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Category Archives: Thoughts
29
Brace yourselves, I’m becoming what I’ve always known was dormant: my authentic self.
I’ve grown a lot and there’s still plenty to go.
Here’s looking at you, kid.
Why Go Outside When Everything Happens Inside My Head?
Oh, boy, this theme entirely resonates with my inner voices these days. I’ve just finished the 4th season of Black Mirror and all of those ideas of technology gone wild are getting pretty mixed up with my usual dose of existentialism powered up by gloomy January. Talking about timing! (*insert granny worried tone here* Voices? You hearin’ voices, now?)
“Why go outside when everything happens inside my head” is a graphic illustration of nowadays life. A frame of us stuck in between texting abbreviations of feelings into our blue screens (HAHA, WOW, LOL) and wishing for meaningful interactions. We want everything to happen instantly, but also keep dreaming of the slow pace we will indulge ourselves in at some point.
The game is on. The entire room of the exhibition is filled with crumpled paper with Andreea’s thoughts on it. I took one that appealed to me and left another freshly written behind. It felt right, even if I don’t really know why. This tactile feeling of exchanging thoughts is so cliche for a reason. It works. It makes immaterial material with the help of language.
Andreea Chirică is an artist and graphic novelist. In 2011 she published her first graphic novel: The Year of the Pioneer and she participated at ComicCon New York and Barcelona. She is really special, I need to drink some more coffees with her. The way she manages to put subtlety into drawings many of us can relate to is just remarkable. She also keeps an online drawing diary on Instagram that you should follow.
Photo credit: Paiame
Eugen Rădescu is a cultural manager, curator and theoretician, with background in political science (specialized on moral relativism and political ethics). He wrote for various magazines and newspapers and he’s my amazing friend. One of those vampire-cool looking gods that will stick around forever with his ZEN mode hovering over the world.
Check it out, it’s out there until the 4th of February.
You
have
time.
Verde ud
Te așteptam cuminte pe vremea asta care atârnă a greu.
când vii acasă, să iei te rog un șervețel/ sau, și mai bine – un umăr de plâns pe el//
Iv cel naiv, SMS 155.
Flow
Just let go.
It’s for the best.
Regarde le ciel
What can I say? The world is a dream.
Corners of contrast in Bucharest
Late April with long awaited sunny days. The mornings are particularly gorgeous. Crisp air with sharp light, vivid green starting to dress up the city with a sense of calmness.
No, no, no. I’m totally wrong, here comes the chaos. Morning traffic, angry faces, dark circles around hurried people’s eyes, honking, pedestrians going around the mud. Ah, they are digging up again. In the middle of the street. I find a sense of lyricism in these layers of Bucharest that are starting to show up. Let’s see: improvised mini markets behind cars with fresh fruit from gardens and steam in the air. Yes, that sounds very much like it. Like the crazy mix of the beautifully repainted theater and the mess and mud in the intersection, with the smoker woman inviting me for strawberries grown in her greenhouse and the supervised workers looking at my ass while i am crossing the street. The swearing words of the taxi driver rushing almost on my steps on the zebra and the journalist in smart clothes bumping into an old lady walking her blind dog. All of this. You have to feel it, I can only offer a glimpse.
Bucharest. I live here. I love it.
The Land Before Time
As a kid traveling around Romania with my family, I would make my own stories from the reality I would experience. It so happened after crossing the Carpathians into the hilly Transylvania.
I have this particular strong mental image stuck with me since childhood probably influenced by ‘The Land Before Time’ cartoon. I would imagine a fantastically flourishing world of… dinosaurs wandering around.
This plateau in Transylvania, Romania, is one of the triggers of that vivid memory. Always. I come by and I instantly get transported to that childish reverie. Ah, I can still see the long necked brontosaurus walking heavily in between these hills secured by the chain of mountains. This is where dinos ran around freely in my imagination.
And because life makes some sense sometimes, I ran into these sweet kids later today. Guess what? They were colouring dinos.
Asa departe de noi
On that particular day
Nothing special happened.
The sun came up at the expected time. I woke up 4h, then 2h, then half an hour before the alarm rang. I had a very serious talk with myself before trying to fall asleep but then couldn’t shut it down. The voice had amplified against my will. Yes, I was going through a lot inside, like most of the times when you ask what’s wrong and I snap out of it, stumble upon the first detail and repress the memory with the properly conceived new story. Le discours impromptu.
No matter how much of a tough person we think we are, trauma always leaves a mark. An open wound or a scar, if we cast it away properly. But most of the times, it just follows us home, watches us over as we buy tomatoes and it changes our way of seeing things. It alters life. And by the gathering of these tiny – we might even think insignificant – scars we tend to recreate the secret road map of our personal history, the ultimate diagram of the ‘burden’ we get to carry around in life.
New wounds are horribly painful. But it’s safe to say they’re there for a reason – they teach you something to avoid in the future. I wish it were so simple. Unfortunately, some things you have to keep learning over and over again.
Pain. You don’t fight it. As they say: “The best way out is always through”. Because the truth is, you can’t outrun it. And life always makes more. Maybe that’s one purpose, to give you an impulse. You will have to get a little messed up to be able to push forward and move, though.
I’ll go to sleep without taking myself so seriously tonight.
Afterall, the sun set at the expected time.
Nothing special happened today.
