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He had been wondering how couples – including he and his life partner, could go back and forth from affection to disgust continually. He had seen how his mom and dad yelled at each other one certain night and be intimate again the next day.

When love is withdrawn by tensions, what can you cling to? That’s when the light dims, and what’s to open up your heart? The feeling is in suspended animation, like the oak leaves falling down, windblown, floating unbearably, then touch the ground, tumble down to the earth. Dries and cracks.

Like today, the fury surrounding him at the time he stepped out of the interview room couldn’t bear the quake in his being it would let gentleness temporarily out of his logic. He felt hopeless about the job he was applying for in that hotel. He broke cheerless and rushed out of the hotel building to meet his life partner at the nearest shopping center. But he couldn’t call his lover for the exact meeting spot because both his mobiles were out of power. He wanted to cry.

However coped the appointment had been after he seek for his lover here and there and finally found his lover looking at a directory board over the south gate, they couldn’t avert fighting after his lover replied by asking simply to settle down when he said he wanted to cry.

He wanted something, which he didn’t know what, to perk up. He couldn’t put up with just a plain advice from someone who he thought loved him the most. The ineffective interview preparation and the crazy drilling interviewer had dispirited him and released his ego towards only his self. Nothing satisfied him, but being a bitch could.

But it is love that keeps you making one’s day.

And Aunt Jeannie once had said to him that it was some magic words in the moment of magic that could beckon love home again after a journey beyond comprehension - to permit your person to be celebrity. Like now, that he suddenly felt he had become rational again when all rages in his mind halted and he was steered to deeply look into the sunflower in his lover’s eyes with the usual fondness; right after he unconsciously asked his lover, “Are you okay?”

And they again gave each other lights in the dimness, like the flows of river sprung from an endless fountain. They again gave each other staying power and serenity for restless souls; gave a sense for every pace, a belief that they be not futile.

*
(Karawaci, 3 July 2006)