a.m./p.m.

9 p.m. I missed Oprah hearted fully. I saw a night breaking news which showed Oprah doing speech on the going to be opened Martin Luther King Memorial Center. Bush also baptized the place, to gain some of his popularity back after the mid election, perhaps.

8 a.m. An ordinary guy clapped his hands twice while squatting fastly, moved towards KOMDAK bridge. In a flick of fingers, those tired eyes and cramped hands cleaned over the well-arranged cheap stuff. Rp.5.000,00 belt, glasses, pirated DVD’s, to the five star-marked slippers. The hands’ owners were not filthy in fashion or in a dependent mood that you’ll see on beggars. They looked like old retired fathers and mothers, with well-worn shirt and cotton pants, with nice belt and glasses. Trying to bring more bread home. The ordinary guy clapping was their sign to rushly pack up their product, or else, the navy blue uniformed people will notch them down.

11. a.m. A first world country expatriate yelled to his PR, that he won’t come to the Idul Fitri party, and told her to call him just at the time she needed him to give a speech.

4.15. p.m. Worried over my reproduction organ’s safety. For the first time, I sat on a Mayasari Bakti carpeted machine beside the driver. I promise I won’t get my organ heated by anymore. I remembered my mom’s myth: no ojek hiking, it’ll dry my ovaries up. Of course, I’ll check google.

11.30 a.m. I loved my batik skirt. It went perfectly with the luncheon

6 p.m. “I fell for nice guys,” that’s what Miranda said on a sleepover two weeks ago. And I agree now. Nice, amiable guys.

a catalyst

A catalyst is someone who is touching your most sensitive
The person heralding a non-significant beautiful manner
Pressing your alarm, burgeoning your production
Of imaginations, words,
Poems, stories,
Tears, metaphors,
Associations,
Future,
features
Giving facts to serendipities,
Befriend the competitors,
Praise the competitors,
Automatic well-mannerism,
Sad hoping flirtatious smile,
Canny soften voice
The sweetest masochism
Without realizing
It’s you who empower yourself
And the person is just a catalyst.

1940

The red car with 19 cap is a public transportation for Kampung Rambutan to Depok route. The othr one, 40, is a brown-orange painted mini van serving the Kampung Rambutan to Pasar Rebo route. Both had been a prudential arena witnessing my fragility.

Fragility would mean a situation when an illuminating haze a remedy no more for reality. A phrase that breaks the hoping wall. Makes each dreg of reality bites you back. It ricochets. Letting the drips translate a real ambition that has been buried in a manner. From calm to calamities.

The process, quelling a warm water to flow, is the hardest one, since it takes at least two hours to get in to my destination. Two hours halting me from a liberating squall like what a baby does. That is the time when I’m surrounded with people whose face I will suspected. Each time one comes and takes a seat, I will tighten my purse. Pungent smell of people who just come back from a market, with wet vegetables and fish smell on their shirt. Shirt on their black black skin from the swelting sun and rare scrubbing. People with tired eyes. Eyes that glimmer their family, and perhaps, their several wives. I believe, they were happy on their wedding day, though. Now, it’s all the art of surviving for them, not an art of sufficing. On November, last year, this type of people was with me in 19 mikrolet. This October, they are with me in the 40. With me carrying my biggest melancholy of the year.

On its high speed way, I planned systematically things to be shared with a friend on the day after. Point per point analysis. I would spell out the bare truth. However, when for hours later I found myself doing my usual method; an elusive self healing, I am convinced, that is why I don’t like a downfall. It is because, practically, it is impossible to find a significant other half a t that time. Then, the lowest point will be a never ending cycle, giving a domino effect that I see won’t be good if I am not who I am now. It might be the lowest point, and without me.

P.S: despite the late night mysterious shootings these months, thank you for the 1940 people who didn’t kill, rape, or rob me (yet) although I’m a frequent midnight rider that should be easy to be watched and anticipated as a target.

blessing on the periphery

November 2005 was the lull line that dropping each endeavor to flirt. However, it doesn’t affect me that much. All of the non-esthatic experience was not a problem. I enjoyed my monday listening to Jack Johnson , Zach Gill and his Animal Liberation Orchestra singing this song:

I come over early in the morning
I'm like a heat wave without warning
And when I touch you my heart begins to flutter
You're smooth and creamy like peanut butter
Girl, I wanna lay you down
I'm gonna flood you like a love river
Ah baby, the postman is about to deliver
I'll cook you up some dinner, a little pasta
Listen to some music, a little rasta
So turn out the lights, bring out the candles
Wrap your arms around my love handles
They say that passion may not always endure
But this feeling that I have for you is burning up my world

Usually, I don’t put someone else’s lyrics on my blog. But I can’t resist this one. So good when you sang it, babe :)

esta llueva en las ramblas

The opera that once stood Maria Callas, the lover of Onassis, was in front of us. The gleam light from its front doors reflected on my opera mousse cake glass. It had a perfect combination of white chocolate on its top and thick bitter dark chocolate at the bottom. Surrounded by ancient posters of Aida as such, a diminutive servant came over, trying some mixture of languages.

It had to be started with, “Ni hao?”, since all tourism cellars in Barcelona have always thought that all Asians must be Chinese.

Then, he turned into, “Good night,”

In the end, “Te gusta Barcelona?”

“Si, a mi me gusto mucho,” I replied. Then, a gush of Spanish sentences spelled out unthrottledly from his beatific face. He looked like James Bond’s rival stereotype, only with nicer, sincere gesture, since he was a servant. For this nice behavior, he got some largesse from us, the poor ‘backpackers’.

After that, we strolled over. On the left and the right of the street, which name derived from an African word, stood up stalls of tapas and bodillas, incessantly followed by some show girl stalls, something unaberrant. The rain was still dripping on the starting to be closed stores except for some marquees. The marquees were some ancient buildings with a narrow street in between them. From the grayish building ornated with gargoyles, girls with mini skirt, stocking, and boots passed by in that glacial night, offering some warmth to male passer-byes. Las mujeres vigorosas. Ay, nosotros tambien.

It was the betwitxt Saturday-Sunday night, around 12 p.m, not the latest night for Jakartan girls, but late enough for this southern region of Spain. Then, we went back to our room, switched the light on, and the American boys suddenly slapped the doors, since we had woken them up at late night. I didn’t know whether it’s the combination of anti- orient behavior and disturbed feeling of mama boys, or just the last one.

touching the simulacra

While I am writing for pleasure, I don’t even know or feel the true torrential sadness that actually happens. The failure of conferences in Oslo and Madrid that made Lebanon bombarded of course is not a slump. Systematically drawn from embedded hatred, it is now not only in between the two countries, but between personal identities, spiritualities. When the velocity of identification spread, we will easily fall for either, since in accepting stereotype or slogan people doesn’t need to delve for more. Musthafa A Rahman stated two rivalries in the recent conflict:

*US, Israel, and Arabian countries pro to Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, like Mesir, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordania (better known as non-rouge countries for US, but well, recent terrorists even came from Mesir and Kuwait. I guess label doesn’t show the truth then)

*New power groups that see there is no place for Israel in the middle east (mention a few: Hezbollah (remind you that they are helped by Ahmadinejad’s Iran), Islamic Jihad, and recently Hamas, inherited the struggle of Yasser Arafat who had a Christian wife.)

The ‘stereotype’ that I’m talking about is believing that the first group always be associated to the conservative Republican US and the second one with Hasan Nasarullah’s “that Hezbollah’s war against Israel represents all ummat (recently defined as Arabs and all Moslem), Hezbollah’s victory will be also all ummat’s victory.”

The question is, should Christian, in other part of the world, never even seen and touched the real blood of the Arabian people should be grouped into the first one. And should all Moslem be put into the second one? Just by grasping the simulacra made by media, and transfer the ‘outside’ hatred into our own neighborhood?

These kind of identifications does not affect our real lives. Should we prioritizing giving sort of money to Palestine instead of helping the uneducated children in the east Indonesia, just because they are (widely known as) Christians? Or should we pray and fanaticize Israel and not praying for Lebannon in our Sunday sermons just because those people are Moslems, not realizing that the same kind of flesh of children are killed?

But, of course, it is our choice to identify ourselves globally, asided the geographical borders and put religion first. Anyhow, the duddest deed of all is meshing the name of our identity as the ‘universal value’ instead of put the real ‘universal value’, human rights, on its supposed throne. Since Christianity is not a value, neither does Islam. They’re just names, and the same greatness of quality of values inside those names, I believe, is not something uncanny for those who respect.

carrot cake

Carrot cake wasn’t as strange as what I had imagined since nurtured by Bobo comic strips. The one I got, It was coated with melted white sugar (like the one you have in Dunkin Donuts) and the meat was really stuffy with fat, soft grind, and chopped carrots. Talked about the first round with a feminism topic that would ban women above 45 to have assisted pregnancy (hmm…how old was Sarah Jessica Parker when she got pregnant then?). I had this chauvinist sexist Berlin dumb dark blond guys from Berlin, who were keep on laughing during the round. Just imagine, if an existentialist feminist from the department (you name it, mbak Gadis, whoever) was there, I was sure, her heels will chop off the guys’ luscious lips. I am not a feminist, though. But, de jure-ly, I beat them, however. After that, the round with two yuppies slash junkies from Los Angeles. The big guy, who associated the last episode of Star Wars with proponent’s proposal about Japan in the Security Council, but without veto. Useless and Lame. Loved him. And after the round, two Hong Kong girls said that Hu Jintao didn’t allow his people to access any international news, however, these girls could grab it by deceiving the intel. Hmm.I felt better in my geographical and institutional position where I am in. Free information, domesticated guys who will not dare to laugh on feminism issues, women who choose to be domesticated. Unexpectedly yummy, just like a carrot cake.

-University College Dublin, Thursday, December 31st 2005-

philosopher and cosmologist

Philosophers use their assumptions and knotting the social juices. Scientists go through formulas in their had and assume. And they arrive at the same conclusion. Perhaps we have told about the conclusion. Some people choose to believe it, and fight for it in the name of it. Some others checked it, because the conclusion cannot be referenced.

social activists and the cosmologist

The activists will cure the world straightforwardly and in a periodic time of history with a certain paradigm. And when one paradigm is changed with another, their function will also be reversed. And we know that paradigm has always changed during the history. Scientists will build fragment to fragment to valuable rope connected the earth with the cause, endlessly, but not straightforwardly.

on the earth or in the universe

Einstein said that a mass is moved through the rail of time and place. When Newton thought that it is because of gravitation, Einstein brought it into a more succumbed level. 

Why I said so? Because in the track of time and place, you cannot escape, and you as a mass not being pulled up by a secular sensed energy called gravitation. Instead, you are destined to be there. In a rail of time and place made for you. The question still, what made it, who made it, or how it was made. 



Then Hawking come to say that the rail can be made endlessly and can’t be cut off from its spur because of an extremely big concentrated mass. When a big mass of a star is concentrated, like a bullet bulk in your stirred milk, all particles around it will circle around it, and nothing can escape. Including the speed of lights, and the light itself. It is like the planets moving around the sun. It is destined. 

Then, Hawking called it black hole. Black, just like the life itself, you can’t escape being stirred.

But then, Hawking followed up his theory and came with this concept, the Hawking radiation. It said that some energy will escape and stretch the time and place around them to be relative and not vanished, even if the concentrated star starts to lose itself and vapor with the clinging energy around it. This energy on the tip of the circling movement is the Hawking radiation. 

The concept is almost the same with Einstein’s relativity. That is when you are pushed into the speed of light, the time will be relative. 

It also resembles the law of evolution I think. Ones who push to the tip of assumptions and routine will survive.

melt

And excitements melt spotlessly into the used-brownish sugar in the bottom of a coffee cup. I side them coyly with a spoon, but I know I will not sip it into my mouth. That’s how it goes with my so called ‘network’ numbers on my phone. Droning. You know, the sound of the keypad is droning, monotonous. Goes along through four hundred something numbers. If I could slosh them off, then how many numbers left, that’s the question. Tonight, none. When I’m longing for a cup of coffee and a conversation, I must be satisfied enough with mister Cole’s stardust, entomb my utopic mood. Let it away just like a smitting smoke from an ended cigarette. Melt. What a murky present I get tonight. Don’t remind me that I am not good at making and maintaining a network. I don’t care about my friends’ birth date, that’s the first. And I just can’t get myself connected. But, how could you forget a conversation, doesn’t it marked redder than any anniversary? Most people don’t, I figured. So, my friend is just a flourescent-lit monitor for tonight. And maybe for ever. And I’m not complaining, to anyone

my agenda stopped on April 20 something, the same day I championed, lived someone else's wish, then breath for the breathless days. Pop the eyes with winded bones craving on pages, stared at my unpredictable yet to come. I am just a girl on a jumping board by the swimming pool. With the water and the sky share the same color, black yet starry.

Huhu

If could scream, I would. But, this place is a computer rental stuffed with teenagers giggling over a handsome face on the friendster. Damn! All I do is just snapping my hair back, sigh, and retype. I have spent over two hours, typing, and SAVING in my document each every sentence. Suddenly, the electricity was off, for a second. No problem with the computer, anyhow, when I deliberately open the s*** my document, all of the word files are gone. And the mas mas, happily, with a wide smile just says, “wah mbak, kalo disimpen di komputer pasti ilang tiap kali komputer mati,” and he's just like going away like flying, like he’s weighless. How come? How come? There're no signs sticked at least in front of the costumer’s eyes about that? Anyway, literally, I cry. And retype for the next two hours. And hold my breath on my floppy disc.
I am pretty thoughtful, I guess. Furiousless. huhu.

I wanna know what he does in the weekends. I wanna know where did he buy his impulsing perfume, he would only has two choices of malls near the habitation. Listening to the songs he chose made me strolling down the nerve of my normal pricking day with the latest Do You Want to by Franz Ferdinand. I cooled down the volume when the disc started with a woman breathless punctuated silky sigh with melodious bass like you find in Shakira’s. That was not jazz. I thought. Nearly to the end, it matched my New Agey essay and the windy night when I sat to my computer.

I wanna know what he did with the wide canvas he put on the black wooden floor. I bonded all the pieces. Slow meditating songs. Muy abirrido. Empty place just covered with Floresian on its sofa and Kalimantanese table cloth. His empty blurry misleading eyes. With the F1 special editions of Lucky Strike, replacing the white cigarettes. His bread near the old backpacker backpack before his three o’clock lunch. His humble in every fashion. His up soft wrinkles at the end of his eyes. His upper lip, which is thinner than its fellow. His paleness.

I wanna know.

Just.

Two…Three scenarios

Doesn’t know

Didn’t mean to
Then stay flat
As ruined as before
Prepare for joker face

Know

Correct translation
Undeceiving nature
Then say still have smart psyche
Do have a sense of humor

Or worst

There
Is
Step below the highest degree
Be the first one can’t it be
But it
Is
There

Second most delight, but sun will wake
Touches and stings
Makes feel only the first and third can do.

I’m scared tensely.

(made seven months ago, I've loosened my tense, yet haven't figured out)

NYMagz. Love it. Hate it.

Swarming in between manic weeks of an undone accomplishment. Smiling after a wedding in a black bricked church, with black eyed guests. Worrying my short-term memory lost. It’s like this, I was going to put some water last night and brush my teeth, on 3 a.m, after typing over the NYMagz analysis, with Laclau and Mouffe infamous theory. When I walked to put the glass, turned out to be the Tupperware had been filled. Full. By who? Creepy. On early dawn, me alone breathing consciously, was it my second ego? Help me. Not. Sisie said it’s because I’m too much preoccupied. Then, I forgot the simples.

On the afternoon, before the eerie thing happened. Had a dream that I got married. It feels soooo good. Electrified me to open my eyes, made a big pointed smile, showed my teeth to my blanket and said, “I’m married!” (I guess it’s because the previous conversation with the anti commitment guy, who kept on saying that marriage is just like going out with a permission from the society.). Took only a click to wash up and do my essay. See, marriage works! At least the ceremonial party. *he he*

A Weird Interview

You need the money. But you pray pray, please, don’t call me up for the interview in that lifestyle magazine (for mum and baby). On a sunny day in Monday, after canceling my Spanish class. I sold myself to a big magazine corporation in the city, the biggest rival of the one I attended as an intern.

As usual, girls with matching necklaces and fancy skirts. Ethnic, chic, rhythmic, you name it. Oh…uu…they allow the employee to wear jeans. Cool. Liberal. And the interviewer was just a lovely motherly figure, with light peach lipstick on her fair skin. Matching her peach wardrobe and orange necklace balls.

(an informal interview)

Interviewer: “Your CV is astonishing”

Interviewee: “Thanks”

Interviewer: “But, I guess you don’t fit with this magazine. I’m afraid it’ll bore you. You know, interviewing mothers, the hospital care people, breast feeding nutrition, and stuff. While you’re a young, fancy woman.”

Interviewee: “Well, I guess I can learn new things from that. Meet new people, you know, say… I will be a mother….someday…(flinching her eyes, shaky voice, sell sell yourself)”

Interviewer: “I really like you, though. I will recommend you to the lifestyle magazine for teenagers. You can mingle perfectly with the people there, I see.”

Interviewee: *oh, she just doesn’t know. The previous teenage magazine editor said that I’m too serious for their field* “Ohkay, I’d be delighted.”

And the interviewer handed the interviewee her magazine, how to keep your house well. (order it into a name of a magazine). How ironic.

Mark Ruffallo, you can do better than assisting Jennifer Anniston in Rumor Has It. Such stringy, cheap, sinetronish movie.

Orang-orang yang sering berpikir

Orang-orang yang sering berpikir
adalah mereka yang paling sering menangis dalam hati
melayang di atas batas gelap perkira
jejaki ratusan kata, dan mengata
tak ada
sang pencipta di mana
karena bagi mereka adalah indera yang punya nyana
bukan rasa, kira, bukan hati
menyentuh dunia, tak cukup dengan hati
mereka menangis, menyentuh gelap jagat
di mana, mana tak ada siapa siapa
dipincingi dari bawah dari mereka yang menikmati sinar
sinar satu arah dari matahari
yang dikira abadi
dan aku yakin, Pramoedya Ananta pasti sering menangis.
dulu.

7 Mei 2006, few days after the departure

May is when the sun would string, makes the mikroleters stare in envy to those in the air-conned box. May this year is when the sun greys, pouring down velvetish ash from Merapi. Occasional rains that wash away thick black bulk from old metrominis, which makes me yell, eat your own dirt, polluters!
By the way, I hate May. In spite of the Tauruses, May puts hearts on the brink of savoir good byes, eternally, unpredictably. Different with December, when you part, partly, and be excited. Manner yourself better, suffocate your body with juices, face with blushes. Since you'll meet again in the midst of january. On May, you're not sure, whether he will walk on La Ramblas on July, hike on Andalucia silent mountains, or on the antique Galicia, Oviedo where Fernando Alonso was born.
and whether I will be where.