Quiet times in times of War

I started this year with the following quote:

"It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other." (Aldous Huxley) 

I want to finish it with it. I wish I could say that in 2024 I was in a survival mode, but it would be false. I was most of the time in a war zone, with no time to think to a distant future, struggling with change, with pain, with lack of kindness, with superfluity and superficiality, of being alone and managing alone to keep the ship sailing, giving time, and energy, and patience to something that I still believe in. Still, it may not have been my ship to keep it on the surface. Being alone, on this ship, was the hardest and the most stressful thing to do, and only the thought that it was temporary made me move on.

At the end of 2024, I finally hear my own body, aching under all the words unsaid, and the times off that I haven’t taken, and all that I want right now is quiet times. If there is something that I learnt during this year is to be grateful for the people and the things that I have, to focus less on the things I haven’t accomplished (although it does haunt my mind) to the small good things that have kept me afloat. So, I am thankful for: 

1. My people – too few perhaps, but the only ones that I accepted in my boat, old friends, and new Joys, who are more as family to me.

2. People that taught me that we are the same, but have different colours, different reactions, different moods, different insanities. And during sessions of therapies with them, I learnt a few things about myself too. Be kinder, accept the other, and stop judging.

3. The chance of growing. 5 years ago, I wouldn’t have seen myself here. 10 years ago, I would have said that “I am a teacher, and this is what I will do all my life”. Before everything, I would always be a teacher, and a catcher in the rye for every child that I met, and everyone who really knows me knows that I would give an entire world for a child, but now I have discovered new parts of myself that I had no idea that I am good at, although I do miss the tranquillity from time to time.

4. The chances that I had to work in a team. As I said, this year showed me what it means to be alone. I have always wanted to be part of a team, and in those few moments when I felt that, I was really grateful. Plus, “no man is an island”, and I learnt that two brains can work better than one.

5. The few books I managed to read this year, found here, and my review of McCarthy’s last novels here, going back into myself, finally doing something that I cherish, my core identity, my square one. I don’t manage to read as much as I used to, nor to write as much as I want, and somehow, I feel this part taken from me. Each year, I promise myself to make time for reading a bit more, and each year, for my birthday, I buy myself a book to start the year with. This year is Murakami’s latest novel.

6. The few trips taken this year. The silence of the mountain, and of the sea, the time when I was away, forgetting about life for a while, wishing I would travel more.

7. The small fluffy beings – too many this time – that bring happiness even in times of need.

8. The times when I had the courage and a car to drive, wishing I would be able to do what I planned to do.

9. Embracing loneliness. Accepting it. Definitely not what I wanted from life, but learning its language, and because of it, being more grateful for number one, my people that are in my life.

10. The small good things from each day (1.5h walks, children smiling, and their gratitude, kind, unrequested words, and so on) that are sometimes so unseen that most of the time only our survival, our power to go on are the only evidence of their existence.  

Learning to Surrender

Uneori îți vine să te urci în mașină și să conduci cât mai departe, spre un dincolo. Îți amintești apoi de toți vitezomanii și agresivitatea din trafic și automat te întorci în prezent. Uneori îți vine să înșiri tot ceea ce simți pe-o foaie albă, dar poate ți-e teamă de ceea ce simți, sau poate nu mai știi nici tu ce e în tine și apoi iar te întorci în prezent.

Te joci cu amintirile, sau ele se joacă cu tine. Mereu mi-a plăcut să îmi folosesc această ,,supraputere” cu oamenii dragi mie, deși uneori am primit fix opusul. Mereu însă și ele s-au jucat cu mine în așa fel încât uneori mă gândesc că la fel ca în literatura modernistă, sunt oameni care trăiesc în exterior și oameni a căror viață se întâmplă mai mult în interior.

Sunt gânduri, amintiri, emoții încolătăcite, și nu mai știi pe unde să o apuci. Vrei să le dai un limbaj, dar se încăpățânează să fie peste tot, dar ascunse de fiecare dată când vrei să prinzi una. Eu, cea care are nevoie de stabilitate, și ordine, și lucruri clare, în interior e haos. Nu știi dacă să te ridici de la masă și să pleci, nu știi dacă să rămâi, nu știi cum să repari lucrurile pe care le-ai tot amânat, pe care le-ai greșit cu tine însăți, nu știi încotro să o iei.

Poate că cel mai greu lucru pe care trebuie să-l învățăm este să ne predăm, să nu mai încercăm atât în a ne impune vieții. Sau cel puțin în anumite momente când simți că ai pierdut războiul. Dincolo de zgomotul asurzitor al tuturor gândurilor, al tuturor amintirilor, al tuturor greșelilor, al tuturor emoțiilor, să închizi ochii și să dai drumul la tot, și poate doar așa, în spatele acestui zgomot asurzitor fără cuvinte, poți găsi într-un final liniștea și ordinea pe care o tot cauți. 

La capatul noptii

Cum ar arăta o lume în care nu am mai ști să ne bucurăm de nimic? Plină de mizantropie, misoginie, cinism și fără niciun sentiment? Cum ar fi să treci prin viață astfel, sau viața să-ți dea o lecție care îți transformă întreaga existență și în care Binele nu mai există?

Am detestat personajele din La capătul nopții prin tot ceea ce ele exprimă, prin lipsa de umanitate și prin această lipsă a Binelui în care da, chiar cred. Cu toate acestea, ele exprimă o lume reală, acea parte pe care poate cei mai optimiști nu vor să o vadă, o lume vie aflată la capătul nopții, în care Celine chiar crede și pe care o explorează cu îndemânare, într-un stil masculin, clar, fără ezitări.

,,Nu pierdea niciun prilej mama să încerce să mă facă să cred că lumea e bună şi că făcuse mare bine că mă adusese pe lume. Era marele şiretlic al nepăsării materne această presupusa Providenta.” (209-210)

,,Mai vine şi vârsta, poate, trădătoarea, și ne amenință cu cei mai rău. N-ai destulă muzică în tine să faci viața să danseze, asta e. Toată tinerețea ţi s-a dus să moară de acum la capătul lumii, în linişte, în adevăr. Și unde să te mai duci oare, dacă nu mai ai în tine suficient delir adevărat? Adevărul. Iată o agonie fără sfârşit. Adevărul acestei lumi e moartea. Trebuie să alegi, să mori sau să minţi. Eu n-am putut niciodată să mă sinucid.” (241)

,,Egoismul fiinţelor care au fost amestecate în viața noastră, când te gândești la ele, bătrân, se dovedește incontestabil, aşa cum a fost de altfel, de oţel, de platină, și mult mai trainic decât timpul chiar.

Când ești tânăr, celor mai aride indiferenţe, celor mai cinice bădărănii ajungi să le găsești întotdeauna scuza unor ciudăţenii pasionale sau a nu știu căror semne ale unui inexpert romantism. Dar mai târziu, când viaţa ţi-a arătat de câtă șiretenie, de câtă cruzime și răutate are nevoie numai ca se mențină de bine de rău la 37 de grade, îți dai seama, ești pe deplin lămurit și bine plasat pentru a înțelege toate murdăriile de care e plin un trecut. E de ajuns în toate şi pentru toate să te contempli scrupulos pe tine însuți și starea de ticăloșie în care ai ajuns. Nici mister, nici candoare, ţi-ai halit toată poezia pentru că ai trăit prea mult. Mare neghiobie, viaţa asta. (253)

,,Descoperi în tot trecutul tău ridicol atâta ridicol, înşelătorie, credulitate că ai vrea să încetezi brusc să maí fii tânăr, să aştepţi ca tinereţea să te părăsească, să treacă pe lângă tine, s-o vezi plecând, îndepărtându-se, să-i vezi întreaga vanitate, să-ţi plimbi mâna prin golul ei, s-o mai vezi din nou trecând prin fața ta, și apoi odată plecată, să fii sigur că s-a dus tinerețea și, liniştit atunci dinspre partea ei, rămas singur, să treci uşor de cealaltă parte a timpului pentru a privi cu adevărat cum sunt oamenii şi lucrurile. (341)

Lifeboats and small good things

In-betweenness. Sinking or navigating the storm. Protecting or giving it all up. Staying or leaving.  Sanctuaries turned into prisons. The borderline is not a place of peace, but of being torn in two halves: hoping and giving it all up. 

Perhaps what matters the most is what you leave behind in people, although they won't remember it. And we are all covered in billions of fingerprints of others, most of them not even knowing that they are there, on us, whether we accept it or not. In all the chaos, and chains of narcissism, the small good things keep you breathing: from passing people who see you as "mother's mothering" or compare you, unknowingly, with the people who once shaped you. 

And perhaps, in this borderline, these small good things are our lifeboats. 

  

Long Dark Night

Nick Cave’s latest album somehow echoes the depths of one’s soul, the struggle to find peace in this world, of letting go – of trauma, pain, or dreams deferred – of jumping into life, but learning how to float inside of it.

We only live once, or at least we remember this one life until that final day. And still, days repeat themselves moment by moment: we wake up, we go to work, we return home. We do our chores on repeat, and from time to time we have our moments of joy: a child smiling, or hugging, a friend’s calling, a walk in the forest, all the things, and all the people we long to, whom we call family or sanctuary. From time to time we dare to try more. And we take a step back from the routine and a step forward into the unknown. 

Burnout and Routine

We get up every day, drink our coffee, go to work, and then back home. On repeat, day after day. We help people around us not because we want something back, but because we still believe in humanity. We want more to life than just work, but somehow we keep on failing on what we want on a personal level. And we give, and we work, and we give again, until one day our body just says stop.

It feels like fainting, like being drained of energy, and everything hurts. It feels like something that you have eaten too much and now your stomach just refuses it. It feels like the pain, the emotional one, gets so high that it turns into numbness. It feels like you want to fight it with all your being, but no pills, no vitamins, no coffee can help you now. It's you against yourself.

And so you stop. And try to take breaks on your own. You remember how much you once used to love travelling, and how much you missed that. You embrace the silence, the getting away from the routine, from all the noise, from all the struggle. It's another kind of tiredness, a good one, that puts your mind at ease. You stop trying to forgive, you just let it be. And you try to be for once a human, with its own needs, with its own pain. And slowly, really slowly, you start breathing, not sure yet if you can stay on your own feet or the direction you suppose to go to now. 

Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1

The news of Paul Auster’s death caught me somewhere in the middle of 4 3 2 1, one of the novels that I enjoyed most from this writer. I don’t know about others, but I do dream from time to time about how my life would have looked like if I took another road, if some events from my life never happened. What would I have become if I hadn’t had a sister, if I chose another profile, another road, other people, if I said what bothered me from the beginning, and so on. There are the small things, when we look back in time, that make all the difference.

I don’t want to write a review here, because the world is probably full of reviews about this book, as it should be. Because I was already familiarised with Auster’s work and his plays with literary techniques (especially Travels in the Scriptorium), I already knew what to expect here, and how the book would end. What is, after all, the difference between us as fictionalised characters and us in the real world? Which ones would we prefer? Is there any way we can make the difference?

I guess that what Paul Auster does here is to write about all the aspects of Life, and that maybe he teaches us here that "Memory is identity" (Julien Barnes), and it’s not only those pieces of our puzzle that make our lives, but it’s also what we chose to remember as part of our identity and conscience, those people who were there for us in times of need and moulded our personality, from the presence (or absence) of parents, aunts, uncles or cousins that pathed our way to the importance of friends who later on in life became part of the family. No matter how many lives we have, no matter what roads we take, for all the Fergursons all those little things matter, because in the end, these are the things that make us humane, and this is in the center of this masterpiece.

Thus, Fergurson’s lives gravitate around these topics: motherhood (Rose who is always described as an ”extraordinary” mother, a devotion to her that almost resembles Cartarescu’s depiction of motherhood in his novels) and the lack of a father from his life (and people who successfully managed to substitute this role) the importance of sport, of good friends and how they have impacted his life, of sex and love, of the history of America (especially the way Afro-American people have been perceived or the influence of the Vietnam war inside America’s university campus), and the glue that keeps everything together: his passion for writing.  4 3 2 1 is among other things an encyclopedia of books that influenced Paul Auster’s career, and from time to time, there are hints and references to other ideas/books written by the author himself.

To put it in a nutshell, Paul Auster reminded me - perhaps when I needed the most - that I believe in the humanity of the human being, and if there is only one book that you should read in a year, I think this would be on the top list. 

Some of the lines that I mostly enjoyed: 

"The word psyche means two things in Greek, his aunt said. Two very different but interesting things. Butterfly and soul. But when you stop and think about it carefully, butterfly and soul aren't different, after all, are they? A butterfly starts out as a caterpillar, an ugly sort of earthbound, wormy nothing, and then one day the caterpillar builds a cocoon, and after a certain amount of time the cocoon opens and out comes the butterfly, the most beautiful creature in the world. That's what happens to souls as well, Archie. They struggle in the depths of darkness and ignorance, they suffer through trials and misfortunes, and bit by bit they become purified by those sufferings, strengthened by the hard things that happen to them, and one day, if the soul in question is a worthy soul, it will break out of its cocoon and soar through the air like a magnificent butterfly." (140)

"[...] remembering how his mother had ultimately replaced God in his mind as the supreme being, the human incarnation of the divine spirit, a flawed and mortal deity prone to the sulks and restless confusions that afflict all human beings, but he had worshipped his mother because she was the one person who never let him down, and no matter how many times he had disappointed her or proved himself to be less than he should have been, she had never not loved him and would never not love him to the end of her life.” (518) 

"No impulse to reinvent the world from the bottom up, no acts of revolutionary defiance, but a commitment to doing good in the broken world she belonged to, a plan to spend her life helping others, which was not a political act so much as a religious act, a religion without religion or dogma, a faith in the value of the one and the one and the one, a journey that would begin with medical school and then continue for however long it took to complete her psychoanalytic training, and while Amy and a host of others would have argued that people were sick because society was sick and helping them adjust to a sick society would only make them worse, Hallie would have answered, Please, go ahead and improve society if you can, but meanwhile people are suffering, and I have a job to do." (996-997)