21 June 2008
Nyebut
Dan semakin banyak orang yang menyebut-nyebut Tuhan dalam keseharian seperti menyebut-nyebut Noam Chomsky ketika membicarakan propaganda.
18 June 2008
mejakerja
Meja kerjaku pagi ini:
- Jejeran buku-buku, mulai dari yang njelimet kayak The Conditions of Learning-nya Robert M. Gagne hingga yang remeh - dan sok tahu - macam Truly Mars & Venus tulisan John Gray. Rasanya sudah lama tak dibersihkan. Banyak serpihan-serpihan hitam mirip jelaga di atasnya. Aku menengadah, ternyata dari AC. *Oh.., sudah berapa banyak yang kuhirup?*
- Tiga tumpuk kartu nama. Dua jenis, katanya. Tapi aku tak tahu apa, tak pernah kubuka. Bingung. Gemar sekali perusahaan ini bikin kartu nama.
- Sebuah botol minum aluminimum bertuliskan 'Los Angeles Lakers'. Semoga mereka menang dalam laga final keempat lawan Celtics.
- Jam meja Black Pig & White Pig. Mati!
- Kaleng permen fox yang isinya macam-macam - stapler, stabilo, correction fluid, bolpen merah dan biru, post-it.
- Kalender Honda. Mei dan Juni gambarnya New CR-V. Lupakan!
- Foto aku dan kawan-kawan lama di sebuah pesta ulang tahun anak seorang bos.
- Tumpukan naskah-naskah yang tak rapi.
- Tumpukan buku-buku baru terbit. Kebenaran? Mudah sekali kau menyebut kebenaran.
- Tumpukan buku-buku mini, mulai dari Long Life, A Treasury of Love Poems, The Little Book of Chinese Proverbs. Prett!
Danny boy, kau perlu satu hari untuk menyingkirkan semua sampah itu. Toh yang kau perlukan cuma satu bolpen merah, satu bolpen hitam/biru, flashdisk 1 GB. Cukup kan?
13 June 2008
Far
"I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. I miss you. If there's anything you need, I won't be far away."
10 June 2008
Judging Books by Their Covers
"Ini salah satu bab favoritku di Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. Sang jenius tak sedikit pun mau mengkompromikan ilmunya. Yang buruk dia sebut buruk. Yang bagus dia katakan bagus. Dia pertahankan integritasnya sekalipun orang-orang di sekitarnya telah memilih untuk penjadi pengikut dan membodohkan diri. Sangat menohok untuk siapa pun yang bergerak di industri perbukuan, tempat di mana segala cara digunakan demi menjual 'ilmu pengetahuan'. Benar-benar pelajaran berharga soal integritas!" - Dan
After the war, physicists were often asked to go to Washington and give advice to various sections of the government, especially the military. What happened, I suppose, is that since the scientists had made these bombs that were so important, the military felt we were useful for something.
Once I was asked to serve on a committee which was to evaluate various weapons for the army, and I wrote a letter back which explained that I was only a theoretical physicist, and I didn’t know anything about weapons for the army.
The army responded that they had found in their experience that theoretical physicists were very useful to them in making decisions, so would I please reconsider?
I wrote back again and said I didn’t really know anything, and doubted I could help them.
Finally I got a letter from the Secretary of the Army, which proposed a compromise: I would come to the first meeting, where I could listen and see whether I could make a contribution or not. Then I could decide whether I should continue.
I said I would, of course. What else could I do?
I went down to Washington and the first thing that I went to was a cocktail party to meet everybody. There were generals and other important characters from the army, and everybody talked. It was pleasant enough.
One guy in a uniform came to me and told me that the army was glad that physicists were advising the military because it had a lot of problems. One of the problems was that tanks use up their fuel very quickly and thus can’t go very far. So the question was how to refuel them as they’re going along. Now this guy had the idea that, since the physicists can get energy out of uranium, could I work out a way in which we could use silicon dioxide–sand, dirt–as a fuel? If that were possible, then all this tank would have to do would be to have a little scoop underneath, and as it goes along, it would pick up the dirt and use it for fuel! He thought that was a great idea, and that all I had to do was to work out the details. That was the kind of problem I thought we would be talking about in the meeting the next day.
I went to the meeting and noticed that some guy who had introduced me to all the people at the cocktail party was sitting next to me. He was apparently some flunky assigned to be at my side at all times. On my other side was some super general I had heard of before.
At the first session of the meeting they talked about some technical matters, and I made a few comments. But later on, near the end of the meeting, they began to discuss some problem of logistics, about which I knew nothing. It had to do with figuring out how much stuff you should have at different places at different times. And although I tried to keep my trap shut, when you get into a situation like that, where you’re sitting around a table with all these “important people” discussing these “important problems,” you can’t keep your mouth shut, even if you know nothing whatsoever! So I made some comments in that discussion, too.
During the next coffee break the guy who had been assigned to shepherd me around said, “I was very impressed by the things you said during the discussion. They certainly were an important contribution.”
I stopped and thought about my “contribution” to the logistics problem, and realized that a man like the guy who orders the stuff for Christmas at Macy’s would be better able to figure out how to handle problems like that than I. So I concluded: a) if I had made an important contribution, it was sheer luck; b) anybody else could have done as well, but most people could have done better , and c) this flattery should wake me up to the fact that I am not capable of contributing much.
Right after that they decided, in the meeting, that they could do better discussing the organization of scientific research (such as, should scientific development be under the Corps of Engineers or the Quartermaster Division?) than specific technical matters. I knew that if there was to be any hope of my making a real contribution, it would be only on some specific technical matter, and surely not on how to organize research in the army.
Until then I didn’t let on any of my feelings about the situation to the chairman of the meeting–the big shot who had invited me in the first place. As we were packing our bags to leave, he said to me, all smiles, “You’ll be joining us, then, for the next meeting..
“No, I won’t.” I could see his face change suddenly. He was very surprised that I would say no, after making those “contributions.”
In the early sixties, a lot of my friends were still giving advice to the government. Meanwhile, I was having no feeling of social responsibility and resisting, as much as possible, offers to go to Washington, which took a certain amount of courage in those times.
I was giving a series of freshman physics lectures at that time, and after one of them, Tom Harvey, who assisted me in putting on the demonstrations, said, “You oughta see what’s happening to mathematics in schoolbooks! My daughter comes home with a lot of crazy stuff!”
I didn’t pay much attention to what he said.
But the next day I got a telephone call from a pretty famous lawyer here in Pasadena, Mr. Norris, who was at that time on the State Board of Education. He asked me if I would serve on the State Curriculum Commission, which had to choose the new schoolbooks for the state of California. You see, the state had a law that all of the schoolbooks used by all of the kids in all of the public schools have to be chosen by the State Board of Education, so they have a committee to look over the books and to give them advice on which books to take.
It happened that a lot of the books were on a new method of teaching arithmetic that they called “new math,” and since usually the only people to look at the books were schoolteachers or administrators in education, they thought it would be a good idea to have somebody who uses mathematics scientifically, who knows what the end product is and what we’re trying to teach it for, to help in the evaluation of the schoolbooks.
I must have had, by this time, a guilty feeling about not cooperating with the government, because I agreed to get on this committee.
Immediately I began getting letters and telephone calls from book publishers. They said things like, “We’re very glad to hear you’re on the committee because we really wanted a scientific guy … and “It’s wonderful to have a scientist on the committee, because our books are scientifically oriented …”
But they also said things like, “We’d like to explain to you what our book is about …” and “We’ll be very glad to help you in any way we can to judge our books …”
That seemed to me kind of crazy. I’m an objective scientist, and it seemed to me that since the only thing the kids in school are going to get is the books (and the teachers get the teacher’s manual, which I would also get), any extra explanation from the company was a distortion. So I didn’t want to speak to any of the publishers and always replied, “You don’t have to explain; I’m sure the books will speak for themselves.”
I represented a certain district, which comprised most of the Los Angeles area except for the city of Los Angeles, which was represented by a very nice lady from the L.A. school system named Mrs. Whitehouse. Mr. Norris suggested that I meet her and find out what the committee did and how it worked.
Mrs. Whitehouse started out telling me about the stuff they were going to talk about in the next meeting (they had already had one meeting; I was appointed late). “They’re going to talk about the counting numbers.” I didn’t know what that was, but it turned out they were what I used to call integers. They had different names for everything, so I had a lot of trouble right from the start.
She told me how the members of the commission normally rated the new schoolbooks. They would get a relatively large number of copies of each book and would give them to various teachers and administrators in their district. Then they would get reports back on what these people thought about the books. Since I didn’t know a lot of teachers or administrators, and since I felt that I could, by reading the books myself, make up my mind as to how they looked to me , I chose to read all the books myself. (There were some people in my district who had expected to look at the books and wanted a chance to give their opinion. Mrs. Whitehouse offered to put their reports in with hers so they would feel better and I wouldn’t have to worry about their complaints. They were satisfied, and I didn’t get much trouble.)
A few days later a guy from the book depository called me up and said, “We’re ready to send you the books, Mr. Feynman; there are three hundred pounds.”
I was overwhelmed.
“It’s all right, Mr. Feynman; we’ll get someone to help you read them.”
I couldn’t figure out how you do that: you either read them or you don’t read them. I had a special bookshelf put in my study downstairs (the books took up seventeen feet), and began reading all the books that were going to be discussed in the next meeting. We were going to start out with the elementary schoolbooks.
It was a pretty big job, and I worked all the time at it down in the basement. My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of a sudden, “BLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!”–there would be a big explosion from the “volcano” below. The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous–they weren’t smart enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, useless , at that time, for the child.
I understood what they were trying to do. Many people thought we were behind the Russians after Sputnik, and some mathematicians were asked to give advice on how to teach math by using some of the rather interesting modern concepts of mathematics. The purpose was to enhance mathematics for the children who found it dull.
I’ll give you an example: They would talk about different bases of numbers–five, six, and so on–to show the possibilities. That would be interesting for a kid who could understand base ten–something to entertain his mind. But what they had turned it into, in these books, was that every child had to learn another base! And then the usual horror would come: “Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five.” Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you can’t do it, forget it. There’s no point to it.
Anyhow, I’m looking at all these books, all these books, and none of them has said anything about using arithmetic in science. If there are any examples on the use of arithmetic at all (most of the time it’s this abstract new modern nonsense), they are about things like buying stamps.
Finally I come to a book that says, “Mathematics is used in science in many ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of stars.” I turn the page, and it says, “Red stars have a temperature of four thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees …”–so far, so good. It continues: “Green stars have a temperature of seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of … (some big number).” There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are roughly correct. It’s vaguely right–but already, trouble! That’s the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don’t quite understand what they’re talking about, I cannot understand. I don’t know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!
Anyway, I’m happy with this book, because it’s the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I’m a bit unhappy when I read about the stars’ temperatures, but I’m not very unhappy because it’s more or less right–it’s just an example of error. Then comes the list of problems. It says, “John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?”–and I would explode in horror.
My wife would talk about the volcano downstairs. That’s only an example: it was perpetually like that. Perpetual absurdity! There’s no purpose whatsoever in adding the temperature of two stars. Nobody ever does that except, maybe, to then take the average temperature of the stars, but not to find out the total temperature of all the stars! It was awful! All it was was a game to get you to add, and they didn’t understand what they were talking about. It was like reading sentences with a few typographical errors, and then suddenly a whole sentence is written backwards. The mathematics was like that. Just hopeless!
Then I came to my first meeting. The other members had given some kind of ratings to some of the books, and they asked me what my ratings were. My rating was often different from theirs, and they would ask, “Why did you rate that book low?”
I would say the trouble with that book was this and this on page so‑and‑so–I had my notes.
They discovered that I was kind of a goldmine: I would tell them, in detail, what was good and bad in all the books; I had a reason for every rating.
I would ask them why they had rated this book so high, and they would say, “Let us hear what you thought about such and such a book.” I would never find out why they rated anything the way they did. Instead, they kept asking me what I thought.
We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.
I said, “The book depository didn’t send me that book, but the other two were nice.”
Someone tried repeating the question: “What do you think about that book?”
“I said they didn’t send me that one, so I don’t have any judgment on it.”
The man from the book depository was there, and he said, “Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn’t send it to you because that book hadn’t been completed yet. There’s a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it’s blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late.”
It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn’t believe it was blank, because they had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.
I believe the reason for all this is that the system works this way: When you give books all over the place to people, they’re busy; they’re careless; they think, “Well, a lot of people are reading this book, SO it doesn’t make any difference.” And they put in some kind of number–some of them, at least; not all of them, but some of them. Then when you receive your reports, you don’t know why this particular book has fewer reports than the other books–that is, perhaps one book has ten, and this one only has six people reporting–so you average the rating of those who reported; you don’t average the ones who didn’t report, so you get a reasonable number. This process of averaging all the time misses the fact that there is absolutely nothing between the covers of the book!
I made that theory up because I saw what happened in the curriculum commission: For the blank book, only six out of the ten members were reporting, whereas with the other books, eight or nine out of the ten were reporting. And when they averaged the six, they got as good an average as when they averaged with eight or nine. They were very embarrassed to discover they were giving ratings to that book, and it gave me a little bit more confidence. It turned out the other members of the committee had done a lot of work in giving out the books and collecting reports, and had gone to sessions in which the book publishers would explain the books before they read them; I was the only guy on that commission who read all the books and didn’t get any information from the book publishers except what was in the books themselves, the things that would ultimately go to the schools.
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
At first we weren’t supposed to talk about the cost of the books. We were told how many books we could choose, so we designed a program which used a lot of supplementary books, because all the new textbooks had failures of one kind or another. The most serious failures were in the “new math” books: there were no applications; not enough word problems. There was no talk of selling stamps; instead there was too much talk about commutation and abstract things and not enough translation to situations in the world. What do you do: add, subtract, multiply, or divide? So we suggested some books which had some of that as supplementary–one or two for each classroom–in addition to a textbook for each student. We had it all worked out to balance everything, after much discussion.
When we took our recommendations to the Board of Education, they told us they didn’t have as much money as they had thought, so we’d have to go over the whole thing and cut out this and that, now taking the cost into consideration, and ruining what was a fairly balanced program, in which there was a chance for a teacher to find examples of the things (s)he needed.
Now that they changed the rules about how many books we could recommend and we had no more chance to balance, it was a pretty lousy program. When the senate budget committee got to it, the program was emasculated still further. Now it was really lousy! I was asked to appear before the state senators when the issue was being discussed, but I declined: By that time, having argued this stuff so much, I was tired. We had prepared our recommendations for the Board of Education, and I figured it was their job to present it to the state–which was legally right, but not politically sound. I shouldn’t have given up so soon, but to have worked so hard and discussed so much about all these books to make a fairly balanced program, and then to have the whole thing scrapped at the end–that was discouraging! The whole thing was an unnecessary effort that could have been turned around and done the opposite way: start with the cost of the books, and buy what you can afford.
What finally clinched it, and made me ultimately resign, was that the following year we were going to discuss science books. I thought maybe the science would be different, so I looked at a few of them.
The same thing happened: something would look good at first and then turn out to be horrifying. For example, there was a book that started out with four pictures: first there was a wind‑up toy; then there was an automobile; then there was a boy riding a bicycle; then there was something else. And underneath each picture it said, “What makes it go?”
I thought, “I know what it is: They’re going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work.”
It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: “What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining.” And then we would have fun discussing it:
“No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up,” I would say. “How did the spring get wound up?” he would ask. “I wound it up.” “And how did you get moving?” “From eating.” “And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it’s because the sun is shining that all these things are moving.” That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun’s power.
I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind‑up toy, “Energy makes it go.” And for the boy on the bicycle, “Energy makes it go.” For everything, “Energy makes it go.”
Now that doesn’t mean anything. Suppose it’s “Wakalixes.” That’s the general principle: “Wakalixes makes it go.” There’s no knowledge coming in. The child doesn’t learn anything; it’s just a word !
What they should have done is to look at the wind‑up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind “energy.” Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.
It’s also not even true that “energy makes it go,” because if it stops, you could say, “energy makes it stop” just as well, What they’re talking about is concentrated energy being transformed into more dilute forms, which is a very subtle aspect of energy. Energy is neither increased nor decreased in these examples; it’s just changed from one form to another. And when the things stop, the energy is changed into heat, into general chaos.
But that’s the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed‑up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don’t know, because it’s not science.
So when I saw all these horrifying books with the same kind of trouble as the math books had, I saw my volcano process starting again. Since I was exhausted from reading all the math books, and discouraged from its all being a wasted effort, I couldn’t face another year of that, and had to resign.
Sometime later I heard that the energy‑makes‑it‑go book was going to be recommended by the curriculum commission to the Board of Education, so I made one last effort. At each meeting of the commission the public was allowed to make comments, so I got up and said why I thought the book was bad.
The man who replaced me on the commission said, “That book was approved by sixty‑five engineers at the Such‑and‑such Aircraft Company!”
I didn’t doubt that the company had some pretty good engineers, but to take sixty‑five engineers is to take a wide range of ability–and to necessarily include some pretty poor guys! It was once again the problem of averaging the length of the emperor’s nose, or the ratings on a book with nothing between the covers. It would have been far better to have the company decide who their better engineers were, and to have them look at the book. I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty‑five other guys–but the average of sixty five other guys, certainly!
I couldn’t get through to him, and the book was approved by the board.
When I was still on the commission, I had to go to San Francisco a few times for some of the meetings, and when I returned to Los Angeles from the first trip, I stopped in the commission office to get reimbursed for my expenses.
“How much did it cost, Mr. Feynman?”
“Well, I flew to San Francisco, so it’s the airfare, plus the parking at the airport while I was away.”
“Do you have your ticket?”
I happened to have the ticket.
“Do you have a receipt for the parking?”
“No, but it cost $2.35 to park my car.”
“But we have to have a receipt.” “I told you how much it cost.
If you don’t trust me, why do you let me tell you what I think is good and bad about the schoolbooks?”
There was a big stew about that. Unfortunately, I had been used to giving lectures for some company or university or for ordinary people, not for the government. I was used to, “What were your expenses?”–”So‑and‑so much.”–”Here you are, Mr. Feynman.”
I then decided I wasn’t going to give them a receipt for anything . After the second trip to San Francisco they again asked me for my ticket and receipts.
“I haven’t got any.” “This can’t go on, Mr. Feynman.”
“When I accepted to serve on the commission, I was told you were going to pay my expenses.”
“But we expected to have some receipts to prove the expenses.”
“I have nothing to prove it, but you know I live in Los Angeles and I go to these other towns; how the hell do you think I get there?”
They didn’t give in, and neither did I. I feel when you’re in a position like that, where you choose not to buckle down to the System, you must pay the consequences if it doesn’t work. So I’m perfectly satisfied, but I never did get compensation for the trips.
It’s one of those games I play. They want a receipt? I’m not giving them a receipt. Then you’re not going to get the money. OK, then I’m not taking the money. They don’t trust me? The hell with it; they don’t have to pay me. Of course it’s absurd! I know that’s the way the government works; well, screw the government! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I’m going to be treated like one, I’m not going to have anything to do with them! They feel bad? They feel bad. I feel bad, too. We’ll just let it go. I know they’re “protecting the taxpayer,” but see how well you think the taxpayer was being protected in the following situation.
There were two books that we were unable to come to a decision about after much discussion; they were extremely close. So we left it open to the Board of Education to decide. Since the board was now taking the cost into consideration, and since the two books were so evenly matched, the board decided to open the bids and take the lower one.
Then the question came up, “Will the schools be getting the books at the regular time, or could they, perhaps, get them a little earlier, in time for the coming term?”
One publisher’s representative got up and said, “We are happy that you accepted our bid; we can get it out in time for the next term.”
A representative of the publisher that lost out was also there, and he got up and said, “Since our bids were submitted based on the later deadline, I think we should have a chance a bid again for the earlier deadline, because we too can meet the earlier deadline.”
Mr. Norris, the Pasadena lawyer on the board, asked the guy from the other publisher, “And how much would it cost for us to get your books at the earlier date?”
And he gave a number: It was less !
The first guy got up: “If he changes his bid, I have the right to change my bid!”–and his bid is still less!
Norris asked, “Well how is that–we get the books earlier and it’s cheaper ?”
“Yes,” one guy says. “We can use a special offset method we wouldn’t normally use …”–some excuse why it came out cheaper.
The other guy agreed: “When you do it quicker, it costs less!”
That was really a shock. It ended up two million dollars cheaper. Norris was really incensed by this sudden change.
What happened, of course, was that the uncertainty about the date had opened the possibility that these guys could bid against each other. Normally, when books were supposed to be chosen without taking the cost into consideration, there was no reason to lower the price; the book publishers could put the prices at any place they wanted to. There was no advantage in competing by lowering the price; the way you competed was to impress the members of the curriculum commission.
By the way, whenever our commission had a meeting, there were book publishers entertaining curriculum commission members by taking them to lunch and talking to them about their books. I never went.
It seems obvious now, but I didn’t know what was happening the time I got a package of dried fruit and whatnot delivered by Western Union with a message that read, “From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving–The Pamilios.”
It was from a family I had never heard of in Long Beach, obviously someone wanting to send this to his friend’s family who got the name and address wrong, so I thought I’d better straighten it out. I called up Western Union, got the telephone number of the people who sent the stuff, and I called them.
“Hello, my name is Mr. Feynman. I received a package …”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Feynman, this is Pete Pamilio” and he says it in such a friendly way that I think I’m supposed to know who he is! I’m normally such a dunce that I can’t remember who anyone is.
So I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pamilio, but I don’t quite remember who you are …”
It turned out he was a representative of one of the publishers whose books I had to judge on the curriculum commission.
“I see. But this could be misunderstood.”
“It’s only family to family.”
“Yes, but I’m judging a book that you’re publishing, and maybe someone might misinterpret your kindness!” I knew what was happening, but I made it sound like I was a complete idiot.
Another thing like this happened when one of the publishers sent me a leather briefcase with my name nicely written in gold on it. I gave them the same stuff: “I can’t accept it; I’m judging some of the books you’re publishing. I don’t think you understand that!”
One commissioner, who had been there for the greatest length of time, said, “I never accept the stuff; it makes me very upset. But it just goes on.”
But I really missed one opportunity. If I had only thought fast enough, I could have had a very good time on that commission. I got to the hotel in San Francisco in the evening to attend my very first meeting the next day, and I decided to go out to wander in the town and eat something. I came out of the elevator, and sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby were two guys who jumped up and said, “Good evening, Mr. Feynman. Where are you going? Is there something we can show you in San Francisco?” They were from a publishing company, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
“I’m going out to eat.”
“We can take you out to dinner.”
“No, I want to be alone.”
“Well, whatever you want, we can help you.”
I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, I’m going out to get myself in trouble.”
“I think we can help you in that , too.”
“No, I think I’ll take care of that myself.” Then I thought, “What an error! I should have let all that stuff operate and keep a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!” And when I found out about the two‑million‑dollar difference, God knows what the pressures are! (Dikutip dari Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman)
After the war, physicists were often asked to go to Washington and give advice to various sections of the government, especially the military. What happened, I suppose, is that since the scientists had made these bombs that were so important, the military felt we were useful for something.
Once I was asked to serve on a committee which was to evaluate various weapons for the army, and I wrote a letter back which explained that I was only a theoretical physicist, and I didn’t know anything about weapons for the army.
The army responded that they had found in their experience that theoretical physicists were very useful to them in making decisions, so would I please reconsider?
I wrote back again and said I didn’t really know anything, and doubted I could help them.
Finally I got a letter from the Secretary of the Army, which proposed a compromise: I would come to the first meeting, where I could listen and see whether I could make a contribution or not. Then I could decide whether I should continue.
I said I would, of course. What else could I do?
I went down to Washington and the first thing that I went to was a cocktail party to meet everybody. There were generals and other important characters from the army, and everybody talked. It was pleasant enough.
One guy in a uniform came to me and told me that the army was glad that physicists were advising the military because it had a lot of problems. One of the problems was that tanks use up their fuel very quickly and thus can’t go very far. So the question was how to refuel them as they’re going along. Now this guy had the idea that, since the physicists can get energy out of uranium, could I work out a way in which we could use silicon dioxide–sand, dirt–as a fuel? If that were possible, then all this tank would have to do would be to have a little scoop underneath, and as it goes along, it would pick up the dirt and use it for fuel! He thought that was a great idea, and that all I had to do was to work out the details. That was the kind of problem I thought we would be talking about in the meeting the next day.
I went to the meeting and noticed that some guy who had introduced me to all the people at the cocktail party was sitting next to me. He was apparently some flunky assigned to be at my side at all times. On my other side was some super general I had heard of before.
At the first session of the meeting they talked about some technical matters, and I made a few comments. But later on, near the end of the meeting, they began to discuss some problem of logistics, about which I knew nothing. It had to do with figuring out how much stuff you should have at different places at different times. And although I tried to keep my trap shut, when you get into a situation like that, where you’re sitting around a table with all these “important people” discussing these “important problems,” you can’t keep your mouth shut, even if you know nothing whatsoever! So I made some comments in that discussion, too.
During the next coffee break the guy who had been assigned to shepherd me around said, “I was very impressed by the things you said during the discussion. They certainly were an important contribution.”
I stopped and thought about my “contribution” to the logistics problem, and realized that a man like the guy who orders the stuff for Christmas at Macy’s would be better able to figure out how to handle problems like that than I. So I concluded: a) if I had made an important contribution, it was sheer luck; b) anybody else could have done as well, but most people could have done better , and c) this flattery should wake me up to the fact that I am not capable of contributing much.
Right after that they decided, in the meeting, that they could do better discussing the organization of scientific research (such as, should scientific development be under the Corps of Engineers or the Quartermaster Division?) than specific technical matters. I knew that if there was to be any hope of my making a real contribution, it would be only on some specific technical matter, and surely not on how to organize research in the army.
Until then I didn’t let on any of my feelings about the situation to the chairman of the meeting–the big shot who had invited me in the first place. As we were packing our bags to leave, he said to me, all smiles, “You’ll be joining us, then, for the next meeting..
“No, I won’t.” I could see his face change suddenly. He was very surprised that I would say no, after making those “contributions.”
In the early sixties, a lot of my friends were still giving advice to the government. Meanwhile, I was having no feeling of social responsibility and resisting, as much as possible, offers to go to Washington, which took a certain amount of courage in those times.
I was giving a series of freshman physics lectures at that time, and after one of them, Tom Harvey, who assisted me in putting on the demonstrations, said, “You oughta see what’s happening to mathematics in schoolbooks! My daughter comes home with a lot of crazy stuff!”
I didn’t pay much attention to what he said.
But the next day I got a telephone call from a pretty famous lawyer here in Pasadena, Mr. Norris, who was at that time on the State Board of Education. He asked me if I would serve on the State Curriculum Commission, which had to choose the new schoolbooks for the state of California. You see, the state had a law that all of the schoolbooks used by all of the kids in all of the public schools have to be chosen by the State Board of Education, so they have a committee to look over the books and to give them advice on which books to take.
It happened that a lot of the books were on a new method of teaching arithmetic that they called “new math,” and since usually the only people to look at the books were schoolteachers or administrators in education, they thought it would be a good idea to have somebody who uses mathematics scientifically, who knows what the end product is and what we’re trying to teach it for, to help in the evaluation of the schoolbooks.
I must have had, by this time, a guilty feeling about not cooperating with the government, because I agreed to get on this committee.
Immediately I began getting letters and telephone calls from book publishers. They said things like, “We’re very glad to hear you’re on the committee because we really wanted a scientific guy … and “It’s wonderful to have a scientist on the committee, because our books are scientifically oriented …”
But they also said things like, “We’d like to explain to you what our book is about …” and “We’ll be very glad to help you in any way we can to judge our books …”
That seemed to me kind of crazy. I’m an objective scientist, and it seemed to me that since the only thing the kids in school are going to get is the books (and the teachers get the teacher’s manual, which I would also get), any extra explanation from the company was a distortion. So I didn’t want to speak to any of the publishers and always replied, “You don’t have to explain; I’m sure the books will speak for themselves.”
I represented a certain district, which comprised most of the Los Angeles area except for the city of Los Angeles, which was represented by a very nice lady from the L.A. school system named Mrs. Whitehouse. Mr. Norris suggested that I meet her and find out what the committee did and how it worked.
Mrs. Whitehouse started out telling me about the stuff they were going to talk about in the next meeting (they had already had one meeting; I was appointed late). “They’re going to talk about the counting numbers.” I didn’t know what that was, but it turned out they were what I used to call integers. They had different names for everything, so I had a lot of trouble right from the start.
She told me how the members of the commission normally rated the new schoolbooks. They would get a relatively large number of copies of each book and would give them to various teachers and administrators in their district. Then they would get reports back on what these people thought about the books. Since I didn’t know a lot of teachers or administrators, and since I felt that I could, by reading the books myself, make up my mind as to how they looked to me , I chose to read all the books myself. (There were some people in my district who had expected to look at the books and wanted a chance to give their opinion. Mrs. Whitehouse offered to put their reports in with hers so they would feel better and I wouldn’t have to worry about their complaints. They were satisfied, and I didn’t get much trouble.)
A few days later a guy from the book depository called me up and said, “We’re ready to send you the books, Mr. Feynman; there are three hundred pounds.”
I was overwhelmed.
“It’s all right, Mr. Feynman; we’ll get someone to help you read them.”
I couldn’t figure out how you do that: you either read them or you don’t read them. I had a special bookshelf put in my study downstairs (the books took up seventeen feet), and began reading all the books that were going to be discussed in the next meeting. We were going to start out with the elementary schoolbooks.
It was a pretty big job, and I worked all the time at it down in the basement. My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of a sudden, “BLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!”–there would be a big explosion from the “volcano” below. The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous–they weren’t smart enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, useless , at that time, for the child.
I understood what they were trying to do. Many people thought we were behind the Russians after Sputnik, and some mathematicians were asked to give advice on how to teach math by using some of the rather interesting modern concepts of mathematics. The purpose was to enhance mathematics for the children who found it dull.
I’ll give you an example: They would talk about different bases of numbers–five, six, and so on–to show the possibilities. That would be interesting for a kid who could understand base ten–something to entertain his mind. But what they had turned it into, in these books, was that every child had to learn another base! And then the usual horror would come: “Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five.” Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you can’t do it, forget it. There’s no point to it.
Anyhow, I’m looking at all these books, all these books, and none of them has said anything about using arithmetic in science. If there are any examples on the use of arithmetic at all (most of the time it’s this abstract new modern nonsense), they are about things like buying stamps.
Finally I come to a book that says, “Mathematics is used in science in many ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of stars.” I turn the page, and it says, “Red stars have a temperature of four thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees …”–so far, so good. It continues: “Green stars have a temperature of seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of … (some big number).” There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are roughly correct. It’s vaguely right–but already, trouble! That’s the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don’t quite understand what they’re talking about, I cannot understand. I don’t know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!
Anyway, I’m happy with this book, because it’s the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I’m a bit unhappy when I read about the stars’ temperatures, but I’m not very unhappy because it’s more or less right–it’s just an example of error. Then comes the list of problems. It says, “John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?”–and I would explode in horror.
My wife would talk about the volcano downstairs. That’s only an example: it was perpetually like that. Perpetual absurdity! There’s no purpose whatsoever in adding the temperature of two stars. Nobody ever does that except, maybe, to then take the average temperature of the stars, but not to find out the total temperature of all the stars! It was awful! All it was was a game to get you to add, and they didn’t understand what they were talking about. It was like reading sentences with a few typographical errors, and then suddenly a whole sentence is written backwards. The mathematics was like that. Just hopeless!
Then I came to my first meeting. The other members had given some kind of ratings to some of the books, and they asked me what my ratings were. My rating was often different from theirs, and they would ask, “Why did you rate that book low?”
I would say the trouble with that book was this and this on page so‑and‑so–I had my notes.
They discovered that I was kind of a goldmine: I would tell them, in detail, what was good and bad in all the books; I had a reason for every rating.
I would ask them why they had rated this book so high, and they would say, “Let us hear what you thought about such and such a book.” I would never find out why they rated anything the way they did. Instead, they kept asking me what I thought.
We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.
I said, “The book depository didn’t send me that book, but the other two were nice.”
Someone tried repeating the question: “What do you think about that book?”
“I said they didn’t send me that one, so I don’t have any judgment on it.”
The man from the book depository was there, and he said, “Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn’t send it to you because that book hadn’t been completed yet. There’s a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it’s blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late.”
It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn’t believe it was blank, because they had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.
I believe the reason for all this is that the system works this way: When you give books all over the place to people, they’re busy; they’re careless; they think, “Well, a lot of people are reading this book, SO it doesn’t make any difference.” And they put in some kind of number–some of them, at least; not all of them, but some of them. Then when you receive your reports, you don’t know why this particular book has fewer reports than the other books–that is, perhaps one book has ten, and this one only has six people reporting–so you average the rating of those who reported; you don’t average the ones who didn’t report, so you get a reasonable number. This process of averaging all the time misses the fact that there is absolutely nothing between the covers of the book!
I made that theory up because I saw what happened in the curriculum commission: For the blank book, only six out of the ten members were reporting, whereas with the other books, eight or nine out of the ten were reporting. And when they averaged the six, they got as good an average as when they averaged with eight or nine. They were very embarrassed to discover they were giving ratings to that book, and it gave me a little bit more confidence. It turned out the other members of the committee had done a lot of work in giving out the books and collecting reports, and had gone to sessions in which the book publishers would explain the books before they read them; I was the only guy on that commission who read all the books and didn’t get any information from the book publishers except what was in the books themselves, the things that would ultimately go to the schools.
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
At first we weren’t supposed to talk about the cost of the books. We were told how many books we could choose, so we designed a program which used a lot of supplementary books, because all the new textbooks had failures of one kind or another. The most serious failures were in the “new math” books: there were no applications; not enough word problems. There was no talk of selling stamps; instead there was too much talk about commutation and abstract things and not enough translation to situations in the world. What do you do: add, subtract, multiply, or divide? So we suggested some books which had some of that as supplementary–one or two for each classroom–in addition to a textbook for each student. We had it all worked out to balance everything, after much discussion.
When we took our recommendations to the Board of Education, they told us they didn’t have as much money as they had thought, so we’d have to go over the whole thing and cut out this and that, now taking the cost into consideration, and ruining what was a fairly balanced program, in which there was a chance for a teacher to find examples of the things (s)he needed.
Now that they changed the rules about how many books we could recommend and we had no more chance to balance, it was a pretty lousy program. When the senate budget committee got to it, the program was emasculated still further. Now it was really lousy! I was asked to appear before the state senators when the issue was being discussed, but I declined: By that time, having argued this stuff so much, I was tired. We had prepared our recommendations for the Board of Education, and I figured it was their job to present it to the state–which was legally right, but not politically sound. I shouldn’t have given up so soon, but to have worked so hard and discussed so much about all these books to make a fairly balanced program, and then to have the whole thing scrapped at the end–that was discouraging! The whole thing was an unnecessary effort that could have been turned around and done the opposite way: start with the cost of the books, and buy what you can afford.
What finally clinched it, and made me ultimately resign, was that the following year we were going to discuss science books. I thought maybe the science would be different, so I looked at a few of them.
The same thing happened: something would look good at first and then turn out to be horrifying. For example, there was a book that started out with four pictures: first there was a wind‑up toy; then there was an automobile; then there was a boy riding a bicycle; then there was something else. And underneath each picture it said, “What makes it go?”
I thought, “I know what it is: They’re going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work.”
It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: “What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining.” And then we would have fun discussing it:
“No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up,” I would say. “How did the spring get wound up?” he would ask. “I wound it up.” “And how did you get moving?” “From eating.” “And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it’s because the sun is shining that all these things are moving.” That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun’s power.
I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind‑up toy, “Energy makes it go.” And for the boy on the bicycle, “Energy makes it go.” For everything, “Energy makes it go.”
Now that doesn’t mean anything. Suppose it’s “Wakalixes.” That’s the general principle: “Wakalixes makes it go.” There’s no knowledge coming in. The child doesn’t learn anything; it’s just a word !
What they should have done is to look at the wind‑up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind “energy.” Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.
It’s also not even true that “energy makes it go,” because if it stops, you could say, “energy makes it stop” just as well, What they’re talking about is concentrated energy being transformed into more dilute forms, which is a very subtle aspect of energy. Energy is neither increased nor decreased in these examples; it’s just changed from one form to another. And when the things stop, the energy is changed into heat, into general chaos.
But that’s the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed‑up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don’t know, because it’s not science.
So when I saw all these horrifying books with the same kind of trouble as the math books had, I saw my volcano process starting again. Since I was exhausted from reading all the math books, and discouraged from its all being a wasted effort, I couldn’t face another year of that, and had to resign.
Sometime later I heard that the energy‑makes‑it‑go book was going to be recommended by the curriculum commission to the Board of Education, so I made one last effort. At each meeting of the commission the public was allowed to make comments, so I got up and said why I thought the book was bad.
The man who replaced me on the commission said, “That book was approved by sixty‑five engineers at the Such‑and‑such Aircraft Company!”
I didn’t doubt that the company had some pretty good engineers, but to take sixty‑five engineers is to take a wide range of ability–and to necessarily include some pretty poor guys! It was once again the problem of averaging the length of the emperor’s nose, or the ratings on a book with nothing between the covers. It would have been far better to have the company decide who their better engineers were, and to have them look at the book. I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty‑five other guys–but the average of sixty five other guys, certainly!
I couldn’t get through to him, and the book was approved by the board.
When I was still on the commission, I had to go to San Francisco a few times for some of the meetings, and when I returned to Los Angeles from the first trip, I stopped in the commission office to get reimbursed for my expenses.
“How much did it cost, Mr. Feynman?”
“Well, I flew to San Francisco, so it’s the airfare, plus the parking at the airport while I was away.”
“Do you have your ticket?”
I happened to have the ticket.
“Do you have a receipt for the parking?”
“No, but it cost $2.35 to park my car.”
“But we have to have a receipt.” “I told you how much it cost.
If you don’t trust me, why do you let me tell you what I think is good and bad about the schoolbooks?”
There was a big stew about that. Unfortunately, I had been used to giving lectures for some company or university or for ordinary people, not for the government. I was used to, “What were your expenses?”–”So‑and‑so much.”–”Here you are, Mr. Feynman.”
I then decided I wasn’t going to give them a receipt for anything . After the second trip to San Francisco they again asked me for my ticket and receipts.
“I haven’t got any.” “This can’t go on, Mr. Feynman.”
“When I accepted to serve on the commission, I was told you were going to pay my expenses.”
“But we expected to have some receipts to prove the expenses.”
“I have nothing to prove it, but you know I live in Los Angeles and I go to these other towns; how the hell do you think I get there?”
They didn’t give in, and neither did I. I feel when you’re in a position like that, where you choose not to buckle down to the System, you must pay the consequences if it doesn’t work. So I’m perfectly satisfied, but I never did get compensation for the trips.
It’s one of those games I play. They want a receipt? I’m not giving them a receipt. Then you’re not going to get the money. OK, then I’m not taking the money. They don’t trust me? The hell with it; they don’t have to pay me. Of course it’s absurd! I know that’s the way the government works; well, screw the government! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I’m going to be treated like one, I’m not going to have anything to do with them! They feel bad? They feel bad. I feel bad, too. We’ll just let it go. I know they’re “protecting the taxpayer,” but see how well you think the taxpayer was being protected in the following situation.
There were two books that we were unable to come to a decision about after much discussion; they were extremely close. So we left it open to the Board of Education to decide. Since the board was now taking the cost into consideration, and since the two books were so evenly matched, the board decided to open the bids and take the lower one.
Then the question came up, “Will the schools be getting the books at the regular time, or could they, perhaps, get them a little earlier, in time for the coming term?”
One publisher’s representative got up and said, “We are happy that you accepted our bid; we can get it out in time for the next term.”
A representative of the publisher that lost out was also there, and he got up and said, “Since our bids were submitted based on the later deadline, I think we should have a chance a bid again for the earlier deadline, because we too can meet the earlier deadline.”
Mr. Norris, the Pasadena lawyer on the board, asked the guy from the other publisher, “And how much would it cost for us to get your books at the earlier date?”
And he gave a number: It was less !
The first guy got up: “If he changes his bid, I have the right to change my bid!”–and his bid is still less!
Norris asked, “Well how is that–we get the books earlier and it’s cheaper ?”
“Yes,” one guy says. “We can use a special offset method we wouldn’t normally use …”–some excuse why it came out cheaper.
The other guy agreed: “When you do it quicker, it costs less!”
That was really a shock. It ended up two million dollars cheaper. Norris was really incensed by this sudden change.
What happened, of course, was that the uncertainty about the date had opened the possibility that these guys could bid against each other. Normally, when books were supposed to be chosen without taking the cost into consideration, there was no reason to lower the price; the book publishers could put the prices at any place they wanted to. There was no advantage in competing by lowering the price; the way you competed was to impress the members of the curriculum commission.
By the way, whenever our commission had a meeting, there were book publishers entertaining curriculum commission members by taking them to lunch and talking to them about their books. I never went.
It seems obvious now, but I didn’t know what was happening the time I got a package of dried fruit and whatnot delivered by Western Union with a message that read, “From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving–The Pamilios.”
It was from a family I had never heard of in Long Beach, obviously someone wanting to send this to his friend’s family who got the name and address wrong, so I thought I’d better straighten it out. I called up Western Union, got the telephone number of the people who sent the stuff, and I called them.
“Hello, my name is Mr. Feynman. I received a package …”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Feynman, this is Pete Pamilio” and he says it in such a friendly way that I think I’m supposed to know who he is! I’m normally such a dunce that I can’t remember who anyone is.
So I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pamilio, but I don’t quite remember who you are …”
It turned out he was a representative of one of the publishers whose books I had to judge on the curriculum commission.
“I see. But this could be misunderstood.”
“It’s only family to family.”
“Yes, but I’m judging a book that you’re publishing, and maybe someone might misinterpret your kindness!” I knew what was happening, but I made it sound like I was a complete idiot.
Another thing like this happened when one of the publishers sent me a leather briefcase with my name nicely written in gold on it. I gave them the same stuff: “I can’t accept it; I’m judging some of the books you’re publishing. I don’t think you understand that!”
One commissioner, who had been there for the greatest length of time, said, “I never accept the stuff; it makes me very upset. But it just goes on.”
But I really missed one opportunity. If I had only thought fast enough, I could have had a very good time on that commission. I got to the hotel in San Francisco in the evening to attend my very first meeting the next day, and I decided to go out to wander in the town and eat something. I came out of the elevator, and sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby were two guys who jumped up and said, “Good evening, Mr. Feynman. Where are you going? Is there something we can show you in San Francisco?” They were from a publishing company, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
“I’m going out to eat.”
“We can take you out to dinner.”
“No, I want to be alone.”
“Well, whatever you want, we can help you.”
I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, I’m going out to get myself in trouble.”
“I think we can help you in that , too.”
“No, I think I’ll take care of that myself.” Then I thought, “What an error! I should have let all that stuff operate and keep a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!” And when I found out about the two‑million‑dollar difference, God knows what the pressures are! (Dikutip dari Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman)
Kathleen Kelly's Philosophy of Selling Books
The main theme of a film is always constructed by a lot of subthemes. These subthemes are often not related directly to the main theme, but there they are to provide the settings for the main theme to develop. Therefore, if you give an extra effort to break a film down into chunks - instead of just look at the big picture, ignoring the subthemes and subplots - and examine each chunk as an individual theme, you will be able to learn a lot of different things from a single movie. And it's often totally different from the main theme.
That's what I did the last time I watched Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. Instead of putting myself in a sentimental state watching the funny romance of Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, I focused on their conflict in the book business - not that I thought romance is a cliche, it's just a try to see beyond the thing that average viewer will perceive.
The first valuable principle was formulated by Katheen when she first met Joe Fox in The Shop Around the Corner. "I started helping my mother here after school when I was six years old. I used to watch her, and it wasn't that she was selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever they were going to turn out to be. When you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."
Off course what Kathleen and her mom did was selling. They got money from books. But the selling was definitely not driven by the money, but by the passion to help people to be whoever they're going to be. Books are seen as equipments for people in their quest to find the self. I think this passion will lead anyone - especially editors - in the book business to make books based on the values they'll give to people's lives, instead of merely on whether it will be sold out or not. The same passion will lead salespeople to sell books that people really need, not books that the salespeople (pretend to) think people need.
Another valuable principle was stated when Kathleen's employees - George, Christina, and Birdie - were talking about their worries seeing the Fox Books store. Kathleen ensured them that they're going to be fine saying, "They're big, impersonal, and full of ignorant salespeople!" Those are at least two deadly sins of a big business: impersonality and ignorance.
In the small The Shop Around the Corner, kids can still sit down listening to the booklady reading a section from Roald Dahl's celebrated autobiography Boy, describing "The Great Mouse Plot of 1923". There were interactions - socially and emotionally - in it, compared to the deep couch and cappuccino offered by Fox Books store as a bribe. There won't be a scene in Fox Books store where a reader cried after reading a touching book and Cecilia Kelly offered a box of kleenex. Instead, individuals will only stroll around from shelf to shelf to find a title and then pay - the thing they can always do in any other places. At The Shop Around the Corner, emotional attachment doesn't only appear between buyer and books, but also between buyer and seller. Buying is not merely an economic activity, it's an experience.
Ignorance was beautifully pictured by the scene in children book section in Fox Books store where a lady were looking for a book and all she can remember was that it contains the word 'shoes'. And the salesman had no idea of what she was talking about. Kathleen who happened to be there explained crying that what she was looking for were the Shoes series of Noel Streatfeild that were out of print already. Kathleen then recommend the Ballet Shoes. In Fox Bookstore, there will be no George Papas explaining to Joe Fox about beautifully crafted hand-illustrations. Ignorance is all we will find when I go to to big bookstores nowadays.
At the end of the film we saw Fox Books store won, putting The Shop Around the Corner into bankruptcy. Yes, I fully understand that the success of a business - note that success nowadays is identical only to financial gain and survival - is determined by sophisticated terms such as marketing strategy and tactic, updated management technique, and so on. But when we talk about quality, I don't think that's enough. I am not blaming modern mega stores. Such a store gives more people chances to earn their living. But I have a vision of putting those principles together in a more humane business: passion to help people, personality, knowledgability, and marketing strategies and tactics. Only by that way I think you can make a growing business which at the same time gives people experience. But still a sad question popped up in my mind, "Is that what today's people really want - discount, cappuccino, gimmick, deep couch?" How sad...
That's what I did the last time I watched Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. Instead of putting myself in a sentimental state watching the funny romance of Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, I focused on their conflict in the book business - not that I thought romance is a cliche, it's just a try to see beyond the thing that average viewer will perceive.
The first valuable principle was formulated by Katheen when she first met Joe Fox in The Shop Around the Corner. "I started helping my mother here after school when I was six years old. I used to watch her, and it wasn't that she was selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever they were going to turn out to be. When you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."
Off course what Kathleen and her mom did was selling. They got money from books. But the selling was definitely not driven by the money, but by the passion to help people to be whoever they're going to be. Books are seen as equipments for people in their quest to find the self. I think this passion will lead anyone - especially editors - in the book business to make books based on the values they'll give to people's lives, instead of merely on whether it will be sold out or not. The same passion will lead salespeople to sell books that people really need, not books that the salespeople (pretend to) think people need.
Another valuable principle was stated when Kathleen's employees - George, Christina, and Birdie - were talking about their worries seeing the Fox Books store. Kathleen ensured them that they're going to be fine saying, "They're big, impersonal, and full of ignorant salespeople!" Those are at least two deadly sins of a big business: impersonality and ignorance.
In the small The Shop Around the Corner, kids can still sit down listening to the booklady reading a section from Roald Dahl's celebrated autobiography Boy, describing "The Great Mouse Plot of 1923". There were interactions - socially and emotionally - in it, compared to the deep couch and cappuccino offered by Fox Books store as a bribe. There won't be a scene in Fox Books store where a reader cried after reading a touching book and Cecilia Kelly offered a box of kleenex. Instead, individuals will only stroll around from shelf to shelf to find a title and then pay - the thing they can always do in any other places. At The Shop Around the Corner, emotional attachment doesn't only appear between buyer and books, but also between buyer and seller. Buying is not merely an economic activity, it's an experience.
Ignorance was beautifully pictured by the scene in children book section in Fox Books store where a lady were looking for a book and all she can remember was that it contains the word 'shoes'. And the salesman had no idea of what she was talking about. Kathleen who happened to be there explained crying that what she was looking for were the Shoes series of Noel Streatfeild that were out of print already. Kathleen then recommend the Ballet Shoes. In Fox Bookstore, there will be no George Papas explaining to Joe Fox about beautifully crafted hand-illustrations. Ignorance is all we will find when I go to to big bookstores nowadays.
At the end of the film we saw Fox Books store won, putting The Shop Around the Corner into bankruptcy. Yes, I fully understand that the success of a business - note that success nowadays is identical only to financial gain and survival - is determined by sophisticated terms such as marketing strategy and tactic, updated management technique, and so on. But when we talk about quality, I don't think that's enough. I am not blaming modern mega stores. Such a store gives more people chances to earn their living. But I have a vision of putting those principles together in a more humane business: passion to help people, personality, knowledgability, and marketing strategies and tactics. Only by that way I think you can make a growing business which at the same time gives people experience. But still a sad question popped up in my mind, "Is that what today's people really want - discount, cappuccino, gimmick, deep couch?" How sad...
Menonton Kitty di Jakarta
Di suapan terakhir nasi lemak yang enak, potongan penghabisan kari ayam yang nyam-nyam, kami terhentak oleh jerit perempuan di lantai dasar. Kami tinggalkan piring kami, bersama orang-orang lain di resto pengusung nama negeri jiran itu menghambur ke luar, mencari tempat di mana mata kami leluasa melihat apa yang terjadi di lantai bawah. Di lantai bawah keadaan kacau. Baju-baju yang dipajang berserakan di lantai. Puluhan orang, kebanyakan perempuan, berlarian tak tentu arah. Butuh tiga menit setidaknya untuk mengetahui benar apa yang membuat orang-orang itu histeris, karena terlalu banyak objek bergerak di bawah sehingga sukar menentukan fokus. Tapi tak lama kemudian seorang pria bergerak ke tengah. Di tangannya sebilah klewang. Teriakan ibu-ibu kian melengking ketika senjata tajam itu diacung-acungkannya entah dengan tujuan apa. Ketika dia berbalik, aku dapat melihat dengan jelas bajunya yang kuyup oleh darah yang mengalir dari luka bacok di kepala. Lalu dia berjalan kian gontai menuju pintu keluar pusat keramaian itu. Sesekali dia berhenti sambil menyeka darah yang kian deras. Lelah mungkin. Sempat pula dia duduk di salah satu kedai kopi. Entah apa yang dipikirkannya. Dua menit kemudian temannya, juga dengan parang di tangan, menghampiri dan memapahnya ke luar.
Dan aku diajak berpikir, bukan terutama oleh adegan berdarah-darah di bawah, tetapi oleh apa kata orang dan aku tentang kejadian itu. Aku sendiri harus mengaku telah termakan stereotip. "FPI kayaknya," ujarku pada seorang teman ketika kami masih sama-sama tak tahu apa yang terjadi. "Tadi aku lihat celananya cingkrang," jawabku ketika dia tanya kenapa aku bisa tahu. Beberapa orang lain di sekitar kami membuat sangkaan senada. Maklum, peristiwa itu hanya berjarak beberapa hari dari tragedi monas. Sebenarnya dugaan awalku adalah bom. Kepada seorang teman sempat pula aku bilang, dulu kalau ada ledakan bom, redpel-ku pasti langsung suruh aku turun, ngubek-ngubek TKP dan rumah sakit untuk cari korban dengan kisah paling tragis, paling heroik, atau paling klenik. "Jangan lupa tanyakan soal firasat, Dan," kata redpel-ku pula dengan cerdasnya. Oh dunia... Di dekat sebuah restoran cepat saji, cerita yang berkembang lain lagi. Dua orang pramusaji justru berkelakar betapa akan lebih seru peristiwa tadi kalau ada adegan adu pedang seperti di film-film laga mandarin. Seorang bapak setengah baya justru membahas rasa jijik. "Hilang selera makan saya ngeliatnya." Ada suami yang menyuruh istrinya menjauh dari tangga, siapa tahu orang-orang yang bertikai di bawah naik ke lantai dua.
Yang kemudian terpikir olehku adalah reaksi orang-orang ketika lelaki yang terluka itu berjalan gontai kehabisan darah. Semua orang justru menyingkir, menjauh. Ada lebih dari lima satpam yang mengikutinya, tapi bukan dengan maksud meringkus atau menolong, melainkan hanya ingin memberinya jalan sambil memastikan dia tidak menyerang pengunjung. Laki-laki itu seperti banteng habis dihunus yang kemudian ditontoni hingga kehabisan darah. Lalu aku teringat kisah Kitty Genovese yang dikutip Malcolm Gladwell dalam Tipping Point. Di suatu hari pada tahun 1964, Kitty dikejar oleh penyerangnya di suatu jalan di New York. Dalam kengerian selama setengah jam itu, dia ditikam tiga kali hingga mati. Ironisnya, kejar-kejaran itu ditonton oleh 38 orang tetangganya dari jendela masing-masing. Dan tak seorang pun melakukan apa pun, tak juga menelepon polisi. "Ketidakpedulian pada tetangga dan masalahnya adalah tindakan refleks yang terkondisikan dalam kehidupan di New York dan kota-kota besar lainnya," tulis Abe Rosenthal, editor The New York Times, soal kasus itu. Inikah yang terjadi kemarin? Barangkali. Klewang di tangan lelaki terluka itu tentu menjadi pembeda. Atau justru menjadi pembenar untuk tak ikut campur, sebab tindakan menolong yang heroik bukan tak mungkin menyebabkan diri terluka. Atau justru besarnya jumlah orang yang menyaksikan ikut menjadi tempat sembunyi yang nyaman. "Kan bukan hanya saya yang lihat. Kenapa harus saya yang tolong?" Entah apa yang kami pikirkan ketika "menonton" saat itu, tapi yang pasti tak kudengar sepatah kata pun nuansa iba di tengah kerumunan kami. Mungkin Rosenthal benar soal ketidakpedulian. Atau mungkin kami bahkan dibuai oleh nyamannya dosa kolektif. Tak apa tak peduli, asal bukan sendiri. Itu pikir kami.
Orang itu akhirnya dibawa entah ke mana oleh temannya, setelah beberapa taksi menolak mengangkutnya di luar. Sementara itu, manajer kafe dan resto yang tempatnya kebagian darah memerintahkan bawahan-bawahannya untuk mengepel. Sebuah kedai kopi bahkan merelakan sebungkus kopinya dihamburkan di lantai, demi mengusir bau amis darah. Hanya lima menit berselang, semuanya kembali bergeliat. Kedai kopi yang dibanjiri darah tadi kembali didatangi orang ramai. "Kejadian tadi menyisakan kengerian yang membuat orang ingin duduk diam sejenak. Kedai kopi pasti orang serbu sekadar untuk duduk minum. Lagipula ada bahan cerita baru yang bisa dibahas panjang lebar sambil ngopi," teoriku. Dan para wanita muda kembali menawar kalung. Dan ibu-ibu kembali mencoba-coba baju batik di bawah sembari mematut-matut diri. "The power of consumerism!" ucapku dan seorang teman hampir serempak.
Dan seperti di film-film, polisi lagi-lagi ketinggalan kereta...
Dan aku diajak berpikir, bukan terutama oleh adegan berdarah-darah di bawah, tetapi oleh apa kata orang dan aku tentang kejadian itu. Aku sendiri harus mengaku telah termakan stereotip. "FPI kayaknya," ujarku pada seorang teman ketika kami masih sama-sama tak tahu apa yang terjadi. "Tadi aku lihat celananya cingkrang," jawabku ketika dia tanya kenapa aku bisa tahu. Beberapa orang lain di sekitar kami membuat sangkaan senada. Maklum, peristiwa itu hanya berjarak beberapa hari dari tragedi monas. Sebenarnya dugaan awalku adalah bom. Kepada seorang teman sempat pula aku bilang, dulu kalau ada ledakan bom, redpel-ku pasti langsung suruh aku turun, ngubek-ngubek TKP dan rumah sakit untuk cari korban dengan kisah paling tragis, paling heroik, atau paling klenik. "Jangan lupa tanyakan soal firasat, Dan," kata redpel-ku pula dengan cerdasnya. Oh dunia... Di dekat sebuah restoran cepat saji, cerita yang berkembang lain lagi. Dua orang pramusaji justru berkelakar betapa akan lebih seru peristiwa tadi kalau ada adegan adu pedang seperti di film-film laga mandarin. Seorang bapak setengah baya justru membahas rasa jijik. "Hilang selera makan saya ngeliatnya." Ada suami yang menyuruh istrinya menjauh dari tangga, siapa tahu orang-orang yang bertikai di bawah naik ke lantai dua.
Yang kemudian terpikir olehku adalah reaksi orang-orang ketika lelaki yang terluka itu berjalan gontai kehabisan darah. Semua orang justru menyingkir, menjauh. Ada lebih dari lima satpam yang mengikutinya, tapi bukan dengan maksud meringkus atau menolong, melainkan hanya ingin memberinya jalan sambil memastikan dia tidak menyerang pengunjung. Laki-laki itu seperti banteng habis dihunus yang kemudian ditontoni hingga kehabisan darah. Lalu aku teringat kisah Kitty Genovese yang dikutip Malcolm Gladwell dalam Tipping Point. Di suatu hari pada tahun 1964, Kitty dikejar oleh penyerangnya di suatu jalan di New York. Dalam kengerian selama setengah jam itu, dia ditikam tiga kali hingga mati. Ironisnya, kejar-kejaran itu ditonton oleh 38 orang tetangganya dari jendela masing-masing. Dan tak seorang pun melakukan apa pun, tak juga menelepon polisi. "Ketidakpedulian pada tetangga dan masalahnya adalah tindakan refleks yang terkondisikan dalam kehidupan di New York dan kota-kota besar lainnya," tulis Abe Rosenthal, editor The New York Times, soal kasus itu. Inikah yang terjadi kemarin? Barangkali. Klewang di tangan lelaki terluka itu tentu menjadi pembeda. Atau justru menjadi pembenar untuk tak ikut campur, sebab tindakan menolong yang heroik bukan tak mungkin menyebabkan diri terluka. Atau justru besarnya jumlah orang yang menyaksikan ikut menjadi tempat sembunyi yang nyaman. "Kan bukan hanya saya yang lihat. Kenapa harus saya yang tolong?" Entah apa yang kami pikirkan ketika "menonton" saat itu, tapi yang pasti tak kudengar sepatah kata pun nuansa iba di tengah kerumunan kami. Mungkin Rosenthal benar soal ketidakpedulian. Atau mungkin kami bahkan dibuai oleh nyamannya dosa kolektif. Tak apa tak peduli, asal bukan sendiri. Itu pikir kami.
Orang itu akhirnya dibawa entah ke mana oleh temannya, setelah beberapa taksi menolak mengangkutnya di luar. Sementara itu, manajer kafe dan resto yang tempatnya kebagian darah memerintahkan bawahan-bawahannya untuk mengepel. Sebuah kedai kopi bahkan merelakan sebungkus kopinya dihamburkan di lantai, demi mengusir bau amis darah. Hanya lima menit berselang, semuanya kembali bergeliat. Kedai kopi yang dibanjiri darah tadi kembali didatangi orang ramai. "Kejadian tadi menyisakan kengerian yang membuat orang ingin duduk diam sejenak. Kedai kopi pasti orang serbu sekadar untuk duduk minum. Lagipula ada bahan cerita baru yang bisa dibahas panjang lebar sambil ngopi," teoriku. Dan para wanita muda kembali menawar kalung. Dan ibu-ibu kembali mencoba-coba baju batik di bawah sembari mematut-matut diri. "The power of consumerism!" ucapku dan seorang teman hampir serempak.
Dan seperti di film-film, polisi lagi-lagi ketinggalan kereta...
09 June 2008
Menjumpaimu Kristania
Aku mengetuk pintu, lalu menunggu. Dalam koor degup jantung dan tarikan napas yang tak teratur, aku mengira-ngira wajahmu. Bulatkah? Lonjongkah? Tak sempat berjawab, pintu telah dibuka, menyisakan bunyi derit samar yang makin mendramatisir suasana. Lalu kita saling tatap. Aku yang lama jauh dan kau yang malu dalam dekap ibumu. Matamu besar. Menantang. Berbinar. Tak sedikit pun menyiratkan gentar. Lubang hidung yang terlalu menganga – kita sama. Mulut mungil yang mengumbar tawa pada apa pun yang kau anggap baru. Kau dan rambut ombakmu. Kupegang tangan mungilmu. Kuhampiri telinga kecilmu dan kuperdengarkan namaku. Ada segaris senyum ketika kau menarik diri dan membenamkan wajahmu di dada ibumu. Akan ingatkah kau namaku?
Tangan yang rentan menggapai-gapai apa saja untuk dilemparkan. Kaki yang pasi menendang-nendang geram. Lekat kupandangi kau yang berjuang membalik badan ketika ibumu menidurkanmu telentang. Kau keras, terpahat di tingkahmu. Kau jelas penuntut. Tak sampai tiga menit kau ditinggal, tangismu seperti meraung-raung, baru reda jika ibumu tiba. Lalu ibumu menyuapkan makanan ke mulutmu yang lapar. Dua tiga suap memenuhi rongga mulutmu hingga luber, sembari kau pandangi aku dengan tawa. Sesekali kudengar pula kau mengoceh. Tak jelas. Seperti bersenandung. Atau menyapa? Aku menyahut dengan apa saja yang kubayangkan sedang kau katakan. Kuharap inilah salam perkenalan. Tapi kenapa kau tak asing? Seperti seseorang yang pernah singgah.
Lama aku mencari jawab dalam waktu-waktu ketika menelitimu dalam lelapmu di ayunan. Seperti ada sejumput jawaban di dasar kepala yang menunggu untuk aku temukan. Siapa kau? Lalu ibumu – kakakku – menghentakku. Matamu, katanya, mata ibu kami. Keramahanmu, katanya, keramahan ibu kami. Keberanianmu, katanya, keberanian ibu kami. Demi mendengarnya, aku tertegun, mengiyakan. Lalu kaki-kaki kecil kenangan berlari-lari di ingatanku, tentang dia yang kini ada di matamu, yang menginspirasikan keramahan di wajahmu, yang mengalirkan keberanian di darahmu. Dia yang kami cintai dan mencintai kami, tapi tak sempat kau kenal dan lihat.
Dan seperti yang sudah-sudah – setiap kali mengenangnya – malam itu aku tersedu dalam diam hingga tertidur. Kubayangkan betapa girang dia akan memandangimu dalam gendongan, mengusap-usap pipimu yang putih. Ahh, pengandaian-pengandaian ini...
Kristania, kau yang kini kulihat telah tanpa sadar menyadarkanku, bahwa kami tidak ditinggalkan. Tak seperti yang dulu pernah kusebut, bahwa kami seperti anak-anak rajawali yang lelah menunggu. Kami dan peran-peran kami dalam kehidupan ini terus bergulir dalam pemeliharaan yang – ketika kurenung-renungkan dalam sendiriku – ajaib. Ibumu yang mengasihi ayahmu, kau yang lahir dari kasih itu, aku yang kini pulang, adalah bukti keajaiban pemeliharaan itu. Kita dicukupkan, tak pernah kurang. Kita semua diikat kuat dalam kedekatan kita yang kadang diam dan sesekali diperciki marah. Tapi beginilah kita sekarang dan kuharap begini pula kita nanti.
Aku terbangun oleh tangismu malam itu, bahagia karena kini kau ada di antara kami. Kudengar ibumu menenangkanmu, membujukmu dengan cerita tentang kupu-kupu. Lalu kau lelap lagi sembari mendekap erat selimut kesayangan. Sementara mataku, mereka bahkan tak kunjung terpejam, mengharapkan malam tak usah ada, agar pagi segera tiba, dan kita bercengkerama.
Aku pulang. Sebulan berselang. Dan yang kutanyakan tiap kali adalah sehatkah engkau. Seperti pagi itu, saat kudengar keluh ibumu bahwa kau sakit, aku ikut lesu. Aku yang jauh kini hanya bisa menyarankan ini dan itu, lain tidak. Lalu berharap kau tak mengalami suatu apa. Adakah kau masih mengingatku?
Kristania, kuucap syukur untukmu, yang seperti satu keping puzzle yang kami temukan. Kau, kini satu alasan lagi untuk rindu pulang...
Tangan yang rentan menggapai-gapai apa saja untuk dilemparkan. Kaki yang pasi menendang-nendang geram. Lekat kupandangi kau yang berjuang membalik badan ketika ibumu menidurkanmu telentang. Kau keras, terpahat di tingkahmu. Kau jelas penuntut. Tak sampai tiga menit kau ditinggal, tangismu seperti meraung-raung, baru reda jika ibumu tiba. Lalu ibumu menyuapkan makanan ke mulutmu yang lapar. Dua tiga suap memenuhi rongga mulutmu hingga luber, sembari kau pandangi aku dengan tawa. Sesekali kudengar pula kau mengoceh. Tak jelas. Seperti bersenandung. Atau menyapa? Aku menyahut dengan apa saja yang kubayangkan sedang kau katakan. Kuharap inilah salam perkenalan. Tapi kenapa kau tak asing? Seperti seseorang yang pernah singgah.
Lama aku mencari jawab dalam waktu-waktu ketika menelitimu dalam lelapmu di ayunan. Seperti ada sejumput jawaban di dasar kepala yang menunggu untuk aku temukan. Siapa kau? Lalu ibumu – kakakku – menghentakku. Matamu, katanya, mata ibu kami. Keramahanmu, katanya, keramahan ibu kami. Keberanianmu, katanya, keberanian ibu kami. Demi mendengarnya, aku tertegun, mengiyakan. Lalu kaki-kaki kecil kenangan berlari-lari di ingatanku, tentang dia yang kini ada di matamu, yang menginspirasikan keramahan di wajahmu, yang mengalirkan keberanian di darahmu. Dia yang kami cintai dan mencintai kami, tapi tak sempat kau kenal dan lihat.
Dan seperti yang sudah-sudah – setiap kali mengenangnya – malam itu aku tersedu dalam diam hingga tertidur. Kubayangkan betapa girang dia akan memandangimu dalam gendongan, mengusap-usap pipimu yang putih. Ahh, pengandaian-pengandaian ini...
Kristania, kau yang kini kulihat telah tanpa sadar menyadarkanku, bahwa kami tidak ditinggalkan. Tak seperti yang dulu pernah kusebut, bahwa kami seperti anak-anak rajawali yang lelah menunggu. Kami dan peran-peran kami dalam kehidupan ini terus bergulir dalam pemeliharaan yang – ketika kurenung-renungkan dalam sendiriku – ajaib. Ibumu yang mengasihi ayahmu, kau yang lahir dari kasih itu, aku yang kini pulang, adalah bukti keajaiban pemeliharaan itu. Kita dicukupkan, tak pernah kurang. Kita semua diikat kuat dalam kedekatan kita yang kadang diam dan sesekali diperciki marah. Tapi beginilah kita sekarang dan kuharap begini pula kita nanti.
Aku terbangun oleh tangismu malam itu, bahagia karena kini kau ada di antara kami. Kudengar ibumu menenangkanmu, membujukmu dengan cerita tentang kupu-kupu. Lalu kau lelap lagi sembari mendekap erat selimut kesayangan. Sementara mataku, mereka bahkan tak kunjung terpejam, mengharapkan malam tak usah ada, agar pagi segera tiba, dan kita bercengkerama.
Aku pulang. Sebulan berselang. Dan yang kutanyakan tiap kali adalah sehatkah engkau. Seperti pagi itu, saat kudengar keluh ibumu bahwa kau sakit, aku ikut lesu. Aku yang jauh kini hanya bisa menyarankan ini dan itu, lain tidak. Lalu berharap kau tak mengalami suatu apa. Adakah kau masih mengingatku?
Kristania, kuucap syukur untukmu, yang seperti satu keping puzzle yang kami temukan. Kau, kini satu alasan lagi untuk rindu pulang...
Si Dan di Suatu Hari
Sembilan belas September dua ribu tujuh. Sudah pukul 07.09. Menyalakan komputer. Membuka Opera. Cek e-mail. Satu dari jobstreet.com – busuk. Satu update dari situs pertemanan. Dua pesan sampah. Semuanya dihapus. Situs pribadi Gay Talese, yang menumpang di portal randomhouse. Mempelajari sang wartawan-cum-penulis. Honor Thy Talese, esainya di The New York Observer suatu kali. Soal writer's paper versus reporter's/recorder's paper. Lumayan, paling tidak ada 'sarapan' berguna pagi ini, setelah tadi pagi Soeharto Inc. di Tempo – belum kelar dibaca. Daripada memandangi wajah bos yang tak menginspirasi, yang pagi ini mengucapkan selamat pagi – setelah sekian lama – dengan canggungnya.
Mbak Endang mengantar teh yang rasanya – karena dibuat massif mungkin – entahlah, tetapi yang pasti kandas di ujung sore. Memandangi jarum jam dinding mengesot. Melirik tumpukan Pocket Mentor yang...entahlah. Why on earth Harvard Business School Press mengeluarkan sampah-sampah macam ini. Soal manajemen waktu, soal memimpin tim, soal apa lagi. Basi. Tak ada terobosan. Stick note bertuliskan 'Sigit P' di cover buku. Si penerjemah kampungan itu. Membayangkan kalimat-kalimatnya yang memusingkan, yang membuat pekerjaanku berbeban. Memikirkan dia yang mempekerjakannya. Dia yang selalu meyakinkanku bahwa semuanya mudah dan cepat. Mudah-mudahan Tuhan mengampuninya.
Teman satu timku – sebut saja Mother-Wannabe – datang. Lenggang langkahnya yang ringan seperti menjanjikan bahwa di suatu titik waktu di hari ini, kami akan menertawai naskah Korespondesi Bisnis yang kacangan, yang norak, yang rasanya ingin kami ludahi, tetapi yang harus Mother-Wannabe kerjakan demi kemaslahatan divisi dan demi janji yang terlanjur terucap kepada penulis entah siapa itu. Senda gurau dengan Mother-Wannabe soal nama anaknya. Kusarankan 'Daniel' agar anaknya sukses kelak. Dengan tegas ditolaknya. Fakta bahwa aku kini bekerja di tempat kami bekerja, katanya, sama sekali tak bisa disebut indikator sukses. “Bagaimana dengan kesempatan tugas luar negeri?” tanyaku lugu. Lalu derai tawa. Si bos kembali dari rapat-entah-apa. Kami kembali ke naskah-naskah kami yang...
Kau-Tahu-Siapa tiba-tiba datang. Kali ini tak terdeteksi. Biasanya bunyi hak sepatunya mudah dikenali – oleh beberapa teman disebut provoking. Tapi kali ini dia melenggang dengan sepatu baru, yang disebut Mother-Wannabe sebagai “sepatu yang nggak banget”. Lalu aku dengan teori-sok-bijak berujar, “Dia itu tipe orang 'yang penting mahal'.” Buruknya lagi, bunyi sepatunya “gemboss...gemboss...gemboss...”. Persis seperti ketika kau menginjak sol sepatu – terbuat dari kulit sintetis murahan – yang basah. “Perhaps this is Kau-Tahu-Siapa's way to show that Kau-Tahu-Siapa is the boss here,” teoriku lagi kepada Mother-Wannabe. Hampir lupa, Kau-Tahu-Siapa ternyata memberikan tugas entah apa kepada bos kami, yang ditanggapi bos kami dengan manut-manut ala babu.
Net send dari Dia-Yang-Terlupakan, soal sms dari Kau-Tahu-Siapa tadi malam – sms norak yang mengeluhkan soal penulis yang disebutnya 'gak tau bales budi'. Lalu aku menghampiri Dia-Yang-Terlupakan, menertawai betapa politisnya jawaban-jawaban kami. Seseorang datang bergabung, membicarakan soal perencanaan tugas ke Frankfurt. Dia-Yang-Terlupakan berpesan agar kami tak lupa singgah ke St. James Park ketika pelesir ke London nanti. Di tempat itu, katanya, bebek-bebek berkeliaran dan hidup liar. Sambil melengos pergi, dengan nada canda, kujawab dia, “Bosen, di sini juga kita sudah terlalu sering membebek.” Lalu derai tawa.
Temanku lainnya, yang menolak disebut namanya, datang untuk konsultasi soal daftar pertanyaan. Siang nanti dia mau wawancara Andrea Hirata. Menarik pasti. Sayang cuma akan dimuat 2 halaman di majalah gratisan buatan perusahaan kami. Aku sempat menyarankan agar dimuat 4 halaman saja dengan mengambil 2 halaman jatah tip bisnis – tip bisnis ini bakal jadi tugasku. Ini murni siasat! Hehehe.
Lalu suara ketak-ketok renovasi toilet. Dan suara orang menerima telepon, menggodaku untuk menebak-nebak isi pembicaraannya – bakat mata-mata? Hampir lupa, seseorang yang memilih menukar huruf 'k' dalam namanya dengan 'qu' - dan merepotkan pelafalan – sudah datang sejak tadi. Dia resmi didaulat membantu bos kami, membereskan ceceran naskah busuk yang dulu 'dianugerahkan' kepada seorang teman yang kini 'selamat' berkat transfer. Dari kemarin mereka asyik berdiskusi soal tugas diplomat dan fungsi Departemen Luar Negeri – salah satu buku bercerita tentang keinginan seorang anak untuk menjadi diplomat kelak. Ahh..., mengingatkanku bahwa aku harus latihan TOEFL. Tadi malam sih udah berlatih kemampuan mendengarkan – soal Jack London, migrasi manusia, penduduk Inggris mula-mula di Amerika. Tapi tak selesai karena tiba-tiba aku teringat harus menelepon seseorang.
Tawar-menawar dengan Mother-Wannabe soal tempat makan siang. Tongseng lagi, sambil mendengarnya bercerita soal dosen-dosennya di FEUI yang eksentrik. Aku sempat teringat Unpad yang payah. Dalam perjalanan pulang, bahasan kami soal pengemudi angkot 03 yang ugal-ugalan.
My God..., musik opera itu...
Aku menunggu Mother-Wannabe beranjak dari kursinya untuk salat. Itu pola khas dia: makan siang – salat (1 jam) – balik ke meja, kerja atau kerja? – salat lagi – eh, gak terasa udah jam 4 – pulaaang. Cerdas banget dia. Tadi pagi, sempat-sempatnya pula dia terinspirasi oleh trik seorang kawan yang religius: datang telat (kan bisa ngisi formulir finger scan dengan alasan lupa bawa kartu absen?) dan pulang cepat. Cerdas kali pun!
Thank God, musik opera itu akhirnya berhenti juga.
Mata ini seperti diberi beban 3 ton. Yang begini mana mungkin lagi dipaksa melototin Mindful Learning. Akhirnya dari tadi aku mantengin Gay Talese lagi. Seru banget membaca tulisan dia soal arogansi antardepartemen di New York Times. Soal leluasanya affair dijalin di sana. Kutipan lirik lagu iseng ciptaan orang-orang Herald-Tribune berbunyi begini: “Drink is the curse of the Tribune, and sex is the bane of the Times”. Sekalipun awalnya mengira dirinya memasuki institusi yang berintegritas tinggi, Talese akhirnya sadar betapa naifnya keyakinan ini. “I realized that I was working in a place of appearances. It was as if the walls of the Times building were made of one-way glass that gave us a view of the outside world and prevented those on the outside from looking in and judging us,” tulisnya.
Kali ini seseorang dari generasi lalu memutar musik generasi yang tlah berlalu pula. Liriknya sih mulia – soal berbakti kepada ibu – tapi tetep gak nahan. Pusing...
Ke ruangan tempat buku-buku tebal diramu. Letaknya di ruang tengah kami. Menemukan notula rapat kuartalan para bos beberapa minggu lalu. Tersentak membaca masukan demi masukan dari para petinggi yang klise gak ketulungan. Ada yang lagi-lagi cuma bilang, “Informasi tentang produk harus disampaikan ke daerah-daerah yang berpotensi kekurangan informasi. Tersebarnya informasi membantu penjualan produk.” Terima kasih, Pak, atas masukan Anda yang sangat riil. Ide Anda benar-benar baru. Ini benar-benar terobosan gemilang. Kenapa kami nggak kepikiran, ya? Ingin rasanya mengatakan itu ke beliau-beliau di atas sana.
Sekretaris menyerahkan selembar jadwal event yang mesti direvisi. Ah..., event. Kapan kami bebas darimu? Untung sudah dapat dua ide yang lumayan. Mudah-mudahan doable. Mendengar kabar terbaru, besok jam 8 mesti ke Kedutaan Besar Jerman untuk mengurus visa Schengen. Cari tebengan.
Diralat. Para pria menemui jalan yang lebih sukar. Visa Schengen belum bisa diurus karena paspor masih tertahan dalam pengurusan visa Inggris yang terkendala. Kedubes Inggris meminta print-out rekening pribadi kami. Mungkin tampang-tampang kere kami tak cukup meyakinkan untuk pelesir ke London. Khawatir (atau malah senang?). Takutnya ada limit. Takutnya tabunganku tak mencapai limit setelah dikonversi ke Poundsterling. Sudahlah, kenapa pula dipusingkan. Come what may...
Si bos menghampiri, membuat gentar kami yang mengira akan mengalami 'briefing' lagi soal sasaran (baca: a-i-m). Kabar yang dibawanya lebih mengejutkan: kami akan pindah ruangan (lagi). Mother-Wannabe mencoba bertanya ini dan itu. Aku cuma manut saja, sadar bahwa keadaan takkan berubah jika ide ini datang dari Kau-Tahu-Siapa. Sempat pula si bos mengeluh, soal segepok tanggung jawab baru yang tiba-tiba dilemparkan kepadanya. Dia sedang digembosi? Dipolitiki? Ah..., kenapa pula aku pusing.
Mencoba kembali ke Pocket Mentor, tapi tak sanggup lagi berkonsentrasi. Ini saatnya untuk mengakhiri. 16.50. Memasukkan barang-barang – iPod, dua bolpen merah, satu bolpen hitam, pensil mekanik, Tempo – ke dalam tas. Sambil menghitung mundur. 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92,....
Di Finger Scanner. Nggak antre kayak kemarin. Di luar pintu, teman-teman berkumpul, merencanakan acara buka puasa bareng sekaligus perpisahan dengan satu teman yang 'tercerahkan'. Aku putuskan tak ikut. Maaf. Bertemu dengan orang majalah, menertawakan beberapa gagasan. Di gerbang, orang-orang berseliweran dengan berbagai ekspresi. Seperti tawanan yang baru dibebaskan. Aku pulang. Tidak dengan langkah ringan...
Mbak Endang mengantar teh yang rasanya – karena dibuat massif mungkin – entahlah, tetapi yang pasti kandas di ujung sore. Memandangi jarum jam dinding mengesot. Melirik tumpukan Pocket Mentor yang...entahlah. Why on earth Harvard Business School Press mengeluarkan sampah-sampah macam ini. Soal manajemen waktu, soal memimpin tim, soal apa lagi. Basi. Tak ada terobosan. Stick note bertuliskan 'Sigit P' di cover buku. Si penerjemah kampungan itu. Membayangkan kalimat-kalimatnya yang memusingkan, yang membuat pekerjaanku berbeban. Memikirkan dia yang mempekerjakannya. Dia yang selalu meyakinkanku bahwa semuanya mudah dan cepat. Mudah-mudahan Tuhan mengampuninya.
Teman satu timku – sebut saja Mother-Wannabe – datang. Lenggang langkahnya yang ringan seperti menjanjikan bahwa di suatu titik waktu di hari ini, kami akan menertawai naskah Korespondesi Bisnis yang kacangan, yang norak, yang rasanya ingin kami ludahi, tetapi yang harus Mother-Wannabe kerjakan demi kemaslahatan divisi dan demi janji yang terlanjur terucap kepada penulis entah siapa itu. Senda gurau dengan Mother-Wannabe soal nama anaknya. Kusarankan 'Daniel' agar anaknya sukses kelak. Dengan tegas ditolaknya. Fakta bahwa aku kini bekerja di tempat kami bekerja, katanya, sama sekali tak bisa disebut indikator sukses. “Bagaimana dengan kesempatan tugas luar negeri?” tanyaku lugu. Lalu derai tawa. Si bos kembali dari rapat-entah-apa. Kami kembali ke naskah-naskah kami yang...
Kau-Tahu-Siapa tiba-tiba datang. Kali ini tak terdeteksi. Biasanya bunyi hak sepatunya mudah dikenali – oleh beberapa teman disebut provoking. Tapi kali ini dia melenggang dengan sepatu baru, yang disebut Mother-Wannabe sebagai “sepatu yang nggak banget”. Lalu aku dengan teori-sok-bijak berujar, “Dia itu tipe orang 'yang penting mahal'.” Buruknya lagi, bunyi sepatunya “gemboss...gemboss...gemboss...”. Persis seperti ketika kau menginjak sol sepatu – terbuat dari kulit sintetis murahan – yang basah. “Perhaps this is Kau-Tahu-Siapa's way to show that Kau-Tahu-Siapa is the boss here,” teoriku lagi kepada Mother-Wannabe. Hampir lupa, Kau-Tahu-Siapa ternyata memberikan tugas entah apa kepada bos kami, yang ditanggapi bos kami dengan manut-manut ala babu.
Net send dari Dia-Yang-Terlupakan, soal sms dari Kau-Tahu-Siapa tadi malam – sms norak yang mengeluhkan soal penulis yang disebutnya 'gak tau bales budi'. Lalu aku menghampiri Dia-Yang-Terlupakan, menertawai betapa politisnya jawaban-jawaban kami. Seseorang datang bergabung, membicarakan soal perencanaan tugas ke Frankfurt. Dia-Yang-Terlupakan berpesan agar kami tak lupa singgah ke St. James Park ketika pelesir ke London nanti. Di tempat itu, katanya, bebek-bebek berkeliaran dan hidup liar. Sambil melengos pergi, dengan nada canda, kujawab dia, “Bosen, di sini juga kita sudah terlalu sering membebek.” Lalu derai tawa.
Temanku lainnya, yang menolak disebut namanya, datang untuk konsultasi soal daftar pertanyaan. Siang nanti dia mau wawancara Andrea Hirata. Menarik pasti. Sayang cuma akan dimuat 2 halaman di majalah gratisan buatan perusahaan kami. Aku sempat menyarankan agar dimuat 4 halaman saja dengan mengambil 2 halaman jatah tip bisnis – tip bisnis ini bakal jadi tugasku. Ini murni siasat! Hehehe.
Lalu suara ketak-ketok renovasi toilet. Dan suara orang menerima telepon, menggodaku untuk menebak-nebak isi pembicaraannya – bakat mata-mata? Hampir lupa, seseorang yang memilih menukar huruf 'k' dalam namanya dengan 'qu' - dan merepotkan pelafalan – sudah datang sejak tadi. Dia resmi didaulat membantu bos kami, membereskan ceceran naskah busuk yang dulu 'dianugerahkan' kepada seorang teman yang kini 'selamat' berkat transfer. Dari kemarin mereka asyik berdiskusi soal tugas diplomat dan fungsi Departemen Luar Negeri – salah satu buku bercerita tentang keinginan seorang anak untuk menjadi diplomat kelak. Ahh..., mengingatkanku bahwa aku harus latihan TOEFL. Tadi malam sih udah berlatih kemampuan mendengarkan – soal Jack London, migrasi manusia, penduduk Inggris mula-mula di Amerika. Tapi tak selesai karena tiba-tiba aku teringat harus menelepon seseorang.
Tawar-menawar dengan Mother-Wannabe soal tempat makan siang. Tongseng lagi, sambil mendengarnya bercerita soal dosen-dosennya di FEUI yang eksentrik. Aku sempat teringat Unpad yang payah. Dalam perjalanan pulang, bahasan kami soal pengemudi angkot 03 yang ugal-ugalan.
My God..., musik opera itu...
Aku menunggu Mother-Wannabe beranjak dari kursinya untuk salat. Itu pola khas dia: makan siang – salat (1 jam) – balik ke meja, kerja atau kerja? – salat lagi – eh, gak terasa udah jam 4 – pulaaang. Cerdas banget dia. Tadi pagi, sempat-sempatnya pula dia terinspirasi oleh trik seorang kawan yang religius: datang telat (kan bisa ngisi formulir finger scan dengan alasan lupa bawa kartu absen?) dan pulang cepat. Cerdas kali pun!
Thank God, musik opera itu akhirnya berhenti juga.
Mata ini seperti diberi beban 3 ton. Yang begini mana mungkin lagi dipaksa melototin Mindful Learning. Akhirnya dari tadi aku mantengin Gay Talese lagi. Seru banget membaca tulisan dia soal arogansi antardepartemen di New York Times. Soal leluasanya affair dijalin di sana. Kutipan lirik lagu iseng ciptaan orang-orang Herald-Tribune berbunyi begini: “Drink is the curse of the Tribune, and sex is the bane of the Times”. Sekalipun awalnya mengira dirinya memasuki institusi yang berintegritas tinggi, Talese akhirnya sadar betapa naifnya keyakinan ini. “I realized that I was working in a place of appearances. It was as if the walls of the Times building were made of one-way glass that gave us a view of the outside world and prevented those on the outside from looking in and judging us,” tulisnya.
Kali ini seseorang dari generasi lalu memutar musik generasi yang tlah berlalu pula. Liriknya sih mulia – soal berbakti kepada ibu – tapi tetep gak nahan. Pusing...
Ke ruangan tempat buku-buku tebal diramu. Letaknya di ruang tengah kami. Menemukan notula rapat kuartalan para bos beberapa minggu lalu. Tersentak membaca masukan demi masukan dari para petinggi yang klise gak ketulungan. Ada yang lagi-lagi cuma bilang, “Informasi tentang produk harus disampaikan ke daerah-daerah yang berpotensi kekurangan informasi. Tersebarnya informasi membantu penjualan produk.” Terima kasih, Pak, atas masukan Anda yang sangat riil. Ide Anda benar-benar baru. Ini benar-benar terobosan gemilang. Kenapa kami nggak kepikiran, ya? Ingin rasanya mengatakan itu ke beliau-beliau di atas sana.
Sekretaris menyerahkan selembar jadwal event yang mesti direvisi. Ah..., event. Kapan kami bebas darimu? Untung sudah dapat dua ide yang lumayan. Mudah-mudahan doable. Mendengar kabar terbaru, besok jam 8 mesti ke Kedutaan Besar Jerman untuk mengurus visa Schengen. Cari tebengan.
Diralat. Para pria menemui jalan yang lebih sukar. Visa Schengen belum bisa diurus karena paspor masih tertahan dalam pengurusan visa Inggris yang terkendala. Kedubes Inggris meminta print-out rekening pribadi kami. Mungkin tampang-tampang kere kami tak cukup meyakinkan untuk pelesir ke London. Khawatir (atau malah senang?). Takutnya ada limit. Takutnya tabunganku tak mencapai limit setelah dikonversi ke Poundsterling. Sudahlah, kenapa pula dipusingkan. Come what may...
Si bos menghampiri, membuat gentar kami yang mengira akan mengalami 'briefing' lagi soal sasaran (baca: a-i-m). Kabar yang dibawanya lebih mengejutkan: kami akan pindah ruangan (lagi). Mother-Wannabe mencoba bertanya ini dan itu. Aku cuma manut saja, sadar bahwa keadaan takkan berubah jika ide ini datang dari Kau-Tahu-Siapa. Sempat pula si bos mengeluh, soal segepok tanggung jawab baru yang tiba-tiba dilemparkan kepadanya. Dia sedang digembosi? Dipolitiki? Ah..., kenapa pula aku pusing.
Mencoba kembali ke Pocket Mentor, tapi tak sanggup lagi berkonsentrasi. Ini saatnya untuk mengakhiri. 16.50. Memasukkan barang-barang – iPod, dua bolpen merah, satu bolpen hitam, pensil mekanik, Tempo – ke dalam tas. Sambil menghitung mundur. 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92,....
Di Finger Scanner. Nggak antre kayak kemarin. Di luar pintu, teman-teman berkumpul, merencanakan acara buka puasa bareng sekaligus perpisahan dengan satu teman yang 'tercerahkan'. Aku putuskan tak ikut. Maaf. Bertemu dengan orang majalah, menertawakan beberapa gagasan. Di gerbang, orang-orang berseliweran dengan berbagai ekspresi. Seperti tawanan yang baru dibebaskan. Aku pulang. Tidak dengan langkah ringan...
Acting God
Dua orang menyambut di depan, mengulurkan jabat tangan palsu. Sungguh. Seperti bukan jabat tangan, hanya bersentuhan. Tak saling genggam. Senyum mereka segaris, tapi mata mereka memandang yang lain. Bukan ke mataku. Jelas, mereka tak ada niat menyambut. Aku mengalah. Ini tempat ibadah, tak tepat mengajak debat etis. Kuyakinkan hati untuk tak memanas. Udara dingin dari mesin penyejuk ruangan membantuku kembali tenang.
Setelah lagu demi lagu dalam liturgi yang tak pernah kenal kata revisi, si pengkhotbah pun mulai bicara. Dia awali dengan membacakan satu perikop dari kitab suci. Aku terdiam mendengarnya bicara, merasa ada yang salah. Terlepas dari gagasan-gagasannya yang melompat-lompat dan tak runtut, aku menemukan terlalu banyak kata 'saya' dalam kalimat-kalimatnya, dibanding kata 'Tuhan'. Siapa sebenarnya yang sedang dia bicarakan? Jelas bukan Tuhan. Aku yakin. Di khotbahnya, Tuhan terasa seperti elemen pelengkap – pembenar, tepatnya.
Kalau benar pagi itu suara Tuhan yang hendak kami dengar, mengapa aku merasa sedang dicekoki dengan gagasan pribadi yang dijustifikasi dengan kitab suci. Si pengkhotbah tak datang dengan 'kosong'. Dia sudah punya konsep-konsep sendiri yang entah dibaca atau didengarnya dari mana – kuharap bukan dari sinetron Indonesia atau buku-buku pengembangan diri. Lantas teks kitab suci hanya sekadar pendukung dan penjelas gagasan utama, yang dipakai di mana perlu. Aku merutuk.
Dalam doa pun begitu. Dia berakting seperti Tuhan. Aku tak mengada-ada. Dia seperti paling tahu isi hati Sang Khalik, mereduksinya dalam hubungan sebab-akibat. “Berkati kami Tuhan, sebab Engkau selalu menolong orang yang kesusahan”, “Campur-tanganlah, Tuhan, karena kuasa-Mu akan membebaskan kami”, “Berikan rezeki kepada kami, Tuhan, karena Engkau Maha-baik.” Lalu berkata lagi dia, “Kami percaya Engkau akan mengabulkan doa-doa kami, karena semua ini kami lakukan demi kemuliaan nama-Mu.” Oh.., kalau Tuhan sedang mengintip di satu sudut. Betapa remuk hatinya mendengar orang yang mengaku hamba-Nya seolah menggiringnya merunduk di bawah keinginan-keinginan manusia - tentang gereja yang megah, natal yang mewah, paskah yang meriah.
Begitu berani kami mengklaim Tuhan dalam permintaan-permintaan mutlak, hanya karena kami mengetahui sejumput sifat-Nya dari bacaan sana sini. Bagaimana jika Tuhan justru berkeputusan untuk tidak mengabulkan ini dan itu yang kita minta, karena Dia tahu itu yang terbaik? Bagaimana jika kita justru diizinkan-Nya susah, tanpa rezeki, agar kita merindu saat-saat Dia memelihara? Bagaimana jika Dia memang sedang berkeputusan untuk tidak campur tangan, sekadar untuk membantu kita tahu bedanya hidup dengan atau tanpa Dia? Bukankah keputusan untuk tidak campur tangan itu juga bentuk campur tangan? Sederet pertanyaanku. Tapi tanpa sadar aku pun sedang jatuh dan berlaku seperti Tuhan ketika aku merumuskannya dalam sederet tanya itu. Akhirnya aku hanya bisa diam.
Hamba-Nya itu mengucap berkat di akhir jam kedua, dengan dua tangan terangkat, persis seperti kisah kitab suci tentang Tuhan yang naik ke surga. Aku mencoba meraba-raba. Adakah Dia sedang memberkati kami? Ataukah sedang menangisi? Suara hamba-Nya lantang, tapi bagiku hanya sekumpulan kata yang lalu lalang. Lalu kami membuka mata dan saling salam. Tak seorang pun tahu apa yang ada di hati. Pagi itu kami seolah sudah melunasi hutang, setelah enam hari diberi pinjaman. Di depan pintu hamba-Nya menyambut, dengan sentuhan, bukan jabat tangan. Dan aku berjalan pulang menatap ke tanah. Hanya tiga kata di hati, “Maafkanlah kami, Tuhan.”
Setelah lagu demi lagu dalam liturgi yang tak pernah kenal kata revisi, si pengkhotbah pun mulai bicara. Dia awali dengan membacakan satu perikop dari kitab suci. Aku terdiam mendengarnya bicara, merasa ada yang salah. Terlepas dari gagasan-gagasannya yang melompat-lompat dan tak runtut, aku menemukan terlalu banyak kata 'saya' dalam kalimat-kalimatnya, dibanding kata 'Tuhan'. Siapa sebenarnya yang sedang dia bicarakan? Jelas bukan Tuhan. Aku yakin. Di khotbahnya, Tuhan terasa seperti elemen pelengkap – pembenar, tepatnya.
Kalau benar pagi itu suara Tuhan yang hendak kami dengar, mengapa aku merasa sedang dicekoki dengan gagasan pribadi yang dijustifikasi dengan kitab suci. Si pengkhotbah tak datang dengan 'kosong'. Dia sudah punya konsep-konsep sendiri yang entah dibaca atau didengarnya dari mana – kuharap bukan dari sinetron Indonesia atau buku-buku pengembangan diri. Lantas teks kitab suci hanya sekadar pendukung dan penjelas gagasan utama, yang dipakai di mana perlu. Aku merutuk.
Dalam doa pun begitu. Dia berakting seperti Tuhan. Aku tak mengada-ada. Dia seperti paling tahu isi hati Sang Khalik, mereduksinya dalam hubungan sebab-akibat. “Berkati kami Tuhan, sebab Engkau selalu menolong orang yang kesusahan”, “Campur-tanganlah, Tuhan, karena kuasa-Mu akan membebaskan kami”, “Berikan rezeki kepada kami, Tuhan, karena Engkau Maha-baik.” Lalu berkata lagi dia, “Kami percaya Engkau akan mengabulkan doa-doa kami, karena semua ini kami lakukan demi kemuliaan nama-Mu.” Oh.., kalau Tuhan sedang mengintip di satu sudut. Betapa remuk hatinya mendengar orang yang mengaku hamba-Nya seolah menggiringnya merunduk di bawah keinginan-keinginan manusia - tentang gereja yang megah, natal yang mewah, paskah yang meriah.
Begitu berani kami mengklaim Tuhan dalam permintaan-permintaan mutlak, hanya karena kami mengetahui sejumput sifat-Nya dari bacaan sana sini. Bagaimana jika Tuhan justru berkeputusan untuk tidak mengabulkan ini dan itu yang kita minta, karena Dia tahu itu yang terbaik? Bagaimana jika kita justru diizinkan-Nya susah, tanpa rezeki, agar kita merindu saat-saat Dia memelihara? Bagaimana jika Dia memang sedang berkeputusan untuk tidak campur tangan, sekadar untuk membantu kita tahu bedanya hidup dengan atau tanpa Dia? Bukankah keputusan untuk tidak campur tangan itu juga bentuk campur tangan? Sederet pertanyaanku. Tapi tanpa sadar aku pun sedang jatuh dan berlaku seperti Tuhan ketika aku merumuskannya dalam sederet tanya itu. Akhirnya aku hanya bisa diam.
Hamba-Nya itu mengucap berkat di akhir jam kedua, dengan dua tangan terangkat, persis seperti kisah kitab suci tentang Tuhan yang naik ke surga. Aku mencoba meraba-raba. Adakah Dia sedang memberkati kami? Ataukah sedang menangisi? Suara hamba-Nya lantang, tapi bagiku hanya sekumpulan kata yang lalu lalang. Lalu kami membuka mata dan saling salam. Tak seorang pun tahu apa yang ada di hati. Pagi itu kami seolah sudah melunasi hutang, setelah enam hari diberi pinjaman. Di depan pintu hamba-Nya menyambut, dengan sentuhan, bukan jabat tangan. Dan aku berjalan pulang menatap ke tanah. Hanya tiga kata di hati, “Maafkanlah kami, Tuhan.”
Setengah Hangat yang Bapak Mampu
Bapak bersyukur, Ophelia, kau tak di sini menyaksikan Bapak berkemas, setelah tadi siang mereka bilang Bapak selesai. Ya, siang tadi mereka bertindak bak Tuhan terhadap Bapakmu ini. “Kami harus merumahkan beberapa orang. Maaf, Anda tidak bisa kami pertahankan,” kata mereka dalam suara yang sedingin kontrakan satu kamar kita kala subuh. Dan dengan itu Bapak kini menjadi Bapak setahun kemarin. Penganggur. Iya, Nak, kau pasti berang, kenapa Bapak tak menggugat. Sudah, Ophelia-ku, Bapak sudah menggugat segigih-gigihnya, sehormat-hormatnya. Mereka akui Bapak bekerja jauh lebih baik dan tekun daripada mereka-mereka yang selamat. Tapi apalah daya seorang tenaga kontrak, Nak. Bapak bertekuk lutut saat mereka membicarakan pasal-pasal hukum ketenagakerjaan yang tak Bapak mengerti. Mereka bacakan pula kalimat demi kalimat dalam surat perjanjian kerja yang dulu mereka paksa Bapak teken tanpa baca. Bapak tidak akan membawa apa-apa, Nak, begitu kata mereka. Dan yang Bapak ingat saat itu cuma kau, Ophelia.
Ya, tak perlulah kau lihat air mata Bapak menetes saat memilah-milah mana barang kepunyaan Bapak dan mana yang punya mereka. Hanya foto kau, aku, dan ibumu ternyata harta Bapak. Lain tidak. Tak juga bolpen yang kata mereka harta mereka. Kelu lidah Bapak saat memandangi foto kita. Bapak tahu Bapak akan kehilangan kata-kata untuk menjelaskan tragedi ini kepada kau dan ibumu. Terlalu sakit, Nak, membayangkan tawa kalian rusak oleh ketidakberuntungan yang mendera Bapakmu.
Tak sampai hati Bapak mengatakan kepadamu bahwa kita tak bisa membeli meja belajar yang kau tunjuk di toko saban hari Bapak memboncengmu menuju sekolah. Merintih jiwa Bapak membayangkan sepeda kecilmu yang baru mesti kita kembalikan karena Bapak tak mampu lunasi kredit. Bagaimana kau akan bersembunyi dari olok-olok teman-temanmu, Nak? Bisakah kau tetap tegap ketika mereka menyorakimu si anak melarat? Ngilu tulang-tulang Bapak mereka-reka kecewamu karena Bapak terpaksa mengingkari janji untuk mengganti tasmu yang telah rusak ritsletingnya. Sepatumu, Ophelia, masih harus yang itu sampai tahun depan, Nak. Dan ensiklopedia tentang bunga-bunga sepertinya juga harus kita lupakan, Nak.
Tapi hidup kan tak sekelam itu ya, Nak. Mana anak Bapak yang selalu bisa menemukan alasan untuk tertawa? Ya, Sayang, mengingatmu membuat Bapak sadar tentang siapa penentu kebahagiaan. Kita sendiri, Nak, kitalah penentu kebahagiaan kita sendiri. Ketika mengayuh sepeda ini menuju rumah, Bapak memutuskan untuk tidak membiarkan bahagia kita dirusak oleh apa pun dan siapa pun, Sayang. Coba lihat sisi baiknya, Ophelia. Mulai besok Bapak akan ada di rumah untukmu. Saat kau bertanya tentang simbolisme bunga – apa arti sekuntum lili, apa makna sekumpulan rosemary, apa jiwa setangkai rue. Saat kau mengeluh tentang gurumu yang bahkan tak mengenal William Wordsworth, Bapak akan membacakan The Prelude di telinga kecilmu. Dan sambil bertopang dagu kau akan memberondong Bapak dengan pertanyaan tentang bunga ragwort kuning dalam puisi itu.
Atau kau akan sambut nasib buruk Bapak dengan gembira? Bapak ingat tentang mimpimu membuka usaha kolam renang di rumah dan menyewakannya bagi anak-anak kampung kita. Selain bisa berenang gratis, katamu, kau akan mendapat uang dari sana untuk bantu Bapak. Oh, Ophelia-ku, manalah bisa halaman kontrakan kita yang hanya cukup untuk menaruh tiga pot bunga kerokot itu kita gali, lalu kita isi air timbaan sumur, dan menjadikannya tempat berenangmu. Tapi Bapak senang, Ophelia, kau telah berpikir besar, seperti harapan yang Bapak senantiasa bisikkan ke perut ibumu dulu. Kau memang harus jadi orang besar, Nak, agar suatu saat kelak kau bisa mencegah orang bernasib seburuk Bapak.
Jiwa Bapak terisak, Sayang, mengingat-ingat senyummu siang kemarin, saat menunjukkan nilai-nilai yang cemerlang di rapormu. Dan makin bergumul Bapak mengingat permintaanmu sebagai hadiah: seloyang brownies yang hitamnya, katamu, akan membuatmu lebih bersemangat untuk belajar. Tak ada uang pada Bapakmu ini, Ophelia. Tak ada. Jadi dengan berat hati Bapak akan berhenti di persimpangan rumah kita, membelikanmu sekotak martabak yang setengah hangat. Tanpa keju. Hanya itu yang Bapak mampu. Jangan dulu tidur, Nak. Bapak akan kayuh sepeda ini lebih cepat. Dan kita, ya, kau, Bapak, dan ibumu, kita akan menyantapnya sebelum benar-benar dingin dan mengeras. Pinggirannya yang agak gosong semuanya untukmu, Nak. Bapak tahu kau suka.
Jangan dulu tidur, Ophelia. Bapak akan kayuh sepeda ini lebih cepat. Menantilah di pintu, Sayang.
(Untuk mereka yang dirumahkan)
Ya, tak perlulah kau lihat air mata Bapak menetes saat memilah-milah mana barang kepunyaan Bapak dan mana yang punya mereka. Hanya foto kau, aku, dan ibumu ternyata harta Bapak. Lain tidak. Tak juga bolpen yang kata mereka harta mereka. Kelu lidah Bapak saat memandangi foto kita. Bapak tahu Bapak akan kehilangan kata-kata untuk menjelaskan tragedi ini kepada kau dan ibumu. Terlalu sakit, Nak, membayangkan tawa kalian rusak oleh ketidakberuntungan yang mendera Bapakmu.
Tak sampai hati Bapak mengatakan kepadamu bahwa kita tak bisa membeli meja belajar yang kau tunjuk di toko saban hari Bapak memboncengmu menuju sekolah. Merintih jiwa Bapak membayangkan sepeda kecilmu yang baru mesti kita kembalikan karena Bapak tak mampu lunasi kredit. Bagaimana kau akan bersembunyi dari olok-olok teman-temanmu, Nak? Bisakah kau tetap tegap ketika mereka menyorakimu si anak melarat? Ngilu tulang-tulang Bapak mereka-reka kecewamu karena Bapak terpaksa mengingkari janji untuk mengganti tasmu yang telah rusak ritsletingnya. Sepatumu, Ophelia, masih harus yang itu sampai tahun depan, Nak. Dan ensiklopedia tentang bunga-bunga sepertinya juga harus kita lupakan, Nak.
Tapi hidup kan tak sekelam itu ya, Nak. Mana anak Bapak yang selalu bisa menemukan alasan untuk tertawa? Ya, Sayang, mengingatmu membuat Bapak sadar tentang siapa penentu kebahagiaan. Kita sendiri, Nak, kitalah penentu kebahagiaan kita sendiri. Ketika mengayuh sepeda ini menuju rumah, Bapak memutuskan untuk tidak membiarkan bahagia kita dirusak oleh apa pun dan siapa pun, Sayang. Coba lihat sisi baiknya, Ophelia. Mulai besok Bapak akan ada di rumah untukmu. Saat kau bertanya tentang simbolisme bunga – apa arti sekuntum lili, apa makna sekumpulan rosemary, apa jiwa setangkai rue. Saat kau mengeluh tentang gurumu yang bahkan tak mengenal William Wordsworth, Bapak akan membacakan The Prelude di telinga kecilmu. Dan sambil bertopang dagu kau akan memberondong Bapak dengan pertanyaan tentang bunga ragwort kuning dalam puisi itu.
Atau kau akan sambut nasib buruk Bapak dengan gembira? Bapak ingat tentang mimpimu membuka usaha kolam renang di rumah dan menyewakannya bagi anak-anak kampung kita. Selain bisa berenang gratis, katamu, kau akan mendapat uang dari sana untuk bantu Bapak. Oh, Ophelia-ku, manalah bisa halaman kontrakan kita yang hanya cukup untuk menaruh tiga pot bunga kerokot itu kita gali, lalu kita isi air timbaan sumur, dan menjadikannya tempat berenangmu. Tapi Bapak senang, Ophelia, kau telah berpikir besar, seperti harapan yang Bapak senantiasa bisikkan ke perut ibumu dulu. Kau memang harus jadi orang besar, Nak, agar suatu saat kelak kau bisa mencegah orang bernasib seburuk Bapak.
Jiwa Bapak terisak, Sayang, mengingat-ingat senyummu siang kemarin, saat menunjukkan nilai-nilai yang cemerlang di rapormu. Dan makin bergumul Bapak mengingat permintaanmu sebagai hadiah: seloyang brownies yang hitamnya, katamu, akan membuatmu lebih bersemangat untuk belajar. Tak ada uang pada Bapakmu ini, Ophelia. Tak ada. Jadi dengan berat hati Bapak akan berhenti di persimpangan rumah kita, membelikanmu sekotak martabak yang setengah hangat. Tanpa keju. Hanya itu yang Bapak mampu. Jangan dulu tidur, Nak. Bapak akan kayuh sepeda ini lebih cepat. Dan kita, ya, kau, Bapak, dan ibumu, kita akan menyantapnya sebelum benar-benar dingin dan mengeras. Pinggirannya yang agak gosong semuanya untukmu, Nak. Bapak tahu kau suka.
Jangan dulu tidur, Ophelia. Bapak akan kayuh sepeda ini lebih cepat. Menantilah di pintu, Sayang.
(Untuk mereka yang dirumahkan)
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