No, this is not my birthday. In case you've missed it, it was June 7th. Drop me a word and I'll send you a message of my home address so you can send your long overdue birthday present to me (preferably a 13" MacBook Pro... or a Nikon D700... or a new stereo system)
Just kidding.
I've made a promise to my Twitter account that I will update my post as soon as I'm done with my summaries, and here I am!
Yesterday, a friend of mine sent a message, asking about a picture of us singing in a YouTube video. I was singing Dewi Lestari's Grow A Day Older while he played the piano. The video was made on the occasion of Azrina's birthday (August 10th, ladies and gents. Do not forget!). But somehow, as I start singing the song in the shower, thought swirled around my head about the true meaning of the song.
The song is simple, really. It's about growing (yes, you've guessed it) a day older. It was written in correlation of the short story Lestari wrote and compiled in her book, Recto Verso. A brilliant piece, really. Definitely one of my favorite. But being the literature enthusiast and logophile that I am, I've highlighted some lines that stuck out to me in that piece.
"We still have our bitter sides that we share from time to time, and that's what I love the most about our connections. For me, a perfect chocolate bar should be bitter sweet, not all sweet, and certainly not all bitter, for then you lose all the fun." (Pg. 70)
"He had appeared in my night sky like a white dwarf, a star feeble in light but so dense that I was sucked into a gravity field where my normal self was either shattered or flattened." (Pg. 71)
"...But deep down, I'm just in love." (Pg. 72)
"Love is surely blinding at a certain range. Better just shut our eyelids and join forces with the darkness." (Pg. 72)
"...not wanting to come across as too eagerly seeking closeness. It was such a lame idea in the first place, now that I realize even a skyscraper of a fence wouldn't work either. I need a line of faith as the real border between us. A strike of amnesia, perhaps." (Pg. 73)
"But I can only carry one romantic connection in this claustrophobic heart of mine. And once I anchor my heart, I'll be heading to a destination from which there will be no return. It's going to get ugly." (Pg. 75)
Clearly, she was in love and to me, nothing is more beautiful than witnessing the expression of love. You're open to disagree but Recto Verso, both the album and the book, is one of Lestari's best work yet. Whatever stage of life you're at, you can relate to it one way or the other.
The past couple of months, I've been drowned in school work due to the choices I made in the beginning of the year in choosing my classes. I'm not gonna lie, I regret my decision just about every other day. The image of what's ahead keeps me going, along with the endless verbal and non-verbal support from my loved ones.
But even with that, this newfound busy-ness of mine has caused my tendency to worry to magnify by a thousand, and the last little piece of line in that song has that sigh and smile effect. Like when you're rambling on and something stopped your words, and you then sighed and smiled because you realize how silly you're behaving by complaining and worrying about things you don't have power over.
So to all of you who's struggling, I'm going to leave you with that powerful little piece of line:
"If everything has been written down, so why worry, we say. It's you and me with a little left of sanity..."
Happy Thanksgiving :-)
P.S. Here's the video I was talking about earlier in the post