Category: This Person

She's a ghost within
Drawn with steps, breaths and thoughts.
Colouring a life--

a ghost within reminding me everyday that no one is perfect

a self portrait of 50% or maybe 0% or maybe 100% each day I touch it

looking like a ghost of my own dead

😁

Those In

How can they be
Part of me?
Emerging
Merging
Like a history.
Who am I? Or who am I supposed to be?
Are those in possibly?
Or none?
Let it be.

Semar

his wisdom & simplicity — my #1 wayang kulit

Anggraeni

my #1 female wayang, a nobody in the wayang box, a loyal wife to a loyal husband — a humble abode for a humble soul

Anoman

he is a symbol of sheer devotion & vitality — what’s more do you want in life?

Larasati

an intelligent woman married to a superior man — still she is willing to be a humble background although she is allegedly much more skilful than her well-known husband, Arjuna

Sri Kresna

I used to misunderstand about his super wised-up character until finding him a mastermind of the biggest battle of a family — The Bharatayudha

no more Sri Kresna as my super wayang

Arjuna

I used to think a perfect man is like him until finding myself someone who asks too many questions; no perfect man –if like him– can handle me

I let go off him long time ago

😎

Limbuk

I thought I was one princess in the wayang box but I am ok to be her — someone who is willing to be as humble as herself, fun as herself, relaxed as herself, witty as herself, confident as herself, flirtatious as herself, devoted as herself, mature yet childlike as herself, happy-go-lucky as herself

just like herself in herself wherever she is put to be

Bima

my father’s favourite

Blossom

It's cherry blossom
Gracefully sway down to earth.
Mother's pink blanket--

under late cherry blossom, Himeji

Playing

Shadow, Beloved
With whom this body's playing.
Well dissipated--

some people prefer working on their shadows, I’m in

Written

Oh, Beloved, my!
It's written. Who will read it?
If no heart recites.

maktoub

Silhouette

🍀

I Won’t Stop

Learning, love, This Person

💕

Three

Learning, love, Poetic, This Person, Those People

It's three, Beloved
Walking the path to the light.
Bless us. Please bless us.

Folded Paper

Folded paper, Love
Hides faces, shows a
figure.
Bowing to the soul--

bowing to the soul by not bowing

Curtains

Curtains, Beloved:
Drawn to find your pretty face;
Closed to hide my heart--

“hello, black cat”, said a lady

“hello, white shadow”, said a cat

Seigaiha

Missing the calmness that sings.
Missing the peace that dances.
Missing the cheer than paints.
Missing the stillness that recites.
Missing all that lives caressing this hair
With the breeze of love
Of love
Of love.

Life is just like that.
Just like
You--

Seigaiha

I’ve Started Thinking

I've started thinking
And it's started with you. You
That I've been thinking--

you’re the rhythm in the musical staff; you’re the rhyme in my head

20-Day Fasting Craves

Learning, This Person

From the earliest up to today– only those cooked at home; the missing days were my lazy days in the restaurants.

gudheg manggar; manggar is coconut flowers in Javanese

sorghum

my glorious day of cooking adventure is over after COVID era & now it’s simple kitchen business

😝

watermelon!

corn!

it’s just Javanese home cooking like most days 💕

banana stew 😍

love is in the bowl

tweedle dee, tweedle dum

sugar cane water

cucumber

Siti, one of my friends stayed overnight & the next day she was willing to be a food critique for me

happy palate!

banana cake

tempeh & tofu

Anything But King

being a pawn, Love:
walk up then be anything.
anything. but king--

you just need to safely walk; yet there shall be purpose, plan, strategy, rescue, re-evaluate of steps all the way across the line

🍀

Composed

Colours, Beloved
Emit messages through air
Wrapped by sight of yours.

why do they think I flirt if I’m a complete composition with which life sings, a finished painting in which symbols are spread, an unrolled land on which my whole body rests every night

i let them misunderstand the way they think they understand me

🌻

I Tell My Black Horse

I tell my black horse
To nod at the blue mountain.
We're ready to climb.

it’s the climb that gives the journey hope to see things from different perspectives every time the traveler stops to let the horse grass before walking up….

…. and fear that something unexpected happens on the way

it’s a journey though worth taking

魚です

私は自分が生きてきた水を忘れてしまったが、呼吸を通していつもそれを愛してきた

how i forget the water in which i've lived all my life; yet how i've always loved it through this breathing

Diluted by You

Have you heard of
Dilution?
It's when this step toward you becomes lighter & calmer
By the liquefied fear
Through any pressure that comes,
With the dream that vanishes
And hope that makes sense
Because of
You, and
You alone
Waving to me saying
"You've been missed for so long.
Waited like rain in a drought.
Whose name is whispered in silence,
Whose beauty is contained in simplicity,
Whose existence is there is yet there is not.
You're a basket of love,
I've longed for within and without."

is it the clover or the basket that matters? they dilute each other with their existence, or do they blend their beauty? whichever, it’s all simply about you making my journey more meaningful

Noise

Learning, This Person

A noise, Beloved
In the ears, never within--
Gap of a light speed.

sometimes a noise is a vibe that triggers a good rest, just like TV screen at my childhood — at that time there was only 1 TV station belonging to the Govt & at midnight after “Berita Terakhir” our TV screen would be full of “buzzing ants” like the above picture 😁

Love is Me

A young girl, I thought love is coming to me
Then I found that they are flying off of me. Emitting-- 
From my sweater,
My hair,
My skin,
My flesh,
My bone,
My heart,
My soul.
I'm breathing it.
Living it:
I'll never run out of
Love.

💕

Love (ranting)

If I am to mention what’s my super power, it’s to love & to accept my life as it is.

What is love?

I used to think love was only that among family members. Then I grew it as a flower in a garden of family and friends. Then it grew to romance. Now it’s as wide as humanity & life. What a growth I’ve deliberately realised when I’m grown up.

Today love itself has taught me how it is a fuel to accept what life is and at the same time to keep the journey on. Love is never that that discourages human being to hope for the best. Love is never that that deflates the hope to keep believing that humanity prevails.

Sometimes love feels so tiny that it can only give me a small hole to see a faraway land with a beautiful meadow. It feels so depressed sometimes that it can only make me breathe the thin air to feel the freshness of breeze in the mountain.

Yet most of the time love is huge embracing this heart to smile and to dance and to prance above the path of life. It highlights what’s bright in a dull moment. It balances what’s tailing, spinning, diving and loopy like a kite flying unsteadily. It makes these eyes see what it is, no drama, no excessive handling– just being a stable self, loving, living.

Love is an action to load daily activities with meaning and purpose, how trivial the action is. Love is a willingness to share with others in silence or in crowd with little to no attention seeking. All not easy, but doable–

I can only write about love because that’s the only thing I can talk about.

Work is something I can only share with my colleagues. Charity is something I can only share with those rightful to receive. Love is for all around me.

Celebrate love! It’s as spacious as a weekend.

☘️❣️

a petal of rose like cherry’s, sways in autumn to mark surrender

☺️

Roomy

Today's roomy, Love
As the rain falls on my hair,
Glides with so much fun.

Hidden Gem

Hidden gem, my love
Glows in this heart telling tales
About hidden love
That might never find her nest.
The voiceless gets more silent.

Today my friend brought me around Jogja. The most interesting part was of course Pasar Beringharjo (Beringharjo Market) in which whatever souvenirs from Jogja are completely displayed. The most I love about this market is “ibu-ibu gendhong”, the women who sell their service to carry the people’s (both traders and shoppers) stuff from one point to another. My friend works in the NGO that advocate them to get better access to better rights as informal workers. The women (we call them buruh gendhong: female porters) know my friend very well so I always get the chance to say hi to them every time I visit some markets in Jogja & be given directions which best traders I can go to get the best products.

Today they showed me a hidden gem, a small corner where old-aged batik sheets and tradion Javanese kebaya are traded. What a blessed day today was!

How should I have felt except thankful? It was a good bargain– just with less than SGD50 I got a package of pretty apparels that I will wear to attend Christmas party in my cousin’s home.

kebaya, old batik sheet & an obi belt of Sido Asih batik

Thank you!

My cold heart got warm with the shopping spree and meeting the female porters who are the true representative of humble life itself.

God bless you, Ibu-Ibu & Mbah-Mbah Buruh Gendong. 💕

Eyes to Eyes

Eyes to eyes, my Love
Where realm of now and here be
Punishing the past.

When I talk with someone, I’ll look into one’s eyes. It’s a sign that I respect my interlocutor, embracing one’s presence mindfully here and now. In return I really hope that the person does the same to me.

Yet who am I to want someone to do it wholeheartedly.

Let days be days. Lessons flow like rivers within me, the heaven that I’ve built to reach the real heaven ahead.

Wish you all a blessed weekend.

💙

Life Is Poetry

Life is poetry
Singing songs to a quiet heart
To be pretty noise.

me trying on the “Booty on mega mendung” batik

Enlightened (ranting)

Pages of a book
Dog-eared, yellowed
And wrinkle
Of fingers stroking--

I’m not a religious person yet I love checking holy books, books about local faith around the world and writings about philosophy. To me wisdom scatters everywhere; it might not be the best sources of wisdom but reading them has opened my horizon of thinking and I’ve become an open-minded and free thinker to some extent.

There is one more thing about checking those books is getting personal advice that I can’t get from even the closest people around me– not because I don’t trust their love to me but I don’t trust their level of bias in analysing my situation. They are not open enough to accept me who is very open in thinking yet very morally guarding to my own self (two paradoxes my closest people still can’t understand up to now). That’s why I “consult” the Quran, the holy book aside from Bible that I’ve been familiar with since I was young (my father was a Christian).

Today I felt the need of consulting the Quran; I prayed, recited Alfatihah the opening suuraah of the Quran, greeted those I respect in life, took a short silence and randomly opened the book.

Here is the answer from the Quran.

QS Annuur #38

That Allah may reward them [according to] the best of what they did and increase them from His bounty. And Allah gives provision to whom He wills without account.

My heart stopped doubting. Is it because of the Quran? Is it because of to whom I prayed? Is it because of my trust? Maybe one of them. Maybe all of them. And I don’t want other possibilities because I won’t let myself doubt what’s been confirmed.

Thank you, dear Quran for being my closest friend, a book that opens all the doors of light. I might not be religious but you’re always the #1 consultant I’ve turned to for the past 33 years and probably will be for the rest of my life.

Light, light, my heart becomes so light.

Thank you❣️

Cracked (ranting)

Don’t crack under pressure. Maybe only “that watch” can do that; while most including human beings definitely crack under certain pressure like ceramics that can even break simply because of some delicate qualities that should crack to let some component of life lessons enter the inner realm of the pressurised persona.

I don’t mind cracking under certain pressure as long as life lessons can smoothly diffuse themselves into the liquid vortex within. Then as gold in kintsugi, they mend what’s cracked leaving golden map showing myself where to find a way of acceptance & letting go.

If I don’t crack, I will always look perfect with no guilt splashed, no criticism slashing, no confrontation exercising, no discussion & argument heated then calming, no accountability assessed. Looking perfect as a being accumulate some layers of avoidance to make mistakes, emotional exhaustion, failure of focused self reflection, forced compatibility even within self, self centernedness. Oh no! I prefer being an imperfect persona in front of many rather than being a looking perfect with so much burden within.

Being imperfect doesn’t mean I’m bad. It just shows me that I’m a human being and it’s fine to look ugly sometimes. As a human being I want to be vulnerable so I can be as playful as possible genuinely; so I can speak my truth with ease in a sweet way; so I can love other human being with no shame; so I can be as imperfect as nature wishes me to be outside my work (hallooow at work I need to be perfectly doing what I’m assigned for sure)!

If only I can directly tell some of human beings I know how perfect you’ve been looking and you need to stop being perfect, I’ll tell you wholeheartedly while assuring that you are free to be you the condition that you agree to heal together with no pretense and that you agree to be true to life.

Dear humans, you’re a ceramics not that watch that won’t crack under pressure. You deserve to be kintsugi decorated with golden map showing love where to flow.

Yes, I love to get answered as an answer is like lacquer reassembling cracked ceramics and yes I give myself answer because I deserve vulnerability, my own vulnerability; truth, my own truth; honesty, my own honesty– with love and respect.

Yes and I’ll let my heart crack again with better understanding and acceptance why it should crack then let life apply kintsugi on me.

Life is just like that…. 💙☺️🌻

this is me, imperfect & vulnerable as I’m kintsugi

☺️

kintsugi in a nutshell

Mandarin Duck

Mandarin duck swims
Through calm water to the edge
Welcoming the breeze.

my small work of art to be, “the lone swimmer, love bird of the east”

Light