...perfect love is like a blossom that fades so quick...

I don't love you, I never was. Maybe I was just too lonely and miserable. It wasn't love at all. You misjudged my feelings. But, that's OK! I just need a company anyway. You hate the glitters in the world. I love to be an exhibit in the museum of lust. One that will be paraded as a trophy in the hands of men. Isn't it an ironic thing? A fool, that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. Who wrote that line? Fitzgerald, right? I don't need no more struggle. I've already had few in my big pocket. I wanna be able to find happiness and comfortably in this superficiality that you will never be able to provide. 

Don't you love all the designer's? 

The harder it is to pronounced, the more you can't afford it. That's what I like. Yes, I am that one lady bossing around to hide my insecurities. Is there any woman out there who are proud of their flaws and willing to embrace the fullness of life? I don't think so. I went to finest school only to get juiced in it. I tasted freedom in a small district of their western hemisphere only to prove a point that I ain't no better than the other folks. A small portion of a dictator's named airport will be forever living in my unknown live. Then I went to some wacky foundation where all the corrupted money would be laundered in a very noble way. I am a subject. I sacrifice my intellectual and intelligence depth to be something I am not just for the sake of societal expectations. 

That's my life at a glance. What do you know about freedom? Liberty? Equality? Fraternity? Boy, you know nothing at all. What do you read? Verlaine? Saint-Exupéry? Camus? Balzac? Those are for uncultured swine like you. Arthur Rimbaud? What are you? A fatalistic? You know nothing about art anyway. You just love to recite these sewer born poets and think that you know more than others. I was there. I spoke the language. I saw the people. There weren't like what you may think.

Bandung, West Java, 2021

We sat down in a bench nearby. My shirt was soaked with sweat. You brought a bottle of mineral water and I started to rant about the weather. I hate factory visit and so are you. Your awkward smile and laugh made me a little bit warm inside. You asked me to unbutton my shirt due to the heat which I refused sporadically. You asked me why do I always wear a long-sleeve shirt even when it's hot outside. And I said to you that I hid something under my shirt. Some heart-torn scars that might scare the hell out of you. You wanted to see them. So I folded my shirt and you see them scars carved on my arms. 

"Well...those are battle scars. Scars that are proving a point to you," she said.

"What's the point of all these "battle scars" you've mentioned," I asked her again with a grinning smile. 

"That you've been through hell and managed to survive...and then we met in a very weird coincidence," 

"Yeah...you're right,"

The Tell-Tale Stories of Someone in a Hiding

Are we all the heroes of our own stories? Whatever decisions we made we'd manage to slay the vicious dragon in a castle and take our priceless chest. It's a tale of terror and detection. It's our story. Along the way you'd meet some random people, thieves, betrayers, kind people, any kind of people the world has to offered. 

Do you wanna live forever in your hiding? The liberty you've found is abducting you from yourself. You are someone else. Beware of enthusiasm and love. Each is temporary and quick to sway. It's king for king and queen for queen. The perfection of love is creating a huge amount of imagination that someday might kill you. It's like a blossom that fades so quick. If someone ever told you to look at yourself, well, never look. 

Success is rather inconceivable at first but you have so many ardent admirers of your stories. They could conjure all the hard knocks of your rough and tumble stories. Words like violence, break the silence. They are sometimes meaningless. Come crashing in into my little world. Can't you understand? Nature's a language, can't you read? All these conventional, pompous societies are denying our true struggle. The way you play with words is slightly dangerous. Barely anarchy. 

*Is it illegal to let these kids ruling the dancefloor?*

Di dalam kesendirian manusia terkadang mampu untuk melihat menembus dinding-dinding nalar. Dikoyak-koyak sepi. Gelap adalah teman sejati. Dia tidak akan menilaimu dari wujud yang diwariskan secara genetik kepadamu. Di dalam kesunyian manusia menjadi abadi. Meninggalkan raga dan terbang ke udara menjadi sama seperti mereka yang dahulu pernah ada. Menjadi tidak terlihat adalah sebuah kemujuran.

In a room far far away from the people who don't care if you live die you laid yourself on the bed. Smoke, lamps out! You are gazing onto emptiness. Dry blood, sweat, and other unwanted fluids soaked on the bed. Your dull jack knife wasn't reliable. The artificial happiness that you set the other night wasn't enough to fill the huge void inside your head. You looked at yourself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed . . . Of all the ways to be wounded. Suppose it was a funny one. You are a fugitive but you don't know what you're running from. You just want to run away from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

*The ideas of a big revolution against the upper class are roaming inside your head. Why should one become the ruler of all people?*

Hours and hours wasted. Who will survive? Will we make it alive? The fakest ones are the safest ones. Those who insist to be themselves completely will annihilated completely, wiped out from this world. Will you give yourself to this fake surrender? You are forced to be someone you are not. In this dire situation you will find those who are true to what the believed in and those who are opportunistic enough and give in. 

It's better to be burned than to fade away.

It's easier to run replacing the pain with something numb. Now look! We are on the top of this mountain. There are high white clouds above our heads. We sit here, absorbing the energy of our surroundings. Soon it'll be clear enough that we both are one piece of a war torn individual seeking for inner peace. We are one, a unity, one solid form of human desperate to find the meaning of life. Maybe they're right, the journey is the destination. 

In this place of no mercy you're asking yourself these questions:

"What does it take for a man to lose his dignity? How far can he fall to pay the price of survival? How long can he fly with his broken wings? Is this darkness in you too? Are you righteous? Kind? Why did it happen to you, to us all? Who are we?"

We are the grunts. That's what they call us. Grunts. Those who are willing to do anything for a piece of bread, a full plate of rice. Those who are willing to get their hands dirty. Those who came from gutter and sewer. Those who are just a bunch of unknown nobody. Those who have nowhere to go. No sparks nor light. We are just a few lucky grunts. 

No one will affected by our absence. Our graves will be unmarked without tombs that are carved with a phrase of bible and all the good things. Commoner is just another way of naming us. People die everyday. Nobody's special...especially us. When you are living to die every minute is an eternity. Days are lost, months blend into one another and the only reality you know is in the moment. And moment hangs you over like death. Take a feisty good look around you. What did you see, beside despair and desperation? 

Some people rely on their academic experience to survive, some with their family's wealth and possessions, and some people use their animalistic instincts to live. It amazes me...the will of instinct. It brings us humans to the time where you don't have to leave your house and to face the reality. 

Who's mocking us? Calling us names whatsoever and laughing hysterically in a thin air.

In death there is no second chance. It's dark...cold. So that's what you think about when you die: the real value of all you've done with your life and all that you might have done. If only you'd had a second chance. Life doesn't wait for an individual, especially life as a common people. You have to do it on your own unless you have mate to pick you up when you fall.

But in the world of shit, in this hiding place, you have no one to be trusted. They are all waiting for you to make a grave mistake and taking an opportunity to let you down. An ache in your soul is their ultimate goal. Make a false move then you are gone forever. So stand your ground! On your feet! On your own!

Sometimes in your sleep you are dreaming of a play. A play made by one of the best authors. A play that you read when you were barely speaking the language. The third act  of this play recited in your long minutes of dream. And in this particular place, the third act of the play keeps coming over and over again where it says:

To die

To sleep
No more

And by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

W

Jakarta, 15/09/2023