You Could Be Happy ...

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." - Jonathan Safran Foer 

I knew it would be hard, but not so difficult. And I haven’t felt like this for years – extremely angry, nervous, and afraid of new, repetitive days. Too tired to wake up in the morning, or unwilling to simply get up. I haven’t felt so lonely, useless and sad for so many Marches. Unable to write, to concentrate, to think. And this one week seemed an entire month.

My drug was my work. Now I feel like I have nothing. Just haunted memories, wandering in my head, trying to decide which ones are the real stuff, which ones were just illusions.

Someone dear to me sent me today the following link and I found myself in the image of the person who always helps the other. “Anger, denial and desperation”, yes, that’s exactly what I feel now. Self-reliance. Maybe this is what makes me so good in keeping up the work when others would have given up by now. But this is only one side of the cube.  

Life taught me that it is too damn short and it can end in an instant. Not just for me, for any of us. I am not good at words, at uttered, articulated words, at opening myself, but I promised that I would show to the others what they are to me and I would try as much as possible to be what I want them to remember me. People are not born to suffer, to just work-have kids-die. And I have always wanted to remember them this. And to give a hand to anyone who needs it. Reading this, letting myself feel my fury, I asked myself what I would feel, what would I take with me if tomorrow never comes, what people I would be sure that they made a difference for me. And I didn't like the answer.

You would think that when one always helps it will always be surrendered by friends and people, and these people will learn to be better, kinder persons. Will never hurt us. Never abandon us. Never forget. But it’s not like this at all, on the contrary. You see, people who help a lot tend to say a lot of “it’s ok” when it isn’t ok at all. We do want simple gestures in our lives, and it is not ok when they are not present. We don't want to be forgotten after a few months of going abroad. Or (feeling) replaced. We want to be called on our birthdays. Or not to hear every year that there was a Christmas and other people were on top of the list. We want to see people caring, not forgetting/calling/going out with you just when you are useful. We still want to feel from time to time appreciated. And respected. Not taken for granted. We still want to be asked how we feel, despite being there like solid rocks for others. And accepting everything. We are not like this, we just know how to hide our real feelings, we are better when it comes to wearing our masks. So good that we fool even ourselves. And as I previously said, we are extremely bad when it comes to speaking, to say through words what we want. We are still human beings, and sometimes, we are carrying inside our souls huge black rocks with us. 

The problem is that we don't say a thing. Just "it's ok" instead of "no, it's not right". We keep saying these three words, fooling ourselves that we don't feel a thing, and we build our depressions brick by brick. Feeling insignificant, replaceable, used. Receiving only the leftovers. We put one brick today, another one tomorrow, till we put so many bricks that we feel suffocated. And we explode to simple, meaningless things. The question is how do we get out of here? How do we learn to swim? 

Bridges

In my ignorance, and naivety, I had believed. In people, in kindness, in friendship, in a better world. In making a difference, in a two-way street. In my ignorance, and naivety, I dreamt of a better world, where human beings learn to be humane.

Deutschland was for me a bubble of air. Of fresh air, that I desperately needed. It was a mirror to a better, civilised world, which I carried inside me and secretly wished to be real. It was the country that I feel in love with, which showed me that yes, there can be a better world.

Human beings are way too superficial. Individualistic, blind, focus on the material part of life. I don’t think that there is a divinity to blame the things that happen to us; the only one who is to blame is us, our decisions, our trains that we didn’t take on time, our blindness in front of our fragility and our inability to think of our own consequences. The faculty that we didn’t graduate, the scholarship that we didn’t take, the courses that we didn’t end, the people that we were too afraid to let in our lives, the words that we were unable to utter on time, the job that we didn’t take. It is the butterfly effect that shapes our lives, the actions that we do, the actions of other people who contribute to our lives. If people made the right calls, stop caring of their own interests, and break that bubble of ignorance, do their jobs as they should be done, without hiring “acquaintances”/doing things superficial, yes there would be a better world. ... We blame God for our faults, for our ignorance, or when things go too far, when it is too late, instead of blaming us for every wrong decision.

6 years ago, 1^st of March taught me that life is too damn short and fragile. From time to time I ask myself what will I leave behind me. How do I want (my) people to remember me? What will it be my heritage? What will it be the difference that I made to the world? What have I taught, what have I learnt? What was the meaning for life for me? Will I be able to say ... 

"And did you get what 

you wanted from this life, even so? 

I did. 

And what did you want? 

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth." (Raymond Carver)

 ... “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” I have always been an artist, where philosophy and art had more meaning to me than the absurd routine of an ordinary human being. I have always tried to say a story – through my words, my gestures, my silence. I have always searched for strange, unique, colourful people. That was my strength and my rope, my bridge, and at the same time my sinking ship. And now, in my experience, and search for happiness, and meaning, I know that 90% of humans are too blind and materialistic, but I do still believe in the rest – in my people, in people able to make a difference, in kindness as a sign of humanity and civilisation, in that kind of friendship that teaches us that “simple, grey people come and go. And sadly, most of us are like this. However, best ones – full of colours, who think outside the box, and want to make a difference with and inside their lives – always stay.” And if there is somewhere in this world a better country, with the things that I strongly believed from the beginning, we should try to be that kind of people that we want us to be and to discover in our journeys. 

Motherhood

“So for good or bad, she knew, to call yourself a mother the only thing you had to do was show up for the job. And stay.

And some are saints and some are martyrs.

Some are victims.

Some are vanished.

Some are walls.

Some emit more light than they absorb, creating their own planetary systems.

Some are sole survivors of the war against themselves. Some are slaves.

And some are furies.

Some are cold, and some are tender.

Few are blameless.

All have names.

Each must answer for her child’s existence.

[…] Still, she kept wishing. For years she’d taken future motherhood, her future in maternity, for granted. Look around – all you see are mothers, women born to it, women who have children just as casually as breathing, women who have babies hanging off their hips like fruit.”

(Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen, 239-240)

Riverside

Today, is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you, by now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do … Well, that’s the problem. I have no damn idea what I am going to do with my life. I have no idea what is going to happen in the future. I have no idea if I can escape destiny/myself/routine and all the things that I have so stubbornly (and foolishly?) fought against for 27 years.

I once awoke on a blank page. I blew the Earth apart and flew away. I then visited history, in search of inspiration – went in the ancient Egypt in search for a true love, or among the ruins of Hiroshima, I even sunk myself into water, going down in my soul, trying to find the meaning of life. And I sunk so deep that I couldn’t write anything, finish a single page, going down and down in fear and low self-esteem and burying myself in … books. Remorse. Self-accusations. Memories. And “too stupid to do it”.

Several nights ago I dreamt the Void. My future. I dreamt it and I lost myself in it. Like sinking in deep water, unable to grasp anyone, anything, choking, unable to breathe. And going down, and down, losing every piece of dream, every piece of me, every thing and every being that I want. Barrenness. Emptiness. Loneliness. I dreamt my world without stability, without my people, without me.

Godless, absurd, meaningless world, as it is our everyday lives … Life is struggle and life is a continuous fight, but still … what if such dreams came true? 

"The color of this life is water"

In its deepness, warmth and happy moments. In its turmoil, and sadness, and scars, and irony. Water which we love and cherish, daring to walk on it in our faiths, our trust in our beloved ones. Water in which we sink and forget how to swim. Water which swallows us in a few seconds, in which we search for that thing to grasp. For a meaning. In its waves. The two sides of the coin from our lives, from my life, water as peace and water as death, water as stability and water with its insanity, silence and noise.

“Envy's color is the color of her pleasuring, and what is the color of grief? Is it black as they say? And anger always red? The color of that sad shade of ennui called blue is blue but blue unlike the sky or sea, a bitter blue, rue-tinged, discolored at the edges. The color of a blind man's noon is white, and is his nighttime too? And does he feel it with his skin like a fish? Does he have blues, are they bridal and serene, or yellows, sunlike or urinous, does he remember? Neural colors like the fleeting tones of dreams. The color of this life is water.”

(Cormac McCarthy - Suttree)

Die Worte/Words

When I say Deutschland I first think of autumn and language. Autumn because of its colours, not only in the street, but also among persons and peoples, a mixture of races, cultures, and personal searches, here, in a foreign country. A mixture of peoples, so different in their customs, voices, ways of thinking.

Language is the most intriguing, confusing, difficult aspect for me. In a war among three languages inside my head and heart – Romanian, English and German, you start feeling yourself in a maze of words, in the search for understanding, for meaning, and for Home. Words and accents get mixed inside yourself, and the more you stay among the Others (while you are the other), the more a new language invents itself inside yourself. It makes you think of what you study, of those artists who had to struggle and to live with/among/inside a new language, forging their new identities.

But language comes for me with its own anxiety, deepening the wars inside myself, with the miss of Home, of small routines, in a conflict with why you are here, with your inner searches of peace, tearing you again in two … I am used to feeling language, to play with it, to understand it … and the break in the wall comes for me from it, from the lack of understanding. I try to grasp a meaning, to find some ground beneath my feet, but there is only air, and sounds, and vivid memories of a world that was … and words go too deep, unable to grasp them anymore, but they still haunt ... as the feelings, the searches, the agenbite of inwit which are so buried, so present, inside yourself.

Insomnii

De ceva saptamani am uitat si eu cum se mai doarme. Noaptea in special, in acel intuneric pe care tot incerci sa-l alungi de langa tine. Poate ca nu am stiut niciodata, si m-am obisnuit - mai mult decat ar fi trebuit - cu insomniile care nu-ti mai dau pace. Asta pana ce te intalnesti din nou cu tine insati, acolo unde te astepti mai putin, in incercarea de a chema somnul, de a rupe sirul gandurilor, de a te uita, de a nu te reintalni cu tine insati. O pagina cu mici semne descifrate parca intr-un alt timp, care-ti aminteste de acel tu - uitat, insomniac, ratacit. Prea ocupat cu gandurile adunate-n manunchiuri de amintiri, gata oricand sa dea pe dinafara. Le linisteai candva scriind. Si asta parca intr-o alta viata. Acum doar umbra ta mai poposeste deasupra unor ecouri venite din acele alte lumi, rostite de alte glasuri, pe jumatate vii, spre a-ti aminti ... numai somnul nu vrea sa-si reaminteasca de tine. 

,,Am uitat deja deseori cum sa dorm si-a trebuit sa reinvat apoi cum se face. Ori e foarte simplu, ori nu merge deloc. Totul doarme spre dimineata, chiar si pisicile si cainii se tot invart in jurul tomberoanelor doar o jumatate de noapte. Cand stii ca tot nu poti sa dormi, e mai usor sa te gandesti in camera intunecata la ceva luminos, decat sa inchizi ochii degeaba. La zapada, trunchiuri varuite de copaci, camere albe, mult nisip – cu asta mi-am petrecut timpul pana s-a luminat de mai multe ori decat mi-as fi dorit.”

 (Herta Muller - Astazi mai bine nu m-as fi intalnit cu mine insami)