Richard Oh

Menuju ke sebuah masyarakat baru, kita perlu telisik ulang pengertian tentang pluralisme yang sering dikumandangkan oleh para pundit politik dan pemikir idealis. Kita paham terkandung dalam teriak-teriakan mereka adalah sebuah niat yang baik, yaitu sebuah masyarakat kemajemukan yang demokratis dgn toleransi tinggi terhadap perbedaan dan keadilan untuk semua. Tetapi, begitu seringnya istilah-istilah seperti demokrasi, pluralisme, multikulturalisme, toleransi, disebut-sebut sehingga pernyataan seperti itu menjadi akronim-akronim pakam yang dianggap pemaknaannya dipahami oleh semua.

Akronim adalah sebuah kata yang terdiri dari huruf-huruf awal kata-kata yang berbeda. Ketika sebuah keyakinan tentang demokrasisasi sebuah masyarakat kemajemukan dikepingkan menjadi sebuah akronim, kita perlu mempertanyakannya kembali, sehingga ia tidak bertengger abstrak menjadi sebuah makna usang yang dipasing-pasing bagaikan sebuah objek konkret dalam genggaman. Apa yang bisa kita pahami dari akronim demokrasi? Ini kira-kira uraian yang kita peroleh: Demokrasi=Pluralisme=Multikulturisme: Toleransi + Keadilan untuk Semua. Setiap akronim menghasilkan sebuah akronim baru yang tak kalah abstraknya dari akronim sebelumnya. Dari pengalaman sehari-hari kita tahu kata Mobil memang secara kategorikal menjelaskan sebuah objek kendaraan, tetapi kita juga tahu kata benda ini hanya merupakan sebuah rujukan umum sebuah kategori objek; ia tidak menjelaskan secara tuntas rakitannya: tahunnya, spesifikasinya dan perakitnya. Seperti itulah yang kita peroleh dari kata demokrasi dan yang paling parah adalah ketika kita sadar bahwa demokrasi, pluralisme, multikulturisme, toleransi dan keadilan tidak bisa dirujukkan pada sebuah objek konkret, tidak seperti mobil yang bisa dirujukkan pada sebuah kendaraan beroda mesin dsbnya.

Penguraian di atas menyadarkan kita bahwa tiada akronim yang sanggup merangkum begitu banyak varian perbedaan ke dalam satu makna: tiada set untuk semua set, namun subset selalu jauh lebih besar daripada set. Bahkan seandainya akronim demokrasi kita definisikan secara saksama, kita tidak akan mencapai sebuah kesepakatan yang berarti. Sebagai contoh, bila kita telusuri pluralisme, sebagai pecahan makna demokrasi, pertanyaan pertama adalah pluralisme berdasarkan apa? Berdasarkan sebuah nasionalisme? Ini kemudian merujuk pada nasionalisme seperti apa? Yang kemudian menghantar kita ke pertanyaan tentang identitas bangsa, kebudayaan, adat, komunitas, keluarga dan individu.

Yang menarik dari penelusuran di atas adalah dari ruas penjelajahan kemajemukan kita akhirnya menyempit terus ke individu. Di sini, saya kira, apotheosis penyelidikan kita dan seharusnya titik keberangkatan kita. Kita perlu menjelaskan sebenarnya apa yang dimaksud sebagai seorang individu. Individu yang ingin saya jelaskan, bukanlah individu yang kalau kita telusuri akan mengembalikan kita pada lingkaran yang sama: yakni individu, keluarga, komunitas, adat, kebudayaan, identitas bangsa, kemajemukan, demokrasi, etc.

Kita perlu memahami bahwa setiap individu dengan sendirinya bukan sebuah entitas utuh, tetapi ia terbentuk dari multiplisitas diri yang berubah-rubah dari saat ke saat. Penyelidikan neurologi terbaru oleh Antonio Damasio membuktikan bahwa diri manusia berubah setiap saat, pengetahuan kita pada diri tercipta dari sebuah kerja sama antara operator daya ingat inti dan daya ingat jangka panjang yang menyimpan data-data imaji berikut perasaan-perasaan yang terekam sebelumnya yang akan teraktifkan secara asosiatif ketika kita berhadapan pada sebuah objek baru . Daya ingat jangka panjang inilah yang memungkinkan kesadaran kita pada sebuah identitas diri yang sebenarnya senantiasa berubah terus.

Identitas dalam pengertian eksternal juga bukan sebuah singularitas mutlak. Walaupun A secara bangunan genetika tidak ada duanya di dunia, dan totalitas kualifikasi dirinya membedakannya dengan individu-individu lain, seperti A bermukim di Jalan Samudera no 44, berumur 25 tahun, seorang turunan suku Madura, A punya kualitas diri yang juga menyamakannya dengan individu-individu lain, seperti A gemar bermain gitar, membaca buku-buku detektif, bernyanyi di kamar mandi, suka makan makanan pedas, dsb.

Seperti diuraikan di atas, jelas sebagai individu pun kita sebenarnya merupakan sebuah totalitas yang berkontinuitas dari berbagai diri dan kualitas yang menjadikan kita unik sekaligus menyamakan kita dengan yang lain.

Sebagai langkah berikut supaya kita tidak terperangkap dalam sebuah multiplisitas yang memosisikan kita dalam sebuah keterperangkapan kultural, keyakinan dan kemajemukan jemu, kita sebagai individu-individu unik harus bisa berpikir secara paradoksal, yaitu berpikir dengan segala keunikan diri. Berpikir telanjang tanpa embel-embel bawaan lahiriah seperti budaya, keyakinan dan bangsa. Proses pengelupasan diri inilah yang membuat kita bisa menghadapi setiap perbedaan tanpa bias, menghadapi setiap tantangan perbedaan bagaikan sebuah phenomena yang perlu dicermati, dipelajari dan ditekuni hingga sebuah pemahaman baru bisa dipetik dari pengalaman itu. Setiap konflik yang terjadi selalu berkonotasi sebuah pemisahan berjarak yang berdasarkan sebuah keyakinan ideologi yang berbeda atau latar sosial dan kebudayaan yang berbeda, maka perbedaan sesungguhnya tidak bisa dipertemukan antara individu ke individu ataupun kelompok ke kelompok, yang bisa dilakukan adalah sebuah usaha untuk menggeserkan diri untuk saling merapat, seperti mengindekskan dua kategori produk berlainan dalam satu rak atau mencoba melampaui sebuah kebuntuan jalan dengan memosisikan dua tangga di kedua sisi tembok yang berseberangan. Yang dibutuhkan hanya kekayaan imajinasi dan keinginan kita untuk berpikir secara paradoksal.

Berpikir secara paradoksal berarti kita harus berani menelisik ulang dan membongkar pemahaman dan keyakinan yang selama ini dianggap sahih oleh banyak orang, bahkan oleh diri kita sendiri. Berpikir secara paradoksal berarti berpikir dari sebuah ruang kosong yang terpijak, namun dengan sebuah hasrat tak terbayarkan oleh kepuasaan untuk mengisi kekosongan itu terus menerus. Totalitas sebuah pemahaman bukanlah tujuan akhir, tetapi pengejaran pada serpihan-serpihan makna yang timbul saat kita berjumpa dengan yang berbeda, yang kita tidak pahami, dan yang mengguncang seluruh pendirian kita. Titik-titik fokal inilah titik keberangkatan kita untuk belajar dan menyimpulkan untuk kemudian meningkatkan kita ke pemahaman yang lebih tinggi dari setiap permasalahan.

Dengan demikian pemahaman multiplisitas bukanlah 1+1=2 tetapi 1+1=1. Dua sebagai produk dari 1+1= 2 adalah sebuah produk perbedaan yang merujuk pada analogi identitas satu dengan satu yang lain. Sedangkan produk satu dari 1+1= 1 adalah sebuah hasil yang mengabaikan sebuah konsep atau identitas yang pakam: ia merupakan sebuah Beda yang hakiki. Pemahaman multiplisitas seperti ini menghantar kita pada sebuah kesimpulan bahwa “only that which is alike differs; and only differences are alike.(Lévi-Strauss).”

2009

Seni, menurut Jacques Ranciere, terdiri dari imaji-imaji. Dan imaji-imaji seni adalah operasi-operasi yang memproduksikan sebuah kesenjangan (discrepancy), sebuah ketidakserupaan (dissemblance). Dalam pengertian ini, maka imaji tidak eksklusif pada apa yang terlihat (visible). ‘Ada visibilitas yang sama sekali tidak menghasilkan sebuah imaji; ada pula imaji-imaji yang keseluruhannya terdiri dari kata-kata.”

Maka di permukaan sebuah karya seni terjadi sebuah pertalian antara apa yang bisa disebut dan apa yang terlihat. Benang pertalian ini bisa saja berupa sebuah analogi maupun sebuah ketidakserupaan (dissemblance). ‘Interaksi ini sama sekali tidak membutuhkan kedua terma mesti tampil secara material. Yang terlihat bisa disusun dalam formasi (tropes) bermakna; kata-kata bisa digelar dengan sebuah visibilitas yang gemilang.’ Dengan kata lain, yang diperlukan dalam sebuah interaksi antara yang tersirat dan yang terlihat adalah sebuah penghubung, parataksis, tak bersubjek.

Di dalam tubuh karya-karya Dedy Sufriadi tersirat kiat-kiat untuk menyentil apa yang tak terungkap sehingga ia keluar ke permukaan melalui sebuah persilangan aksara.  Karya-karya seperti Landscape dan Puzzle, mungkin paling mudah disimak, menampilkan sisi analogi rupa dan objek yang dipertautkan oleh sebuah goresan aksara: lihat goresan aksara secara diagonal dari kiri atas ke kanan bawah dalam karya Puzzle yang menjadi sebuah jembatan digambarkan oleh Ranciere sebagai sebuah kesenjangan (discrepancy) dan lihat pula guratan-guratan yang berubah-rubah dalam tiap keping bingkai Landscape, berupa tiga tulang iga seekor hewan, sebatang ranting, dan kupu-kupu, yang membentuk sebuah pertalian bermakna ketidakserupaan (dissemblance) dalam karya itu.

Penelusuran/penguraian menurut metode seperti ini semakin sulit atau menjadi sangat subtil ketika Dedy Sufriadi menanggalkan semua penanda-penanda penghubung dalam karya-karya seperti Kamuflase, Ikon, Village, Gold dan Comic Series. Di mana belang dalam Kamuflase itu? Di mana bentuk dalam Ikon? Di mana geometri gubuk dalam Kampung (Village) itu? Di mana riak gelaktawa dalam Comic series? Di mana keemasan dalam kemilau Emas (Gold)? Kita hanya bisa meraba-meraba melalui gradasi warna, demarkasi linea, dan penzonaan ruang agar bisa mengumpulkan kembali pencitraan imaji yang bertaburan supaya ia tidak hambur kembali ke dalam skizofrenia antahbrantah.

Dari pergelutan Dedy Sufriadi ini, kita bisa lantas memositkan bahwa permukaan bukanlah sebuah bidang yang memberi sebuah kesenjangan (discrepancy) ataupun ketidakserupaan (dissemblance) tetapi kebuntuan itu sendiri, atau faille itu, yang menurut Lacan, ‘kata penunjuk dalam tubuh Liyan dari mana tuntutan-tuntutan jouissance berawal.’

Di dalam ruang kebuntuan ini, setiap subtraksi menampilkan sebuah lokus, dan seruan sebuah topologi. ‘Penanda-penanda ganjil’ dalam tubuh jouissance pada akhirnya adalah jejak-jejak aksara yang dibutuhkan untuk mewujudkan hasrat dalam realita konkret. Berbekal pengertian seperti ini, saya meneropongi karya-karya Dedy Sufriadi. Boleh jadi karyanya sengaja tidak sesaksama seperti karya Joan Miro yang bilamana kita bubuhkan setetes cat minyak di ujung kanvas Obra de Joan Miro, keseluruhan topologi karya itu akan berubah seketika. Kanvas Dedy Sufriadi, seperti ruang kebuntuan yang disebut Lacan itu, memungkinkan sebuah perhitungan satu per satu bisa dilakukan dalam satu persimpangan (intersection) kebuntuan yang tak terhingga. Ia menuntut keberulangan subtraksi dan pengungkapan agar yang terhasrat bisa terkonstitusi dan terinskripsi.

Sebuah perenungan atas permintaan PhiloArtspace.

Jakarta May 17, 2010

I’ve had my share of wine tasting days. In one private wine-tasting occasion, a young fellow, scion of one of Jakarta’s upper-crust families, brought six bottles of wine, all wrapped in brown paper. They were stood on the table, three on each side. A bottle was uncorked to go with each course of dinner. The game that night was to guess which group of bottles belonged to New World and which to Old World. You don’t need to be a wine connoisseur to understand that New World means Chile, Africa all the way to Australia. Old World is of course pan Europe.

It wasn’t so much about how close to the mark we were that night at the guessing game, but how this young bloke and his spouse and friends went about thrusting their beaks into wine glasses, sniffing and gargling and spitting out the wines that amused me tremendously. As for the former, no genius would go wide of mark to say that we were all off mark, despite the agonizing efforts. As for the latter, it was really a hilarious sight, watching these guys going after something that a true Sommelier would tell you, no one would ever get the vintage year, country and the intricate blend of spices and ingredients down pat.

This same Sommelier, a Mr. Lee who owns a successful wine lounge, once told me this. Don’t be fooled by the price tags. (A bottle of Gaja grown and bottled in the Italian valley would easily fetch US 400.) The best wine, he winked at me, is one that you really enjoy. Now I must admit this statement lifted a lot of weight off this novice wine taster’s chest. I’d thought, as with any knowledge, there must be a set of underlying fundamental principles that one must acquire in order to be considered a person with a good taste for wines.

This simple truism about wines, I suppose, can be expanded to include anything to do with our taste. Our taste for a certain color, texture, style of clothing, food and drink is as natural as the day we were born. I, therefore, scratch my head in complete bafflement when I hear words like ‘acquired taste’.  Sure, after a few years of wine-tasting, you do get a few simple facts straight about the age of a wine by looking at the color of tannins and the fermentation fingers forming a Mercator inside of a glass, but that doesn’t mean you have an ‘acquired taste’. To have an acquired taste suggests that you had no prior taste whatsoever, which is rather difficult for me to comprehend. Some snooty wine connoisseur would pipe up, “But how would you know how good a wine would taste if you don’t know what good wines are.” My bone of contention is still this: no one could persuade me to enjoy a bottle of Gaja at whatever price it is tagged. It tastes like formalin with hell knows what else in the mix. And I stay away from Riesling and Shiraz, for as much reason as I keep going back to Cabernet Sauvignant and Merlot. I like wearing dark-colored short-sleeve shirts with matching pants or shorts. If we were to carry on with this ‘acquired taste’ bunkum, we’d all be lemmings led to the abyss of uniformity in our taste for clothes, drinks and foods. Just because these connoisseurs and fashionable folks tell us we should!

All this would make a whole lot more sense if you were to look into this matter of taste more thoroughly.  Our taste is instinctual. It’s most directly related to our senses. And our senses are what constitute our personality. Over time, naturally we’ll expand our taste to include other variants, but I would argue that these variants in one way or another pertain to the basic components of our taste. Thus, a coffee drinker is more likely to develop a taste for wine and vice versa.

The basics, however, remain enigmatically unchanged. I could, for instance, bend my mind to the most intractable thoughts or books, even if that would spell doom to my neural cells, but I just can’t make myself eat broccolis, tomatoes or anything to do with aubergines. (The quixotic fact is that my mom loved these veggies but failed to make me eat them.) As for colors, I loathe red, orange, and green. I drink tea, never just a glass of plain water. Aqua or Evian or any variants of mineral water for some reason just don’t appeal to me at all.

I’ve spent half a life trying to puzzle out these rather quaint proclivities but I must tell you I’m still figuring them out till now.  Our taste is in the end as individualistic as we are as a person. If we were to cut our own clothes, make our own wines and cook our own dishes, we should be wearing, drinking and eating very differently. Unfortunately, we’ve got our priorities in life. As such, we’ve unwittingly relegated our taste to the expert hands of others. We’re in a sense carrying the badges of other people’s tastes while still believing that our taste is irrevocably one of a kind!

A version of this essay was published in Now! Jakarta, April 2010

For the longest time we’ve been misled by Descartes. We’ve been told time and again that our mind is the seat of the highest reason and emotions are a separate zone that has little to do with our critical faculties. In view of recent developments in neurosciences, we should rewire our understanding about what truly makes sense and how our sensibility is formed.

For centuries, the mystics, Deepak Chopra no less in modern conundrum, have tried to convince us that I’m therefore I think. We’ve always been annoyed by the fact that people who make the least sense are often ones who make the most sense. Antonio Damasio’s seminal book, The Feeling of What Happens: body, emotion and the making of consciousness, sheds more light on how our actions are truly arrived at through information sent from our somatic markers. One example cited in this enlightening book is that in a critical situation, such as heading toward a collision, the somatic markers throughout our body alert us and dictate our action long before our brain has adequate time to process the information. Malcom Gladwell in Blink brings up another example that we’ve known all along to be true but couldn’t really put a finger to it. Gladwell’s research shows that an art investigator has an inkling about whether an artefact is forgery or genuine within seconds of looking at it.

If we were to take these findings seriously, we must re-think the way we often categorize people as if they belong to separate types. Pragmatic people are often dubbed as being dull and efficient and they’re as far removed from intelligence as tofutti and Parmesan, whereas sensitive people are more likely to be considered sensible, wacky and yes so damn smart. As it turns out, it has nothing to do with intelligence at all. It has more to do with how tuned in the sensory systems in each of us are. It appears that the more attention we pay to our surrounds, the better our sensory systems will be honed. Those people that are waywardly pragmatic or dogmatic are then people who won’t break out of their molds. And those most endowed with sensibility (I believe the matter of taste must in some way come from hereabout) are often known to be undisciplined and adventurous.

If we were to take everything that’s said above into account and bear it out against what we’ve been hammered consistently to believe about discipline, we must conclude that discipline plays a very minor role in the totality of learning. The concept of No Pain No Gain as an equation for learning should be eradicated. For whatever that most appeals to a person’s sensibility in the end will out his or her proclivity in learning. To see how much damage has been caused by parents by meddling with their children’s careers, all you have to do is to interview those engineering, economics, law graduates who turn out in the end to be interior designers, film directors and literary critics. It seems that interest should always come first before perseverance or discipline can take effect. A person driven by the passion of his interest will in the long run make something out of their life rather than those forced into things they detest.

The fear of emotions, the belief that they often lead one to silly blunders or calamitous errors of judgment, has always been touted against overly emphasis on whatever that appeals to our senses. This is of course a paradox inherited from the Victorian age. Because how can a person do wrong if he or she follows whatever his or her instinct tells her to do? Those that are confused are certainly people who have problems believing in their own emotions. Those that are so out of touch with personal relations are again people who restrain from truly feeling the emanations of each situation they are in. Just as those art investigators who know within seconds of looking at an artefact, we should be able to sense the conditions of a situation we find ourselves in.

The proponents of Think!, a book that refutes Blink!, would like us to think that we can’t trust our emotions. It shows how certain people who repeatedly make the same mistakes because they trust their instinct over their reason. These advocates seem to me quite facetious about the idea of right and wrong, as if every situation is a decision in the nick of time that spells success or doom. As if when one’s in a millisecond situation, the pressing of the wrong button will blow one away forever. Think what happens if you don’t press that button at the millisecond. You’ll still be blown away for sure. There is always that fifty-fifty chance in every critical situation in our life. The question should be more about how well-accumulated our experiences are up to that point or what have brought us to that situation rather than about the right or wrong button to press. I’m inclined to think that those with a wealth of experiences, thus with more seasoned sensibility, will likely survive any such critical point: they would likely have scooted out of the situation at a mere glance rather than waited for that millisecond point to explode in their faces! And we should therefore speculate that those who repeatedly make the same mistakes in their lives must not be very perceptive people, or they would not be so numbed as not instinctually to learn from their past mistakes; we’ve been often told by psychotherapists that traumatic experiences tend to cause us to refrain from repeating certain acts.

To have good sense then means to exercise our senses to the fullest, which naturally involves some kind of shenanigans as they’re part and parcel of what make up for our natural learning curves.

A version of this essay was published in Now! Jakarta, March 2010

To talk about love is akin to bringing up an old sore to which each is to her own pain. (Ecstasy is usually consigned to the false prophets.) Much like talking about a creed, a faith, or a politic. This is so because love is strapped to the point of petrifaction with so many layers of myths, hearsays, moral tales and differentiated thoughts. The scientists will tell you, it’s simply molecules causing a chemical combustion. The poets, wiser, nonetheless more oblique, eulogize Aphrodite, sending her up to the altar of all creations. They refuse to obfuscate the matter with nitty-gritty abstraction. The thinkers are of a different stripe of creatures altogether. They refuse to accept established norms. Grappling with a few working tools, they try obdurately to unmask the myths and sniggle in the ever narrowing crack to fish for a still possible new light.

Venus and Aphrodite

Various beliefs and myths tell us that Venus is the Roman counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite. She is the protectress of Julius Caesar and the Goddess, often associated with Etruscan deity Turan, has as many epithets annexed to its name as there are people to claim her heritage: thus we have Venus Acadilia (to do with baths and a well in Orchomenus, Venus Cloacina (the Purifier), Venus Erycina (from Mount Eryx in Sicily to represent the icon of impurity for prostitutes), Venus Genetrix (Mother Venus as the originator of Romans), Venus Libertina (erroneously construed for pleasure) and Venus Victrix ( a derivative from east for Istar, a goddess of war).

Eros

Eros in mythology is generally described as the son of Aphrodite. Hesiod claims in Theogony that Eros emerges from Chaos. But Eros is known for his love for Psyche, the youngest of three daughters of a king , who is so beautiful that she angers Aphrodite. Eros is sent to make Pysche fall in love with the ugliest man on earth. But Eros, upon seeing Psyche, falls in love with her. He’s so in love with her that he touches himself and Psyche with his torch. Eventually, understanding the impossibility of their situation, Eros erases the memory of their love from Psyche. Sensing that her cupid son hasn’t done his job, Aphrodite casts a spell on Psyche. Not another suitor will come knocking on her door ever since. Her worried parents take her to see the oracle, who tells them that Psyche will never marry a mortal. She will be given to one who waits for her beyond the mountain. He will overcome Gods and men. In the valley, Psyche soon hears the voice of her husband, a kind and loving creature that refuses to be seen in daylight. Because once she sees him, their happiness will flee forever. Soon her sisters come to visit her in the valley. They insinuate into Psyche the idea that she must definitely take a good look at her husband for fear that she might be trapped by some insidious monster. One night after her husband has gone to sleep, she lights up a lamp and takes a good look at him. It’s Eros, who looks back at her in astonishment and flees away. Saddened, she returns to her village and tells her sisters about her betrayal of Eros’s trust and the penalty of her sin. She then embarks on an aimless journey in search for him. One day she comes upon a deserted hall strewn with ears of corn, barley and wheat. Psyche proceeds to clean up the mess. Her deed catches the attention of Demeter who sees the beauty of her soul and takes pity in her. She tells her to go to Aphrodite’s temple and begs for her forgiveness. Of course, Aphrodite is still angry with Psyche. She sets up a chore for her to finish before sundown, which Psyche does with patience. Which naturally angers Aphrodite even more. So she asks her to go down to the grove and collect the fleece from all the sheep there. Again with the help with the Naiads, the sea nymphs, who tell her that the sheep are tame and quiet after the sun sets and while they sleep, Psyche can collect their golden fleece. Returning to Aphrodite with the golden fleece, Psyche is set upon another task to go down to the underworld to collect Persepone’s beauty in a box. A task Aphrodite believes will definitely trip Psyche. Again, Eros comes to her assistance, navigating her through the dangerous labyrinths and tells her not to open the box that contains Persepone’s beauty. On her way, Psyche thinks that Aphrodite will not need the beauty but she, travel-worn that she is, will please Eros tremendously if she has the beauty. So she opens the box, thus breaking the commandment of the immortal and falling unconscious. Eros goes to Olympus and pleads with the feasting gods. The gods are moved by the pure beauty of their love and summon Aphrodite and soothe her until she relents. Hermes is then sent down to earth to pick up Psyche and reunite her with Eros in Olympus.

Myths, as we‘ve learnt, are disguised statements from lived lives. There is hidden in the story of Eros and Psyche the longing for the ideal love: the eternal truth of love. The kind that moves and affects even the gods! But how are we to make of this ideal love when Venus or Aphrodite as goddess or as saint is perceived in different lights by diverse cultures? When there are as many myths and stories of love as there are individual experiences? When love, as an acronym, an abstract term can’t constitute itself for lack of unifying denominators? This impasse in thought had caused the postmodern to think erroneously that since there was not one altar for love, therefore there must be many. As such, bodies and languages were the two freest components of our existence. So we abused them. Promiscuities and obscenities were the direct results; the firebrands of this cause thought this was the meaning of life: rebellion and defiance against our own limitation! Now we can look back with a sneer at this thought. A more scientific and more thoughtful way of looking at the whole matter has been posited by more affirmative thinkers. There is no One, true, but the multiples are not necessarily dissembling into nothingness. The negative sign ¬ p can be converted into positive by simply adding ¬¬p. Therefore, nature is by itself positive. So is love. The trick is never to buy into the concept of two become one. But rather Two as the inevitable inscriptions in the arena of love; they are irreconcilable, because to love as in to live is not about aiming for the totality of the count, for that unreachable definitive term of love or life, but the recollections of every move in an endless counting. To move from one step to another step in the ascending ladder, as Plato’s Diotima tells us, is the way to eternal love.

A version of this article was published in Now Jakarta, February 2010