In the beginning was not the word. In the beginning was just was. And the was was with the is. And the was was the is as the is be. In the beginning be I. I be. No tense, no time, just free movement in space, infinite space, eternal movement in space, perpetual motion. Objects in motion tend to stay in the speed of motion a priori without the intervention of external force is the same as objects at rest tend to stay at rest without the intervention of external force. Inertia. Gravitation is the same all over the place; everything falls at the same pace, the same momentum, the same painful thump when you hit the ground. Not a pretty sound, neither healthy nor sound. Had it not been for the atmosphere slowing spread things down. Spread before you hit the ground: it is less hazardous to your health. You and I and he and she and they and we. Ennui. We sit, and without the intervention of an external force, a supreme force, we remain seated. No, gravitation is not the same all over the place because gravity is greater on the couch, and cushions, in front of the TV. Gravity is graver when you’re sinking. No need trying to hit the bottom because objects in motion tend to stay in motion at the same velocity, same speed and direction without the application of an unbalanced, uncontested, unilateral external force. No external force? Being free is being without any kind of responsibility weighing you down. A weighing down is gravity, which is an external force, like the state and its civic duties and taxes and authority over I that be. Like gods demanding offerings burnt on altars, sons and daughters slaughtered lovers to be loved by only them. Jealous gods are these demanding gods. Demanding gods are wanting gods though gods shall not want. They are not gods because all gods are probably dead, crucified, eaten, or forgotten. Begotten and forgotten gods are dead. They can’t be gods, but they may be ideological state apparatuses—weighing you down like gravity, constantly. Objects that go faster or go slower or cannot make a decision whether to go faster or to go slower or cannot make a decision whether to stay in motion or stop is not inertia. Decisions are either grave, acute, or circumflex. And it doesn’t really matter if you are really falling or rising because if there is no external force it is eternal. It is because the earth and other heavenly bodies are round. You can stay in the ground, fall till you hit the ground, rise till you hit the ground on another planet, or go round and round and round the world till you realize that there's no place to go but down.

In the beginning was not the word, so the word can be with us but not all over us. In the beginning should be the performance, action, bodies moving, like giving birth, or copulation, some goddess shedding tears, or some dead goddess fertilizing soil growing grains of wheat and rice. Or popping out of a cereal box, or seeping out of a magic lamp. Then, you jump out and be fruitful and multiply, like meiosis and mitosis, like viruses, like bacilli, like a plague. Jump into being, sliding out of vaginas, sprouting out of divine heads, springing full grown out of the sea, splitting, killing this one and creating the two and four and eight. At that rate, by the time you are all used up you will have crowded every corner, suffocating the universe with your genetic material. And that’s when you are totally free, and that is why in the beginning was not the word.

Ari Adipurwawidjana