on a cloudy like like today i always think of this bit from a sitor situmorang poem:
jakarta
kumuh
tercinta
can’t remember which poem, but that’s the whole stanza. he being mr. coy modernist and all. where did you hide pound’s personae, eh? i can see it bulging out of yer shirt pocket!
(it’s ‘beloved / decrepit / jakarta’ for you pasarayaman.)
now that i’m writing about what i think about on a cloudy day like today and not just be in it, i think about this too, and this, but when i only have my mind to think about it is
jakarta
kumuh
tercinta
that i think about.
because this has a tram in it; i’d start thinking of aminah cendrakasih singing and bobbing her way around the other passengers/backup singers in asrama dara and flowers would bloom in my head.
and this is in menteng, where flowers still bloom everywhere.
i have to make do with
beloved
decrepit
jakarta
i think of when i meet new people and the first thing they’d ask me would be, ‘what are ya? batak? chinese?’ and then it hit me, hey, you wanna run away too,
but you’re still here.
and that’s when flowers bloom in my heart.
Divagyrations 