Prophecies, primbon: signs of anxiety. Traumatic changes to life in Java at the end of the 19th century, for instance, encouraged the circulation of the 'Jayabaya prophecy', Jangka Jayabaya.

In the conflict and competition between ‘left’ and ‘right’, what came to the fore was not embittered ideologs or tough guerillas, but the skills of political campaign managers, the competence of advertising bureaus, the canny display of clothing styles, handsome faces and slim bodies.

There was no coup d’état on September 30. Or on October 1, 1965. What happened was more confusing than that—and still, there is no fitting word to name it. But after that day, the Indonesian Communist Party collapsed.

Ambiguity—others might call it diversity—is being gradually suppressed. Civilization is changing. In capitalist societies, in a life system where science, high technology and administration shape people’s lives, there is no place for ambiguity.

Tat Twam Asi. Schrödinger viewed the universe as one. Randomness and plurality are illusions.

As seen from today, Isaac Newton’s physics are indeed simple. His classic physics views reality like a huge machine that moves forward with time, in changing configurations following fixed laws, like Newton’s three laws of movement.

The pandemic has made me—and not only me—anxious about space and sensitive to distance. Maybe this is what the pandemic is shaping, slowly but surely: with these months-long rules about ‘keeping distance’, we are getting used to negotiating with space.

George Washington was respected and praised not only because of his role in the war of independence, but also because he seemed to be someone who did not want political power for himself.

The faces on the billboards are really just phantoms of the desire for recognition and the ambition for power – a soft version of the face of the king about to seize lands.

Under a regime that declares a constant state of war, citizens are placed within a prison-like Jeremy Bentham’s ideal construction, the panopticon: on its high tower are the eyes of Argus Panoptes.

AI, artificial intelligence, is both exciting and worrying—and that is our state right now. It is often observed that the more super-intelligent these machines are, the less autonomy we have. We can no longer call ourselves decision-making subjects. It could spell the end of individuality. 

Given this atmosphere, it is understandable why Toeti Heraty entered the field of philosophy and paid particular attention to the person as subject and their world. Her thesis was titled Aku dalam Budaya (I in Culture).

In Murakami’s story, the first question that arises is: are names personal possessions? Where do we get them from?

In Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal, Block does not seem worried that it will all be pointless. He is returning from war, he has travelled through plague territory. He has seen how easily lives are lost. The thin knight with the tense expression is anxious not because of Death, but because God is silent. He has found no basis to his faith. Faith is a torment.

Maxime Rodinson is an atheist. But he is not one to shut himself off with arrogance as do the ‘new atheists’. He sees that “…Muhammad did really experience sensory phenomena translated into words and phrases and that he interpreted them as messages from the Supreme Being.”

The dalang creates an aesthetic construct with layers of components. Voice, sound, diction, intonation and rhythm interconnect when he describes a scene, creates dialogue (with different personalities), introduces humor, makes Bhima move, and moves two wayang in combat.

Like power, noble values are usually associated with heroes – which is one reason people build monuments. These values—nobility of spirit, courage and so on—have no fixed place. The fixed is not in anyone’s heart.

The gods make unnecessary laws because they do not know mortality. A king on earth makes laws, even if they are not good because he is human—he must protect life that is contingent. 

Titles, which are considered to be symbols of recognition, are actually not completely dialogic in nature. Titles are determined after authorities exist to assess a person’s achievement. There have to be judges whose word is not doubted: universities, palaces, or customary leaders. 

Until at least the early 17th century in the Turkish Ottoman empire, the successor was not determined by birth rank. The principle of succession was brutal: the strongest won. It was brutal competition.

As we know, blackboards are where teachers write lessons and students pay attention. This simple technology facilitates the giving and receiving of knowledge. The blackboard cannot be separated from the teacher. It is their first and last sign, like the flag in a scene of defeat. 

Justice, the formulation of which is always unfinished, constantly produces thrilling stories, grand ideals, strong desires, and violence.

Historians note how Napoleon managed to change France, Europe and other parts of the world. After the French Revolution ended the feudal order, he, a revolutionary army officer, emerged as ‘Consul’ from the political ruins.

Yes, death and cruelty do not disappear because of One Thousand and One Nights, but life can be better because of stories and their tellers.

The ‘Malay world’ in this novel is not a closed, impenetrable world. In this novel at least, that kind of world does not become ‘local color’. Usually in literary criticism, what is called ‘local color’ is something identifiable—because it is whole, homogenous and distinctive: descriptions of landscape, customs and local dialects used in the story.

Kartini’s language, the language of a 20-year-old, is like a storm, although not immediately evident. It is not linear, or flat. Hyperbole arises in many sections, particularly when she mentions something (or someone) that she likes. Exclamation marks abound.

The coast is the world to be viewed, with curiosity and wonder, from a distance—from the outside.

Taman Mini reflects the view that life is only the status quo—as though in every phenomena, every difference, there is only the everlasting.

Flesh, eyes, skin—the physical and the psychic—have shaped the language of racist violence. In Indonesia, too.

Now Covid-19 can remind us that intimacy with the flesh is the same as simple gratitude when one is healthy, and taking an easy attitude towards pain and death.

The past does not stop. Over and again, we fail to recapture it in memory. Of course, we have history books and think that this is where the past is recorded as memory. But memory is the product of the present, and the present is not a station where memories pause, unchanging. This is why we often try to recall the past in other ways.

Revenge, retaliation, and dark characters make us feel something more than just addiction to stories of violence; we feel that we are discovering stories about ‘justice’, and turn them into moral discourse.

Tempo was born and changed the magazine scene. Previously, weeklies were like convenience stores.

His diary is not a monologue, and not a soliloquy: even in the narrowest of cells and in the most cruel oppression—particularly in Nusabambangan, the camp that was actually even worse than Buru—his voice was one of many. 

The phrase "the desert of the real" conveys that ‘the real’ is the destroyed world, gloomy, fantastical, inexplicable through language, especially when viewed from the ordered world. In Indonesia, we are actually in that ‘desert’: with incessant floods, landslides and earthquakes.

Death is always with us in the same carriage. Death does not cut the journey. Death is part of the journey.

With the technology of the Hubble telescope, we see that we inhabit merely one tiny planet in a galaxy, while there are two trillion galaxies sprinkled in space. Humans are not the center.

The ondel-ondel, which people say used to be part of high-class ceremony in old Jayakarta, is nowadays part of the life of the impoverished, who know they are not in the limelight.

Viruses are wars without borders. There is no space or time that can be completely ordered and stabilized in indices and maps. Contagion and healing go on within traces of differing attitudes towards life, sickness, and death.

The eye – unlike the ear – does indeed absorb things field by field, not all at once. Sight becomes king. Humans no longer know objects by hearing, tasting and feeling them.