Nik Setiadarma

crumbles of time

Blog

  • unmanifested

    unmanifested

    You know: our writing ain’t shit, and we take pride in every cloud we replicate as we refuse rain and storm. Fretting with frat boys of literature, tobacco blowjobs until our whole view is smokey shadow. No shit we can’t write good. We have no clarity. We need to leave friendships. A circle of bad… Read more

  • Sandiwara Pengakuan

    Sandiwara Pengakuan

    Confession of a Mask: Yukio Mishima menulis tentang topeng seorang laki-laki berbicara tentang dirinya sendiri, meliuk ke dalam, ke luar, berbalik, berputar, melalui, ke dalam tubuh. Pecahan memori yang tidak selalu bisa diandalkan berubah menjadi gerlap fiksi memoar. Topeng itu meminta kisah hasrat, nafsu, seksualitas, dan raga erotis, merajuk pada jiwa libido yang meronta hendak… Read more

  • phase four; pacing

    phase four; pacing

    I kissed her goodbye a thousand times; and yet the gaze still sees her as part of me. It doesn’t matter anymore what I call myself. I can only write. Out of disaffection because what I have right now is responsibility to finish, to think, to answer, to sit with the past always for the… Read more

  • pada hari minggu ku turut rasa ke mana

    pada hari minggu ku turut rasa ke mana

    . . . . hari ini hari minggu ketiga bulan november; aku berjalan keluar rumah, mencari angin sore hari jika masih ada, sambil menggaruk ketiak gatal dari balik baju tipis, bulu-bulu tajam pada lipatan kulit mulai kembali tumbuh, mulai kembali mengganggu, sudah biasa; aku melangkah pelan, memaksa badanku bergerak sedikit lebih banyak, membuka gerbang rumah,… Read more

  • Impurity

    Impurity

    Thanks to Day, Mirna, Gita, and Bella for watching and discussing this movie with me. Cleaners (2019), directed by Glenn Barit, tells some slices of everyday life among Filipino high-schoolers in early 2000s. Weaving four separate yet connected mini-stories, the movie offers bitter-sweet, nostalgic youth of friendship and love, with sprinkles of politics, that allows… Read more

  • Fragments Incarnate

    Fragments Incarnate

    Pedro Páramo is a thundering grandeur. Non-linear narrative; yes, please. Population of characters who are conscious of their alienation; served. Latin-American literature through its history knows what to do with estrangement. (The last novel I read was Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum of Eterna’s Novel and I still remember the imaginary fireworks surrounding myself as I… Read more