Preoccupied with Things Miles Away

“Children need discipline — but often grownups do too.” – my wise horoscope for today

“Let us see, what are the biggest distractions of our lives these days?” This is the topic during my last conversation with friends.

A friend said: downloading movies using BitTorrent, and of course, followed by watching them; planning to travel after those bloody exams (including checking out the cheapest airline or train or bus or hostels, and contacting friends living there for free accommodation); shopping t-shirts online; cooking and sitting for hours in the kitchen playing cards. Another friend: making music with a Spanish friends, chatting with a blonde girlfriend, playing PSP or XBox 360 with ONLY male friends.

As for me, it would be hundreds more: jotting unimportant notes on Stickies (like now); downloading music; adding pictures to Flickr; reading and replying e-mails; mopping the room; going to REMA 1000 for corn chips; eating those chips; editing music info on iTunes; playing Reversi and Hangman on dashboard; reading Indonesian newspapers online; adding people on messengers; talking to you on messengers; making CD compilation; thinking about how many beers to take for picnic by the lake today; updating status on messengers; “screaming” on the latest news to friends on Skype; adding favourite videos on YouTube, for example this one about the Amazing Victor:

The list continues: finding lyrics for the song I’m listening while typing and singing it; editing pictures using photoshop; goodbye-partying; thinking about why the voice of Keith Murray from We Are Scientists does so much better job for him when he sings than when he talks normally; cleaning my Mac because you know, the more you write on it the more you see that weird new colour and the more you want to grab that wet tissue far away on the corner of the shelves; updating the lyrics application on Facebook: as now I want to change The Rakes’ Just A Man With A Job with Divine Comedy’s Freedom Road…

[It's early morning on I-19. I ain't got much for company. A pick-up truck, a brown Volvo, and a couple of jokers on the radio.]

or

[When I was a boy I'd fantasize about the freedom road. I'd drive a thousand miles before sundown, father a child in every town.]

or

[Well I've seen the power of the lightning storm, I've seen the endless ears of corn, I've seen the lakes at the break of day, and that shit takes my breath away.]

or

[It's early morning on I-19, a dreamer's waking from his dream, a driver who has lost his way parks up his rig and walks away.]

It’s still a long long list to go; singing The Maccabees’ First Love; getting rid the fallen hairs etc. etc.

The typical thing is, those distractions don’t appear when we don’t have to study or write papers. Distractions only come when you have a major priority in head. Other than that, it’s not distraction. It’s just leisure pursuit. However, merely complaining for this distracted mind doesn’t give any viable solution. The best solution is: turn off the internet. NOW.

Oh wait, after an episode of The Simpsons.

Still My Flame

you’re still my flame

still my flame

Hello, darling. What did you do today? You know what I did? It’s the same as yesterday, the day before yesterday and the days before it. I travel to vanity, where dreams are like the cake, people want me to share them proportionally. This is the kind of place where you can’t have your cake and eat it (too). I just can’t let go. I don’t want to move on as there is no possible way at all. I want to talk to you about thousand things. I want to tell you how I kiss the day in this country. How I smell things differently. How I became a sad man, sometimes bad, but most of the time, sad. A rush of strange affections come while we’re separated by too many things: homelands to many friends, the nations you’re criticising all the time. I don’t blame you, although I know deep down inside you find me guilty. You know I’m not an island, I have to go. Anyway, don’t go crazy. I am still your satellite. I am still made to impress you alone. You are still my flame.

Inhabitants of Youth

heading to your city

We used to be the inhabitants of a country called youth. We used to be always together there, not in the same city, but we know we’re together. Now we’re getting older without watching each other grow. I get wiser; you get smarter. I hope by the time we both face each other again you’ll still remember how I look. If it looks so bad, well, I don’t normally look that way. Perhaps that’s what I’ve become after the trips. Tipsy trips.

I ain’t no Vladimir or Estragon

What: trying to write about the government’s efforts for the recovery and reconciliation in a communal conflict back home.
Personal problem identification: most of the journals, both national and international, say those efforts only lead to FAILURE, INEFFECTIVENESS, UNCLEAR SITUATION, etc etc all those bad nouns and adjectives.
So: still waiting for enlightenment (and not Godot). HELP!

Just Not A Right Piece of Work

“Don’t just try to walk in my shoes,” you said. “Then what else, Mr. Demanding?”. “Try to put on my glasses, coat and jeans, too, while you’re at it.” I shrugged. “That’s impossible.” I answered. “First, I don’t like your style; second, I simply don’t like your shoes brand.”

Reading You, People, Books.

 

At first it’s so compelling. This book has you, a Serb lady character so tall, that’s so eye-catching, added with the prescription of your long blonde hair. However, the more pages I open, the more I don’t understand you. Or in some chapters, I even start to disagree in so many things with you. The way you open and close the bathroom door, for example. Too much sounds and I simply can’t comprehend why there’s a necessity to slam it in such level of noise. On the twelfth chapter, I began to wonder, what brand of perfume are you using? Your scent is superbly strong it comes out of the book. I want to say to you, “You would never be a good killer. You’ll leave marks everywhere. Your smell will linger for a long time on the victim.” But anyway, I also can be in the same opinion with you in other things such as: how delicious baklava is, how I should improve my norsk by engaging in kitchen conversations with you, how the kitchen should be clean all the time and how we are all seduced by the beauty of Slavic women.

***

Your cover looks at first so blurry since I bought you at night without my reading glasses, in a cold cold day of spring. After checking the paperback, you started to look so convincing, so I bought you. It’s not a second-hand book for what I know. You’re new, published in Marseilles, perhaps along a street in the Panier. The thing is, I read you too fast. I got back to my old habit, reading a book starting from a page in front and goes briskly to the middle chapter or even the last page. I read you starting from the last chapter and that how it goes. Straight to the end. I had a plan to re-read you again for example starting from chapter two but then every time I see you I lost the mood. Do you know why? Your story is boring. And plus, you talk bad things about my favourite football club.

***

Currently I’m reading the eighth chapter of this book I bought last March. At first it wasn’t interesting enough for me to look into the details, since I have other books with nice sleeves and I thought your story was just not my cup of tea. But weirdly as I try to read page per page, this feeling grows on me, that this book’s actually so great inside. It tell stories about someone with super ability to wrap gifts so neatly better than any professional working in the gift shops. About someone born many centuries after St. Francis founded the Fransiscan in his hometown, although this character doesn’t care that much to birds or the environment as the saint did. Apart from his habit of drinking to much leading to the Great Detoxification, he is not a social smoker and if he were, he would only smoke something from his country. In this book we may find additional guidances of how to cook pasta, lasagna or all those kind of cuisines involving much much olive oil. Or peperoncino. I wrote the recipes down in my notebook and try to do some experiments in the kitchen. If I can rate this book openly, I will recommend it a 2008’s Pulitzer. So full of knowledge!

Playlist For the Last Days of Spring Semester

• Focker — Late of the Pier
• Alice — GoodBooks
• All My Heroes Are Weirdos — !!! (Chk Chk Chk)
• Juno — Tokyo Police Club
• Happiness for Lola — Cats and Cats and Cats
• blister in the sun — Violent Femmes
• Balloons — Foals
• Oslo Skyline — Jaga Jazzist
• Dead Sound — The Raveonettes
• Take a Flight II — Pilot Scott Tracy
• Precious Time — The Maccabees
• I Love You Why? — Trabant
• Push It — Stereo Total
• Fire Sign — The Gossip
• Knights — Minus The Bear
• Hong Kong Garden — Siouxsie and the Banshees
• Get Lost — Patrick Wolf
• WDYYB — Clinic
• Dude Where’s My Skin — Schoolyard Heroes
• Insane — Grand Ole Party