Friday, December 31, 2010

keepsakes...

i miss my best friends. a lot.
and this is the only place i can say that.
i'm not good at saying my feelings out loud. i'm not good at showing how i really feel towards people. that is one of my many, many weaknesses, i'm afraid. i'm not the kind of friend who goes on hugging friends, not even those i haven't seen for ages. i'll feel awkward, to be honest. deep down i like and appreciate it, but still the awkwardness won't go away. i'm not the kind of friend who calls friends just to chat, not even once a month. i wouldn't know what to chat about. i wouldn't know what topic to go into when we got past the greetings. i hardly sms to ask how a friend is doing, i'll only be texting to wish them happy birthday. and that is when i ask them how they're doing. once a year. that is the only way i show them that i do remember them. by remembering their birthdays. but, i do remember them. a lot. i miss them.
there's a reason to it, though. my one, solid excuse. my best friends move on with their lives. and me with my naive and at times, stupid thought believe that i don't want to bother them.
tonight, i miss my three best friends from uitm more than ever. and this is why i'm writing this.
i miss our laughter together. i miss our tears together. those four years we shared cannot be replaced by anything, anything at all. i still keep the memories, even though they already go way far along the road, leaving me behind. i held on to the little things they ever gave me for as long as i could. my keepsakes.
Elya once gave me this keychain with four cartoon figurines on it for my birthday in 2006 (i think). each representing everyone of us, she said. me was the naughtiest and the skinniest one, heh. i lost it in the built-in-the-floor heater at my sister's rented house in melbourne in august 2010. i sat there crouching on the floor, groping for it for hours, but didn't find it. maybe i lost it somewhere else. but the fact remained that hurt me most is just that: i LOST it. it might be just a little, meaningless thing to some people, but not to me. it represented me and my three best friends. it represented the memories. it represented a friend who loves her friend. i've held on to it for years, dangling from my favorite backpack and it traveled with me. to bangkok, and melbourne twice. i'm so sorry i lost it.
Maria once gave me a set of pink brooches, because she knew i like pink, one smaller than the other, also for my birthday. i didn't wear it when i was still studying, because i was not much of a girl who swung her tudung this way and that way. i was pretty much a simple girl who worked just fine with one brooch. so, i kept it in the box she gave me. i started wearing them when i started working, at the end of 2007. and never stopped wearing them until i lost them too, somewhere i didn't even know, recently. i hate this. she didn't even know whether i ever wore them, because she never saw me do. but believe me, they were my favorite brooches for as long as i could hold on to them. still, some people might say, what the heck, it's just brooches, but it's a gift. from a best friend. who knew and noticed and understood what i like and dislike.
Fad once surprised me with a cute little dinosaur teddy, with pink polka dots all over its body for my birthday. i named it Baby Pinky. one friend saw it and thought it suited to be called Measles, for the dots on its body, heh! nice name. even funnier than that, when all of us went to my sister's house one day, we saw that my barely one year old niece had the same teddy in her arms. what a coincidence! mak sedara ngalahkan anak sedara main teddy bear! i still hold on to it. i still have it on my bed, one of my sleep companions every night. thank God, it's a bit bigger to be lost anywhere.
those are my keepsakes. my sentimentally valuable keepsakes given by my three cherished best friends. whom had moved on beautifully with their lives. Elya is married and expecting her first baby this march. Maria is married and blessed with a cute little boy named Adam whom i haven't yet met, except through pictures in facebook. Fad is also married and expecting her first baby somewhere close to elya's too, i think. see, how i don't know much actually, because catching-up with friends is a failed course in my book. however much i miss them. and i regret that. but still, i hold on to the excuse that i don't want to bother them. as long as i know they are happy, that is enough for me. and so i sit here, missing them, and keeping our memories together close in my heart, with and without the keepsakes, for the sake of a beautiful friendship i'll treasure forever.

Friday, December 24, 2010

romance, romantic, romanticism...

wookay...
i've been trying to write on this topic since the first time i watched the movie 'The Young Victoria' on star movies. and that was a while ago. i've watched reruns of it three time! heh. it was about the queen victoria of the eighteenth century, how she met her husband, the love of her life, the regent prince albert and how she reigned for 64 years, the longest period of reigning for an england sovereign, to date. it's only fair to say that the movie was romantic, and the fact that it chronicles the queen's early life almost to the letter (except for the fact that her husband in reality was not hurt in the attempt to shield her from that crazy man who tried to kill her) kinda made me fall back into my romantic mode and believed that fairy tale happy ending does happen in real life. heh!
which somehow made me want to write about this:
first: romance.
second: romantic.
third: romanticism
Romance
by definition from wikipedia, romance is a noun that describes the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. It is also used as a verb (meaning to court or pursue amorously). in my case, to be perfectly and completely honest, i was a fan of romance novels. i did feel that tug in my heart whenever i watch romance-genre movies or dramas. there you go. but heck no, i didn't go fooling about romancing anyone, Alhamdulillah for that.
Romantic
Answer.com reflects romantic as relating to characteristic of romance or as a noun, it is said to be a follower or adherent of romance. in my part, i wouldn't say i'm a romantic. my best friends would say quite the opposite. well, i did cry at some shah-rukh-khan starred hindustan movies, which to them automatically labeled me as a romantic. outwardly, i hardly show that i'm romantic. i try to be the complete opposite, when deep down, actually, I am. i shared the same opinion as the two leading characters of the 27 Dresses. for them, when attending a wedding, they don't pay attention to the brides. instead they watch the look on the grooms' faces. whether it was pure pleasure at the first sight of his bride in a wedding gown, a forced smile, a nervous shake of the head, or plain torture. i do the same. whenever i watch the movie with weddings in it, i look closely to the groom, and not the bride, how happy he looks. whenever i attend a wedding, i watch the groom, the way he sits in front of the wali and tok imam and tok kadi, the way he nods his head, the way he smiles nervously and says the solemnization vows, the way he looks up, searching for his newly-wed wife and smiles when he finds her with her head bowed low and a soft smile upon her lips, relieved. brides are supposed to look beautiful on the wedding day. so, what's the use of looking at them when you already know that fact? but, you never can predict how a groom would look on his wedding day. if he's happy, it would show on his face when he finally solemnizes the marriage. if he's not, it shows too. that is much more interesting to look upon, and if that makes me a romantic, so be it.
Romanticism
Wikipedia said that romaticism (or the Romantic Era) was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. quite a mouthful, huh? so, it's a movement, in various aspect of living at that time. The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and terror and awe. so, it's about emotion. emphasizing on emotion, and neglecting anything else. hm... not quite a good thing to do, when emotion can lead you astray to the wrong path, if you neglect to use your head with it. being a woman, especially, emotion plays a vital part in our lives. unlike men who are all about logic and rational thinking, we, women, tend to rely on emotion a tad too tightly. which brings me to another definition of romaticism, quoted from Harun Yahya's Romanticism; A Weapon of Satan.
hah! that was on the cover of the book. we don't even go in depth of the book yet, but still the title already tells us that romaticism is not a good thing. according to Harun Yahya, romanticism is one such falsehood that is erroneously thought to be "true." In a society where people do not live by the true religion, romanticism is portrayed as a favourable quality peculiar to
compassionate, good people. Essentially, one of the most harmful characteristics of romanticism, and from which we must be on our guard, is that it rejects "reason" as contrary to its philosophy.
another mouthful, yes, but the important part from this i can extract is that romanticism is dangerous. we Muslims are people living with the true religion, we don't need a deviation to classify ourselves as what kind of a person. being a Muslim, a true one will automatically make us compassionate and good people, following the guidance of our Quran and the sunnah of our prophet. because those two teach us to be good people in details, and still keep our head above us, to rationalize things, not relying solely on emotion. we believe that our hearts are the center of our emotion, while our heads are the center of our rational reasoning. the beauty of Allah's creation is that the head is placed above all parts of the body, and the heart is placed on the upper left corner of our torso. reflecting on that, He wants us to put our head above anything, that is, to put our reasonings above anything else. emotion only come second.
There is a subtle danger that leads people away from religion, prevents them from submitting to God as their Lord, and ultimately brings numerous other forms of trouble and distress upon them. This danger of which we are speaking is sentimentality that leads people to live, not according to their reason, but according to their emotions; that is, according to their desires, hatreds, their susceptibility to temptation, and their stubbornness ~ Harun Yahya.
Ya Rabb, please don't let me fall prey to this danger, ameen.
so, following that, i redefine myself.
Romance, Romantic, Romanticism.
i let go of the first, i only hold on to the second deep down and be cautious about it, and i identify the third as something i should be careful about and God willing, not to be a victim of... insya Allah.