Out in the Inside

As the sunny days decline into the somber, winter weather, I find myself less and less willing to go outside. Instead, staring out at the sidewalk from my window, I find myself questioning the concept of "going outside". Is it the breath of fresh air? The ability to look up at the sky? The ability to walk and explore the landscape, or the cityscape, with no restrictions? Or is it simply the notion of exiting the enclosed shelter we call "home"?

The outside. Literally, the outdoors: the landscape unbound by walls, without a door to enter or to exit. Simultaneously, the concept outside is interchangeable with anything outside our house. Surely, sometime in our childhood, we've played outside. Surely, there was a time when our parents, concerned with the amount of hours we spend in front of our computer in a room with artificial lights, told us to go outside. Even now, when I find my body refusing to leave the folds of my warm blanket, I find my roommate chastising me to go outside, to leave the house, to be productive.

In Happy Valley, I find the notion of going outside synonymous to the idea of leaving an enclosed space: to walk unimpeded by walls, to breathe the cool air, to look up at the sky, to enjoy a walk as an escape from the cramped space I call home. However, back home in Jakarta, I find that the notion of going outside doesn't correspond to entering the outdoors.

When we say we're going outside, where are we really going? We are simply moving from one enclosed space to the other. We exit our house, and even when we exit our often, we often do not walk outside our doors. Our cars are waiting inside our garages. We enter the car and we get driven to the epicenter of city life in Jakarta: malls. One enclosed space to the other, where else would we go?

Where is this outside? For us, there is only an enclosed space to go to outside our house. When did our "outside" become another "inside"?

Here, public space is taken for granted. It is expected for people to be able to freely use the sidewalks, to be able to walk across lawns, to be able to enjoy the public space, unencumbered by fences and walls. After all, isn't it normal for people to be able to enjoy the outside, the outdoors, the earth that we all share equally?

Why have we accepted the notion of another inside as our outside? Why are we stuck within enclosed, capitalized spaces?

Why is there nowhere else to go?

As citizens, do we not have the right to question the lack of public space? Do we not have the right to public space? Do we, as humans, not have the basic right of sharing our landscape, our cityscape?

Why have we been denied the green space, the open space? Why are the streets unfriendly? Why have public gathering been forced into small sidewalks, or the streets?

And for what little green space we have left, why do we let them be? Why are we so insistent on ignoring these spaces, leaving them for the homeless to scavenge? Gardens fenced up with barbed wire, but for what purpose? It doesn't keep the scavengers out as long as the people look the other way.

Why do we degrade our own public space, then complain that we have none? We left them be, preferring to chase after the notion of progress offered by the glittering malls. We accepted the message that as citizens, we had the right to progress, and that progress was embodied within the new capitalistic ventures that we call our malls. It became the center of our city lives, and so our city lives became a mobilization of people between enclosed spaces, but never a mobilization of people in the city.

We do not live in the city. We do not breathe the city. We do not walk in our city. We do no own our city.

We proclaim ourselves citizens, we proclaim ourselves good citizens, we proclaim ourselves citizens who are deprived of our city. For us, our city is just roads that we look at from our vehicles. It isn't a holistic environment. We live in the buildings and center our lives within the buildings. We do not go outside for the sake of going outside, we go to another "inside".

When was the last time you walked outside your house just for the sake of taking a walk? When were you able to enjoy walking down the streets, for the sake of being outside and not just to go to another enclosed space?

Why did we let our city become so hostile to us? When did the city become just roads? We have no space we share, only space we buy. Space that is capitalized, that's where our rights to public space ended.

We tried to fulfill a notion of progress by replacing every empty space with money-making industries. And yet we forget to make our city livable. The concept of a city disappeared and was replaced by an empty shell: a collection of roads and buildings. We live in buildings, live out our lives in buildings.

In our struggle to form the ideal, modern city life, we forgot to include the city in our plan for progress. Now we are stuck in an endless cycle of being inside.