Owlish Birthday

Seven months and a week after my 29th birthday, I turned 29. It happened yesterday. A Sunday. I was sitting at the dining table with a bag full of chocolate, a great book on love and heartbreak and poets and writers, stacks of hand-written drafts, and a cup of hot tea. I could see the raindrops from where I sat and sniffed the comforting smell of wet soil that was wafting in the air. And suddenly, it felt like whatever I had experienced in life started to make sense.

Maybe we don’t have to understand everything (that can be really frustrating at times). All we need to do is to believe that time is indeed a good friend. Time will tell us what each missing pieces in our lives means—when we are ready to learn another lesson, when we are ready to move on, when we are ready to know the truth (because you can’t change the truth, but the truth can change you, so they say).

And just like that, I turned 29.
And I am still here: counting my blessings; and feeling solemnly content.

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Four years ago, Nia and myself gazed at two jars full of coins on our working desk, and we thought how wonderful it would be if we could use those coins to send more kids back to school. We counted the coins and the amount could actually cover a child’s tuition fee in elementary school. We blogged about this idea (that later on we called Coin A Chance!) and invited our friends to participate in sending more Indonesian kids back to school; hoping that we could get 5 more friends to donate their coins. The news spread so much faster than we thought and on our first Coin Collecting Day, we got 30 people instead of 5, bringing along their jars of coins that all weighed around 15 kilograms.

Coin A Chance!

Four years later, we are still counting coins. All in all, around 60 kids have gone back to school (some have graduated from high school) thanks to our Coiners and Droppers in different cities across Indonesia. Coin A Chance! organizers in different cities—most of them are university students; volunteered to organize Coin Collecting Days in their cities, find the kids, and take care of all the administration procedures to send these kids back to school. We could not thank them enough for their kindness, their dedication, their time, and their enthusiasm.

Today, we’d like to thank each and everyone of you who have supported us since 2008 until today: volunteers, donors, coiners, droppers, friends, colleagues, onliners, corporations and institutions, schools, journalists… you have been such an amazing part of our wonderful journey.

Thank you so much.

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There were moments when people just took off and left you behind; and you thought they were being unfair and selfish. Other times, it was you who decided to pack your bag and leave, and when they said, please, stay, you thought how annoying and unfair they were for trying to tie you down. And now you realize that maybe people are just afraid. Afraid of being alone, again. Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of being a history…

Rain

And it reminded me of that day when we were about to swim in the pool one afternoon, but it was raining cats and dogs; and so we stood there, at the edge of yes or no, with our swimsuits and towels and flip-flops and all. The sound of the rain was deafening, the water was gleaming under the raindrops, the wind was blowing hard and cold, and so we hesitated for a while but then we exchanged a few if-not-now-then-when glances and nodded and hand in hand we plunged ourselves into the freezing water and we could hear ourselves screaming and laughing and water was splashing everywhere and we just knew that we won’t regret this because it was too effing awesome and we were not afraid to take that first leap of faith.

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My dear friend Nadia asked me to write a script for her pre-wedding video. We had discussed about the concept of the video beforehand, but I had never seen the video itself until it was finished—and I needed to think about the matching script that would go along with the video’s storyline. The first thing that crossed my mind was the fact that Nadia and her husband, Deni, are totally different; they’re like each other’s opposite. But maybe, to them, that’s love. It’s not about similarities, but about differences.

Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. About how he loves to play tennis and gets a tan… while she just sits there, cheering, and trying to be cute with an SPF 30 sun protection lotion. Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. It’s about how she loves all the cute stuff; and how he just doesn’t get it. Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. About how she loves to capture him with her camera lens, while he loves to capture her with the glance of his eyes. Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. It’s about how she gets bored easily. And gets excited (easily, too) by random romantic lines. About him being very serious whenever he works; and about her, being annoying, all the time. About him trying to be patient and her trying to be lenient. Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. About how he tries to be romantic; and how she tries to be thinner. About how she does ridiculous things (sometimes worse than this); and how it makes him smile. Maybe love is not about similarities. Maybe love is about differences. It’s about him being cool; and her anything but cool. Maybe love is about being OK with that, and being lonely without.

*)written for Nadia Sabrina.

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unsent letters. heart-shaped memories, bursting in words. lonely sentences, never leave the torn pages. crumpled secrets, inside a stack of envelopes. silent phrases and faraway wishes at the back of your plane tickets. the farthest distance is one that is not crossed.

And this is the exact reason why you got those letters.

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Dim, happy (belated) birthday! I am wishing you a great year ahead, full of love and sweet memories to keep! 🙂 And, I know it’s been a while… sudah lama kita nggak menulis untuk satu sama lain seperti dulu. Untuk ulang tahun kamu, let’s do it again, for the sake of the lovely (and awful) memories we have shared along the way.

Oh ya, Dim, ada banyak hal yang terjadi dalam hidupku (will spill all the details when we meet in Bandung)—dan mulainya waktu aku pergi untuk sebulan itu. Aku pergi tanpa mencari apa-apa (selain sedikit pantai, sedikit laut dan sejumput kata-kata), tetapi aku kembali membawa banyak hal tentang hidup. Tentang cinta. Tentang kesempatan kedua. Sewaktu pergi, hatiku kosong. Sewaktu pulang, hatiku penuh dengan setumpuk surat dan puisi yang ditulis tangan, percakapan demi percakapan yang tidak putus-putus selama lebih dari 7 jam, cokelat champagne dan es krim vanila, perjalanan di tengah hujan, genggaman tangan di pagi hari, puluhan huruf X dan D, juga film-film yang diputar di HBO.

Aku diberikan banyak pelajaran tentang menikmati ‘sekarang’, Dim. Masa lalu sudah tidak bisa diapa-apakan, masa depan belum lagi akan datang. Perjalananku membuatku lebih menghargai yang ada ‘sekarang’. Seorang temanku bertanya, what is the sense of life? Aku bilang, mungkin hidup ini adalah lebih tentang kesempatan-kesempatan yang kita raih, daripada kesempatan-kesempatan yang kita lewatkan. Hidup ini adalah tentang sekarang—tentang hal-hal yang terjadi sementara kita sibuk memikirkan masa depan, begitu kata sebuah kutipan yang entah dikatakan siapa.

Teman yang sama bertanya lagi, what is love? Mungkin sama juga. Cinta adalah apa yang terjadi ketika kita tengah sibuk mempertanyakan arti cinta itu sendiri. Mungkin cinta adalah momen. Ketika kamu tengah bersama seseorang dan berpikir bahwa dengan dia di sampingmu, kamu bisa melakukan apa saja. Ketika kamu pergi jauh dan merindukan dia, dan mengetahui bahwa jika kamu harus pulang, tempat yang akan kamu tuju adalah tempat-tempat di mana dia berada. And I-love-yous, maybe they are not forever ever after. Maybe they are moments. Moments you can never get back.

Jadi hadiah ulang tahunku untukmu, Dim, adalah saat ini. Sekarang. Nikmati saat-saat ini, ya, Dim. Setiap momen. Setiap kesempatan. Setiap jalan yang dibukakan. Setiap pertemuan. Karena di akhir hari, kamu akan mengenang semuanya. Mungkin tak seluruhnya indah. Tapi setidaknya, kamu akan mengenangnya tanpa rasa sesal. Dan itu adalah hal terindah yang bisa kita katakan tentang hidup yang sudah kita jalani selama ini.

Love,
Hanny.

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What do you know about sadness? About being left-behind? About seeing those backs, those steps, walking away from you, over and over again, and you found yourself looking at them with your eyes welled up with tears every single time, hoping that they would stop and look back but they never did? And you tried to brace yourself and looked up to prevent those tears from falling, but no matter how hard you tried it didn’t work because it still hurt?

What do you know about opening up and letting your guards down and falling in love and getting hurt? About how it sucks, and about how the fact that you can’t get away from it makes it sucks even more? About not being able to trust anyone ever again because you have been betrayed so many times you can’t even cry anymore? About how you kept thinking that you should have killed the feeling right away?

What do you know about trying? About wanting to believe in something good, something special, something real? About wanting to believe that people actually mean what they say when you keep on hearing lies? What do you know about wanting to believe that some people will actually stay when you are always the one being left behind?

What do you know about disappointment? About thinking that this is the one and that this time it should be different and that this is real and later on knowing that everything is nothing but the same old lies?

What do you know? What do you know about me?

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I have not lived long in this world,
Yet I have learned to take account
Of what I got from life—not much,
But none the less, a fair amount.

It taught me to perceive the good,
Gave me a glimpse of learning’s wealth,
Put love for justice in my soul,
Gave me two Eands to work and health.
It gave me friendship, mutual love,
Although not always strong and deep.
It said: “Go sow thy seed, although
Thy hand may not the harvest reap.”
It also gave me enemies
Who cursed and persecuted me;
It gave me friends who yet were prone
First their own interests to see.
Yet over all I value most
The cup of unjust suffering
Life gave to me, that truth and light
I might perhaps to others bring.

~ What Life Gave, by Ivan Franko ~

Ukraine

Ukraine.

Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine

Models: Katya, Inna Buryakovska, Julia and her friend, Francois Bellemare, Fransisco Garcia, Kyryl Kurinniy, Ieugenia Petrikina. The people I stumbled upon in Kyiv, Ukraine.

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Tentu saja, ada hal-hal yang tidak kukatakan padamu pagi itu, karena. Rasanya terlalu lekas. Sementara aku sedang tidak ingin bergegas-gegas. Ada sesuatu yang lucu dan menggemaskan (juga mencemaskan) dalam menunggu. Tetapi aku suka; menikmati kamu sedikit demi sedikit supaya rasa ini bertahan jauh lebih lama. Aku tahu aku banyak tertawa dan bilang ‘hanya bercanda‘, tetapi. Sebenarnya tidak juga. Tidak sepenuhnya. Katakanlah lima puluh lima puluh. Mungkin saat ini aku mulai bersungguh-sungguh (dan sebenarnya tidak ada tanda titik koma dan kurung tutup atau titik dua dan huruf P di belakang semua perkataanku).

Jadi. Sulit melepasmu (atau kau melepasku, atau sesungguhnya kita saling melepaskan) pagi itu. Sesungguhnya aku sedikit sedih. Dan sedikit kehilangan. Dan sedikit terkejut karena bisa merasakan semua itu. Dan kita berkali-kali mengucapkan ‘selamat tinggal’ tetapi tidak ada di antara kita yang beranjak pergi dan aku menemukan diriku di sisimu lagi, dan kamu di sisiku lagi, dan kita menendang-nendang kaki satu sama lain di bawah meja secara sembunyi-sembunyi, lalu menyelinap ke taman untuk mengucapkan ‘selamat tinggal’, lagi, tetapi. Kita bahkan masih tidak ingin berjarak meski hanya satu senti.

Lalu aku pergi. Kamu pergi. Aku pikir aku akan kehilangan kamu selamanya pagi itu. Aku sudah terbiasa melihat punggung-punggung yang menjauh, tetapi sesering apapun tetap saja masih terasa sedih. Jadi aku tidur saja seharian itu. Karena aku tidak ingin menangis. Rasanya terlalu dramatis. It’s not me. Maka, keesokan harinya, aku sudah siap mengucapkan selamat tinggal (betapa aku benci perpisahan yang dilakukan seorang diri), tetapi.

Kamu kembali.

hanny
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Hanny illustrator
Hi. I'm HANNY
I am an Indonesian writer/artist/illustrator and stationery web shop owner (Cafe Analog) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I love facilitating writing/creative workshops and retreats, especially when they are tied to self-exploration and self-expression. In Indonesian, 'beradadisini' means being here. So, here I am, documenting life—one word at a time.

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