sleep tight

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the nondairy creamer is floating on top because she's kind of engrossed already. Lost in world of the author's making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. She if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in a song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by God, she's going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things : motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to climax. Because the girl who reads understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. 

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age togethet and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the show off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and halfbaked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. 

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

I'm lonely so I do lonely things, loving you was like going to war, I never came back the same. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for ride home. You're a ghost town I'm too patriotic to leave. I stay because you're the dream I want to remember. I didn't call him back because he likes his girls voiceless. It's not that he wants to be a liar, it's just that he doesn't know the truth. I couldn't love you, you were a small war. We covered the smell of loss with jokes. I didn't want to fail at love like our parents. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay. I'm not a dog. We were trying to prove our blood wrong. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things. Yes, I'm insecure, but so was my mother and her mother. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me. You were too cruel to love for a long time. It just didn't work out. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back. I can't sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth. I cut him out at the root, he was my favourite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home. The women in my family die waiting, because I didn't want to die waiting for you, I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me. You're the song I rewind until I know all the words and I fell sick. He send me a text that said "I love you so bad", his heart wasn't as beautiful as his smile, we emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you. I'm a lover without a lover. I'm lonely and lonely. I belong deeply to myself.

everyone has their own lane & their own track, you don't always need grand gestures to make you feel better about life. I've worked out ways to appreciate the moment I am in, to help me focus on positive things rather than the things that weight me down.

Everybody is turning it into something else, something it's not, but we're friends - we know that, that's where it start and ends. Do you think there's an alternate universe where we did'nt have to worry about all this stuff? Where we could keep hanging out and no one would care? 

We're just characters in a book, remember? There are millions of books out there. We could be living all sorts of different lives, and I was suddenly overcome with emotion. It felt like the person standing in front of me knew me better than anyone else. I couldn't imagine how I would stop my self from calling him, and I sensed he felt the same way.

"Well, you'll be a writer, mark my word. You have the name for it"

Jaman masih kuliah di UI itu, uchi seneng banget kalo bisa temenan sama temen yang pinter, bukan bermaksud membeda-bedakan kamu pinter kamu engga, ini definisi uchi sendiri, pinter bagi uchi kalo dia bisa menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan uchi dengan jelas, dan uchi merasa terjawab, mungkin definisi pinter menurut kalian beda-beda tapi bagi uchi definisi pinter ya seperti itu.

Akhirnya uchi punya temen yang pinter namanya agus al-imam bahaudin kalau gasalah, dia pinter banget, bisa jadi murid favorite semua dosen-dosen, karena setiap pelajaran, bisa dibilang di semua pelajaran kalo ada pertanyaan yang susah nama agus di mention sama dosennya, "gmn gus pendapat kamu?" , seperti yang bisa uchi prediksi, agus selalu bisa jawab dengan perfect. Uchi udah pernah bilang sistem kuliah di UI itu, kreatifitas kita bener-bener dibebaskan, jadi sistem kuliahnya simpel aja dosennya cerita kompetensi apa aja yang harus kita capai dikelasnya, kemudian materinya dibagi rata setiap kelompok, kita presentasi sendiri dan kita yang tanya-tanya sendiri, kalo uda mentok dan gasesuai ekspektasi dosennya, baru mereka komentar.

Bisa dipastikan kalo sekelompok sama agus semuanya beres, gaperlu khawatir kalo presentasi dia selalu bisa jawab, pinter banget. Dalam geng farmasi UI, agus itu masuk kategori geng cumlaude (bahkan pemimpinnya karena dia pegang best IPK), dan termasuk laki-laki yang gasombong, mw berbaur, mw temenan sama orang walopun gasegeng, sama uchi misalnya.

Di UI itu ujiannya gasusah-susah banget, tapi menenangkan ke-khawatirannya yang mahal, setiap mau ujian kita pasti foto copy contoh soal kakak-kakak kelas kita, bisa foto copy sampe 5 semester diatas kita

"gus, ngapain sih kita harus foto copy semua soal-soal ini, padahal kalo kita belajar konsepnya kan gaperlu takut soal model apa aja"
"ini namanya beli ketenangan uchi, nnti juga ga gw baca kok uchi, cuma foto copy aja biar tenang, hehehe"
lucu banget kalo ingat ngantri-ngantri foto-copy yang menguras kantong, untuk  membeli "ketenangan" itu.

Dulu itu jamannya kalo mau ujian juga lucu banget, pasti farmasi itu nggerombol per-gengnya, terus tebak-tebak an, terus hafalan bareng, lihat geng-geng berhamburan di sekeliling uchi, uchi semakin khawatir, jadi jalan satu-satu nya adalah bawa headset, puter musik yang keras terus mulai belajar

"ayo gabung, belajar bareng uchi"
"engga deh gus, uchi belajarnya lebih bisa belajar sendiri dari pada bareng-bareng, kecuali kepepet belum belajar sama sekali, gapapa belajar bareng-bareng, bukan yang njawab, tapi ndengerin jawaban kalian, siapa tahu keluar"

lucu banget kalo ingat jaman itu, uchi juga paling suka kalo dosen belum datang, terus liat gengnya agus riwa-riwi ke kantin beli jajan, rasanya pengen juga, tapi takut pas ke kantin nnti dosennya datang. Terutama waktu pelajaran farmasi klinik.

"udah nanti uchi aja yang presentasi, kan uchi jago banget kliniknya"
kalo dibilang gt rasanya kepercayaan diri meningkat, tapi tetep aja, takut dosen di UI itu uda senior banget, kaku, kalimat kita harus tepat yang dia mau kalau mau selamat

yang paling sedih itu, waktu uchi ketemu agus di bis kuning, uchi kan galolos mata kuliah registrasi obat, haduh rasanya mata uda bengkak banget, sama ingus gaberhenti, pengen deh pake masker biar gaketahuan, gt deh rasanya punya pengalaman temenan sama anak pinter, tersiksanya lebih dalam disaat kita galulus dan teman kita dapat skor paling tinggi, dulu sih sedih banget, kalo sekarang malah lucu banget nginget-ngingetnya :D