in the crossings

When I was kid, when I was sitting on my class, they told me that my country, Indonesia, is in a crossing. Because it laid between two continents.  And it came to my knowledge that the story of people traveled long long way from their home was the story in the reason of gold, glory, and god. And they traveled across the globe and found an archipelago which later became my country, Indonesia. Sometimes they came from the region which was called East or West. My country was truly a busy crossing since those days. 

Except the fact that in their opinion my ancestor's god(s) were not the real god, they did find gold, and then, glory, until now, until this very day. With the glory and the gold, they replaced our god(s) with theirs. Along with it, they taught us everything we need to live in modern world. Among those things, were written world, technology, visual civilization, the ideas of human right and democracy and so on and so on, by which I couldn't hardly live without them. I truly enjoyed them.

But somehow, I knew that I couldn't be them. I still wore some of my ancestors' belonging, a vanished culture that I couldn't comprehend exactly what it was. And along with it, I saw that our natural resources has been nearly depleted. Along with our march into modernity, capitalism and global market. It was us that paid the cost of it. With our trees, earth deposits, and our identity.


As a descendant of Javanese ancestor, in fact,  I have been no longer Javanese. Because I have been living in a country which was daydreaming to be a West, or at least, of having the prosperity the Westerners have been defined for five centuries. In fact I have been a hybrid. A cross. A mixture or worst, a compromise of two or more things. I have been living in the crossing.

I intended to witness it.