Handwritten

Behind him I stood, straining my eyes - and he moved a friendly smile. As he moved on to observe my preoccupation, as I did his - a chuckle escaped him.

"I thought I was going blind. This is Braille, after all" 

I concurred by giving a slight laugh. The parchment we were observing was a letter by Louis Braille, who was born a blind man, and is - according to Helen Keller - the source of indebtedness by blind people of retrospect and on the future - in the same manner in which mankind is indebted to Gutenberg. I moved on to the next transcript on display - Charles Darwin.

This was just this afternoon - a windy and chilly affair - and I was running across the lawn of the national library, ascending the stairs in haste lest I be denied of admission due to being an hour late. My audience was booked for 2 pm, and after spilling excuses I was inside. Having only an hour and a half to explore Handwritten, I set to the task at hand immediately. Instinctively I took my phone out, and proceeded to take a picture of Hegel's letter regarding the importance of dwelling in philology before traversing into the study of philosophy, only to be told to delete it by the exhibition official.

But at least I made away with these droolworthy postcards...

I was overcome with awkward awe as I primarily walked through the Justinian code manuscripts - the authoritative text which paved the way for the 21st century Western civil law. Among others - Galileo, Napoleon, Newton, Marx, Curie, von Bismarck, Einstein, Beethoven, Cook, Michelangelo, Watt, Volta, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Descartes, Brahms, Handel, Austen, Pasteur, Nobel, Machiavelli, Nightingale, Grimm, Kafka - among others, I lost count as well as memory.

But despite of leaving me feeling high, I was rather worn out. Not once did I yawn after an hour of walking around the gallery (unforgivably rude, as some would see it) - and I retired to a bench in the middle of the room, looking for a sense of liveliness in the guidebook instead. The stature of the things in front of me was undeniable - it was indeed a perspective of a thousand years of history being put there for my experience - for me to see, to feel. But they did not trigger the same jubilation that I experience when coming into consideration of, say, the judgment of Mason CJ on Mabo. Indeed, Eddie Koiki Mabo was the centerpiece of the exhibition for me. I spent a considerable time experiencing the text that he wrote on a regularly-lined A4 paper, using a ballpoint pen, as with the typical nature of self-written texts. I read his plea to his people, and to the pro bono heroes of the profession I aspire to enter, regarding the indigenous people's right to native entitlement of land and laws - spurning a ten-year battle for almost a century of sovereign denial.

Mr. Mabo's self potrait- placed beside his text.

Sitting on that bench, in the middle of all these manuscripts, written by those who have contributed to writing arguably the world's primary history,  I chanced upon a realisation. This was not my history, and I could only feel detachment. These letters did not elicit a scene in my head of the centuries of change, they did as much as to remind me that these people - who I revere as much as the next average person - are not part of my consciousness, they did not form my conception of the past that I claim to be mine. 

And instead of feeling deprived, feeling denied of the opportunities traditionally available to those raised in more affluent surroundings (such as early exposure to literature, and musical education, etc.), I breathed a sigh of certainty: my real history is somewhere else. 

In those tar streets of Taman Aman Tiga. In that preexisting state of messiness that my house has eternally been. In those wooden steps of St. Dominic. In the small library in Fajar. In the PCs of MacroTech in Milimewa - and of the 50 cents noodles in Angel Cafe. In the gravel-road rides to enter Silabukan. In the small buses that go to Sepagaya. In the universe that Batu Dua was. In the green-ness of the road to a certain SMS.  In the small town I knew every inch of. In the faces of those I have known all my life. In the conversations, or rather non-conversations with the ones I love.

I could go on forever, see?