April’s mostly about reuniting and catching up with some good old friends. It’s about spending hours and hours talking over coffee and good food, laughing and crying and hugging and wishing each other good luck. It’s about shooting lots of pictures to be shared with my loved ones. April’s also about loads of small gifts and letters and postcards on my desk (mostly owls) – thank you so much! Apart from that, April is mostly about being lazy at home after coming back from a short business trip (that ended up with getting lost in the midst of a national park) and spending weekends working and revising some short stories with my editor. All in all, April’s an awesome month. Sun. Rain. Owls. Home. Good food. Friends. Gifts. Cute things. Best friends. Comfort. Trip. Meetings. You. Loads and loads of you. I’m happy 🙂

*) The title is a suggestion from Iqbal Corleone.

Silent movies are just wonderful. It’s a bit like love in a way, because words can’t describe everything that we feel. Most of the times, it’s more about the butterflies in your stomach when the the palm of his hands meet yours, the flickers in his eyes when he spots you in a crowd, the way he caresses your cheek with his fingers, the way your lips shape a U when you see something that reminds you of him. It’s more about the color of his eyes, the shape of his glasses, the food that he likes, the things that make him laugh, the serious look upon his face when he’s working, the way he treats you…

Models: The Mavericks and the Raconteurs.

I find pleasure in hours and hours of strolling around a bookstore or a stationery shop, buying books and gifts and ribbons and envelopes and beautiful wrapping papers—oh, and of course, cards with neat design and wordings!

When everyone can send you an email, a tweet or a Facebook message in just one click, I find the joy in receiving postcards from friends in faraway places. These postcards will be a bit crumpled when it reach me, but this just adds up to the authenticity of the thoughts, the journey, and the experiences—something that has traveled the distance of hundreds or even thousands of miles. The crumpled postcards are just the best and I love them oh-so-dearly.

There are times when I am in a bookstore or a stationery shop, and I’ll spot a nice card and my thoughts will go to a certain person, a friend, an acquaintance, a colleague, and I will just grab that card and mail it away. I’m not really into sending cards and packages for special occasions in someone’s life. Birthdays, graduations, promotions, weddings—err, no. Not really. What I love the most is just to send cards and packages on an ordinary day. Like a totally random day. And for no particular reason.

A lot like love, no? You don’t have to wait for a special day to show your love, and you don’t have to reason about why you love someone.So, my pile of cards and packages, fly, fly, fly, and fly away. Travel the distance safely, and please tell the people who receive you all that I care about them, I am thinking of them, and I wish them well.

Alain de Botton, 2006 | 240 pages

Ada sesuatu yang luar biasa manusiawi dari On Love. [SPOILER ALERT:] The book tells a journey of falling in and out of love. Dan begitulah yang terjadi di dunia nyata, pada jutaan kisah cinta tiap manusia di dunia. Buku ini merangkum perjalanan itu dengan manis sekaligus getir. Kita bisa membacanya dan mengenali pola-pola manis-getir itu dalam hubungan yang sedang atau pernah dijalani. Kemudian, de Botton membuat kita berpikir. Mencerna rasa pelan-pelan. Mencoba mengerti mengapa kita jatuh cinta.

Dengan gaya bertutur yang santai dan lugas, de Botton mengaitkan masalah rasa dan debar-debar cinta dengan teori probabilitas, beragam cabang filsafat, sampai psikoanalisis. Karakter-karakter yang punya ‘cacat’ masing-masing juga ditampilkan dengan sangat jujur dan apa adanya. Salah satu adegan yang saya sukai adalah penggambaran ketika si tokoh lelaki dan perempuan makan malam di sebuah restoran, dan si tokoh lelaki—melihat sebongkah marshmallow, berpikir:

Love was a sugary, puffy object a few millimeters in diameter that melts deliciously in the mouth.

Membaca On Love seperti tengah mendengarkan kisah cinta seorang kawan lama. Kita tidak menghakimi. Tidak bertanya mengapa. Tidak mendesak. Tidak berekspektasi. Kita hanya duduk di sana, diam, dan mendengarkan. Menunggu. Membuat kita lebih mengerti bahwa sesungguhnya, kita sendirilah yang menentukan kapan cinta itu datang dan kapan cinta itu pergi.

I find happiness in simple things. Like living in a small town with an 80-hectare botanical garden at its city centre—a sanctuary for more than 15,000 species of trees and plants. It’s a small town with the highest number of rainy days (320 out of 365 days) in Java (or maybe in the world?), hence the title “Rain City” (though for the sake of romanticism I prefer to call it “The City of the Falling Rain”).

But what I love the most from a small town is the absence of tall buildings and skyscrapers, as well as 24-hour  brightly-lit billboards and LCD screens that contribute to light pollution. I love it when the night is pitch dark (as it should be) and the sky is clear; so you can sit down on an open field (or in my case, the empty parking lot in front of my housing complex’s swimming pool) and gazing at the stars.

I could spend hours just sitting there, looking up into the sky, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. My heart twinkles.

A few days ago, going back home at around 11 pm, I entertained myself with the view of the starlit sky from behind my taxi’s window. It was on the highway, the last few kilometers home, with open fields on my left. The sky seemed closer. At the time, I wished I could mail that amazing starlit sky to you, so you could see it in your sky, too.

***

Around midnight, a girl arrived at her home. She dashed in, threw her bags, sipped a cup of hot tea her father had prepared, then snatched her camera and ran to the front door hurriedly, yelling: “Am out to shoot the stars!”—and off she ran to an empty parking lot in front of her housing complex’s swimming pool; still inside her working outfit with blazer and all; then she directed her camera to the sky. She fluttered around the open space, trying her best to capture the twinkling stars. Someone who happened to see her from afar might think she was dancing while looking up to the sky.

***

A few days later, somewhere far away, a guy opened his mailbox and found a tiny card with a handwritten note on it. It said:

Dear you,

I haven’t mastered the skills to capture those stars vividly, yet
(not to mention my improper handling of the camera)—but I hope,
you can still catch the beauty of  those twinkling tiny dots,
if only you’re willing to see this with just a little bit of extra love.

H.

Short trips. Lovely weekends. Books. Paintings. Sketches. Taking pictures. Shopping for shoes and blazers. Cute things. Adorable moments. Winter days. Friends. Great laughs. You. March.