TUHAN YANG MANA?

You’ll get the God that you deserve.

Kalimat itu mengerikan buat saya. Seakan Tuhan ada dalam beberapa versi, Yang Maha Penghukum, Yang Mengetahui Semua Dosamu dan Pasti Akan Menghukummu, serta Yang Maha Baik karena Dia Tahu Kebaikanmu.

Saya pendosa besar, dan jangan-jangan, the God that I deserve adalah Yang Maha Menghukum.

Tetapi beberapa teks suci menghibur hati saya, bukankah dikatakan, Tuhan adalah zat yang lebih menyayangi kamu daripada siapapun di semesta ini? Dengan itulah saya menghibur diri, bahwa Tuhan menyayangi saya walaupun saya berkeliaran di tempat umum tanpa menutup rambut. Dengan pakaian ketat dan bibir dicat merah. (Seorang teman mengatakan, perempuan mengecat bibirnya untuk membuatnya semakin mirip dengan vaginanya. Saya ingin meminta ampun kepada Tuhan saat mendengar itu. Kemudian saya sadar, teman saya itu tidak pernah banyak berpikir tentang hal-hal selain vagina.)

Ketika Ulil Abshar-Abdalla menulis di koran pandangannya tentang jilbab, saya terpana. Inilah orang yang dengan lugas dapat memformulasikan apa yang berputar-putar di kepala saya selama bertahun-tahun. Begitu ramainya orang menghujat dia karena tulisan itu, dan banyak orang menanyai mertuanya, Mustofa Bisri. Saya katakan padanya untuk tidak takut kepada siapapun, kecuali Tuhan, kata Bisri.

Jilbab, saya banyak berpikir tentangnya. Saya memikirkan agama dengan intens sejak kecil. Agama adalah hal penting buat saya. Kedua orangtua saya berseteru karena hal yang satu ini. Mereka tidak dapat berhenti.

Apakah jilbab membuat saya seorang muslim? (Secara harafiah, inilah arti muslim: berserah diri. Tidak ada yg mendefinisikan berserah diri dalam cara apa.) Apakah ketika saya sedang berdiri tanpa pakaian sehelaipun di bawah pancuran, saya bukan seorang muslim?

Katakanlah kamu seorang Katolik. Suatu ketika badai menghancurkan seluruh dunia, semua katedral, semua basilika, semua Corpus Christi, semua patung Perawan Suci, dan tak sebuah rosario-pun ada ditanganmu. Apakah kamu akan menggelar tikar dan berdoa dengan cara bersujud, karena semua altar ke arah mana kamu biasa berdoa sambil berlutut, telah hancur?

Bila Kabah hancur, Masjidil Haram hancur, benarkah saya akan hilang arah, dan tak tahu lagi kemana harus menghadapkan doa?

Inilah tiga hal yang saya ingat tentang ayat mengenai jilbab untuk perempuan: ulurkan pakaianmu ke seluruh tubuhmu. Jangan tunjukkan perhiasanmu, kecuali yang biasa tampak. Pakaian yang terbaik adalah takwa.

Berapa juta tafsir yang bisa muncul dari ketiga hal itu? Dapatkah kamu katakan bahwa jilbab adalah satu-satunya pilihan? Pakaian terbaik apakah yang bisa melindungimu seumur hidup, menurut ayat itu?

Beberapa waktu yang lalu, saya membaca bahwa orang awam seperti saya tak diizinkan menafsirkan teks suci. Dikatakan bahwa sebagaimana pasien tak boleh menafsir resep dokter, saya harus turut pada tafsir para ulama. Tapi, kata saya, bukankah Tuhan berbicara kepada kita semua, bukan hanya kepada ulama? Mengapa saya tak boleh memakai otak saya dan mencoba menafsir teks suci semampu saya?

Baru-baru ini seorang teman meneruskan sebuah e-mail bersubjek "JIL TERNYATA DIBIAYAI AMERIKA". JIL, Jaringan Islam Liberal, adalah organisasinya Ulil. Apakah Ulil akan berubah pendapat tentang jilbab, jika JIL dibiayai Pemda Sumut?

Saya bukan simpatisan Ulil, Amerika, atau Pemda Sumut. Saya orang yang percaya bahwa pemikiran kontekstual harus dilakukan. Hal-hal yang tekstual harus dijabarkan secara kontekstual. Secara tekstual dikatakan, kamu harus membersihkan diri dengan pasir bila terkena liur hewan. Secara kontekstual tentu kita harus berpikir, di zaman sekarang, pasir yang bersih sulit dicari. Indonesia bukan Arab yang kaya pasir. Dan apa jadinya bila kamu membaca teks itu di Antartika, dimana salju menutupi rumah kamu sampai ke atap? Kenapa tidak menafsirkan yang tekstual secara kontekstual; pakailah antiseptik yang makin murah itu untuk mencuci tangan setelah bermain-main dengan anjingmu. Atau, pakailah sabun para bintang. Membuatmu bersih, dan lebih putih.

Tuhanmu lebih dekat kepadamu daripada nadi di lehermu; teks ini membuat saya terhibur. Karena saya tidak ingin menutupi rambut saya dan berpura-pura Tuhan tinggal di dalam kerudung. Tuhan saya adalah Dia yang tahu bahwa saya mencari-Nya sejak lama, bahwa saya telah seringkali duduk di dalam gereja Presbyterian maupun Katolik, memangku Injil menunggu-Nya sejak duapuluh tiga tahun yang lalu. Tuhan saya adalah Dia yang tahu bahwa saya duduk di tikar dan mencari-Nya sambil meletakkan kening saya di lantai yang dingin. Tuhan saya adalah Dia yang tahu apa yang ada dibawah rambut saya yang terbuka, apa yang ada di balik dada saya yang tertutup bra fancy dan kemeja sempit, apa yang dimaksud oleh semua doa, semua perkataan yang keluar dari mulut saya yang dicat merah.

Tuhan yang inilah yang saya bawa kemanapun saya pergi, di bawah rambut saya yang tidak tertutup, di balik dada saya yang terbungkus pakaian sempit.

Tuhan yang manakah yang kamu miliki?

EVEN A FOOL CAN SEE

Everything seemed right

But that’s when he told me
he said it was time to move on
Just something that he kept inside
That told me the thrill was gone*

“We will find a way. There will be a way.” <-- a lie.
“I miss you.” <-- a lie.
“There are so many people, but there is simply nobody like you.” <-- a lie.
“I know you are seeing somebody else. It’s okay if you don’t want to admit it. What do you mean what about me? I never date another woman, I never dream of seeing somebody else.” <-- a lie.

This, Dearest, confirms one and only one thing: that I am stupid, just like I have always been suspecting.

You, dear, a smooth liar, you. You are even better than I am. You are so much better than me at it. At lying. I let down my guard and poof – you’re gone – in a blink of an eye.

I laughed my ass off thinking how foolish I was, how naïve I could be, how trusting and simply stupid. Then I cried and tried to spit out your name from each crack of my soul.

I no longer want to have anything to do with you.

Wait. That’s not true. You no longer want to have anything to do with me.
You spit me out of your soul. You, you don’t want to have anything to do with me.

The thought sent me flying to N’s house, almost as quickly like you can say “Stoopid.” I felt that it wasn’t the right thing to do, because the moment I turned up at his door feeling down, there was only one thing that would cross his mind. But still, I felt that it was the only thing to do anyway.

And now I can’t believe
I can’t believe it’s over
Suddenly it’s plain to see
he’s leaving me and --*

What can I say? N was waiting in his living room, serene and happy, as usual. I told him to please, please keep his smart comments to himself, I don’t want to hear any comments now please, please, but you are right, Keparat has been two-timing me all this time, please, please keep your smart comments to yourself. Please.

It is okay, it is okay was what N said, and I wanted to say no it’s not okay because when you are a fool nothing is okay. When you know that you are stupid, you want to die. And that is not okay.


---Even a fool can see
There’s nothing left between us
I knew all along something was wrong
But I did my best to deny it*

I half expected him to say, “Well, you must have seen this coming. You are going out with me. You. Me. You, the reserved the introvert the quiet the mouse in her hole. How can you find me? Me, the reserved the introvert the quiet wolf in his cave. How can you date me? How can you think he is not doing the same?”

I half expected him to laugh. I half expected him to say how can you complain about his lying to you, when you are lying shamelessly to his face? and yes, I half expected him to kiss me and say everything is okay.

“She is 18 years old,” was what I said next, as if it mattered. Of course it didn’t matter. Whether she was 18 or 28 or 38, it didn’t matter. I just wanted to say it, and try to make sense of it. I failed.

I knew I expected what he did next. He used a finger to wipe off my mascara (not waterproof, I found out the unfortunate way) and gave me a deep kiss, the kind which reminded me of a phrase ‘a kiss sweeter than wine’. His tongue caressed mine, and soon he was kissing me on the left side of my chest, where my heart is, where it was hurting the most.

And now I can’t go home
he wants to be alone so
Tell anyone who misses me that I’m alright
Even a fool can see*

I tried several times to say something, but nothing came out of my mouth.

Won’t ya tell me that I’m alright
Even a fool like me*

And come to think of it, I didn’t want to say anything. What I wanted to do was to kiss him back, to tell him to hold me and not let go, to thank him for breaking my fall, to tell him everything, without words. I held his head against my chest, and he told me my heart was beating fast. “So fast, like a girl doing okay,” he smiled.

I stayed in his arms for the better part of the night, trying hard not to blink. Who knows? The moment I blink, he might disappear. I trusted Keparat stubbornly through the years, and he disappeared in a split second that I took to blink.

It was almost midnight when I left his house. And I swear to God I swear my life, that I was okay.
Make it I am okay.

I’m alright, even a fool can see.


*Lyrics from Even A Fool Can See, sung by Peter Cetera.
I changed some words. So I violated some copyrights. Sue me.
See if I care.

TANGLED

Maybe one day, when we are finally living in the same country, you’d tell me why a long-distance call from you always left a big lump in my throat.
Maybe one day, you will miss me enough to fly home.
Maybe one day, I will miss you enough to let go of my life.


Across thousands and thousands of miles, across vast lands and gigantic ocean, your voice flew to me. I imagined cables –thousands of miles of them, some extended up above our heads, some buried deep in the bed of the Pacific ocean– and I imagined microwave antennas –standing alone on top of tall buildings, or somewhere atop a mountain– all of them carried your voice to me. Your voice ran to me, from South Pole where it was almost midnight, to Jakarta when it was dusk, through many barriers. Through dust and water and air. I wonder why your voice can push through all barriers and find my ears, and why you yourself cannot push through all barriers and find my person back home.

I wonder why those cables and antennas and the air and the land and the ocean can bring me your voice, every word, every comma, every breath, every pause you take. I wonder why they cannot bring you home to me.

“Is it you?” you had said, and I wondered whether it could be anybody else.
“Are you coming home for the holidays?” was what I asked. I know you are tired of that question, tired of saying ‘no’ all the time. I’ve asked you whether you are going home for summer holiday, winter holiday, spring holiday, Lebaran holiday, Christmas holiday, Chinese New Year holiday, anything, any reason I could find, just so that I finally can hear you say ‘yes.’

“I will, in February,” you said. “I can’t wait”, I told you. In English. Because I can’t say that in Indonesian. You know how I speak in Indonesian, think in English and Indonesian, and feel in English. Anything I feel is expressed in English. You, held close to my heart, I have so many English words for you. I know you have yours for me too.

“What was that?” you said, and through millions of kilometres of cables I could hear a tiny laugh came out of your mouth, tiny ringing laugh, as if you wanted to say “Please say that again, though of course I heard you the first time, I just wanted to hear you say that again because I’m this giant-walking-ego and I need you to feed that ego.”

“I can’t wait,” said I.
“Pardon?”
“Cannot wait.” said I obediently.
“Apa?” you persisted.
“Forget it,” I told you. Then I heard that tiny ringing laugh of yours again, satisfied because you’d made me say how much I wanted you three times in a row.

“So have you sent out your research proposals to universities here?” you asked urgently.
“Uh, I, it’s too difficult.”
“Of course it is. So where did you send them to?”
“I made only one, and it’s not good.”
“Where did you send it to?”
“Uh..Auckland.” I lied again. I simply couldn’t bear saying I didn’t make any efforts to go there.
“That’s very good. Oh that’s very, very good. Superb.”

Then I told you some technical aspects which made it not too good, at least to my pessimistic eye. And you told me things would be less difficult if I could study in Wellington instead. And whether I could for just one tiny second forget my pride and let you take care of me for just awhile, let myself be financially-dependant to you for just one itty-bitty moment.

“And then,” from across the Pacific Ocean where you stood, you whispered into my ears: “you can find a job here. I promise you, you can find one here.”

Oh dear God in heavens, how could you be so sure? Have you forgotten how I spent six years, six long miserable goddamn years doing monkey jobs, in my own country, where I speak the language fluently and know how things are done, with two university diplomas all legal and valid, in my own country, with two academic transcripts showing six and a half years of hard work, how I finally landed a job I love, which to some people are still a monkey job, only with more responsibilities? Do you want me to clean tables in South Poles, they don’t acknowledge my diplomas, do you have the heart to see me, one female version of you, me who has an ego as big as yours, if not bigger, do you have the heart to see me doing monkey jobs all over again, just to finally be with you?

“Find a job? You mean like selling myself on the street?” I tried to laugh.
“No, selling yourself will make you ineligible for a permanent-residency permit.”
I laughed all right, but at the same time tears came out of my eyes and I swore to God I didn’t mean to cry. I didn’t know where those tears came from; maybe, maybe some dust got into my eyes.

“We will find a way. There will be a way,” you said. Through thousands of miles of cables, through microwaves tapped by antennas faraway, I could hear your unsure tone.

“Do you pray for us? Do you pray that one day you’ll be here?” you asked suddenly.
“Praying is useless.” I said, not stating the obvious. The obvious being that of course it had been a long time since I stopped praying, since I stopped hoping that things would be okay between us.
“No. Praying is never useless. So pray. Hard. I never stop praying.”
And I almost laughed out loud, because here was a man who got drunk religiously (except during the fasting month) telling me to pray, telling me how he never stopped praying. But then I remembered that I was worse than him, so his preach was actually acceptable.

Oh and it started to grow. The lump. It started to grow so big, so big, inside my throat. “I will pray then,” was what I told you next, hoping it wouldn’t be another lie.

“You sound funny, are you crying?”
“No I’m not.”
“Okay..now..what are you doing at home?”
“Nothing, you?”
“Nothing.”

It was quiet for a long time, I could hear you breathe in another place, another time. Another galaxy away.

“Let’s talk again soon.”
“Yes, let’s.”

And with that, with a click of a phone, I was, once again, shut away from you.
The land is vast between us, the ocean enormous and impossible to cross.

Now the only thing left for me to do is opening my mouth, and letting that lump out of my throat. In the form of, yes, big gulps of tears.

With or without praying, dearest, I hope there will be a day when we are finally living in the same country, and you’d tell me why a long-distance call from you always left a big lump in my throat.
I hope there will be one day, when you miss me enough to fly home.
Or, or this: there will be one day, when I miss you enough to let go of my life.

WHEN A SIN IS NOT A MISTAKE

I'm no philosopher.
I'll never make my own definitions of the complexities in life. That'll be too exhausting for my tiny brain. I've read in books the definitions of sin, and I discussed with a friend about his definition of it. Honestly, I am left much more confused than I was before the discussion.

A sin is doing something God forbids, and/or not doing something God orders you to do, according to The Poet.
A sin is something you do, and you're scared that somebody will find out about it, according to my highschool teacher.
A sin is violating an agreement with another party, according to a friend.
A sin always means making a mistake, but a mistake is not necessarily a sin, according to all three.

I'll just admit it, by any definition, what I do with you is a sin.
But until the last day of dear life, I'll never be able to admit that it is a mistake. Because to me, it simply isn't.

That's what I think of, dearest, when I first lay down next to you, holding your head against my pounding heart. A sin is a sin, but how could loving you be a mistake?

You see, that is how confused a tiny-brained woman can be.

SAYA TIDAK BERUNTUNG DENGAN PEREMPUAN

“Saya memang beruntung karena selama sekolah saya tidak pernah mengalami kesulitan apapun, dan sekarang mempunyai karir yang mulus. Tuhan sangat adil karena saya sepertinya tidak pernah beruntung dalam relationship, dalam masalah dengan perempuan.”

Kalimat itu diucapkan sambil tertawa oleh S, satu-satunya sahabat saya yang berkelamin laki-laki, suatu hari 3 tahun yang lalu. Saat itu kami sedang makan siang bersama di sebuah mall, dan saya baru bertanya kepadanya bagaimana dia bisa menyelesaikan studi magisternya lebih cepat dari seharusnya, walaupun terkendala oleh bahasa.

Tiga minggu lalu S mengirim pesan pendek kepada saya. Ajaibnya, pesan itu berbunyi Selamat Idul Fitri 1425 H, Mohon Maaf Lahir Batin.

Bah. Saya kecewa membaca pesan klise itu datang dari seorang yang logis, penuh perhitungan rasional seperti dia. Klise. Klise!! Dan apa artinya mohon maaf lahir batin? Minta maaf secara fisik dan mental? Saya sangat menghindari ucapan yang tidak jelas artinya itu. Saya juga tidak mengobral permintaan maaf. Kalau kamu pernah menerima permintaan maaf dari saya, yakinlah bahwa hal itu disebabkan saya menyadari benar-benar pernah bersalah kepada kamu, dan saya sadar betul apa artinya permintaan maaf saya itu. Tetapi tetap saja perkataan ‘maaf lahir batin’ akan sulit kamu dapatkan dari saya.

Saya katakan S adalah seorang yang logis, dan penuh perhitungan rasional, karena saya tahu persis bahwa memang seperti itulah dia. Saya mengenalnya di kelas 2 SMA, seorang yang cerdas dan pekerja keras, walaupun memang, ia cenderung masokis dalam hal belajar. Bakatnya adalah semua pelajaran eksakta, dan satu-satunya kelemahannya yang agak ketara adalah dalam bahasa Inggris. Dia sangat keras terhadap dirinya sendiri. Sadar bahwa mendengarkan musik adalah kelemahan yang bisa membuatnya lupa belajar, seringkali dia menyegel radionya dengan cellotape pada masa-masa ujian.

Kecerdasan, kecenderungan untuk bekerja keras ditambah sifat keras pada diri sendiri itu membuat dia tidak mengalami kesulitan selama studi, memang. Kami se-almamater, tetapi berbeda fakultas. Dia mendapatkan beasiswa untuk meraih gelar magister setelah lulus, dan ketika saya menyatakan kekaguman saya, dia tertawa dan berkata merendah, “Kebetulan aja kok. Soalnya dekannya suka sama gue.” Ya, dia memang lucu, aktif berorganisasi, dan pandai bergaul. Jangankan teman-teman seumur, orang-orang yang jauh lebih tua pun banyak yang terkesan padanya.


Ringkasnya sekarang dia sedang menempuh studi doktoralnya, yang lagi-lagi dikatakannya adalah karena ‘kebetulan.’ “Kebetulan gue suka ikut-ikut riset di tingkat universitas dan di tingkat fakultas.” “Kebetulan pas ada kesempatan.” “Kebetulan banget gue bisa keterima.” Dan sederet kebetulan lain yang menurut saya samasekali bukan kebetulan.

Tentang hubungannya dengan pacar-pacarnya yang selalu bermasalah, itu rasanya tidak bisa disebut ketidakberuntungan.

“Yah pastilah, cewek-cewek maunya sama cowok yang kurus,” tawanya di kesempatan makan siang dengan saya 3 tahun yang lalu itu. S memang jauh dari kurus. Sejak remaja beratnya selalu di atas 100 kilogram. Tapi apakah benar semua perempuan menghindari dia? Salah, salah samasekali. Selama kuliah S1 dia selalu punya pacar, seorang diantaranya begitu cantik sehingga saya yang perempuan pun tergetar melihatnya :D

Setelah lulus S1 dia bertunangan dengan teman sejurusannya, mari kita namakan dia F. Sebelum berangkat untuk studi lanjut ke Inggris, dia menelpon saya berkali-kali, suaranya tersendat-sendat, sedih karena orangtuanya tidak mengijinkan mereka menikah. “Bokap gue bilang, baru boleh paling cepet nanti tahun 2003,” adunya. Saat itu tahun 1999, tahun 2003 rasanya seabad jauhnya. Saya hibur dia tanpa hasil. Selama di Inggris dia rajin mengirim e-mail dan surat (ya, surat! Dengan perangko! Sungguh sulit dipercaya) yang antara lain berisi keluh-kesahnya karena udara dingin membuat dia mimisan terus-menerus, bahasa Inggrisnya tidak cukup baik untuk menangkap bahan kuliah dengan cepat, dan keinginannya untuk cepat-cepat bertemu kembali dengan F. Satu hal yang tidak dikeluhkannya adalah makanan Inggris, yang menjadi masalah besar buat banyak orang non-Inggris. “Yah dari dulu emang gue gak pernah susah soal nyari makanan yang cocok,” tulisnya.

Ya Tuhanku, jelaslah saya percaya soal itu. Karena belasan tahun yang lalu kamu pernah mengatakan, kamu bisa makan ‘nasi kucing’ sampai kenyang di Yogya dengan Rp 500. Oh ya, berapa sih harga seporsi nasi kucing, tanya saya. Seporsi harganya Rp 50, kata kamu ringan.

Begitu tiba di Jakarta dengan gelar magister, dia kembali menelpon saya dengan suara tersendat-sendat. Kali ini dia sedih karena kedua orangtuanya, plus orangtua F, meminta mereka segera menikah. Semua perasaannya pada F sudah hilang tanpa sisa. Bukan karena dia menemukan orang lain. Tapi semata-mata karena “Setaun gak ketemu si F, kayaknya mata gue kebuka. Aduhh, sekarang gue ngeliat dia jelek, gak pinter, gak menarik, fisik dan mental. Gue takut banget….gue udah terbang ke Lombok, ngomong langsung ke bokapnya F bahwa gue gak bisa nerusin pertunangan ini. GUE GAK MAU KAWIN SAMA F!!!! Yang ada gue dimaki-maki bokapnya, terus diceramahin sampe jam 2 pagi…belum lagi bokap gue juga ngelarang gue mutusin F.”

Kelabakan saya menerima telponnya setiap malam. “Aduh..mati gue..” adalah kalimat yang diulang-ulangnya dengan suara terputus-putus. Saya tidak bisa menolongnya, karena dia dipojokkan bukan saja oleh calon mertuanya, tapi juga oleh ayahnya sendiri. “Lobi nyokap lo!! Lobi juga nyokapnya F!” kata saya panik. Dengan lesu dia berkata ibunya terus menangis karena tidak tega putra kesayangannya menikah dengan orang yang tidak lagi dicintainya, tetapi ibunda F mengancam akan membuang F dari keluarga besar karena pertunangan yang diputuskan adalah aib yang serius. (Pertunangan mereka memang dirayakan besar-besaran di Lombok.)

Syukurlah persoalan itu selesai. Sejak saat itu sampai sekarang, S tidak pernah punya pacar. Dulu saya kira, dia memutuskan F karena menemukan orang lain. Dia menyangkal dan mengatakan dia benar-benar kehilangan minat pada F, tidak ada alasan lain. Sekarang saya tahu dia tidak berbohong.

Jelaslah bahwa bagi saya, dia bukannya tidak beruntung dalam masalah relationship. Orang yang selogis dan serasional dia, mungkin tidak akan lagi dengan gegabah berhubungan dekat dengan perempuan manapun, sejak peristiwa F yang penyelesaiannya memakan waktu hampir satu tahun dan menuntut keluarga besarnya terbang ke Lombok meminta maaf atas pembatalan pertunangan.

Omong-omong, di mall dulu itu, setelah makan siang saya menemani S mencari peralatan audio di salah satu toko. Dan saya sengaja tidak ingin berjalan terlalu dekat dengannya, karena, aduh, saya tidak mau orang-orang di mall (yang notabene totally strangers itu) mengira saya adalah pacar si 'raksasa' di sebelah saya itu. Astaga tololnya saya.

Tiga minggu lalu saya mengirim pesan pendek kepada S, meminta maaf kepadanya. Saya tahu persis kesalahan saya kepadanya. Dan entah kenapa, saya ingin meminta maafnya dengan kalimat aneh itu: “S, maafkan saya lahir batin”.

Mudah-mudahan, dia dapat memaafkan saya.

HAPPY LEBARAN, MOW!

And happy-working-disguised-as-a-holiday-but-it-is-still-work-nonetheless to Dien.
And happy-working-as-usual to Dion.
Heeeeee heeeeee.

My friend told me she could tell that I’d lost a bit of weight, because I started looking stupid in my pants. (An eufemism, considering I look stupid in everything except for my birthday suit).

“Your pants are all too big now,” she noted pitifully. I could sense that too, because already that morning I tried to fold down the waist of my pants and they suddenly fitted me better that way.

After that remark of hers, I stepped on the bathroom scale and noticed I weighed 45 kg now, and the last time I weighed that much was in junior highschool.

I know, many girls weigh less than 45 kg all their lives. You can see those girls parading in malls, looking so bony you’re tempted to boil them to flavor your soup. I’m not one of them. I strongly believe all women are born to have curves, not just bones and angles. In my humble opinion, there’s nothing womanly about Kate Moss. She looks like a kid, and I had more curves when I was 12 years old compared to her when she was 21.

Anyway.

When you are a woman you have a certain body part (errr..two certain body parts) which consists mainly of fat tissues. When you lose weight, this part flattens to some extent. And much as I can endure looking stupid in my pants, looking stupid in my bra is somewhat more difficult to deal with.

Come the end of fasting month, I should eat more regularly and gain back a bit more weight. And umm, get back to that push-up routine because umm, in my humble opinions, women should umm, have rather well-developed umm, pectorals.

TERRIBLY SORRY.

THR is here :D

I wanted to buy Mom something nice, really. Although it is always impossible to find something nice enough for a lady who shines brighter than diamonds.

This is the lady who put me in her lap on a hot day a long time ago, sitting next to the main door of our house because it was too hot inside. She fed me warm boiled rice and fried fish, promising me that if I could finish the plate, she would make me a glass of red syrup that I liked so much, yes, with lotsa ice-cubes, of course, honey.

This is the lady who carried me with a pink carrier around her shoulder, with her arms tight around me, pacing up-and-down around the house, humming softly, trying to calm me down. I was crying non-stop because a fever burned me alive.

This is the lady who gave me a hug outside my classroom when I was around 10 years old, because my teacher had just told her that I had a talent in writing. “I want you to be a doctor, actually,” was what she said, “but being a writer is also very cool.”

I wish you would ask me for a diamond ring, or a new cellphone, or a year-end holiday, Mom, something I could work hard and save up for.

But you simply don’t.

How do I tell you this? How do I tell you that I can’t do it, Mom, knowing how much it would hurt you, knowing that it is the only thing that you want from me right now?

HOW TO MAKE YOUR LECTURER CONSIDER A NEW CAREER

The followings are examples of ways to make your lecturer so depressed that she actually considers a new career of selling cosmetics door-to-door :

A)Place: YB 2xx Day/Time: Wednesday/ 7 AM

Student A: Bu, nomer 5 pasti salah soal dehhhh….hasilnya imajiner!!!!

Student B: Ah pasti ibu salah deh

Student A: Kita udah itung pake cara ibu. Sampe ke titik komanya, sampe ke lekuk-lekuknya..sampe ke lekuk-lekuk Ibu.

Student B: Ssshhh.

Student A: Eh..

Lecturer : (to herself) I want a glass of water. And some painkillers.

Student C: Udahhhh dong Buuu….udah kebanyakan ini soalnya…kan lagi puasaaaaaaaaa…

Lecturer: (to herself) Like hell you are fasting. Bet I’m the only one in this class who’s fasting. Anyway I don’t have that many problem-sets anyway.Whaddaya think? You think I’d want to stay awake allnite preparing problem-sets for you brats? Arrrrr. I want a glass of water. And some painkillers.

B) Place: YB 2xx
Day/Time: Monday/ 9 AM

Student D: Hmm....L, (calling the lecturer by her first name) can I talk about something with you?

Lecturer: Sure.

Student D: In private?

Lecturer: (to herself) OH NO. (to the student) Okay, I’ll be in theoffice until 3:30 PM.

Student D: Can I have your phone number? Your extension number and your cellphone number…

Lecturer: (to herself) I want a glass of water. And some painkillers.

Student D: ….ngngng…..because….. this is very important….I want to discuss with you some very important things.... like...

Lecturer: Like what?

Student D: Like WHY YOU CHOSE TO STUDY ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING…..

FACT OF THE DAY: ONE BRAT ACTUALLY HAD THE GUTS TO DROP BY MY OFFICE AND INTERVIEWED ME WITH SUCH QUESTIONS.

Student E: L, what semester are you?

Lecturer: Err??

Student E: Oh, have you graduated?

Lecturer: Yes, when you were still in junior high school.

Student E: Heee heee. So you have graduated. WHY DIDN’T YOU FIND A JOB?

Lecturer: Doh. Because I prefer playing congklak here. (I want a glass of water. And some painkillers.)


VERDICT: STUDENT E IS RIGHT-- LECTURING ISN’T A JOB; IT’S A GAME, JUST LIKE CONGKLAK.

There are more examples, such as one time when a student stubbornly called me Cici, which means older sister in Mandarin.

By the way, did I mention the word depressed?

Don’t really mean it, actually. No matter what happens, I always have a good laugh after class.

SELF-CENSORSHIP

That's what I've been practising -- in terms of writing-- for the past few days.

The result is amazing: none of my writings could pass through my own censorship unscathed. The so-called writings include two essays written last week during the boring training days, and one super short story I typed into my cellphone because I was bored out of my skull during one training session and I didn't have a pen and a piece of paper with me.

According to my own censorship terms, the first two writings are classified as pornographic materials -- hence I cannot post them online.

The super short story is deemed unfit for public view due to its harsh racism & sexism content, not to mention the abusive language used.

Damn. I want to update my blog everyday. Damn damn damn.

I should never be given anymore training sessions. They only poison my already-venomous brains with porn and violent images and language.

That, or I'd have to simply stop censoring myself and declare a new title for this blog: ASYLUM OF MINE -- UNCENSORED.

MEZZO FORTE

I stopped taking piano lessons last March. And now I miss it sorely.


I miss the harshness of practicing for hours each day, the pain of swallowing my teacher’s cruel criticism on my hard work, and the warmth that seeped in each ventricular of my heart when she was feeling generous enough to say something as itty-bitty as “Your playing is not too bad.”


I started learning to play around the age of 10. I’d had many teachers, one of which I don’t even remember the name. I’d had my share of nice teachers, vicious teachers, Indonesian ones, foreign ones. I can safely conclude that all of them thought I was too doubtful as a person, and I wasn’t brave enough to express myself fully. They all said that more or less, those two characters were reflected in my playing.

All of my teachers said I played too softly, too safely. My last teacher’s comment was the one that shocked me. She said, playing softly was more difficult than playing loudly (a.k.a just bang on your piano), so she wondered why I could play softly (gradually named piano, pianissimo, pianissimo assai) but I couldn’t even play moderately softly (mezzo-piano) let alone loudly (forte, fortessimo, fortessimo assai).

Upon hearing that comment, not only I practiced to play forte, I practiced to speak more articulately too.
Because I agree that the way you are will really be reflected in your playing.
Because I want to think that I am worth listening to, if not as a piano player, then as a humble human being.
And because I want that to be reflected in my playing.


That was how much the piano lessons could affect me.


When I told my last teacher that I wanted to quit, she went hysterical. At that time the school had just raised the tuition fee, so she thought I quit because I could no longer afford the fee. “I tell you what,” she said, “Each month, I’ll return the fee to you. Nobody needs to know about this. If you agree, then you can have the lessons as usual.”

I almost wept at her kindness, and I told her I simply wasn’t worth it. She was right, I was so close to conservatory level, but it was high time to admit that I wasn’t good enough to be there. And if she didn’t want to admit it, then I would.

Then she screamed at me because she really thought I could finish studying, and that I was just lacking the gigantic-confidence needed to finish the hardest last step towards conservatory. “I’ll do anything to reject bad students, and I’ll do anything to keep good ones,” she said. “And now I’m willing to pay for your fees so that you can continue studying.”

“You will miss studying classical,” she said. “You might play pop music for the rest of your life, but you will miss classical music and you will come back for lessons. But by then your skills will have deteriorated, and you’ll end up at the middle of the steps once again. Take my words. I’m no inexperienced teacher, I’ve been teaching for 20 years, I know you’ll come back one day.”

These are what I know so far:

1. Playing forte is easier than playing pianissimo
2. In music, and in life, I should not play safe in all the time, some forte is needed here and there
3. I miss studying classical music
4. I try to play pop songs but always end up playing Heller’s
5. My skills have deteriorated
6. Already I’ve been toying with the idea to enroll in my old music school
7. She has been right all along.

PLAYING HOUSE

His house, I think, bears the landmarks of a man living alone, and liking it that way. There is simply no space left for somebody else. Not even a cat. And most definitely, not even me.
Let me tell you what his house looks like. It looks like him. Quiet and seemingly empty, but full of unspoken ideas. The living room is barren except for a single-seated sofa, but lying on the floor are his knick-knacks: an old Pentium II laptop, his desktop computer hovering over a keyboard which is its lifelong partner, the remains of a PDA we took apart one night because I wanted to see what it looked like inside out. I know what is inside his computers too, and that is why I know the seemingly empty room was full of unspoken ideas.

Like the owner who possesses very fair, porcelain skin, the house boasts immaculate white walls.

Like the owner who is quiet, distant and unreachable, the house is cold and private. I know not many people will be allowed here. And I know he’ll scrub off any signs of anybody ever entering his door, because he is a private man and he doesn’t like his territory crossed. Not even by a shadow of someone he loves.

“Did you pee all over the place?” I asked, observing that the house screamed the owner’s name wherever I looked. He laughed, and said he almost did, for the sake of marking his one and only private territory in the whole wide world.

Other landmarks of a man living alone and forever wanting to be left unbothered include the minimum number of towels available, no cups, only 2 glasses (“One to be used when I am too lazy to wash the other”), no high-carbohydrate food in sight, and no coffee. Because he doesn’t drink coffee. And he has forgotten that I do.

His bedroom is nice: this is where he reads, and sleeps, and watches movies. I looked through his books when he was not looking. He owns many computer books I never touched in a lifetime, because I am an electrical engineer who knows nada about digital signal processing and a civil engineer might know more about it than me, and he is an accountant who knows the details of taxation and auditing and Berkeley API and WinSock and Java programming and reads MIT OpenCourseware site to amuse himself during his spare time. So his computer books didn’t surprise me. The ones that put a big lump in my throat was his new collection of books on a certain religion, the name of which is written somewhere across my ID card.

When I went there for the second time, he already bought a cup, with the word LEO and a picture of a lion imprinted on it. “For you,” he said, “for a person who is a lion by western horoscope, and a tiger by chinese horoscope, but always looks like a virgo to me.” And he already bought a tiny container of instant coffee. Because I think he doesn’t expect me to stay around long enough to finish a bigger bottle of instant coffee. Because I could finish his supply of coffee in five or six visits, and he doesn’t want me to visit him anymore after five or six occasions.

Then I told him not all virgos are virgins and not all virgins are virgos and not all virgos look like virgins and not all virgins look like virgos. Then he told me to hush up and lie closer to him and don’t say things which are confusing, or better yet, don’t say anything. Then he told me he would throw away the cup if I were no longer around because he wouldn’t allow anything belonging to me to be lying anywhere in his house.

The night was spent reading for a while then I could no longer read and I kept looking at him, figuring why things went wrong. Then I know everything had been wrong since day one, since the day I admitted that I didn’t understand why one plus one didn’t equal two.

Some of the night was spent in his arms talking for a while about how IBM took PwC shares some time ago and all business life and believe-you-me, he could really make corporate dispute stories really interesting even in bed in a quiet night in his arms.

Then the rest of the night was spent in deep kisses, asking each other why exactly things went wrong and why nothing could be done about it and why one plus one equalled four, most probably even more. And how he would really like one plus one to equal two and how much I too believed one plus one must equal two but in our case it just didn’t. Then we consoled each other and said it was okay, I am okay, are you okay?

I promised him I would leave without a trace, I would disappear from his life like a dream and he nodded and hugged me and kissed me and said I should take the damn cup with me. He promised not to make things difficult for me.

But I broke my promise. Because when he was fast asleep, I used my green-inked pen to write down my initials on the inside part of the door of his wardrobe. Tiny initials in the corner of the wooden panel. Hah. Leaving without a trace is so not me. I want him to remember me, with pain, or with joy, whichever he chooses. I’ll leave my trace allright. So I am childish, so what, sue me.

And he broke his promise too. Because he texted me this morning, only hours after he made the promise, saying “I have bought a bigger bottle of instant coffee I miss you please come around we can take the laptop apart this time.”

So maybe I’ll visit him again. In that house which bears the landmarks of a man living alone, and liking it that way. Where there is no space left for anybody else, not for a cat, not for a LEO cup. And most definitely, not even for a lion who is also a tiger but looks like a virgo.

THEY’RE FINE. WE’RE FINE.

During an internet chat two days ago, Friend A asked: “How are your parents?” (or maybe it was “Are your parents okay?”) Anyway it was a simple question, but I deliberately chose to give it a slip.

Because simple as it was, I couldn’t readily answer that. Just like I couldn’t answer Friend B’s question a long time ago, which was “Are your parents divorced? Or separated? Why do they blah-blah-censored?”

Maybe Friend A didn’t really mean to go that far. Maybe he was simply asking whether my parents are well, in terms of their health. Still I couldn’t answer that, because just a few hours before that internet chat, my mom called long-distance, telling me about the surgery she’d have to go through at the end of this month.

“The biopsy went well. They removed a small tissue and examined it. Turned out that it was ‘suspicious’. Pre-cancer. So I’ll be having a surgery soon,” she said chirpily. She sounded as if she was telling me she would be having her usual hair-colour treatment or manicure.

“I’m doing fine. I’m very okay,” she assured me.

She was back in Jakarta yesterday, and this morning she ran out the house upon hearing my starting up Cathy. She wanted to say good-morning and have-a-nice-day. (She once told me she was so sorry that she couldn’t see me off to school everyday when I was in high school, because she always woke up an hour after I left).

This morning she smiled at me, asking whether I would like to bring some cakes to work. I looked at her, she was so beautiful, her mahogany hair was shining. Her light brown eyes were sparkling. I might be subjective, but to me she is an eye-candy.


Looking at her beaming, I couldn’t help thinking: is she being optimistic, or is she really okay? Is she pretending everything is fine, the way she pretends that her marriage is fine all these years?

And what should I do?



My dad acts like nothing bothers him either. Is he sure that mom will be okay? Is he worried about the surgery and all the implications it will bring to our lives? Or maybe he is just pretending, the way he did when he said “I didn’t hit my girl” after he hit me with his bare hands and a broom and saw me bleeding. The way he did when he said “What did you do? Did you fall off a chair?” upon seeing my bruises the next day. The way he did when he said “What do you mean? I never hit you,” when I said “no-I-didn’t-fall-off-a-chair-these-bruises-are-there-because-you-had-beaten-me-yes-you-really-beat-me-good.”

As for what I should do, I guess I’ll follow my mom’s lead. I’ll stay optimistic, or I’ll pretend that I’ll stay optimistic. I’ll tell Friend A that my parents are okay.

I’ll really be able to pull it off. Why shouldn’t I?

After all, I was raised by two great-pretenders.

DRIVING LESSON

Driving with a friend of the opposite sex can be a challenge. If you are male, chances are your male friend won’t say a word when you force forward a zigzag path along a crowded road, but rest assured a female friend would scream a violent protest. The opposite also applies. Being a female of the species, I’m constantly under the scrutiny of male friends when it comes to driving.

None of my female friends says anything about my careful and methodically correct (read: super-slow) way of driving. They also have no objection on the way I always keep my hands precisely at the 12:45 clock position on the steering wheel. I have one more habit that my male friends find so disturbing: I only overtake other cars after very careful calculation, and most of the time I keep to my lane. No zig-zagging necessary, for I always take the right lane and I am patient enough not to change lane every time my lane got jammed.

I am so used to protests coming from male friends, most of which I don’t even pay attention to. But one of such protests still sticks in my mind more than 7 years since the first time I heard it. It was said by a male friend (well of course) upon noticing the way I tried to change lane (which was, and still is: 1. put my blinker on 2.look carefully where to go 3.come to a full, or near-full stop 4.wait patiently until the other car gives way).
This method is safe; yet doing it in Jakarta takes time and a patience level more than the normal human beings have.

After clicking his tongue impatiently, observing that none of the others drivers were willing to let me pass, he said in a nice tone: “Why don’t you roll your window all the way down, and show the world that you are a woman?”


Whydontchajustdropdead.

That was what I think. What on earth does being a female have to do with trying to change lane in a crowded Jakarta road? I never had the slightest thought to exploit my sex to get my way ahead of others. In all aspects of life. Yikes.

But something in me begged to try his advice. So I rolled down my window, and voila. One driver stopped and let me pass. Oh oh.

Now if only that dreadful selection committee will look at my papers and say: “Let’s take her in. She’s female.”

Fat chance.

CATH-LESS DAYS

The saying “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” doesn’t apply to me when it concerns my Cath. I never take her for granted. She is an old whiny girl, always craves for my attention, but I’m grateful to have her for these last ten (!!) years. Living in a middle of nowhere in Jakarta, I’ve become so reliant on her.

Last Friday, she was sent to a garage and the repair was estimated to take 1 week. Hence started my days without her. It means leaving the house at 5:30 AM like usual, but instead of driving, I walk my ass off for 20 minutes to the shuttle-bus stand.

The shuttle bus leaves the stand at 6:00 AM, which is of course a big joke. If you dare to drive out of the 7th Sector of Bintaro at 6:00 AM, then you’re asking for trouble. The traffic jam resembles Evil Hell (a.k.a Neraka Jahanam, nope I’ve never been there, thank you very much. But if God wants to torture us good, then the Evil Hell should feature Bintaro-type killer traffic jam.)

Actually the bus has a TV set, and the idea of watching the morning news before work kinda appeals to me, but I always end up not watching it. Most of the time I’d watch my own version of morning news inside my head.

The shuttle-bus takes the route of Bintaro – Pondok Indah – Sudirman – Senayan and back. I get off the bus at Ratu Plaza, and climb that weird-looking staircase to cross the road and get to the TransJakarta bus stand. The whole process of getting to the office takes about 1.5 hours, and I wonder how on earth am I to make the 7:00 AM classes without my Cathy. Impossible, really.

Going back home is an even bigger challenge. It takes about 2.5 hours, sometimes 3. The traffic resembles, again, the Evil Hell. While getting off the bus one night, I heard the bus driver sighed quietly, slowly: “Forgive me, forgive me God.”

Forgive us all indeed.

Oh and it just occurs to me that I don’t have a single picture of Cath.


PS: It’s confirmed: I can take Cath home this afternoon. I sure miss the old girl.

HUHUHUHU (Part II)

These are what happen when your car is struck from behind by another with full-force, at 6:21 in the morning, when your sleepy brain is trying hard to think about those unsolved problems you have to give in your 7 AM class:

- You pull up to the curb, thinking: “What did I do?” and “Oh, let’s give the class that serial-parallel Si-d configuration maybe? Will have to churn out some simple examples though.”

- [Brain slowly processing what really happened 2 seconds beforehand]: “My God!!!! That motorcycle stopped without the slightest hint! The driver didn’t even put on his blinker! And he stopped dead right in front of me!! And the passenger just stepped off the motorcycle without looking, OH MY GOD, somebody is standing IN FRONT OF MY GODDAMN MOVING CAR I have to brake, I have to brake—“

- CRASH BOOM BANG (didn’t sound as sweet in reality as the song by the very same title)

- And the rest is history.


To be politically correct, I guess I’ll have to say I prefer having my Cathy hit by a speeding City, rather than hit somebody to death.

To be honest I’ll say: some people deserve to be run over to death by my Cathy, and Cathy should never, ever, endure the pain of a vicious crash at the expense of saving the lives of some stupid people.

HUHUHUHU

Mobil gue ditabrak.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S WHO YOU ARE DOING IT WITH

Kalimat di atas adalah terjemahan saya untuk perkataan seorang teman, “bukan apa-nya, tapi dengan siapa-nya”. Walaupun kalimat terjemahan saya itu tidak orisinal, dalam arti saya sudah pernah membacanya di suatu tempat, suatu waktu, tapi saya yakin kalimat teman saya yang dalam bahasa Indonesia itu adalah 100% orisinal, hasil dari pemikiran dan pengamatannya sendiri.

Saya sangat gemar memunguti perkataan orang lain, terutama tentunya orang-orang yang saya anggap menarik. Beberapa kali saya mengatakan sesuatu yang ‘aneh’ kepada N, untuk memancing komentarnya. N adalah satu-satunya orang yang sadar bahwa kadang-kadang ucapan yang keluar dari mulut saya adalah pancingan, permintaan untuk sebuah input, tapi saya terlalu malu atau terlalu sopan (ya ampun) untuk memintanya secara langsung. Suatu kali dengan di luar dugaan dia berkata, “Cerita apa yang sedang kamu tulis sekarang?” hanya karena saya menanyakan apa pakaian favoritnya waktu pergi tidur. Saya jadi harus mengakui bahwa saya perlu inputnya untuk karakter cerita saya waktu itu. Agar karakter itu hidup, saya memakai detil nyata untuk melukiskannya, dan detil-detil nyata itu (termasuk seluruh isi lemari pakaian si karakter) saya ambil dari kehidupan N.

N tidak pernah berkeberatan dengan cara saya yang aneh itu. Cara saya meminta inputnya cukup kriminil, kadang dengan mengeluarkan komentar yang membuatnya marah. Saya memang sangat menginginkan kalimat spontan dari dia, tanggapan nyata dari dia untuk komentar saya yang menyakitkan itu. Komentar balik darinya akan saya catat dan saya tuliskan di dalam cerita saya.

Akhirnya dia tahu bahwa yang saya lakukan lagi-lagi adalah untuk cerita-cerita konyol saya, dan dia tidak menjadi marah karenanya. Dia sendiri agak kagum pada kalimat-kalimatnya sendiri, akhirnya. Dan dia mengerti (sepertinya) kenapa saya begitu mengagumi kalimat-kalimatnya, caranya berpikir dan menganalisa, semua kalimat-kalimat spontannya. Begitu sukanya saya menyerap kalimat-kalimatnya, hingga pada suatu rentang waktu tertentu, setiap hari saya mengirimkan kepadanya kutipan kalimat-kalimat ucapan dia yang menjadi favorit saya. Begini biasanya saya tuliskan kutipan itu: If you are not a drug addict, or HIV-positive, then you have all the reasons to feel happy. Please be happy. (N, 1972 - …)

Ada banyak lagi kalimatnya yang saya kumpulkan. Dia bisa melihatnya di sana-sini dalam cerita-cerita saya. Dia adalah satu-satunya makhluk bumi yang sudah membaca hampir seluruh cerita saya.

Dua orang lain yang saya temukan sangat menarik adalah Keparat dan Kelinci. Hampir setiap hari saya membungkuk memunguti kalimat-kalimat mereka yang berceceran di lantai, kalimat-kalimat yang mereka lontarkan begitu saja tanpa menyadari keindahannya, tanpa menyadari begitu dalamnya arti kalimat mereka menurut saya.

Keparat sangat pemarah dan temperamental, sedangkan Kelinci sangat suka makan brokoli. (Maafkan kalimat tanpa nalar ini, tapi saya terlanjur menyukainya.) Keduanya berpikir cepat dan mengeluarkan pendapat dengan cepat juga, tanpa ragu-ragu, tanpa merasa perlu bersembunyi di balik kalimat-kalimat kiasan yang bersayap-sayap. Kadang tanpa berpikir bahwa mereka tidak sedang berbicara dengan orang dengan tingkat pemahaman dan keterbukaan pikiran yang setara dengan mereka. Rasanya mereka tidak pernah mengira, bahwa saya terengah-engah mengikuti pemikiran mereka. Tapi belajar memang tidak mudah, dan sialnya, saya yang malang ini suka sekali belajar.

Jumat lalu saya memancing input dari Kelinci. Bukan dengan membuatnya marah (seperti yang kerap saya lakukan pada N dan Keparat), tapi dengan membohonginya. Samar-samar tentunya dia tahu saya sedang berbohong. Tapi, tetap saya dapatkan dari dia apa yang saya inginkan: input yang spontan, riil, aplikabel, tidak hipokrit. Dengan gembira saya pungut darinya kalimat berharga yang menjadi judul tulisan ini, kalimat yang bisa diterapkan dalam segala hal dalam hidup, bukan hanya dalam satu kasus.

Kenapa ya ada orang-orang seperti itu? Orang-orang biasa di sekitar kamu, bukan filsuf, tidak berjubah dan seumur hidupnya tidak akan pernah berpikir untuk mengenakan sorban (berani taruhan), tapi bisa mengeluarkan kalimat-kalimat dengan pengertian luarbiasa yang bisa mengubah jalur pemikiran orang-orang picik seperti saya. Rupanya kelas filsafat ada di mana-mana, bukan hanya di gedung angkuh dengan profesor yang tidak kalah angkuhnya.

Kapan-kapan akan saya tuliskan beberapa pelajaran penting yang saya dapatkan dari Keparat.

Sekarang yang penting adalah saya ingin meminta maaf kepada Kelinci karena saya sudah membohonginya, untuk menarik keluar dari mulutnya kalimat spontan yang saya perlukan untuk cerita konyol saya yang berikutnya. Saya sudah memerasnya seperti preman pasar. Maafkan si bodoh ini…dia ini hanya ingin (dan sangat perlu) diajar.

What Was I Thinking?

Please help.

YIN AND YANG

"You have too much yin," was what N said one day, to my surprise. Yin constitutes the female elements, coolness, passiveness. The opposite, Yang, represents the male elements, hot-fiery things, aggressiveness, and the likes.

Well, I might look 'yin'..but. But I don't have too much of it. I have my yang elements too. For instance, I'm very aggressive when it comes to...hmm..finishing my homework. Okay. Bad example, but there you go.

Having too much yin makes me unbalanced, unhealthy, and constantly tired. (Again, this is according to N). "I can cure you," he said, "I can give you some of my yang, and you can give me some of your yin. We'll cure each other, keep each other balanced and happy."

And how, I enquired, was he supposed to give me some of his yang elements? "Easy," he answered. "Sperm is of course the core of all yang elements. Feel free to have some of mine."

I was amused by the creative way he started the conversation, only to land to this famous topic. That really made me laugh.

And guess what, he is right all along.

PEEK-A-BOO

Considering the pathetic conditions of my jeans, several weeks ago I went to a jeans boutique near my house to find a new pair.

The place was spacious, nice and tidy, the staff all very helpful, but I sensed something wrong when I was about to enter the fitting-cubicle. Knowing my own self too well, I quickly dismissed the feeling as the usual paranoid I suffer from time to time.

On the first floor there were 2 cubicles with carved wooden doors standing side-by-side, each bore a sign that said: 3 PIECES MAXIMUM(whatever it meant). Inside, it looked pretty normal, well lit and furnished with a large mirror and a big framed poster of a strikingly beautiful woman wearing a perfect pair of jeans. (I stood gaping in front of the poster, thinking: “All rightey, Matey, but you had those jeans altered, didn’t you? I’ve lived long enough to know that there aren’t such thing as perfect jeans”, but that is another story).

The wooden door is thick and cute; it didn’t go all the way from the floor to the top of the doorframe, though. It started like 15 cms off the floor (so when you are inside the cubicle, people outside can see your feet), and stopped maybe 20 cm below the top of the doorframe (lucky me, I’m not tall. So people can’t see my head from the outside, along with the frustation allover my face due to the unbearable task of finding a nice pair of denim).

But I did find a nice pair anyway. Ah, the bliss of a simple achievement. Happily walking to the cash register, I looked back and was mortified. Attached to the ceiling were 2 cameras, each pointing into one cubicle. That was why the doors were shorter than the doorframe, dear Watson.

Oh my. Looked like the cameras were dead, anyway, because I couldn’t see the red lights they usually emitted when they were working. And I didn’t do anything funny inside the cubicle, just the normal stuff people do when they are trying pairs and pairs of jeans.

But still, duh.

LIFE SO FAR

(1) Tomorrow you can see another writing of mine in publish. Like they say, “If you wake up thinking about singing today, it makes you a singer. If you wake up thinking about your writing, then you are a writer, whether you are published or not.”

By that generous definition, I am a writer. I write fictions and non-fictions with the same passion, but funnily, only my non-fictions are published in print. I quite fancy having another piece of my writing published next November, with an insane intention to write a research report on telco engineering with poetic language. A soulful research report maybe with snippets of love songs attached here and there. Yeah right. As if.

(2) I’m recovering, at last, from last week’s violent illness. Another lesson learnt: I’ll never again abuse myself.


(3) I’d rather lecture on Electromagnetic Theory than have a casual conversation with anyone. Better yet, I’d just write to myself like this. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, seems like everytime I try to have casual conversation with a person, I end up hurting that person. This only happens with people I care about. Well of course. With people I don’t care about, I won’t spare the time to analyse whether I say something wrong or whether I use rude words. With people I care about, I can cry for hours over a single wrong word I say, over each idea taken wrongly, over each comma, over each full stop. The opposite is also true: your words can only hurt me if you are a person I care about.

(4) Seems like every step and every turn I make, always takes me back to you. Damn I miss you.

BUT I THOUGHT WE ALL WERE PARTIALLY BLIND.

When I was a new student in a high school years ago, all of my new classmates told me astonishedly: “My, but you look EXACTLY like Ln. Even your voice is so similar to hers.”

Ln was a student in that high school too, but she moved away some time before I came. I never get to know her, but I was shown pictures of her. And yes, she looks like me. A lot.

Later I was also told that Ln is partially blind. I mean, one of her eyes doesn’t function at all. Because both of her eyes looked perfectly normal, none of her family members suspected a thing. She, of course, was too young to realize that she had something abnormal.

The moment of truth came when she was 8 years old. She was playing with her aunt one day, when she playfully covered one of her eyes with her palm and asked her aunt: “Auntie, isn’t it funny? Why can we still see when we cover this eye with our palm..but..” –then she put her palm over her other eye—“..but we can’t see when we cover this eye?”
Her aunt was terrified, and said cautiously, “What do you mean, Baby? But I can see, we all are supposed to be able to see, whichever eye we cover with our palm.”

I wonder what the hurt was like to her when “we” became “I”. “We can’t see with this eye” became “I can’t see with this eye.”
What surprise came to her when “we” became “you”. When she told others “Why can we see with only one eye?” and others told her “You see with only one eye. We don’t.”

I naturally had this exactly same opinion too, when I was younger. I thought everybody was like me. Never once it occurred to me that I was different from others. Ln was lucky that the person who broke the news to her was a kind, trusted person. I was told that I was different by a very unwise person. Whenever I looked back to that experience, I regretted that I ever trusted that person with my story. I really, really shouldn’t have done that.

Almost exactly 4 years ago, I met a man who I trusted enough with my stories. He likes thinking and analysing things to death, and his vast knowledge amazed me. Soon we had dinners together after work regularly, and our talks varied from our friends, wave-modulation (deargod, as if there wasn’t anything more interesting to talk about over dinner), and daily life. Soon we graduated to more advanced topics I don’t normally discuss with anyone. Like the years I spent studying classical music, religions, and beliefs. And we graduated even further, until I hinted that topic lightly. Just to test the water. Just to see how he would react.

I still remember how he reacted: he reached a hand across the dining table and held my elbow. Then he broke the news to me, once again changing “we” into “you”. Changing “everybody” to “only you”.

And once again I wondered whether Ln felt as alienated as I was, when she found out that not everybody was partially blind like her.

WEEKEND STUDY SESSION

The faculty gathering in Puncak last weekend was nothing much, but still I learned some important lessons in those 1.5 days.

The first was when we did this merciless hiking along the edges of steep, high cliffs, on Sunday morning. The ground was all muddy and super-slippery, thanks to the previous night’s light, constant shower. At one point, my animal instinct said I really shouldn’t go further, because there was only wet, slippery, steep path as wide as my foot and there was nothing to hold on to. There were only grass and bushes around (plus that menacing cliff right next to me), no trees, nothing solid to help me balance my weight. But I pressed forward bit by bit, anyway.

For about half of the journey, L, the 2nd Vice Dean, walked ahead of me with her teenage daughter J. Every once in awhile J would protest: “Mommy, it’s too slippery, I can’t.” And L would always say, “Mommy is here. Mommy will watch out for you. Step with faith, Ci (from ‘Cici’, means ‘older sister’ in Chinese, which is apparently how J was called by her siblings), do not hesitate.”

That was my first lesson of the day. “Step with faith”, I told myself, “do not hesitate.” How could I not hesitate, when in front of me there was only a steep wet narrow path? With the risk of slipping into a cliff-- With my shoes all wet and muddy, making it so difficult to move-- With my untrained body and my tired legs-- When sometimes I couldn’t even stand upright because it was so hard to stay balanced, that I almost walked on all-four—

The same thing applies to life as a whole too. There are many a time when I find it hard to step forward in faith, knowing full well that the path ahead of me is too dangerous. Nevertheless, staying unmoved is not a wise choice either, because there is nothing worse than knowing that you have accomplished nothing because you have been to afraid to make a move. So I told myself to step with faith, and fought my way for the rest of the journey. I hope I’ll step forward with faith not only when it comes to hiking, but every step of the way in the journey of life.

The second lesson was, I wouldn’t make it if I weren’t humble enough to ask for help. R and A helped me a lot during the journey, and R especially, wouldn’t have helped me if I hadn’t asked him. But I tried to forget my big ego and admitted that I needed a pull from them when the field was too nasty. If that had happened five, or even three years ago, I know I wouldn’t ask for help, I’d stubbornly try to work things out myself.
When I was stuck in a stream, unable to move due to its muddy, slippery bottom and stones, A almost went back to get me. I couldn’t bear that, my damned big ego wouldn’t allow that, so before he did, I stepped forward and slipped ahead, dipping about knee-deep and almost fell down if it wasn’t for his strong grip from across the stream. Though I hated it, I forced myself to cooperate, to trust him, to reach out for his hand and let him help me out of the stream.

So here is lesson number two: admit your limitations, be humble enough to ask for help, and to let others help you. Damn, it wasn’t easy for me. I’m too self-reliant and I’ve always thought I could manage anything without the help of anyone. I was wrong.

Lesson number three was learnt when I took off all of my clothes after the hike: there were blood clots in my panty. My period was over about two weeks ago, and I don’t normally bleed outside my cycle. So eventhough I had fun during the hike and thought I didn’t exert myself excessively, my body didn’t agree. It was too much for my body and the first alarm was the uterus bleeding. Who knows what might come next if I dare to try something like this again without preparation. Goddamnit, I never like to be forced to deal with the bloody business outside those unavoidable 12 days in a month.

I am thankful for the very important lessons taught to me by L, R, A, and my own body. Learning all those in the space of only a short time really gave me, well, MO.

X-FILES

Kapan-kapan, (kalau kamu yakin kamu belum pernah melakukannya sekalipun sepanjang hidup) cobalah untuk melupakan sesuatu dengan sengaja. Kalau saya tidak salah, akan kamu temukan bahwa hal itu jauh lebih sulit dilakukan daripada dikatakan. Banyak hal yang tidak disangka-sangka akan lewat di depan mata kamu, mengingatkan kamu pada X yang ingin kamu lupakan. Satu hari dapat lewat dengan baik, kamu berhasil menyibukkan diri dan melupakan si benda (atau si orang) X, dan hopla, tiba-tiba kamu berjalan di suatu tikungan dan bertabrakan dengan X. Atau kamu menyalakan TV dan di sana X muncul memandangi kamu.

Bertahun-tahun saya berusaha melupakan sesuatu. Saya kira saya berhasil, karena setelah beberapa lama, bukan saja si ‘sesuatu’ itu yang dapat saya lupakan, tapi juga segala alasan kenapa saya harus melupakannya. Segala yang terkait dengannya terkubur jauh di dalam otak saya, di ujung-ujung synapse yang nyaris tidak pernah saya gunakan sehari-hari. Semakin hari semakin sedikit aliran listrik melewati synapse itu, sampai saya kira, synapse itu mati. Saya kira. Tapi perkiraan saya salah.

Suatu hari beberapa tahun yang lalu, saya menonton DA di salah satu stasiun televisi. Saat itu DA adalah news anchor perempuan terkenal yang gayanya begitu khas, begitu lain dari gaya news anchor lainnya. (Sampai sekarang gayanya yang disebut-sebut meniru gaya news anchor BBC dibakukan, dijadikan patokan untuk news anchor generasi baru di stasiun televisi lainnya.) Dia muncul di acara berita tengah hari, dan di salah satu segmennya mewawancarai CH, aktris terkenal yang baru menyelesaikan syuting film yang unik. Saya sudah sering melihat DA dan CH di media, tapi belum pernah melihat mereka bersama-sama dalam satu kesempatan.

Hari itu CH kelihatan lain, dia menggunakan make-up yang cerah dan memakai syal merah. Tidak biasanya dia memakai sesuatu berwarna terang, sejauh pengetahuan saya yang tentu saja tidak mengenalnya (dan sebenarnya tidak pantas berkomentar mengenai warna apa yang pernah ataupun tidak pernah dia pakai.) Yang membuat saya terpana adalah kata-kata DA untuk membuka wawancara: “C..(katanya menyebut nama depan si aktris)…begini cantiknya Anda rupanya…Anda kelihatan sangat cerah..”

Ya saya tahu, tidak ada anehnya memuji-muji narasumber kamu, membuatnya santai sehingga lebih mudah diwawancarai. Tapi sesuatu dalam cara bicara DA, sesuatu pada cara CH menanggapinya, terasa lain. DA jelas ingin menghancurkan pemisah antara dia dan CH, sehingga dia memilih menyapa narasumbernya dengan nama depannya, bukan dengan sebutan ‘Mbak’ yang lebih umum dipilih orang untuk menyapa orang yang tidak begitu dikenalnya. Dan ada lagi sesuatu-sesuatu lainnya dalam wawancara itu, yang tidak dapat saya jelaskan.

Hari itu saya matikan suara TV dan saya teruskan menonton bahasa tubuh DA sewaktu mewawancarai CH. Oh no, pikir saya. Bukankah ini mengingatkan saya pada sesuatu, entah apa. Saya menyalakan suara TV kembali ketika DA mencondongkan tubuhnya ke arah CH, mengucapkan terimakasih, lalu mencondongkan tubuhnya ke kamera (rasanya seperti dia mencondongkan tubuhnya ke arah saya) dan mengatakan dengan lugas, “Anda dapat menyaksikan CH dalam film XYZ yang akan segera beredar minggu ini. Tetaplah bersama kami.”

Semalaman itu saya terus berpikir, sialan, kenapa wawancara tolol itu membuat saya tidak bisa berfungsi. Kenapa wawancara sependek itu membuat otak saya sesibuk ini. Apa sih anehnya wawancara aktris film terkenal yang film barunya akan segera beredar?

Lama saya berpikir. Kemudian baru saya bisa mengingat: dalam wawancara itu saya melihat X, perempuan yang ingin saya lupakan, dan segala alasan kenapa saya ingin melupakan dia. Selama ini X belum mati, dia hidup, antara lain di dalam mata DA. X mencondongkan badannya ke arah saya suatu hari, dan berkata dengan lugas: “Kamu terlalu lemah. Atau saya yang terlalu lemah. Pokoknya tinggalkan saya.” Kemudian matanya berkilat dan suaranya menjadi lebih mendekati suara dia yang asli--lembut dan ragu-ragu—“Saya suka Keparat. Bagaimana kalau kamu dengan dia saja. Atau N…dia punya empati yang sangat besar..saya tahu kamu lama-lama akan akan tertarik dengan dia.”

Sejak hari itu saya tidak lagi melihat X, tidak lagi mendengar suaranya, dan tidak lagi memikirkannya. Sampai saya melihatnya memandangi saya, melalui mata DA di TV. Sampai saya melihat DA mengatakan “Tetaplah bersama kami.”

Susah payah saya menahan keinginan untuk mencondongkan badan dan balik berkata kepada DA (atau kepada kamu yang hidup di dalam matanya, X): “Saya tetap di sini. Saya tidak berpindah selangkahpun.”

PLAYING GOD

The best thing to learn a subject is by teaching it. (Anonymous)

Then I can never learn anything about life. (Peacefool)


It’s a wonder why in Indonesia they commonly call the final-oral-comprehensive-examination, where students have to present their final projects before a panel of lecturers to end their study in university, a “sidang” (=”trial”).

The word “trial” reminds me of a court, where the accused stands or sits nervously, waiting for the judges to decide his future. It reminds me of lawyers, prosecutors, and sometimes (depends on the system used) a panel of 12 juries too.

So when I was asked to be one of the “judges” in a “trial” last week, my stomach turned. I never liked playing judge, playing God. Who am I to judge this student, I am nothing better compared to him. I am not more knowledgeable than him. Why must I ‘judge’ him, and decide what mark he deserves, thus deciding his future forever?

Another wonder is how the other ‘judges’ jumped to snatch the opportunity to rip the student (= the accused?) into pieces. It’s about ego, I think. By giving the toughest questions in the harshest way, they thought they’d gain respect from fellow ‘judges’. Hell, I prefer not to gain respect that way, if I ever need any. I approach this job using a completely different mindset, I guess. The one thing I’m here for is to fulfill my gigantic need to learn from others, and I won’t be too off-the-mark if I say I learn more things from the students, not my colleagues. So ripping a student in public will defeat my whole purpose of being here.

I know, in those ‘trials’, the ‘judges’ are paid to ask probing questions, to make the students defend their projects. But nobody says we shouldn’t learn something from them. Nobody says we should be harsh and humiliate them and belittle the efforts they have put in their projects. Nobody says we must pretend to know everything about his or her projects. We are allowed, I guess, to ask for explanation nicely, to admit that there are always some aspects we don’t understand about their projects. And to admit that yes, we lecturers have our limitations too, so would you be kind enough to teach us something here?

This is what I want to say to students facing their ‘trials’: please do not copy several pages off your final-project report to transparency sheets and use them for your presentation; those look so pathetic. Put more efforts into your presentation (as my lecturers said: a presentation contributes to 30% of your final mark) and hold your head and voice steady while standing there in front of your ‘judges’. This is your project, you’ve worked hard on it, so why not use this opportunity to tell us what makes them interesting for you, why not use this chance to impress us?

This is what I want to say to you: do not stand there trembling like a rabbit, dear, remember what you are here for. Remember you’ve gotta teach us something here.

BROKEN SUN

Rringgg...rrriingngng...(10x)

"Hi you."
"Hello..I thought you didn't want to answer my call. Am I disturbing you?.."

...

"..or you just need time to decide whether or not to pick up the phone?"
"Bingo."

...

"You miss me?"
"Duh."

...

"Hei hei. I miss you."
"Okay."
"How are you? Dear? God I miss saying that word. Dear. Dear, say something. Need to hear your voice, been too long."
"I'm doing fine, sort of. You?"
"I'm down with a nasty diarrhea since last Monday. Miss you too much. That last time I had diarrhea this nasty, remember? That was when I went on a business trip to Bandung and didn't get to see you for four days in a row."

I laughed, then at some point I felt like crying.

"Motherofgod, from all things on earth that you can claim to remind you of me, you pick diarrhea? A nasty diarrhea reminds you of me?"
"Hei..listen to yourself. You negative-thinking baby. What I'm saying is, everytime I miss you, I get ill. I get diarrhea, the most miserable illness. Can't eat can't sleep can't think straight. Tummy aches so much. Been almost 10 days now."
"Oh dear. Maybe you ate something poisonous. Go see a doctor."
"No, my brain's poisoning me. Wanna go see you."
"Oh."
"You heal me. I can't stand this."

...

"Say something, will you? Listen, I bought you something every day we didn't meet."
"Really? So kind of you."
"Nah, just stupid things. Stuffed animals. Colourful pens, geez, I'm such a weirdo, I just love buying you stationary. And a lined pad for you to practice writing your fiction. I remember you told me you wanted to practice writing longhand instead of typing...what else..books..CDROMs...I compiled some stuff here myself..for your lectures. Oh and a necklace also..don't worry..it's just a cute cheap thingy..looks sweet I think..a doll like you needs sweet jewellery...hey..have I been talking too much? Say something please. Hush honey, don't cry. Hush up, did I say something wrong?"
"No...I miss you too."

...

"You saw the paper today? Navratilova won a match or something."
"What?????"
"Navratilova..she's a..you know...I just can't stop thinking about you..then I saw her picture...and I can't help thinking how come, how come, GOD, you are so much different from her.."
"Don't start. I'm warning you: don't start."

...

"Who do you love?"
"You."
"You want me to hang up?"
"Never."
"Then say something."
"When can I see you?"
"Tomorrow, lunch time? I'll bring these sweet nothings too."
"Why not tonight? Now, I want to see you now now now now -- "
"I can't, and you know why."

...

"You miss me?"
"Very much."
"My tummy doesn't hurt as much now. Feel much better. And who do you love, Doll?"
"You.
You and Martina Navratilova and Ellen DeGeneres and Desi Anwar and that cute little bitch on TV just now."
"HUAHAHAHAHAHHHHHAHAH. Kiss me?"
"Yes, tomorrow."
"Tell me again who you love."
"You."
"I want you."
"Me wants you too."
"I miss your voice like you wouldn't believe."
"And I miss yours..don't hang up on me. Let's hang up on 3."
"OK, I'll see you tomorrow? Let's count now...1..2..3.."

---call ended---

WHAT I LEAVE BEHIND

Every once in awhile you bump into someone you can't forget in a lifetime. Every once in awhile you cross a road and when you turn around, you realize a part of you does not cross the road with you.
Every once in awhile you meet somebody and falls for that person. You pack your life and embark on a new journey with that person. Then you turn around and see: a part of you stands still many miles behind, and waves you goodbye.

A DIMENSION, OR TWO

Samar-samar saya ingat: prisma akan memisahkan cahaya tampak (visible light) dari matahari menjadi 7 spektrum dengan panjang gelombang yang berbeda-beda. Peristiwa ini disebut dispersi. Perbedaan panjang gelombang mengakibatkan ketujuh spektrum tersebut terlihat memiliki warna yang berbeda-beda bagi mata manusia. Tolong koreksi saya, karena seingat saya titik-titik air di atmosfer setelah hujan juga bertindak seperti prisma, mereka menghamburkan cahaya matahari yang tunggal, menjadi 7 cahaya warna-warni pelangi.


We were walking along a creek, enjoying the sun, sharing secrets, when you bent down and picked something up from the bottom of the creek.
“Look,” you said, “Obsidian?”

I know nothing about stones
but when I held that tiny rock against the sunlight,
I could see that
it dispersed the light
into seven rays.

I looked at you,
shifting the rock in my palm,
holding it against your face,
And I could see that it dispersed
your shadow into seven rays.

“You are seven different people,” I told you.
“No, I’m seven thousand different people,” you laughed.
I noticed one of your rays
looks clearer than the others.
(Only your red ray looks a bit familiar to me. Your other rays look dim, almost invisible. Still I know red isn’t your only ray. There are others, but I can’t see them)

You took the rock
and held it against my face.
“Blue,” you told me.
“All I see is blue,
but I know you have many other rays as well.”
(All this time you show me only your anger, and all this time I show you only my misery.)

We were walking along a creek, enjoying the sun, sharing secrets, when you suddenly stopped and looked at me.
“Excuse me,” you said. “Who are you again?”
(If I’m worth your time, I’ll tell you where I come from. If I am worth your time, I’ll tell you where I’m going.)
“Pardon me,” I said. “But I don’t know you either.”

(In my palm the tiny rock glinted.
I could see many people walking along the creek, and I could see not all of them found their obsidians.
This one must stay, I thought to myself.
This rock tells me the many dimensions you have, and the many dimensions I have.
This rock reminds me of a time a long time ago
When life was easy and happy
When neighour kids knocked my door and asked me to play
And never once said I looked different from them.)

“Throw the useless rock away,” you had said.
“No,” I said simply.
“I want to keep it.
To remind me of you.
To remind me of a person
Who never once looked me in the eye
And never once told me
that I was a freak.”

OH..SO THIS IS HOW IT FEELS..

..to finally be away from everybody.