205.

Din nimic, ridicam sau doboram munti, asa cum ne jucam cu si printre cuvinte. Fie ca vrem sa cucerim mari si tarmuri cu ceea ce simtim in interior, fie ca suntem mereu prezenti pentru celalalt, ambele poluri cauta acelasi lucru: gratitudinea tradusa prin a fi unul dintre oameni, printre oameni, de a fi acceptati, de a fi intr-o barca cu ceilalti, nu azvarliti de fiecare data cand ne simtim mai in siguranta peste punte. Si pentru asta, fie ca inca mai incercam sa pastram umanul din noi si inca mai credem in bine, fie ca ne-am instrainat demult de tot ce poate fi omenesc, asa cum personajul cartii a facut-o, am da toate marile, si toate tarmurile cucerite.

 ,,O odaie alba si goala, cu tine in mijloc, rasunatoare la fiecare pas al tau. Pretutindeni sclipeau in razele trecand prin crapaturile paretilor valtrapuri grele de panza de paianjen, si muste mari sagetau zbarnaind prin aerul vested, punandu-se pe rahati uscati omenesti ce de veacuri, parca, intinau podeaua. Stand acolo, chiar in miezul odaii celei desarte, te-a izbit deodata, ca un topor in crestet, singuratatea. Te-ai vazut o clipa asa cum erai: cel mai singur om de pe pamant. Ti-ai inchipuit ca te afli in iad si ca asta este pedeapsa ta: o nesfarsire petrecuta-n acea odaie. Mai curand te-ai fi-nvoit sa fii cufundat in plumb topit sau jupuit de piele pentru cat tinea vesnicia.”

(Mircea Cartarescu, Theodoros, 599)

Ode to My Family

        Adeseori uităm să spunem un ,,mulțumesc”, uităm prea repede mâna întinsă, sau ne luăm cu viața de zi cu zi și trecem prea repede cu vederea de ceea ce ceilalți au făcut pentru noi. Adeseori ne amintim când este prea târziu, desi poate pentru celălalt acel mulțumesc ar fi făcut toată diferența.

            Nu știu cum se face că uneori suntem mai sensibili la oamenii pe lângă care trecem fugar, și le vedem singurătatea, în timp ce o ignorăm complet în oamenii de lângă noi, fie că suntem prea învățați cu singurătatea acestora, fie că credem că acei oameni vor fi mereu acolo. Suntem sensibilizați în fața efemerului, a poveștilor pe care nu le știm, dar pe care noi, atâta timp cât nu-l cunoaștem pe celălalt, avem toată libertatea de a o scrie și rescrie.

            În decembrie ni se amintește că trebuie să fim mai buni. Împachetăm rapid cadouri pentru copiii orfani, le aruncăm într-o sală sau poate facem chiar efortul de a-i vizita, și apoi ne vedem mai departe de viață. Punem apoi poze cât mai colorate și mai pline de fericire pe rețelele sociale, iar cei care au rămas într-un alt timp, în ignoranța și egoismul lor, încă mai întreabă când ceilalți vor face un copil sau când se vor căsători.

            Fiecare dintre noi are o poveste în spate, și fiecare dintre noi, atât cât poate, se chinuie să supraviețuiască și să rămână măcar pe linia de plutire. Poate că unii dintre noi ar da toate acele realizări care sunt puse sub semnul tăcerii în preajma sărbătorilor pentru ceea ce societatea ne cere, sau pentru niște sărbători alături de oameni, în care să ne uităm de propria singurătate. Iar când aceasta devine prea mult, cedăm.

            Și-abia atunci îmi amintesc și eu de zile de nașteri demult uitate, de mâinile întinse într-o altă viață, de acea energie pe care nu mi-o imaginam că va fi cândva îngenunchiată, că fiecare dintre noi, oricât de puternic poate părea, păstrează în el umanul și că poate aș fi putut spune la rândul meu mai des un mulțumesc. 

Ain’t Got No, I Got Life

At the end of 2023, I feel defeated on all the levels, but somehow, I feel freedom at the same time. I don’t know if it’s numbness or a kind of awakening, or perhaps just simple acceptance when you feel, as a song that I keep listening to these days, “all out of fight”, and I stopped struggling, or trying to find reasons why.

            At the end of 2023, I am with my eyes wide open. Yes, I do sometimes cry for all the dreams deferred. For the Sanctuaries that came up to be other prisons, for trying to find home in places where I shouldn’t have searched for this, for all the things that I postponed and now it’s too late for them. For all the words that I didn’t dare to say when I should have.

            At the end of 2023, I feel that I have lived half of my life, and now I have to look straight into the eyes of the other one. Somehow, perhaps that is why I feel it like a new beginning, leaving behind the youth, the one who dared to hope, and all the mistakes that I did.

            At the end of 2023, maybe the most important part, I came to accept my own loneliness. You see, I had a design, and my design was belongingness – how I cherish and value this word. How I fought for it, and gave, and searched, and longed for it. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the world, or the destiny, or an ironic, cruel God. But at the end of the road, you have yourself, and your memories and feelings – be they as they be - , and your own life, and your own words, and it should be enough, shouldn’t it?

            Memory is my identity, and perhaps my true sanctuary, and my home. This is what I take with me and this is what some of us only have. And acceptance, without strings attached, for my own life and for the others. In order to give peace a chance, you need to embrace it all. To all the insanities of the human mind and soul, to all the coldness and the blindness, to all the superficiality, to all that burning pain that you either learn to live with it or you die by it, to all the unseen and unrecognized kindness.

 

Sanctuary

"When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey".

 (Wendell Berry)

I have always longed for stability and believed in the good in people. My design was pretty common and simple, the dreams of every human being, since the beginning of time, in a life where we run from loneliness. But somehow on this road something broke loose, and I started building wall after wall, moulding a sanctuary to hinder the pain that was inside.

We are never too old for pain, and we do lose control in front of strong, overwhelming feelings. Not all of us feel loved and worthy. Not all of us have a home to go to. Not all of us are surrounded by friends. And some of us have only us to cling to. Most of us are not seen, when the only thing that we need and want is the feeling of belongingness.

And like me, people have built up sanctuaries in places and with things that eased their pain. Some went to churches and dedicated their lives worshiping the unknown, others got lost in drugs, in sex, in alcohol, others in too much work, others searched for that holy meaning that we all search in their own children. All of us ran from pain into our own sanctuaries, chaining ourselves, not aware that our own sanctuaries are our own prisons where the only inhabitants are us, our loneliness, and that pain that we were actually running from.

Photo: https://naridarbandi.com/ 

Imagine

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace"

John Lennon, Imagine 

I lost my faith in our future a couple of years ago. There are too many wars, too much violence, and this planet does not deserve us. However, I strongly believe in those people who “carry the fire”, who are different, and I strongly believe that children can be moulded and taught to carry this fire, because they are all born with it. 

I was reading the other day Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and I came across the myth of Cain and Abel, and perhaps the first story of an unloved child by his father. And I agree with Steinbeck, that this is square one, the birth of anger, bitterness and inflicting wounds to other human beings, and we are all Cain’s ancestors.

“I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. […] The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt – and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there – the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world – and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. […] Therefore I think this only and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul – the secret, rejected, guilty soul.”

 (John Steinbeck, East of Eden, 271)  

The World can Wait

... ironically, when you were feeling that there was no time left, no time to stay

... when there were people to be saved, including yourself

... when Change was simply knocking on your door

.... when you were swimming in a sea of turmoil ... 

                 and suddenly you forgot to swim. And to breathe underwater. And everything hurt. And from the one who tried to save everyone, you became the one in need. 

So yes, the World, and Life, can wait. 

Underworld

Imagine a bomb being dropped in the middle of life, spreading everyone in thousands of directions. Now, imagine that instead of killing these people, this bomb becomes a kind of gravity on how someone’s life develops: some, from housewives become artists, others, from typical teenagers become killers, and so on. You can now change the word “bomb” with “Cold War” (or any kind of war). And ask yourself, are we the product of history, or do we have some agency in front of history? Who, or what molds what we call a Life?

“Reverse” is one of the keywords for DeLillo’s Underworld, because "‘I suppose in this case it’s not the ending we need but the beginning” (314). On the one hand, if we ignore the prologue, we have its reversed structure, starting from the end/one of its endings - 1992 - and ending when the story actually begins – 1952. “Reverse” also because sometimes you struggle to read those almost 1000 pages, asking yourself what this book is really about because, as we find inside the novel about the Underworld from 1927, “The plot was hard to follow. There was no plot. Just loneliness, barrenness, men hunted and ray-gunned, all happening in some nether-land crevice” (430). But when you finish it, you know it’s that kind of book you will carry inside you, with that type of language that only a few writers manage to powerfully use. And although DeLillo seems to tell us that history is the nightmare we will never awake from, Underworld is about Everyman and Everywoman, about the humanity of the simple man/woman in the age of waste and consumerism.

* 

“Men passing in and out of the toilets, men zipping their flies as they turn from the trough and other men approaching the long receptacle, thinking where they want to stand and next to whom and not next to whom, and the old ballpark’s reek and mold and consolidated here, generational tides of beer and shit and cigarettes and peanut shells and disinfectants and pisses in the untold millions, and they are thinking in the ordinary way that helps a person glide through a life, thinking thoughts unconnected to events, the dusty hum of who you are, men shouldering through the traffic in the men’s room as the game goes on, the coming and going, the lifting out of dicks and the meditative pissing.” (21) 

“There is a balance, a kind of bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it’s true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second. He thought that we were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time.” (235)

“Seasons ran together, the years were a stunned blur. Like time in books. Time passes in books in the span of a sentence, many months and years. Write a word, leap a decade. Not so different out here, at his age, in the unmargined world.” (236)

“Civilisation did not rise and flourish as men hammered out hunting scenes on bronze gates and whispered pihosophy under the stars, with garbage as a noisome offshoot, swept away and forgotten. No, garbage rose first, inciting people to build a civilization in response, in self-defense. We had to find ways to discard our waste, to use what we couldn’t discard, to reprocess what we couldn’t use. Garbage pushed back. It mounted and spread. And it forced us to develop the logic and rigor that would lead to systematic investigations of reality, to science, art, music, mathematics. [...] We make stupendous amounts of garbage, then we react to it, not only technologically but in our hearts and minds. We let it shape us. We let it control our thinking. Garbage comes first, then we build a system to deal with it.”(288)

 

 

 

 

 

Our haunting past of parenthood

In family we find our heaven and hell, our construction and destruction, our blissful moments and/or most ever-lasting traumas. One of the questions that haunted me for ages was why children, in the end, take after the traits of the parent that hurt them the most. Why at a certain age one was deeply hurt by a particular behaviour and after a couple years, the child who is now the grown-up behaves exactly in the same manner as their parent, inflicting in his turn on their own child – or beloved one – the same treatment.

While writing my B.A. paper, I found one answer to this in Adler’s psychology. We are creatures of habits, of patterns, and to get away from those patterns is a fight, perhaps also a trauma per se. I guess one other reason for embracing the unembraceable is love, and paradoxically, memory and pain.

Succession, a TV series that I have been watching for a while, seems to play with my question, going with and against these patterns. And I guess that for all of us – either if we choose to take the easy route, or to fight our own demons, everything is summed up to this: “I can’t forgive you. But it’s okay. And I love you.”  

Eden

Uneori viata pare a fi o piesa absurda, in care ajungi sa te detasezi de propria persoana si sa privesti de undeva din afara lucrurile care se intampla. Alteori aceasta nu este ,,cronica unei morti anuntate”, ci se opreste sau se schimba cand te astepti mai putin. Iar acest absurd pe care uneori il mai prindem din cand in cand la televizor pare ceva indepartat, desprins dintr-o carte, care nu ni se poate intampla noua. Pana se intampla, o data, de doua ori, de trei ori.

O singura data, lucrurile care mi-au schimbat viata, au fost in cel mai ciudat mod posibil anuntate. Si atunci, nimic nu mi-a stat in putere sa le schimb. Nu stiu cum se va termina totul, nu stiu cum lucrurile se vor schimba, sau cat vor sta in aceeasi stagnare, nu stiu cati dintre noi suntem constienti de lipsa de control pe care o avem. Nu stiu cate depresii ne mai asteapta si daca cineva, candva, chiar va sti sa ne asculte. 

“Memory is identity”, si este cu siguranta identitatea mea. Daca ar exista un Dumnezeu, i-as cere sa o pot lua cu mine pentru ca in amintiri avem putinii oameni pe care ii indragim. Si pentru asta, da, as lasa si acele amintiri care bantuie sa o mai faca o vesnicie. Nu stiu cat am reusit sa fac aici, nu stiu daca am pus vreo amprenta in viata cuiva, nu stiu daca am reusit sa fac o diferenta pe unde am calcat. Dar as vrea ca putinii oameni care au facut pentru mine o diferenta sa o stie.  

The Passenger

“I suppose in the end what we have to offer is only what we’ve lost.” (376) 

McCarthy’s prose is poetry that acknowledges the evil in the world and inside each of us. The darkness, the despair, the fall, the pain and the loneliness. Written and uttered in a paradoxical minimalistic way that for me is very personal and intimate. McCarthy’s language is my language. And yet, inside this darkness/the Shadow, there is also light, there is also goodness – in all of us, in the simple human beings. Besides all of these, The Passenger is perhaps McCarthy’s last novel (if we see it and Stella Maris as a whole), a mature and challenging novel about friendship, family relationships and forgiveness, modern issues of the world, literature and philosophy, and why not, physics. And of course, what remains at the end of a day/of a life.  

*

“His father. Who had created out of the absolute dust of earth an evil sun by whose light men saw like some hideous adumbration of their own ends through cloth and flesh the bones in one another’s bodies.” (368)

“Let’s just turn out the lights and call it a life.” (16)

“There were people who escaped Hiroshima and rushed to Nagasaki to see their loved ones were safe. Arriving just in time to be incinerated. He went there after the war with a team of scientists. My father. He said that everything was rusty. Everything looked covered with rust.” (115-116)

“You will never know what the world is made of. The only thing that’s certain is that it’s not made of the world. As you close upon some mathematical description of reality you cant help but lose what is being described. Every inquiry displaces what is addressed. A moment in time is a fact, not a possibility. The world will take your life. But above all and lastly the world does not know that you are here. You think that you understand this. But you dont. Not in your heart you dont. If you did you would be terrified. And you’re not. Not yet.” (128)

“You have to believe that there is good in the world. I’m goin to say that you have to believe that the work of your hands will bring it into your life. You may be wrong, but if you dont believe that then you will not have a life. You may call it one. But it wont be one.” (174)

“I think I would have found my life pretty funny if I hadn’t had to live it.” (293)

“I believe in the reality of the world. The harder and the sharper the edges the more you believe. The world is here. It is not someplace else. I dont believe in traveling about. I believe that the dead are in the ground. I suppose at one time I was like old Pau. I waited to hear from God and I never did. Yet he remained a believer and I did not.” (380)

The Banshees of Inisherin

How do you define loneliness? How do you depict exactly that state that you feel at the end of an awful week, when everything went wrong, when you were just struggling to breathe and cope with your own shit, and people – strangers, co-workers, best friends – hit exactly where it hurts the most?

The Banshees of Inisherin is about all these feelings and more. “History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake” (Joyce), be it personal or social, and War has been created by the human being. But war, in this film, is like a faint echo, far away from all the noise and loneliness of characters, and at the same time present everywhere. Because the simple people don’t care about the war, it’s not theirs, because like most of the fights, war/the conflicts between/among people are absurd, like some whispers of the banshees.

We get loneliness, fury, and pain through this absurd conflict and blindless. And when we feel that, we all want to hit back, don’t we? When we are left all by ourselves, when we feel unloved -when all we have wanted was to feel safe and beloved – how can one remain kind, good, present there? How can one not strike back? Because at the end, evil seems to conquer and defeat all of us – some sinking, some taking their lives, some regretting their acts when it’s too late. Do we have any kind of agency in front of the evilness of this world? 

I guess that’s one of the most challenging parts of our lives, almost impossible. To understand the one that harms you, to remain true-to-yourself even when you are wounded and you feel that you are alone in the world. 

In a World Where You Can Be Anything ...

Cu toții avem nevoie să credem în ceva, iar eu una cred în acel Bine prezent în străfundul tuturor, oricât și orice am fi făcut, paradoxal, într-o lume care pare să-și fi pierdut umanitatea.

Este ușor să nu avem niciodată timp pentru ceilalți, să ne pese doar de noi, să uităm să spunem ,,mulțumesc, ești bine, cum pot să te ajut?”, ușor să ne amintim doar ceea ce ne-a rănit, ușor să arătăm cu degetul spre ceilalți care de fapt sunt o oglindă a ceea ce nu ne place în noi înșine.

Este greu să ascultăm, chiar să-i ascultăm pe ceilalți, să ne reamintim din când în când momentele când ceilalți chiar au fost prezenți pentru noi, când ne-au fost alături în cele mai grele momente, este greu să le spunem cât îi prețuim, mai ales când suntem îngroziți să arătăm această vulnerabilitate.

Mereu începem să îi prețuim pe ceilalți când este prea târziu. Mereu ni se spune să spunem oamenilor cât sunt aici și nu atunci când aparțin unei alte lumi. Câți dintre noi chiar facem asta? Este atât de ușor să răspundem lovitorilor pe care le primim tot prin lovituri, atât de greu în a încerca a-l înțelege pe celălalt, în a-l lăsa să lovească, pentru că știi că aceasta nu este persoana în care crezi.

In a world where you can be anything, be kind. Asta este unul dintre cele mai dificile lucruri pe care un om le poate face.    

Maybe

Maybe I will never be

All the things that I wanna be

Now is not the time to cry

Now's the time to find out why

Am tot încercat să înșir câteva idei aici, la granița dintre ceea ce simt și ceea ce gândesc. Rareori mă gândesc la raportul dintre cât dai și cât primești, dintre a fi prezent și oamenii din jurul tău, pentru că a ajuta a fost mereu parte din ceea ce sunt, din ceea ce cred. Am adeseori tendința de a mă pune pe mine pe loc secund atunci când văd suferință în jurul meu. Nu știu dacă e bine sau rău, e iarăși parte din ceea ce sunt. Și adeseori nu știu să cer ajutorul, nici să vorbesc despre ceea ce simt.

Se întâmplă uneori însă să te gândești și la acel ,,de ce”. Ca în anii de liceu sau de facultate, când erai mereu acolo de a da o mână de ajutor, dar niciodată printre cei cool, care puteau fi invitați la un film sau la o ieșire cu alți prieteni. Și bineînțeles că sunt zile când acest ,,de ce” predomină.

Sunt oameni care își împart viața între cea personală și cea profesională, oameni pentru care cea personală predomină, alții pentru care cea profesională e mai importantă, mulți care poate fără să recunoască le vor pe amândouă. Cât de mult îndrăgești ceea ce faci în acele 8h la birou, la școală, pe drum, în diferite săli? Cât de importantă este să simți că faci o diferență și cât de mult poți suporta o rutină precum aranjatul unor foi în fiecare zi, introducerea acelorași date în fiecare săptămână, non-culoarea care vine o dată cu acea stagnare?  

Iar atunci când îți răspunzi la aceste întrebări, și te uiți în jurul tău, te întrebi încotro și ce faci cu tot ceea ce simți. 

Maybe I just wanna fly

Wanna live, I don't wanna die

Maybe I just wanna breathe

Maybe I just don't believe …