A Way To Heaven

A Way To Heaven

A Paradise is anywhere, whatever your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your nose, touch, your mind, your heart enjoy. That’s easy enough.

When you’re lost in the woods at night and there’s no hope, you suddenly see a faint light far away that’s heaven, though it might be an old shed.

So  when you very eagerly want to go to heaven you on purpose get yourself lost in the woods at night or you eagerly want to be left alone in an ocean, then and only when the most unbelievable thing –to be saved - does happen, there and that’s heaven. It’s that easy.

Ocean

February 2012

Wonderful, Unforgetable Women

Wonderful, Unforgetable Women

I never saw the real Monalisa painting of da Vinci, except in reproductions.

I remember the wonderful, unforgetable women in “The Little Mermaid” pictured by Andersen and “Anna Karenina” pictured by Tolstoy and Porgy’s Bess, staged in the opera of Gershwin.

Are these women which were not painted with paint but pictured with words, with beautiful sounds and enacted, less beautiful, less wonderful because anyone could easily buy, or read them in a book, or see and hear it on DVD/You Tube or watch it live in the concert hall, rather than be awed, scared,  seeing the priceless original Monalisa in the Louvre Museum so far away?

January 2012

Volley Ball Coach: IVBF Lacking Courage, Imagination

Volley Ball Coach: IVBF Lacking Courage, Imagination

Till today, more than half a century, Volley ball is almost played the same, dominated by super tall world players. The authorities of the IVBF lack courage, imagination.

My Volley Ball members then played with variable teams of 2, 3, 4, players, we made the net height variable, reasonable according to players height, age. We made the 3 M front region as “out”, the spike be launched from behind the 3 M line. We played with a “two touch” play, we created an overhead smash for our relatively short players from a distance. We allow the weaker team a “gain” of certain points as compensation or have a women club team play against non-club boys, ... We just regulated the difficulty factors.  Those possibilities are what the IVBF should consider so that playing Volley Ball would be fair, reasonable, sensible and exciting in the future.

Suppose chess be played with a different start position, then no one could take recourse to such a stupid thing as learning the best opening moves by heart.

January 2012

Paradise All Along The Way To The Saguling Dam

Saguling Dam

Paradise All Along The Way To The Saguling Dam

A Paradise is not only in Alaska or on the Alps in Switzerland.

It’s all along the way to the Saguling dam.

See the many views below far away from high above, feel the cool wind, eating your picnic just of Tahu Sumedang (fried soybean cake), see the branches beautifully, gently waving, see the outlines of trees against the sky far away, the mountains, the hills in front of you, beautiful “islands” on a “sea” of paddy fields, ...  as you drive or walk or sit or eat.

Besides, find a Paradise just around the corner as you drink your warm coffee milk, hear the bird’s twitter, see the dew on the grass, hear a child’s laughter, ...

So Pak Arif assured his son as they drove together to the Saguling dam.

January 2012

The Author

Welcome!

My Home And Me

This, right now, right here is my home and me. Just takes a minute to be there. Wherever you are, even at the end of the world, whenever you want to, dinnertime, even bedtime. You can come in your daily wear, barefooted, or on slippers. You don’t need to travel by plane, train, or take a car. Just ring my doorbell http://www.leisurelyreading.blogspot.com/ and there I am and so do I look like.

Leave any time you like and in a minute you’ll be back home.

Chew GH

My Photo?

Why? Do you want to see my photo? Do you want to see a scarecrow?

The Scarecrow

Self Portrait

And I were jealous,

And I feared,

And I desired the forbidden apple

And I fell

And hurt myself.

Kin to those who’re so human,

To all creatures, all life.

I am Nature’s Child.

My Cricket's Song

Warble as a nightingale I can’t

Though you would teach me

Not chirp as a cricket I can’t

Though you would unteach me.

My Brainchildren

Blessed with a loving mother’s kiss, they enter into the world.

It Was Just An Alms

It Was Just An Alms

Poorly clothed, a man was drawing a full,  very heavy garbage cart slowly, straining, with all his efforts as a lean horse. I made up my mind and returned and gave him a ten thousand rupiah note - that’s just about one dollar - to buy himself perhaps something to eat. He smiled. But as I was home again. I regretted. was ashamed of myself that I just gave him an alms. Perhaps it were far better that I kept up my thump as my respect in honor to him which is certainly worth far more. He will have his selfrespect and wont feel him self so poor, so low as a beggar.  

January 2012

Why I Don't Leave My Purse Carelessly

Why I Don’t Leave My Purse Carelessly

Why I don’t leave my purse, watch, ... carelessly on the table just anyone could take it, that is meant to avoid me thinking badly of others, as not to harbor, have any suspicion of others. If it’s lost, my own negligence is to blame. Not so much as to think well of myself by preventing other people to fall into temptation or try other people’s integrity.

January 2012

Content, Happy, Grateful As It Is

Content, Happy, Grateful As It Is

Born, there’s no choice whatever between “be born” or “not be born”.

Yet every living thing is happy, content, grateful as it is, is fated. Ask your dog, a bird, a fish, a butterfly, an orchid  if it ever wants to change itself with you were it possible. Every human being, creature, plant thinks, feels of its race as the very best, moreover you are the best as you are, or would you change yourself with someone else?

So said Pak Arif.

January 2011

A Dear Friend

A Dear Friend

No need to talk to.
No need to be witty, interesting, smart, delighting, or entertain him.
I can think my thoughts openly.
For hours, days, years he isn’t bored with me.
He gladly, readily goes with me wherever I go, in rain or shine.
He is delighted with my coming home, without asking distrustful questions.
He is my dog.

Suppose, when I on purpose leave him alone somewhere with the wish that he goes astray, yet will he return happy and gladly, joyfully meet me without hard feelings.

When my acquaintances, my friends, my children and even my wife have left me, my dog will be the last creature to leave me and only then, whenever he has the heart to do so.

Only in the eyes of my dog, am I forever rich, young and good. Where I am, there’s his home.

How I wish Eve could be so dear.

1977

January 2012

Piggy and me

What's So Wonderful

What’s So Wonderful

How wonderful to see “beauty” of Anika Alonzo in Wordpress.com blog and what’s so wonderful is that what is really wonderful always will remain wonderful even though when people say it’s awful and for sale.

January 2011

Nothing To Be Proud Of

Nothing To Be Proud Of

Nothing to be proud of, there’s no joy, shooting (with a camera) a bird in a cage, to fish in your aquarium.

January 2011

"I'm Your's" A Lover Says

“I’m Your’s” A Lover Says

“I’m your’s” a lover says, not “You’re mine.”

January 2011

So Discreet Our Indonesian People

So Discreet Our Indonesian People

As far as I know of, no real Indonesian would ever say “I love you”. It sounds so unashamed, so rude as though one’s  love that’s so subtly shown, expressed, - kiss, fondle with the eyes, with words, ... is not enough but has to be declared openly, to be convincing, believed. We’re so discreet and never really kiss each other than when in private, no one could see, disturb us.

In public women now kiss each other when meeting or leaving each other but that’s not a kiss. It’s cold devoid of love.

In former times they greet with reaching both hands, the “salam”,

to each   other.

To kiss, embrace our child, baby, our mother, our father, our dog

warmly,   lovingly, that’s a real  kiss. 

A woman kissing a woman is nothing at all. There’s no man would ever

kiss a man unless he is not a man.

January 2011

Don't You Ever Become A Decrepit Old Woman Before Twenty

Don’t You Ever Become A Decrepit Old Woman Before Twenty

“Sure, from the outside may I look like an old man, a scarecrow but from the inside am I a young man and am still growing younger. Don’t you ever become a decrepit old woman before twenty. Ha, Ha.”

That’s what Opa Johan said to his 17 year grand daughter while he is almost 82 years.

January 2011

What's So Praiseworthy Of Our Indonesian People

What’s So Praiseworthy Of Our Indonesian People

Once a mother with her baby, boldly, recklessly climbs up into an overcrowded train while she stood about a meter below the entrance as that was her last chance, the last “boat”, train, to save her to return back home.

“Look the train is empty”, says a passenger gladly, happily pointing to the people still standing, walking in the train  while there’s no empty seat anymore. When he sadly, mournfully says “the train is overcrowded” that means he and his wife have to climb up to the train’s roof. While a wealthy woman comments “It’s nice to live in Pondok Indah suburbs but  I can’t stand the many traffic jams on the road to my office in central Jakarta and the train is always overcrowded with filthy people and dirty.

Imagine our people travelling in  overcrowded trains for almost two hours when there’s no toilet.   

January 2012