This is what you missed

Thursday

I stood in indecisive clouds of doubts. The day provided me the relatively good ignorance, a good dosage of sleep at night, and some amount of uneventful hours that resembled a bleak-colored Thursday.

And one-liner text message to my personal mobile from unknown number which failed to give me the thrill of mystery, much less for a curiosity.

It says, 'I am sorry, my dear friend,' in Bahasa Indonesia.


The first name that came to the corner of my worn out body was Tika, my longtime stalker cousin. The text has the same quality of sentimental mood, I thought to myself, tried to put down all the cards of non-enthusiast question marks whose colors fade to pale black.

She always leaves her name on every end of her messages as if it is a definite compulsory sign for me to take them seriously.

I laid the mobiles on the left corner of the pillow, watched a bit of the hilarity of Peter Griffin though I had no interest in it that night. My eyes tried to capture the shapes of his eyes on the screen, those ugly ceiling eyes the show's creator pasted on each character which I still resist to like. Can't he make them look more dysfunctional? Uglier?

I felt the painful silence at the house, in the dimly lighted bedroom. There were three men downstairs indulging themselves in predictable trashy reality shows on the 14'' box, glued in the same nightly rites of TV,  cigarettes, and small cups of coffee.

I was alone in the bedroom this time. Fully aware of the granted privacy and the floods of silence I neither cherish nor resent. I took some time to listen to the world. The songs from the cricket, the stale night air, the far away roars of motors...it felt like witnessing my own random meaningless dream I sometime have after the second attempt of sleep in the middle of the night.

I wanna do something. And nothing can I do. I stripped off my clothes and thought it would feel good to soaked myself in that cold shower. I can walk to the guest bedroom and take my long abandoned large bottle beer and suffocate myself with spontaneous self-made funny songs after a string of greedy sips.

I can make hours of unnecessary phone call to one of my friends and listen to their words invade my small ears. I can fix myself instant noodle and an egg and eat some of it. I can just skip them all and brush my teeth and wash my face, for the second time.

I fell a sleep. A sleep I am fully aware of. The same given nights I would soon shake off the next morning as if they never happened.

Friday

I had to stick to my Yes I confidently wrote responding to C's plan on spending the weekend at Amed.

I outsmarted myself by even saying that I'd be find the taxi or shuttle bus by myself there in the Afternoon while it turned out none of those cars wanted to hit the road for one passenger only, unless I paid them a price for three passengers. I buried the mobiles in my deep pocket, didn't want to remind me how long I've been walking down the few blocks to stop by at some shuttle bus 'agents' to get the same issues, 'We don't have another passenger to that area.'

Somehow, when I returned home with two plastic of beef soups in my hand hoping I'd have lunch with the folks at home.

The clock said eleven pm, I submitted to my premature hunger and surprised to know the three of them already had their lunch earlier. They watched me eating on the floor with that sorry gaze, 'Can't you get it cheaper than that?' Ibu Sri asked after spent a few moments thinking her husband would be more than willing to escort me with his motorbike to Amed without necessarily demand for some payment.

I smiled at her, glad with her motherly concerns. 'Even if he's-her husband-able to drive me,' I said while toying around with my spoon on that plastic blue plate, 'It'll be uncomfortable long ride for him and me.' She hesitantly agreed, it would take 6 hours of his husband's weekend labor.

Eventually, I made it there three hours later, in a washed up old blue car with a young friendly driver kept on reminding me to call him for a ride when I wanted to return to Ubud. The windows are rolled down, I didn't bother to ask if his aircond is not working or he simply wanted to save the fuel. We tried to keep on asking each other questions that requires longer-than-five-minute answer. He chose to bombarded me with Who Are You questions and confessed he had never been to Jakarta and made an impression as if it is not a part of Java island. He voluntarily fed me with his family tree history while occasionally criticize government unpopular policies. He's a Politic addicts, indeed, and drove very safely that it took us 30 minutes longer than his initial answer, '1hr 40mn.'

It was almost three o'clock. Amed seemed familiar and I knew it can't be a cheesy deja-Vu. Not at all. I remember its hostile humidity and dry wind, it's big dark stones on the feet of its hills, its air of isolation.

I am so familiar with the tickle of homesickness in my stomach when I looked around me.