Jakarta has a way of pulling you under, and sometimes, skyward. It started on a beach at night. I was alone, trying to forget endless bad news at work when a wave nearly took me. A stranger pulled me to shore. His name was Pan Neo, a neurologist. Not long after, that uncanny weightlessness crept back. Pan called it "Seed Syndrome". It had been dormant in him for over twenty years, since the day his sister disappeared. He became a doctor to find answers, and told almost no one he was a survivor. Not until me, in the early stages of the same condition. We followed the trail of seeds to its source, all the way to a giant seawall, where something had long been feeding on collective despair. Its vision was seductive: become a seed, and receive eternal peace, free from a collapsing reality and a canceled future. But in the end, we saw it for what it truly was: death, carefully disguised. Gravity snapped back. Instead of dissolving into nothing, we leapt together into the sinking world below. We had once counted on a Noah’s Ark to carry us into a new world. We were told it was canceled. So we landed, and returned each to our own leaking vessel, and kept going. Perhaps that is enough. In a world where escape is no longer an option, on land destined to sink, to feel the gravity pressing on your body, to stand with feet in the mud and cast a clear shadow: perhaps that is the only way we find peace, and preserve our dignity.
When the promised future declares bankruptcy, how do we find a place in a world left unfinished?
当承诺的未来 宣告破产， 我们要如何在烂尾的世界 安置自身？
In 2022, news of Jakarta’s Giant Sea Wall Project struck me: this barrier resembles an absolute shield mankind builds to resist the loss of control over destiny. As the grand capital relocation plan stalls in reality, this metaphor grows sharper—we once hoped for a Noah’s Ark to carry us to a new world, but now we’re told the ark is canceled, forcing us to continue living aboard this leaky old vessel.
In this context, “Seed Syndrome” is my pathological diagnosis of the contemporary urban adults mental state. Our generation suffers from collective weightlessness: trapped between the collapse of the old order and the unfinished new world, we crave suspension, yearning to escape our heavy body through digital, hallucinatory means.
“Seeds on the Seawall” attempts to portray a courage of disenchantment. Just as Sisyphus found meaning in pushing his boulder, my characters ultimately fall back to earth and reclaim their physical existence. This is the politics of “Being Here”, in a world where escape is no longer an option, feeling pain and standing with feet in the mud may be the only way we preserve our dignity.
