My Revolutionary Road

,,Nebunia mă urmărea încă din fragedă pruncie, pândindu-mă de după un pom sau un bolovan. Treptat m-am obişnuit să simt aţintită asupra mea privirea de sepie a acelor ochi neobosiţi care se mişcau lin pe traseul vieţii mele. Totuşi n-am cunoscut nebunia doar sub forma unor umbre malefice. Am cunoscut-o şi ca pe o explozie de extaz, atât de bogată şi de zdrobitoare, încât lipsa unui obiect palpabil prin preajmă, asupra căreia ea să se poată descărca, a fost pentru mine o formă de evadare.” (Nabokov, Priveste-i pe Arlechini, 248)

For me, 2013 is synonym with “dreams deferred”. Not to mention the lack of snow from this year.  So I want everything that belongs to 2013 to go away. And I want my own self back. My insanity. My games. My energy – to let it out. I want the people that I love in my future, but I don’t wish for ordinary things anymore.

I don’t draw lines at the end of a year. But I really wish to do this now, because of all the wars fought within myself. I wrote very little, here, on this half-abandoned blog, and for my own personal projects. I failed an important thing in my “career”, and I also lost a dream. And I guess that this is the most painful thing for our souls: the dreams that we love, that we cherish, our own children, buried inside ourselves, being killed by others and by us before we even start working on them. It’s like losing a baby, a limb, a piece of your own identity. And I don’t want this to go on in 2014. I read fewer books – I think it’s the “poorest” year from all my life.

However, I cannot say here that I haven’t found some new titles and writers. My favourite book and author from 2013 is without a doubt Cormac McCarthy – The Crossing. It’s the book which gave the title of a dream, a book that I love, which reminds me a lot of Johnny Cash. It’s about the death of the American dream, or another kind of it, it’s about the loneliness of the soul, the history of America, and also our own personal histories. Because, as Joyce was saying, “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” Be it personal or social.

Other great books that I read this year are Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, Paul Harding’s Tinkers, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 – awesome book -, Jose Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night, Ernesto Sabato’s On Heroes and Tombs, and Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown. It’s difficult to say which one of these is better than the other ones. I could definitely say that McCarthy was my year’s favorite, followed by all of these books.

Maybe the greatest disappointment was Papini’s A Man Finished. Interesting, philosophical, brutal. But a book that I had to read when I was a teenager and not now. Good for this year, though.

Hoping that 2013 is really over. Hoping that I should or someone would remember me that I want more from life. Hoping that maybe that miracle that I have been waiting all my life will suddenly come true.  

And let it be insanity …. 

My Kind of Christmas

Cred ca Craciunul meu este o sarbatoare a lucrurilor simple. Nu a preotului care trebuie sa ne ,,binecuvanteze” casa ce trebuie in aceasta perioada curatata in toate locsoarele sale, unde se gateste de dimineata pana seara. Nu e o sarbatoare a ,,bucatelor” si pentru multi dintre noi nu e sarbatoarea nasterii Domnului… Si totusi, orice credinta am avea, indiferent de starea noastra, Craciunul inseamna acel ceva, acea amintire dupa care tanjim ani la randul, acea reuniune de familie pe care o asteptam intregul an, acel respiro, acel moment cand ne gandim la toti cei dragi noua si nu-i bombardam pe toti cunoscutii si necunoscutii cu urari. E acel moment cand ii vrei pe cei dragi, pe “your people”, pe toti dintre ei, langa tine. Si atunci cand acest ceva e imposibil, te astepti la un cuvintel mic de tot din partea lor. E acel lucru simplu, neinteles de atati de multi. Ca acel creion mecanic pe care-l folosesti si nu-l mai pierzi - never ever -la fiecare carte citita pentru ca vine din partea acelui cineva special, in care crezi cu fiecare particica din tine. Si e o amintire frumoasa si calda. La fel ca acea promisiune, acel joc, facut acum cativa ani, pe care l-ai tot asteptat, acel lucru simplu, acea amintire care ar fi spus mai mult decat orice carte aleasa la intamplare “I believe in your dreams”.