this blog has now been removed to a new website.

hey,

i'm removing my blogs, including this and my tumblr page, at my new website contains a lot of informations and things i do to http://diantra.weebly.com 

thanx a lot for reading this blog, although i dont do most of my writings here. check out my new website, it got everything from album reviews, mixtapes, and my drawings.

bye bye :*

mixtape : a kaleidoscope of the perfect runaway

it contains surprises.

songs that bring you to my current mood. 

download it here

enjoy ;)

book reviews : july - august 2011

Running With Scissors – Augusten Borrough

An Object of Beauty – Steve Martin

Let The Great World Spin – Calumn Mc. Cann

Hector & The Search for Happiness – Francois Lelord

The Guy Not Taken (stories) – Jennifer Weiner

Madre- Dewi Lestari/Dee

Winnie The Pooh – A.A. Milne

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt – Nick Hornby

Running With Scissors has been made movie – and i haven't watched it. I bought the book at omuniuum because i find the cover (i love paperback) cute. Staring at the legged scissors i thought “this must be crazy.” and it is. Burrough opened the 'explanation' of his situation (this is his autobiography, fyi) as her mother gone crazy. Sometimes i just stared at the pages and thinking how Burrough could have written this. It must be hard, - i can't imagine, without all the humor, how the book would come out. Is it gonna be a self help, or just random anonymous autobiography only read in psychological purpose? I think it's the humor that brings the book to the world best sellers and finally, the major motion picture (with lots of nominations). Humor in the book is the way to lighten the actual issues, for the reader sake or for Burrough himself, i can't tell. But for a autobiography of a 13 years old, this is not suitable reading for the age. Burrough finds himself gay when he was still a little, and adding the craziness of her mother, he moved to her mother's even crazier psychiatrist - and even more crazier family. That's where he 'had relationship' with Dr.Finch's 30 years old adopted son. And then he finds out later about her mom being gay as well with their fine-christian neighbour who has the most perfect family. If i didn't know it was autobiography, i'm gonna think this is the craziest family ever created by an author that actually stepping the line between 'real' and 'surreal'. But knowing this is an autobiography, i could only say “and where is Burrough now? Is he okay?” because this is too much for a 13 years old. This is not a delight read. This is disturbing, uncomfortable read. Yet, i still laughed hard, cried, and touched. It is extremely moving and it's insightful. The craziest part was that we can still feel Burrough's love to the Finch family, eventhough they've done a lot of damages to his childhood. It doesn't even sounded as he disturbed by that fact. That, man, was the perfect closure of every feelings the book has given you from the beginning. Knowing that it's all alright after all. It's not crazy, they're just being more honest to themselves and others. And we're not. :))

An Object of Beauty was bought at the airport's Times purely because i love Shopgirl – previous book by Steve Martin which was filmed (and it was great). But somehow i didn't finish reading it because, it was boring, for me. Maybe the contemporary art based novel is not really my thing. Surely Martin knows and loves it, and also very good at writing it. Well, i stopped reading somewhere between the adorement of the narrator (bestfriend of the lead character – the rutheless and ambitious young woman – i forgot the name) and her breezy summer dresses she wears that take men's breathe away.

Let The Great World Spin by Mc.Can i found very breathe taking. I think he's the most talented young writer after Jonathan Safran Foer. I find the concept of the book surreal, but in a very realistic way. It's a 9/11 related book, but not about what happened, or what happened after. This is pre-9/11. Colum tells us about freedom. It's about people on the ground watching something unbelievable – a man walking on a wire on the higest high top of the building, and watching the fate of the man without really doing anything. It shows us – the watchers from the ground and the readers, what it is to be implicated in a freedom we can never attain. I can never find myself writing the perfect words for a praise to this book. It's just too amazing.

Hector and The Search for Happiness, is a simple third person narrative book about Hector, the unhappy psychiatrist with bunch of unhappy clients. This book made me want to do the happiness searching myself, and i did. You can read what i wrote about it on my www.diantra.tumblr.com page. Hector was travelling around the world for this little happiness journey. From China, Africa, to America (he never really write about the exact countries he was at, only littlest clues.) and i think this Hector lives somewhere in Europe. He met the most happiest people including monks and papas, the most unhappiest people like his business man bestfriend, and learned a lot from them about what happiness it. He wrote down everything he learned, and visited a monk, and also a Happiness Theory professor who told him he did a great job, went home, and finally can be happy (little by little) and make others – his lover and his clients happy too. - or less unhappy. I love the book that changes your perspective, teaches you lessons, and push you to do your own searching.

I dont really know why i bought The Guy Not Taken in the first place. I just bought it. I've never read any of Weiner's book, and didn't know what to expect. But i love short stories in one book and the trying to connect the dot. This begins with a story of a very young girl, and ends with a story of a very old woman. I just finished reading the book about a week ago and still having mixed feeling of it. Every one of the stories tells the adventures and thoughts of people (mostly women) in their lives. More or less like our own ordinary lives. But it makes you realize that no live is as ordinary as it seems. It's the littlest drama; the loss, the daily lesson, and the people around you that make it special, extra ordinary. A very light reading that touches deeply.

Madre is the new book from local author (a very talented one) Dewi Lestari a.k.a Dee. I loved her previous short stories and novels so i bought the book. I didn't know what Madre was before, and i know it now that it's a spanish name for Mother. In this book, Madre is the basic ingredient in making bread (the older the better). The first story about the young man without much aknowledgement about his own family, got a heritage (by the man he didn't know – who turned out to be his grandmother's love affair – this got mixed racial issue at the time in Indonesia) which is Madre, changed his no maden – without any strings attached kind of life. He finally brought up the hiatus bakery into life again and changes the lives of people he didn't know moment ago. The stories after aren't too memorable for me, there are some poems and a really short mumbles Dee's typical of showing her emotions in writing. 

I read Winnie The Pooh to my baby daughter every night for 4 days in a row. I don't need to review the book to tell you how simple the way of Milne teaches children (and also grown ups) to do things with heart, with love, with tolerance. The every different characters of Pooh, Piglet, Tiger, and Christopher Robin have one connection; a naivity, a pure heart, and humanly mistakes that teach you how to live together nicely.

The last book in reading – The housekeeping vs. The Dirt, i haven't finished reading, but you can tell how it affects me to write this. I'll update the book review for this one separately. Or not, at all. :)

Enjoy the review, and i really hope everyone start making their own review and collect the wisdoms and lessons and emotions in their own writing. It's so enjoyable and actually, a bit learning also.

Keep reading!

books i read : july - august 2011

Running With Scissors - Augusten Burrough (re-read)

omuniuum

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin (abandoned)

times

The Great World Spin - Colum Mc. Cann

periplus

Hector & The Search for Happiness - Francois Lelord

times

The Guy Not Taken - Jennifer Weiner

omuniuum

Madre - Dewi Lestari/Dee

gramedia

Winnie The Pooh - A.A Milne

omuniuum

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt - Nick Hornby

omuniuum

The moment i'm writing this, i haven't finished Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. In fact, i just started reading it an hour ago. But this book has a very big impact on me writing this now, because the book is not a book about tips on cleaning a house - as the title implies. The book is actually a book about -well, books. Hornby written a witty review about books he's been reading every month for a year. So, that's when this comes from. The idea is Hornby's idea, (just like the happiness lessons on my tumblr page was Francois Lelord's idea) i'd loved to do great inspiring ideas people have, in fact, that's why they're writing it, no? To inspire people to take the best of it, and just do it? :)

i love reading so much and i could read 5 to 10 books a month. i buy books based on the back cover review, or just curiosity of  the nice covers, or the stamp written "best seller", or more often books by my favorite authors. Sometimes i have themes for books i want to read every month. Last month was "Classic". I read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and they were fun adventures in plots, characters, and drama. :))

i have no particular theme this month, it was just a lot of waiting (for a sound checks, photo shoots, etc) so i bought a lot of books. i bought most of the books at Omuniuum, Periplus, Times, and Gramedia. So it's a random souvenirs from my favorite stores. 

I also found my old stacks of books recently when i'm rearranging daddy's library upstairs. So, i think i'm gonna be re-reading some of them - also some of my dad's books this month and try making essay/review one of each month or each stacks of books i've read. 

starting now. 

things that made me happy today,

zara's first watercolor painting,

of course the artist herself, 

my diaries, (the manual way: green notebook is new)

and these great imaginations and thoughts before sleep,

last dream

last night i dreamt of jonathan end.
he still hate me. still hurt and broken hearted.
but when i decided to leave my fiance (i don't know who) the night before my wedding (stupid dream, by the way),
he offered to marry me.

and he was actually nice to me. i still can picture his dopy eyes and smile,
and it was like the first time i saw them.

but it's just a dream. a very weird one.

have a happy life, jon. :)

happiness is the most complicated form of art

you can't make other person happy without you being happy about yourself.
you can't actually be happy when you have no one else around.
you often misunderstood happiness with joy.
you are trying every way to be happy and automatically make others unhappy.
you are happy with one person while they're the other way.
you are now confuse about this 5 characters that can't understand yours, let alone your lover's character.

and

you still want to be happy,

even with knowing how complicated it is.

28

if you look back all of those years you've passed, and you can give yourself a grade for your accomplishment, what would you mark on your life's paper?

i'd give myself an

E.

a narrator's story: 01

one hot summer day
in a land that is not so far away,




a not so young girl is walking fast to an abandoned park. 
she jumped over two fences just for fun, and landed smoothly on the silver sand. 
she hummed something about why the sun doesn’t shine when someone is not around. 
and wishing to be that special someone. 




she saw a guy with a black shirt. the same guy she’s been seeing, awake or no. 
they looked at each other so intense, it’s like they were looking at themselves in each others eyes. 
they didn’t say a word, but a mimed hello and a monalisa smile. 
next thing they knew, they already share one belief; other half does exist.




[to be continued…]








because the girl doesn’t want to be interrupted now. 








she is in love, and blinded by the image of happy ever after. 








she doesn’t know, that it doesn’t exist. 








do not tell her. 








because, that is my job. 

childhood hometown.

this is where i spent my early childhood. the street. the town. 

doctrine

i was told that to love is to hurt.
i was told that to hurt is stupid.
so i believe, that to love is stupid.
and i know i'm not, and i don't want to be.

i was held against my will,
or maybe it ain't a will
it's just a feeling, and
i was told that feeling is nothing.

but when i'm touching you,
it feels right,
and what's right is never wrong.
so, what's wrong, and what's right?

you read books and they're all different.
coz book is what other people feel to write.
so when i'm disagree,
do i have make my own book?

what's right and what's wrong?
who's right and who's wrong?

sweet songs about garden caravan and love.

1. Our Broken Garden - Garden Grow
2. Efterklang - Caravan
3. Sleep Party People - A Sweet Song About Love

when life gives you lemons,

can i ?

i haven't forgot, so i couldn't really forgive. i thought i have, but i don't think so, anymore.

some things are too deep you can't really see the bottom. some things are just too painful, you can't really see it without feeling the pain. 

so, 

can i just say; "i forget you, but i couldn't forget what you've done. but, i think, i can forgive you without forgiving what you've done." ? 

a little note about first memories and current memories as well

I KNOW EXACTLY WHEN, WHAT TIME AND WHERE I decided to write. One morning in the nearly end of April 2011 in my rented room in Bandung when I was reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It’s not one of his worldwide best-seller novels. It’s not even a novel. It’s his memoir. He, himself decided to be a novelist back in 1973 at a baseball stadium in the end of his 20s and got his first novel publish in his 30.

It’s funny how much I dragged into Murakami’s life when I don’t even read his novels, such as Norwegian Wood, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, etc. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is the first and only one so far from Murakami that I read. I decided we don’t have to read someone’s best-seller works to inspired by them. It only took a memoir, of what he thinks in daily basis – in this case – while running.

I am currently a singer of a pop band, write songs about love and what’s inside; longing, disappointment, missing, being together, being apart, jealousy, and insecurity. I realized what I wrote were almost all the uncomfortable part of love. But to be honest, that’s what I feel – and write.

I am 27 going on 28. You can still call me young, un-experienced, naïve, restless; I am all that. It’s silly how I’m writing this as my memoir, but this is it. A memoir of a singer, song writer, jobless graduate, widow, single mother.

This whole week I was reading Augusten Burrough’s Running With Scissors, also a memoir, of a young Augusten before he became a writer. So I thought, why not? I maybe don’t have such a fucked up childhood like Augusten, or a long interesting life like Murakami, but I’ve got some good stories to tell. So, why not?

MY FIRST MEMORY was the image of me holding a big glass jar, standing on stairs with dark red carpet, being yelled at by my mom “put it down!” I was standing still, looking at her, and dropped the jar. She was furious – I didn’t remember what I was thinking – but I walked down and stepped on the broken glasses. I was crying hard, and she spanked me so hard, yelled at me, till I reached her and hold her legs. What do you think I thought back then? I can’t remember how I felt, the image of the ‘coincidence’ flashes in my mind all the time. Before I sleep, when I’m running, in a class, whenever-wherever. It’s almost like something’s missing from the image of my memory. So often it flashes I feel like it’s a message. That somehow my uncompleted life so far has something to do with it.

It happened when I was 3, before my family moved to Hiroshima, Japan where my dad studied post graduate medical school. It was in family’s house, actually belongs to my grandmother – my father’s aunt. There were 3 families living in the same roof. A 2 floor building, big enough for us to live, small enough to live full of conflict. I don’t remember much of it back then, but when we’re back to this country when I was in Junior High, there are some moments when conflicts were happening all the time.

We come from traditional family. My dad’s grandfather – who lived in the house – was a king. Yes, a crowned king, of one of the oldest and strongest empire in Makassar called Maros. Also a name of a prefecture in Makassar, South Sulawesi. He was also a head of police station there. He and his wife (we called them Opa & Oma Maros) raised my dad when he abandoned by his father, after the death of his mother. My dad, my successful down-to-earth genius father, disowned by his own father, was living a vary life. Moved from this aunt’s to that aunt’s houses, learning life by his own. Adapting, compromising, as a child without a home who lives in some other people’s houses. He made it. He made such a strong character, all good. He is the resemblance of what we call survivor.

For myself, in my nearly 30, I couldn’t say the same thing about me. I lived a very happy childhood, with both parents and 2 sisters, never been experiencing a troubled phase of a childhood trauma whatsoever. And here I am, lost. In a midnight fog, I picture, in a freeway where everyone is speeding up, knowing their destination, while I’m blinded by the fog, don’t know where I’m headed.

So I’m writing this, perhaps not to tell you a story, but to collect my memories, till it one piece of a detailed big picture of an unfinished puzzle. So I know where to go.