the team celebrated the submission of a 80 million euro fund application with two bottle of champagne and a box of chocolate cookies. germans and their lack of festivities when it comes to evening food/parties, where the most elaborate dish is cheese and grapes on a stick. then gummy bears, salt sticks, nachos, chocolates. I grab a glass, and sip pensively, navigating between the flavour and my own self judgement.
as the evenings draw to a close, the message box opens and one is allowed to whisper the most sacred/mundane of thoughts. what pleasure is there to seek behind a photo, an exchange of suggestions and inquiries? I am tired of this, and F is miles away, uttering ohne dich, ich bin nicht laments. Meanwhile Hajra shares with me, in what seems a abrupt conclusion of her ‘love story’, if It can be called so. maybe I attract the broken, but who can know for sure?
what is it with kisah cinta islamik, navigating boundaries (the unsayable and the undoable), that people put so much hope and effort and longing in them? one can simply end the torture (or pleasure) by asking, will you marry me, or do we make sense together, or what is it that you seek?
then again, my marriage to F was a simple affair. happiness (in the form of boredom, tedium and safe territories), in exchange of strife (and the secretion of pleasure in navigating this complex, tortured being that if F). whether this is enough reason aside from quiet sensible love/companionship to stay together, only time will tell.
consolation can be found in the form of hot baked potatoes with guacamole, or in the form of flat white coffees from Australian baristas who think it is a good idea to open a hipster coffee here (thank you for putting on Backstreet Boys on a Tuesday afternoon), amidst the Backerei and terrible filtered WMF coffees.
A is 37. I remember the narration given to the taxi driver on the day I left Jakarta, summarizing, in brief, among the things that have happened there. Strange how we allow ourselves the liberty of confession in 30-minute drives, that end in, naturally, in him asking me, ‘What if?’
There are no use for what ifs, it is a question of want and opportunity, I say to Pakcik Teksi.
perkaraperkara 