SEGERA TERBIT: "Perkara Mengirim Senja"

Pada suatu kesempatan, saya diminta oleh Jia Effendie bersama 13 penulis lainnya untuk bergabung dalam sebuah project kumpulan cerpen tribute to Seno Gumira Ajidarma. Senang? Tentu saja! Bukan hanya karena Seno Gumira adalah salah satu penulis favorit saya, tapi juga karena teman-teman yang bergabung pada project ini juga merupakan penulis-penulis yang saya kagumi.

Berikut adalah para penulis yang tergabung dalam project ini:
1. "Gadis Kembang" -- @vabyo
2. "Perkara Mengirim Senja" -- @JiaEffendie
3. "Selepas Membaca Sebuah Pertanyaan untuk Cinta, Alina Menulis Dua Cerita Pendek Sambil Membayangkan Lelaki Bajingan yang Baru Meninggalkannya" -- @hurufkecil
4. "Kuman" -- @lalabohang
5. "Ulang" -- @putrafara
6. "Akulah Pendukungmu" -- @salamatahari
7. "Empat Manusia" -- @monstreza
8. "Saputangan Merah" -- @tummythumb
9. "Senja dalam Pertemuan Hujan" -- @omemdisini
10. "Kirana Ketinggalan Kereta" -- @maradilla (saya)
11. "Gadis tak Bernama" -- @perempuansore
12. "Guru Omong Kosong" -- @arnellism
13. "Surat Ke-93" -- @febyindirani
14. "Bahasa Sunyi" -- @lukisansunyi


Para penulis juga diminta untuk menyebutkan satu lagu yang dapat menggambarkan mood cerpen mereka masing-masing. Kamu bisa mendengarkannya di sini

Perkara Mengirim Senja akan terbit dan hadir di toko-toko buku pada bulan April 2012 oleh Penerbit Serambi.

A Journey of Solace Serenade

Forget it, and you’ll remember.
You are out of chalks to write on that board, but you’ll remember what to bring. What to do. The journey is in front of you, and you won’t treat it like any other trip, because it will feel like an extraordinary trip.

Dripping toughts.
Get out from unnecessary distractions. It is very easy to remain the goals. For the more of walking time, it reminds you to prays of hope and cure of any painfuls. You’re not going to see something, but to receive something. A greater devotion, a distance to get closer.

Looking for a hand in the dark, where actually people hold you.
Betrayal, infidelity, and unending heartbreak: Oh, the stories that they could tell. Yet we are afraid and fearless at the same time as babies. We got heart. Yeah we’ve got.

And in a brief moment of sincere and clarity, you knew that staying with me would be more secure than anything the blackness could hold.



Twin Sister - All around and Away We Go (Teen Daze Remix)
Matt Van Schie - Journey
Toro Y Moi - Before I'm Done
Jackie Moon - Love Me Sexy
Gipsy and The Cat - The Piper's Song (Aeroplane Remix)
Au Revoir Simone - Backyards
Body Language - Tempoture
Kamp! - Distance of The Modern Hearts
Badly Drawn Boy - Promises (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Reanimation)

cover: Jeff Pitcher

Download it here

So you called it "Fake Realism"

(The beautiful pics captured by Willy Irawan when he was travelling to Raja Ampat - Papua)

and don't ask why and how on earth this person write this. just read. and hopefully you'll think what's next for our country.


...I'm from Indonesian just like Rarindra. And come along with that, I hope my comment could add new perspective about what Rarindra intent.

Indonesia is huge. Even me (who have travelled arround 20 islands or more-yes islands) still felt unfamiliar with this part of the globe. Some part of our country were expansive, with jungles and sheer tall mountain, panoramic view and its sturdy silent people. But some part were dark, full of garbage, smoke and noisy people get killed. Those two world in one country were not mixed together. They were seperated. And when they were seperated, it's nearly impossible to have a clear focus on your eyes to capture Rarindra intent.

To speak the truth. In Indonesia, Me and my generation hold a great dissapointment in goverment-that act like a thieve. One thieve goes down but another thieve elected. They were people that have most responsible on what Johathan McIntosh capture in Jakarta. Poverty.

While some people get permission to exploit our country (and its you who live in "the west") from the thieves. There some part of our country that remains the same. Freeze by the time. Those part are part that I told you before. Expansive, with jungle and sheer mountain, sea, panoramic view and sturdy people. In this part of Indonesia, people are not concerned with computer, Mother Theresa, celluler phone or striptease. And as you can see in Rarindra portofolio. They were happy. That's not myth happiness.

Me and my generation still struggle to fix poverty in this country. But hence..there's a lot of time when we were felt very sad about what happened in our country. Mad And loose the spirit to change the way our goverment rule. Tired on corruption and lazy people.

When that times come, looking in some Rarindra's photograph give us good feeling.

Still. Rarindra may dont have any clue about what he has done. I think he's just want to make a beatifull portrait of Indonesia and represent it in dreamy way. The reality sure is not good as the photo. But looking at his portofolio give me sense of pride. We love this country. And will do something to make it remain loved.

Call it third world fake realism. But for me it worth something.

----- friends, i have to repost this, it's written by Ganis Angger Atmawarin. it's a beautiful posting :)

The Route of 88

seberapa jauh jarak antara rumah anda dan pacar anda?
hehehe. mungkin ketika membaca judul playlist ini ada yang langsung bisa menebak, "ooh maksudnya rute ke lembang 88" atau mungkin heran karena lagu-lagu yang ada di playlist ini tidak serupa dengan lagu Nat King Cole "Route 66".

sebenarnya sederhana saja. karena jarak rumah saya dan rumah pacar lumayan jauh, dari antapani ke lembang 88, mungkin sekitar 35 km lebih (yang menurut saya itu "lumayan" jauh), tentunya lagu yang saya habiskan tidak mungkin hanya satu-dua atau tiga lagu saja. ditambah kemacetan, melewati jalan yang meliuk-liuk karena rumahnya yang ada di daerah gunung (hehehe) membuat saya terbiasa mendengarkan satu rangkaian playlist, dan inilah dia. "The Route of 88", berisikan lagu-lagu yang akhir-akhir sedang saya dengar. ada lagu lama, lagu baru, atau lagu yang saya sendiri tidak tahu umur rilisnya berapa. semoga bisa berbagi imajinasi dalam sebuah perjalanan yang sudah menjadi ritual (hampir) sehari-hari.



1. Memory Tapes - Run Out
2. JJ - Kill you
3. Starfucker - Reptilians
4. PNAU - Baby (Breakbot remix)
5. Futurecop!- Dreams
6. MGMT - Electric Feels
7. Washed Out - Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi remix)
8. Neon Indian - Mind, Drips (Bibio remix)
9. Cut copy - Take Me Over
10.Working For a Nuclear Free City - B.A.R.R.Y
11.Toro Y Moi - You Hid (Studio Session)
12.White Hinterland - Icarus

download it here


.......i believe that when you're making a mix, you're making history. you ransack the vaults, you haul off the junk you can carry, and you rewire all your ill-gotten loot into something new. you go through an artist's entire career, zero in on that moment that makes you jump and dance and smoke bats and bite the head off drugs. and that you play that moment over and over.

a mixtape steals these moment from all over musical cosmos, and splices them into a whole new groove.... - Rob Sheffield, "Love Is A Mixtape".

The Ephermal Sunshine of The Blemished Mind

broadcasting sometimes could be one of the best remedy. you share it with your listeners, you play the song that suits your feeling. it was touch and go. and when a broadcaster going through their difficult times, it's hilarious how you turn on the radio and even the most cliché things perfectly capture how you feel them. And then you realize why people wrote those songs. we're not special. we're humanbeings. hopefully, as a listener, you get a feeling like you understand a moment when you just can't get away from your problems. you leave your house, you're driving down the road, you're going to do something different, and all of a sudden you hear, oh, here's their story on the radio.




edvard munch - separation



please let me keep this memory of us singing this song....

i wanna relish the moment.when we're lying in my bed. smoking watched the sun rising and inhaling each other's scents. open the windows. and let the breeze touch our skin. open your eyes. let's make it worth waiting. your whispers were spellbinding. your kisses infatuating. your caress was my oasis your whispers were bewitching. your kisses mesmerized me. your caress was my oasis. when I gently touched your hair. i could feel you're shivering as you moved your body closer i could feel that love had come. your whispers were spellbinding. your kisses infatuating. your caress was my oasis your whispers were bewitching. your kisses mesmerized me. your caress was my oasis.
----- "dew" by santamonica.


now i'm ready for the next chapter.

the premature decision.

my brother once told me wisely, that sometimes, a good separation came from a silent trigger. you can see the symptoms. constant changes, hidden distraction (you name it, brah!). we had our long conversation about something that keeps running on our head, about decision and conclusion of our own life.
i appreciate our beautiful mind. for what i agree, i believe, that, a grown-up relationship will need an innermost contemplation, a something that could arrange your present love, while probably solitude will arrange itself (i said probably). sooo........talking about mine?
he was looking at me sadly. he knew. "go on sis, tell me" he said.

see the thing is, i have this difficulties to explain on why i should see that, this is not a failure, no, but more like force majeure. as a grown up relationship trying to be, this may be the most massive struggle we've ever done to really make it works. the dangerous phase where actually everything is fun but vaguely not fine, all covered up in a perfect beautiful package. we're not a coin who has a different side that complete each other, we're the same side. you can see another version of me in him. totally. we reach at a point when i finally realized that this is the war. the war that we don't made, this is the tragicomedy story that we can't see clearly. once again, (i hate to say this) this relationship stays in purgatory (purgatory, brah, ring a bell of something? dante alighiery?hehehe)


so blame me, for being the trigger. i had to. i refuse to fall into the same hole. shit happens but we're no longer in the kindergarten where kermit from sesame street taught us a simple and honest message, please step aside. see the different between childhood and adulthood.

you were right my brother, i have to take the premature decision.

spinning time

time.
sebuah kata yang biasa ditemukan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari namun patut untuk selalu diingat, dijadikan inspirasi, dijadikan sebagai bahan perenungan.
as cliche as it may sound, people need time for everything. things in life. Even for human, they need time to race, and the human race is faced with cruel choice: work or lazytime television. not that i'm judging the second choice.
glad i'm one of those people who often frustating works stuff, not frustating life without works or jobs.
and being grown up, i really think it takes soooo much time for me being grown up, not a childish one. but the spinning time giving me the thought of there's no point of being grown up if people can't be childish sometimes. fiuhhh, hehehehe.

time.
that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. the opportunities, even for love stories.
lately, it doesn't seem to be working, hahahaha.

time. sebuah kata yang bisa dijadikan perenungan,
karena selalu ada makna dibalik "take your time".

smoking kills.

anggaplah sebuah guilty pleasure adalah sebuah rokok. rokok bagi mereka yang merokok adalah sebuah keharusan, dan kecenderungan untuk menjadi addicted sangatlah besar. saya memang tidak merokok. tetapi lingkungan saya yang berisikan perokok memungkinkan saya untuk mengerti bahwa merokok bagi perokok itu sangat sulit untuk dihentikan. dan anggaplah sebuah guilty pleasure adalah sebuah rokok, maka saya saat ini sedang menjadi perokok. perokok berat.

saya merokok suatu perkara, dimana saya sangat-sangat-sangat menikmati itu, namun saya sadar bahwa "itu salah". nothing beats the power of guilty pleasure, dimana semakin kita berlama-lama dengannya, semakin kita terikat dengannya

pada akhirnya teman saya mengingatkan:

" the plan of a better life might settled for future, but the act started now. stop smoking. smoking kills. and the future is, now."


I'm trying now.



unfortunately.........









I'm sorry, i'm trying not to stop. i'm dying here, so please will you just kill me?

the progress

ketika "ketika daun bercerita" sudah diterbitkan, hanya sebentarr saja bagi saya untuk sedikit merasa lega. ada sedikit kekhawatiran mengenai karya saya yang kedua: Absurd Paradiso dan Terra Incognita. kekhawatiran ini, kekhawatiran itu, apalah. Pencapaian saya untuk kedua novel berikutnya memang berbeda. I want it not to be perfect, but more exactly like what i want. Terbebaskan pakem. sedikit beban yang berbeda, karena harapan yang ada memang berbeda, pokoknya berbeda, hahaha. Sooooo....wish me luck, will you?? ;)

A State of Mind

the world has taken me around, and now i'm arrived at a point when i'm not chasing or finding something for good. It's good already. good doesn't mean perfect, but it equals more than i expect.
the road was emptier at midnight as always, and on my way back home i realized that i turned to be a melancholic kinda girl who wants to change a perfect picture of future in a different line.
they asked me, " Are you happy? " HAPPY. yeah, i'm happy. but happiness is just a state of mind, after all. what kinda happy do you want to be? is it happy that makes you still can't stand to wipe the unreasonly invisible tears that sometimes coming out from the sky of your heart? all i want is to be happy, where happiness is not only a state of mind, but a beautiful invention that makes you out of your mind.

anais nin, what are you?

kadang kita dibuat berdecak kagum ketika membaca sebuah literatur yang luar biasa. bagaimana bisa, kita akan dibuat bertanya-tanya, apakah yang ada di dalam pikiran mereka yang membuatnya sehiangga bisa menghasilkan sesuatu yang hebat? what are they?

" dream pass into the reality of action, from the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence the highest form of living....." -anais nin

Anais Nin adalah seorang penulis kelahiran prancis yang berdarah kuba dan denmark yang kontroversial. hasil-hasil karyanya yang banyak mengusung tema feminis dan seksualitas banyak mempengaruhi kaum wanita prancis pada saat itu untuk menjadi menjalani kehidupan seperti dia, bebas, mandiri, dapat melakukan apa yang dia mau termasuk soal seksualitas. berbagai macam penilaian ditujukan padanya seperti alter-ego, pembohong, inses, dan lain-lain.

Namun, dibalik ke-kontroversialannya, ia banyak mendapat pujian dan kekaguman banyak kalangan. banyak yang menilai bahwa ia mengangkat sisi seksualitas walaupun erotis namun tidak terkesan jorok. Bahkan beberapa kalangan menilainya sebagai hasil karya yang 'indah'. aneh bukan? kutipan-kutipan pemikiran filosofisnya banyak dipakai, karena mengandung 'pelajaran berharga', sarat makna.

Baru-baru ini saya membaca salah satu bukunya yang berjudul " Delta of Venus". Ketika membacanya, kita akan dibawa pada perjalanan imajinasi dan fantasi seksualnya, wah wah wah. saya tidak sanggup membacanya. begitu rumit. saya jadi teringat ayu utami atau djenar maesa ayu, namun anais nin adalah masternya. buku yang berisikan kumpulan cerita pendek ini memang menguras otak saya untuk tidak mengecap anais nin sebagai sosok yang negatif, karena beberapa ceritanya cukup "wah", seperti the boarding school, dan lilith. hhh......

akhirnya, ada pandangan dalam pikiran saya tentang anais nin yang justru bukannya mengecapnya sebagai sosok yang cabul: kedewasaan dan extraordinary. mungkin inilah proses pembelajaran bagi saya untuk menarik makna dari sebuah literatur untuk dapat menilai ada 'lesson of life' apa dibalik segala hal,

bahkan dari sesuatu yang berbau pornografi.

so..anais nin, what are you?

qualified fiction

fiksi dan imajinasi sangat berhubungan erat.
kamu harus dapat mempercayakan hasil penulisan kamu pada kekuatan imajinasi yang ada di pikiranmu. buat orang yang masih menganggap remeh tulisan-tulisan fiksi hanya karena tulisan tersebut hanyalah bersifat karangan, wah....tentu saja itu hanya pikiran dangkal. menulis fiksi tentu tidak semudah membalikkan telapak tangan. namun, bagi sebagian orang, menulis fiksi lebih menyenangkan, terlebih lagi orang tersebut adalah tipe pengkhayal tingkat tinggi (seperti saya, hahaha). sekarang pertanyaannya, bagaimana kita dapat membuat tulisan fiksi yang berkualitas?

sebagai contoh awal, kita dapat membubuhkan fakta dalam sebuah hasil karya fiksi. fakta dapat menjadi penunjang untuk menggali dan mengembangkan fiksi menjadi lebih luas. fiksi yang berkualitas biasanya dapat memberikan kamu inspirasi dan pengetahuan yang baru. para penulis biasanya mengembangkan hasil karya fiksi mereka dari inspirasi-inspirasi yang didapat dari hal-hal kecil di sekitar mereka. belajar mengkritisi fakta-fakta kecil yang terdapat dalam kehidupan sehari-hari kita sangat membantu kita untuk dapat mengembangkan imajinasi kita dalam menghasilkan sebuah hasil karya fiksi.
jadi, giat-giatlah menjadi seorang analyzer dan visionary person jika anda ingin membuat karya tulisan fiction yang qualified.