Quirky little cafe in Djogja.There’s always somewhere a Sartre quote on a wall, even in the most spiritual, even in the most religious of places. Because both the rich and the poor stumble and crawl sometimes and neither money nor the burning sun nor those cunning little gods can fill the void.
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Campuhan ridge walk. Can you hold my hand? ‘Here, let me hold that soul for you’. The mind is still the darkest, most dense jungle I have ever known. Despite the insects, the rattling sounds, the monkeys, the monkey mind is still the wildest animal we’ll ever know. I told you once that ‘you brought me peace when my whole body was a gun’. I was not being original but I was certainly being honest. I want you to know that my mind will be pointing its gun at times, its venomous tongue will bite you through these bitter, tangled words of mine. Please, promise, that on those days, you’ll still kiss the hell out of me, still kiss the bitterness out of my mouth. Promise to bring me peace when my mind is a gun. I promise I will open that cage where you hide your wild soul, I promise to dance and laugh and cry with you until you release these artificial barriers we all put up sometimes, until you release the tension. I promise to set your soul free, then hold it for you if needed.
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Canggu. We complain about pollution, but what are we but ignorant, self-important, disengaged tourists. What are we, then, but visual pollution. Nature fights back. Always. Its dogs will chase you and bark at you at night just when you think you are -finally- in familiar, well-lit, well-trodden places. Its roosters will keep you on your feet, remind you that you do not control the earth, that you do not control the time with your fake alarms, stolen dreams and deadlines.
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Vinyasa. Enjoy this (soul) flow. Inhale, exhale, hold your breath for one, two, three, ten. Accept that the nature of your own mind is simply that it wanders. Accept that constant change is the only state of nature for the mind. That life goes on even when your mind wanders down these illusive memory lanes of time.
They say that not all those who wander are lost. Yet why are so many travellers scared to be touched, body or soul, by another human. I think that, subconsciously, we all want to keep drifting. Change is the only state that we accept as the truth and maybe that’s why we feel safer in detachment.
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Prambanan temple. We skipped towards sunlight, only our shadows captured in the lens of your camera. I jumped and you caught me in your arms and, for a moment, even though strangers in a foreign land, we both felt safe. For a moment, I suspended my disbelief in love and all things manmade, my fear in falling. I ran fast and aimlessly, my lungs filled with the freedom of not knowing where this will end or where we are heading. For a moment, I loved you in the way all things are to be loved. The way we should all love this wild nature we won’t ever understand, this wondrous chaos that constitutes our mind, this mystic, inconceivable world of our own soul and that of other humans. For a moment in time, balancing in your arms, I was still, we were perfectly balanced.
Your camera, slightly more perfect us, thankfully captured this otherwise fleeting moment.
Rational Artist 