Camaraderie

For all my life,

               I'll wonder why

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She is loving him still after all this time

The day was early, and the sun was already shining bright. 
We had matching white shirt; I know it meant nothing because so did a hundred other people there. But I was glad we did.
You look different. Bigger. Better. Older.
You grew up. And I believe so did I.
That small electricity under my skin when I saw you; it used to be a lot like love, but I guess it's more of an obsession now.
I don't know what to call you, though. An obsession? A past? A stupid mistake? The one that got away? The untouchable? A hopeless dream? The one I will always have feelings for? What?
I know the small details about you; just the way kids do when they think they have a crush on someone.
I know the struggle you're facing, and in some ways we're very similar that way.
But I don't know you. And you don't know me.
In a way, maybe this is the way I've always wanted us to be. 
Perfect strangers.
Because strangers will never hate each other. Because strangers have the appeal to always be the mystery we want to solve, and you can be that for me. A mystery. A case I will never close. The one thing that will keep me going.
You should stop feeling like you're useless. Because you're not. You've been a big part of my life, and you don't even know it. 
Across a park, a stolen glance.
A lifetime of wondering if I'll ever see you again.

The last two lines were inspired by Iain Thomas's I Wrote This For You blog. 

Shakespeare is a Half-God

I can be very personally involved with some fictional books, and Gayle Forman's Just One Day is one of the most remarkable books I've known. It has so many links to my side of life that I've been sharing in this blog; the one that I don't let out every so often. Most of you must have realized how different the me who's writing the whole posts in the blog and the me in real, everyday life. I can say that this book touches the me whose head is in the clouds and sometimes too far from the ground.

The premise alone was exactly the way I'd imagined true romance should started. It was actually my friend's idea when we had this light conversation of a dream romance (with mine being posted previously here). The idea was to travel somewhere in England and meet a striking stranger who happens to be very nice and spontaneous, so much that he asked the girl to get lost somewhere she's never been to. And while they're there, he'd ask her to get even more lost than they already are. It just adds to my pleasure that the guy in this book, Willem, is a carefree Dutch who act in Shakespearian plays, speaks fluent French, and happens to be a well-traveled person who can talk about love just as deep as he talks about his art. Not to mention how it is set mostly in Paris and Amsterdam; the two places I would like call home someday, because they're just that enchanting. And even better: Stratford-upon-Avon, the place Shakespeare would like to call home; and London. And you know how I feel about that city. 

Apart from that very personal experience, what makes me like this book so much is how I could go from disliking the heroine of the story, Allyson, to admiring her since the last quarter of the book. I can see how she, through what made her seem so lost as a person, could actually find who she is and finally deciding her life. I'm pretty sure each one of us had thought, at least for once, to change our vocations. To take a road that we're so wanting to take but didn't, because it's not considered good by people around us. But sometimes the way to know what we shouldn't do is by doing what we're not supposed to do. It may be easier to be said than done, but that alone is a sign that our heroine in the book is a girl with such determination to finally decide for her own life, and I guess in some ways, that's the kind of person we should look up to. 

Human Life Estimation

The Book Thief is the kind of book that gives you a chance to view life from a perspective that's not human's. I learn as much about mankind as I did from David Levithan's Every Day. It's a very well-written book about a German girl during the Nazi Germany era. There's so many books about the holocaust written from the Jewish perspective, so it's certainly a breathe of fresh air to read from a German family's point of view. A German family that's not blindly crazy about Der Führer, that is. Narrated by Death, it's a story about a series of unfortunate events happening to a little girl during the war. Her foster family was so poor; and she seek happiness through stealing books even though books are not edible. It's not so much about how really devious the Nazis were. It's more about how, even in desperate times like 1942 Germany, human are still capable of kindness and good. How even during the authority's threat, one can still exercise their belief in humanity towards fellow humans. How, despite all the teachings by the powerful, wrongful leader, the book's protagonists can still see the Jews as just human. 

Through Zusak's words, I can almost believe that I was there; that I lived in the '40s, have lived to see the two world wars, and was constantly in danger of being blown off by the Allies' attacks. I learn from Death that... Humans are so many things; and even Death, the one thing humans are always worried about, is constantly fascinated of how humans are virtuous and evil, and at the same time, mostly made of water. 

Myth

I feel like men are more romantic than women.  When we get married we marry one girl. Cause we’re resistent the whole way, until we meet one girl and we think: “I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl she’s so great.” But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option or something. I know girls that married they’re like: “Oh he’s got a good job.” I mean, they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.

When we were little, we were told all these fairy tales of how a beautiful, kind and pure girl would fall in love with a handsome, rich prince charming who owns a castle and they will live happily ever after in a faraway land. But not only do happily ever afters don't exist, so is the kind of story they keep telling us as bedtime stories.

In real life, there is only very few people would fall in love with someone's voice the way Phillip fell for Aurora. No one is going to have the kind of love at first sight Marius had with Cosette. And there are so many other beautiful ways about falling in love that movies and fairy tales tried to make us believe, but they're ridiculously impractical to the point of them almost being completely impossible.

Very recently, I had an epiphany. Maybe there's no love. Maybe people get married out of the commitment to build a life, a traditions our ancestors did to sustain human life, and that alone is the reason why there's marriage in this world. Maybe people don't fall in love; they fall in logic or whatever it is that drives them toward someone. Some people like money, fancy cars, bright future, career, social status, or someone's lifestyle... And maybe they are the things that make marriages more sustainable. Because only very few people fall in love with the right person. But the definition of right will always change to suit someone's perception of life. So I guess it's something other than love that takes people to get married.

My view in marriage is somewhat very... modern, I suppose? That's what Before Midnight say anyway. I believe that every couples have an expiration, because love does. Only very, very few people found someone that they can fall in love with every day for the rest of their lives. And those who didn't, well... They live out of commitments. Marriage is a vow people say in the name of God and in front of God, and therefore it is a very sacred institution that should never be broken with words such as, "I fall out of love with him."

By that definition, I think that maybe we marry someone who has the same vision with us; the same commitment, i.e. someone whose actions and missions are tolerable and in harmony with ours, and whom we will never run out of patience with. I grew up with the belief that love isn't the holy grail of relationships; it's commitment. Someone said to me a few years ago something the 18-year-old me had never thought of: "Commitment is a very big thing, you know? You graduate school, you take a decent job, you marry someone you like, and that's what you're gonna end up with forever. A job that you must do every day; the same person you're gonna wake up to every morning for the rest of your life; the same house you're gonna go home to every day; children you have to feed and educate and has the needs you have to fulfill... It's a grand job, you know? And you have to do it every single day of your life. You have no other choice. That is a commitment. You think commitment is easy?"

I know, it's such a morose essay and my last post before this one is an optimistic quote to remind us all that sometimes, life does imitate Disney movies. And while it is your life to live it any way you want to, with the kind of buoyancy my last post gave you, or the grimy truth I just told you, I want you to always keep in mind that after all... It's your life. No one has the same story. Just because you have a good life doesn't mean someone else does, and vice versa. So maybe the best that we can do is still to believe that if we are good, we deserve good things too. And if they're not here yet, maybe the package just come in late. 

Optimism Could Work Sometimes

Sometimes you have to look at the facts and experiences, and realize that sometimes, true love is fate, sometimes its completely Disney choreographed, and sometimes it is the result of intense restraint to keep things in a state of bliss because indifference is its killer. 

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A Thought List

1. Strangers are weird. Most of the time they teach you without talking, that the society is shit and no one seems to be up to fix it. Sometimes they make the best conversations I could ever remember, even without knowing their names. And sometimes they could do the simple things they thought mean nothing, when in fact it touches the very soul of someone who's never seen it done with such voluntary notions. Some of them have the power to make you think, and the power to remind you that no matter how ugly the real world is, there is still some kindness and some faith worth investing in people. Well, some people, maybe. I'm not saying we're allowed to be naive, no. I'm saying that it's okay to let our guards down sometimes. It's okay to let people talk to you and trust them a little bit; a trust that they won't rob you and left you somewhere in the highway. Because life without trust is so uncomfortable, you know? Life without trust keeps you in constant worry, never-ending restlessness and a mind filled with so many "what if?" "why?" "how?" and other questions you shouldn't punish yourself with. After all, there wouldn't be a Before Sunrise trilogy if Richard Linklater hadn't talked to a mesmerizing stranger on his way to Philadelphia some decades ago. 

2. We need to stop playing God. Seriously. I mean, the only way it's okay for us to play God is by writing fiction; that way we can do whatever we want with it. Literally whatever. Seriously, stop playing God. God doesn't play mortals either. He could if He wanted to, but can you imagine what would happen if He does?

3. I can never be with someone who doesn't like The Beatles. There, I've even settled for like. I refuse to admit that I know someone who doesn't even know who John Lennon is, or what he looked like. 

4. Jodoh has an expiration date. I'm not talking in the context of soul mate, because who even has the right to talk about it, really? Do we have the right to talk about what we will never know until we take our last breath in this world? But I'm talking about the jodoh terminology Indonesian people use to say to people or thing that are "meant to be". I don't know if you'd understand, but they do. You know, how you get to know people, become friends or lovers with them, and so on? It's because you're meant to be. And when things end, it's not because you weren't meant to be; it's merely because you've come to the expiration date that's always there. I don't know if it's because your star crossed with them but then they keep revolving in a different harmony with you, because for me, the simplest explanation would be an expiration date. Heck, even the old couples who've been together for 70 years have it too. It's just different for everybody. When things fail, instead of saying how you're not meant to be, our definition of it should be rendered into, "Ya memang cuma segini aja jodohnya." 

5. Why point #4? Because God never made a mistake. When He sent someone to come into our lives, He'd know what they'd become to us. A blessing, or a lesson. Sometimes a blessing, then a lesson. But thankfully, it's usually the other way around.

6. I've been mentioning God in this post is not because I just recently found God and become religious etc. I don't really have an answer to this, because I was never necessarily religious in any context. I usually claim myself as being spiritual, while at the same time always coming back to the same religion. One thing I know for sure is that it's always nice to have God. Just like trust and faith aforementioned in point #1, knowing that there is God would make life seems to be more comfortable. And easier.

7. Don't wear your heart on your sleeves. I used to encourage some people to do it, and now they do it in the most annoying way possible. What's too much is never good. Even too much love is gonna kill you. Alright, do it. Wear your heart on your sleeves. But always remember to leave something for you. Don't let people know everything. Only very few people really care. Others are just curious. True story.

8. Feminism is an -ism that even most women don't want to believe in. It used to be a heroic movement for women because it's a man's man's world after all. But feminism is now more like a doctrine men made to make fun of the women and make women hate themselves. I'm not a feminist. I believe in a lot of women's rights and women emancipation and blah blah, but women have to admit that they don't always demand gender equality. Because it's always nice to, once in a while, be treated the way women should be treated. Dare any lady say no about this?

9. Not knowing is always a gift. And bravery is always a rewarding act. 

Fantasy Girl

Everyone's got one. It's a tale as old as time, and everyone's got one.

We will always have each other's backs. We will always want to talk to each other after a rough day. We will always want to make each other laugh, and stop each other from weeping. We will always want to fight the bad guys who tend to ruin our days. We will always want to see each other in each of our own big days. We will always love each other. We'll always be in the same team. And when something's going on, we'd like to tell each other about it. We wish we could be there to witness it together. And thought that had we been there at the same time, it could be more awesome. Like nothing's cool without you and me.

Everyone's got that one person. Everyone's got the Robin to their Ted, and a Ted to their Robin. But just like them, it really doesn't mean that we should be together.

We will always have something that brought us together, a force though invisible but still very hard to be ignored. But we were not planted from the same seed. We are not rooted to the same core. We got entangled in so many ways, but when it comes to the basics, we're just never the same person. We will always want different things. Things that are very principal; almost non-negotiable, and if they were, we would be less of the person we'd fallen in love with. What we want is never to share a life together. It's always more about sharing two lives together, and so that means we just shouldn't live in the same life. Because we might be great at crossing paths; but it's just impossible for us to walk on the same path together. We might be great for short-term visions, but our long-terms don't have a future.

So, you're my Ted. The always amorous, sweet, classic melancholic Ted. And, I can always be your Robin; like the bird robin, I will always wanna fly without baggages. Maybe someday I would like to retire flying and just watching the others bird fly from the land, but even when that day comes, I won't be with you. We probably will still talk and say how we miss each other every day. But you and I, were never built to be in the same life together.

Playing For Keeps

The first thing you need to know about me is that I don't need to be kept by someone who would only keep me to make them feel safe. I don't want to be held captive from the big, wide, world out there. I'm learning to give someone a second chance, but not to the ones who are most likely to blew it the way they blew out their birthday candles; way too willingly happy. So, don't keep me. I'm wonderfully happy on my own and you should try it too. It's much more liberating and honestly, when your happiness doesn't depend on anybody else, it's probably the best thing in the world. I'm not saying you shouldn't come back, you just... shouldn't keep me. For whatever reason you may have. I'm not a keeper for you, and I know now that I'm better off without you. But when are you gonna learn about this?

I'm not

I'm not something that you can resort to. I'm not a consolation prize. I'm not a stop along the way. I'm not the mac-and-cheese your mom made you after a terrible nightmare. I'm not the last minute booty call you take on a cold night. And I'm not even the best friend you can call up at 2 AM because somehow you feel empty and upset.

I cannot be just one of the choices you have; not even if I'm on top of the list.