11 in 23

11 in 23
Can’t say clearly more
About 2 numbers
That are in sequence: one, two, three;
That are prime: singly operated by one and itself.

Happy anniversary!

——

I started writing diary when I was a six grader of elementary school. My golden years of diary writing was around 6 years in junior and senior high school — honest stories, mostly quoting people’s word verbatim, hand written beautifully, locked and un-shared.

WordPress is my diary, not as naked and straightforward as my younger diaries, yet all writings are genuine expressions about daily life wrapped in love language. Whatever the stories are, love is always the core and the cover.

Thanks, WordPress for being a place for me to sing my days with my own lyrics, rhymes and rhythms. I don’t like to be misunderstood yet I don’t mind being differently interpreted by different people — their misunderstanding is not a result of my creative process, it is the result of their own lack of clarity about their own inner journey.

In my life, in this WordPress, anywhere I am an open humble book but I am kept among reference collection.

11 years of being a reference collection in the library of everything. Yay!

More years to count!

took off from Multiply in 2007, landed in WordPress in 2012 — this journey is on

Mosquito

Mosquito’s buzzing,
Scarier than it’s biting
Ears though can’t complain.

——

when i said to my friends that i wanted this, they chorused high toned answer “no, it is not Japan, with this type of water garden, you’ll be mosquitos’ daily party here!” 😁

View Finder

The light that is in,
The angle that frames, both play
To find the best view.

——

About Tugu Yogyakarta

photo taken while my friend was driving fast to avoid some motorbikes; i’ve missed the opportunity of taking its picture many times, this time no although not from a nice point of view

Dripping

This heart is leaking.
Droplets of love are dripping,
Fertilising life.

——

About wedang uwuh

wedang uwuh, a favourite beverage in breezy night of Jogja

inside wedang uwuh

Lovely Friendship

The spell of friendship
Is not F R I E N D S H I P.
To spell friendship
Is to put some magical words
To a bond
So it lasts forever
In love.

My friends put a spell on me.
I put a spell on them.
We put a spell on each other
To stay together
Gleaming like stars
In a cluster
Or in different ones blinking to each other.

How beautiful friendship is
When bonded with genuine drops
Of souls
And
Adorned with true colours
Of hearts.

How real friendship is
When soul and heart
Are sprinkled on to
A life that hopes
And loves.

——

this book of friendship — no where to find in souvenir shop but found in the heart of friends

fun and true and real and genuine 💕 friendship with my beloved nephews

On A Rope

A rope might help
To travel to the other side,
Yet it might be not.
Being in the other side
Is not always wise
As a wise is
That that means
Decision for the right.
Right time
Right place
Right person
That might be
Not right:
Not always right amount
Not always right distance
Not always right calculation.
This rope is right
Only when it is about
Knowing that pulling or releasing
Are both hurting
Right where and when it is decided to.

this?

this one is wiser for now 💕

might not be the right one, yet being relaxed and easy is sometimes the right one for now — i just don’t want to think too much; wisdom is not always hard 💕

Remote & Intimate

💕

work from remote in people’s thought

it is more than enough to have this in my work from remote to accompany my mother and….

…. to take off celebrating what good about life – one of them is he whose love to life is like cool water 😁 💕

Memory of Fun

Vito and Ocka in fun flash rehearsal in the costume storage room 😁😘

💕

his life was about fun and memory about him should be about fun, too

Never-ending Prayer

In a prayer
Millions of pearls
Are dangling
In a line of blessings
Letting go off
What is called
Attachment,
Co-dependency,
And ignorance.

When darkness traps
What is called hope,
It is love
That keeps it sparked
And sparkling
Before it is free,
Traveling light
On a beautiful orbit.

——

my boy, I commit to celebrate your life and dreams instead — be always in our heart; you are so much loved, you are always remembered 💕

alfatihaah 💕

Books To Breathe

Have a seat, dear friends.
Breathe this home before our chat.
Leave the heat outside.
Pages of shapes and colours,
Tell them to bring their best selves.

——

Coffee table books are good to make guests relaxed before longer chat with me and at the same time to lay foundation of the chat. Not all guests visit me to chill out; some do to ask for help that might make it difficult for them to start a convo, so some flash reading can help them break the ice and sometimes for the host to loop back to the ice breakers when strategising to refuse unreasonable requests. 😉

Just fyi, some people don’t easily give up “selling misery to get a buy-in”, so be softly tough; one exquisite coffee table book might not even work.

About coffee table books

coffee table books taking turn monthly to welcome my friends

this book contains reproduced masterpieces of world’s well-known painters; the characters in the original paintings are all replaced by cats

all reproductions are by Susan Herbert

thank you, Ma’am for your art! 🙏🏼

here is very few from a total of 140 illustrations

The Beguiling of Merlin — Edward Burne-Jones, 1872-7

A Couple — Pierre Auguste-Renoir c. 1868

The Milkmaid — Johannes Vermeer c. 1660

The Child’s Bath — Mary Bassat, 1893

this is originally not a coffee table book but i will make it one — currently reading it 👏🏼

always suitable anytime so it will be forever on the table accompanied by the monthly one — only women have this power 😊

Be Happy, Beloved

I won’t, Beloved
Take you from what completes you.
Your here now is that, not this.
This garden with lemongrass
Is my here and now I love.

——

Ibu sent me this picture that she took by herself after forever saying “I can’t take good pictures like you, don’t ask me any” — 3 slices of some cake I bought online (sold through Twitter) and delivered directly to her ♥️

she said “thank you for the ‘spikoek’, it is amazingly yummy”

my mother’s love is so huge that i don’t realise like seeing a sheet of paper from 1 millimeter away 💕

i am enough with a few humble friends that truly understand me so i won’t anymore beg friendship from that not even wanting to know who i am 😁

Flush Me Once!

Or once again!

And again!

And again!

Oh I am still in your head?

Once again!

What? Still there?

Once again!

In your heart?

Alamak…. Just let her go? 😂

Some people don’t know that flushing is about letting go.

😂

one toilet cubicle in Changi Airport Singapore 😂

Bloom

This heart blooms and blooms
Leaving quiet budding season,
Emerging from mud.

——

One of my friends complained why all my poems are about love, like I am either falling in love or broken hearted day by day.

After some time of chat and juice against wine glasses that friend answered one’s own question.

“Ya! Life is about loving: smoothly or broken-heartedly. Now I know what you mean. I thought all were about romance! Ahhh!”

I tried a sip of wine from that friend’s glass.

“You’ll get drunk more at home and write more love poems!” Said that friend laughing.

“Yes, I won’t give up this love whatever interpretation is thrown about me to me. I am thankful enough to have very few true friends who understand.”

Salaam.

true love is too tasteless for those weighing it with money; yet too complex for those weighing it with faith — for those not knowing the true secrets behind words, love is just a marriage between distrust and fear hidden in sparkling plastic 🙃 i know love is still beautiful whether it is well understood or misunderstood 💕

Good Day

Good day is good hope
Lining waiting for handling
By heart that sees light.
Dance, Beloved. Welcome the day.
The gate opens wide with smiles.

——

the view from in front of my door; seeing the reservoir has always energised me 💕

even 2024 looks good from here 🙏🏼

Friends

We fight
We peace
We laugh
We cry
We tease
We toast
We friend
We dance!
We grow
We flow
We age
We page!

What goes around
Comes around,
And friends
Are best to count.

——

Some of my colleagues are very good friends of mine. We genuinely talk as friends outside of work term. They invite me for drinking without making me drink what they drink. We celebrate birthdays together and deeply share some ideas of how life is.

This and next weeks we meet for work and have good chances to meet almost every day after all back to back meetings. Lunch and dinner can be the best time to insert some teasing and sharing and blessing.

We are growing old but still excited of what we are doing at work.

Thanks for pur wonderful life celebration.

Salaam.

growing old and mature is a luxury; let’s enjoy it with true friends 💕

Light Steps

There are steps prancing
On a line between two worlds
Within and without.
Lotus shows celebration,
Mud purification.

——

Twitter is getting louder and louder before election in Indonesia. Instagram is getting more and more showy with the holidays and parties coming.

I am happier not too much engaged with those two; Twitter is for me to keep abreast with political issues that help me make decision whom to vote in 2024 (I quit abstention this time after for the rest of my life) and Instagram is to tag and be tagged by family and friends. I am now even happier to have stopped stalking unnecessary accounts that made me scrolling and searching to gain nothing but sighs and shivers.

Only WordPress can hug me consistently warmly. Only WordPress can make me realise I have words to travel light, imagination to travel far, values and wisdom to travel with caution and good will to keep moving.

I am safe here.

💕

how warm and jazzy that place was; see you again, Jazz Gunung Bromo next year! I am happy to be part of your warmth and jazz! 🙏🏼

Heaven on Earth

Only by being true,
I find heaven.
They said it is after life,
Yet it is here now
Every time I see
Those who are true to me.

Good morning,
Real Heaven.

——

good bye, dunia tipu-tipu forever 💕

Surprise

Surprisingly
Life throws one surprise
After another
Of all types
To me who is cushioned
Only by submission
And genuineness.
How generous
Life is!
How intriguing it is
At the same time!

Dear, Life.
I don’t want any other way to love
You.

——

Life is full of astonishments to me. The most recent one was when I met the architect of my Jogja base home in Jazz Gunung Bromo without planning. I happened to know that she has been the bamboo stage designer of the annual jazz festival for the past 15 years! Yes, she is an architect cum bamboo artist.

We decided to ride a jeep together to see the sunrise the next morning before she returned to Jogja and I enjoyed my jazzy night.

A short fun meet up with a friend it became.

Thank you!

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

feeling so blessed to have met so many humble human beings in my life and it has made my life even more wonderful

That Dance

That we have to dance
With beautiful souls that dance
Is sheer dance of life.
Dance, you who hope for the light;
These notes are jazzing for you.

——

the best from Jazz Gunung Bromo 💕

Night

Night is jazzy
With sparkling stars
Among the mountains
Wipe the fog down the slope
To send melodies
Of a warm heart.

——

started at 4pm — many were not yet seated yet look at the tribune 😍

Ermy Kulit, our 80’s jazz queen

Margie Segers

red for Primavera

blue

2 hilarious MC

The Second Brain

so vibrant

Yura Yunita in white 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Morning

Morning
My only time
That can be broken
But not damaged

Day and night
My only time
That can be merry
Without celebration

Life
My only time
That can kindle hope
Sweeping hatred away

——

the red in the tip of east side 💕

old jeeps to climb up to 3 spots to see the daily sunrise, this one is the lowest spot

Mount Bromo and her neighbourhood in one bright morning

the other side of the sea of sand

vertically

Flowing

The water
Flowing
With singing ripples

The air
Flowing
With whistling whispers

The wrong
Flowing
With whirling apologies

The right
Flowing
With blessing forgiveness

The heart
Flowing
With reciting verses

The soul
Flowing
With chanting gratitudes

The music
Flowing
With dancing life

——

they bought it from amazon for me and keep it for my next visit— my prayer is flowing with never-ending ありがとう!

Relax

What is said
Can be misunderstood.
What is shown
Can be misinterpreted.
What is written
Can be misled.

Only those who clarifies
Will be clear.

Relax.

——

sometimes you just want to relax whatever whoever thinks of you 😊 ‘coz only those who really clarify will understand — those who guess too much will lose so much 😎

the seats

the door

the aisle

I’ll Keep It Secret

I don’t fully know
You
But I know your secret
That I’ll keep forever
Even if I’m unpaid.

A lovely secret about
You
And I learn myself through it
That I’ll only talk over
When it is legit.

What secret?
I won’t tell.
I can’t tell.
Although
You smell.

——

many use different ways to keep things secret — one of them: flush it!

Caution

Caution, Beloved
Walking down the hill with care.
Climbing hasn’t ended.

——

going downstairs is oftentimes more risky than upstairs — my father’s last words to me before he died was “…. be cautious”