Kamu tahu, kamu tidak pernah berjanji. Tidak pernah berhutang. Tidak pernah bersepakat.

Tapi setiap tahun, marka di kalendermu terasa seperti janji yang harus dipenuhi. Hutang yang harus dibayar. Kesepakatan yang harus dijalankan.


Mungkin kamu merasa bersalah. Karena itu kamu lingkari tanggal hari ini. Entah untuk berapa tahun sampai rasa bersalahmu habis. Janjimu penuh. Hutangmu terbayar.

Aku setuju; kata maaf terlalu klise dan membuat canggung percakapan. Karena itu di kalenderku sendiri, aku punya tanggal-tanggal yang aku lingkari.

The combination of the cause of phenomena is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. But the impulse to seek causes is innate in the soul of man. And the human intellect, with no inkling of immense variety and complexity of circumstances conditioning a phenomenon, any one of which may be separately conceived of as the cause of it, snatches at the first and most easily understood approximation, and says here is the cause. In historical events, where the actions of men form the subject of observation, the most primitive conception of a cause was the will of the gods, succeeded later on by the will of those men who stand in the historical foreground—the heroes of history. But one had but to look below the surface of any historical event, to look, that is, into the movement of the whole mass of men taking part in that event, to be convinced that the will of the hero of history, so far from controlling the actions of the multitude, is continually controlled by them. It may be thought that it is a matter of no importance whether historical events are interpreted in one way or in another. But between the man who says that the peoples of the West marched into the East, because Napoleon willed they should do so, and the man who says that that movement came to pass because it was bound to come to pass, there exists the same difference as between the men who maintained that the earth was stationary and the planets revolved about it, and the men who said that they did not know what holds the earth in its place, but they did know that there were laws controlling its motions and the motions of the other planets. Causes of historical events—there are not and cannot be, save the one cause of all causes. But there are laws controlling these events; laws partly unknown, partly accessible to us. The discovery of these laws is only possible when we entirely give up looking for a cause in the will of one man, just as the discovery of the laws of the motions of the planets has only become possible since men have given up the conception of the earth being stationary.

There was a saying I heard once that goes more or less like this: "In a relationship between A, B, and C, if A dies, B loses not only A, but parts of C that only A can bring out."

I don't know much about losing, but this much I know: human beings are not numbers. Our dynamics is not a constant, a given. You subtract one out of five, you do not necessarily get four. There's a good chance you'll end up with zero.




And if you think you're prepared to lose one, ask yourself if you're really ready to end up with none. Because when it comes to people, sometimes that's just how the math works.

I must not be the only person who has this irrational fondness of certain words, truly by the virtue of how they sound and the way they roll off your tongue. To begin with, I really like rhyming phrases, for example: hustle and bustle, hither and thither. I love words like ease, cease or seize, ones of very few single-syllabled words you don't rush into - you take time to go through the vowels, not merely leap on the word in hurry to arrive to the next word. I like through because of the 'th'; the intricate way to produce the sound, teasing your tongue just slightly between your teeth, exhaling some air, and the sound it produces has an airy, feather-light quality to it. I like words that have the tricky 'double-s' endings like assists or consists because it's really tricky to pronounce; the 's' kind of stops briefly, but then you pronounce another 's' again just as briefly. It's hard to pronounce it correctly, but when done right it sounds beautiful.

This is also the reason why I tend to pick the word perhaps over maybe, or probably, or any other words with equivalent meanings. Because perhaps, that is how I always imagine how hopes, chances, and promises will take form in sound - it starts with p, the dead, close-mouthed consonant, then you go through its two vowels separated by the tricky r and the airy h, and right when you thought the word would end the same way it started, with the same dead, close-mouthed consonant, it gives you the subtle hissing, perhaps slightly buzzing, s, and just like hopes, chances, and promises, it doesn't leave you right away, it lingers.

In every case of losses there is left a sort of hanging thought. Of what it is, it's hard to say; perhaps of missed chances, of wrong turns, of closed doors, of cold shoulders. Of all these things my thought is intruded: one scene after another like a bad slideshow on loop, its brightness obscene against the pitch-black of its surrounding.

For what it's called - a hanging thought - I can find no way escaping. Turn my head and it's in my peripheral vision. Close my eyes and the colours' still printed in my vision. And contrary to the expectation, never will I get used to the condition.

It is bitter, and it is painful, and it is okay. Losses are meant to feel bitter - and the ensuing thoughts, those hanging thoughts, they are meant to be intrusively painful. But it's okay, you know? It never feels more okay. It is even liberating, to some extent. And despite all the thoughts of missed chances, of wrong turns, of closed doors, of cold shoulders, I get this weird feeling of knowing that this loss, it is right. And I am right.

There certainly won't be a nice dream, but I think I can sleep well tonight.

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

- Paul Goodman

Oh ya, bulan kemarin ponsel saya hilang, dan saya belajar banyak tentang penerimaan dan keikhlasan. Berapa kali kemarin saya selalu menyangkal, "Gak hilang kok, cuma ketinggalan, gak ketemu aja, gak mungkin diambil orang" saat ditanya perihal kehilangan. Setelah beberapa lama waktu berlalu saya sadar, keikhlasan tidak mungkin diraih saat pertanyaan selalu dijawab dengan sangkalan. Memang dia hilang, begitu saja. Sulit mengatakannya dengan datar dan menahan keinginan menambahkan sangkalan-sangkalan. Tapi untuk menerima, kata-kata itu harus diucapkan. Memang dia hilang, begitu saja.

Untuk sebuah pergantian tahun yang ditunggu dengan ekspektasi, disambut dengan selebrasi, dan terlalu banyak disertai resolusi, momen itu anehnya terasa biasa saja.

Tahun baru yang kemarin saya rayakan bersama teman, berjalannya seperti ini: pukul dua puluh mulai menyalakan arang, pukul dua puluh satu kami makan, pukul dua puluh dua bersantai di sofa dan bermain entah kartu atau tebak-tebakan, pukul dua puluh tiga mengobrol sambil terus melihat jam. Kemudian saat menit menunjukkan angka lima puluh kami keluar ke dak beton melihat langit dan menyulut kembang api. Tiba-tiba di tengah sulutan dan ledakan ini, tahun berganti. Begitu saja.

Sebagai momen, kita selalu ciptakan tahun baru sebagai sesuatu yang besar. Tapi jalannya waktu tidak memberikan keistimewaan yang sama. Tidak ada menit yang tiba-tiba panjangnya digandakan, atau detik yang tiba-tiba berjalan lambat. Ternyata momen yang ditunggu dengan ekspektasi itu berjalannya biasa saja.

Doa dan pengharapan untuk seseorang, entah untuk yang terkasih dan tersayang atau sebagai keharusan sosial, punya kedalaman dan makna yang berbeda-beda.
Beberapa doa disampaikan dengan tergesa, mengucapkan lirik atau mengutip frasa, tidak begitu dipikirkan.
Beberapa doa maknanya agak lebih dalam; seluruh kata yang disampaikan benar dimaknakan, dan kata semoga punya urgensi yang lebih dalam.
Segelintir doa maknanya melebihi kata yang diucapkan; kedalamannya tidak bisa dijabarkan.

Saya berdoa untuk seseorang; saat itu rasanya seperti doa tersebut disampaikan untuk kebaikan orang tersebut.
Tapi saat doa yang tahun sebelumnya diucapkan dengan sekenanya (atau mungkin tidak sama sekali) lalu tahun ini diucapkan dengan sungguh-sungguh, sepertinya saya tidak bisa mengklaim doa tersebut disampaikan untuk kebaikannya.
Doa itu untuk saya, dan alasan saya berdoa adalah egois, seperti alasan kita semua berdoa, sesungguhnya.
Kita sungguh-sungguh mendoakan seseorang yang kebahagiannya mempengaruhi kebahagiaan kita. Karena itu beberapa doa diucapkan tergesa, beberapa dimaknakan, dan beberapa sangat dalam.

"Semoga orang yang kebahagiaan hidupnya menyenangkan saya, selalu dalam kondisi yang baik"

During my last holiday trip I spared a time seeing a recital of piano, cello, and shakuhachi.

The shakuhachi player played this solo shakuhachi piece. It was titled Koku (literally translates as "Empty Sky").

He talked about it a bit before he played the piece. He talked about the character "Ko" that made up the title "Koku" and what it meant. He talked about a Stephen Hawking episode about Big Bang and about the non-existence of universe before the big bang, and how difficult it is to grasp the concept of what predates the big bang; to understand the nihilism, the absence of time, the absence of being. He said that the character "Ko", though can be literally translated as "empty", has a meaning that to him is as difficult to grasp as the "pre-big bang" concept.

He said he was going to play the piece, that it would be ten minutes long, and he advised us to not pay attention to the piece and instead let our minds wander. He said to let the music fade into the background, that some music is meant to be enjoyed that way, and it was one of them.

Right before he blew the shakuhachi he told us, "Okay, I'll see you in ten minutes."


I don't know if I would've liked the piece as much as I did, had it not been preceded by such a talk. What I know is that the piece was one I enjoyed the most, and one that struck me the most, and the one that I was talking about when I wrote in my journal the moment I went home.