Malam ini adalah malam tahun baru, yang berarti besok adalah tahun yang baru.

Apa yang harus gua kerjakan di malam tahun baru ini?
Karena seperti biasa dan tentu saja, malam tahun baru menjadi semacam penyakit kekurangkerjaan yang tiap tahun (terpaksa) gua rayakan. Sebenarnya hampir nggak ada yang spesial dari perayaan tahun baru; malam itu kan cuma pergantian tahun aja. Malamnya sih sama saja dengan malam kemarinnya, atau dengan malam kemarinnya lagi.
Sayangnya, banyak orang yang merasa malam tahun baru itu adalah malam spesial yang harus dirayakan. Jadi dengan berat hati gua merasa berkewajiban untuk terpaksa merayakan malam tahun baru dengan berpesta ria menyambut tahun baru.

Yeah, right.
Niatnya aja sih begitu. Tapi tetap aja gua malas ngapa2in. Sebagai bukti, malam tahun baru tahun kemarin gua nangkring di depan komputer baca komik 20th Century Boy dari nomor 1 sampai nomor 15. Dari jam 10 malam sampai jam 8 pagi besoknya. Selesai baca, tidur.

Well, berhubung gua males jalan-jalan, dan cewe gua itu ga ngajak gua jalan berhubung mau malam tahun baruan sama teman2 SMUnya dan jadinya gua jadi males ngajak di jalan juga, kayanya gua bakal tidur aja di rumah deh.

Dan malam tahun baruan buat gua juga jadi kepikiran sama resolusi. Karena orang-orang semua pada bikin apa yang namanya resolusi tahun baru. Bisa dibilang resolusi itu adalah keinginan reflektif dari diri mereka masing2 tentang target yang ingin dicapai tahun baru tersebut. Dan lagi2, gua jadi merasa harus ikut-ikutan bikin resolusi juga biar ga ketinggalan zaman...

Tapi ternyata, susah juga ya bikin resolusi. Setelah setengah jam berpikir keras, nggak ada satupun yang gua rasa pantas untuk dimasukkan ke dalam kotak resolusi. (Ah, dasar terjemahan keparat, kayanya frase resolution box lebih cocok deh.) Masa yang kepikiran di otak gua adalah,
1. Berhenti kuliah, terus
2. Berhenti buang uang buat beli buku dan novel2 itu sebelum gua kehabisan uang dan mulai berpikir untuk makan tuh buku2, tapi yang paling mending adalah
3. Berhenti merokok, dan yang aneh adalah
4. Tsunami dan juga badai Pamela dan Katrina melanda Jakarta kalo perlu ditambah hujan meteor segala, dan juga
5. Hidup single dan bebas nggak perlu terikat cewe manapun.

Semua resolusi aneh kecuali nomor 3, dan gua sangat skeptis dengan mereka semua. Kenapa? Coba lihat aja...

Berhenti kuliah.
Gua nggak mungkin lulus tahun ini. Mau DO? Boleh aja, asal mau dibunuh Mama. Nggak sampai dimutilasi sih. Ya kalaupun dimutilasi, liat aja positifnya. Paling nggak gua udah bahagia dengan hidup gua selama ini. Dan kalo ternyata hidup gua nggak membahagiakan, gua nggak usah susah2 mikirin hidup lagi kalo udah mati...

Berhenti buang uang buat beli buku.
Hmm, nggak mungkin juga sih. Kecuali Oomunium ngadain Supermurahan#4 dan gua berhasil menemukan buku yang murah-meriah-menarik. Yaaa, memang ngeluarin uang juga sih ujung2nya, tapi kan paling nggak harganya lebih murah dan kepuasannya lebih terasa. Daripada beli di QB kampret yang suka memeras dompet para pecinta buku itu...

Berhenti merokok.
Yeah right, gua udah coba berhenti merokok ratusan kali.

Bencana di Jakarta.
Hohoho, at last! Kapan tuh bakal diadain? Tapi memang susah juga ya mengharapkan hujan meteor di Jakarta...

Hidup single dan nggak perlu terikat cewe manapun
Iya Sayang, walaupun kamu udah beliin aku novel The Last Juror-nya Grisham, kamu nggak baik dan perhatian, jadi single sama aja kan...Tapi kayanya gua bakalan tetap tertarik sama isu tentang komitmen deh. Jadi, ya pacaran-pacaran aja lagi paling. Padahal udah tau pacaran itu cuma ngerepotin, hhh...
Lagian gua masih punya cewe sih, pacaran yang berasa single ini.
Nggak jelas memang, tau deh putusnya kapan... *sigh*

Resolusi udah ada. Tinggal niat yang tak kunjung datang. Memang begitu kan biasanya?
Yah, resolusi taik kucing lah.
Yang penting tahun baru, ya sudah, jalani aja. Mana tanggal 3 Januari gua ada ujian pula. Sehari sebelumnya gua harus ngumpulin paper yang baru dikerjain 30% saja, yang berarti waktu ngerjain tinggal 2 hari.
Okay, tampaknya gua akan memilih untuk mengerjakan paper buat tanggal 2 itu aja deh di malam tahun baruan yang ceria ini.
Hmmm...
Nggak ah, gua mau tidur aja.

Tapi tadi mantan gua ngajak berjalan-jalan lengkap dengan skuad teman Smu. Kayanya abis itu dia bakal ngajak ke villa di Lembang.
Wah, gua nggak mau mabok malam ini sih, tapi kalo minum2 aja mau deh. Semoga gua nggak kebanyakan minum sampai mabok. Benci aja sama efek hangover pagi-paginya.
Tapi sekali-sekali kayanya nggak apa-apa juga ya. Apa-apa nggak sih?

Okay, so here am I, now, in Jakarta. It is the worst town, in my sarcastically opinion, I've ever visited (despite of the architecture). I HATE this city. It never has a clear blue sky. When you look above, all you can see is the gray-cloudy sky. Like yesterday, I thought it would be raining because it so cloudy. But not a single rain drops. So, it must be the pollution, smoke from the cars. And then, it's hot in here, makes you never want to live without the air conditioner.

Anyway, I came here to release the stress I had in Bandung. All the pressure is troubling me. Like you've read before in my recent thoughts, feeling manically depressed combine with the absence of faith and confrontation with despair make me feeling mentally ill.

But when I arrived at Jakarta, I didn't have anything better to do besides lounge myself reading a book at my grandpa's house. I wanted to go somewhere, but Jakarta doesn't have interesting places besides the shopping mall. What else? Monas? Dufan? TMII? It must have been so crowded, it's a holiday. I never like crowding much; it tends to make me feel dizzy. I don't have a crowding phobia, if you ask me, I just don't like spend my time on such dense places.

So I called my friends to accompany me going somewhere. We met at Citos, another shopping mall nearby. Wait, maybe it's not a shopping mall, it's an eating mall. It's so full of restaurants and cafes, I don't know why.

They late half an hour; she should be there at thirty past ten. I should be mad; I don't like unpunctual people, it wasting my time. But it's holiday anyway, so why one should mad about time wasting?

Later, I have an idea to go on a book hunt so we went to QB book store at Pondok Indah. Oh, I missed that place. I once go there, and wow, take a look at those books; I could die happily reading books in there, despite of the prices of the books itself. Unfortunately, almost all of the books cost hundred thousands of rupiahs... *sigh*

I tried to look for all the Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess but there was none of it. I looked for Salinger's and Saint-Exuperry's book, but I shouldn't mention it here anyway because the price made me petrified. I have the money, but I think I'm going to spend it on some better goodies with lower price...

I went to QB at Kemang too the next day, but the result is the same. So I just buy a book, Ellipsis by Laksmi Pamuntjak. It's a compilation of her poems, in English. And I found that I have new preference of buying books now: written in English. Why so? I don't know. Maybe because of this blog, since when I tried to write it in English and be consistent on it.

The book hunt didn't go as much as I expected, I just bought a book. I needed to find a place with some lower price on the books. So I ask my friend, Upi, about Aksara book store she used to go to.

Who knows it deals with a better price? The name is Aksara, in Kemang, but I don't know the exact place it is. She told me it's beside the Newscafé. But I went there and saw nothing indicates that there's a book store nearby. So, another day of book hunt passed by and I'm quite disappointed on the result, but I hope my next bookhunt will be better.

despair: (N) the complete loss or absence of hope; (V) lose or be without hope.

"What can people do when they meet despair?"*

It's raining outside. It has been raining for the last few days. I move myself to the window. Hmm, the weather is going colder. I stand there, watching everything happens outside from inside my room. I need a distraction. I need to think about something else.

I lay my head on the big window glass. It's cold, my breath is making hazes on the window glass.
Don't you know how fragile I could be?

Everything's so blurry outside. How can I think about anything? The only sound I hear is the raindrops, it just keeps falling to the ground. So let' talk about the rain. Oh, how I love the smell of the ground after the rain has just already gone. Or how I love playing outside under the rain, looking for rainbows when I was child.
I keep getting thoughts into my mind. But I can't. My lips are trembling. My hands are trembling as well too. One of them still holds my cell phone. It shows words, words from you...
...I just stop, I stop loving you...

I read it once again. It still looks the same. It doesn't even change a little word like I hope it would: I stop loving him... But of course, it is my imagination. Because nothing changes.

That moment, a tear drops to the screen of my cell phone. It surprises me: am I crying? Another tear drops, and I just can't stop it. They just come out somewhere from inside your eyes. Hey you, Homunculus inside of me, what are you trying to do? Forcing me to cry again??

I almost forget this sensation, the time when you feel like life is so cruel because a very bad bad thing happens to you and there is nothing you can do to change it. You pray to God to change it, but He always pretends that He doesn't listen, so nothing happens. And then, all you can do is cry.
I'm thanking you for this emotional feeling, feeling of being hurt because of losing someone.

The same feeling when I lost my sister. She died painfully besides me on a car crash. It was raining too back then. The streets were slippery. Our car crashed. I, sat on the driver's seat, was a little unconscious that night. I just saw her indistinct image sat there without making any single move.

That moment, a tear drops on my bloody face. I was terrified with the thoughts of losing her. And suddenly, all the tears just fell out from my eyes. I cried heavily. I didn't stop crying when I was sitting in the corridor with the bandages wrapped on my head, waiting for my parents with my brothers to come. I still cry at her funeral. It was raining too back then. She was fourteen when she died, she should have been eighteen this month.
It was the time when I felt so bad, and I pray hard to God to bring her to life again. But God always pretending not to listen, He did do nothing.

Since then, I never want to drive a car again. Sometimes, my body's trembling hardly enough even I can't stop it when I sit on the driver's seat.
Since then, I never cry again. It useless I think, nothing happens although you will feel better.

But now, you give me the same old melancholy sensation. It doesn't embarrassing really for me to cry for you. Sometimes people can't act strong anymore. They just need themselves to unleash their emotions. So they cry. So I cry.

And if you feel like you've done something really bad and awfully terrible, and you're sorry for it, and there's nothing you could do to change it, just go crying and you'll feel better.
Well, at least I think you will..




* quote is taken from the 20th Century Boy comic. I forget the exact edition, but I think it's on volume 14.

I went to Jakarta to release all of the stress I've got in Bandung. It quite work actually, and I'm afraid I was quite happy here and dont want to go back to Bandung as well.
Oh well, I'll think about it later.
I'm gonna hunt myself a book at QB and Aksara!

I almost forget to say,
MERRY CHRISTMAST,
everyone!

It was Tuesday afternoon and I didn't have anything better to do at college, so I went home early that afternoon. It felt a little bit weird for me to see the road with fully loaded with cars on my way back home. I usually went home at night, when the roads were empty and there weren't so many cars. When I got home, I took a bath and then decided to just laying on my bed and reading something.

I was reading The Little Prince* when my brother asked me to accompany him watching The Chronicle of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe** at the cinema nearby our house.

Brother : Have Narnia been played on theater?
Me : Yep, since last Thursday...
Brother : Is there any in BSM theater?
Me : (keep reading) ...two studios.
Brother : Studio 1?
Me : Nope. It's Studio 3 and 4, I think.
(short silence)
Brother : What time?
Me : (looking at the clock) ...6.15 pm, and the next one played one an hour later...
Brother : Great, still have a lot time to catch. Wanna go?

Hmm, I don't have anything better to do that afternoon besides reading books...

Me : (stop reading, thinking) Wanna buy me a ticket? ***
Brother : Fine with me.
Me : (get up from the bed) It's fine with me too then...

So off we go to BSM to watch The Narnia movie at the theater.

It felt weird going there with him. I seldom go with him, almost never actually. Well, he's 6 years older than me. Plus, he is a serious type person, unlike me. And mature too. He's cool in some kind of way. He even never speaks about woman; it's not in his priority. He's not homosexual, definitely. He just doesn't talk about woman.
Woman tends to make you feel dizzy, he said, so why talk about them?

The interesting thing is, on that day I realized that we're look alike****. With an exceptional on the hair; mine is a little bit pollen while his is short-spikey. We also have the same eyes like my mother's. Our eye cornea is a little bit red, because it has the nerve system near the surface of the cornea, which makes our eyes sensitive with sunlight. My mother never went out without her black sunglasses. Sometimes, when I tried to look straight to the sun on a bright sunny day for just a moment, I felt like I was going to faint.

After we got there, we went to the theater on the third floor. The theater wasn't crowded at all like we expected. There's even not any queue in front of the ticket box. So I browse the movie poster display and look for the coming soon while my brother buying the ticket. And I saw King Kong's***** big poster. It had a picture of a woman in the middle, a-some-kind-of T-Rex on the left, and the King Kong on the right. Then my brother talked from my back,

Interesting isn't it? I want to watch it later when I'm already back to Jakarta again, maybe at Grande******...

Grande, huh? Hmm, maybe it IS a good place to watch movie like this.

I asked him,
...there's a T-Rex in the King Kong movie?
Yes, there is, as you can see on the poster. It's an primitive island.
...oh, I see. I thought it's just about a big King Kong ran away from a zoo and kidnapped a beautiful pedestrian passing by and take him to the top of a skyscraper...

Anyway, the studio 3 doors was opened and we went in to watch the movie.
What do I think about the movie?
It's not as good as I think. The film couldn't meet my expectation. I think they're miscast the player, like Santa (he was really phony), Beaver (a beaver with a lousy Irish accent? I think it's so uncool), and the worst is: the voice of Aslan. His voice's like narrator in a child's movie. It didn't even sound like he's the greatest king of Narnia.
Or maybe I just put up my expectations highly because I've watched The Lord of The Rings Trilogy and Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire******* first? So I expect it would be very cool like that?

Not really, the film's not that good anyway. But I enjoyed spending time with my brother. Maybe I should do it regularly.


But now he had already gone back to Jakarta.
So what should I do?
Hmm... how about read the Little Prince again?
Yeah, sound's good. I'll finish it once again, it is a nice book anyway...







Footnotes:
* One of my favorite books, written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943).
** Visual adaptation from the 2nd book of the chronicle, directed by Andrew Adamson who was also the director of Shrek and Shrek2.
*** Hey, don't think of me badly, I really didn't have money back then.
**** Of course, you silly, it's your brother...
***** Remake of the old King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of The Rings Trilogy)
****** One ticket at Grande's theater equals two tickets on BSM's. The quality is almost the same.
******* The best Harry Potter movie, the previous third was terrible. They just thought about adaptating Harry Potter's novel on the previous third, but didn't think about MAKING a very cool movie.

When I watched Kramer vs. Kramer* last night, I began to think that I hate lawyer. In contradictory, I wanted to be a lawyer since I was little.
It's all because of John Grisham. I read his novels a lot, and since that time I think about how cool the lawyer is. Lawyer is the hero**, he is the one who prove the innocent remain guiltless. Without considering the money people try to buy him, he still helps the poor and the clean people from the bad world.

Lawyer is just the perfect guy, isn't it?

But now I realize, it isn't. Maybe I was too naive back then, or maybe the world is getting crueler than ever. All I see now, lawyers don't help innocent people: they just help people to look innocent. My childhood dreams are perished. They're liars***. Even guilty people become innocent too. They don't uncover the truth. They expose the good thing, which is true, about the guilty people - their client - but they didn't even say any little tiny bit words about the bad thing from the guilty people. The worse, they can make another innocent people become the suspect.

I don't like that. I don't like when Margareth (Merryl Streep) and Ted (Dustin Hoffman) were arguing about the right to raise their son Billy, since they were separated, that lawyer, who were hired by Margareth forced Ted to lie.
Well, come to think of it, it's not lying. It just admitting something that didn't have any relationship with the matters, but it just makes you looks like you're such a bad personality people, so you're the guilty one.

The lawyer asked Ted,
Had you ever go home when you're working and it makes you passed the deadline of your work?
And then Ted said,
But my son was sick! He's got a 140 degree temperature!

But the only thing that matters to the lawyer is that Ted went home during his work and then passed the deadline of his work, so that make him looks like irresponsible person. So he couldn't raise his son.
But he came home because he love his son, doesn't he?
Even later when Margareth won, his son doesn't want to leave Ted. The father and the son loved each other, so why they separate them?****

The lawyer couldn't see this, right? He just thought about the money Margareth would give him if he won the court for Margareth.
Yes, it's all about the money. When Ted Kramer told his lawyer about getting Billy back from Margareth, it would cost him $15,000 if he wins.

Like Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), he couldn't afford a lawyer to get Lucy (Dakota Fanning) back*****. The state took him because Sam's retarded so he couldn't raise Lucy. But fortunately for him, Rita Harisson (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a good lawyer (not like the one I've told you before) who give him a pro bono****** thing.
But what?
Shit happens. They're still on the losing side either. I mean, why we should separate a father and a child who love him?
Isn't love is all you need?

Poor Ted and Sam, it's a really cruel cruel world.
They don't even care about love anymore.






Footnotes:
* Won 5 Oscar nomination in 1979
** When I was 5, I consider Superman wasn't a hero, he just a silly man wears a silly red underwear
*** Jim Carrey's Liar Liar
****
Billy Kramer: Who's gonna read me my bedtime stories?
Ted Kramer: Mommy will.
Billy Kramer: You're not gonna kiss me good night anymore, are you, Dad?
Ted Kramer: No, I won't be able to do that. But, you know, I get to visit. It's gonna be ok, really.
Billy Kramer: [crying] If I don't like it, can I come home?
Ted Kramer: What do you mean if you don't like it? You're gonna have a great time with Mommy. Really. She loves you so much.
Billy Kramer: Dad? Don't forget, once, if you can just call me up, okay?
Ted Kramer: We're gonna be okay. Come on, let's go get some ice cream.
***** I Am Sam, directed by Jessie Nelson. Sean Penn win the best actor on the 2001 Academy Award in this film
****** Free from charge

Lovesick and The Lacuna Inc.

I'm sick. Lovesick. Sick of love. Tired of being in love. So this time I won't talk a single thing about love.

Why?

Like I told you before, I'm sick of this game called love thing. It's giving me headache. Andy Fletcher said, "When you're born a lover, you're born to suffer."* Even an old friend of mine said, if to love is to suffer then one must suffer to love**. So, do you think I must suffer from this lovesick to love?
I tried not to think of it, but it really meddlesome because it always enquiring me.

When you're like this, short time memory lost maybe the perfect solution. I can assure you it won't cost a thing to make you forget that you're in a lovesick situation for the next fifteen minutes. Unless you write something down to make you remember that you're still in that lovesick thing.
But I don't want to get anything like that. I've watched a movie about Leonard Shelby, a man with that kind of symptoms***, and I think it's troublesome. I mean, if you're forgetting something ENTIRELY, it really annoys you. I still want to keep in mind at least the thing I do like to do, such as walking alone just for wasting time, or watching the Fairly Odd Parents**** on the television. I just want to forget something partially, without losing ability to memorize what I like to do. Can I do just like that?

The next thing comes up to my mind is Lacuna Inc. It can remove the memory in your brain and won't give you any side effects or further damage. At least that's what it said on the leaflet. Joel Barish tried it, at least it works*****.
So I open the yellow pages, try to search a phrase that reads Lacuna Inc. Wait a minute, maybe it's Luna Inc? I'll scan them both. Yellow pages always comes in handy in a time like this, it really useful when you want something but don't really have a single clue.
But there's no sign about a incorporation named Lacuna or Luna that can manipulate your memories. There's a dolphin preservation named Luna Corp. But that's not what I'm looking for.

So I try to look for Lacuna and Luna phrase on the encyclopedia. Well, it doesn't useful enough, especially when you think that encyclopedia contains any information from all around the world. It only talks about Luna, the moon. Without any incorporation phrase followed. And when I remember the moon, I remember love, because we used to sleep on the grasses watching the moon.

But I don't want to talk a thing about love now. Because when I talk about love, I remember that love and I talked about the stars too, and the beautifulness it reflected in both of our eyes. And I held her hand, kissed her forehead gently, and we just slept there until the sun rose and woke us up...

Hey, enough talking about love! Do I have to repeat my words that I'm in a lovesick situation? So let's talk about anything else or I'm starting to puke.

I still try to think, think about something to removing this lovesick. Or at least something that can make me not to think of it for now. But thirty minutes passed by without any suggestion came to my mind.

How can I make myself not to think about anything??

Oh well, I think I'll just get some sleep then. But I can't think in my sleep, so I still can't find a way to make me not to think about something that can make me stop thinking about the lovesick for a moment now.

Hmmm... I'll go with the sleep thing for now.
I'll think about something when I wake up tomorrow.





Footnote:
* Goodnight Lovers, by Depeche Mode
** Just read the story at
http://budibadabadu.blogspot.com/2005/11/film-akhir-pekan.html
*** Memento, directed by Christoper Nolan. What a cool film!
**** I REALLY want a fairy parents like Cosmo and Wanda...
***** Have you watched Eternal Sunshine and The Spotless Mind?