Tepatnya pukul 2.31 a.m belum juga terpejam, masih dengan fikiran fikiran yang bercabang, masih terjebak dalam hati kecilku. Malam ini entah mengapa aku merasakan kerinduan, merasakan kesepian, namun merasakan dekat nya kehadiran dirinya. Aku terbenam dalam fikiranku. Apakah banyak yang merasakan sepertiku. Merasakan kedekatan seseorang yang dulu pernah mengukir kisah bersamamu ?
Ya .. Aku sering sekali merasakannya. Tepat nya hari ini, ntah mengapa aku begitu lemah ketika ia tinggalkan. Saat berpapasan dengannya, aku tidak merasakan apapun. Namun sesudahnya, aku merasakan bahwa Ia merasakan hal yang sama sepertiku. Bodoh kah ? Iyah, aku berfikir aku terlalu bodoh untuk merasakan semua ini.
Aku yang dulu mengakhiri semuanya. Aku yang terlalu lelah dengan sikapnya. Aku yang kehabisan kesabaranku. Aku yang tidak dapat terbuka dengannya. Sungguh sebuah mimpi buruk yang selalu aku semoga kan menjadi mimpi indah.
Namun aku sadar semuanya akan sia-sia. Dia sudah memiliki kekasih. Seorang perempuan yang dia damba-dambakan terdahulu. Sedangkan aku ? Aku bukan siapa-siapa di matanya. Ironi bukan ? Mencintai seseorang yang sama sekali tidak dapat mencintaiimu :).
#bersambung
Strange Birds by Kelly Barnhill
“Once upon a time there was a sorcerer who disguised himself as a poor man, went begging from house to house, and captured beautiful girls. No one knew where he took them, for none of them ever returned.”
– “Fletcher’s Bird,” a story from the Grimm Brothers
When I was a little girl, once I actually started reading (which, for me, took a while; longer than most), I read fairy tales. Lots and lots and lots of fairy tales. I started with Grimm, of course, because that was what we had on the shelf. I have no idea which edition or translation it was, all I know is that our copy was so old that the covers disintegrated, and my dad had to re-bind the ancient pages himself, using an old checkerboard and a lot of duct tape. These were the stories he read to us, over and over, when…
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The Offering (A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #26)
And then something happened that changed everything.
I wish I could start the story that way, because that’s how it felt when it happened: startling, vivid, breathtakingly transformative. Even now it makes my heart race, the moment when I looked down and saw what I saw on our front porch, and the follow-up moment when I pulled the car out of the garage and saw what was there. But you can’t be jolted out of a world without there being a world to be jolted out of. That’s an awkward way of saying it, but I’m a storyteller, not an expert in metaphysics. Bear with me.
And then something happened that changed everything.
We’ll get to the something. But first, you have to know what the everything was.
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We were renting a house on a cul-de-sac in northern Virginia. The purplest part of a purple state, in the section of…
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The Case for Slow Programming
My dad used to say, “Slow down, son. You’ll get the job done faster.”
I’ve worked in many high-tech startup companies in the San Francisco Bay area. I am now 52, and I program slowly and thoughtfully. I’m kind of like a designer who writes code; this may become apparent as you read on 🙂
Programming slowly was a problem for me when I recently worked on a project with some young coders who believe in making really fast, small iterative changes to the code. At the job, we were encouraged to work in the same codebase, as if it were a big cauldron of soup, and if we all just kept stirring it continuously and vigorously, a fully-formed thing of wonder would emerge.
It didn’t.
Many of these coders believed in thefallacy that all engineers are fungible, and that no one should be responsible for any particular…
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Did the Torture Report Just Open the U.S. Up to ICC Prosecution?
Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay (Photo: AP)
Does the recent ‘torture report’ on CIA ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ leave US citizens vulnerable to prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC)? That was the question I was asked to answer in my latest article for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, originally posted here.
Dec. 9 saw the much anticipated release of the U.S. Senate’s “torture report,” outlining in harrowing and tragic detail the CIA’s program of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in its “global war on terror.” On Dec. 2, the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court also released a report in which it made clear that it was inching closer to opening an official investigation into crimes in Afghanistan – including U.S. interrogation techniques. These developments could very well expose U.S. officials to formal investigation – and potentially prosecution – by the ICC. But is the court truly prepared to…
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The Tyranny of the Bucket List
My alarm went off at 3.30am. I got dressed and went out and tagged along with the procession of half-asleep travellers crowded into tuk-tuks or furiously pedalling unlit hire bikes through the crepuscular gloom. At Angkor Wat, the hawkers were patrolling the car park with torches,
“You wan’ coffee-breakfast?”
“Not now, thanks.”
I joined the concert crowd assembling in front of the temple and sat and waited with increasing impatience for an hour or so until the sun struggled over the horizon. Is that it? I thought and went to get coffee-breakfast.
It occurred to me later that I had seen dozens of landmarks, just as iconic, but had never before felt the need to get up in the middle of the night and watch the sun rise behind them. But it had never before been a Thing You Must Do before You Die.
It is always a must:…
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Areas of Fog #37: Paper Allegories
This is still our Sydney
Flowers in Martin Place at 9.30am on Tuesday.
It’s Monday morning and I’m running late. Walking late. It’s twenty minutes to ten when I turn left from Phillip St into Martin Place.
I don’t look at the Lindt cafe as I pass. My eyes are focused on the Channel Seven news ticker. I can’t remember now what it says but I’m sure Michael Clarke’s hamstring features somewhere.
I love Martin Place, its wide indulgent promenade and its buildings that speak of other times. I always take a moment to breathe it in.
Man Haron Monis is only minutes away. This morbid chapter is already unfolding. By the time I settle at my desk, he has entered the Lindt cafe. The lives of seventeen people going about the mundane business of ordering and serving coffee are now forever changed.
Before long, a large TV screen in our office is showing static…
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How to Be a Ladyperson at the Holidays: 10 Important Tips
How to Make (and Keep) a Traveler’s Hippocratic Oath
Tours you can take, although we’ll pass
First, do no harm.
It’s an oath sworn by physicians and a pledge that every traveler should make as well. As guests in the places we visit the very least we can do is respect our hosts by not hurting their country or their people.
Unfortunately such pledges are easier made than kept. That’s especially true in areas of the world that lack strong regulations protecting vulnerable populations. It’s not uncommon to see plenty of exploitive activities marketed to tourists. And sometimes those activities are even cleverly disguised to prey on our very desire to do good.
Visiting and volunteering in a children’s orphanage in Cambodia, for example, sounds like a good way of directing your travel dollars to a worthwhile cause. That is until you learn about the fake orphanages that separate children from their parents for the sole purpose of separating…
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delfiannatens 