20/08/2026
The twins passed by in a kind of singularity. Two reds, two shoulder-length hairs, two shiny red briefcases, and the same strides in their walk. I wondered whether the two ever confuse themselves for one another, woke up from the same nightmare, or went into a hospital for the same kind of sickness. Twins, after all, are connected through invisible strings that we, ordinary human can not see.
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Their back got smaller until it disappear at the edge of the small alleyway. The food seller jumped me out of my reverie. Handing me the gado-gado in a white plastic bag that surely adds another layer to the earth’s trash blanket, but so convenient. Gado-gado and Karedok. A different kind of each other. One cooked, the other served raw. Maybe deep inside, the twins’ dynamic is the same as Gado-gado Vs. Karedok. Visually the same, but inside’s so different.
Talking of individuality and personality, I remember wearing the same kind of clothes as my friend, feeling like I had lost part of my personality. Not that it was gone and retrieved so unexpectedly from my life. It stayed and turned into something that belongs to the communal, and not personal. I was making the same kind of choices that she did in wearing the same pattern. And I felt uncomfortably overwhelmed by the thought of my “self” being intergrated to “other,” forming us into a singularity. I am me, and not us, or we. And I reminded myself that I need to go alone to the lake tomorrow morning, for the sake of being alone.
