Mame Mo Memelay

Aku tak akan berpura-pura, aku membayangkan seperti apa kamu sekarang. Aku mencoba melukismu dengan cat air berwarna masa lampau. Toh aku ingat betul seperti apa warnamu: sabana yang dihangatkan matahari dan terus-menerus disapa angin dingin sebelum sampai Hargo Dumilah, diiringi “I think our rocking chairs used to rock together all night.”

Namun berhenti di situ saja. Padahal aku merasa harus mengantisipasi sekeping dentuman yang herannya tak kunjung datang.

Barangkali rasa, setiap kali ia muncul, sebenarnya sudah berupa memori. The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. Sensasi tentangmu adalah imaji yang telah menghablur menjadi asap ingatan, yang sekali dua kali dapat melayang naik ke batas horizon mata akal. Seperti aroma yang bisa membangkitkan kenangan atas suatu fragmen tempat dan waktu di masa lalu, membuat bulu-bulu emosi sekilas bergidik, namun tak berarti keinginan untuk menjadikannya ada dan berlangsung kini. Atau, seperti kata sahabatku, sama halnya dengan detak jantung yang sejenak terasa melambat menyaksikan matahari terbit, yang mungkin biangnya adalah gen-gen purba dalam kenangan diri atas pengalaman menyaksikan terang pertama.

Affliction

The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected is something that exists and has always existed; it was not the invention of the philosophers, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic revolution, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of blood and in the salt of tears, and we made our eyes into a mirror turned inwards with the result that they often show without reserve what we were verbally trying to deny.

Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by comitting an evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the previcator ends up being, without mercy or pity, without shame or infliction, either twice or half what he deserves.

Gugur

Menyaksikanmu adalah perih yang membayang dan rasuk yang meradang. Tanganmu membakar segenggam buluh api dengan kementahan kelam, mencacah sekuntum hujan. Dan anggukan akhirmu yang menenggelamkan jingkat-jingkat getar.

"I can see a fireside turn blue, I can see a lot of life in you."

you are not alone

I will hold my longing tightly

before the leaves become quiet

(Photo taken in Klaten, October 2008)

you flutter, dear self

Oh what is it that rustles and shivers
shaking the dithering soul
stirring the valves of glands
folding, unfolding the way of dark and light,
the surreal steeping,
unnaming?

- This cave turns abysmal, i could never have been back up.

the estranged will be gone, the saline eternal

In your body of nights distilled
silence chuckles
like the splashes of waves
echoing through every curve of the land
gentle as a kiss on a blister
and green dreams set sail to faraway
bequeathing darkness upon the stones
and your skin

the barricades

When all of a sudden you need to justify who you have been for the past year, you realize you no longer have a place to stay. Subsequently you have two choices, walk your lonely road, or impose your reality within the possible limitations.

and it rolls down, everytime

Perjalanan itu menuju puncak,
yang ternyata sekadar punggungan-punggungan yang lain.
Setiap kenangan adalah luka kemarau yang menggeliat di mataku,
yang terpintal nafas pagi
dan kemudian hangus bersama mimpiku.
Kernyitan dahimu terus menanti,
toh setiap melodi bukannya mengisyaratkan penikmatan,
melainkan lantunan pertanyaan.
Telah kau lempar cabikan air mata ke jalan-jalan sunyi yang menghampar kusut,
jarak pandangku tersesaki variabel angka-angka,
sambil menangkap tangan kirimu yang terus menggenggam mistar.

(Artikulasi yang diilhami cerita seorang teman lama, Y.P., tentang perjalanannya di Pegunungan Argopuro.)

shall we make a deal?

How can we explain what happened, we pile up words, words, and more words, the very words we talked about elsewhere, a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, and however we try, however hard we struggle, we always find ourselves outside the feelings we so ingenously hoped to describe, as if a feeling were like a landscape with mountains in the distance and trees in the foreground.

work is good

it takes the mind off the pain
or even if it does not, it prevents me from hugging the pain

(Photo taken in Bekasi, November 2007)

wall's mockery

“So you think you’re sure of your opinions? You cannot be sure of anything. Are you going to endanger the harmony of your community, your fellowship with your neighbors, your standing, reputation, good name, and financial security – for the sake of an illusion? For the sake of the good mirage of thinking that you think? Are you going to run risks and court disasters – at a precarious time like ours – by opposing the existing social order in the name of those imaginary notions of yours which you call your convictions? You say that you’re sure you’re right? Nobody is right, or can ever be. You feel that the world around you is wrong? You have no means to know it. Everything is wrong in human eyes – so why fight it? Don’t argue. Accept. Adjust yourself. Obey.”



(Photo taken in Depok, October 2008)

charges

I haven't felt my own presence. This always happens when I attempt to be present, in terms of the state of body and mind as a united package, in a couple of places at once. Being the chimpanzee, he said. I was angry when he said that the first time. But on second thought, insult will always be included in the chain of reactions when someone else's words affiliate with the plain simple truth about yourself.
So here I am, scratching the back of my head looking for the sign of treads I thought I had left. In times like these then, life is the effort to operate between the gaps of what is possible, even if it is well-recognized how life is not completely made up of what is possible.

We’ll collect the moments one by one; I guess that’s how the future is done.

I’m not geared up, or probably will never be, to have any fraction of my past being simply perceived by others. It’s not one of the features in the times of yore that got deeply incised, or that huge giant strong pillar, or anything. But along the way, I realize more and more that it is the petite details that build me. The meaningless pieces. But in this case, not for me.

You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware of the degree that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and radio music. And whoever wants more and has got it in him – the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints – is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

the yearning to dust

What I currently need, is merely space. And, well, probably a little more time for self-reflective session. My thought has been interfacing nothing, but exposure. For all my life, I dedicate some part for superficial exposure, with things underneath left without intrusion. These past weeks, still in my strive to keep the discounted area wide enough and well recognized (as last year there was time in which that area was forcefully pushed inwards, and there it went, my senseless coping mechanism), I see and let too many hands in.

I can’t neglect how those hands have been toning colors up, but they each have own ways of embracing and flicking, and all of a sudden I feel like being polarized to many directions at one time.

While too many occurrences have happened unobserved, or not yet well-learnt, having just that lots of beaks wetting in the stream inside kicked myself in the current small chaos.

Please, I need space, and a moment, to digest.
To breathe in.
To formulate choices and be conscious in doing so.
To pick the questions I want to focus in.
To cross out the opportunities (the ‘tricks’) that will leave me feeling guilty.
To convert movements and sugary sweets into thoughts that roar.
To read with passion.
To sit down and be able to find out just the tight keywords.
To be ready to again have my brain as dry sponge.
To just re-comprehend to stop in every changing-of-the-day before restarting the engine.
To remember the divine intervention, and then feel dependent and protected.
And finally to see what comes next after I open both eyes…

road to re-engagement

Limitations defined through one comprehensive peek.

(Photo taken during the flight from LAX to SFO)

qualm upon the shift

Kebekuan pun dirumuskan atas nama
teralihnya besi yang menjaga
relung dekat dengan liang bercacing,
terkubur dalam substansi yang membangun keakuan.
Atau yang diakui.
Namun banjir bandang bukan penggali.
Dadaku basah dilengketi sepatu yang
minggu ini rajin berkecipak dalam ketercairan.
Apa yang mereka dapat selain detak melambat
dan sarkasme sebuah tawa?
Dan air toh mampu melubangi kelapangan.

Parr-à-pluie

Je te tiens,
chaudement dans mes bras.
Écoute la pluie qui frappe
sur les fenêtres.
J'ai perdu
la puissance de la solitude,
l'invincibilité de l'homme sans coeur.
Maintenant j'ai peur.
À cause de toi,
je suis faible comme dans un rêve
de la douceur de mon avenir
avec toi.
Je te tiens,
chaudement,
c'est mieux, n'est-ce pas?
Et au dehors il fait froid.
Pourquoi tu pars?


[midnight drivel. sorry to disturb you, oxygen.]

defragmentasi

Holiday is over. 3 words probably: Virilio’s point of inertia. Hehehe. Well I did stay remote. No, but it was pretty much a memorable one.
I saw processes. Miniatur berbagai progresi (dan regresi) yang dimampatkan ke dalam sebuah keterbatasan waktu dan ruang yang mendesak. Apresiasi atas detail? Hm, another one’s moving up the rank.. Kesempatan, tabula rasa. Saya begitu menikmati berlembar-lembar cetakan foto tanpa gambar, ratusan telapak tangan yang terbuka. An embellishment of the bidding to wind up in this fortress? Yeah probably.
I spotted upshots. It’s amazing how everything fluttering around could turn you into. Of course with the contribution from all the folds inside, hehe. Waktu lagi les di CCF saya pernah ditanya oleh sang guru waktu kecil suka main apa. Terus saya jawab dengan sejujurnya waktu kecil saya suka main payung, secara kalo dibuka jadi lebar terus kalo ditutup jadi panjang dan keriput.
I remember how I was, therefore to a certain extent completing the project of scrutinizing the massive stream of details in the tapestry of events. I sat and found some of the answers of some major choices. I conversed and settled some fundamental tribulations.
I smiled to what people were projecting. I caught a glimpse of myself, hahaha. Should it take me like 20 years? Such moron.. hihihi. “..a koi in a frozen pond, a goldfish in a bowl..”
I learnt my lesson. Baik dari kenaifan yang monofonik maupun melalui berbagai hamparan ambiguitas yang mengimplikasikan relativitas. Tahu rasanya minum obat cuci perut lalu buang air dan badan pun jadi terasa enteng, lalu lapar mulai melanda kembali? Begitulah kira-kira.
I made friends. Hahaha. Seriously, saya juga nggak percaya baru sekarang saya punya teman dimana kita tidak saling memberi dan meminta terlalu banyak, tidak saling mencari kecocokan, tapi bisa saling menyediakan rasa aman. Sporadic escapades. Man it does feel great somehow. It’s simply about genuinely liberating (part of) yourself. Well no, it’s not that simple.
Pada akhirnya setiap detail yang terobservasi menandai satu gelembung yang terbiarkan pecah. Dulu ada temen saya, namanya Tuan Dao, when he found out that he was accepted at UCLA, kata2 pertama yg keluar dari mulutnya adalah, “This is what I meant by sacrificing for another amusement.” Hihihi.

Anticlimax.

Bukit kapur dalam baluran jam pasir.
Bebijian jagung menggeluti angin.
Cermin cembung bersikeras.
Desau ombak yang menggapai malam hari.
Is it?

pseudologia fantastica

Dimness vanishing each and every precinct and reckoning,
toward the cavernous cavity in darkest sea..
“Sans toi, les emotions d’ajourd hui ne seraient
que la peau morte des émotions d’autrefois”
Dan aku pun membangunkanmu pagi itu,
dengan ketap mulut bergegas menyibak subuh dan
langit masih coklat kita menghitung jejak,
hingga pantai itu dengan cerita berlompatan
bagai biji hujan menjelma laut tempat bersampan.