Arief's wedding vows

You are my best friend and constant companion.
Your heartfelt compassion and unwavering love have guided me through uncertain times.

Today, we join our lives. I promise I will always be your side ready to share in every successful and every obstacle.
Today, I join my life to yours. From this day on, I will be your partner and companion for you are my dearest love and my best friend.

I look forward to the joy we will find in each other's separate success, as well as our shared ones.
I welcome the challange of whatever obstacle we encounter as for I know that whatever we face, we face it together.

I pledge I will be your friend, your love and your partner for all the days of our life.

My wedding vows

This probably is the most negative wedding vows ever. In one of my favourite movie, "Picnic", the leading actress CoCo said, "the day I was born, the world was born. The day I died is the end of the world." Tomorrow, tomorrow is always a luxury dream for me. You all know that my favourite lines is "tomorrow is another day." But I'm the person who never knows where is tomorrow. Does tomorrow really exist? Everyday I wake up, I so wish that will be the end of the world. Every night I sleep, I so wish there won't be tomorrow anymore. But someday, at a magic point made me met someone who has been and will always be changing my life. That person is you, Arief, my love and my only one. In the past, I tried and tried so hard to survive to believe that tomorrow will be another day, but you, you, just as an exist, just standing there is already more than anything, more than any evidence, more than thousand words, to tell me that tomorrow, tomorrow is really another day. Thus, I won’t said, “no matter for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part”, those are for the optimistic couples, although it is a fact now.

I love you, I love you so much, I love you more than anything or anyone in the world, but that you’ve already known. What I want to say is, I will live, I will try my best to live, and I want to live by your side. I’ve given my love to you and now, I will give my life to you, and hold your life in my hands to through all the tests we have been overcome in the past and those we might face in the future. So, yes, I will give you my life and to see each sunrise, each sunset and each tomorrow with you until my dying day. So many words, but these words still cannot express my feelings, and my gift is my song and this is for you:

It's not against the religion, it about we as a human being.

To my dearest:
I didn't sleep well last night. All my mind is still about this thing, why and how could they cut speech so important like this. And I was also sad about our conversation stopped in the wrong point.

I won't say it's to against the Muslim religion, because as a Christian background gay man, I deeply understand how contradict it was inner myself long time ago. Therefore, I would like to tell you a story, a story about a boy who was 16 years old grow up in a church school. One day when this boy found he was attracted by the same sex boys, he was totally terrified. "I will go in the hell, I will burn by the fire, I'm sin, I'm immoral person." There was no hope for him, after day after day prayers, he still couldn't get any sign or message from hit God. He felt he was left, although everyday he sang for the God in the choir, every week he went to the church. There was still no hope.

So many years after, he met a female paster who told him "it's not a sin if you are a gay or lesbian. The most important is the relation between you and God. Interpretations are created by people. But what God tells you? He said I love you no matter who you are."

And one day, this boy on the way to the choir practice, he heard a voice and light from inside. That voice said, "Oh, my lovely child, you know I love you!" The boy was touched and cried and cried. From that moment he knew that God loves him and didn't leave him no matter he is gay or not.

For me, I believe that churches should bring and take people in not push them out. If you believe that there's a truely relation between you and God and no one can take it away. Then why can't you believe that some teachings from men might be wrong, the are pushing gays and lesbians out not taking them back? Is there any possible to open the dialogues inside the religion? If you don't believe this possible, how can you say you believe in God? How can you explain what God tells you directly but not from others?

And further more, if we just be quiet like this, are we trying to make this world better? I cannot, and I won't forgive myself when I am going to marry with someone I love but I leave others might be in similar situation in a difficult time. Can we just pursue our own happiness and say others it's not our business? It's not what we concern for? Then are we still in the goodness road in our lives? What will God say to us for our selfish?

Thus, I felt I was wrong to said that I was sorry to tell you those opinions. No, I'm not sorry for that because I know I'm doing something good for people like us. What I do is not to against the religion, but to earn the equal and just very very simple a respect as a human being! If there's one day Jr. ask us why can't we live in papa's country. I don't want to tell him or she that we are sorry and we didn't do anything for that. How can we face our child or to tell him this cruel fact just because we didn't do anything? I really really hope that you can understand this.

your love

蕭泰然 愛與希望

愛與希望

種一欉樹仔　在咱的土地
不是為著恨　是為著愛
二二八　這一天
你我作伙來思念　失去的親人

種一欉樹仔　在咱的心內
不是為著死　是為著希望
二二八　這一天
你我鬥陣相安慰　不通尚悲傷

從每一片葉子　愛與希望在成長
樹仔會釘根在咱的土地
樹仔會伸上咱的天
黑暗的時陣看著天星
在樹頂閃熾

跟你長談之後我想起了蕭泰然老師的曲子，愛與希望。

也許你又要笑說我頭長在天頂。（音樂？哈。）

但是我們如果只能教導下一代仇恨，而不是教導以之愛，對這片土地的愛。

仇恨只會延續，如同盧安答數十年不斷地重複種族滅絕。

我們要這樣的台灣嗎？我要我的主權，但是我不認為仇恨可以達成我們彼此寄望的最終目標。

如果每個種子都受到我們做長者父母得悉欣呵護，有沒有可能會長出強壯的大樹？

如果沒有希望卻寄望暴力，我們怎麼可能說透過這方式得來得是真實的民主？

蕭老師以一個走過那段歲月的歷練寫下這首曲子，黑暗的時候看著天星，而愛與希望的種子就在那裡。

Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Berge

In the funeral of fashion master, Yves Saint Laurent, his life partner Pierre Berge gave his love a moving farewell speech.

"It’s the last time I speak to you, Yves.

"I remember the first time we met and those days that followed. The day we decided to be together.

"I remember telling you in your bed at Val de Grace hospital that you were no longer the head of the couture house where you worked, and I remember your reaction. ...

"I remember your first collection under your name and the tears at the end. Then the years passed. Oh, how they passed quickly. The divorce was inevitable but the love never stopped."

What stuck Berge the most, he said, was Saint Laurent’s “rigor and exigence.”

"We find the style you created everywhere today.

"Chanel and you were the great couturiers of the 20th century. She of the first half, you the second.

“You constructed an oeuvre,” he said and compared its beauty and mastery to “a garden of Le Notre or a beautiful Matisse.”

"I don’t know how to say good-bye because I can never leave you. We will never watch a sunset together again. We will never share the emotions together before a painting again. Someday I will join you under the palm trees of Morocco.

I want to tell you my admiration, my profound respect and my love."

(According to Los Angels Times)

Bravo, Master!



(this is a collection of black suit from 2002 Retrospective to YSL)