah’s “that Hezbollah’s war against Israel represents all ummat (recently defined as Arabs and all Moslem), Hezbollah’s victory will be also all ummat’s victory.”

The question is, should Christian, in other part of the world, never even seen and touched the real blood of the Arabian people should be grouped into the first one. And should all Moslem be put into the second one? Just by grasping the simulacra made by media, and transfer the ‘outside’ hatred into our own neighborhood?

These kind of identifications does not affect our real lives. Should we prioritizing giving sort of money to Palestine instead of helping the uneducated children in the east Indonesia, just because they are (widely known as) Christians? Or should we pray and fanaticize Israel and not praying for Lebannon in our Sunday sermons just because those people are Moslems, not realizing that the same kind of flesh of children are killed?

But, of course, it is our choice to identify ourselves globally, asided the geographical borders and put religion first. Anyhow, the duddest deed of all is meshing the name of our identity as the ‘universal value’ instead of put the real ‘universal value’, human rights, on its supposed throne. Since Christianity is not a value, neither does Islam. They’re just names, and the same greatness of quality of values inside those names, I believe, is not something uncanny for those who respect.

carrot cake

Carrot cake wasn’t as strange as what I had imagined since nurtured by Bobo comic strips. The one I got, It was coated with melted white sugar (like the one you have in Dunkin Donuts) and the meat was really stuffy with fat, soft grind, and chopped carrots. Talked about the first round with a feminism topic that would ban women above 45 to have assisted pregnancy (hmm…how old was Sarah Jessica Parker when she got pregnant then?). I had this chauvinist sexist Berlin dumb dark blond guys from Berlin, who were keep on laughing during the round. Just imagine, if an existentialist feminist from the department (you name it, mbak Gadis, whoever) was there, I was sure, her heels will chop off the guys’ luscious lips. I am not a feminist, though. But, de jure-ly, I beat them, however. After that, the round with two yuppies slash junkies from Los Angeles. The big guy, who associated the last episode of Star Wars with proponent’s proposal about Japan in the Security Council, but without veto. Useless and Lame. Loved him. And after the round, two Hong Kong girls said that Hu Jintao didn’t allow his people to access any international news, however, these girls could grab it by deceiving the intel. Hmm.I felt better in my geographical and institutional position where I am in. Free information, domesticated guys who will not dare to laugh on feminism issues, women who choose to be domesticated. Unexpectedly yummy, just like a carrot cake.

-University College Dublin, Thursday, December 31st 2005-

philosopher and cosmologist

Philosophers use their assumptions and knotting the social juices. Scientists go through formulas in their had and assume. And they arrive at the same conclusion. Perhaps we have told about the conclusion. Some people choose to believe it, and fight for it in the name of it. Some others checked it, because the conclusion cannot be referenced.

social activists and the cosmologist

The activists will cure the world straightforwardly and in a periodic time of history with a certain paradigm. And when one paradigm is changed with another, their function will also be reversed. And we know that paradigm has always changed during the history. Scientists will build fragment to fragment to valuable rope connected the earth with the cause, endlessly, but not straightforwardly.

on the earth or in the universe

Einstein said that a mass is moved through the rail of time and place. When Newton thought that it is because of gravitation, Einstein brought it into a more succumbed level. 

Why I said so? Because in the track of time and place, you cannot escape, and you as a mass not being pulled up by a secular sensed energy called gravitation. Instead, you are destined to be there. In a rail of time and place made for you. The question still, what made it, who made it, or how it was made. 



Then Hawking come to say that the rail can be made endlessly and can’t be cut off from its spur because of an extremely big concentrated mass. When a big mass of a star is concentrated, like a bullet bulk in your stirred milk, all particles around it will circle around it, and nothing can escape. Including the speed of lights, and the light itself. It is like the planets moving around the sun. It is destined. 

Then, Hawking called it black hole. Black, just like the life itself, you can’t escape being stirred.

But then, Hawking followed up his theory and came with this concept, the Hawking radiation. It said that some energy will escape and stretch the time and place around them to be relative and not vanished, even if the concentrated star starts to lose itself and vapor with the clinging energy around it. This energy on the tip of the circling movement is the Hawking radiation. 

The concept is almost the same with Einstein’s relativity. That is when you are pushed into the speed of light, the time will be relative. 

It also resembles the law of evolution I think. Ones who push to the tip of assumptions and routine will survive.

melt

And excitements melt spotlessly into the used-brownish sugar in the bottom of a coffee cup. I side them coyly with a spoon, but I know I will not sip it into my mouth. That’s how it goes with my so called ‘network’ numbers on my phone. Droning. You know, the sound of the keypad is droning, monotonous. Goes along through four hundred something numbers. If I could slosh them off, then how many numbers left, that’s the question. Tonight, none. When I’m longing for a cup of coffee and a conversation, I must be satisfied enough with mister Cole’s stardust, entomb my utopic mood. Let it away just like a smitting smoke from an ended cigarette. Melt. What a murky present I get tonight. Don’t remind me that I am not good at making and maintaining a network. I don’t care about my friends’ birth date, that’s the first. And I just can’t get myself connected. But, how could you forget a conversation, doesn’t it marked redder than any anniversary? Most people don’t, I figured. So, my friend is just a flourescent-lit monitor for tonight. And maybe for ever. And I’m not complaining, to anyone