Saved from Myself

How often I've cried out
in silent tongue
to be saved
from myself

in the middle of the night
too afraid
to move

horrified the answer
may be beyond the
capability of my
own two hands

so small

(no one should feel this alone)

-- Quoted from Jewel: "A Night Without Armor --

The Darker Brother: A Review of The Movie The Great Debaters (2007)

I am the darker brother
They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes
But I laugh, and I eat well and I grow strong
Tomorrow I will sit on the table when company comes
Nobody'll dare say to me 'eat in the kitchen' then
Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed
I, too, am America
- Langston Hughes, 1924 -

Opened with a witted poem read out loud by Denzel Washington in front of his class, this 'inspired-by-a-true-story' movie had all at once brought me up to my whole attention (though it was 00.00, my clock said). He was a literature teacher in the movie, politically radical, but also a strong-hearted debate team coach for one of the small 'black' colleges in America. It was 1934, and I just realized that at the time, black-racism was still so strong in America. Black people or coloured people or Negroes or Niggers could not be admitted to state universities. They were lynched instead. I just noticed that there were such a word, 'lynch', which according to my Longman Dictionary would mean:

(esp. of a crowd of people), to take hold of and put to death without a legal trial (a person thought to be guilty of crime).

Denzel in the movie taught me the history about this word:

Take the meanest, most restless nigger
Strip him off his clothes
In front of the remaining male niggers, female niggers and niggers infants
Tar and feather him
Tie each leg to a horse facing an opposite direction
Set him on fire
And beat both horses until they tear him apart
In front of the male, female and nigger infants
Bullwhip and beat the remaining nigger males within an inch of their life
Do not kill them, but put the fear of God in them
For they can be useful for future breeding

It was an expression made popular by Willie Lynch, a vicious slave owner in the West Indies. He was also very well-known of his simple-yet-diabolical methods of controlling slaves: "keep the slave physically strong but psychologically weak and dependent of the slave master: keep the body and take the mind". The word 'lynch' came from his last name.

Basically, this movie told us the story of a group of underdog Negro college students in a debate team that eventually took on the Harvard elite. I enjoyed very much the debates in the movie (since I was also in a debate team when I was a college student, *giggle*). But not only that, this movie also brought its audiences into an insight. It opened their eyes of the power of destruction of 'human-ego'. The ego that lied (and still lies and will always lie there) in each and every one of us. The ego that always sprouted hatred in the heart. The ego that kept people in boxes, classified by their colours, religions, sexes, and so on.

I myself believe in a non-violent way, that hatred can only be ceased by love. But this movie somehow made me undertand that some people could not simply just walk in that way so easily. Especially when you were black, and had just witnessed a fellow of yours being lynched, strung up by his neck up on a tree and set on fire burnt alive to death, simply for just being black. Therefore, I myself would give my every thumbs up for the Negroes that had managed to survive and prove themselves in a constructive way nobody else could.

This was part of the last speech by the debate team against the Harvard, giving us confidence that somehow, some way, non-violence can be the best moral weapon to fight for justice.

[Proposition: Civil disobedience is a moral weapon in the fight for justice]

But how can disobedience ever be moral?
Well, I guess that depends on one's definition of the words.
Word.
In 1919, in India...
10.000 people gathered in Amritsar to protest the tyranny of British rule.
General Reginald Dyer trapped them in a courtyard,
and ordered his troops to fire into the crowd for ten minutes.
379 died.
Men, women, children shot down in cold blood.
Dyer said he had taught them a moral lesson.
Gandhi and his followers serponded not with violence.
But with an organized campaign of non-cooperation.
Govenrment buildings were occupied.
Streets were blocked with people who refused to rise, even when beaten by police.
Gandhi was arrested.
But the British were soon forced to release him.
Gandhi called it a moral victory.
The definition of moral: Dyer's lesson or Gandhi's victory?
You choose.

In Texas, they lynched Negroes.
My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire.
We drove through a lynch mob and pressed our faces against the floorboard.
i looked at my teammates.
I saw the fear in their eyes.
And worse....
The shame.
What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial?
In a dark forest filled with fog.
Was he a thief? Was he a killer?
Or just a Negro?
Was he a sharecropper? A preacher?
Were his children waiting up for him?
And who are we to just lie there and do nothing?
No matter what he did, the mob is the criminal.
But the law did nothing.
Just left us wondering why.
My opponent says: "Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral"
But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow South.
Not when Negroes are denied housing.
Turned away from schools, hospitals.
And not when we are lynched.
St. Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all"
Which means I have a right, even a duty, to resist...
But with violence or civil disobedience?
You should pray I choose the latter.

I Miss si Ndut.......

June 14th 08, I brought si Ndut from her home.....
I brought her to the grooming store, bought her all the stuffs i thought she would need.....
They adored and praised her....
Then I brought her to my friend's house and stayed the night there
They adored and loved her.....
I practically couldn't leave her alone....
If she woke up all by herself and couldn't find me then she'll start whining.....
I even had to sleep on the couch to accompany her...
And she would just roll herself up close to the couch...

June 15th 08, I started my journey to bring Ndut to Jakarta.....
I had to convince the travel agent that she's good and wouldn't be a problem in the car all the long way to Jakarta
Then I had to convince all the passengers as well....
And finally they allowed us to ge on....
Though I had to pick another destination which had less passengers...
She did pretty well the whole journey...
Never complained, never whined..... just as long as she was close to me.....
Dang the car..... Its tyres got into some problems, so we had to pull over then had to slow down.....
Dang the car.... Its air-cond sucked and malfunctioned....
I was worried with Ndut, since she was supposed to be in a cool-to-cold place
But she just slept her way so peacefully.....
She was never naughty.....
We got home.....
I was so proud of how beautiful and cute she was....
She wet my room.... LOL..... Kinda upset.... But nevermind.... She's nervous at her new home....
She wet my room the second time... Nevermind.....
And the third time and the fourth and go on....
LOL.... Looked like my plan to house-train her didnt start very well..... LOL....
Then she played by herself.... With the artificial bone I bought her.....
But she just didn't like to be ignored....
She would come and nip me if I got too concentrated on my computer...
Then she slept.... Then I slept....
Two hours later, she woke up and woke me up as well......
I had to get down to the floor to watch her play and play with her...
One hour passed by....
She got bored and slept away..... And so I slept too.....
But after two hours, she would just woke up again and she would woke me up too.....
It just went on and on and on.....
LOL.....
It pissed me off at the time.... But now..... I miss it......
Oh, and have I told you that I couldn't even go to the bathroom without her looking nervously and would cry and whine if I took too long?

June 16th 08, I had to skip work......
Felt not right to leave her by herself......
Besides I had to go buy her kennel......
But when I thought and re-thought.....
Guessed it's just too selfish to keep her alone for too long a time everyday when I had to go to work....
Guessed I had to take her home......
So I went straight JKT-BDG that day......
And again, she was so quiet along the way...... So nice..... So loveable....
She would roll herself up close to me then went to sleep.....
Finally, she got back together with her sister, Citta...., her mother, Wira...., her friends, Gilang and Arya....
She can play now all the way she wants.....
But when I got back to my room and saw the mess she left....
There's something missing.....
.........
.........
.........
Hope we can meet again someday.....
And hope we can be together......
Ndut.......

We're Gonna Kill 'em All

Well, this is gonna be my first narrative blog after all this time.....

I just watched "The Kingdom" starring Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper. At first, I thought this movie was just another simple war-action movie involving army and desert and gunshots... yeah, sort of an injection of adrenaline that i need to refresh myself between my routines all day at work. But well, the movie did involve army and desert and a lot of gunshots. But what came to my surprise was that it turned out to be NOT just another plain action movie, at least for me.

This movie intrigued me, made me ponder and reminded me of something that i have been forgetting for quite a long time: love, care, hate, revenge, forgiveness and all they got to do with life and living. It painted a very clear picture of living in fear as the consequence of living in hate. It showed, so vividly, several mass suicides and some even more destructive acts (so horrible and so painful to swallow...) executed by the Arabians (read: the so-called terrorists) because of their hates towards Americans. And all those hates were then just given back so equally by the Americans towards the Arabians.

There were actually two scenes that made the most stinging ending of the movie. One is at the beginning of the movie, in which a popular and loved-by-everybody American (FBI) agent was killed in a suicide bomb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On this incident, Jamie Foxx gave a comforting whisper to Jennifer Garner who was one of the agent's close friends. OK, I will stop there (so that I won't be called a spoiler, LOL) and then jump to the second scene at the end of the movie, in which the head of the terrorists, hanging there by his last breath after shot, also gave another comforting whisper to his crying grandson. (wait, is this a spoiler? Ups, sorry.... but nevermind)

Those two whispers formed a very deep message to the audience, actually. At the very closing scene of the movie, those two whispers were revealed by each parties. The whispers had carried comforting messages to the ones who were grieving and to our surprise (and to my regret), those whispers actually did carry the same message, a message full of hate: "Don't worry, we will kill them all....." And the movie credits started to roll....

Yes, to me it was a very sharp conclusion that answered all the thoughts that were flying in my head during the movie: what's wrong with this world? what will end this? who began this? Can I live in this movie? Will I be able to bear all the fear living like this?

I believe that all this movie was trying to say was that hate was born from hate. When you let one hate live in your heart, then you are giving birth to another one of hate in another heart.

But, in the end there is still one question left unanswered (and I can't even answer it myself either): Will hate cease?

...
...
...

Well, here's just another quote from another movie about hate and bigotry (because instead of having the answer to the above question, all I can do is just quoting):

Every good people said that we LEARNED prejudice,
that bigotry wouldn't exist if no one taught us.
I believe hating is something we were given to OVERCOME,
We just don't seem willing to admit that ourselves.
We seem to always concentrate on our UNCOMMON GROUND.
More puzzling, it's often our COMMONALITY that we choose as the borderline.
Two men can love God equally,
but if they worship DIFFERENTLY, they're enemies.
If devotion to a higher power turn neighbors into strangers,
how can loving each other be any less trouble.

Life is About Phases

Life is about phases...

You like it or not
You despise it or not
It will just move on and leave you behind

And once it does move on
You'll see that all you can do is to move on as well

By then,
An enlightment will come down to you
That life indeed is just about phases that you can't get attached to...
Even whether you want it or not

So cherish every moment of your life
Every happiness that passes you
Every bitterness that is bestowed upon you
For tears and laughters, love and hate were just phases
That made us who we are now and will make us who we will be

*dedicated to possum*

Pieces of Thoughts (2)

months and days passed
and I still wonder whether men were born to suffer

is the time gonna come?
when I don't need all these concealments and protections
when i can stop reeling around
when the sun goes down and I don't have to hold on to you

build me a home underground
free from light and sound
build me a home in the air
build me a home under water

well, good bye life
maybe in a better time we can be friends....

Pieces of Thoughts

I'm my own worst enemy
Should I give up?
Should I surrender?
Because I'm sick of feeling and suffocating
Please someone something put me out of my misery!
I can't hide anymore all the hurt inside...

What am I leaving when I'm done here?
Would you forget the wrong that I've done when my time comes?
Am I leaving behind some reasons to be missed?
Would anyone keep me in memory?

Gosh I'm so strong on the surface
but never all the way through...
Please someone something come and save me from myself!