Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Akhirnyaaa, selesai juga bacabuku ini :))
Ini tuh buku kumpulan cerpen. Dan bukannya persiapan buat UAS besok, gue malah baca buku ini yang ±150 halaman (total 500-sekian-halaman) dari malem sampai tadi subuh. Eh gak baca terus-terusan ding. Baca-ketiduran-lanjut baca XD
Ini sepertinya bakalan jadi buku terakhir yang gue baca sampai UN deh :D Mau fokus UN dulu masbrooo. Tuh detik-detik udah dibeli dari kapan tapi belum diisi sama sekali XD
Yowes lah, as always, ini kumpulan quotes-quotes yang gue ambil dari novelnya Haruki Murakami - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. To be frank, I don't really love the book as I love the Perks of Being a Wallflower. Maybe it's all because this kind of book is not my genre-love-to-read book. But at any rate, it's a good book, tho' :]

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."

"It's like being in an elevator when it breaks down and you're trapped inside with strangers."

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. He'd woken up at nine, worked for a while in his room, and then said he felt sleepy. He went to the kitchen, made some coffee and drank it. But the coffee didn't help. "I think I'll take a nap", he said. "I hear a buzzing sound in the back of my head." Those were his last words. He curled up in bed, went to sleep, and never woke up again.

"People think of all kind of things at three in the morning. We all do. That's why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off."

Reality began to melt away in the darkness. Everything began to feel as if it were happening a long time ago, in a world far away. Or was it happening in the future, in a different far-off world?
Outside, people were digging a hole, trying to reach them. It was like a scene from a movie.

But I don't know, what's so bad about talking to yourself? It's natural. It's just words coming out of your mouth.

Then she said, "I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."

Of course we were ignorant, conceited kids. We had no idea what life was all about. In the real world there was no such thing as Mister Clean and Miss Clean. They only exist on TV.

The older you get, the more boring travelling alone becomes. It's different when you're younger—whether you're alone or not, travelling can be a blast.

But the world outside isn't like that. It's a big world there, and we have to get ready for it.

"I'm so very very scared. Life is frightening. In a few years, I'll have to go out in the real world and it scares me.."

"I like to have someone read to me," she explained. "It's been my dream ever since I was a child—to sit in a sunny place, gaze at the sky or the sea, and have someone read aloud to me. I don't care what they read—a newspaper, a textbook, a novel. It doesn't matter. But no one's ever read to me before. So I suppose that means you're making up for all those lost opportunities. And besides, I love your voice."

There are millions of reason floating around the world for millions of results. Millions of reason to live, and millions of reason to die. Millions of reasons for giving reasons.

And I would sing in praise of the brilliant glow of the sun in the green bottles, sing in praise of the broad sea of grass below, sparkling with the morning dew.

".... So then I began to wonder: how come I'm alone so much? In fact, I probably average a little over twenty-three hours a day alone. I live alone, I hardly ever see anybody in connection with my work, I take care of most of my business by phone, my girlfriends belong to other people, I eat out ninety percent of the time, the only sport I ever practice is long, lonely swims, my only hobby is listening to these more or less antique records by myself, and the only way I can ever get my kind of work done is to concentrate on it alone. I do have a few friends, but when you get to this age, everybody's busy, and it's impossible to get together all the time. You know what this life is like, I'm sure."

I want you to understand my position, though. At the time, I didn't want to get involved with anyone.

... he thought, Life: I'll never understand it.

Everyone ended up alone sooner or later.

He never made any real friends, but this did not cause him pain. He found it natural to be by himself: it was a kind of premise for living.

They never seem to tire of talking with each other, as if they were filling up each other's emptiness.

Sometimes I even forget that warmth ever existed. I'm still able to cry, though. I'm completely alone, in the coldest, loneliest place in the world.

"Interesting," he said. "Life can be pretty scary, can't it?"
"Exactly," she said, and held up a mischievous finger. "Life is a scary thing. More than you can ever imagine."

His heart felt enclosed by something formless, surrounded by a deep, soft mystery. He no longer had the faintest clue where his life was headed, and what might be waiting for him there.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

It was just like she said—every time I struggled to find the right words, they slipped from my gasp and sank into the murky depths.

"If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, choose the one without form," she repeated.

"I didn't want to explain things," he said, cutting her off. "I wanted people to understand me, without having to put it into words. You, especially."

"... maybe chance is a pretty common thing after all. Those kinds of coincidences are happening all around us, all the time, but most of them don't catch our attention and we just let them go by. It's like fireworks in the daytime. You might hear a faint sound, but even if you look up at the sky you can't see a thing. But if we're really hoping something may come true, it may become visible, like a message rising to the surface. Then we're able to make it clearly, decipher what it means. And seeing it before us we're surprised and wonder at how strange things like this can happen. Even though there's nothing strange about it..."

At one point the thought dawned on her: What I need now most of all is time.

"... I'm expected to attain perfection right from the start. No mistakes allowed. Perfection or nothing. No in-between. No second chances."

"If you were distracted, you could lose your balance, and that might prove to be an obstacle to your career."

What matter is deciding your heart to accept another person completely. And it always has to be the first time and the last.

"Like you love somebody but he loves somebody else. Like there's something you want very badly but somebody else just grabs it. Or there's something you want to be able to do, and somebody else is able to do it with no effort... Those sort of things."

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To sum it all up, what I learnt from this book is—people come and go, unexpectedly. And to be alone is not a choice. Sometimes it's a definite things that happen in life. I don't know. Life is a scary thing, isn't it?

How To Stop Time?

Bukan. Tulisan ini nggak akan ngebahas tentang albumnya Adhitia Sofyan yang emang namanya "How To Stop Time". Tapi boleh lah, diselipin sedikit...

"Further along I could see how I wish that I knew how to stop time." - Adhitia Sofyan, Tokyo Lights Fade Away.

I'm a...

uhm...

I'm in this position where I think that I wish that I have a fast-forward button in my life. Wait, no.

I...

I do want to skip some particular things in my life but I also do want another particular things for not coming that fast. So I think that I need a stop button to fix something that I think it's wrong. Then I can keep pressing the fast-forward button without worrying those things for coming that fast.


Lo pernah nonton film pertamanya Raditya Dika yang judulnya 'Kambing Jantan', nggak? Ada satu scene yang sampai sekarang gue inget kejadiannya, dimana si bang Dika teriak, "STOP!" kemudian semua hal di sekitarnya nge-freeze, terus dia ngomong, "Kenapa sih semuanya harus pake bahasa Inggris? Cape bacain subtitle, tauk!" Ya kurang lebih scenenya gitu lah. Dan kemudian pas unfreeze, semuanya jadi ngomong pake bahasa Indonesia, termasuk si dosen bulenya. :))

Ya kadang, gue juga ingin bisa teriak, "STOP!" di tengah-tengah sekolah, keruwetan, rutinitas, atau apapun lah yang lama-kelamaan bikin muak. Teriak stop, and then crying all over myself, alone. Teriak stop, and staring at an emptiness. Stop, and deep breathe in and out and then being alright again. But unfortunately, this is not a Kambing Jantan movie. It's life, and it keeps going on. Bisa sih teriak stop gitu.. Tapi paling yang ada, orang-orang bakalan ngeliat gue dengan muka, "Ini anak kenapa? Waras?" :|

Nope. I just realized that it's not all about how to stop time. But it's all about me who's not ready yet. I haven't well-prepared yet to face what's there in front of me. It's all about me that have to manage the time. And it's all about me, worrying too much about God's plan which still a biggest mystery.

Yes after all, I can never blame the situation but myself.