Ever since I can remember I always remember of having this kind of feeling deep within me, and I can't really put my finger on it to describe how they felt.
It's an inexplicable things for me,
When I am old enough to had reasoning in my mind, I learned that what I felt these years was a nostalgic feeling.
I am not sure myself why am I bringing this topic and hoe am I going to end this post either, but let's just flow with the atmosphere to whichever it bring us in the end.
Y'know what, I always told this in a joking manner all this years, but eventually I need to admit that maybe something did hid some truth beneath my joking tones.
I always told my peer that I'm born too late in time.
I'm an old soul, even my preference of music were from back in the 50's and early 60's jazz if not some past centuries classical piece.
And I did had some kind of suspicion that I prefer a slower paced lifestyle unlike how people lived their life nowadays.
That's for the gist of it.
Now Imma return to describe how it feels all of these years, 34 years minus 1 day.
My deepest memories, is a night bus ride from Padang to Jakarta, back in 1993 or was it 1994? Oh, I apologize, I'm not sure. And the latest from olden days is back in 2002, and it is a night bus ride from Padang to Jakarta.
It took nearly 3 days to Jakarta on a bus ride.
You see, back in the days, no entertainment in a form of high-end smartphones like we had today. Funny how 20 years can bring for a change.
So, yes, to be exact, beside sleeping, there must be no other answer for you to distract yourself from the long bus ride, over the hill, across the mountainous road, from one village to the next city, and till you met the Java Trench for a ferry ride toward Java, and another 5 or even 10 or so hours before finally it's Jakarta.
And the bus one and only entertainment will be the late 80's songs.
That kind of nostalgia and reminiscing feelings you experienced when listening to those kind of song and the only view of road spreading ahead, is how I will use to explain how I felt all of these years.
I'm not a romantic, and neither am a tortured poet.
But I had this nostalgic bittersweet lingering feeling which constantly haunts my head.
Hence, I explains in my jokes, that perhaps, I supposedly born in the early 1900's or late 1800's but maybe I got a late start, hence I arrived here in 1989.
For what purpose do I brought this up? I don't know either.
Maybe I'm a vintagerian, like those people nowadays showcasing their hobbies on social media platforms by dressing in ancient style and portraying a lifestyle from those eras in their daily lives.
Maybe I'm not, or maybe it's Maybelline (my typing suggestion keep popping this word in, so I simply give in to this impulse for a lame joke).
Now it's all a jokingly manner, for a refresher of course.
Why do I suspected the late 1800's or early 1900's.
Because if I said Middle Age like the 1400's or 1600's(late Byzantine and early Reinassance eras), then I'm going to die young, be it to the Black plague, or some wars, or even the witch hunts, well, it's mainly the witch hunt as my biggest concern. I'm joking.
But yeah, I am admitting it myself, that those past is more preferable for myself instead of this modern hectic age.
And so, if you can collect all of my digital traces from the very first day I got in touch with internet, is about history.
I am not a thinker, neither am I a man of any science nor any applications of it in my daily life.
But I had some interest on multiple disciplines of know how.
I know some degree of architecture, some span of engineering not to make a building collapse in its construction, some degree of chemistry and it's predecessor pseudoscience, mainly because I wrestled my way into occultism through alchemy, i know how to generate electricity from scratch and how to construct a miniature dam for generating enough power to spin the makeshift turbine.
At the very extreme end, I know how to butcher my own meal, making simple snare traps and pitfalls for my survival.
Maybe I read the anarchist cookbook too often.
But yes, I can safely guarantee my survival if I got stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and mantain some degree of civiled lifestyle for sure.
I might sounded as bragging here, but that's how I best shows my longing for those ancient time before my own.
You know, I once said to myself back in middle high, I'm not quite interested with numbers despite they're not really that scary if I'm willing to develop a new neuron path merely for calculating some mathematical formulas.
I just find math to arguably 'inconsistent' and barely related to real applications.
I remembered one day on senior highschool arguing withy 3rd year math teacher, while doing a calculations in class.
The real answer if you put it on real world is zero, but mathematically its -1 or minus something on the paper.
So I just stopped caring about maths.
Ah, I went astray again.
Back in middle highschool, I excell in some spread of majors. My history is always 9.5, an A basically, followed by electronics, a 9 on theory, and a C on practicality, my big finger and my shaky hands isn't fit for holding a soldering iron and built a PCB, so I always accidentally soldered some wrong place, I never had an agile and adeptness fit for craftsmanship. Hence, even the simplest circuitry of a flip-flop light panels, will turn into a firework in my hand after managing to lights for 2 rows. My rule of thumb, only test it twice, the third time turning the board will bring either a boom, a puff, or a smoke. It's because I always either destroyed the transistor or the resistor in the soldering process.
Okay, my point is, my History score is the one and only leading discipline, let's set English and Indonesian literature aside, I was privileged from the beginning, I'm a polyglot so to say, so, literature isn't my go-to forte despite my brain wired for quickly noticing a language faster than most people. But I never think it's anything special.
It's history, so, I once said to myself, maybe I should be an archaeologist. But those days was long gone, and I argued back I recall, that all that we need to know is already excavated, to my surprise, not all technically, as even this year, a new megalithic site was found in Northern Sumatra.
So yeah, maybe being an archaeological expert wasn't really that bad.
I'm almost 34, but my musical preference was not like people my age, or I can say, kids my age back in my teenage years.
While they liked pop culture music back in those days like the Backstreet boys, Westlife, the Moffatts, or whatsoever the MTV hyped about. I steadied my head with no such music at all, non vocalised music, meaning Classical Baroque.
So it's a problem during practical test in the class for the whole Elementary years, yes. I sang the same kid song from year 1 to 6. Apuse Kokonda(Papuan folk song), and Riding a Train for a free choice song.
And worse, I can't argue with those teachers in return when she berated me in front of the class for singing a kiddie song in front of the class, as I am not sure either whether I should humm a tune from Claire de Lune by Debussy or not in class as it's a singing test, and I'm not sure either why it's the only piece pops up in my head during those days. (Well I bet I will be straining my neck out like a wailing madman when I reach the high octave, or I will suffer my diaphragm during the end of the 2nd line during the lower tone. I'm glad that I didn't)
So, yeah, I'm weird from the start.
You bet, not many people my age will even stand a piece of old Keroncong from 1930's. But you bet I will.
I don't really play an instrument, as I never had a good sense in my head. I can play guitar, rigidly yes. I know most of the keys, but I never really good at strumming the strings. I don't know what good and best approach in this piece of music, should I only strum it monotonously up and down, or I used a interchanging beat or combined or whatever. So yeah, I prefer to say, I cannot play any instrument.
But I secretly learn guqin, the 7 string zither (it's not a zither, a zither had 21 strings, but yeah, whatever), despite never lay my hand on one.
I can read the scale specific for a qin, using a sort of shortened Chinese characters mixed with numberings.
It's just easier as it's make more sense, so a piece of qin chords will be filled with this specific Chinese characters. Which if you interpret it, it will dictate the piece literally how to play the piece. So, there is 13 dots on the board, and 7 strings, and you used your left finger to push the keys, and right hands to strum the string. So, the chord will say like such. Put thumb on 6th dot, 3rd string, and right hand using thumb on 1st string, index at 5th and pick gently upward simultaneously, and so on, so forth.
So, it's rather easier for me to understand such instructions rather than reading a key chord with no guide to play beside the chords and tempo.
And I'm not a Xeno fans either. Funny, a Chinese ancestry but despising the Chinese race and culture.
But that, is a story for another day.
To remind myself, how far astrayed I went by ramblings on nothing...
I am a person with my personal antics, I am unique to my own way. I never said that I'm a good person, but sure I hoped I am not a bad one either.
This feeling, that I never quite understood, is here to remind me, that I am unique, and maybe, this kind of person nostalgia is my personal charms, I got so attached to it, I sometimes even blinded by it. But this what use to be untold story, now finally revealed, is how I feel for all of these years.
I had some romance with this bittersweet inexplicable sensation, a sort of craving if I may say, of days gone by, that I constantly looked back, even long before my time, and that made me feel so out of time, as if I born not in the right era. As if I born too late for my soul.
But this feeling, that I don't know what it's called, nor I know how to explain it, is yet, still another mystery, that is also a part of me. And so, I had to accept it, despite not knowing of what to do about it.
Why it's here, and what for, is a mystery.
So, I took a trip, on a train... And I thought about you...
(No, that's a line from a song, so I didn't took a trip on a train, or perhaps I did? Oh, I did back in 2017 to Solo)
It's a sort of longing feeling, lingering there right from the beginning. So maybe that's what make me this kind of poetic filled with long-winded wordings and some unnecessary flowery choice of words.
I'm older in my soul, I tend to forget that I'm not even 34, but maybe my childhood play a big part on causing this. I grown up to soon, life bring my young mind to be on the constant alert too soon, so I didn't get much time to play during my childhood, forgetting how to be kids, and my mental age progress onwards while constantly looking back.
Maybe this is my inner child speaking, that I longed for a simpler life.
Life is hard, yes. Life sure is not easy, and unkind also for sure.
Maybe what I felt these years, is making me thinking for having enough of this, hence I longed for the simplicity from past ancient eras.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I am born out of my supposed time.
Or maybe not...
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