Cinta Hari-Hari Kurungan (Hari Keenam)

"Menyendiri tidak sama dengan kesunyian," tulis ahli falsafah Terry Eagleton dalam akhbar The Guardian baru-baru ini. "Orang sunyi mempunyai desakan untuk berada dalam keramaian, sementara seorang yang menyendiri ingin melarikan diri daripadanya."

Saya perasan semenjak perintah berkurung dikeluarkan, saya tidak nampak sebarang perbincangan tentang masalah kesunyian. Kita seolah-olah percaya setiap warga Malaysia akan berbahagia berada di samping orang tersayang. Kita tidak membincangkan kesunyian secara terbuka sama seperti kita tidak membicangkan masalah kemurungan atau kesakitan. Kita takut dikecam, kita takut dipulaukan. Kita takut dilabel sebagai "lemah iman" dan sebagainya. 

Dalam era media sosial hari ini masalah kesunyian menjadi bertambah parah, kerana semakin manusia bersosial, semakin susah untuk kita mendengar (atau peduli) suara mereka yang memilih untuk diam. 

Saya kongsikan hari ini beberapa petikan yang menggambarkan kesepian menulis, renungan di tepi jendela, dan keterasingan di dalam sebuah kereta api. Saya tidak tahu jika membaca fiksyen boleh menghilangkan kesunyian, tetapi saya harap ia sekurang-kurangnya boleh memudahkan seseorang untuk tidur dengan  fikiran lebih tenang: dia tidak seorang di dunia ini. 

* * *

Anwar Ridhwan, HARI KEMATIAN

Aku masuk ke tandas. Keluar tandas. Memasuki gerabak-gerabak lain. Pandangannya adalah sama: orang-orang tua dengan muka berkedut, wajah yang sedih, tangisan, tubuh-tubuh yang hampir rebah dan beg-beg buruk mengisi penuh setiap gerabak. Sesekali ada antara mereka bertukar tempat duduk seolah-olah untuk menangguhkan kematian. Lima enam orang riuh bercakap, tetapi bukan bercakap sesama mereka. Mereka bercakap sendirian. 

Aku terus lagi berjalan di dalam gerabak-gerabak ini. Aku bercita-cita untuk menulis poskad, menulis surat, membuat lukisan lawatan kelmarin apabila nanti sampai ke desa kelahiran. Aku berjalan lagi. Bergoyang ke kanan. Bergoyang ke kiri. Di dalam perut kereta api. 

* * *

Marguerite Duras, WRITING

Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome. I believe that the person who writes does not have any ideas for a book, that her hands are empty, her head is empty, and all that she knows of this adventure, this book, is dry, naked writing, without a future, without echo, distant, with only its elementary golden rules: spelling, meaning.

* * *

Robert Musil, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES

Clarisse was staring out the window. But now her gaze sharpened; she was focusing on something specific out there, for support. She felt as if her thoughts had strayed outside and had only just returned. This sense of being like a room, with the sense of the door just having shut, was nothing new to her. On and off she had days, even weeks, when everything around her was brighter and lighter than usual, as though it would take hardly any effort to slip out of herself and go traipsing about the world unencumbered; then again there were the bad times, when she felt imprisoned, and though these usually passed quickly, she dreaded them like a punishment, because everything closed in on her and was so sad. Just now she was aware of a sober, lucid peacefulness, and it worried her a little bit; she was not sure what it was that she had wanted just a while ago, and this sense of leaden clarity and quiet control was often a prelude to the time of punishment. She pulled herself together with the feeling that if she could keep this conversation going with conviction, she would be back on safe ground.

* * *

Jean Paul-Sartre, NAUSEA

The first light to come on was that of the Caillebotte lighthouse; a little boy stopped near me and murmured ecstatically: ‘Oh, the lighthouse!’
Then I felt my heart swell with a great feeling of adventure.

[…]

I am alone, most people have gone home, they are reading the evening paper and listening to the wireless. This Sunday which is drawing to a close has left them with a taste of ashes and already their thoughts are turning towards Monday. But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which push one another along in disorder, and then, all of a sudden, revelations like this.

Nothing has changed and yet everything exists in a different way. I can’t describe it; it’s like the Nausea and yet it’s just the opposite: at last an adventure is happening to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here: it is I who am piercing the darkness, I am as a happy as the hero of a novel.