SWORDS

There is nothing much preferably done in winter than waking up between 11 to 12 AM to a warm cup of coffee without thinking it as one of the greatest guilty pleasures in life.  To be sorry is a very humble thing, but I wonder if it's at all necessary. To never feel sorry or to never having to say sorry might very well be a good challenge to take on as a new year resolution, which comes soon enough to be pressure. It might not be as hard if you just hear it once, but to never have to say "sorry" requires you to be always right and to be always right means not more than to never do wrong and there are two ways to never do wrong in life: 1. To behave just exactly the way society expects you to behave 2. To never regret every little detail that you decide to do The latest one has somehow made its way to be "in" nowadays, mostly in the West. I personally think that this is a beautiful way to live the life. Nevertheless, a tricky one because we tend to forget the reas...

It's safe to say that 2020 is one of the most depressing years all time, at least that's the impression I get from social medias and some conversations with people around me - and this isn't only because of COVID-19 which definitely limit our free wills. Happiness or gratitude suddenly become the things that we need to look for, because it doesn't happen just-like-that anymore. So, instead of waiting for good things to happen, we are forced to create or look for them. "What makes you happy?" ...was the question I hope I could answer with a list of activities. After realizing that it I could not begin with anything, the question reformulates itself into... "What used to make you happy?" Maybe that's the question I should start with.  Of course I (or we all) am not always this gloomy. We were all once those kids whose good moods could be triggered simply by cotton candies or playgrounds. The cotton candies now have turned into carb diets and the pl...

  On my latest trip to Amsterdam, I saw I guy singing while he was riding his bike through the streets in a crowded city of Amsterdam. After wondering how it feels to have that kind of self-consciousness, I started to wonder, how would a person like that handle a heartbreak? This blog contains a lot of heartbreaks. I’ve been blogging for about 10 years and have shared a lot of my personal heartbreaks and those of people around me in this blog of mine. Not always directly “you guys, my heart’s broken”, sometimes in other forms: stories, poems, or even happy poems and happy stories. Through those years, I acknowledged that heartbreak has a wider spectrum. It could happen not always in a relationship, but also in losing a friend, in hormonal changes, in rejections, in being totally afraid of not knowing what could happen next, in a massive confusion about life and all the possible meanings it may have. Not only that, heartbreaks also showed me that it’s not about how heartbroken I am....

I was often told of Kalong Wewe back when I was a kid. I have never seen a Kalong Wewe but this Kalong Wewe should be an old and mean witch, who liked to kidnap children. Kalong Wewe would start to look for children as the sun goes down. That was how "go home before dark" became one of the most important rule for the children, at least, in my neighborhood. Little did I know, in Japan, especially in public places, there's a song that will be played at the same time everyday as a reminder for the children that's it's late, and that it is time to go home. Is it not a very beautiful thing, to have someone/something telling you, that it is enough for today, that it's time to come home?

In the heart of Europe, a little bit to the south, I am typing this. Correction: I am typing and deleting this, typing and deleting this, typing and deleting this. This is one of those posts which have occupied my drafts for the last few months. Each word in this post has been trying to find a meaning they can call their own but sometimes things just don’t work that way.  Everything would be easier if we were all able to talk through our feelings, through no words. Words were made to limit us, I once read. But with no words, there would be no ambiguities and misunderstandings. And, come on, ambiguities and misunderstandings, at many points, often also trigger us to develop. So, what’s the limit anyway? I am writing this mostly because of my upcoming birthday. Birthdays are always filled with questions. The questions use to change from “what present do I get for my birthday?” to “what have I achieved up to this birthday?” We also change the address we send the questions to,...

Dahulu kala semesta diciptakan bersamaan dengan dua roh agung Siwarka dan Sakwari. Siwarka dapat bernyanyi dengan indah tiada tara, namun diciptakan tanpa indera pendengaran. Sementara Sakwari diciptakan bisu, namun memiliki pendengaran yang begitu hebat hingga dapat mendengar suara hingga yang paling lembut sekalipun. Sains hari ini mengelompokkan suara ke dalam tiga frekuensi; ultrasonik, audiosonik, dan infrasonik, dimana satu jenis spesies makhluk hidup hanya bisa mendengar salah satunya. Sakwari mendengar suara dalam frekuensi apapun, bahkan yang gelombangnya dapat menembus semua jenis alam. Sedangkan Siwarka, mengenali nada dan irama lewat getaran. Dari getarannya, ia ciptakan dan ia mainkan melodi yang paling indah yang siapapun bisa dengar. Siwarka dilahirkan di satu belahan semesta, sementara Sakwari di satu belahan lainnya, jaraknya mungkin berabad-abad, atau lebih. Siwarka tidak tahu dimana Sakwari, begitu juga Sakwari tidak tahu dimana Siwarka. Tapi dengan cara yang ta...

Ada sebuah perkataan soal New York, begini bunyinya: hidup di New York itu baru bakal sempurna kalau 3 hal sudah terpenuhi; rumah, pekerjaan, dan pasangan. Ini bukan New York sih, tapi 3 hal itu tetap penting buat hampir semua manusia. Rumah Lagi-lagi, pertanyaan soal rumah mengusik pikiran. Sejatinya sungguh sudah jelas, bahwa yang layak disebut rumah adalah sayur oyong buatan ibu dan nasi goreng buatan ayah. Kalimat itu tentu bukan untuk diterjemahkan literally ; maksudnya, cintaku yang sebesar itu terhadap sayur oyong dan nasi goreng tidak akanlah eksis tanpa juru masaknya yaitu ayah dan ibu. Maka dari itu, sungguh rumah bagiku adalah yang tercipta dari adanya ayah, dan adanya ibu. Yang lain, hanya tempat singgah. Tapi hidup kan tidak melulu begitu, hidup ini tak cuma melenggak-lenggok lembut seperti jogetan tradisional jawa, tapi juga ngebor seperti Mbak Inul. Keras. Belom selesai dengan satu hal, udah ditendang ke hal yang lain. Begitu terus. Tapi tendangan-ke-hal-lain itulah...

The idea of rescuing life, always triggers the question of worth. The Germans, except Ferdinand von Schirach , agree that human dignity is inviolable. But, why? I still shiver everytime I see the helicopter of the hospital where I work in landing upon the rooftop. It makes a very big noise and it wasted a lot of environment-unfriendly gas just to rescue one person. One single human body. Or when an ambulance drive through the town with an unimaginable speed. The emergency doctors and nurses would then be gathered at once. When the patient enters the room, things would begin to move fast, hectic but also structured and people would talk only when needed. Every second counts in that room. My job was, at first, to stay at the corner at the room, keeping my mouth shut and just do nothing. The first step is always observing. It was in the time of observing can you really see what's going on and what's worth to focus on. My first day in the emergency room forced me to think of th...

It is getting easier each day to think that the world is messed up. *** Where I live, a bird flock would murmur loudly every sunset and every dawn. Along to the murmur they would fly in circle. It doesn't actually look like a circle, it looks more like some chaotic and random flying maneuvers, but if you look a little bit closer it really looks like dancing. I just need to step out of my house door, then I’d see and hear it, the Vögelwaltz. Being late or too early is never in their agenda. They like their patterns and they like to live with it. Pattern is nature and nature is where our souls secretly want to go back to. But the current world doesn't seem to fancy the idea of nature and routine. It moves and changes flexibly, fastly, in the way that is often unimaginable. But somehow, these changes, they burn the passion inside of us. They keep us develop, it’s fun because what’s deviant is just always interesting and curiosity is also humane. But, there’s also pattern ...

“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question .” - Harun Yahya I showed my father the quote above about seven years ago then told him that the quote has really motivated me. I wanted not to be like those birds, I wanted to go away, experience and learn lots of things and this and that and everything. My dad smiled and said that maybe it wasn't supposed to be understood that way, maybe the quote wanted to tell us that you should stay. The birds were just some anecdote to tell us that nature wants us to stay. I didn't understand, or maybe I didn't want to. My wings were too big, they wanted to spread. "Rantau" is one of the old words in Bahasa Indonesia that I can't find in other languages and thus explains not only the activity that almost only the Indonesians do, but also the Indonesian culture itself. This word means leaving your home with the purpose to have a bett...