ON OPENING UP A FIRE HYDRANT

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness
and of love.

--William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)


For days now, he had been pressing me to open up. By God, one of the hardest things for me (other than putting on eyeliner and cooking Indomi properly)is to "open up and talk". Look, just look at what happened. I opened up alright, not just my mouth but my giant-sized tear-ducts as well.

There he sat I saw, he watched me have a crying fit with a stricken look across his face, and at the end he wrapped me in his arms and said each and every last one of everything was his fault and that so many things escaped him and that he was to blame.

And here I am sitting in the research room thinking how much I want to sleep with this man.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

It's a book by Khaled Hosseini, whose first book The Kite Runner is hugely famous, one of the books I decide not to read for fear that it will swell up a sad vein inside me.

But I found a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns in my parents' room, and was so drawn by the title that I decided to read it anyway. In the inside page I found my father's signature, and below it he wrote a date: 29/11/'07. I also found a bookmark he put inside it, and knew right away that again, he had bought a book with all the good intentions to finish it, only to fail once again.

From the start, it seemed that I couldn't put the book down. It surprised me that a man could write so intimately from a woman's point of view, no, not just a woman, but two women. I always thought it was difficult for one to write from the point of view of the opposite sex: hence Tom Clancy's main characters are always males, the way Amy Tan's are always females.

Nowadays I don't fancy myself as a fiction writer anymore, but whatever wretched little pieces of unfinished stories I write, always have a female main character.

Anyways. This book is simply beautiful. I lay down reading it and finding with a startle that I drew strength from those fictional characters, that I took a journey inside my own heart as I wept through half of the book. Oh yes yours truly lay on the sofa weeping, and believe-you-me, I am one who can manage to cry at the sight of everything: everything, like a stray leaf or a cup of piping hot coffee or a tv commercial featuring kittens (God help us), so it was just normal that I cried over this book. This book tells of women beaten by men, of women washing men's undershirts under the scorching sun, of women cleaning after men, of women put in unimaginable misery. One of the women ended up as a teacher, a profession so dear to my heart, and I was reminded of a much younger version of myself, telling my mom that I would be teaching one day. These last few months I have been pondering about quitting my job and find a "more decent" one. Yet, here I am lying on the couch reading about a fictional woman being a teacher at long last, and getting reminded of how I ended up as a sort of a teacher myself.

The book tells a story of how love actually exists, too. And it tells how the Quran, somewhere among its lines of violence, also contains words of consolation. I don't know what to believe anymore, actually. Real love, I have so far learned, means endless cleaning of the house. The Quran, I have so far learned, says a husband has a right to strike his wife if she "doesn't obey" him. I cannot summon the strength to believe that there are real people, real women, who pray five times a day and recite the Quran, knowing full well that the holy book grants their men the rights to degrade them.

I think the book revived some memories of my childhood too, my teenage years even, when I was eager to look for God. My endless chanting of the surah and the verses of the Quran, and later, my endless questions of why, why, why does God forbid women to pray during their periods. Why so many holy texts refer to a woman's menstruation as a "dirty business" after which she has to wash herself from head to toe. Why a lovemaking is also something dirty we have to wash up after. So dirty we are not allowed to communicate to God after a lovemaking.

Yes, I realize with a sore, I miss being able to kneel on my praying rug without thinking too much. Reading some Quran verses in the book saddened me in a complicated way. Whether I weeped for the main characters, for their pain that I recognise so acutely as mine too, or for the longing of the God I once worshipped without question, I don't know anymore.

But of these, I am sure: the book is a good thirst-quencher, and I am grateful for Khaled Hosseini for having written it. One day perhaps, I can tell you in a more logical way, why exactly I am grateful, on the day I can finally make sense of these tears.

Variations on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head.

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear


I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as beathing in


I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

(Margaret Atwood)

PENNY-PINCHING GALORE

The news that a good friend had been diagnosed with cancer came as a shock. The fragility of life never ceases to surprise me.

I have finally finished writing the book, and I am planning to avert from doing revisions as much as I can. I submitted that darned research proposal on time. Today I guess I am gonna go over my reading materials without falling into daydreams too often.

Anyway. Can you believe I have given up Nescafe for Indocafe? R noted that it was Rp 5000 cheaper than Nescafe, so it went straight into the shopping basket. I kinda stared at it for awhile, thinking how could somebody so dear asked me to give up my Nescafe. I thought, what wouldn't I do to earn that extra Rp 5000. Maybe I need a third job? I've never bought a single new shirt or pair of shoes or bag for the last 4 years, so I know what it means to live simply and frugally. But I need a slice of my cake every now and then (like, every four months or so), and I need...my coffee...everyday.

But! Indocafe turns out not to be so bad. It is in fact, rather good. But before you go and buy your Indocafe, be advised that you shouldn't rely on my judgment only. You know, my common sense is tinted with the need to comply to R's massive need to penny-pinch. And oh, I've been away from my Nescafe for almost a month now. And believe-you-me, when you're too far from you fave coffee for too long, there's nothing left in you to be relied upon, anymore.

BEFORE I COMPLAIN

I go to a corner of my brain, where I keep an image of this card.

WINDOW

No, this post has nothing to do with windows whatsoever. I just couldn't find a correct title for this post, and this famous writer whose blog I absolutely love, titled one of her blog-posts "The Window", so I think, why not?

Anyway. I am now in the campus, having delivered 204 printed pages of my would-be book to my co-promotor, about two hours ago. It's not finished yet, my book, there is still one more chapter to go. He asked me to finish the last chapter by the end of this month. That's big. That's a hard thing to do, but I just couldn't say no. Because something in me said that I could actually do that much that fast. I really hope I can see the book in print. I know my name will be printed below his name, albeit my working on it all by myself for the past year. But it will still be my book.

The co-promotor also asked me to submit a proposal for another research grant, which is due 4 days from now. Right now I guess I'm not surprised anymore whenever somebody asks me to hand in a 40-pages of proposal in 2 days' notice. The thing is, for this particular grant scheme (which deadline is due in 4 days! 4 days!) I need to re-do my current proposal, so as to give it a different angle from the one I submitted to the Higher Education Directorate scheme. I've been sitting at my desk in this deserted research room in the campus, thinking how on God's earth I could do just that.

But something in me, a much sadder, much meaner, and much foolish version of me, say that I can actually do that much, that fast.

So here we are, my logical self doing the blogging, and my mean self whispering "come on now. come on now."

SHINE SHINE ON

He bought those sticky plastic sheets and started putting covers on my textbooks.

He put my Crocs on the side, saying he wanted to wash them up.