KARTIKA LESTARI
“Our past has shaped us into the person we are today.”
I’m from thousands of islands,
beaches and mountains,
hundreds of tribes and words,
the union of many ancestries.
I’m from the slopes,
morning tweets and night crickets,
cold breezes and petrichor,
a house next to a cornfield.
In my bedroom was a cupboard
storing stories in pictures,
keeping fairy tales,
and Agatha Christie’s novels.
In my desk’s drawer were diaries,
recording my every second —
stories of my days.
Those books were the listener to my feelings,
home of my words and poems,
haunt of my imaginations,
place where I trusted my dreams.
(Who I am by Kartika Lestari)
A person who doesn’t know what the universe is, doesn’t know where they are.
A person who doesn’t know their purpose in life doesn’t know who they are and what the universe is.
A person who doesn’t know any of these things doesn’t know why they are here.
So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?
—Marcus Aurelius