18 tahun kemudian matahari terbenam,
Belakang Puncak Alam,
Next to the international museum,
The sun never sets,
Dalam sinaran mentari,
Aku mengira titik-titik muka mu, yang ku cium,
Mencari makna, melawan arus mimpi.
"Apa yang kau tulis?"
"Perasaan tak cukup kata
Pabila menjiwai rasa rindu ku,
kepada bulan-Bulan yang sudah tiada"
Hari ini aku berasa selesa.
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Sunspots
Monday, August 10, 2020
Our Trip to the Movies
You smiled. wearing your best zombie suit
Holding my hand long enough,
For the usher to see you,
And for the last time,
And for all eternity,
They slaughtered Death in front of our very eyes,
When we haven't bought the tickets to see the show
Are they worried to be kind,
In case they accidentally love a monster?
Pass me the popcorn, honey,
We're good at pretending we belong here
Come and put your head under your legs,
And see the world upside down,
With the ocean above you,
And the beach in line with your frown.
But you're smiling now.
Holding my hand long enough,
For the usher to see you,
And for the last time,
And for all eternity,
They slaughtered Death in front of our very eyes,
When we haven't bought the tickets to see the show
Are they worried to be kind,
In case they accidentally love a monster?
Pass me the popcorn, honey,
We're good at pretending we belong here
Come and put your head under your legs,
And see the world upside down,
With the ocean above you,
And the beach in line with your frown.
But you're smiling now.
Monday, July 13, 2020
Rome
This train doesn't go where I want to go,
The map doesn't say where I'm from,
The ads that are selling all these budget flights to Rome,
Don't know what is there yet to come.
Backstage, we know more than we used to,
About all the heroes we love,
We talked about things we were pressured to do,
But it's my free will that chooses to love you,
I don't mind,
Every time,
You speak in a language you barely understand,
Just to learn about life,
In clumsy ways that could lead to our demise
This train doesn't know where we want to live,
It knows that we're far from where we came,
We stopped at a farm where we didn't want to be,
But we made some good friends anyway,
Old age chases all and knows no one it can spare
In pinky swears, we've chosen to care,
The darkest of stories will wait on us you see,
We'll have dinner, we will pay, but never leave.
It's your smile,
Every line,
They speak in a language that doesn't seem to end
Like a book about time,
Convincing us that everything is fine.
This train doesn't let us bring our pet inside,
Unless we were different or blind,
To people who don't want to look into our eyes,
It's fine, we'll just walk instead, this time.
Barely waged, not too late,
I try not to break my back for a boss I tolerate,
Just to be, home with you,
We'll have fun having nothing much to do.
It's the wine,
Maybe nine,
For dreams to be real as the time we both cried,
When your favourite uncle died
After telling us we'll never be alive.
For dreams, for dreams, for dreams,
Are alright
I'm just tired of things fading when I open my eyes.
There's the flower that I gave when we first said goodbye
Both our phones are now dead, so no pictures tonight.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Right As Rain
"It's raining really badly over here"
"Oh yeah? Everything's alright up here. The sun. Blue skies.The neighbours were playing on their trampoline. Who even buys trampolines anymore?"
"That's cool! Show me a picture. No, no, wait. Record it"
"Really though. These people are lower middle class, much like most of this neighbourhood. They have a small patch of patio in their backyard. They barely have any grass. But they choose to fit in a trampoline at the back of their house anyway".
"I think it's charming"
"I guess so"
"What would you have them put?"
"A garden"
"Maybe their kids are the rowdy types. They need some bounciness in their lives"
"I guess. I just..it looks really squashed in between everything. Could be dangerous?"
"Is this..."
"Like Rear Window except I'm not in a wheelchair?"
"Am I Grace Kelly?"
"What?"
"In that movie. She's in it right?"
"I don't remember. Could be. I don't know much about that era of cinema. Every actor looks like a corruption or an improvement from Warren Beatty or James Stewart".
"Pretty sure those two aren't from the same era"
"No? Well, goes to show"
"Do you think that when you really love something, you have to know every single detail about it?"
"I don't know"
"I used to write notes, you know. On people I like. So that I remember their likes and dislikes. Like making my own posts on GameFAQs or something. It's strange now that I think about it. Takes the romance out of it everything"
"Funny thing is that a lot of romance is planned"
"Really?"
"Yeah, I mean if you think of the capital R, Romance, but also the lowercase r, romance, it's all derived from story in which a character is spontaneously expressive or emotional about their love for someone right? Grand gestures or small. We fall in love with the spontaneity, but the spontaneity was written, way before".
"Right"
"So you gotta work behind the scenes. I mean don't tell people you write notes about them. Just remember it. They like the thought of you remembering it"
"What if they find it? I mean wouldn't that be romantic too? I've seen movies with scenes like that. I think"
"Yeah, but I think in those movies, the diary or journal or whatever is found after someone dies right?"
"Right"
"I guess you can't hit on me now"
"Hahah wait what? I wasn't..wait why?"
"You told me you write notes about people"
"Used to. Also-"
"-means you can't be romantic with me anymore"
"You think someone is gonna read this and think 'Oh this is the cringey part where they comment on the conversation they're having where all the little flaws are exposed that's supposed to prevent them from falling for each other but they do anyway'"
"There has to be a name for that on The AV Club. Like on their list of film tropes. Every Netflix coming of age romance has something like that"
"Yeah! Or sexual deviancy"
"What?"
"No, as in...ugh I don't like that word 'deviancy'. I mean you know, sexual diversity. Like there's this movie trailer I saw about this Asian girl who feels alone in this outback town on the mountains. She gets to know a guy who likes a girl, and she helps him write a love letter for her. Turns out she likes her too! And I think she likes both the guy and the girl. Like the tagline is "Love isn't just about finding the perfect half""
"Hey...I wanna say 'that's interesting'
"Haha what, say it".
"That's interesting"
"Yeah, but I feel like when they know that's what they're doing it gets more difficult"
"They?"
"Yeah, filmmakers"
"As in, you don't have to be on-the-nose about it?"
"On-the-nose?"
"Yeah. Like too obvious. Don't make that the point of the story"
"Why are there so many rules in storytelling when there are so many kinds of stories"
"I think it's coz we're all attempting to find some universal way to tell the best ones"
"Isn't it weird that this is a blogpost where you're writing a dialog between two people, but you don't know who the people are?"
"They're you and I"
"Who are we?"
"You know how earlier this quarantine, I was talking about stream-of-consciousness. Like I should just write with automatism, like the Surrealist Manifesto Andre Breton right. Like I shouldn't plan things, I should write what I feel without structure. Just the impression of my thoughts"
"This is ceasing to become a conversation, you're just explaining things now"
"Yeah, well I decided maybe this time, I frame the stream-of-consciousness thing like a conversation between two people. Because you know, consciousness is about conversations you have with yourself anyway, the awareness that there is an inside you and an outside you is a consciousness"
"You can't just have the other guy, aka me say 'Yes' all the time. That feels self-absorbed. You don't wanna do that"
"What if I snap-"
"-in two"
"Or...what if I feel less alone"
"Then you wouldn't need me really. You just need you"
"Why isn't this thing I'm writing on a thing we talk to"
"Yeah but it's not responding"
"Sometimes you have two human beings talk to each other, but only one person really says anything"
"This is getting stupid. Aren't you gonna go sleep and masturbate?"
"Hm. Play some Stardew Valley maybe"
"You were supposed to get your shit together. Tomorrow's Ramadhan"
"What does that mean to us?"
"Nothing"
"Well?"
"Still, deadlines. Maybe the air of ritual makes it easier to discipline yourself"
"Sigh, I'm gonna start praying again huh"
"Probably"
"You're doing really well"
"Me?"
"Yeah. You just need to write things down, dedicate yourself to a word-count per day, and you're set. Even if it is three essays"
"3000-word essays. Oh hey notice how I'm not the advisor anymore? I'm the advisee"
"Stop commenting on it"
"This makes me think about Community"
"Dan Harmon saying that all of the characters are just different versions of him?"
"Aren't all characters made by filmmakers and authors like that?"
"It's strange"
"I'm sleepy"
"How do we do this without cue signs. Maybe we'd be more real if we yawned or something or we said things with qualifications at the end, like if I say something angrily, it would say "he said 'angrily'", he said with circumspect
"But we don't want to be real"
"No, I guess not"
"Oh man it's gonna be a long day tomorrow. I never could use that literally. Like...because there are seasons here. So days do get longer"
"I said I was going to sleep"
"Okay. You'll probably be awake later anyway. Just not in text form"
"Let me sleep"
"Okay"
"No, I mean it. Get me out of this conversation"
Okay.
"Oh yeah? Everything's alright up here. The sun. Blue skies.The neighbours were playing on their trampoline. Who even buys trampolines anymore?"
"That's cool! Show me a picture. No, no, wait. Record it"
"Really though. These people are lower middle class, much like most of this neighbourhood. They have a small patch of patio in their backyard. They barely have any grass. But they choose to fit in a trampoline at the back of their house anyway".
"I think it's charming"
"I guess so"
"What would you have them put?"
"A garden"
"Maybe their kids are the rowdy types. They need some bounciness in their lives"
"I guess. I just..it looks really squashed in between everything. Could be dangerous?"
"Is this..."
"Like Rear Window except I'm not in a wheelchair?"
"Am I Grace Kelly?"
"What?"
"In that movie. She's in it right?"
"I don't remember. Could be. I don't know much about that era of cinema. Every actor looks like a corruption or an improvement from Warren Beatty or James Stewart".
"Pretty sure those two aren't from the same era"
"No? Well, goes to show"
"Do you think that when you really love something, you have to know every single detail about it?"
"I don't know"
"I used to write notes, you know. On people I like. So that I remember their likes and dislikes. Like making my own posts on GameFAQs or something. It's strange now that I think about it. Takes the romance out of it everything"
"Funny thing is that a lot of romance is planned"
"Really?"
"Yeah, I mean if you think of the capital R, Romance, but also the lowercase r, romance, it's all derived from story in which a character is spontaneously expressive or emotional about their love for someone right? Grand gestures or small. We fall in love with the spontaneity, but the spontaneity was written, way before".
"Right"
"So you gotta work behind the scenes. I mean don't tell people you write notes about them. Just remember it. They like the thought of you remembering it"
"What if they find it? I mean wouldn't that be romantic too? I've seen movies with scenes like that. I think"
"Yeah, but I think in those movies, the diary or journal or whatever is found after someone dies right?"
"Right"
"I guess you can't hit on me now"
"Hahah wait what? I wasn't..wait why?"
"You told me you write notes about people"
"Used to. Also-"
"-means you can't be romantic with me anymore"
"You think someone is gonna read this and think 'Oh this is the cringey part where they comment on the conversation they're having where all the little flaws are exposed that's supposed to prevent them from falling for each other but they do anyway'"
"There has to be a name for that on The AV Club. Like on their list of film tropes. Every Netflix coming of age romance has something like that"
"Yeah! Or sexual deviancy"
"What?"
"No, as in...ugh I don't like that word 'deviancy'. I mean you know, sexual diversity. Like there's this movie trailer I saw about this Asian girl who feels alone in this outback town on the mountains. She gets to know a guy who likes a girl, and she helps him write a love letter for her. Turns out she likes her too! And I think she likes both the guy and the girl. Like the tagline is "Love isn't just about finding the perfect half""
"Hey...I wanna say 'that's interesting'
"Haha what, say it".
"That's interesting"
"Yeah, but I feel like when they know that's what they're doing it gets more difficult"
"They?"
"Yeah, filmmakers"
"As in, you don't have to be on-the-nose about it?"
"On-the-nose?"
"Yeah. Like too obvious. Don't make that the point of the story"
"Why are there so many rules in storytelling when there are so many kinds of stories"
"I think it's coz we're all attempting to find some universal way to tell the best ones"
"Isn't it weird that this is a blogpost where you're writing a dialog between two people, but you don't know who the people are?"
"They're you and I"
"Who are we?"
"You know how earlier this quarantine, I was talking about stream-of-consciousness. Like I should just write with automatism, like the Surrealist Manifesto Andre Breton right. Like I shouldn't plan things, I should write what I feel without structure. Just the impression of my thoughts"
"This is ceasing to become a conversation, you're just explaining things now"
"Yeah, well I decided maybe this time, I frame the stream-of-consciousness thing like a conversation between two people. Because you know, consciousness is about conversations you have with yourself anyway, the awareness that there is an inside you and an outside you is a consciousness"
"You can't just have the other guy, aka me say 'Yes' all the time. That feels self-absorbed. You don't wanna do that"
"What if I snap-"
"-in two"
"Or...what if I feel less alone"
"Then you wouldn't need me really. You just need you"
"Why isn't this thing I'm writing on a thing we talk to"
"Yeah but it's not responding"
"Sometimes you have two human beings talk to each other, but only one person really says anything"
"This is getting stupid. Aren't you gonna go sleep and masturbate?"
"Hm. Play some Stardew Valley maybe"
"You were supposed to get your shit together. Tomorrow's Ramadhan"
"What does that mean to us?"
"Nothing"
"Well?"
"Still, deadlines. Maybe the air of ritual makes it easier to discipline yourself"
"Sigh, I'm gonna start praying again huh"
"Probably"
"You're doing really well"
"Me?"
"Yeah. You just need to write things down, dedicate yourself to a word-count per day, and you're set. Even if it is three essays"
"3000-word essays. Oh hey notice how I'm not the advisor anymore? I'm the advisee"
"Stop commenting on it"
"This makes me think about Community"
"Dan Harmon saying that all of the characters are just different versions of him?"
"Aren't all characters made by filmmakers and authors like that?"
"It's strange"
"I'm sleepy"
"How do we do this without cue signs. Maybe we'd be more real if we yawned or something or we said things with qualifications at the end, like if I say something angrily, it would say "he said 'angrily'", he said with circumspect
"But we don't want to be real"
"No, I guess not"
"Oh man it's gonna be a long day tomorrow. I never could use that literally. Like...because there are seasons here. So days do get longer"
"I said I was going to sleep"
"Okay. You'll probably be awake later anyway. Just not in text form"
"Let me sleep"
"Okay"
"No, I mean it. Get me out of this conversation"
Okay.
Monday, April 13, 2020
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Just Submit The Damn Thing
Yesterday, I felt triumph for a brief moment. It was due to my finishing a press release I have agreed to work on a couple of days ago. I'm trying my best to hold on to those feelings so that I crave it in my other 4 unfinished essays. Last term I knew that this term was going to be busy, yet I'm still treating it like I have all the time in the world. Like an essay that I can just conjure out of thin air even though I know it requires months of research to fully internalise the things I have to write.
Sure, maybe I didn't do that either with my essays last term and I scored pretty decently, but it sure as hell is going to be more difficult to wing 5 essays in comparison to two. Goddammit, I only had two essays to write last term that is nuts.
Anyway, tomorrow is when the hardwork starts. The only way I know how; scheduling all of the things I'm not supposed to be doing when there's only a week left before deadlines in between my short writing stints and cramming everything in the last minute anyway. I'm trying to compress that timeframe into every weekday, so that I do a shit ton of productive stuff. My thought process goes like this: if I panic everyday I get more done.
Instilling the panic is hard.
Today, one of my favourite YouTubers, Brian Jordan Alvarez (whom I've suspected but now have confirmed knowledge is a multi-talented genius) was riffing on on one of his 'formless chats'. He brought up journalling, and how you're trying to grasp at every memory before it fades away because even the most beautiful things tend to get misremembered. There's also the excitement of putting everything down ON SOMETHING (paper, blog, social media statutes, well not InstaStories because they eventually disappear) while it's still fresh.
Putting my mind to that now. Nothing much happened today. Wondered while I washing the dishes and the red soap started bubbling up in the washing dish tray whether I should reconfirm with Claudia, just so you know I really like her. Would that be too early to say openly even though there have been hints and compliments and flirtatious overtones throughout? If I say it too early will it mean even less the longer we have to be in this Covid-19 lockdown, because I'd have to spend more time giving her something to look forward to?
Will I even be around? Is the supervolcano in Yellowstone going to erupt this year?
I don't know.
SciShow released a video today about 4 Things That Are Evolving In Humans Right Now. Pretty cool stuff. Some of them include resistance to arsenic poisoning that some indigenous Andean populations have developed, others include the increasing of average height (with nutrition taken into consideration of course), human alleles changing against the development of Alzheimers in future human generations (which, if the trends continue, is good news) and I think one more was our ability to drink milk. Have to watch that again.
I realise this journalling thing - back when I did it in my early years of college - was also supposed to be a documentation of the things I learned. All of the videos I watch, the articles I read, the books I peruse, those things shouldn't fade away. They should be written down, memorised by the forces of muscle movements subconsciously associating and dissociating raw facts with action. Raw information, sorry.
But, as you can tell from all of the stupid posts I've been posting recently (well, not stupid, maybe 'formless (formless is slowly becoming my new favourite word), I've been more inclined to document emotions and experiences that are not just data - that are automatistic manifestations of myself and the things I feel. Ugh so stupid.
I had other thoughts.
Oh, several years down the line since I've first thought of it, I still think human beings are the coolest in spite of everything because we can leave legacies beyond genetic codes. From scientific knowledge to viral videos.
Hopefully, we all stick around. Anyway, wish me luck, Journal (not sure whether to anthropomorphise this blog yet).
Sure, maybe I didn't do that either with my essays last term and I scored pretty decently, but it sure as hell is going to be more difficult to wing 5 essays in comparison to two. Goddammit, I only had two essays to write last term that is nuts.
Anyway, tomorrow is when the hardwork starts. The only way I know how; scheduling all of the things I'm not supposed to be doing when there's only a week left before deadlines in between my short writing stints and cramming everything in the last minute anyway. I'm trying to compress that timeframe into every weekday, so that I do a shit ton of productive stuff. My thought process goes like this: if I panic everyday I get more done.
Instilling the panic is hard.
Today, one of my favourite YouTubers, Brian Jordan Alvarez (whom I've suspected but now have confirmed knowledge is a multi-talented genius) was riffing on on one of his 'formless chats'. He brought up journalling, and how you're trying to grasp at every memory before it fades away because even the most beautiful things tend to get misremembered. There's also the excitement of putting everything down ON SOMETHING (paper, blog, social media statutes, well not InstaStories because they eventually disappear) while it's still fresh.
Putting my mind to that now. Nothing much happened today. Wondered while I washing the dishes and the red soap started bubbling up in the washing dish tray whether I should reconfirm with Claudia, just so you know I really like her. Would that be too early to say openly even though there have been hints and compliments and flirtatious overtones throughout? If I say it too early will it mean even less the longer we have to be in this Covid-19 lockdown, because I'd have to spend more time giving her something to look forward to?
Will I even be around? Is the supervolcano in Yellowstone going to erupt this year?
I don't know.
SciShow released a video today about 4 Things That Are Evolving In Humans Right Now. Pretty cool stuff. Some of them include resistance to arsenic poisoning that some indigenous Andean populations have developed, others include the increasing of average height (with nutrition taken into consideration of course), human alleles changing against the development of Alzheimers in future human generations (which, if the trends continue, is good news) and I think one more was our ability to drink milk. Have to watch that again.
I realise this journalling thing - back when I did it in my early years of college - was also supposed to be a documentation of the things I learned. All of the videos I watch, the articles I read, the books I peruse, those things shouldn't fade away. They should be written down, memorised by the forces of muscle movements subconsciously associating and dissociating raw facts with action. Raw information, sorry.
But, as you can tell from all of the stupid posts I've been posting recently (well, not stupid, maybe 'formless (formless is slowly becoming my new favourite word), I've been more inclined to document emotions and experiences that are not just data - that are automatistic manifestations of myself and the things I feel. Ugh so stupid.
I had other thoughts.
Oh, several years down the line since I've first thought of it, I still think human beings are the coolest in spite of everything because we can leave legacies beyond genetic codes. From scientific knowledge to viral videos.
Hopefully, we all stick around. Anyway, wish me luck, Journal (not sure whether to anthropomorphise this blog yet).
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Wait A Minute
A shard of glass stuck in between your wrist bone, you stop for a moment to consider the pain of everything you felt when you were 17. Leaving an old world for a new one, inviting friends over to a chapter you never thought possible because of all of the times you wished you were gone. But now you're here. Enclosed by the notion of infinite possibilities brought to you by the kind people of Nokia. The corporate heads who marketed your phone to you that now plays music for your solitude in the modes of indie rock or classic folk songs. You know, now once and for all, that this is not the time for you, or anyone else that you love, to die.
That alone is enough
That alone is enough
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