Broken web

What would you do if a place you used to call home doesn't feel like home anymore?
What would you do if you suddenly didn't recognize the people you used to know?
What if everything that once familiar to you became unfamiliar?

Would you stay and hold on to the sheer memories and fruitless hope?
Or you walk away, hoping by doing so you keep your sanity?

People are hold on to what's familiar for them like a spider hold on to the web they created. it eight feets recognize every part of it without even have to look at it. but imagine one day someone destroyed the web, and leave the spider in confuse. frozen in whatever left from it web, dont know wether it shoud weave it one more time or leave it and start a new one...

And now I feel like a spider in broken web, still cannot decide what to do when my house is just a house and not a home anymore...

Ghost of the past

How many times in life that you think you have passed some difficult moment, you finished it, and move on, live your life, only to realize that those moment never leave you. It just stays in the corner, waiting your weakness and attacks you with full strength.

They say it okay to fear, they say it okay to afraid, but don’t let it blocking you away. How easy to say that, but to experience it is a whole different thing. How to make a closure? Should I wave all the things and letting those ghost walk freely?

What going to happen if I do so? Will it be better? Or I just make things worse?

It been years, and I thought I’ve finished with it. I thought I’d get over it and live my life just they way I wanted to be. But then one day it came back, all of it: the fear, the pain, the sacrifice, the feeling, the betrayal, fresh in minds as if it just yesterday. What am I doing all these years? Only building my own wall, creating web of reasons to protect myself in order to prevent me to experience those moment anymore. Without realizing that I might hurt other in the process.

I thought I’ve already get over it, but I guess I just shoved it away because I don’t want to deal with it anymore. But I didn’t realise that by that I’m letting the ghost of it haunting me… shadowing every steps I take and decision I make.

I just hope I will be able to get rid this ghost of my past once and for all, for the sake of my life…

To my dearest cat...

24th September is the day when my cute-spoiled-arogant-funny-loveable cat passed away beacuse of disease...

I know this is the best for him because he suffer for weeks, but I'm still crying almost all night. he still five y'old, he's not suppose to die now, but who am I to complain God decision...

I just wish I could hold him much longer, have him at my house as a part of 'home'...

Facing The Bridge

I’m standing at the edge... facing the bridge in front of me, the bridge that lead me to many opportunities, but also contain many risks.
I’m standing and thinking.... should I cross the bridge or turn away and leave?
I don’t know what lies ahead... I don’t know what I will encounter when I cross the bridge. I might be astonished by the venue or I will fall to the depth underneath and crushed into pieces.
But if I turn away, will it be better for me, or it just another form of destruction? The dull and slow-motion destruction with series of questioning myself.

So here I am still standing…
Facing the bridge…

Thinking…

Narcissus and the lake

Prolog of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who daily knelt beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the Goddesses of the Forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

"Why do you weep?" the Goddesses asked.

"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.

"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."

"But..... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.

"Who better than you to know that?" the Goddesses said in wonder, "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!!"

The lake was silent for some time. Finally it said:

"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."

"What a lovely story," the alchemist thought.

when changes occur

One day I sat alone in my living room and thinking about things that recently happen in my life.

Many changes occur during the past month, people that I care making decision without my consent, people that I need to ask their approval before deciding something important. I feel useless, meaningless, and powerless upon things that happened.

Who are they and what they do to them? Please bring back the real them that I know, the rational and logical people as they used to be. The people that make me believe the real thing, people that make me believe in my own judgment based upon fairness and reality. Now they demand me to be what they want me to be, demand me to understand, but how? We all talk different things right now, care upon different things now.

Am I being left behind while all of them are moving and changing? Then why I feel like they’re chasing ghost?

Oh, how I wish to be careless, to be ignorant, to shut my eyes and ears and live my own clamshell world. To be selfish and walk away, leaving all this only to be dealt by the weekend. But I can’t…

I just can’t.

And here I am hold on to things that was real, as a shade of memory and fruitless hope of good things that may come if I stay a bit longer.

“To see the world as so conniving, you cannot take pleasure in the
appareance of something good... because you suspect...
it is only a painted drop behind which other troubles lie.”
Madeline Bray (Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens)

Second Front (Medan Tempur Kedua)

Dalam kesempatan ini, gw memutuskan untuk berbahasa Indonesia. Mengapa? Karena pekerjaan gw adalah mem-bahasa Indonesia-kan buku ini. Medan Tempur Kedua oleh Ken Conboy yang karyanya telah menjadi semacam kamus bagi orang yang pekerjaannya terkait dengan spionase, terorisme, militer, dsj.

Sejujurnya ini bukan jenis buku yang lazim gw baca. Gw bukan penggemar literature spionase dan terorisme (kecuali Jason Bourne :D). Tapi ternyata selama menerjemahkannya, gw menemukan kisah ini sangat menarik. Kenapa? Karena ini nyata. Ini merupakan bagian dari sejarah Indonesia yang penuh dengan rahasia dan misteri.

Buku ini menceritakan sepak terjang Jemaah Islamiyah mulai dari kelahirannya di Desa Ngruki, pengasingan kedua pendirinya di Malaysia, hingga aksi-aksi pemboman yang mereka lakukan di Medan, Bali, dan Jakarta, serta kaitan mereka dengan Al-Qaeda.

Nama-nama seperti Abu Bakar Baasyir, Hambali, Dr. Azhari merupakan nama yang akan sering ditemui di dalam buku ini. Dan tidak hanya sekedar menyajikan fakta belaka, Ken Conboy (yang senang mempersulit hidupku dengan menggunakan analogi dan istilah aneh) menceritakan latar belakang orang-orang tersebut yang mendorong mereka bergabung ke dalam Jemaah Islamiyah. Misalnya Dr. Azhari yang dulunya tukang main saat masih sekolah di Australia, yang kemudian bergabung dengan JI setelah istrinya sakit parah.

Menurut gw, kita sebagai warga Indonesia perlu untuk lebih memahami sejarah dan apa yang sesungguhnya terjadi di Indonesia. Ironis sekali orang yang menulis sejarah kita berasal dari luar negeri. Tapi terlepas dari asal sang sumber, sebuah buku berisi pengetahuan selalu pantas untuk dibaca. Meski tidak lupa untuk menelaahnya sendiri saat selesai membaca nanti...

Medan Tempur Kedua. 2008. Ken Conboy. Alih bahasa: Syahrini Dyah N. Jakarta: Pustaka Primatama.

The Spider and The Fly

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said a Spider to a Fly,
"It is the prettiest parlour that ever you did spy,
You've only got to pop your head just inside of the door,
You'll see so many curious things you never saw before,
Will you, will you, will you walk in, pretty Fly? …"

"My fine house is always open." said the Spider to the Fly,

"I'm glad to have the company of all I see go by."

"They go in but don't come down again, I've heard of you before."

"Oh, yes they do, I always let them out at my back door,

Will you, will you, will you walk in, pretty Fly?…"

"Will you grant me one sweet kiss, dear," says the Spider to the Fly,

"To taste your charming lips I've a curiosity." Says the Fly,

"If once our lips did meet, a wager I would lay,

of ten to one you would not after let them come away."

"Will you, will you, will you walk in, pretty Fly? ..."

"For the last time now I ask you, will you walk in, Mister Fly?"
”No! If I do, may I be shot, I'm off now, so good-bye, good-bye, good-bye."
Then up he springs, but both his wings were in the web caught fast;

The Spider laugh'd, "Ah, ah, my boy, I have you safe at last.
Will you, will you, will you walk OUT, pretty Fly? …"
"Tell me, pray, how are you now?" says the Spider to the Fly,

"You fools will never wisdom get unless you dearly buy;

Mostly European nursery rhymes were rather grim compared to Indonesian, especially Eastern Europe, but this one from British and one of my favourites. I like it because it has deep meaning on how we should careful about things that looks appealing, because what we see in the surface may not reflect what’s beneath it.

Hari ini

Hari ini (Jumat 29 Agustus) bangun dan langsung mendapat berita duka.

Sepupuku meninggal.

Aku berasal dari keluarga kecil, hanya empat orang (+ satu kucing). Tapi karena orangtua dari keluarga besar, sepupuku banyak sekali. Ketika sedang niat menghitung, aku dan sepupuku dari pihak ibu berhasil mendata keluarga kami dan jumlahnya ratusan. Karena itu kadang saat kumpul keluarga di lebaran sekalipun, kita hanya bertukar salam dengan beberapa orang saudara sebelum asyik ngobrol dengan saudara-saudara terdekat.

Tapi bukan berarti hubungan kekerabatan kami tidak dekat. Meski bertemu minimal setahun sekali, keakraban itu tetap ada. Mas Jon (alm) bukan sepupu yang ditalikan dengan darah karena Alm adalah anak tiri Bude, tapi dia anggota keluarga dan kami semua bersedih atas kematiannya. Terlebih lagi keluarga inti yang ia tinggalkan masih amat membutuhkan sokongannya.

Hal yang paling aku ingat dari dia adalah sikap menjaga dan melindungi khas seorang kakak saat hampir semua sepupu menginap di vila di Puncak. Sampai kapanpun dia tetap seorang kakak bagiku.

Selamat jalan Mas Jon, semoga diterima di sisi Allah SWT. Kami semua mendoakanmu...

To The One

To the one who understood her task and her purpose.
To the one who looked at the road ahead, and understood that it was a difficult journey.

To the one who did not make light of those difficulties,
but, on the contrary, made them manifest and visible.

To the one who makes the lonely feel they are not alone,
who satisfies those who hunger and thirst for justice, who makes the oppressor feel as bad as the oppressed.

To the one who always keeps her door open,
her ears listening, her hands working, her feet walking.

To the one who embodies the verses of another Persian poet,
Hafez, when he says: Not even seven thousand years of joy are worth seven days of sadness.

To the one who is here tonight, may she be one with all of us,
may her example multiply, may she still have difficult days ahead,
so that she can do whatever she needs to do,
so that the next generations will not have to strive
for what has already been accomplished.

And may she walk slowly,
because her peace is the peace of change,
and change, real change, always takes time.

(Message from Paulo Coelho to honour Shirin Ebadi at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, Oslo, December 11th 2003).

Daily things...

Every day when I log in to internet, I’ve receive a message in my YM account from my friend. Each day consisted different message, but every one of them is inspiring and sometimes help me through the day.

Although sometimes I do forget the message’s content, but only by remembering there’s someone care enough to send inspiring words everyday for me makes my spirit lifted.

It also made me realizes that it doesn’t take a lot of effort or money to genuinely be kind or inspire people. Just like what my friend did through one message per day, there’s also many ways to tell people that no matter what difficulty they might encounter during the day, there someone who care about them and wishing them a good day.

To Vino, thx and keep sending me messages! :D

pekerjaan

satu pekerjaan selesai!!!!
yang lain menanti. hiks!
kadang bertanya sama diri sendiri, sebenarnya ingin kerja seperti apa?
kerja seperti sekarang seneng juga, tapi ga ketemu banyak orang.
kerja kantoran ketemu banyak orang, tapi ga suka sistem 8-17-nya.
apalagi kalau kantornya jauh, uh... malas!
memang sih, jadi orang susah puasnya. kepingin dapat semuanya.
tapi kalau bisa kenapa nggak?

Languages...

I always fascinated by language. I don’t know why, but the first time I learn foreign language (English) is when I was in elementary school, probably 2nd grade. I was watching Sesame Street and since that day I love languages and eager to learn it. If it’s possible, I want to learn all the language in the world.

Right now I learn French, and it’s cool and fun, and confusing at the same time (j’aime apprendre français, mais difficile). I want to learn other Latin-root languages such as Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. I also want to learn Turkish, Japanese, and any language that I able to learn.

But when my job require me to know more about my own language, I realise that I don’t know that much. And then I chat with my friends from other countries. They asked me about Indonesian language, and I have to open my school book to answer some of their questions.

As an Indonesian, we often take-it-for-granted Indonesian language. We forget about proper Indonesian, we don’t normally use it in conversation, even in formal conversation (which is fine for me).
I got A for English but C for Indonesian. Isn’t that ironic?

I’m an Indonesian in every inch of my blood (as far as I know) but yet I don’t know (and perhaps don’t care) much about my own language. While out there, some foreigners wanting to learn more about it. A chieftain of small ethnic in Alaska said once:

“Without land, without language, and without culture, there will be no native.”

Those words were haunting me. How can we call ourselves Indonesian native if we neglected our land, forgetting our language, and disrespect our culture?

I guess this is the right time to learn more about my own country and pay more respect to what we have as an Indonesian.

PS: but it doesn’t mean I’ll stop learning and using foreign languages. :D

Like the Flowing River

Be like the flowing river,

Silent in the night.

Be not afraid of the dark.

If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back.

If there are cloud in the sky,

Remember, cloud, like river, are water,

So, gladly reflect them too,

In your own tranquil depths.

- - Manuel Bandeira - -

Quoted from Like the Flowing River, thoughts and reflections of Paulo Coelho*

See where I stole my blog title?

The Wall

When we were a child, our parents build walls around us to protect us. They told us not to touch the caterpillar because it might itchy and you’ll suffer skin rash for weeks; you’re not allowed to eat the soil because it definitely unhygienic and you cannot kicks a dog because it might chase you.
When we growing up, we start to experience things and build our own wall based on the foundation our parents created. We build it when we fall from trees, when the dog bite us, or when the driver shouting at us with nasty language because we cross the street carelessly. And then wall became higher and thicker when someone stabs us from behind, when someone cheated on us, when we were fooled and betrayed.
Years passing by and without even realizing it, sometimes we build the wall too high and too thick so no one outside can see through us or even takes a peek. At first we comfortable with it: we feel strong and confident, no one able to hurt us. They don’t even able to touch us. But then, at some point, we realize that we are alone behind the wall, but yet too afraid to open the door because people might see our weakness and use it against us. And when it happen we might hurt deeply or even crushed into pieces. Because we know the one that hurt us the most is the one we love the most…
And although we know there’s no coming back, our biggest fear is that we will never be able to collect the pieces and be as strong as we were before.

Question

Who is the strongest of all? Those who stand behind the thick defences or those who offences non-stop?

But yet again, perhaps those who appear the strongest might be the weakest of all…

The Importance of doing nothing

We always have to do something. We have to go shop, we have to read some books, we have to go to the office, and we have to learn things.

We always have to create something. We feel ashamed if we didn’t move as busy as ants and be as productive as bees.

There so many things yet there’s so little time.

I have to study languages, I have to work to have some money, I have to build a relationship with people, I have to clean my room (something I haven’t done for a while), I have to cuddle my cat or he will despite me all day long, I have to listen those who in need to be listened, I have to assist those who need my assistance, I have to think about my future, I have to buy cereal and bread, and the list goes on.

But sometimes I choose not to do any of those and just do nothing. Simply doing nothing productive, just sit and breathe.

My favourite author once wrote that he feel useless when he didn’t do anything. He feels the urge to do things, and he have to fight with himself for stay where he is and not stand up and go just for buy a glue.

But then he manages to stays, because according to him, he’s doing nothing but also doing the most important thing a person could do. Listen to himself.

It is important to moves and be productive, but never forget to stop and look what you have accomplished and listen what you have to say to yourself. Because perhaps, that is the most important thing you have to listen in your life.

cloudy monday

It's a cloudy monday so I cannot bath my cat.

It's a cloudy monday so I relax and didn't do my job.

It's a cloudy monday so I thinking about someone and the thing he might do today.

It's a cloudy monday so I feel sleepy...

but above all, it's a cloudy monday after sunny sunday of our 63th anniversary of independence day. I hope the weather did not reflect our lifes these days. when we all forgetting the fire that burn our heroes heart when they fight for our country independence...