parc si crap is crap si parc

2nite: it’s Anytown, Indierock

Orientals of the world, unite!

Pins on lapels

Cheap beers «best served with friends»

Firman haircuts

Neat

Hair washed, teased, blow dried, hair-sticked, hair-sprayed

Senen Garfield tee on Jimi Danger, 4st 7lbs

Sleeves rolled-up

«Ils sont Les Jadugars»

Casio Exilims’ flash

Passing joints at the bar

Generous Absolut in the cranberry

A couple kissing at the bar

Open microphones

A couple kissing at the bar

DavTar hiding the labels on his records

Edophilia spinning burned CDs with tracklists stickered outside

So people can make requests for James, latest Franz Ferdinand’s 7″s

Glamorous indie rock ‘n’ roll

The waiters are young

People say, «Lundi, c’est le grabuge, yeah!»

Converse hi-tops, lo-tops, hi-tops, Converse, All-Stars only

Turn-ups. 511s

Electric Youth

Electric, eclectic youths on friendster

Blogger, melancholico, virgoagogo, everyonesintolomo

Everyone missing the extra -sis in narcissists

Lou Reed walks on the left side of the street

Punk’s sordid affair with disco

Nastee is not so

Nastee doesn’t even drink

Batman wears a Transformer mask

Otherwise, he’s normal

People come in groups

Their clothes ironed and clean

The patches new and shiny

The turn-ups pressed, permanently

People lean on glass walls

Or sit in groups at the back, their toes not a-tapping

Checking pictures they just took of each other with their Canon DIGITAL IXUSi

The Canon DIGITAL IXUSi was incredibly small in 2003

Beers come in pitchers with black straws sticking out of the amber like ancient watchtowers

Someone orders profiteroles from the Italian place downstairs, the waiter wears black and carries the cream puff balls on a perfect white plate

The sugar syrup was dark and dribbled all over with the utmost care

The cool people crowd around the DJ booth. Sing along when the DJ turns the volume all the way down

The cool people refuse drinks, saying, «I’m gonna smoke a joint first.»

The Nameless Club is Open. The door is dark wood. Heavy with a small metal handle. Like a trap door. Or a secret door leading to a secret room where

«The music is not too loud, you can still talk!» she screamed into my face

It’s bright inside, so people can check each other out

Then people post pictures of the night before the morning after

On their personal hik-hik blogs

They send thank yous and shout-outs to the DJs on friendster’s bulletin boards (remember, this was 2004)

A man is a bunny rabbit and a woman is a female carrot

Everyman’s an artworker

A poster of the State TV’s Latest Nite News on the wall

Breaking news: «I’m gonna play mostly new rock.»

The DJ sings along to his own tune. Ash’s Candy

The DJ smokes, his/her fingers white and long like witches’

The place is nestled amongst freight-forwarders and modelling agencies

It’s a cinch waiting for cabs outside

It’s next to the ugly mall where all the expats go

It’s next to the mall where all the ugly expats go

It’s Anynight, Indierock

People Take Pictures of Each Other

And store them in digital Picture Books of the mind

I saw one of them the next day at Plaza Senayan, carrying a huge LV shopping bag with her left hand, and a leather baguette slung over her right shoulder

These people speak of a new renaissance

Of langue, parole, littérature and the delicate fine arts

Of waiters taking your money and printing out a legible receipt (finally!)

Some argue with people who charge it on their mamans’ cards

The people threatened with a name and everything’s resolved in a blood-lust under the table

The beer is twice the price inside and you can only buy two or not at all

Everything comes in two

Except a year

Studies for a street scene (macan tutul bok!)

Straws like bullets / in his back pocket / cold water / in his hand / like a grenade—

Plastic cups of water in his hands / cold / like hand grenades—

For a thousand rupiahs
you can get
a fully grown man
to run around traffic
of heavy steel
like a child
playing tags
short straws
packed like bullets
in his back pocket
plastic cups of water
Cold
in both hands
like hand grenades
he hands over to you
reaching out[cross that]
across the heated air
above the dull knife edge
of your passenger seat’s window—
of the window
you roll down
from the safety
of your passenger seat—
of your modded
passenger seat—

a hand like an elephant’s trunk
resting on
the edge of a car’s tinted window
like a shark fin
rolled down just enough
to let
the hand roll out—
it roll out—
to flick dead ash
on the asphalt
and rest
on the sun-warmed roof
of the car to wait—
and wait—
for the next drag—

More honesty you don’t need/more of me repeating myself repeating myself myself myself

«And one night I woke up in room A007 and went straight to my desk (so fast I almost went at it), opened a notebook my mom had left me on her last visit when she threw a full good box of Honey Crunch cereal down the sink, one of the many drug companies’ gifts she always had lying around the house—it seems sometimes all the stationeries I’ve ever used in my life had the cute Paphros owl on them—and spent the next two hours writing a Platonic dialogue between M & M, both initials for my own name of course, just like this one in fact, with the two Ms instead of the « », and I think I was really honest then. I’ve still got the notebook, I plan to type it out one day, that’s how honest I think it was.»

«Why, how, what makes you think it was honest? What makes you keep the notebook for so long? I mean, it does feel good when you’ve written something honest, doesn’t it, even when the writing is bad, you read it years later and you can still feel the warmth, but that’s making the whole thing sound cheap, or just not… singular. You do feel warm inside when you’ve written something as honestly and as truthfully as you can. Even when you don’t get everything down, because maybe you’re not good enough, some warmth does stay on the page.»

«Well, that’s right. Sometimes I think honesty is a technique, you know, Hemingway always talked about it, although he used the word «truthfully» instead—I don’t think he ever wrote «honestly», for obvious reasons, not to write anything «ghastly» like Orwell said could’ve been one, maybe not, Hem would never have listened to Georgie O.—but it’s such and integral part of the early career of a writer… well, really, of his life before he started his career as a writer—I think when you aspire to be a writer you start out just wanting to be honest—and I don’t think you can start up a head of steam unless you’re at least a little honest about yourself—that once you’ve got the career and you get very good at it, at all the different permutations of honesty, at telling it straight, or telling it circuitously to get at a bigger truth, at lying… you don’t wanna go back, you distrust those feelings now, you think maybe you were just drinking too much coffee to stop yourself from going hungry. «Hunger was good discipline?» Where’s the beef? You know, now you think honesty was just that, being really really hungry and not being able to afford a hot lunch.»

«Yes, and what did M & M talk about?»

«Love. Of course. At least it started out as a discussion about love. But then I think it ended up more about me… than about this girl I thought I was in love with. I think I actually wrote it down that I loved her. Of course I didn’t. OK, I did. I sort of liked the way she could say the things I used to want to say, to other people, to myself. Cruel things. It was the start of my masochism. So I wrote in my honest, uncompromising style du jour about how I had all these masks, a whole trunk of them that I put on according to plan, like, who am I talking to now, if it’s her then I’ll just put on my Bob Saget mask—that’s what I used to call my straight, cool, but sensitive man mask—on and if it’s a Thursday afternoon Philosophy tutorial then it’s my ESPRIT tweed-patterned jacket and a skeptic mask and off I go on my eco-friendly SPECIALIZED MTB. But she didn’t seem to care about all these masks I put on, she didn’t even see them. One day I saw her at the mall and she said, «You’re fat!»—she didn’t seem to notice that I was wearing my thin mask. You see how all this talk about masks makes you cringe? That’s what most writers feel about honesty. They feel that about themselves…»

Cerita super pendek 30 tahun yang akan datang tentang Nirwan Déwanto 20 tahun yang lalu

Cerita ini terjadi waktu dia masih muda. 32 tahun. Waktu itu dia bekerja di sebuah perusahaan minyak sebagai seorang géologis, lulusan ITB dengan IP 2. Waktu magang pas semester terakhir di perusahaan yang sama, direktur HRD di situ, seorang ibu setengah baya dengan gaun bunga dan sabuk besar tinggi di atas pusar, memergokinya membaca Olenka. Ibu itu hanya bilang, hati-hati nak, buku itu hanya akan membuatmu putus asa. Dua bulan kemudian dia mendapat surat panggilan untuk bekerja di perusahaan itu sebagai karyawan tetap dengan gaji di atas rata-rata.

Malam itu dia belum pulang. Biasa. Buatnya, siang adalah lembur, malam hari baru dia benar-benar bekerja. Menulis esei untuk koran, puisi untuk disimpan di blog-blog yang cukup ditunggu beberapa teman. Namanya mulai terkenal sebagai penulis esei yang judes, pembawa suara anak muda. Koran-koran setengah terpaksa mulai memuatnya.

Di sebuah software untuk chatting yang waktu itu populer dia menyapa ibu-ibu HRD tadi yang sekarang jadi semacam sahabatnya. Halo, masih di sana? (Ruangan Ibu itu kira-kira 320 meter dari kubikelnya—menghitung bélokan-bélokan menghindari kubikel-kubikel lain, 260 meter kalau ia tarik garis lurus saja.) Ya, kenapa nak? Mau baca puisi saya? Sudah saya kirim ke Koran Témpo, akhirnya. Ya, boléh saja.

–

Sudah kubaca. Aku lebih suka puisimu yang dulu. Yang ini membuat keningku berkerut dan aku kesulitan membacanya dengan hati.

Hahahahahaha, dia tertawa, entah dalam hati atau menggetarkan kubikel sebelahnya. Membuat keningku berkerut dan aku kesulitan membacanya dengan hati. Rasanya, seumur hidup itu pula tuduhannya pada dunia.

Dia mengirimkan sebuah émotikon tertawa. Di sebelah monitornya, Olenka yang sedang, belum juga selesai ia baca.