Portrait by Lambok Sinaga, May 2017.

My name is Claradevi Handriatmaja. Shortly, Clara is my official nickname, along with many custom others that keep growing and changing along the time. In contrary to what I always expected, my life is about adjusting to changes; a theme that you might learn to be familiar with if you stick around a little longer. This blog is the quiet witness that speaks out loud through letters and pictures about my eight years of understanding those shifting moments: days that run into weeks and mornings that evolve into nights. I write to catch the pauses. Time tend to flash fast and gone within a blink, but through every written word I find the force that can hold it to last forever. What am I if not a greedy collector of fleeting memories.

The whole addiction to creating my own world of literature was started since I decided to pour my feelings into word instead of saying it. I kept a daily journal, to track the journey of my senses. Mostly filled with my very early development of lonesome, as a result of typical peer grouping and juvenile lover's rejection. I used to write about one thing. Then from one it becomes many. From those many, comes the only consistency from my ever-changing story of life: the thirst to paint the blank paper with my sharp, bullet-loaded pen weapons.

High school was the first time for me to realize that besides my fully-acknowledge ability to make mistakes and practicing bad attitudes, I do have one potentially good trait: the mastery of being 100% sure about what I want to study for the future. Journalism. A vision that I owe to Pramoedya Ananta Toer - the great Indonesian author whose tetralogy novels, Buru, successfully introduced me to the magical world of combining the observation of reality and story-telling skills to represent the truth. A collective work done together to preserve the good side of humanity. It was love at the first read. So I finished my high school's social major and entering the faculty of social science and communication. University life. First-time real life writing's exam. The brain exploded with good faith. I decided to start a blog called Sunflares Plethora back in 2007 (I know - what a title. My young addiction to catching sun flares on my photographs).

The blog evolves around me until I decided to create a brand for my digital content in 2010: "Lucedale." Little did I know that this blog will open the door to almost all career opportunity that I have in the future. All I want is a place where I can hide from the outside world, while at the same time regaining a limitless connection with as many online strangers as I can. No matter how many digital trends has passed, here I am, rewriting this introduction page for you. Yes, this blog has changed for so many times; from its designs to its address, from its content to its readers. Nothing stays the same. But I keep on storing all the precious stories I experience in life here; slowly, persistently, whole-heartedly.