pokok renek

tiba-tiba aku dicuit dari belakang.

bahu ni, terasa lembut dipegangnya.

aku toleh ke kiri bahu dan dongakkan kepala sedikit.

dia.

"kenapa?" dia tanya sepatah.

aku tarik nafas panjang.

"pokok in..." aku tunjukkan ke arah cahaya matahari menerobos masuk ke ruang bilik.

di tingkap unjur yang berhabuk halus, ada dua pasu kecil bertanamkan pokok renek. pokok renek yang tak semegah mana. entah kenapa, mereka melayu. sudah disiram, masih lagi longlai. sudah diterikkan, masih lagi lunyai. parahnya - daun dari salah satu antara mereka sudah gugur.

kenapa?

apa mereka merasakan jugak musim luruh sini?

tangan dia tidak lagi bertaut pada bahu aku. dia duduk di sisi dan menggenggam tangan kiri ini seerat mungkin. aku pejamkan mata.

"in tak siram kott?" dia cuba menelah.

terdengar sayup-sayup gelak kecilnya. mungkin saja dia sengaja mahukan aku untuk tidak,

gusar.

gundah.

atau punah.

lagi.

"siram lah..." kelopak mata diangkat, lalu aku menatap bening matanya.

"in...ok?"

"in nampak tak ok ke?"

"pokok in tak ok"

"pokok in...bukan in..."

"pokok -- pokok in ikut jiwa in"

"tak lah..."

"in..."

"in ok. cuma in risau dengan pokok in"

"risaukan diri in dulu"

aku diam. malas berdialog lagi sama dia.

lama. lama aku menjadik kosong.

terus, dia bingkas bangun.

ah, nak ke mana tu?

"cuba baca ni" dia hulurkan.

aku sambut.

dan sekejap, aku tersenyum.

"betul?" dia tanya sepatah.

aku balas dengan anggukan.

dia duduk semula di sisi. dan menggenggam tangan kiri ini seerat mungkin. aku pejamkan mata.

sekali lagi.

"the young man came to the old man seeking counsel.

i broke something, old man.

how badly is it broken?

it's in a million little pieces.

i'm afraid i can't help you.

why?

there's nothing you can do.

why?

it can't be fixed.

why?"

"it's broken beyond repair. it's in a million little pieces" aku mencelah, menghabiskan bait terakhir garapan james frey.

"broken beyond repair, in"

"yeah, i know"

"there's nothing much we can do?"

"i'm out of ideas. i'm just sick of it" aku pandang jauh.

"life is short, in. maybe-"

"there's no --

there's no, maybe, ok? no more. i'm done. we're done" aku tarikkan tangan kiri.

tidak lagi aku dan dia menggenggam.

kedua-dua kepala lutut aku bawakan ke dagu.

dan dia, terdiam.

argh.

damn it.

"life is a cycle" aku kembali bersuara.

"it's a repetition. just like a song. and what i'm going through right now, it's only a chorus. i'm used to it"

"will you be ok, in?"

"i'm always, always be ok. not to worry about me" aku gariskan sedikit senyuman, seakan memberi signal yang aku betul-betul maksudkan.

aku pergi ke arah tingkap unjur yang berhabuk halus.

salah satu pasu pokok renek diangkat.

dan aku menghadapnya, membelakangkan cahaya matahari menerobos masuk ke ruang bilik.

"do you think i'm in denial?" aku soal.

dia mengangguk.

"how far am i in denial?"

"as much as you can no longer recognize your own feeling"

"really?"

"your plants tell me the truth. your words - not at all"

"i think i'm ok. that's what i told you"

"you think?"

"yeah"

"you think and not to feel?"

"is there any difference between that?"

"of course"

"they're just the same to me"

"where's your soul?"

"what?" aku angkat kening.

"you're dying, aren't you?"

"i'm not"

"yes, you. are." dia pandang aku tepat.

aku paling.

pasu pokok renek diletak kembali.

better to put before anything happens.

"see"

"what?"

"you're running away"

"running away? heh. i am not. what's the problem here actually?"

"you"

"me? (tangan serentak ke dada). apa pulak in. berapa kali in dah cakap, i'm ok, i'm ok and i am ok. which part of the sentence can't you understand enough?"

"define your 'ok'"

"my 'ok' means, i still can breathe for the next day"

sekilat dia tarik tangan aku dan memeluk aku rapat.

"may you have the strength all the way through" dia berbisik.

"yeah..."

"bawang?" suara farah di balik pintu.

"ye?"

"makan. dinner dah siap"

"ok, thanks"

"kau tengah skype ke?"

"ha-ah..."

aku pandang semula ke arah bilik sebelum melangkah keluar.

dia masih lagi di situ.

dengan pokok renek layu, di tingkap unjur yang berhabuk halus, tingkat sepuluh.

sakit itu istimewa

"pain happens when you care" (lisa cuddy, 2010)

and it is not when you don't.

in my words, pain is born out of love.

my life is filled with people who i allow them to cross in my heart and stay there as long as i want them to be there. when i put them into the space i've created in my very own special way, i love them unconditionally and infinitely that i rather to put myself behind or above anything else, just to make sure they are alright without even being hurt by the slightest of any harm.

i must say that one of the good points about love is, it is the craziest element to be exist in the entire of human creation. agreeing with lionel richie as his music sings "love will conquer all", it is not too much to speculate that love has its undeniable ultimate power which can rule beyond our scientific, logical thinking and affect us greatly in many unimaginable directions. for instance, we can become irrational as we learn to fall in love. we can become insane as we learn to be touched by some hearts. we can become unrealistic when we learn to give and take the love that starts to bloom. and, to allow yourself to getting involve in love means you are ready to face anything it may pay you along the journey you will have ahead.

love requires you the A-to-Z needs and sometimes, you just can't justify the reasons behind every decision and action you take. remember, love is a powerful tool that always tends to turn you to be three-sixty degrees in clueless state. so, you might suddenly incline to have the highest level of protectiveness, security, self-sacrifice, adoration, affection and also care, without you even realize they actually start to be imprinted on your dna.

let's take the element of care into our discussion. as we love them, we care them. as we care them, we love them. these components may go in both ways and absolutely come hand in hand. to be put into a hypothesis statement - the more you love someone, the more you will care about him or her. or, the more you care someone, the more you will love him or her. both statements can be interpreted differently but the main issue here is still centered by the feeling upon human being.

i would take 'care' as an independent variable while 'love' is my dependent variable. however, before we make a correlation between these two variables, i would like to propose another variable and it is 'pain'. therefore, my first attempt is to relate the elements of 'pain' and 'care', and from that point, i will try to connect it with 'love'.

giving a situation here, i care my biological sister a lot. yes, a real lot. she is the only sister i have in my whole life and no one can ever replace her regardless how many sisters kindly treat me like their own family. bonded by blood and only death will be the only reason we become apart, i was very much anxious the moment my future brother in law entered her life. i was scared to death if she would be hurt again by men. i was extremely worried if her face was swollen because of the tears caused by the good-for-nothing, uncivilized so-called gentlemen. those bitter days were just too much for her.

too. much.

and i couldn't stand anymore with the pain she's been going through. worse enough, i couldn't do anything to at least, repair her. thus, wasn't it horrible when we see our loved one had his or her poignant stage of life and we were really helpless back there? yeah, i was totally sucks to catch her before she fell. o how i wish i could erase those days for her and let her smile shines every now and then, yet how could that be possible? being powerless, it hurts me and this is so much right to say - "pain happens when you care".

to simplify ;

i feel the pain because i care for her and i care for her because i love her. therefore, isn't this ringing my first statement "pain is born out of love" ?

other example would be my experience involving a close friend of mine. we had this argument just an hour before i took my first advanced academic written english test. an hour before. i was out of control that i slipped some words which i shouldn't say to him. it was awful and indeed, i felt really bad. realizing all those nasty words perfectly came from my lips, i tried to save our friendship before he walked out from the door. i tried. and i failed. after all, he was the one who didn't give me a second chance and pushed me away with a real hard. therefore, i am accepting the fact that we are no longer friends. it was ugly seeing the moment he left me because all this while, i had always care about him. to me, listening to his stories never been a bored. reminding him about taking care of himself never been an exhausted. and helping him out whenever i can, never been a tired. because of the care i had upon him, i felt pain literally in my heart a few minutes before i sat for the test.

but then, the pain has gone now because as what he vaguely requested from me, i am no longer care anything about him at all. it was quite difficult at first, yet, for this is his last request, i should do him a favour.

so, in my conclusion, i couldn't agree more with cuddy when she says "pain happens when you care" and as you care, it shows that you have love in between the lines.

pain ?

it's a bless.

penulisan akademik

"writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness" (georges simenon, 1955)

how true is that?

explain.

***

it is true based on my experience.

i think i write at best when i'm emotionally suffering. i've been going through all the rough and tough that always pull me down, kill my soul, osmosize my strength and spring some tears in my eyes. it is hard every time you are at the bottom part of the black world. it is cold when you are in the deep hole. and it's never been easy to buckle up and lift your head up to the sky when you lost all your inside parts.

but then again, i never regret to have those shits in my episodes. like i quoted before from the good charlotte - "people always tell me this is part of the plan, that God's got everybody in his hands" - so, i think He's up there, mysteriously plans something for me. i talked to Him last night, silently in my prayers. with my hands still wet because of the crystal clear lacrimation, i begged an extra strength to be able to manage things that i've made in massive mess. i also asked for forgiveness because might be i've done blindly something wrong along the way i live on His land.

yeah, i'm a total screw.

well, someone told me, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" and i learn to make one. like, at an obvious level, i can write and arrange some words to be turned into sentences, paragraphs, plots and series. as every words i wrote were read by people, i did get some feedbacks, telling me the masterpiece is at least, a good one. and that never fails to put a smile on my face because i know, for some reason, people can sense the anguish and torment i live in.

so, now, i can confirm the statement above - "writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness". as a matter of fact, under a depression state, oaks and diamonds can be made awesomely.

this confirmation leads me to another point.

happiness.

an abundance of happiness doesn't seem to be a good element. read again. an abundance. if we're having a minimal bits of happiness, i don't see any problem on that. but, if it's wealthy enough to dominize every second of your life, does it really turn you to become a better person? in my own personal point of view, it won't. instead, i might be even in the worst state of human being. yet, how can we possibly measure an amount of abstract matter like happiness and unhappiness? hence, this is all back to yourself. you're the one who decides whether what you feel is at the least or the most.

up to my thought, a high degree of happiness is merely an illusion. it's a conceptual stuff fabricated with lots of oxytocin that you feel it as a real, concrete thing to be hold onto and be preserved in your life phase.

well, did you know that gregory house became a lousier medical diagnostician when he was showered with happiness upon lisa cuddy's love? he lost his patient because of the reason he was being distracted with the happiness he had. back to the early part of the series - when he was a vicodin abuser, all he had by his side was the great amount of unhappiness. and this unhappiness, at the beneath of its surface, had made him to become the best medical case solver at the princeton-plainsboro teaching hospital (ppth).

to relate the example given about house, it is the same thing happens on me. the excessive unhappiness has intensified my creativity in writing words.

and this is enough to hypothesize that the larger scale of unhappiness you have, the better things you will produce.

to support the hypothesis given, i've searched plenty of examples from either fiction or non-fiction world. for example, an author of a popular young adult book series, alice tanner, in "unwritten" (the third episode in house's seventh season), held an emotional pain ever since the death of her son in a car accident. devasted by her lost, she ghostwrote a story that eventually stroke a phenomenon in teenage novel era.

other example is a virtual writer who i hardly know him in person. from my five-year of reading upon his writing, i must say that i sense his unhappiness. having a great failure in a love relationship, he was in a total of pieces and ashes. ergo, the breakdown had affected him to rebel some notions in societal system and also influenced his level of thinking. different as he seems, i admire his style of writing in putting down all his opinions and feelings. however, after the day he was sent to a psychiatrist and lost pounds in his weight, he decided to stop writing and his blog remain buried.

in short, i can see how the unhappiness empowers human being to create extraordinary stuff. not only that, it also teaches us to be strong enough to deal with hardships given by the almighty supreme power.

so, in my very own conclusion, i think i deserve a bounty taste of unhappiness instead of happiness. the latter one will only micrify myself in many ways. therefore, in my humble, personal opinion, i second with the saying - "writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness".

and i rest my case.

***

p/s : jangan kau sangkakan university of auckland berikan tugasan begini.

it's just a piece of my thought which i intend to write it in an academic form.

sang gembala di wilayah biri-biri : puisi luruh

upon the autumn that always creates sorrow and agony in my bosom,
here's a poem to celebrate it.
cheers.

"we both hurt each other.
and why did we do it, i wonder.
are we, again, being stranger?
or we are no more getting along together?
it seems like things become harder.
and do you realize that, dear?
or do you pretend they never appear?
love, i'm doing my best to make things clear.
so now, how could i fix us to become better?
i'm clueless, help me here.
because i won't give up to be your shoulder,
as for now and forever"

autumn 2012
auckland, new zealand.

photo by : ferrohanc

sang gembala di wilayah biri-biri : bila alam mula kelam, sesuatu malang akan berlaku

kalau bukan semalam, pastinya hari ini.
kalau bukan hari ini, pastinya esok.
it'll haunt me each night and day.
until,

just now, i met it.
sesuatu yang malang telah pun berlaku.
TE-LAH.

***

oh ya, musim luruh sudah tiba !
dan musim ini sememangnya menyuramkan hari-hari aku.
ah, bencinya.

kata seorang mantan

"aku anggap je kau ex aku. kau yang tak sure time tu"

.

dialog anak kecil #14

aku

seriously, kau tengok aku macam mana?

lelaki A

macam budak.

aku

macam budak-budak?

tak pernah ke, in your eyes, aku ni macam, em, lady? perempuan?

lelaki A

[gelak]

tak lah bawang.

aku tengok kau macam budak. takdenya lady. perempuan.

aku

[tolak kerusi ke belakang, toleh ke lelaki B dan C]

korang.

korang tengok aku kan, macam mana? is it like, korang tengok aku sebagai budak?

lelaki C

haah. macam budak, bawang.

lelaki B

pada aku, kau budak lagi.

aku

[pandang lelaki B]

kalau untuk kau, ye lah. sebab aku pun rasa kau macam abang.

kau?

[pandang lelaki C]

tak pernah ke kau rasa aku ni a lady? like, really a perempuan?

lelaki C

[gelak]

yang tu, memang tak lah kan.

lelaki A

[gelak]

lelaki C

maybe sebab kau saiz kecik, so, aku anggap kau macam budak. tapi, tak tahu lah kalau kau punya mental kan. matured ke tidak. aku tak sure.

sang gembala di wilayah biri-biri : lawatan ke sekolah tempatan - remuera intermediate school

nad

hello, bawang, kau kat mana?

aku

[sambil tangan sapukan tuna atas roti]

aku kat rumah lagi ni.

nad

eit, cepat lah. bas dah sampai !

letak telefon, aku terus gelabah tak hengat dunia. tuna tak sempat nak disimpankan dalam peti sejuk. pisau tak sempat nak dibasuh dalam sinki. coleslaw atas katil tak sempat disarap. minyak wangi tak sempat disembur. purse dalam beg lagi satu tak sempat diamek. dan, botol kosong tak sempat dimasukkan dalam beg.

yang sempat aku capai cuma blackberry, kunci rumah, pisang, dan sandal.

that's all.

sampai kat perkarangan kate edger information commons, nad called farah, telling us that if we couldn't make it by eight o clock, we had to take a taxi to go to remuera intermediate school. oh ya, aku sempat makan pisang masa aku jalan laju-laju dari columbia apartment and i swear, that wasn't cute at all.

bila dah nad warning gitu and masa cuma tinggal tiga minit, which by that moment we only arrived in front of the national bank, aku terus lari so that bila dah sampai at the pick up place, i could tell the driver to wait for farah and shuq.

again, i swear - running with your baju kurung wasn't cute too. pulak tu, depan manusia-manusia universiti.

damn.

aku sampai kat bas pukul 7.59 pagi.

haih, what a shame you know. kalau aku terlambat satu minit, tak memasal kena bayar tambang teksi pulak.

ok, the first day of school visit, aku dah terlewat.

gaaaahhhhhhh

***

he's 12 and i'm 22. 10 years of age difference doesn't make me less older puuunnn
hahahahaha !

i can't afford another agony

for the starting of this year, i'm trying to be more objective, more focus, more happy and more spirited. enough is just enough. aku tak larat lah dan everything yang pernah aku habit-kan in my life here, i have to say that i need to stop it.

so, sebagai langkah kecil, this is what i'm gonna do -

1. no more pill abusing

be it for my headache, for my sleeping problem, for my cold, for my stress or for my fun. i won't take my candy anymore.

2. ignore the voice

don't take any provocation from it. it may jingle shits in my ears but i don't give it a damn. kau kata aku alone and you're saying that it's better if i take my own life again? kau nak provokkan itu pada aku?

hey, itu perkara paling bullshit yang pernah aku dengar.

3. control stress and emotions

a person once suggested me to keep a medical diary because my health wasn't that pink. so, ever since i have the diary, aku dah boleh trace my sickness patterns. the most common reason behind all my pain is the level of stress. bila emosi dah serupa macam roller coaster, stress pun me-roket laju. end up hormon jadik tak stabil and life becomes miserable.

4. write a diary again

tak semua benda aku boleh tulis pada kertas bawangmerahsquared because i have to maintain a facade. therefore, to be honest to myself, aku akan tulis diari semula. dah lama benar aku tak berlaku jujur hinggakan kakak bilang sama aku, sifat denial dan self-defensive cukup menebal dalam diri ni.

5. eat good, healthy food

umi bekalkan aku mee hoon instead of maggie dan umi siap ajarkan aku resipi sup sayur sebelum aku terbang pulang ke wilayah biri-biri. dan sekarang, diet aku mula berubah sedikit demi sedikit. sarapan pagi - roti atau pisang. tengahari - kentang atau roti. malam - a bit of nasi.

aku dah mula makan biskut dan aku cuba sekatkan diri dari makan chips. aku dah mula minum milo dan aku cuba kurangkan minuman gas. aku dah mula makan banyak sayur dan aku cuba minimize-kan daging.

cukup lah these five small steps for me to make a change.

moga-moga, Tuhan pinjamkan aku rasa sakinat dalam hayat ni.

ini teman sebumbung dan sedinding.
ye, kali ni, aku cuma hidup bertiga saja.