SOMETIMES IT'S NICE TO HAVE THINGS ORGANIZED

pictures via things organized neatly

the sunday before the last

laneway felt great, no rain so no more the much pined, eww-enticing mud-sliding. sun rays pierced through my skin, winds swirled through my ears, swimming its way through the chaotic sea of noises and friendliness and organized screaming. the world came to winking grains during austra (third set), backed off and had to give up second-from-the-front position. boyfriend sat me on the grass and jumped back to watch girls; the sky turned familiar and i was a stranger again. queued for some drinks alone with my temporarily alcohol-intolerant self, met isyana and she helped me order two bottles of fiji water. sang alone when 'laura' was playing and waved to afifah, waved to remedy andra dimas etc, seemed like everyone was there. treaded on straw carpets, heineken rugs, plastic mats, and grey baked pavement and kept hearing native tongues clapping clasping and closing everywhere.

i died a little during m83's set, was at the foremost front row slamming words against the hard look a security guard gave me. but he knew i was happy, beset in a kind of happiness he didn't understand. everyone else was either drunk or happy or maybe both but i was solely happy. there was comfort there, in strange bodies and alien noises. i remember holding on to three things: 1) the fence rusts 2) my camera 3) anthony's hand before the festival came to a decrescendoing final halt, with prolonged white noise as a souvenir. i remember i saw an honest whiteness and something brighter than white for some seconds before the blackness came to embrace us again


last saturday

faceless people with sultry laughs and transfixed eyes, while i jumped and screamed and pushed away and fell and pranced and shouted syllables that did not mean a thing to me. doing all those things people did not see and doing all those things people did see, or did want to see, who could've cared. my fingers kept trampling through foreign dresses with feminine appliques; and pastel fabrics of green, of seafoam, of off-white, and of lavender pink, looking for a speck of comfort. it was there. and everywhere else. i was happy and i thought 'i'll remember being happy'. behind the crushed velvet curtain i said to my friend, 'this has been fun.' but we knew it was more than that. glances were exchanged and in those pairs of living orbs i knew that it was all an accumulation of moments to be imminently missed and a pinch of shared knowledge that we all were in position of warning ourselves to take things slowly. but time had always been a deaf companion and humans were always in a haste. but we were happy—and as deaf as clock hands for some moments, only excreting sounds.

at night my hair bred bobby pins and i stole a pocketful of minutes thinning back my face from all those viscous minerals and volatile colors. it felt weird to be someone else. and walk someone else's walk. like finally the lines are clear and you start to hate yourself a little less

or maybe also love people a little more