The dim terrace reeked of year-old moulds. I took my last Dunhill out. Shoot, I thought, should have picked a new pack when I walked the guest out. 

It appeared my guest was, just then I learned, a notorious celebrity of some sort. I checked online. I could recall seeing the man in talkshows and whatnots. Quite an imposing character he had on TV, if you asked me. But the one I met with this afternoon was a calm figure, one that was deliberate with his moves. Shaky, even, at times. Didn’t really know how he’d found me, but I wasn’t too keen to learn. Tonight was our second encounter, and while he shared some chunks of his daily struggle as a single, ‘minted businessman’, in his words, I couldn’t say I know why he sought for my aid in the first place.

Yet I could never want to judge. My sole business was to comfort. 

You know, this kind of discord didn’t really come as a surprise to me. I understand that my clients are complex, both in their heads and in their surrounding worlds. Boys, gals, moguls, students, married, never married, divorced. All sorts of people with their own motives. As far as I know, every single one of them was worlds apart from me, and probably from each other; the only thing they shared was baggages they brought with them. And with those baggages, came a need for solace. 

I decided since long, that although perhaps people are tightly wired to perform, it’s always the tiny moments that define them. Yes, they put on some masks, or a role to play, from the moment they took off their shoes behind my dull apartment door; but boy, did their truths leak all over, perforating their sweet talks.

My phone buzzed slowly across the picnic table. I didn’t check who.

Mind you, I don’t exactly love being crudely, and so shortly, loved for my role. This was simply my way of getting by. Yet, I must say, I took my own pleasure from it. Not from the actions, as I’ve muted my senses too long I stopped trying to reclaim it; it was from the brief stories. The peeping hole I was granted by my trade to see into the peculiar lives of the crowd. It was there, you see. The firm handshake that a lanky but dignified young graduate equipped. The soft weep of a sturdy elite bodyguard he himself was unaware of. The relentless sweetness of a stern, lonely businesswoman. The moment of baring that, thankfully only a handful realized, exposed also their senses of the world.

I took pleasure from them. I've known for some time now that my business dulled me, if only slowly. I couldn’t bother to break free from my circumstances, but I lived through by taking pieces of the baggages.

The intricate lights of the city murmured from above.

I kept coming back to this part of a poem I read somewhere.

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough; 

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? 

I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea. 

Whatever that piece was talking about (I was then drawn only because of the somewhat soothing lines), I now see it as something written for me. Look behind the outlines, and you’ll see too—that people emit stories, long or brief, and the woven tales are the sea I’ve been living on. Those threads were never mine, but the ones I saw, I dearly hold onto. I made them made me.

Another buzz. I lit a half-burned cigarette from the ashtray, God knows how long it’s been around, and puffed. Then, a knock on the door. I figured it was about time.

A Self-Loving-and-Loathing Prick's Prelude to End-of-Year Evaluation

Hello. It’s December, and how time fucking flies.

(I always pull that for my opening remarks, didn’t I? Feels outdated now (get the joke?) - it feels as if I’m seeking for whoever's forgiveness for not being able to evaluate more often. Of course time goes by when you only record your steps every half year.)

It’s December, and boy, did a lot of things happened.

(This, too, sounds painfully ungrateful. I don’t think I’m supposed to reduce all my experiences, feelings, and obsessions into a bucket filled with things that are somehow ‘a lot’? Even if I was dead early year and couldn’t write this sentence for today, lotsa things still would’ve happened. Invalid.)

Hello, December. We’re here for my irregular meet-up with myself, only pushed into context whenever I feel driven to.

(If that sounds somber, rest assured that it usually emerged not due to phases of sadness and despair (which were persistently there), but the reconciliation exactly after those: the phase when I thought I might know the answer, but could never be ready to commit myself to it. Often it was driven by a sequence of weak self-love, after moments of lethargy, or boredom, or rejection. Other time, it was simply on contrived rendezvous that demanded a look-back: contrived birthdays, departures and arrivals, end of years like today, etc.)

This isn't fucking working, and I've mostly forgotten what I wanted to write.

Let's try my next birthday. It's springtime, so my brain wouldn't be as frozen.

Ah,

I thought,

here’s the silence. The all too familiar silence. The lurking deafness that I’ve been dreading to meet since I woke up this morning, and the one before this, and before that. The loss of din I’ve been shoving into my two dangling ears my whole day just so I don’t have to cope with nothing. You know it too, I’m sure I’m not at all weird. Nothing is frightening. Nothing is the void with no quality. Not even dark, or small, or quiet -- it just isn’t anything.

I can see silence is inescapable. That’s why we invented music. Nightlife. Roaring speakers tearing our eardrums. That’s why we invented language--heck, I think that’s why we were given voice in the first place. So we don’t have to fight with nothingness.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being still. I savor the inertia I can simply throw myself into at any time, staring at the hazy bubble floating in your eyes. (I’ve wiki-ed it, there’s a scientific shit behind that. Apparently it’s your white blood cell. Weird, yes, but not at all creepy.) See, for me it’s not the absence of sounds or noise that bugs me, but the abundance of voices behind the silence. It’s the humming but explosive cacophony that fills in. It’s the loudest cry, the shriek that’s far more unfathomable than the wildest techno-trash beats you devour at your beloved dingy clubs, but also sometimes the softest whisper, fleeting hushes that don’t even make sentences, but you can understand its demands nevertheless. It’s the monster on top of your bed when you close your bedroom door and tuck yourself in.

Many times it’s filled with questions. Asks I thought I’ve found the explanation to and let go every other night. Other times, it’s just a stream of nonsensical phrases and sentences, or glimpses and snaps of stuffs I failed to make sense. But it’s never an answer, because answers would close the loop, where this keeps going as it’s a full circle of doubts.

Although maybe answers are more terrifying, I don’t know. I haven’t been brave enough to pluck one.

That’s also why we sleep, I reckon. So we don’t have to cope with the terminal noise, which is silence. I tried loving them, but I failed myself most times. And now I’m going to repeat doing what I’m always good at: muting the silence.

It is already too much to ask for a friend.

The Storm:

the storm resides in the very back of my head for years now. The only fact to grasp for hope is that this too shall pass; the words swirl back and forth, like a chant losing its magic, without anymore meaning. Yet it shall pass. It should, because the law simply forbids any endlessness to exist. 

Then there sadly came whispers, asking, "what if this was the last storm we may weather?", "what if, what if storms, the grandest curse and blessing of men, have always bound to recede?" What would we have left?

I don't feel alright
In spite of these comforting sounds you make
I don't feel alright
Because you make promises that you break

Into your house
Why don't we share our solitude?
Nothing is pure anymore but solitude

It's hard to make sense
Feels as if I'm sensing you through a lens
If someone else comes
I'll just sit here listening to the drums

Previously I never called it solitude

And probably you know
All the dirty shows I've put on
Blunted and exhausted like anyone
Honestly I tried to avoid it
Honestly
Back when we were kids
We would always know when to stop
And now all the good kids are messing up
Nobody has gained or accomplished anything

I never got the chance to dance with you, but I guess we never would however. Petuahmu belum lagi rampung. Pun, bagaimanapun, itu juga tidak pernah akan.

Kita berdua terlalu tahu malu.

Why are you thinking again, little brother
When you know there's a story for every wrong
But I won't be around in the morning
Can only pray there's no harm in me moving on
To the trials in your unknown


And if you could just walk home by
With signs just flying around
And if this storm was just a motion
Of your kid just trying out
If we could only lose these minds


Why are you drinking again little brother
When your remnant's the hard part of loving you
You say the creeks and the falls want to drown you
But there are deeper wells where we're going to
There's no drown in this unknown

And when your memory is lost on the hillside
And the wind takes you further and forward now
Your world is a kite in the weather
Gently tight to your end that is pointed out
There's a sky in this unknown

At Night

Rancabuaya, 02:12 AM
I was compromising when I affirmed that the Milky Way seemed only like a towering constellations of clouds faraway, unmoving. It was, of course, an exhausting day for everyone (except for me that wasn't driving at all), so by the time the burning fire and the faintly-lit oil lamps' stable murmurs started to amplify the grand starry mirage, they were already asleep in our packed little tents, placed right next to the juxtaposed, lined up as if they were on display, motorcycles. The waves beat itself ashore in a perpetual noise. No chatters or laughs could be heard. Not even from the only camper there other than us, the drunk Germans (I think they were Germans) on the tent across.
I slowly closed my tent's zip from outside, tiptoed over some of the members courageously sleeping out in the open, leaned over the only car included for the trip, a Volkswagen Beetle, and gazed upward.

Sunset Road, Kuta, 01:40 AM
The wide bypass stretching all the way from Kerobokan to the airport (and more) were all seemed lonely with only dim lights from the buildings sideways. Buildings, some of which were badly crammed next to each other in many corners, and some isolating themselves with a wall of wild grasses. The surface of the sidewalks were uneven in unfinished pavements. The veins of the Land of Gods had started to secretly dream of lofty cottages and estates, after all. Our two rented motorcycles stopped aside under lines of humming palms wavered peacefully over the street lamps. We were waiting in silence for something I couldn't remember. Had I just misheard scraping sounds of ocean waves then?

Bandung, 03:08 AM
What happiness do I derive from being burdened by hymn-like songs, lengthy in their ordinary, songs that sound so otherworldly human that I can't help but thanking my thin being, I can't really explain (neither can I give you examples of the songs I'm referring to). Anyway, that night the open skies couldn't be more pleasant with shifting haze of skeletal clouds here and there, yet tender drizzles sprinkled my face as the red light signals, reflected imperfectly in wet streets, blinked.

It was right when the tilted mountainous roads shifted my perception of gravity, and all the far-gleaming city lights in front of us started to float up, drifting higher and higher above us.