To Joulise Joulisa

Hey there Joulise,

From the way you held the camera, I could tell that you weren’t okay. Well, maybe you are always not because you doubt the universe, and your idea of falling in love, and any kind of faith.

Trust me Joulise,
We can never live a life if it is not upon the Earth or under the tales of the end of the rainbow, with a happily ever after scene of Apple Pie Princess and Prince that had just turned back handsome guy after being a gastropod. But we have to deal with the reality, that guys can be gay, or jerks, or ugly, or all, and sometimes we can’t choose.

We can live with or without beer, but life is on its best when we are not drunk. When we can hear even the smoothest noise, when we can see the picture, big or small, not closely, but clearly. Not instantly but directly. Not silently, but not halfheartedly.

Joulise Joulisa,

This is not about you or me. This is not about Holga or Diana. This is not about Paris or Sydney. This is not about Silas or Jonas. This is not about our horoscope, or our good lives. What I mean is, be still, and be good. Be fine, and be glad. Sometimes, take a fresh dawn air. Walk outside, and put your sweater on. Don’t be sad.

I wish your name were started with P.

 
 

With love,

 
 
 
 

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Don’t Promise to Grow Old with Me

Don’t promise we’d spend the rest of our every evening with teapots of coffee, with low light, listening you writing songs about me and your old stories.

Don’t promise we’d survive the war or the earthquake, because there are too many men who try too hard to be important, because I already told you that Earth keeps secrets the best.

Don’t promise to come to Vietnam with me. We both are too busy. I’m jumping to the very next flight to Kenya, when monochromatic zebras are closer, and pink hippopotamus are farther.

Don’t promise that you’d be able to read me like you’re able to read the whole newspaper with its ads and its political jokes backward.

Don’t promise to stop seeing the glass half empty, the bible half misinterpreted, the skyscraper half ruined, the storm half stopped, the bread half toasted, and the women half naked.

Don’t promise to spell every Beatles’ lyric correctly in French, in Japanese, in Arabic, in PHP, or in silence. Just say, and write a letter for me later than the dawn.

Don’t promise to draw the silver linings perfectly because bright clouds aren’t good at raining, and because it’d hurt the dark designs we always have in our selfish minds.

Don’t promise to go hiking and stop the volcanoes. They are too sad to sleep too long. Too sad to lose their warmth, their weight, and the lives around. We both never know.

Don’t promise to stay or to make a home in a train or an airplane, so when you’re too tired to drive following the horizon, we’d just rest upon the yellow grass or above the golden sea.

Don’t promise to forget every promises you didn’t promise me, the way I often forget my way home, all those traffic lamps, and punctuations in your bed time poems.

Don’t promise anything in this temporary life. You and I have never been too close or too far to see the future and lifetime is never worth the wait.
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