After returning to the city, my family and I went for vacation. We took pictures and smiled a lot :) :) :) Then I got back to Bandung; to do my routine in LFM. The bad news was: I missed an opportunity of volunteering in Global Citizen Corps Indonesia. Did I regret that? Kinda yes, for people around me all are seemed to do GREAT things like internships, exchange programs, backpacking, etc. I kinda, envy them.

Well, I changed my mind:

HEY, THIS IS HOLIDAY!!

I’ve almost always been busy on Julies, BUT this time, I feel like really taking breaks. I buy novels, and DVDs. I spend a lot of times with LFM, have frozen yogurt everytime I want, and tell my boyfriend that I miss him. F__k the rest. Really. Just f__k the rest.

Next semester is coming, and I would stop pretending like I have all time in the world.

People know how much I like him, and how loyal I’ve been to Spain.

They congratulated me.

***

This is my 8th year of blogging. If you ask me what have changed; a lot. If you ask me what have not changed; I still post about Iker Casillas Fernandez.

I never thought a mountain could be so complicated inside.

Every mountain has its own tale; its own history. It might be born under the sea or the continental sky. It might be hard outside but weak inside. It might be very hot once then it calmed down. Mountains never writes autobiographies, so we have to ask. We have to ask to them in very special way because each mountain is special. It is special because, just like rain, a mountain is not literally alive but it gives lives; to the people who struggle, the trees and the wild.

It takes special people to ask, and we are learning to be that special.
***

When I was a child, I and most kids, fight each other a lot. Friendship was not that simple; like little things mattered. And then we grew up and we knew each other and we continued growing up.

I never thought friendship could be just simple and very simplifying.

After 30 days in Karangsambung I also learned more about friendship. We hiked and got tired. We were up and down. I got bored and I thought, “maybe I’m not special enough to ask to the mountains.” But when I looked at my friends, there they were: very special. Then, when we talked and we laughed, I knew, that we are THAT special.

And we deserve to ask to the mountains.

—————————————————————————-

Thank you all a lot for those days in Karangsambung; Pak Bambang Priadi and all lecturers and staff and the whole team (we were 87 although I wished we were 89) and also very special thanks for Brenda Ariesty, Hermala Yuniaji, Shabiati Hafizah, and Jesika Chandra for even just being there.

I’m back to the city for a while :)

While people are doing great things for holiday (like going to Turkey or holding a youths-meet-up to change the world), I am, spending a half of my holiday in a country where rock beds are not so shy to tell their tales. Here, in Karangsambung, they tell their stories and I’m learning how to read them: rocks and outcrops, hills and rivers; judging and labeling them. They don’t mind though. They have many secrets kept inside; buried and hidden. Beautiful.

Each day, I get closer to nature, at heart. When I sit by the river, walking along the little paths of rice fields, or hiking the hills, I feel like living honesty. A honest and fair life. Unlike a big city, the mountain treats everyone the same. They don’t care whether you have limo; even if you have money to buy the whole area, you still have to hike. The river flows with constant velocity; it will not give any damn about how small, or how big you think you are. The snakes and caterpillars will be snakes and caterpillars: they won’t pretend to be your best friends.

Life is very fair here. Unlike a big city, where people treat others differently. They treat people with private jet plane differently. Girls with beautiful faces or liars with smart lies. The president and the other (they-think-they-are) important people may go on the street with high speed causing the other stuck up in a jam.

The big city just treats people differently.

And the ’snakes’ and ‘caterpillar’ may pretend to be your best friends (and ‘kill’ you later).
*

So what life do we call ‘unfair’? The life with millions beautiful lamps polluting the sky causing the stars to hide.
***

‘Hi’ from Kebumen! :D

Ooo… Karangsambung…
O o o… Karangsambung…

Bangun pagi-pagi mandi pun harus antri
WC mampet banyak cabe mengambang
Palu dan kompas ayo segera disiapkan
Berangkat ke lapangan

Ooo… Karangsambung…
O o o… Karangsambung…

Dari Bukit Brujul sampai ke Penosogan
Siang hari degan selalu jadi santapan
Sore hari Mbak War selalu siap sedia
Menyegarkan kita dengan susunya

Ooo… Karangsambung…
O o o… Karangsambung…

Begitu setiap hari, keakraban tercipta
Tanpa terasa sebulan lamanya
Banyak arti yang kini tersimpan di dalam hati

Ooo… Karangsambung…
O o o… Karangsambung…

(Musik Santai GEA – Karangsambung)

My summer holiday: friends and Earth :)

Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla
Ég er ugla, sumar ugla

Most of the time I draw myself as a bunny, but perhaps I’m an owl at heart. Such a tragedy because an owl eats a bunny and I start to feel like eating myself inside out. I put Rugla on repeat mode and think very patiently as if I had all time I’d need. I left my suitcase a half opened, and my books bookmarked. My ego makes me an owl at night. An owl; a summer owl, because I like the rain. And, if I die, I want to die with the fireflies.

I’m an owl
su-summer owl

This semester is ending soon. Monday will be my last day of final exams, and on Tuesday we will visit a dam. From the 8th of June we would spend a month in Karangsambung and act like a true geologist. As the rest of long holiday flies, a new semester comes. My 7th.

Tonight I walked in the campus; from the north gate, to the south. The low light touched a part of my heart; where memories are kept in unalphabetical order. It’s been almost 3 years of falling in love with the configuration of a life phase: myself, my friends, and everything in between.

I remember the first day I came here to start a new life. I remember the first day I met my boyfriend. The first day of Salam Ganesha; a little thunder I am somehow proud of. The first day of Calculus. The first day I broke my heart and learned that a couple shouldn’t come from different religion. The first day of getting a crush on an unpublished writer and becoming a goddamn stalker. The first day I misjudged the girls which later became my very best friends. The first day I turned yellow and raised my fist to the blue sky.

The low light and the empty path reminded me when it was full and bright. I could picture us there, then I felt like everyone is leaving, and younger strangers are coming. Another semester is coming.

And the first day I countdown to the day of seeing the aurora would be the first day of missing a life phase. That I think I do already.

I learned the concept of making pop-up paper craft a few years ago; the simplest one. It was my best friend, Noumi, who made the card (full of Iker Casillas’ pictures cut from newspaper and magazine) for me after reading the tutorial on Gogirl! magazine. Later, I started making pop-up cards for everyone (one of them is Ramda) :D

I wouldn’t write any tutorial in here. My tips is to check here for the basic mechanism, and here for the more advance tutorial, and if you may go googling and end up with hundreds amazing forms of this kind of paper work.

I may only guess what makes pop-up card so special.

It is: the surprise. Because when we receive a folded card, we would expect writing or picture or well, maybe lips mark (duh); something 2 dimensional. Then, ‘tadaaa!’, pop-up card delivers it in 3 dimensions. So, can you see the point? It is about being something more than what is expected.

What else? Simply, it is handmade.

Anyhow, I’ve spilled one of my analog best trick. Why don’t you try? And stop doing the birthday greeting for your important people via Facebook ;)

—

“It’s a juried show. We look at the crafts and make sure they are handmade. We try to be careful about the balance so we have a mix of everything.”

- Deanna Anderson

However, last night, it was Copeland and I decided to come. First, Copeland was one of my favorite band (as I told you in this post) and they have my attention. Second, it would be their first and the last gig in here. Third, I’ve dedicated too many of their tracks to my boyfriend :P

The show was started at 9 PM, (after 1 hour waiting) and they opened it with ‘Priceless’. Priceless is a song I would recommend to you guys who intend to melt a heart…

Cause I need you / Like the dragonflies’ wings need the wind / Like the orphan needs home once again / Like heaven needs more to come in / I need you here like you’ve always been //

They went on for about 2 hours. They performed all of my favorites; ‘Take Care’, ‘Control Freak’, ‘Coffee’, ‘On The Safest Ledge’, ‘California’. Yes, also ‘You Have My Attention’, and… ‘Brightest’. How did it go? I’d borrow the lines from IndyWeek.com to define it: Airy falsetto voicing sentimental verses works against a backdrop of dreamy keyboards and a lush rhythm section, as it long has.

It was beautiful. They have been Copeland.

Could it be so beautiful just because it was a farewell?

—

—

(PS: I lost my voice last night because of the flu.)

My mother just called me. She told about a thing or two, and then she told me that my uncle passed away. She didn’t cry. I didn’t either. I have never met my uncle. He sailed to America when he was seventeen and he never came back.

I knew him from the blurry memories of my mother and my grandma. That he was childish, and really good at swimming. I knew him from my father who visited him sixteen years ago, that he ate and gambled a lot. I knew him from my other uncle, that he lived in Richmond, Virginia which is my mother’s last name, that he got married with older woman named Beatrice, but they didn’t have children.

He couldn’t speak Bahasa Indonesia anymore, but from his letters I translated for my grandma, I knew he missed her, his mother. And before my grandma passed away, I knew, she missed her eldest son even more. I knew; from the way she kept his photographs, his postcards, and even his folded dollar bills.

I have never met him, but I miss him a bit. I know it’s strange, to miss someone we never met, but blood is thicker than water. I tried to google his name, but he’s only known as a random citizen and there is no detail about his cancer, or how lonely he had been before he died.

So I dedicate this post for you, Alexander Abraham Tahalea.
That you are loved, and you have been missed.

May you rest in peace, Uncle :)

Lately, it is harder to find the empty spaces I used to fill with words. Those words that dim at night.

Lately, I miss a lot of rhymes.