Puty's Journal

Last night was LFM Awards, and as always, we had fun. The best part was that I got ‘The Most Innovative Photographer’ award. It was given to me because I constantly use my honestly-awful-and-terribly-adorable plastic cameras for shooting the life. Thank you very very much :) :)

It reminded me on one of my dreams when I joined LFM ITB (Liga Film Mahasiswa ITB), when I just bought my first lomo, Diana; that I want to learn & develop alternative photography.

It’s been a year, or more, and I’m doing it. I fell in love. Then that dream seems starting to come true. Insya Allah, I will participate in Festival April 2010 Photo Exhibition, with my Diana black and white shots. The concept is about ‘Desiring Body’. It’ll be held in Goethe Haus, Jl. Sam Ratulangi, Jakarta from 13th to 17th of April 2010 :)

I’m really really excited. Please come there as the festival would be really artsy and out of the box I think :D

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The thing is actually not about how big the award or the exhibition. I read a lot of quotes about dreams. I listen a lot of songs and I saw some movies about them. You dream, it may just come true. I dream it, it may just come true. You dream to be famous, it may come true, but will it make you happy, you should start to think about it as well. You dream to be rich, it may come true, but is that it?

So dream wisely, people.

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“Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.”
- James A. Baldwin

I’m a ‘man of my words’ type of girl. The written ones, the spoken ones.

I think all people should be responsible of their own words. Beautiful or bad, happy or sad. And I think, “I love you” is a really bold statement. It takes a lot of responsibilities. It takes time. In some cases, it takes a lifetime. For me, it is not only about letting a person know. This is one of my favorite piece of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud Incredibly Close,

“She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”

 

Brilliantly said.

I think many people say “I love you” a bit too easily. They say it loud, they make songs, they tweet it, they carve it on trees. It is not the point for me. There are too few of them, who keep the responsibilities. So, I decide to be careful. To say it less, so it wouldn’t be less special. To mean it, and keep it.

Instead, I say: “I’m happy. Let’s go to the zoo, or to the park, so we can play, and take pictures of our laugh.” Or, “I’m hungry, let’s have some sushi and green tea.”

:)

Studying geology has brought me closer to the Earth, and simply turned me into an Earth fan. I prefer call myself a ‘fan’, rather than a ‘lover’. I’m not officially an environmentalist, and I don’t do Save-The-Environment campaign on the street, being naive and tell people not to cut the trees. Soon I’ll be paid for digging holes on it.

What I do, is admiring. How it works. How complex it is. How old, the same as  how young. How detail it is, that even a piece of rock can tell us about many things; about the journey he has wandered, about the river or about life. How patient, and how it keeps the secret underneath; the secret about its past, and its future.

I admire volcanoes too.

For its height. For it mystery.

“What a mount of heartache it is. A volcano resembles human life. In youth it gives reign to the passions, and burns with fire. It spurts out lava. But when it grows old, it assumes the burden of past evil deeds, and it turns as quiet as a grave.”

-from Volcano by Shusaku Endo

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(The picture above is Hekla, a volcano in Iceland. It is not like the explosive volcanoes we know in Indonesia. It is calmer, but hotter. It is basaltic. It is taken from here.)

After my self-introspection in the previous post, I wonder if you would wonder, whether I think about rich people too much.  Whether I complained too much about capitalism. Whether I criticize too much about consumerism. I wonder if you wonder.

Well, I think you do (wondering), and I think I do (paying too much attention to things that are none of my business).

Now I’m telling you.

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Since I was a kid, I’ve always been thinking, that I’m the luckiest person in the world. I have great family, great grade, great amount of things I can laugh about, great words to say and write. My family is not a rich one, I would say, (it’s a bit hard to decide because we use money as variable, and money is something infinity, and infinity is just, abstract) we’re just in the middle. I went to school by public transportation. We have our own car, but we don’t have chauffeur.

We could afford another car, honestly. Maybe cash, maybe we could pay in installment. We just could, but my parents decided not to, and I’ve never been a spoiled type. I didn’t ask for a car (until recently), and I never suggest that we should have a chauffeur. Instead, I take the bus. I take the train. I take angkutan kota. I (seldom) take the taxi. Sometimes I’m tired of standing on the bus, of traffic jam, of the sun burning off everything but the dust.

But I live the life. I see the reality. How people struggle through the morning. How the fresh-graduates seek for jobs. How the vegetables are brought to the market. How uncountable plastic glass and bottle and wrapper becomes the rubbish at the end of the day. How the kids, with excitement, chase their dreams, and later they forget it, choosing cigarettes and whatever to be written on the walls. How zero option the city leaves for the pedicab drivers. How old and sad some people that I think they’d better be at home soon.

I see them, maybe just like you do.

So when I see the magazines, or enter the mall, just because I can afford them, or just because I have to do them, and have my own life, I just can’t leave the other part of my life. It haunts me, but unfortunately it is not thriller. It saddens me, but unfortunately it is not drama. It is irony. How some people pull the cart all day just for the price of a cup of tea. A cup of coffee. A gulp of wine. A bite of roast duck. How some people spend the same amount of some other people’s income of a whole month, just for a pair of original rubber shoes with alligator logo, and they complain about life. It is irony for me, for both are real, and both are my life.

I know life is unfair. There is yin, there is yang. There is day, there is night. I’m in the middle of them and I’m going nowhere. I can see both sides like they are transparent but actually separated. Then life leaves me here. Thinking. Be sad when it is sad. Complain when they ask for way too much more, and the other else only get less than none.

Complain when some people go busy busy busy wanting exact pieces of fashion items for the sake of the trends, while some others only have washed out clothes from flea market with the same amount of days in a week. And it’s not one sided judgment.

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Oh, well.  I already told the conclusion on the previous post. This is only a late prologue of a self-introspection.

I only wonder of you really wonder.

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It’s similar with one of my past post. Maybe I just like this kind of life stuff.