17 April 2020

laurie

we exchanged glances last afternoon
under the shade of a big tree
by the nearby store

"let me come with you," he seduced, whispering
he grabbed me by the hand,
so tightly

i told him i fell in love,
with a fictional character
"laurie," i said the fictional name
"curly brown hair, ocean eyes, freckles,
"never been in my life met a boy but all black-eyed," i announced
"i'm not black-eyed," he proudly claimed
i agreed

a moment later,
i get him a white little coffin,
for him to stay,
for me watch him alive,
and die.

13 April 2020

Anita mau minum kopi


Anita tidak memulai ceritanya dengan terbangun di pagi hari, karena nyatanya semalam ia tidak tidur dan sekarang sudah siang. Anita ingin gosok gigi dan cuci kaki, akan tetapi ia selalu diajarkan untuk gosok gigi dan cuci kaki sebelum tidur. Sekarang, Anita sedang tidak ingin tidur, karena ia baru saja bangun tidur. Anita pun tidak jadi gosok gigi dan cuci kaki. Alih-alih, ia pergi ke dapur, ingin membuat kopi.

Anita ingat bahwa kopinya sudah hampir habis, tapi belum benar-benar habis. Kira-kira masih bisa untuk membuat satu cangkir lagi. Namun, malang nasib Anita, wadah tempat ia menyimpan kopi rupanya sudah kosong melompong, seperti empat gigi seri Rosyid, adik sepupu Anita, usia lima tahun yang tidak pernah diajarkan ibunya untuk gosok gigi. Tidak seperti Anita yang sejak baru lahir, sejak badannya masih merah mengkerut dari dalam rahim, sejak sebelum ada gigi muncul, sampai gigi susunya satu per satu tumbuh, lalu satu per satu tanggal berganti gigi permanen, Ayah dan Ibunya tidak pernah alpa mengingatkannya untuk menggosok gigi. 

Anita bergidik kalau ingat bagaimana dulu orang tuanya mengingatkan, lebih tepatnya memaksa, memaksa Anita untuk ke kamar mandi dan membuka mulut. Anita punya adik perempuan yang saat itu kepalanya bulat seperti buah kelapa dan rambutnya mencuat-cuat seperti sabut kelapa, namanya Fantasia. Anita sendiri yang memberi nama, karena saat itu ia ingin sekali pergi bermain ke Fantasia. Fantasia menangis nyaring sekali di ambang pintu, menonton penderitaan kakaknya, yang sebentar lagi juga akan menjadi penderitaannya. Anita selalu menghitung detik demi detik giginya yang mungil digosok dengan pasta rasa stroberi. Anita tidak pernah suka wangi stroberi, saat teman-teman Anita di taman kanak-kanak selalu beli susu dan camilan yang rasa stroberi, ia lebih suka minum air putih yang kemana-mana dibawanya dalam botol plastik berbentuk telepon genggam kuning berantena merah. Telepon genggam itu sering digunakan Anita untuk menelepon Fantasia yang sering membuntut di belakangnya. 

Kabinet di atas kompor hanya menyimpan setoples teh dan gula. Ada garam, lada hitam, lada putih, ketumbar bubuk, bawang putih bubuk, dan penyedap rasa berjejer-jejer, tetapi Anita tidak bisa membuat kopi dengan bahan-bahan itu. Anita terheran-heran, karena dari empat anggota keluarga yang tinggal di rumah ini, hanya Anita yang suka minum kopi. Anita mendengar suara nyaring televisi dari ruang tengah, Ibu menyemprot pewangi ke baju yang disetrikanya, Bapak rebahan sambil menggali lubang hidungnya, Fantasia berfantasi dengan buku bacaannya, tidak satu pun dari bertiga itu yang sedang minum kopi. 

Kata orang di televisi, semua orang di seluruh dunia sedang tidak boleh keluar rumah. Ada virus dimana-mana, ada wabah yang bisa membunuh anak-anak, orang muda, dan orang tua. Waspada. Harus sering cuci tangan. Dilarang batuk dan bersin sembarangan. Gara-gara kata orang di televisi itu, sudah tiga minggu ini Anita tidak keluar rumah. Sendi-sendinya mulai kaku, otot-ototnya mulai melembek, lambungnya meronta-ronta akibat kebanyakan telur dan kecap. Tidak masalah bagi Anita. Selama ada kopi, Anita senang, tapi tidak hari ini.

“Ada yang minum kopi punya Anita?” seru Anita dari dapur. Ada yang menyahut tidak, ada yang menyuruh cari kopinya dengan benar mana tahu terselip di antara beras dan mi instan, ada yang balik berseru, “diminum Si Korona!” 

Anita mengumpat dan membanting pintu kabinet sampai engselnya rompel. Ia ditegur Ibu, katanya anak gadis tidak boleh mengumpat. Ibu tidak tahu bahwa engsel kabinet favoritnya rompel gara-gara Anita mengumpat. Anita balik menyahut teguran Ibu, ia bilang bahwa: pertama, tidak ada hubungannya antara menjadi gadis dan tidak mengumpat; kedua, mengumpat adalah cara untuk mengekspresikan emosi yang tidak membahayakan siapa pun; dan ketiga, Anita belum sempat memikirkan pembelaan dirinya yang ketiga, karena Fantasia keburu menyela, “tinggal beli ke warung saja, apa susahnya?” 

“Susah! Ada Si Korona!” omel Anita. “Kalau tidak ada yang minum, seharusnya ada di sini. Di toples ini. Tapi ini kemana? Bapak, Ibu, Fanta, tidak ada yang mengaku. Sudah dicari di antara beras, mi instan, sarden, telur, teh, minyak goreng, tidak ada dimana-mana! Makanan kita kan cuma ini-ini saja selama di rumah. 

“Kita juga tidak punya pembantu yang suka minum kopi. Lagian, kita kan tidak punya pembantu. Kalau pun punya, dia juga tidak akan ada di sini saat ini. Dia akan pulang kampung! Pulang seperti orang-orang di televisi itu! Disuruh tidak kemana-mana, malah keluyuran. Dasar bandel! Nanti sakit yang repot siapa? Negara, kan? Nanti kalau Anita keluar beli kopi, pulang-pulang kena Si Korona, yang repot siapa? Ibu, Bapak, Fanta. Semua, kan? Makanya, tolonglah mengaku saja siapa yang minum kopi Anita. 

“Apa perlu Anita cek satu-satu bau mulutnya? Yang bau kopi dan tidak gosok gigi setelah minum kopi adalah pelakunya. Dulu mau gosok gigi juga dipaksa, beli pasta gigi juga dipaksa harus yang stroberi. Oh, Fantasia! Cuma dia yang senang stroberi. Hanya dia! Lihat dia sekarang! Terpaksa baca buku padahal sukanya stroberi. Terpaksa diam di rumah, padahal senang kelayapan. Sekarang sudah sebesar ini, lalu menuduh Si Korona yang ambil kopi. Tidak masuk akal! Kalau benar Si Korona itu yang minum, Anita akan keluar, minta pertanggungjawaban, suruh dia beli kopi baru.”

“Fanta, bantu kakakmu cari kopinya!” perintah Ibu. Setrikaannya masih menggunung meski cairan pewanginya sudah menipis, Bapak masih setengah sadar dengan telunjuk masih menancap di lubang hidung, Fantasia masih pura-pura tidak mendengar sampai Ibu mengulang perintahnya tiga kali. 

Fantasia mendatangi Anita. Ia tiba di dapur dan menemukan sebuah kekacauan: pintu kabinet rompel, pintu kulkas terbuka lebar, bayam, kangkung, wortel, buncis, tahu, tempe, telur, sarden, beras, bumbu dapur, berenang-renang di atas lantai bersama minyak goreng, susu cair, dan air yang mengalir dari bak cuci piring. Anita berada di antaranya, kedua tangannya meraba-raba, membolak-balik, meraih-raih, membuka, menutup. Ia berdiri dan terpeleset, berusaha bangkit dan gagal, lalu mengumpat berkali-kali. Ibu mendengar umpatannya dan ia pun ditegur berkali-kali. 

“Jangan diam saja! Bantu aku berdiri!” Anita mengulurkan tangannya. Tangannya diraih Fantasia, pelan-pelan ia mengangkat tubuhnya. Gagal. Fantasia pun kehilangan pijakan. Mereka tumbang dan basah kuyup. Mereka mencoba lagi dan gagal lagi. Tubuh mereka semakin kuyup. 

Anita terbangun di pagi hari. Bukan, bukan untuk mengawali ceritanya, karena ceritanya sudah berakhir. Ia terbangun dan tidak menemukan kesibukan di ruang tengah, tidak ada kekacauan di dapur, tidak ada tubuh yang kuyup, tidak ada Fantasia yang jatuh bersamanya. Hanya ada secangkir kopi di genggamannya. Hangat. Wangi. Bukan, bukan wangi stroberi. Ini wangi kegemarannya, wangi kopinya yang tadi raib. 

. . .

6 Januari 2020

Do you love him?

I dreamed of having the courage to talk to grandma, asking how she's doing after grandpa left her. As usual, she sat there at her favorite spot: not so close from the TV, so her eyes won't hurt; not so far from the door, so she could see who's coming over; and not too away from her room, so she could come in when it's  time to pray. 

She was silent for a moment. She stared at the door, where grandpa would usually come from: buying her food; fishing from the pond next to my house; repairing the next-door kindergarten's playground; or just going out without letting grandma know. He did many different stuff within a day, but he would come home at the end of the day, bringing  the same typical plastic bags filled with food or with the same dirty-sweaty clothes he would wash himself.

"We had an arranged marriage," she answered, finally. "I was eighteen or nineteen. I had your mother when I was twenty. This house was built without windows. It wasn't here." She pointed at a gigantic wardrobe by the aisle. "This too," she continued, pointing at another cupboard. "Where were you back then?" she chuckled. 

"Do you love him?" Another question that I dreamed of asking her. 

She dazed, as if I spoke in a foreign language that she couldn't understand. Her lips trembled, as if her words were too precious to make it into the air. She burst into tears within a second. 

I stroked her knee gently. 

"Your aunt can have this." Again, it's about the cupboard. "I have some clothes for you, and your sister. And oh.. get my purse. Here.. your allowance." Then she was busy counting her pennies while apologizing for not being able to give me more than a couple thousands.  

I realized I asked a stupid question.

The word 'love' sounds strange for her. She probably never heard of grandpa saying 'I love you'. Saying out loud the word 'love' irritates her, just as how it does to me. 

I kept the pennies she handed me, I said thanks and left her there, at her favorite spot.

19 Juni 2019

Watching Him Work

One new year eve, maybe when I was ten, I stood in silence behind my grandfather. He brought my story book, along with cans of paint and brushes. He opened the book and stopped on a page with picture of a boy and a girl wearing uniform. They walked to school, while waving their hands to their parents.

He took a pencil and started making rough lines on a white wall in front of him. He glanced back and forth between the book and the wall. It took me a while to realize that he was copying the boy and the girl on the book to the wall. I kept on watching him in silence, until I was too sleepy to stay awake and decided to go to bed.  

On the following morning, I looked at the wall and chuckled at it. There’re supposed to be little kids going to kindergarten, but my grandfather messed their faces up. He made them look way older than any five year olds.

They wore uniform with my grandfather’s favorite color: green. They smiled weirdly to their invisible parents. Their tangled fingers were holding colorful balloons.

The balloons say TK NU AL-ANSHAR.

The name of a school he built next door, over thirty years ago.  

On any other nights, I would find him doing another artsy projects for the school. Sometimes he repainted the chairs, sometimes he created hand-written sign boards, and sometimes he re-arranged the classrooms’ layout. When I wasn’t too sleepy, I would join him by watching silently and he would let me. At the following mornings, he would be sleeping and I would be awake, enjoying the master pieces he’s done during the night.

Until now, I still do love watching him work.  

It’s like he never stopped working. 

12 Juni 2019

Grandfather


Three days ago, on the day of the death of my grandfather, I sat still with my cousins in the living room, waiting for our turn to give our last kisses to his flowery-scented body.

My grandmother couldn’t move her feet due to her illness, she remain seated next to his coffin and cried out to him desperately. My youngest aunt burst into tears after her last kiss, my mother hugged her and said it was our turn: the grandchildren.

I moved closer to the shrouded body, kneeled by his side and touched his forehead with the tip of my nose. It was jasmine, rose, reminisce and all lively scents, as it is him who’s breathing out the flowers. I couldn’t think of a prayer for him. I couldn’t think of anything at all.

I was busy feeling his wrinkled skin to mine, inhaling his pheromone with all my strength, while trying so hard to hold back my tears from falling to him. I was being an egoic-head who’s craving for his body. The body that made my existence possible, the body where my blood and vein were rooted.

I went back to my spot, covered my red-face with my hand and let the sorrow take over me. My sisters cried in a hug. My mother was there too, calming them down.

“He’s now in a better place. He’s free of the pain,” she said while stroking their backs.

I joined the hug after a moment of solo-heavy-cry and made the most heartbreaking grief in the world.

5 Juni 2019

I’ve Been Dead for Too Long

After finish reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I become more conscious of my thought. I’m not surprised when I found myself couldn’t stop thinking, because that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for my whole life. That’s also how I identified myself as a human. Noticing that it is just how everyone else’s been doing.

In fact, that way of life has made me a dead meat. I might still look like a real person: be nice to other; set some life goals; and have a hobby, but I haven’t been actually alive. The thing is, my thought has been running my life this whole time. Thanks to the book, recently, whenever I caught my mind wandering, I would shout internally, “come back!” I do come back, but that wouldn’t be for long. Seconds later, I’ll be somewhere else.

I desperately want to arrive at some point in the near-future, where I project myself as a better person with better life. I delete my unrealistic monthly goals and wait for the next month to come, just to set other seemingly-realistic goals. I rewrite my unchecked to-do-lists and convince myself that I’ll do them tomorrow. I wake up every morning and tell myself that it’s going to be a good day.

These doings lie on the same false believe: the now is a stepping stone for the better future. The now becomes a wait for an arbitrary thing called the future.

The clock time surely is a helpful tool for organization. It does give me lessons from the past and hopes for the future, but my life happen now. Once I’m done using the clock time for practical reasons, I should return to the present moment immediately and be truly alive by being in the now.

There is never a time when my life is not now. It has always been that way and it will always be.

I’ve been dead for too long.

Now is the only time to wake up.

Maybe, you are too.

29 Mei 2019

Little Mischief Guys Called Thought and Emotion

There are two things that us human, love the most: Thought and Emotion. 

We love them so much that we let them take control of our lives. We are so into them that not even in a second, we are willing to let them go. We are so full of them that we become them and they become us. We adore them so much that we keep on denying that they bring us pain. We’ve been blindfolded, yet we can’t help but to keep them around, waiting for them to untie the fold.  

Like us, Thought and Emotion have their own favorite: the illusion of time. They like dragging us to the past and the future.

“In the past,” said Thought. “Things were better.”

“In the future,” Emotion takes turn. “We will be happy.”

They are so seductive that it’s almost impossible not to trust their words. Unfortunately, it makes us detached from the present, the only time where we live, the only thing Thought and Emotion dislike. Sometimes, when we claim ourselves as being present, we still do judge and analyze. We bring over our two lovers to the only moment that should’ve been for us to experience. We frame the now in the eye of Thought and Emotion, ignoring the eyes of our own.

This might not be easy, as we’ve been under their control for most of our lifetimes, but this requires one thing only: be a watcher. Watch the now as it is: watch what Thought is doing to our heads, what Emotion is doing with our chests. Head and chest, both are part of our bodies, the most truthful character in this play.

We might be manipulated by Thought and Emotion, but Body will always safe the day. Body gives us physical signs of what Thought and Emotion have done to us. Once we become the watcher, we’ll listen when Body tells us the ache in our muscles, or the pain in our stomachs.

Listening to Body means, we withdraw ourselves from the illusions and bring ourselves back to the present. Thought and Emotion will still be there, but they’ll lose their control over us. We know that those little mischief guys are still inside, but now they’re under our watch. They might still come and go, but they’ll no longer inhabit the life that we own.

*this post was written after reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle