Warmth

 

I’m in one of those hazy moments. Those times in life when everything is a little fuzzy and smothering. When I wear a sweatshirt and beg for snow and dream about Christmas trees and bonfires. I love these times. Life speeds up a bit too much for me most of the time. I need everything to go in slow motion for a while. Days in the kitchen cooking mince pies, spanakopita, and apple crumble. Lazy afternoons listening to the hum of my father’s guitar, gazing as the snowflakes stumble. These are the moments I will remember. I haven’t felt like this in a while. I miss it. Jakarta is fast. Pace. Movement. Not a minute lost. Every second a clock ticking. A minute of silence broken by motorbike. No. It’s too fast. ‘Slow down’ I want to scream at this city. Where have the seasons gone? Where are the autumn and the winter that brought this feeling to me every year? I’ve nearly forgotten the crunch of brown leaves and the thrill of falling into crisp snow. The feeling of cold rain drops on my skin and wind biting against my cheek. I didn’t think I’d miss those things. But after all, it’s the small things that you miss.

So here I am, homesick and in the bubble of haze. I never want it to leave. It’s like being in a dream. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket. It’s like the scent of fresh bread. It’s safe. I wish I could always feel like this.

In this city

I’ve got big eyes that want to see this world

And small ears that strain to soak up all they can

I live in house painted white

On a busy street

In a busy city

And every day I see people peddling their souls

Up and down my street

I look out my window and see the men sitting on the bend

Night and day they’re always there

On the bench that faces the park

I don’t know what they talk about

But I imagine they’re telling stories

Stories of life

Illustrated by each wrinkle on their face

And each callus on their hand

Those hands have worked hard

And haven’t gotten very far

But far is what we tell it to be

And they may go much much further than me.

My heart is turning to mush.

A very girly day watching the notebook and reading letterstocrushes.com, which I have been obsessed with for the past hour. One thing lead to another and I ended up writing my own. Aimed at no one in particular, odd for me, but generally at the world: 

I wish someone would write about me, for a change. I seem to be the one writing about everyone else, praising the details I love, cursing the details I don’t. And it’s because I think about them. I think about everyone in my life, no matter if I see them every day or once a year, or haven’t seen them in a while. I think about their flaws. I think about their gifts. I decide what I love and what I can’t stand. I have to do this, think everything through. I have to know where I stand, or I’ll go crazy. But I wish there was someone that did this too. I wish I knew they thought about me like I think about them. I wish I was thought of. Most of the time, I think I’m forgotten. There I go again, thinking about what other people think. It’s like I have some uncontrollable need to please people, and at the same time defy their expectations. I guess in some twisted way, I expect them to see what I’m doing, to look at me and just get me. I want them to know me. But I don’t think they do. I’m still waiting for them to catch up.  One person. That’s all it will take. If one person thought about me as much as I think about the world. If one person saw what I am desperately trying to scream in the silence.

I’m here. I’m ready. See me.

Help me defy this world.

Hold my hand.

Please.

Pray

I pray. 

Not because I think a higher power is going to look down on me. No. I pray because I have faith. Faith in what, I’m not quite sure. Faith in humanity, perhaps. Faith in myself, maybe. Yet I pray. 

Because I know that faith and religion are two separate entities. You don’t have to believe in God or Allah or Buddha to pray. Praying is just talking to yourself really.  It’s not God who’s giving you the strength to face life, it’s you.

Time

It’s strange this generations infatuation with the past and future. No one wants to live now, in the present, we all want to live 200 years ago, when manners were better and your place in society clearer, or we want to live in the future, a place of high tech gadgets and no wars or crime. Yet, both ‘realities’ seem completely unrealistic. Did people in the past dream about the future? Did they think that the present couldn’t possibly be as good as the past or the future too? Many authors have tried to predict the future, but they’ve always been wrong.

We look at black and white pictures of great grandparents and long lost ancestors, and I find myself wishing pictures could talk. Was it a better life then? I wish I knew them, I wish that they could tell me about their life. Everyone else’s life seems so much interesting to your own. But did they look at paintings and wish they were born 100 years ago? Or did they hazard guesses about the future? Did they predict a time when there would be no wars or hate? Did they look back and long for the fashions of yesteryear, which would look so out of place now? Surely there isn’t much difference between being a teenager in the past and being one now? Nor will there be much difference in the teenagers of the future?

Yet as fashions and technology changes and evolves, so do thoughts and teachings. Long ago it was accepted that the earth was flat, but now we are all certain it is round. How can we be certain if something that was certain has so radically changed? If there was such a way to go backwards in time, would we see a better life? Or perhaps maybe we would want to select the bits we want from each time and put them together? The fashion, etiquette, un-ruined natural beauty of the past, with no pollution or looming skyscrapers combined with modern thoughts and ideas and discoveries, supported by futuristic medicine, exploration and solutions. 

Yet in each generation, solutions are found for problems that didn’t exist in the previous one, so they couldn’t have been made sooner. Our issues in modern day society didn’t exist 200 years ago, so we as society are destroying and creating problems for ourselves, all in the hope of discovering something else about the world we live in. The energy demand, the food demand, all comes from a growing, technology driven population, of a magnitude leaders of the past couldn’t have imagined.

With all the modern issues, we look to the past for solutions and to the future for possibilities. Yet what about the present? The present is constantly ignored, overlooked and brushed aside in favor for “It used to be” and “it will be.” What happened to “it is?”

All these thoughts have come from an old black and white picture. If they could talk could they give us some answers? Could they reassure us that our thoughts are the same as theirs? And can we tell them the answer to our own question – when we are looked back on in 100, 200, 300 years, will they see an outdated, uneducated society? Or will they see an interesting, colorful one, full of new discoveries and adventures? Are our frontiers of technological advances akin to the geographical explorations of the past? And what will be left for our grandchildren’s grandchildren to find? 

As we move along the time line of humanity, we want to look back and see what we don’t know. We’re here, at this point from documenting past discoveries, but what about the undocumented ones? What about daily lives that weren’t recorded? And what will happen to the over-documented lives of today? Will the World Wide Web simply delete all of the dead accounts and old information? Will we ever reach a point when virtual documentation takes over, and nothing physical no longer exists?

Will the entire human history comedown to a single memory chip, only to be destroyed in a big bang, and started all over again. How many times has this happened before? Is time a circle which will continue forever? What significance is time? 

If time is what we label it, who is to say that this entire reality hasn’t happened before, and we are all just a recycled mass of repeating discoveries, thoughts and people, doomed to run the same course over and over again, always running short of the final discovery. There is no escape of reality, yet we as a society constantly attempt to revert to the past, or look forward to the future, and altogether dismiss here and now.

If pictures could talk, what would they say?