Bra1n-w@shed

The island is quiet empty localized in which I’m staying now, Ubud Bali. The resort is like a desert of noise in this peace hour. Where only I can hear the river running not far from my villa. I’m staying at Four Seasons Sayan Bali until this weekend for business trip. Just finished my last meeting about an hour ago. I took a nice warm bath and calling people that I..well, kinda missed. With my full of thoughts and an empty heart I try to scratch my name in time with these words.

I can see people wear their mask lately in a much more intensive way. I don’t know are they doing that in the name of shame, guilt or just pretense? Each of us is like a rabbit finding a hole to hide in, when the coast is quite safe we crawl back up. To die or not to die is overrated. Nowadays I believe dignity is bigger than faith, bigger than love, bigger than god. Don’t blame me, I’m just the observer. You are the player in this game so raise your hand and stand up.

Why is the next question. People trying to prove something in the community that actually already exists and doesn’t need a bold marker anymore to prove the point. Trying to prove that they are here, in the world, actually living the nothing life into the something of living. They trying to be rich, they trying to be popular, they trying to fit in something that doesn’t exist and doesn’t belong. I never said it is wrong of what they are doing, but why? Has life has become too simple that we trying to find something much more complex to make us look ‘sophisticated’? that’s bull.

Don’t we all realize that we are losing something that is basic and much smaller than the universe? Much smaller than money, much smaller than dignity, much simpler than simplicity? People that we called friends. They are the connection of what makes life full of vibrant and happy distortion. A portion in which we are all taking part in the big lane in the end. The funny thing is we just don’t realize it yet.

I haven’t written anything for quite a long time. Not because there’s nothing happen in my life. Many people come in and go in my door step. Stories I have been through. The sad book, the joy adventure and lonely romantic journey.  My body surrenders to the situation where I accepted that I can’t control everything. My mind tries to fight but in the end it just flows with the rhythm life has prepared for me.

People grief on the contrary, singing meadow of the night in the feeling of greatness. I told myself to never let go of that secure feeling I have since long ago. Not even when somebody trying to dig cracks in my wall of defense. He may get through me but never have me whole. I am belonging to my shadow and my shadow only. Everybody lies they said, everybody have their own secrets they said and I have mine too.

The world can break me like crystal on a hard concrete road in the middle of nowhere; I will never be found. God pick up my pieces as He picked up my shattered faith. It’s raining crucifix and angels now. They fall right between my eyes and show me the only truth the world ever known. They are inside me filling my emptiness with realism and ropes from the thread you made for me.

My days are fine like a sailor on a sunny day out far on the horizon of watery world. Seagulls lead me to my sanctuary. Wisdom words are my prayers, strength is my belief. Like the old wise king in his golden days. I’m calm like the water itself carries so many peacefulness inside it and all the drifting dreams it has. Creatures swimming inside my skin building castles of commiseration, deep underground.

Shame to myself who’s been letting my guard down and let myself in the maze of my own super-dramatic life line. I let myself drifted to the sound of my own amusement which leads to nothingness. In the result of my own disappointment I cried for help. Dripping melody of my sanctuary let’s dance to this tune of oddness that each of us has creates to satisfy our solitary lives.

But then I realize that this just had to stop. My mind is one and I’m the captain of this boat. I can’t keep jumping ship just to feed my ego and lust. I’m about to finish on this dramatizing every events and start to pull my head out from the dirt. Looking to the great big horizon where I see copies of myself lining up in an army of me. Ready to defend and replace me whenever I go start destroying myself on the folktales about ‘love’.

Happy New Year.

Either that’s for Gregorian Calendar of Chinese calendar, I’m still celebrating. This is my first writing in 2009. Nothing too special happen, just me having a cat name Kuru, I’m in relationship again and I got this job in which I love doing. I don’t want to start my year by making how dramatic how my life could be. Or hoping too high. Or get too excited. I’m just making my steps in the horizon in a modest way. That’s what the world is all about now. The global crisis, the killing spree in Gaza, Obama taste his first Air Force One, that’s only the pink and green sprinkles on top of the globe.

My life running in a highway where lotsa things running in there too, in a positive way making me don’t run too fast giving me time to think where I’m heading. It’s 49 minutes past 10 pm as I sat in this dim room, listening to Michael Jackson’s in Bossa Moments CD. I gotta wake early in the morning tomorrow, doing my routine gym and then off to work. It’s deadline week so I got a lotta things to do. To be honest, it’s part of my fault to delay things and I have  a bad time management system. Not like my boss.

My boss is a firm woman. A discipline individual where she likes to control everything and everyone. I likes her way of managing people, she knows what she want and when she wants it. Sometimes people may feel over-powered when they met her on the first time. Yes, she has this charismatic way of saying “I can see you. I will control you” in a very mannered way. She’s also fair to her staff. When she likes their job, she giving compliments in the nicest way. But when someone did wrong, there goes her claw and teeth of words to that person. Then she apologize if she thinks she’s overreacting.

I respect her as a superior, I care for her as her friend, I feel sorry for her as a human. Sometimes she feels she’s a rock when inside she’s a butterfly. She wants people to see her tough. I can understand of what she has been going through, plus her ambition drove her engine running full speed while working. But sometimes we should understand our limit as a human. In either way, it’s her choice and she has her own reason to do that. I still respect her and part of me want to have her positive attitude.

Today it was raining hard as hell. Can you imagine at eight in the morning the rain pour down like it never rained before? I drove my scooter to office as usual, with raincoat ready and plugged my ear with iPod. It was quite nice and supporting by playing songs that are perfect for that moment: Jamie Cullum - Singing in the Rain, Ray Charles - Raining in Georgia, Aisha Duo - Despertar. It’s a bit weird as if it knows my mood and situation and picked the right song to play in the playlist. It knows me so very well.

Sometimes my iPod talking to me when I’m alone and full of thoughts. It told me things that really helpful and lifting my mood. I just wonder am I adjusting to my mood to my iPod or it adjusting its songs to my mood? It never let me down, I carried it everywhere: to the gym, when I’m driving, when I’m alone, when I’m on the bus or when I just need someone to cheer me up. It never let me down in every moment. It said to me: “Life is just like a playlist, you never know what its playing next but you know is the right music for you.”

My pages in this year has almost comes to an end. As I take a glance to what I have done, I see a person with pieces of regret with his head down low. Some chances I had blown; some hearts I couldn’t avoid to break but still I couldn’t count how many blessings I received this year. Again, myself has failed me to bring me to that point of expectation of someone with great hopes.

This year is very special to me because I have felt deep down inside that something big will happen. I don’t know when and what but my hunch is so strong it scares me. My eyes is not the all seeing eye that sees everything, I couldn’t predict what will happen to me. The universe is very kind to just let me feel what’s next in my life chapter.

I did what I have to do; I challenge my fear everyday to do at least one thing I’m scared of. In my 25^th years of my living of the unknown past I dare to ask that to my family. The secret they had hid for many years are dig up so deep by my curiosity. I ask my aunty one morning the truth about my past, about my parents, the true story about me. What makes me didn’t do this years ago because I don’t want to deal with the drama they will involve me in when I ask this big question.

She began to cry. As she explained, I didn’t react to the memories that strikes her at that moment. Somehow my numbness has creates me a layer so thick I am protected from all the lies in the world. Everybody lies, that’s the only thing I believe its true. Not that I’m telling her a liar but she did lied to me all this years, making up stories that my dad was a Javanese and my mom from North Sumatra. I’m not stupid and the mirror never lies. This face shows that either one of my parents were from Middle East somewhere or Mediterranean at the least.

My aunt continues her story and she finally get a grip of herself as I get bored with her tears. She was my mom’s closest friend in campus, Indonesia University back in the 80’s. She was knocked up by some guy that left her during her nine month carrying me. My dad was a real jerk that crowned himself as the King of the Jerk Island and people bowed him for his Jerkiness. Mom hid her pregnancy so well her family never sees the changes on her.

When it’s time for her to deliver, she went to her friend: my aunt and asks for help. Together they went to the nearest hospital and I was born in the afternoon, according to my aunt story. My dad never showed up for years and my mom had passed away. Her last resting place are not far from where I lived now, that means my real family also living in the same area. In my logic sense, back in the old days not many cemeteries were there like nowadays here in Jakarta.

I asked what was my mother’s name, but my aunt stay silent. The air that morning felt chill, eating my nerve and surrounding my bones and it felt much colder inside the house. Then she told me she can’t give out her name because she doesn’t feel right to say it. Not that she doesn’t want to, but she just couldn’t. She asked for time and will discuss it with the rest of the family if it is ok to give out my mother’s name to me.

I felt that my freedom is taken away from me at that moment. The truth I have been waiting to have is not fully mine. But at the same time I feel relieved in a very awkward way. My thoughts began to work; the engines inside my head are starts to move forward fueled by my curiosity. Once I have my mom’s name, I will first search her name on the ground, go the cemetery management office and find where she was once lived. I don’t care the promise I made to my aunt to never search my past, I have my own reasons.

That’s why I hate Christmas time. The happiest time to share love with your family, they all said. What family do I have? This family has fallen apart. I have seen for myself how brothers and sisters taking revenge on each other, they lies for the smallest reason, self beneficial and arrogance has taken the love from them. The monsters are crazy, there are monsters outsides. I have grown and educate myself since I was a child with lesson from people outside from my own so-called-family.

Nature give her hand to lead me to the path I am now, makes me strong and little bit crumbling inside. I believe everything will worth it when I’m in my New Jerusalem that God had promised me. I never deny how much I missed my mom and dad. It repeating so many times it builds hurt so deep taking the hollow space where they both supposed to be. The truth is hurt but the honesty will give comfort.

Josh Stone - Security, 2004

I just got a new kitty cat, his name is Kuru. He loves to chew and bite everything around him now, including my hands. Kinda cute and one hellavah spoiled brat. I love that lil’ devil.

He’s a white and black little cat, more like a cow but with no tail on him. his favorite toy is the sponge ball I just bought for him, he doesn’t eat much on Friskies but he loves that Tuna in can and sometimes white eggs. He’s a very naughty cat, he is. Running here and there, up on my desk, on my notebook, biting on my rug, sometimes he likes to jump high like a toad. I think he’s reincarnated as a toad in his previous life.

Its rainy season in Jakarta and lotsa thunderbolts followed by thunderclap which makes Kuru run and hides away. Yes, he’s afraid of thunderclap. This kitty has been potty-trained so I’m not worry of kitty litter everywhere. But I think I need to buy bigger litter-box when he grows older later. He can see the unseen too, one time he seemed don’t recognized me for 5 minutes but then I realized that actually there’s another presence in the room.

Kuru is one of my love life. Besides my other one thousand friends out there; which I share the same level of love. I used to give all my love for someone in friendship category. But sometimes not everyone deserves my loving and just takes it for granted. Despite he’s blinded that to the fact love I’m willing to give is so big I’d risk my life for that person. But fates always talks different.

I have so many faces I can’t remember, so many names I lost but never forgotten, so many handshakes I shared, so many kisses I passes, but they were just like night suddenly strike by the dawn of morning. It’s not gone, you just can’t see it. I guess it’s all just supposed to happen.

“Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.” I always remember that piece of a song from Baz Luhrmann. It kept repeating in my head and race in my heart. Along with river of emotions full of different memories from the past I try to swim through. Those memories are the ones that keep me from drowning.

I have so many friends that I always lost count. I am grateful that I’m blessed with so many loves I received yet sometimes I always feel not as much as I’m giving. I became the witness of life changing into something I cannot perfectly describe. It’s confusing if you keep on following the foot step of the world. I’m just merely one soul that trying to survive and learn.

My friends changing partners, relations after relations, heartbreaks and makeovers, lies, betrayal, seducements, lust and frustrations, words and false actions. I just don’t get it. Why is it so important to them? But why am I asking this question when I still feel loved? Is love different from friendship? Is the shape changing so rapid no one could tell the difference?

Maybe I should stop. Love is not for questioning. It’s almighty and powerful. It could leave you breathless and high when it actually bringing you down to the point you can’t picked yourself up again. People had been searching for love and truth, but I just found mine in two small eyes that stares back. It’s honest and true. I called him Kuru.