Agate: Remains of a Past Culture

The agates lied silently upon the white table.  I hadn’t met the ghosts that dwell inside those stones tonight. I thought that it was because I didn’t get sleep. Oh, I had a chance to get very sleepy and hence slept only for a while -- from 10 pm to 1 am. But there wasn’t anything special. I was woken up because of a call from my girl. We didn’t talk much on the phone and I couldn’t get into sleep anymore. But there wasn’t anything special from my brief sleep. I slept with the usual restlessness when I get vey tired and there is no ghosts or spirits haunted my dream.

My father gave me those stones yesterday afternoon after I showed him my cheap, white agate stone. I didn’t have a chance to boast my agate, including the class under which my stone falls, namely “Mata Kucing” or the eye of the cat. When my father asked me whether my stone had a “content”, I told him it was a cheap agate bought at Malioboro. Then I asked him whether he still had his collection of agates. He instantly produced his collection from the drawer. There were at least four of them with various colors. I took the red and white color because I think they would be like the flag of the country.

My father said that the red one is able to help drawing fortune for the wearer. But the wearer should not bring the agate to a funeral because when the wearer touches the corpse, the corpse will come to life again. The white agate is able to draw other people’s love to the wearer.

To make my father permit me to try wearing those red and white stones, I put each of them behind my ear just like the way my late grandfather always do when he wants to know whether a thing has a “content” or not. Of course I don’t have the ability to “feel’ the presence of a “ghost” inside a thing like my grandfather. I did it in front of my father just to win his approval for me to try wearing the stones. I also took a cup of water and put those agates in. According to my friend, if you put an agate in the water together with a snail, the snail will react, or make a slight movement, because the agate produces a kind of energy.

I never witnessed the actual test but I did as my imagination told me although of course I couldn’t get a snail for the current test. My role play worked though and my father gave his approval. Last night I slept alone in my parents’ stall with a hope to dream of ghosts come in my dream to communicate with me. There was none. And in fact I couldn’t sleep until 4 o’clock in the morning after I was woken up by my girl’s call.

I didn’t know how I feel or how I should think about those agates. They are the remains of a past culture. Modernity and science had brought them to their end but in fact they still live, at least in the imagination of the people -- and in my imagination. My father had been a communist who was involved in the Indonesian ’65 tragedy and hence he was actually an atheist. But things had changed him after a 10 years exile at the Buru Island. I think he had come back to his Javanese roots. He even often talked about religion too.

I don’t think I want to try meeting the ghosts in the red and white agates tomorrow night. At least I won’t try too hard. If they are -- the ghosts -- really want to communicate with me, let them make the first step. I want to put my spare energy and time for more productive things.***