Bit by Bit…

One car flung out of the overpass, another got lost in a dense neighborhood, and another rolled over and hit a truck and exploded, then caught on fire. There were still two police officers chasing me. Just a piece of cake. They could never catch up with me, and after a prolonged chase, they ran out of gas and all they could do was cursing. I checked the sunset in my pocket. Unscathed, its breeze blowing, strokes of purple in the sky, waves splashing on the beach. Only for you was this sunset, Alina.

But Alina, police are not as silly as what I’d thought. They were completely alert everywhere in the city. I couldn’t even get my dinner. Even in the dark sunsetless sky, their chopper’s spotlight beamed on alleys between tall buildings. I got cornered and almost got caught. Had there not been an open sewer…

I already left my car when I reached this slum area. I ran between buildings, old houses, poles and ropes. I fell on dump, crawled up a worn-out ladder, until a vagrant ushered me to a place I would never forget for the rest of my life.

“Get in,” he said calmly, “you’ll be safe in there.”

He pointed at the open sewer. A rat crawled out of it. It was stenchy and reeking of urine. I peeked down. I found bats hanging upside down. I wavered. But, the roaring chopper with its searching spotlight wiped off my hesitation.

“Get in, you got no other choice.”

And the vagrant pushed me in. I fell face down. It was so stinky like hell. The sewer hole was suddenly closed and I heard the vagrant lay down on it. The chopper’s spotlight beamed through holes in that sewer but it wasn’t strong enough to catch sight of me. I felt the sunset in my pocket, with whose the golden red rays I could see in the dark. I walked down the sewer, which turned out to be high enough. I groped forward between the hanging bats (dead or alive I didn’t know). I saw a white light at the end of the sewer. Stinky water was flowing kneep-deep. In a dry spot, I saw vagrant kids sitting around or laying on their backs, scattered, holding their tambourines with eyes reflecting despair.

I walked on over them and tried to bear the smell. However, this was better than giving up your sunset, Alina.

At the end of the sewer, where the white light had been seen, there was a ladder downward. I followed the ladder. It became brighter and brighter. Gosh! You can believe it or not, Alina, but you will keep on reading. The ladder led to a mouth of a cave, and you know where I was when I got out of the cave? In a place that looked precisely the same as where I had taken the sunset for you, Alina. A beach with a beautiful sunset: waves, wind, and flapping birds – and of course the golden rays of light and purplish lines in the clouds that were floating like dreams. The thing is, there wasn’t a postcard-sized hole. Then, although precisely similar, they were not the same place.

I walked along the seashore, drenched in the virgin nature. Coconut trees, surely, sun, and crystal-clearly seen shore bed with ripples creeping so musical. There were no cottages, barbecues, nor marinas – they were indeed not necessary. Shuddering against the nature, the sunset gave off golden light to the edge of the universe. I was so ashamed to see all these. Alina, can I translate everything into words?

Sitting by the seashore, I was thinking what was all this for if nobody was there to see it? After walking around, I learned how the world in that sewer was totally vacant. There were no man, no rats, not to mention dinosaurs. Only flapping birds, which didn’t even look like birds that lay eggs and nest. They were present only as ornamental illustrations for the sunset. They were flapping and flapping all the time there. I couldn’t understand, Alina, what had this world been made for? What was the love-arousing sunset for if you couldn’t find even a single dinosaur to see it? Meanwhile, people up on the ground were making a fuss about the loss of sunset….

Thus, Alina, I took this sunset. I cut along its four edges with my Swiss army knife that I had always kept with me, so that a postcard-sized hole was then seen on the horizon. With the two sunsets in each my left and right pocket, I stepped home. The world that stopped revolving behind my back turned into humid and stinky darkness. I climbed up the ladder to the sewers of my beloved earth.

Once I was on the ground, after groping through the hanging bats, vagrant children scattered here and there, and knee-deep water, I didn’t see the police and their chopper anymore. The vagrant kid who had helped was now laying on his back playing his saxophone under a power pole.

I tried to find my car. It was still neatly parked in front of a supermarket. It seemed like having just been washed. Chewing my pizza, I stepped on the gas headed to the beach. With two sunsets in my right and left pockets, complete with its sun, sea, beach, and its golden rays of light, my car seemed to burst with divine lights. On the overpass, the freeway, I was riding my car with full speed…

Alina my sweetheart, my honey, my woman.

You must have learned about what happened next. I pasted the sunset that I had taken from the sewer on the postcard-sized hole, and they fit. And then I sent this “real” sunset for you via mail. I wanted to have what I had seen in the first place: a sunset in the most original sense of this word, not the kind of sunset that I found in the sewer.

Now the sewer was real dark, Alina. In the future, people will tell stories to their grandchildren about why sewers are now dark. They will tell that actually, there was, under the sewer, a world with its own moon and sun, but it is no longer there because someone has taken this underworld sunset to replace the real sunset. Those old people will also tell that the real sunset has been stolen by someone and has been presented to his girl.

Dear sweet Alina, my sweetest Alina, the ever-sweet Alina,

Please accept this piece of sunset, only for you, from someone who wants to make you happy. Be careful with the sunset and sea, the light can burn the sky and if the water spills it can flood the earth.

Along with this, I also send you my longing, with kisses and hugs and my warmest whispers, from the quietest place in the world.

~ the end ~

Henry James wrote Daisy Miller more than a century ago. I just read it like two weeks ago. Henry did it in Europe, and I did it in the US (of course with my Indonesian sense of readership :D). So, there’s a quite a huge gap between us. But, let’s see how it influences (or doesn’t influece, too bad if it doesn’t) the way I read it.

Well, to me, the first character that attracts my attention is Daisy Miller itself. Well, she gets the strongest spotlight, man! She has the privilege to be the title of the novella. She was also introduced by the narrator with the help of co-main character Winterbourne minutely in the first pages of the novella. Yeah. She’s quite a cool character as a character and as an “imitation” of a person as well.

She’s a carefree kind of girl who doesn’t want to be alienated by social norms that don’t comply with what her heart says. She’s the kind of girl who utterly says “no” if she doesn’t like or agree with things. She loves freedom and, of course, hates being dictated. However, she appears to be someone who doesn’t want to hurt other people’s feelings when those certain people don’t hurt her feeling. Well, I would take the scene when she doesn’t want to leave Giovanelli with Mrs. Walker as an example. In this part, she doesn’t want to leave Giovanelli because he has planned to take a walk in the garden with her since ten days ago. However, when she hears Winterbourne forbids her from doing something (and being dictated is something she really hates), she makes a harsh remark about his being “stiff” and everything. Well, that’s what I have observed so far about Daisy.

Now, what I really want to point out is Winterbourne, the main-character-of-whose-name-the-novel-is-not-named-after of the novel. Well, he is very important to me. It is true to Henry James might have stood on Winterbourne’s shoes and might have used Winterbourne as a kind of mediator that story-tells us about how the American expatriates in Europe looked like. That might have been true. But to me, Winterbourne is the kind of character that has to be found in great, long-lasting literary works. It’s his brooding and pensive manners that make us spend a longer time to be with him, to think with him, to unconsciously follow his way of thinking. This observing kind character makes us see deeper to other characters in the novella.

Besides, we will most probably like his quality (as a fictional character) and hate him (as a reflection of certain people) once we realize what a of character he is. Well, he is very indecisive. He stands between young American who has the spirit to be free and old Europanized (or should I say not-so-American-in-terms-of-norm) American who stick to Christian values very tightly. He is so in love with Daisy Miller that she really finds sticking with old people’s way of thinking irritating but still he can’t completely flee from them. He ends up disliked by older generation but not openly loved by Daisy Miller.

This ambiguous character captivates us all the time with his being caught in dilemma. At most times we really want to kill this guy for his being hypocritical, but at other times we will think that what he thinks or says could be right and we feel sorry for his being made jealous by Daisy’s behavior.

Well, maybe I should start looking for more information about the characters of this all-American must-read novella. Until then, I will not start my serious articles, papers, or everything about it.

Dearest Alina,

Attached with this letter is sunset, complete with its wind, roaring waves, a setting sun, and golden rays of light. Do they arrive safe and sound? Of course, like any sunset in any beach, it has birds, wet sand, silhouette of rocks, and maybe a boat passing off shore. There might be edible bivalves, colorful stones, and the sparks of bright light flickering on the seafoam, resembling dreams that always drive me to think about the things that I most probably do with you, although I know they will all end up as mere probabilities—only God knows when it will come true.

I’m sending this piece of sunset for you, Alina, in a tightly sealed envelope from far away, because I want to give something more than bare words. There are already too many words in this world, and words, indeed, don’t change a thing. I will not add to the innumerable words in the history of man culture. What for? Words are useless and forever in vain. In addition, who will listen to them these days? In this world, everybody is busy wording without ever listening to other people. They don’t care whether people listen to them or not. They don’t even care about their own words. This world is filled with meaningless words. Words are redundant and are not needed anymore. For every word, you can change its sense. From every sense, you can change its meaning. That is our world, Alina.

I’m sending you this piece of sunset, Alina, not words of love. I’m sending you a piece of gentle sunset with real reddish sky precisely in the state when I took it, when the sun almost sunk behind the horizon.

Sweet Alina, melancholy Alina,

Let me tell you how I got the sunset for you. One afternoon I was sitting all alone by the sea shore, looking at the world that’s comprised of time, watching how time and space live in alliance, creating the universe for my eyes. From the seashore, at the edge of earth, universe appeared as a stroke of golden and the sea was a liquid metal, but still the foam on the splashing waves was as white as cotton and the sky was purple and the wind humid and wet and the sand warm when I thrust my feet into it.

All of a sudden the sunset and light shuddered. Beauty suddenly struggled against time and suddenly you came into my mind. “Perhaps, this sunset is good for you,” I thought. So I severed the sunset before it was too late, cutting on its four sides and thrusting it in to my pocket. Hence the beauty would be eternal and I can present it to you.

After that I went home light-heartedly. I knew you would like it because I know that is the kind of sunset you’ve ever imagined for us. I know you’ve always dreamed about a long holiday, a long-distance trip, and probably a pair of deck chairs in the sunset in a beach, where we converse looking up high to the sky wondering whether this is all true or not. Now you can take the sunset anywhere.

When I was leaving that beach, I saw people come swarming. It turned out that they became furious because the sunset was gone. I saw a postcard-sized hole in the horizon.

Loveliest Alina,

All this has happened and the it will still be like this. I had reached my car when from among the crowd I saw someone pointing at me.

“He is the one who stole the sunset! I saw him grabbing the sunset!”

I saw people walking towards me. After judging from their manner, I got into my car and hit the accelerator.

“Get his plate number! Get his plate number!”

I shot right to the highway. I sped up without panic. I had made up my mind to give the sunset to you and only for you, Alina. No body should take it away from me. The golden rays of sunset were flaring in my pocket. I really worried because even though my car windows were dark, the rays were bright enough to shine through every breach in my car, so that my car darted with a brilliant shine on the asphalt and sky.

From the radio that I had turned on, I knew that news about the missing sunset had spread everywhere. On my car TV, I saw my portrait featured. Gosh! Only one sunset gone and they were that panicky. Couldn’t they just wait until tomorrow? What would happen if everyone took one sunset for their girlfriends? It might be the right time now to produce fake sunsets that you can sell in shops, packaged in a plastic bag and sold by roadside vendors. It’s time now for us to mass-produce sunsets so that child street vendors can sell them at crossroads. “Sunset! Sunset! Get three for one dollar!”

My car darted in the highway towards the downtown. I had to be careful because everybody was searching for me. Police sirens roared in every corner. The bright evening lights without the color of sunset made the golden light from inside my car not to prominent. And what’s more, in the downtown, not every people gives a damn whether the sunset is gone or not. In the city, life goes without time, regardless morning, noon, afternoon, or evening. So, it’s never important for them whether sunset is there or not. Sunset is only important for tourists who like taking pictures of the setting sun. Possibly, that was the only reason why police officers searched for the sun that I had with me.

Police sirens approached from behind. With a loudspeaker, a police officer gave a warning.

“Driver of gray metallic Porsche with a plate number SG 19658 A, stop your car. This is police. You’re under arrest for stealing the sunset. Although it is not against any law, but based on…”

I didn’t want to waste more time listening to this. So I just hit him in such a way that he was hurled away from the road. I sped up and jet pass other cars with agility. In a minute, the city became noisy with roaring police sirens. But I knew the ins and outs of the downtown, streets with colorful lights, dark alleys not listed in directory books, and secret sewers secured only for those who live underground. (to be continued…)

* Translated by… (drum rolls) … me

Hello, world!!! I’ve come to blog for the millionth time about the reality of experience, and to forge in the new wordpress of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Y’all know it sounds too Joycean (I do parodize from that super-author, :D)… it’s just… I can’t help myself from quoting him again and again….

Well, all I can say, have a good blog-reading…. Enjoy!!!