those creatures are melting away into the anonymous lights.

The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.

It is valiant enough to bear the burden, but

where is the courage to cast it off?

—JOSEPH CONRAD

When you breathe in you'll realize the shade of blue will paint your lungs in the same shade, and you realize that the sunlight may bake your heart, like color-burnt clay roofs during summer.

Our ears are ringing because of the silence. you come home with tearful eyes, and nobody is actually to blame. you tell me that someone has scraped your heart like a heap of dry leaves, and that the dense dry air is everywhere in your mind, clouding your very thoughts, creating storms that is able to sweep clean even the vast field of Sahara.



I can only reach out to cradle, cradle your bony hands. don't get lost in the cruelness of the universe just yet. for the entire ground we set out feet on are mostly glues made of venom, so are the mouths of foul-souled people, this war will never be ours: we are a part of the infinite game, where no winner is needed. we will continue to fight forever, shed lights, and mark paths. aren't we just like the world of fashion? infinite game. nobody is trying to create a final trend, is it not right? so are we: we should never, never consider to finish sufferings or we'll be dead.

Some people just don't want to be free and you get the meaning. a ship cannot sail for so long over a calm, sun-drenched sea with its crystal-blue sky. like those ships, like them, we are constantly heading towards a storm.

Only for challenge.

One day you'll find those blue hands reaching out to you.

One day I'll find those blue hands reaching out to me.

Talking about dead-ends can be something really metaphysical; and no one wants to shed that much brain for others, unless you're willing to die at young age, or bang your head over callous matters.

for a dear friend.

XOXO. ♥

sputnik sweetheart.

photographs  taken by devina. the inspiration of these shots is sumire, the leading cast of Haruki Murakami's sputnik sweetheart.

support me by hyping on Lookbook.nu:

latte sweetheart.

no matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: 

it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades.

— HARUKI MURAKAMI, "KAFKA ON THE SHORE"

test shots by devina. the background is the white wall in her room.

he was simple. he wore a pair of equally simple thin-framed glasses. he had a friendly smile. he wasn't exactly a beauty but his charm had moved an air of magic surrounding him. his voice was something very ordinary, but those were his eyes that gave him away. his teeth were imperfect but in that imperfection alone was another spell that ended up enhancing his smile. when he asked me what would i like to order, i was about to answer 'that fucking smile of yours' when my tongue surpassed my head by answering: "tall iced vanilla latte."

that was a sunny afternoon when i decided to fulfill my caffeine fix. no cloud could be seen.for a moment the sun resembled a golden brooch hanging on the dense blueness, drenching an area close to it in the fine shade of white, as if it was about to pierce a hole in the stratosphere. 

anyway, let alone that arrogant sun— because here on earth i'd found its personification: that "latte sweetheart" of mine was a real charmer; that glitter of his resembled Nan Jing road's colorful lights after dark.

 

for K., Starbucks barista.

look of the day.

mango cardigan (as top), jeans, and bag/ i.s.o. wedge booties, zara headband, bracelets: all vintage, except the chain one from animale

"your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks." *

*from kafka on the shore by haruki murakami, p.11.

wearing a guy's cardigan as a dress, just in case you're curious. the photograph was taken by my sister using her berry, and we were on the way to pasar senggol, a special event in grand hyatt nusa dua in which they mix BBQ-based dinner and cultural dance. the dance that night was legong, in which the dancers wore rich-colored clothes, accessories, and most of the dancers were very, very young: children below 15. 

anyway, gonna make a worthy post soon. meanwhile, it's good only to lay down for a while, gaze emptily at the sky, imagine myself as one of the clouds hanging around the dense blueness of the sky. sometimes i wish i could run away, though, from everything; being an insane strangers rummaging through the streets without getting arrested. ah, dreams of youth that will probably never come to pass— and that's where it gets hurt.

there's a phrase by cartoonist/ blogger Hugh MacLeod: "as a children, we're given a box of crayons each" and the impression lingers in me until today, really. why do we, as adults, sometimes choose to think that dwelling in this society where most of the things are stifled—including creativity— is eventually a better choice instead of being a person who's totally unfettered, free like a young eagle?

"night is everything in motion."— dylan thomas

we have our heads in the clouds. we grow up with trained eyes to

scrutinize beauty the way we scrutinize flaws in it.

when night falls, i'll be typing some random stories in front of my laptop, with my ears filled to the max with sonny rollins, duke ellington, and thelonious monk's songs of the night. sometimes i feel like screaming my heart out, but those papers can't hear me; all they're able to hear is the clacks made by my fingers on the keyboard as those words flow out of my head like a rush of waterfall tracing the gigantic rocks on its way down.

sometimes i take several moments to imagine about other nocturnal creatures whose movements contribute to the flow of the city's flows of informations. they move that way to replace the memories of the daylight with the memories of the shinning skies of the night; but only eyes of the satellites know how translucent the open sky actually is. the satellites, too, know what they—and I—are doing during those hours after the western sky swallowed the arrogance of the sun.

there will be clacks on keyboards, excessive loudness of house music in small and big clubs, tender talks of lovers in a secluded café , chatters and laughters of friends after several bottles of beers.

night is everything in motion, and here i present my soul to be listed as one of those nocturnal creatures.

photography by devina

23:12 P.M.

Outside from that warm bed

We are a dream they dream.

Their eyelids keep the shade.

No harm can come to them.

We cast our skins and slide

Into another time.

—Sylvia Plath

Night had crawled over the city's brightest state alongside its purple legion. the fates were now up to them to decide as their movements unintentionally interlocked each other...

HE WAS VAST ASLEEP, in a worn-out white t-shirt and over-sized pair of old Levi’s, shoes off. His perfect blond-dyed hair looked like a spoonful of spilled honey on milk on the stark-white pillow sheet. His longish eyelashes stroked the skin right below his closed eyelids gently as he breathed in, breathed out, restoring the tired cells in his body as well as putting them into rest by each fresh air inhaled. Earphones were still attached to his ears, and the excessive loudness of the music had sent several funky beats of Nona Reeves’s “Changin’” charging around the air closest to his ears.

A messed-up Kipling backpack belonged to his best friend sprawled beside the relaxed figure. It was apparent that the bag had been ransacked by someone who clearly wasn’t the owner himself because the bag's owner left about an hour ago. Several bars of KitKat had been mercilessly ripped out of its foil wrappings; two cans of orange Fanta were now two empty cans ready for the trash bin. A book peaked out shyly from underneath a balled-up used white shirt—a collection of Dylan Thomas’ poems. Masculine scent of CKIN2U For Him leaked out from beneath the rumpled fabrics, but it didn’t seem to affect the sleeping man.

caption from late night cocktails by vinda sonata.

Photography by devina

PS:

I'll be in Bali starting tomorrow (September 8th) and will return home on September 15th. i've prepared a scheduled post on September 11th, at 7:00 P.M.

i'll try to keep in touch with you guys during that holiday period. Thank you!! 

something like a sweetheart.

things about citylights keep me fascinated nowadays. perhaps, the addiction started when i first read a passage in the first chapter of murakami's after dark. "our lines of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it—a sea of neon colors." how irresistible does that sound? the passage makes me want to be a bird (and since we've got previews of how seeing through a bird's eyes will be from gorgeous shots done by lomo cameras, it will not be that hard to imagine as one).

when night comes, i'll stay on the topmost level of the city's tallest building, and i will watch the sleepless city's blood flowing restlessly in its veins, as the joy radiates alongside euphoria and silent knowings that lie deep in the heart of people.

photography by devina

afterdark.

photography by devina

no wind is blowing, but the air carries a chill.

the date is just about to change.

—haruki murakami, from after dark

 

Sometimes i imagine my life as a cup of coffee in the middle of the night, and the heartbeats of mine are the sensual songs of Duke Ellington playing in the background inside a café's dimly-lit interior. i can feel the warmth, the bitterness, a bit of sourness by every sip taken; but i can also follow the beats of the music as my brain helps the tongue to recognize the tastes.

heartthrobs of the night. indifferent faces of the nocturnal busybodies. calls from the dawn. i believe i will never be late to follow the running time. the date is about to change. the morning will come when the gods of eastern skies conjure up twilight. for now, let the night controls the flow of time. it has its own rules.

TIK TOK.