Day 1 - P U R G A T O R Y

People come and go, places change, world goes by. And somehow, you’re feeling like you’re standing still. When it feels like you have to make some noise, your call.

I’ve known some beautiful souls who could make a big decision in a flick of fingers. They’re old souls whose eyes and beings have tasted pain and losing, take a lesson, and know they’ve got to carry on. Me? My immature, dull, and stubborn core couldn’t take it. I need to feel the pain. I need to experience lost. I need to devour the moment.

And it’s always been in Jogja, a place I called Purgatory where everything ends and something begins.

Why did you come to Jogja? Vacation? Seeing the modernity overpowering the ancient wisdom localized in the centerfold of the city? Watching the same old story of nobility grinding down its subjects to just surrender their ancestors’ land for the so-called progress or bullshit development? Or tasting the Satan’s liquid that you could bumped into one in every five meters in Jalan Kaliurang, exploiting the hardest-earned harvest from an honest farmer who couldn’t understand why so many city people are going crazy about their children and gulping them all in whole while he still couldn’t make ends meet—or even worse, being greedy? Or enjoying the grandeur of a man-made landscape to be exchanged with one or two hundred artificial love on your social media?

For me, it was studying. The first intention was to live there in Jogja, to know some foreign letters and the captivating meaning underneath, in a big, old building with lush garden, and a huge, comfortable library with people teaching and learning. The latter was surviving; the most engulfing, the most heartbreaking, the most relieving. And there, in Jogja, which felt like a millennium ago, all of those elements were purged into something new, something foreign yet familiar. Like a long lost twin, that you know it in your bone you had. That was first.

The second was to leave. I’ve been taking in so much and giving back nothing. So, I’ve got to be on my feet again and fight in a big, necropolis city that people live just to live, to consume, to look happy, to feel empty, and to shrink one another. I had to go to start anew, to tackle the unimaginable and be grateful with what I had. To have hope in a—sometimes—inhumane humanity. Imagine a blade of grass in the field of pricking needles. And I became the field, just seeing the days go by, indifferently.

The third was to reclaim my life, to literally purge the obstacle that general population considered as a crime, to deprive a man a reason to carry on his fate—a man that’s been temporarily the center of my universe—to choose what’s right for me and no one else, to go on to the other side. And the Mountain agreed. It gave us blessings with the ashes and made us stay longer to contemplate, to let go. To carry on, in the most wayward way. And life, as we see it, is never be the same. 

The fourth was to close the book that’s been written for more than five years. It was 19 days of fast pace and primitive thought process: to flee or to fight. The days and nights of decadence of Sodom and Gomorrah with the gentleness of Venus de Milo, and the nuance as distinct as Mondrian’s. The comings and the goings. The respect earned and lost. The sleepless nights. The adoration and contempt of a bleeding Blood Moon. The detail and the big picture. The familiar, homely curves of a stranger. The surface and what implies down below. The mind I want to peel layer by layer. The enjoyable cheap tricks. The meetings of two opposites. The encountering of an ivory castle that I thought I could conquer. The abrupt hug and warm conversations in between awkward smiles. The hunting of the heads. The joining of two souls buried in the deepest yet divided by .03 mm of latex. The I-want-you’s and the please-forget-me’s. The pain of being on the other side, and the hurt of reaching out to an empty space.

But what’s a Purgatory without the pain? I believe that what I am now has started from it. It is the pain that gives me fire to light the way. The pain that triggers, the pain that gives me power. The pain that ignites. The pain that once you embrace will become what you need—a friend or a foe.

Have I told you that my core is so dull and stubborn? I need to repeat what I’ve learned again and again so it will etch into my brain that I’ll register into my database. I always fail the first try; I always need to take the same subject, over and over, to really understand what it’s all about. But that’s how I roll.

Hey, I was wondering. With so many Purgatories I’ve been through, will I go to heaven?

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