hey little boy, you look so wonderful to me

oh your beautiful eyes...

Bagaimana harus kuucapkan pengakuan ini:
Aku jatuh cinta berulangkali pada matamu,
danau dalam hutan di negeri ajaib
yang jauh menyelusup dalam ingatan itu.
Berabad-abad yang lalu,
kuucapkan selamat tinggal pada apa pun
yang berbau dongeng, atau masa silam.
Tetapi cinta, bukan sebotol coca cola.
Atau film Disney; di sana tokoh apa pun tak pernah mati.
Juga bukan Rumi yang menari.
Sebab pada matamu bertemu semua musim, sejarah,
dan sesuatu yang mengingatkan aku
pada suatu hari ketika waktu berhenti,
dan kusapa engkau mesra sekali.
Kini, bahkan wajahmu samar kuingat kembali.

Haruskah kuucapkan pengakuan ini:
Aku jatuh cinta berulangkali pada matamu,
danau dalam hutan di negeri ajaib
yang jauh menyelusup dalam ingatan itu.
Tetapi cinta, bukan sekotak popok kertas.
Atau sayap sembilan puluh sembilan burung Attar yang terbakar.
Cinta, barangkali,
kegagapanku mengecup sepasang alismu

-1994, kenang-kenangan, cecep syamsul hari-

like a prison for the daughter and party for the others

Oh boy...i hate when i have to write a lot. Writing in english is killing me :(
Anyway,
in here, it's called "pingitan", usually held when their daughters are around 9 until 14 years old, a ceremony to symbolize the beginning of the mature-hood. The daughter has to stay in a room, almost naked. She's not allowed to come out for 7 days, even to the bathroom and toilet so every single thing she wants to do, she has to do inside the room. The food will be brought through the door and no body can't see her, even her parents.
In the night before the daughter go into the room, the village elders, the family and also the neighbors are invited to their house. The music is played while the families are dancing, start from the oldest member followed by the younger in "men first then women afterward" order. There's the choir also, to me the song just sounds like a long "eeeeeeeeeeeee" in high and low tones. In these days, only the elders know the meaning.













This is the choir. Unlike the dance that is only held on the first night, the music players and the choir have to keep on playing from dark till dawn during the 7 days.
Hard to imagine, no? :(

thousands lines of thread

traditional way to weave the sarong.
isn't it beautiful? and it's very neat.but sad to say, it's bad for the backbone

sorry to all

i'm sorry i had never recognized the comment column on edit posts. i thought it'd be automatically seen on the blog.
so tonight is the first time i see all of your comments and i'm so happy.
forgive my foolness that makes me never reply your humble comments...

i love you all,

xoxo

baby crab in the bottle

festival pulau makasar..watch the dragons

and we've got the winner...hurraaaaayy....

there's always beauty in every man...

Japanese style?...uh noo...parisian style?...ummmm...or new yorker?..arghhh whatever..i just love it!

friday afternoon

It was started when she brought her daughter to the clinic where i work. We had some chitchat so i knew that she is a tailor. Then i asked if i could fix my clothes, "just bring it to my house" she said.
So last friday, i went to her house (which is very difficult to be found since the traditional houses have the same pattern).She said it wouldn't take long. I decided to wait and during that time took some photos.





It seems like you can put everything on the wall, artist's pictures, family portraits, sewing tools, fake plastic flowers, even your shirts...anything...








This is her dad. He has lived in Ambon, Molluca island since 1956 and he just came to visit her daughters and her grand childrens here. by this time when i post this blog, he would have already in the ship, going back to Ambon.
He told me that he was a clove farmer but the plantation was burned in 1999, when almost the whole city was destroyed in a big chaos.
"First of all it was just about a rascal who coerced a bus driver to give him some money, but this personal matters spread rapidly into religion issues and created a big chaos between Christian and Muslim. But one year earlier, i was told by my nephew that there were many people on the ship who came back from their failed "try to get a better life" from Jakarta. He said, be careful uncle, they would make some chaos in here."
"Whether it was really true or not, in these days we can't absolutely know. But it's better now, although the frictions are not dissapeared yet."
When i asked him what he does for living now, he just said 'just ordinary work'.



here's some articles you can read about the chaos (had tried to insert direct link but didn't work, sorry...):
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/0117/indonesia.ambon.html
http://www.kontras.org/index.php?hal=siaran_pers&id=60

the singers

on my way back, last month.
Crossed the Flores Sea from Makasar to reach Baubau. Normally it takes 20 hours but i don't know what was wrong so we had to spent 26 hours in the sea. Thanks for the ship artists. They sang and dance cheerfully and i couldn't stop smiling during the show. They bought me some tea, we spent the afternoon talking in the cafe. We had a good time, hadn't we?