2725 SFJ

It's here, finally...
the four-wheel
that once broke my heart

It's not about the car
Or the label it brings along

It's about the stories behind it
The journey
The quest
And finally the fate
that puts me where I am
In the place where I belong...

The Encouraging Failure

The power of curhat emang dahsyat.

It’s Friday night. And it’s not too bad.

Tadi siang gue berhasil tidur pules selama 2 jam. Mimpi ngalor ngidul ngga penting. Bangun dengan perasaan desperate as usual, but I managed to neutralize it.

Sepertinya di hari-hari gue sekarang, siang dan malem ada episodenya sendiri-sendiri. Selama ini yang jadi momok itu sore hari. Ngga tau kenapa kalo sore rasanya gloomy banget. Rasanya hidup gue kosong, ngga berarti. Feeling useless dll...

As if life was moving away as the sun goes down on me.

Padahal... malemnya ada cerita baru. Waktu matahari pergi ninggalin langit jadi gelap, ada bintang dan bulan yang muncul, barengan sama ribuan lampu dari rumah dan gedung-gedung. The background is dark, yes, but the life lingers. It tastes different, but it doesn’t vanish at all.

My sisters and a friend came by this evening. Tadinya ngga niat curhat tapi akhirnya gue selipin juga, di antara jokes and laughter. Dan ternyata gue dapet lebih dari yang gue harap. God... yang kayak gitu yang gue butuh all these times. Comforting words and encouragement. Bukan kisah sukses dan teori-teori yang bikin frustrasi dan bikin gue ngerasa kayak orang gagal. Sendirian.

Bikin gue jadi bertanya-tanya, apakah gue selama ini udah jadi orang yang comforting? Dan bukannya bikin frustrasi. Kadang gue suka banget pamer kisah-kisah sukses gue ke orang. Have I made people frustrated?

Sore ini gue belajar, bahwa kadang kisah gagal itu justru menghibur, dan sebaliknya, kisah sukses itu bikin down.

Dan satu hal lagi, jangan pernah berpikir kalau kita bisa nanggung semuanya sendiri tanpa bantuan orang laen. Tuhan punya alasan kenapa Dia nyiptain manusia sebagai makhluk sosial. Meski dengan level yang berbeda-beda, manusia butuh orang lain, bukan cuma untuk urusan kebutuhan fisik, tapi juga emosional. Terbukti dengan betapa mood gue langsung berubah jadi bagus waktu denger comforting words dari orang-orang deket. As if the tons of burden yang selama ini nindih gue sampe nyaris gepeng, tiba-tiba keangkat, dan menguap jadi asap. Hilang... Just knowing that I’m not the only one who is full of flaws. We are all flawfull. We were loosers at times. We fell and we made lots of mistakes. But the important thing is, we survive anyway. We survive and we share our fail stories to get our loved ones rise again.

Losing my Character

I need to fall in love...

Otherwise you’re nothing 

But a stream of empty words

How can I make me think of you

How can I make you appear in my daydreaming

With that piece of song 

That awakens my imagination

Please tell me who you are

Let yourself appeal to me

And replace the other

That was never intended to linger in my mind

I need to feel the way you feel

And see things the way you do

Thus unroll every scene

As I knit down the whole play

Sepotong Perjalanan

Mau kuapakan bayang ini?

Tentang kamu dan semua yang terhubung denganmu

Ah...

Mengapa kita jatuh cinta

Manusia itu aneh

Akalnya sering tidak bergandengan dengan hatinya

Dan begitu banyak kebetulan-kebetulan

Yang teruntai menjadi sebuah cerita

Namun tak ada yang namanya kebetulan...

Hanya sebuah kehendak

Dari Sang Penulis Agung

Milyaran insan terjebak di dalam romansa

Yang mereka pikir nyata

Sungguh menakjubkan makhluk-makhluk kita

Sungguh sebuah misteri

Mengapa kita berputar-putar di permukaan sebuah zat berinti panas

Mencari dan mencari

Makna...

Di mana kah gerangan jiwaku berada?

Mengapa hari berganti tanpa selembar goresan pena

Hingga aku melompong

Bagai tanah tak bertuan

Yang ditinggalkan hewan-hewan

Karena musim kering tak berkesudahan

Sisihkan bagiku tetes-tetes embun itu

Yang menyentuh bibirku dengan segenap bukti kehidupan

Hidup...

Kuingin hidup lagi

Dan merajut kisah-kisah itu

Tentang kamu...mungkin

Dan tentang semua yang pernah singgah dalam kalbuku

Little Grace

you came to me

out of the blue

a Godsent angel

to mend my broken heart

just when I stopped praying for him

when apathy nearly devoured me

to turn my path

to all the wrong corners

you are trully God’s grace

forever remind me

of how He loves me so

of how He loves him too

Prophecy

Dream as you please

Dream even if it hurts

And your surroundings get darker

As you turn within the belly of the earth

As you die each day

Leaving behind the ruins

Of what used to be your fortress

Listen to you dream

When she whispers

The emotions you need to let go

And the ones you should hold on to

Dream...

And believe...

For it might be the premonition

Of whom you are meant to be

Of where you are meant to go

Reaffirmation of Identity

I got it from the net and deeply touched by the rich description from the remarkably skilful writer. I'm having my struggle in search of inspiration, and lost myself a little in my new overwhelming environment. So this is merely personal affirmation, without any intentions to discredit anyone.

The Difference Between A Writer And Someone Who Writes

Jul. 12, 2011

By Eliot Rose 

A writer is not just someone who writes. In her head, it’s words all day. She sees the world not as a place made up of things but of words about those things. She knows more meaning is contained in a phrase like “poison friends” than a paragraph-long attempt at comparing emotional pain to a stab wound. A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before. A writer understands the capacity for words to embolden, to eviscerate, to cut a man in half. A writer’s words have texture and an aesthetic – they mean one thing on paper and another in your mouth. A writer knows the word “perfume” has a scent, and “savory,” a flavor. She also knows that the technical term for making you taste her words is synesthesia, but she’d rather show you than tell you.
A writer’s mind is sticky, cavernous. It is a locus of constant invention and generation, but also of deconstruction and warfare. Its very synapses fire bullets between semicolons and periods. In the infancy of the day, or as it’s expelling its final breath, an errant phrase will show up there unannounced and become lodged in some furrow. It will keep the writer up at night, until she’s built a temple, or at the very least, a sand castle, around it.
A writer believes in truth but understands the utility of a lie. Someone who writes will think about a lie in terms of its anatomy: she’ll see it as something with dead legs, flayed on a cold steel table, reeking of that stuff we use now instead of formaldehyde, because formaldehyde will kill you, too. But a writer believes in a lie’s biology and knows it is still alive, animated by some preternatural aspiration, an amorphous mass of amorphous cells, dividing and multiplying and taking on some new architecture every time you look at it. A writer knows a lie doesn’t want to die.
Someone who writes writes from a place of common experience in a common language, beleaguered by tired phrases and obvious similes, for those we call in my day job “the mass market consumer.” This is the audience who rapid-fire tweets without adding commentary. A blogger writes for the Facebook share; a writer writes for mind share. But still, in a way, a writer writes for herself. She knows her best work will get the least traction because the mass market consumer didn’t study English literature and doesn’t have the means to do the heavy lifting of literary analysis. And that’s OK. She writes for them, too, but only because it’s a way in. It’s sort of like when Ryan Gosling does one Notebook for every four Blue Valentines. A writer knows you’ll get that analogy but kicks herself for drawing it.
Someone who writes writes as herself. A writer’s voice, on the other hand, is chameleon-like. She can write from the perspective of a nine-year-old child or a pair of hands and make you believe. A writer knows exactly what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” A writer not only fashions the image of a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, but could tease speech out of those waves and teach sign language to those claws. A writer drowns in deeper oceans.
Someone who writes understands writing in terms of something she does, not in terms of something she is. A writer is aware of the singular stuff of which her soul is composed, but will never shake that gnawing feeling of inadequacy. She will be at once inspired and made to feel inferior by other writers’ words. But she’ll never let that stop her. She’ll continue to see the poetry in a broken watch, or a dog with one blue eye and one brown. She will give you her heart on a Saturday night for the story she gets to tell on a Sunday afternoon.  She will give you her soul always. And she will give it to you in writing.

Faces and Names

It was perfect,
Really it was...
But now I miss those familiar faces
I miss the chaos and the noise
The crowds and the yells
This is too funny to be true
But freedom is indeed a choice
Like there's always tits for tats
Some lost for some gains
Free from one
Trapped in another...

I know this will take place
Though it was a perfect beginning
With every warm smile
And a sweet greeting
From those with mere faces and names...

A New Beginning

Tomorrow's will be D day.
   First of July
      First day of the second half of the year
         First day in my new chapter

         Not as nervous as I imagined though
      Not  as obsessed as I was a few weeks before
   It's just something natural
Not unusual

Hesitation

Remind me again why...
Why I decided to answer the knocking on the door
'Coz it's hazy sometimes
Being surrounded by those who find a hard time letting me go
It's not your fault
Nor theirs
It's merely my choice
And the knocking sound that wouldn't leave me alone
Don't ask why
For I may not be able to answer correctly right now
In case you haven't figured it out,
Every major change means a little death
And my mind starts to haunt my days and nights
While trying to catch just the precise image of you

Starting Over

H-5...
Perasaan gue makin ngga keruan. Antara excited dan cemas, mikirin bagaimana kelanjutan gue di tempat baru. I'm really leaving my comfort zone. Wow... this is big. Meskipun gue masih di bank yang sama, tapi pindah gedung dan pindah divisi ini feels as if I'm converting my faith. Haha...
This is big, because it's gonna be the first turning point in my life. The point where I eventually make a choice of my own. It's the second chance I could only dream of. It's the major I didn't afford to take some 15 years ago. And suddenly, the road is opened before my eyes. Tanpa gue rencanain, tanpa gue sangka-sangka. Makasih Tuhan.

Tapi rasa takutnya ngga bisa dipungkirin. Kadang pas lagi bengong di mobil gue mikir, gue udah ngambil keputusan yang beresiko banget. Karir gue di finance yang udah bertahun-tahun, sekarang gue belokin. Gue banting setir, ke jalur yang ngga gitu nyambung sama background pendidikan gue. Hmm... lebih tepatnya ngga nyambung sama sekali. Gimana kalo divisi baru gue ngga lebih baik dari divisi yang gue tinggalin? Gimana kalo kerjaan gue nanti ngga jelas? Gimana kalo unit gue ditutup karena satu dan lain hal? Gimana kalo bos gue ternyata ngga suka ama gue? Or worse, dia manipulatif dan cuma mau memanfaatkan gue. Gimana kalo orang-orang di sana ngga cocok sama gue? Segudang pikiran negatif wara-wiri di kepala gue. Dan somehow, entah kenapa hari ini kecemasan gue nyampe ke titik puncaknya dan turun. Alhasil, gue jadi pengen ketawa terus. Gue sendiri juga ngga tau hal lucu apa yang gue ketawain di samping fakta bahwa gue bisa aja mati gaya di tempat baru dalam waktu dekat ini. 

Out of the blue, I told myself that I should behave correctly in the new place. Why? Because lately, gue berkhayal kalau gue bisa jadi bintang. Gue terlalu bersemangat dan berpikir kalau gue pasti hebat ngerjain kerjaan yang baru, karena gue punya minat besar dan visi yang gue pikir cukup mulia. Yeah...right...
Darling, here's what you should remember:
One, you're a newby. And a snobbish newby is a major turnoff. Lupakan untuk jadi seperti loe di tempat yang sekarang, yang orang-orangnya sudah mengenal loe dengan cukup baik. Yang seluk-beluk pekerjaannya udah khatam di kepala loe. Bukan karena loe pinter banget, tapi karena loe nyaris jadi barang antik saking udah lamanya nangkring di situ.
Two, jam terbang loe di tempat yang baru = nol koma nol nol. Jangan pernah berpikir untuk jadi sotoy (sok tau), karena loe jelas belom tau apa-apa. Ngga ada yang lebih menyebalkan dari orang sotoy yang sebenernya ngga tahu apa-apa.
Three, jangan kebanyakan curcol. Loe belum tahu siapa yang bisa dipercaya dan ngga ember bocor.

Jadi, kesimpulannya: be subtle, be quiet, and just learn as much as you can. Oh, and one more thing: be patient. Mungkin, belom dalam waktu dekat gue bisa merasa nyaman dan enjoy. Mungkin, gue akan banyak melakukan kebodohan karena banyak ngga tahu ini itu. Tapi seperti spirit yang selalu ada di dalam hati kecil gue tiap kali gue melangkah ke tempat asing: I believe one day I will 'Conquer them all!'

Good night Jekardah!