A Watch

 

Okay, I'm going to talk about time. Because now I live in the world, and according to the science Earth is round like a basket ball. So I think the time is a circle as Earth moves around the sun. However, the time is moving away not approaching and it movement caused a distinct events. Everything moves experiencing causal messy, but interrelated. Every living in the world also experiencing causality and resulting the civilization. I’m on the experience, a relationship that keeps me thinking, walking and disappears. People are living with time. Installing wall clock, wear a watch and schedule activities. Every time in the event of their life always see the time, when the time for leave and go home, start and end, make an appointment. Time becomes the source of their lives, no time then there is no event, no causal no civilization and no civilization there is no God. Here, I say time is a god.

I’m standing on the porch of an old building. See the clock on the watch. There is a sound, like a heartbeat. What if my watch off? Am I going to die? The answer: Yes. And I looked around people are always looking at their watch. Because in my world. Their live depend on the watch that wears by them. The watch has been attached since they were born. No one knows where it came from. People remain active as usual in accordance with the time that their arrange themselves: work in the morning till evening, eating, sleeping, watching theater, creating anything. So the effect of time on watches is smaller, no anxiety when the clock stops indicating death. Now, time is being important affairs caused by their agreement with the time so people rushed, hurried and hurried. They realized that thinking of the death means wasting time in life, and those who died because their stopped watches not get preferential treatment. They assume that is a failure of a person to live a life that was given by the time.

But not with me! I can tell when people around me die, perhaps in the whole world. How come? I don’t know. I don’t know since when I got the ability to see their death, what I feel now is I can see a digital clock at the top of their heads. Hours, minutes, seconds are very clear. And those numbers are moving backwards. If the figure shows 00-00-00, then that person dies. Without illness, accident or death, then they will fall into dust and lost in the wind. Really odd! My ability to see digital over their heads made me feel very special and terrible. Every time I go out from the house I always see death, people falling, lost. Every day death in my world is like eating peanuts, don’t stop until exhausted. I don’t know, where are the dead go? So, I chose to visit the lake on the edge of the hill frequently and in my mind, if they disappear into dust, must be fused with the wind. I feel the wind is the spirits of the dead.

“I don’t like wind.”

“Why?”

“But, I used to like it.”

“I don’t like rain.”

“Why?”

“Just like you, I used to like it.”

 That’s all! I speak to the objects moved by the wind. And so, they talk to me. There is inequality between us, but there are similarities, namely a past. Past, past, and past! The words must often occur in people who live, at a young age and the same space they would like the same things. Maybe madness, romance or freedom!

“So, you come here often?”

“Yes, to avoiding death.”

“Why did you avoiding the death, the death will come to every living thing?”

“I know you are the place of living spirits, seeing civilizing. But, we are different! You aren’t real just can be feel. Doesn’t it hurt to seeing people die?”

“Don’t you think? I saved their spirits since human were born. Imagine how much spirits in my life.”

“You don’t have any family, so you can not feel the hurt. I watched my family members died when their time was stopped and nothing I can do. Although, I clearly see the time was dying.”

“We both lonely,”

 I see the lake water is rippling, weeds and trees swaying rubbing each other. Only stone is silent. The sun heading west, clouds moving, somewhere along the line they will be stopped. All life has a purpose and meaning of each. Only stone keep in silent! Don’t stone has time? I want to make friend with a rock, but the rock can not speak or give a sign that he is alive. Could it be stone dead since there are on earth? Then why the dead are in life?

Enough! I'm fed up with all this, thinking, pondering understanding is the act of misleading. The proof, I was a stranger in the middle of where all human’s life was never concerned with their own lives. Choose to enjoy life, light and earthy. I hate myself. Why just me who thought of it all? Aren’t there people who agree with me, at least they feel what I feel. Ah, maybe void only owned by people who live. I have witnessed a lot of pain, loss, torture, and inhumanity in this world. It’s been long time since they came. Because too often, the death chose me to know the secrets of time, see the time means feel the life. Time, is the ideal companion, generous, attentive, courteous, and have compassion. In this world, almost all people want to know the secrets of time. When did they die? Whenever a disaster occurs and when the world ends. From the first they thought of the unseen world, so often chatter and joke about the end of the day.

***

In a cafe, blues tickling my ears. And a poet reciting his poem with a mouth filled with beer foam, he didn’t care if there are hardly any visitors at this cafe, laughing to the music. A waiter of the cafe is an old man, his face full of feathers; mustache and beard. I sit waiting for a friend. Above my desk, a couple of bottles of beer had run out, and a pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray means the time has run long I sit here. There is no death, the digital clock above the heads of the people here are still quite long stalled, and of course they also look cheerful and unconcerned. Certainly, far from feeling gloomy and void from the past! People with impaired painful past is very easy to know, they wear dark clothes, silent and never wanted a voice, walk alone, writing stories and will easily detected when crying in the crowd.

Cafe door’s creaked, a blond lady come in and sit down in front of me, the waiter is smiling, his mind find a bottle of beer and money. While blues and poet preoccupied with themselves respectively.

“You look sick,” said the blonde lady.

 I shook my head, my eyes filled with water and my breath is wheezing. Sweat profusely. Suddenly, I had a fear to meet her.

 “Okay, I assume you’re okay.”

The waiter comes with a bottle of beer and a glass containing ice shards. After placed it he goes without sound, just the sound of his shoes bothering my ears, the sound of dragged steps.

"Hey…You still wearing that watch I gave you!”

 I smiled, seeing his eyes twinkled. There is a dark alley in the middle of her eyes such as sucking up all my views. And I think, since I first knew her. Those eyes, that smile, everything isn’t changed.

“How is your day?”

I keep in silence—nothing to say about the trip so far because she must have known and always say: Is not there another story! I actually tired of dealing with it and waste my time. I prefer the sun, blue sky and wind. They never destroy life even bring life, in contrast to the earth. It brings destruction.

“Do you still think I’m an evil?”

 I've thought of that before. You are evil and vindictive! I drink beer, watch the poet who convulsions as he continued to read his poem that I understand as babble words. Nothing contained on the poem, the poet is drunk, and keep babbling as he is giving the word of truth.

“Talk to me!”

I look at her—I should refuse to meet her at this time, this is boring.

 “It’s been long time I don’t talk with God anymore,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because He’s too mysterious, if He’s real why He must be hiding?”

“You don’t have to judge something from your perception. There’s something you have to priority first before yourself.”

“Am I selfish?”

“Yes you are and I like it.”

“But I don’t like you.”

“So?”

“I want to eliminate you from the human history.”

“You are over acting.”

“No I’m not, you can see the chaos. The death getting stronger without any cause, people dying because time.”

“That’s a fate.”

“Not for me, that’s just the malice. If people must die, let them die by people or... disaster.”

“World of war should stop, it’s just make no sense if people dying in the name of God and country. And.... if the disaster began, it caused by human too, I don’t like damage, I just want them to have normal death.”

 I look at her—closer and closer until I can’t forget her face. The face of God that reincarnate into human, seems like He’s afraid to look at His own face in the mirror so He decided to disguise Himself into anybody else to meet me. I wonder what his plan for me. I feel there is an imbalance in life when there is no cause-and-death consequences. Die becomes the easiest thing! it is more cruel than murder to me.

 “So should I to die now?” I ask.

“This is the time, your watch showed zero,” she answered.

 “Okay, before I die, let me know where I will go?”

“To a place where is no more death.”

After said that words that lady take the watch off. She smiling—one characteristic of psychopath killer, never felt any sins after killing me, whereas people should think of their sins that make them broken. I only let it go, no power against time. She step into the stage and then give the watch to the poet who has been drunk, the poet is shocked and then blowing a harmonica. He is like rediscovering tone, poetry and sense of drunk. After that I feel everything going dark. Floating dust in the wind then disappeared in sight.

Nana Sastrawan bersama Grup GPSP (Goresan Pena Sang Penulis)

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