last weekend i briefly visited home to do many unimportant things including documenting my old sketchbooks. it was quite an experience, the same way mothers would probably feel when they revisited their old disco days from yellowing photos. blood was an underlying theme in many of my sketches, apparently, as was being child-like and nearly innocent (i’m uncomfortable using this word, actually. it just sounds… iffy.) anyway these were from my i-want-to-move-to-bandung-and-be-a-starving-artist phase, before i completely thought through what being starving meant, which is pretty useless now because i’m still starving anyway.
a brief, thoughtless selection of my old work (2001 - 2005):

old forgotten photos from my trip to milan last summer. these were found when i was cleaning up my room for a new desk, and i realized i had forgotten to scan this part of film.
this was taken in piazza del duomo, the third afternoon i was there. (so it was probably june 13th or 14th).

highlights from the sketches and paintings & illustrations sections of my gallery of selected works.


for noise’s AD4ARTIST curation, 2007


self-lick study sketch, 2007


deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow, 2008


harsh but fair from the drenches series, 2008


bunny ears rule the world, 2008


whilst we kiss the sky from musically inclined series, 2009


wash you out of my hair from mono series, 2009

fly by here or here for more artworks.

christmas dinner images from 2005 taken with holga using a 120 mm neopan 100 film.









my christmas lunch will be on the 26th, as apparently, for christmas, everyone vouched for shopping instead. will be taking pictures. updates soon.
have a jolly x!

i found a sudden courage.

here’s my very old short story, the one i mentioned a couple of weeks ago. it’s written in bahasa indonesia, and was featured in a literature anthology published by my high school bahasa teacher. it was written five years ago. i re-read it about a month ago, and i was mildly humiliated. now i’m extremely horrified by it, but fuck it.



enam kaleng schweppes dan cerita tentang p
photo is a part of my painting, done several years ago, called orange soda.

have a good time laughing at me.

i remember a tiny notebook i brought into the steam room once in a while, now wavy to the extreme end, shaped and stretched by humidity and then preserved by dryness.
months later i decided to read the rule board of the steam room attached to the entry door for the first time, and i realized bringing in papers was not allowed.



“there are no faces in the steam room.”
only figures. trapped between levitating water drops, a face is a minor feature that got lost in the hazy fog of steam. the fog gave a manipulative effect to the yellow light, making it seem like a dying sun. the only identity left is that of navels and pubic hairs. and limbs. and nipples.”
outside the steam room, everything walks in fast pace. such pace that left you in isolation from the whole world and yourself. the pace will run over you, bulldoze you, kill you and leave you numb as it has no time to recollect you anymore. your faces become my enemy. your attire become an impossible standard that started my lies and self-abundance. and so we are a society of faces and labels stitched on the inner line of our clothes.”
steam room becomes my only moment of solace. far from the gym, where we strive to kill imperfections. from the locker room, where we showcase how we killed flaws. but we undress and we take a shower, washing away all the things that make us, and step into the steam room and become strangers to ourselves.”
in the steam i am dark nipples and heart-shaped pubes. i have no friend in the steam room, yet i observe every visitor and soon found schedule mates. they are pink nipples, abnormally large nipples, and pointy nipples.”
pink nipples, abnormally large nipples and i shared our first steam room session together. the steam machine was broken at that time. there were only dews sticking on the ceiling and a hint of heat. we dared not take our towels off. the two women before me were both a little older than i was, one stocky and short-limbed, the other tall with a clean hollywood pubic hair, or lack of. from then on, i always see them together in the steam room. they come in together, usually before me, and i left in midst of their conversation. they talk about their children, office work, husbands’ affairs. they wear panties into the steam room even though it is clearly stated otherwise is expected on the door. pink nipples is presumably younger and abnormally large nipples sounds like she enjoys dictating her. their conversations agitate me but i sit trough every time.”
on other times i meet pointy nipples in the steam room. she seems to enjoy silence. i always found her during low-occupancy time at the gym, like before sunrise, during lunchtime or after dinner on weekends. she always steps in already fully naked, with no inhibition at all. if she comes in before me, her towel would be about fifty centimeters away from her hands. her breasts are small but her nipples are extremely pointy, so asserted that i feel they talk to me and stare at me. pointy nipples never seem to trim her pubic hair, and they grow wilder and wilder each time i see her.”
she brings an olive-scented oil which she smears all over her body and injects the whole room with the taste of olive. there are days when i stand near the steam room and taste olive vaguely in my tongue and nostrils, pointy nipples must be smothering herself inside, and i would somehow come in, even when i’ve showered. inside, we never talk, but the texture of her skin is so familiar i’ve read her whole life story without speaking. she and the crème-colored mozaic tiles are perpetually blending in, but they never obscure her. a certain poise she possesses, it exudes a humane truth trough her nakedness and leaves me to see clearly in a pool of humid clouds. i would hit her unintentionally with my towel and she would leave a greasy trace of oil on the seats, but there would never be a lie here.”
there’s nothing there but the truth. everything else is blurred. elsewhere, where the air is clear, only the truth looks like steam. blurred, grayed, and impartable from lies and made-up stories. my pointed nipple friend and i both get up and wrap ourselves with towels. and then we step out of the steam room. i don’t recognize her face. i only taste olive, vaguely.”


now i am no longer steam room mate. i am sauna room girl. as fat and retained water have chiseled my limbs in ways i could never seemingly undo by fitness training, i decided to just forget about it altogether and show everyone my stretch marks.

day five of post-surgery for my top left wisdom tooth. now i can’t clench my teeth more than ever.
but on the upbeat side, this has been a very lazy monday for me, a fact i am mostly proud of. of course, as with all things i am proud of, they never really eventually get me anywhere. but that doesn’t matter.
inspired by glass orgy woman a.k.a andina, and my forever-unfinished cv (as i was trying to figure out what more can i write down to further manipulate and elaborate my working history), i looked up my very old short story, enam schweppes dan cerita-cerita tentang piee’, featured in a literary publication by my high school. it was very strange to read how good i was, and to read trough how honest and simple my mind was.
i also went on to read glass orgy woman’s ‘orkes dalam kamar’ and my good, blog-less friend tito’s ‘30 februari’. glass orgy woman, if you’re reading this, i can’t comment on your latest blog post because i’m not in the exclusive gang of wordpress-blogspot-aim-livejournal users. but they are mean to me and my personalised css theme. so i blog.

i miss that feel of importance and acknowledgment of high school. write an immature short story about a dead rock star and get published and everyone talks of you and your works for a good whole week. by the end of that week, a very plain idea of another immature short story is already on its way to the final paragraph. but world after self-berating relationships and derogatory educations is not an easy thing to slip from. and it’s certainly not easy getting back up.
real world really sucks. you notice?


i was going to attach a link to ‘enam schweppes dan cerita-cerita tentang piee’, but i’m too mildly humiliated by my own straightness of the past. maybe some time later when i’ve woken up from this… thing.

“love is lost, of that
i can surely say
why i never said the three syllables
is not because every time i breathe my whole body breathes in rhythm
synchronized to the degree of slopes and hills of your body
it is because, only because,
eight letters, we’ve known too well of it
but i want to be surprised by you each day forever.”




i tried finding a picture of you
under my bed, in my closet, in between piles of books,
on the internet, the student directory,
it’s as if you never existed,
but then again
maybe you never did.