A Letter to a Friend




This is Jakarta. A noisy city inhabited by so many humans. Since a few years back, I became one of the inhabitants. Every day, memories scatter on new sheets of paper. Sometimes it stays forever in memory, sometimes decays, forgotten along with time that keeps rolling. Some fragments are scattered, scattered into a series of characters, then blend into a teapot, and ready to fill empty cups.

There are many stories I want to share with you, my friend. The story of a perplexing purple sky, or the story of a fire that once burned my poems. All I had prepared in a pitcher of memorable, carved curves of leaves, which once had fallen on our heads.

You must have forgotten, when I asked which way to go to Kampung Rambutan, or when I asked about the reason for the closing of the filthy cinema, Downstream Bend Market. Also, when you guess right that I'm the first child, and I'm guessing you as the youngest child who is very spoiled. Questions and guesses just flew out just to be the opening of the next chats. Such questions and guesses that in later times we will be held together together as a very, very stale ado.


It's not easy to make a conversation you. People used to say you're a shy man. They said, there's also a suspicion that your silence is a reflection of your arrogance. But that's very different from what I think. And with patience, I like to get around, to catch your sign. Being an ear for each of your stories, becomes your hand when the pile of work takes over the whole work table. 
It feels great fun, though beyond that, we will going back to share laughter with our own world. Our own privacy.

Then, we've been stuck in the same confinement. We are both still and stiff, awkward in front of the window waiting for a gentle breeze to wipe the face. Until the conversation about cigarettes and matches opens the next story. Laughter unstoppable, scorn against the world, and our conspiracies further color the days. Together we laugh at many humans, cursing, and then reflect into our hearts. We are both trying to find, what kind of man we are. All conversations are memorable, especially when under the sky there is only us. There seems to be no reason not to be yourself, even in the most annoying configuration.

My days in Jakarta are becoming more colorful. Because, we see it with a different perspective. At least, happy is real in our own version. The empty load is like loose in the air. Gone like a smoke flue from a cigarette. Also my iced ginger tea and iced coffee mix are repeatedly filled. In fact, in our silence in front of a green round table, I was like finding the right place to rest. Is not this kind of friendship that many people want? Yes, share laughter and restlessness, then keep the distance from the privacy domain that sometimes do not have to be shared. In the end, though, with childishness I break those distances because of curious curiosity. Apparently, I've hurt this friendship.

Friend, as I said in our conversations, nothing lasts. When I ask about this friendship in the future, you can only shrug, as a gesture of keenness. That's where sometimes I feel that this is just a spoiled tale of a friend who feels underestimated. Sometimes it hurts me. For, there is a side of the soul that is not willing if this friendship is snatched back by the pride of time.

And all proven. Our silly conversations must be stopped. Changed with an uncertain mystery story. Our friend book is like meeting the closing paragraph. Not when your back away from my days, but afterwards, after various seasons stop by and change our point of view. Change all of us.

Friend, are you still in town? Just slicing the streets, with your favorite motorcycle, through the congestion that makes the body achy. Are we still standing on the same ground with parallel coordinates? Or you fly with a dream, disappear in the dense hope, and settle on many questions.

Wherever you are, you have to know about this, Jakarta, me, and a whisper of conscience. A conscience that can only be presented as words, but has not been poured into empty cups on the table. Because, this kind of heart is impossible to spend alone by me.




Pejompongan, 2013-2017

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