Pak Arif's Goodbye When He Dies

Pak Arif’s Goodbye When He Dies

To the living,

I just left for the land where there’s no ill, suffering, hunger, thirst, enemy, jealousy, hatred, sorrow, sadness, pain, old age, space, time, … anymore.

Goodbye

Pak Arif

That’s his e mail and his voice in You Tube he wants me to forward when he dies.

May 2010

Opa Johan, The Smart Husband

Opa Johan, The Smart Husband

If I want someone with a poor performance to exert more efforts I say:

“I never thought you were that good” and be assured that he will gladly exercise when I’m away, having got his selfrespect again.

“That’s so delicious. How clever you are.” And she, our daughter-in-law, then would improve her cooking and gladly send us a dish home. If it weren’t delicious I don’t say anything, say nothing. Ha, ha.

“Am I not a very smart husband?” So he whispered to his wife.

May 2010

I Need No Study How A Man Would Feel

I Need No Study How A Man Would Feel

“How beautiful are your ferns,” I said to pak Arif who was watering his little garden with a hose.

“Oh, I didn’t do anything or plant, except to water them.”

And he even watered the weeds neglected on barren earth beside the road, outside his fence.

“Why do you water them?”

“That’s a blessing, a happiness, a rain in times of drought and they could grow as beautiful as my ferns as well. I don’t need to study psychology to know how a man would feel, even of an animal or a plant. It is the same for a man, who so thirsting as a weed, is living neglected, got ‘watered’. He would be so happy, so grateful.”

May 2010

The Choir Conductor's Thoughts On Happiness

The Choir Conductor’s Thoughts On Happiness

There’s the so happy warble of a bird in the morning, a chirp so close above in front of me in my roof garden, happy, unafraid, as to tease me. Then somewhere “Tuuuiiiit – Tiiiirrrr”, endlessly, a bird’s lover’s duet calling each other “Where are you Darling?” “Here, Honey,” the whole day long. Two little birds chasing the other frisky from branch to branch.

And I remember Sarah Brightman singing “Think of me” in the Phantom Of The Opera, “Canto Della Terra” in a duet with Bocelli, I could cry and now eighty, am I still feeling as young and happy as never before.

May 2010

A Memory Of Oma's Father And Mother

A Memory Of Oma’s Father And Mother

I remember oma’s father and mother when they were about 80, on Sundays going, not to Cipanas in the mountains, but to the church in Gunung Sahari by opelette, a public car. There’s no one who thinks, imagines, that this was a feast for them. It was as though they were young again. Perhaps they couldn’t follow, didn’t like the sermon, but remember, when you’re lovers attending together, even a very boring church service is heavenly.

Their grown up children were not rich, have no car. Sure it wasn’t so easy and dangerous for a couple as old as they were to ride in an opelette. It was adventurous, they were like inexperienced little children again. And like a king with their little bit of money they own, they visited a food court on their way home, not less delighted than a young couple with a car and plenty of money dining in a restaurant.

They hadn’t got any earnings any more, except when they got an unexpected money surprise of oma from time to time who then baked cookies for her living. Don’t think they were unhappy, though having almost no money, were not accompanied in a car, not treated in a restaurant. They never boasted of a married life of more than 50 years, didn’t complain, instead they were proud of being still independent, happy and feeling as young as ever.

So said opa Johan to his granddaughter.

May 2010

On Being Healthy

On Being Healthy

For someone who is healthy, the simplest, ordinary food is most delicious, is every day, fine weather.
For someone who is ill, the nicest food is as bitter as a pill, is every day, bad weather.

May 2010

The Hubble Telescope Seeing Into The Universe

The Hubble Telescope Seeing Into The Universe

As I remember the Hubble telescope who could see into our universe on distances of more than a million light years away, who had ever thought before that stars are suns or solar systems with their planets, that the stars we see are but stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We never thought there were so many galaxies or clusters with billion of stars.

Even in our age, astronomers are lucky to see a supernova, an exploding star lighting brighter than the other stars for a short period. Perhaps it doesn’t happen as when we see it now but happened some where 10.000 light years earlier.

Imagine, we’re just 2010 A.D. today, not yet 10.000 years, more over not yet a million years.

It seems our earth to be so very small, it feels like our life to be so very short, our knowledge, our beliefs, our riches to be so negligible, so insignificant. Only when we realise this would we be freed from being haughty.

May 2010

Heroes Of Saving The Earth

Heroes of Saving Our Earth

Women who consciously sacrifice themselves to have just one child, or no child at all by birth control will be the heroes of saving our earth. Those having more than two children are increasing the burden of our earth.

“Many children, many blessings” people here say in former times. At the time of Adam and Eve, having 100 children is too little. In this age with a world population of 6,8 billion, having one child is even too much.

Forbid man to have children, within a hundred years the human race will be extinct. Permit them to have one, in a relative short time, our earth will recover. Permit man as many children they want, our earth will collapse.

Isn’t this sensible? Though I’m not an expert, unqualified on matters of the earth.

May 2010