we're going nowhere and it's now

snow down

2012-01-19T13:58:00.000+01:00

it's raining rain and also falling snow. simultaneously. and it's huge snow flakes. as big as the toilet seat. and just like the toilet seat in a house with boys, they will never settle. sit down. stay down. go north of logic and you'll find boys are to be blamed for the lack of snow in this case. go north of korea and you'll find american imperialists to be blamed for the same. this proves nothing. disproves nothing. except,

erotica

2012-01-12T01:50:00.001+01:00

there's an explanation to why i think of my mother when i hear the word erotica - but before i go on i must ask fans of freud to put their hopes into the plastic bin beside them.

my mother's name is rodica. the accent falls on the second (!!) syllable. it is such a romanian name, that if we had ever thought to invent some national heroine she would have been called, undoubtedly, rodica. (ada milea knew this, too.) it's funny how, in the many years of being aware of both her name and the word erotic, i never thought of the similarity. till one day, f. said "i forgot your mother's name again". so i said "it's rodica". so he said "can i call her erotica? like this i can remember". so i said, well, nevermind, i probably said something less interesting. i should've stopped at the previous line, shouldn't i?

zzzzzzzz.

womankind

2012-01-07T18:21:00.000+01:00

i witnessed this conversation at a party, and when it will happen anywhere else but at a party (or perhaps also at a transvestite anonymous meeting) it will mean something. what, i don't know.

boy: hej, man

girl: hej, man

boy: or woman!

girl: ...

boy: or girl!

girl: ...

boy: or man

girl: hej, man

the sun is the same

2012-01-03T15:14:00.000+01:00

(in a relative way)

(a personal reminder in a sort of public spot)

to rent a room in copenhagen

2011-12-10T12:51:00.001+01:00

once, i heard someone say, renting a room is like making love to a beautiful woman. i never heard the rest because we were on a train, it was loud, i was having a sandwich and eavesdropping at the same time. nonetheless, his words stuck in my head like salami and cheese in my yesterday's sandwich and every time i rented a room i asked myself: is this what making love to a beautiful woman is like? i've asked myself this about ten times since, although i rented a room four times. i dont recall the context of the other six times.

now, four moving ins and four moving outs (within two years) later, perhaps better at eavesdropping but not wiser, i believe that man on the train was on to something. renting a room (in copenhagen) is a lot like love. first of all, it's stressful. there are a lot of people looking for rooms, but very few offers that are decent or above decent. you have to be lucky, patient and persevering and it wouldn't hurt if you were a bit good looking, too. secondly, there are rules and conventions made up for the benefit of the parts, but they don't always work. sometimes you get kicked out unassumingly, other times you leave and disrupt the order of things. thirdly, there's something about sharing a bathroom that is bound to demystify and reveal truths you were absolutely unaware of at the first meeting.

but no matter how many "hearts" you broke nor how many times yours has been broken, you carry on. i use silly encouragements like "5th time's a charm" or "five will make you feel alive", cheap websites and a solid, unshakeable belief in human goodness.

and at times, i think back at the man on the train and try to imagine what he could have said. i picture him with a top hat and moustache saying "renting a room is like making love to a beautiful woman: it's potentially great, if it doesn't cost too much, and then laughing robotically like a prude victorian. or i imagine him with a bowtie, thick glass frames, an old leather bag and pants above the ankles, saying, with a copenhagen accent, "renting a room is like making love to a beautiful woman: impossible, but you can get fucked pretty good".

you are not free.

2011-09-29T00:01:00.002+02:00

(Man Tänker Sitt, 2009)

"It's a ridiculous demand everyone makes that you shall speak so that everyone understand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings. As if there were safety in stupidity alone."

I feel liberated, step by step.

chicken poop for the soul

2011-09-01T16:53:00.001+02:00

if memory lane was a real lane, road, street or boulevard etc, it would start at my grandma's place, carry on to my old apartment, and then from there go all the way to my other grandma's place. grandma m and grand l, my mom's mom, respectively my dad's mom. if you were to look at this physical memory lane from above, it would look something like orion's belt, not that it matters, but "orion" is an anagram for "oniro", which sounds like "oneiro" which means "dream" in greek, which is how i've always experienced walking down this road.

10 years ago i was rollerblading up and down, free of chores and full of hope, probably humming some retarded song, 15 years ago i was kicking the marmelade jars in my bag on my way home from grandma m's house, 20 years ago i was exploring the wilderness of an imaginary concrete world, concrete in every way, but especially infrastructure-related, with its shark peninsula, crocodile corners and its secret safe spots. today, which in reality was yesterday, i walked down that same road, in the same dream-like state, allowing only one song to come along with me.

for the first few steps everything seemed fine. then, well, let's just say they don;t call it blast from the past just because it rhymes, as accepting such a fact would be detrimental to my story's integrity and intensity. let's say there is a strange, much deeper, absolutely fantastic reason for why it is called that and move on to the actual blast. which came from the past. into the present. which is already now the past. but because it stayed with me for longer and i am even writing about it, i will risk calling the present.

so at first, this blast, after having properly introduced itself as all of the above, gave me a pair of comparative glasses that allowed me to see, in real time, what these surroundings looked like long ago in my head. and i had a sudden rush, kind of like alice after taking that pill and chasing the white rabbit, everything was out of proportion, the trees on the side of the pavement had grown with me, but all the old, ugly concrete buildings, now in their festive wrapping, painted in white or sick orange, seemed to have shrinked. they gave a quick wrap-up fix to the pavement, too, so my shark peninsula was gone, not to mention all the safe spots, but i guess one doesnt need secret safe spots if there is no more shark peninsula to lead you into the ocean where all the sneaky sharks roam. i felt sad, even if a lot of unaware people had perished over the years, i felt sad for the sharks and all the adrenaline i've spilled in that ocean on the pavement. but besides the wrapped-up buildings and street, grown trees and missing sharks, everything seemed the same.

i stopped for a while on the stairs of what was once the book-shop on the ground floor of my old apartment building. i was baffled after i had stared at my old window, which was no longer there, cause whoever moved in changed it to some ugly-plastic-framed-three-layers-of-glass-anti-nuclear-bomb window (if necessity is mother of invention, exagerration is the mother of romanians), and as i was sitting on these stairs, wrapped, too, in something to make them look a bit better, i could feel the old stairs underneath, moaning a bit, kind of like when you sit in the back of the car on the way to pick up your aunt, and then she gets in the back with you, but she's so fat she sits on you a little bit, and even long after you remove yourself from under her greatness, you still feel suffocated, you still feel the weight of her enormous pig-devouring ensemble squishing you, maybe even months after she got out of the car.

i moved away from the whiny stairs and entered my old school yard. the building, almost 150 years old, was also painted in sick-peach-orange. i guess it's not hard to imagine the effect such a color would have on an old, beautiful building. it's amazing, i thought while crossing the big, 6 lanes boulevard of the republic, how great romanians are at quick-fixes, at wrapping things. no wonder they all move up north, they're probably helping santa.

but before i had time to continue that rant i saw it: a big, big, big, big (maybe 5x3m) poster saying, in large black on white letters: Hemorrhoids? Varicose veins? Ah, provincial advertising, such interesting aesthetics you have. A car parked near it, with the license plate PH-67-AHH, made it the perfect picture of post-communist Romania, exemplifying both the fought for freedom of speech (i.e. the giant hideous poster) and also the best means of self-expression a half-witted car owner could ever have (i.e. the license plate) in the little country i call home.

approaching my grandma l's house, i got woken up of this post-revolutionary reverie by a noisy carriage pulled by a quiet horse, the vehicle of a little family of well-groomed gypsies, obviously following all the modern trends (all the women were wearing purple), as they were leaving the garbage dump grounds. and it was good the carriage was so loud, cause i needed to focus, the way to my grandma l's house always seemed a bit unusual, and now, when everything else seemed so strange, the feeling of unfamiliarity this little side street gave me was the most familiar one of all.

but i love being at home, i love the heat, the quirkiness, people's stares, the quick-fixes, the rush, the whole poetry of the place, i love it all, it has a charm like no other, it has the beauty of a mutant-half-bee-half-horse-steel-creature that kicks you in the face, really hard, and then stings you in the eye and you're happy about it, cause it can only happen once.

a most peculiar thing

2011-08-30T13:35:00.001+02:00

picking the right books to take with you on a really long roadtrip is like calcium - essential, in the right amount. since i missed henry and i knew i'd be hanging out in paris for a while i thought it would be appropriate to read the tropic of cancer. said and done. great read! i couldn't stop overwhelming myself with congratulations for such a perfect pick! until i got to my mom's place and, rummaging through my old books, i found the tropic of cancer, the romanian edition, all read, all read, even with my reading trademark, the bent corners on pages that i found particularly glorious. then i concluded that my awful memory is not a bad thing at all, as it lets me enjoy things over and over again, with the same fresh feeling. say nothing, i will forget it, anyway.

last tuesday

2011-07-29T23:39:00.001+02:00

nevermind
what time of the day it is
what weather it is
throbbing through walls of perception

you and i are getting older

and what is that
if not a little bit of dust on a little china doll
inside the little cabinet where i hid my soul
a little bit of coffee spilled
on a little bit of white cloth
owned by a little man with an odd glare
who owns so many other things that he would never care
not even a little bit

a little bit of soup in my spaghetti
please,
to make it taste like nothing.
i love the taste of nothing,
not just in my food.

poetry mash-up

2011-07-07T13:39:00.000+02:00

in an obscene attempt to make me more aware of time
my watch started ticking louder, even in the street
my watch has no tact, just tick.

but there will be time, there will be time
to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
time for you and time for me,
and for a hundred visions and revisions,
before the taking of a toast and tea.

(thank you, t.s., you're so full of whimsy)

non sequitur

2011-07-05T00:43:00.000+02:00

this idea that hit me today about how the right, almost gourmet, mix of media consumption can make you feel extremely happy/content/excited/thrilled to be alone (without any potential perils of feeling lonely) is doomed.

if you agree because you got the point (which is unlikely as i'll only make it later on), we won't talk about it, as of course i am in the highest stage of my alone happiness, unaccompanied by loneliness.

if you agree but didn't get the point we still won't talk about it, and most likely we won't talk about any other things, as well.

if you disagree without being cynical, it makes you cynical, as you then agree to the initial premise, that according to which some books, movies, tunes etc in the right combination can give you an intellectual high that makes you feel happy without anyone around you. not even people you love having around, madly. and if self-sufficiency isn't a sign of cynicism, then it is a sign of twatness.

if you disagree just because you're cynical, it makes little difference to me, and probably even less to you.

so qed, it is doomed. where doomed refers to the non existence of any favorable situation. where do i stand? i'm cellophane. that's a word i'd like to use from now on for semi-cynical, self-contented girls or boys who would rate spending time alone among their top 2 favorite activities.

but it's temporary.

like achilles.

ok, or like watermelon.

june, she'll change her tune

2011-06-21T01:20:00.001+02:00

last week i fell into a rose bush and then, unrelated, i wanted to see a movie that tells me what to do. i have also started a coffee drinking ritual with a strict policy about the coffee's look and composition. my knee hurt. i saw on average two movies a day. i never liked averages. i had a time panic attack. mostly, i felt really lost, but somewhat happy.

flying in love

2011-06-10T14:03:00.000+02:00

"I wasn't 'falling in love', because i never felt any weight, I was 'flying in love' for the first time in my life."

(Arizona Dream, 1993)

flying in love beats falling in love, because it's dynamic. falling in love is static, you fall and stay there, in a love hole miles underground, you don't know anyone else anymore, you don't see anyone else anymore, you don't even want to, the whole world comes down to you and the object (and some girls might object to the term) of your affection. an emotional reclusion that doesn't work in spite of you thinking it's the best thing that could ever happen. you've been there, and if you haven't, you're lucky.

when you're flying in love it's a whole different story. you're floating above and around, you keep on moving and you love everything, absolutely everything, the blue sky above (when you're floating on your back), the tall people you can see clearly, the short people you can't really see, the rain in spain, champagne from maine, a dane called jane, a train in vain, etc, and you are so happy you can't believe it, you can't believe little tormented you can be so happy about it all, all that you see and all that you do, and then you hit a big tree because you were so happy you weren't paying attention, so hitting the tree makes you fall (in love) and it's all over, i mean, it's (happening) all over again, you fall, then the hole, then the absolutes regarding your object of affection, then the reclusion, then the end, then the quiet period, and then, if you're lucky, soon enough you'll be flying in love again, hopefully wearing some winged sandals this time or at least a helmet.

truth is, when you fly in love, you're really in love with yourself and with how you fit in so well with what's around you that it makes 'clac!'.

badabing!

all about id

2011-05-27T01:20:00.001+02:00

"One day I carried thirty pounds of wood a distance of file miles. Another day while hiding in the forest I covered my eyes with make up to see how they'd come out."

i took a small break tonight from the heat, the heat of exams, these ghostly, ghastly exams banging like mad on the exit door of my superego, trying to take over and suck out all the fun. (speaking of which, my superego is losing lots of ground lately to the hedonistic id, but it still knows more tricks; e.g. the first sentence was very much good superego P.R.).

but well, during this break i did a small unscientific study on the aesthetics of my face. it's this new long hair thing, combined with the questionable possibility of being more feminine derived from years of awkward haircuts and my charming, but boyish walk. there was some recent cinesseurial influence, too. i proceeded as follows: i put my hair in a due i could never re-do (hi!), applied make-up, and turned on photo booth.

mind you, i don't think it's pretty stupid to take pictures of yourself with a computer, then put them all together and publish them online somewhere, hoping people will appreciate or even be amused by the content and not think of how sad and narcissistic and insecure it really is you did it. i know it's stupid. which is why i didn't publish them online. the one below is an evocative, but unintelligible exception.

contrast was added to protect the integrity of this webpage

so i took them anyway, and as they're lying in a diversion folder called pictures of meadows, flowers and sunsets, i went on with analyzing and writing down my conclusions. of course, the results of this pseudo-study shall not be published either, but the superego P.R. team released the following statement: "the battle between the little-unaware-tomboy and estrogen-regulated-society-inoculated-girly-girl is far from over, but as they say in curling: let the best man win!"

but now, gentlemen, to bed! we rise at dawn!, said the superego to the ego, as the id wasn't listening.

you have my soul and i have your money

2011-05-25T09:10:00.001+02:00

if calves are babies of cows, elephants or whales and every woman has two, uncomplicated but grammatically irreverent logic would have it that all women are cows. or elephants. or whales.

but men have calves, too. so they must be cows as well.

and we're all equal, finally.

why i'd like to be a cat

2011-05-21T16:57:00.001+02:00

the enfant terrible of the citrus family, mr. grapefruit, has an identity issue. you'd think he's the fruit of the grape or maybe they're somewhat related, so you could realistically expect him to be crunchy yet soft and sweet just like a grape is. but he's not. he's bitter and difficult with deceiving on top. i like him anyway, though, and even if every attempt at devouring him ends in a mess, i remain ridiculously positive. just like i once liked this boy called benignus who i suspected very early on would hurt me terribly, but i acted against my better judgement and my own interest, just like one does in love, and my only consolation was the little laugh i had to myself in the end at the irony of benignus' evil side, cause har har, things are not what they seem to be, and benignus was actually malignus.

but if i turned into a cat i wouldn't care about eating grapefruit. i'd ignore it just like i would ignore anything that doesn't move frantically or looks like dinner. and boys called benignus couldn't hurt me, firstly because of my feisty cat claws and secondly because everyone's name would be spelled in meows, which would make benignus (or anyone else by any other name) somewhat non-existant by my new rules of perception. i'd be happy licking my paws, listening to jazz and maybe sometimes getting a bit confused and howling at the moon. or i could be william burroughs' cat, junkie. that would be pretty cool, too. except he's dead.

sleeping sissy

2011-05-18T18:20:00.001+02:00

for entertainment and also differentiation purposes, we develop certain likes and dislikes throughout our lives which make us more or less idiosyncratic, depending especially on how well we groom our dislikes into dramas of different proportions.

in a top three major dislikes list i would always include afternoon naps (i hate them so much, so very much), which could also feature on all or any of the following lists: things to do when you're almost dead, top ways to waste your time (besides facebook), 10 ways to politely avoid seeing people you live with and natural ways to authentic bed hair.

today's afternoon nap came into being despite all my efforts to prevent it and had an abrupt and loud end: i was talking to someone in my dream, about naps themselves, when i noticed his face looking worriedly at my chest. i had no time to react awkwardly because he immediately said "your heart, it's gonna blow!" and then i heard a big noise, kind of like 12804 cheap chinese fireworks blowing up at the same time, my heart exploded and i woke up.

sax and violins

2011-05-02T17:56:00.001+02:00

nothing makes me more sad on beautiful sunny days than couples walking hand in hand, with gloomy looks on their faces. you know the kind, looking in different directions, almost as if there was nothing to say to each other, walking the same way the losing team leaves the field, facial expression similar to that of remembering the day your first pet died. and as hand-in-hand is pretty disturbing anyway, with all the questions and sighs it generates in the mind of the standalone viewer in springtime, if you add the gloom you've got a whole different type of horror. facial gloom and hand-in-hand simply don't go together, cause they stand for opposite things (e.g. boredom vs. bedroom, dead end vs. happiness, there might have been love vs. this could be love etc. etc) and they cause maximum confusion in my apparently cynical but really hopeful mind.

here's a slogan for a new kind of spring cleaning: fuck habit. break up this spring!

the lion ate the dingo who ate the baby who couldn't even chew

2011-04-26T13:13:00.000+02:00

i was biking somewhere, with two other people, on a road that had no bike lane. scared as i was due to that, it got worse: on the side of the road, in a small lake by a house, a guy in a car and his wife were trying to drive out of the lake. (i know this was because i saw some scenes from pierrot le fou last night). we stopped to look or to help, i'd like to think it was the latter, and as we were sitting (maybe we were just looking!) in the field also close to the house, a man with a dog came by. we were all watching this lion who was lurking in the field and had his eye on the people in the car. the dog was silly and wanted to make contact with the lion, the man said he was going to eat us anyway so i said, calmly and collectedly, let's blow this joint. we tip-toed out of the field, the lion had no idea. we decided it's too late to go where we wanted to go, so we split up and decided to go home. so i'm alone on my bike and i look back and see the lion chasing me! fuck! a woman-eating lion! and my bike chain is all rusty!

and then i woke up. at 8.30. double fuck!

home alone as i was, i put on some lipstick to match my pink rubber gloves, and got to work. i understood: the lion was my conscience, chasing me to do my homey chores. which i have done. in the process of cleaning the bathroom i met with the realization that it's the first time i'm doing this. the whole thing was absolutely weird because it was very much like a really cute flirt: kinda fun, subtly dirty and sort of sexual (!!) and made me feel very proud at the end, even though i'd still be sleeping alone tonight.

afterwards, while kneading, my mind wandered off and my enthusiasm for a job well done plummeted at the thought that i have become a weird future housewife hybrid, which was never part of the plan (mainly because there never was any plan), and i would've face slapped myself if it wasn't for all the sticky dough on my hands.

but maybe it's a fair trade: all my hopes and most of my self-esteem for a cake that no one will remember in few days and a bathroom that will look dirty in another few.

aurora

2011-04-19T22:51:00.000+02:00

"hell is other people."

j.p. sartre

for about 80% of the watch time, aurora felt confusing. i didn't know where it was going, but i stuck with it. i wanted to know. the build-up lasted for about two hours, more or less, but it played with my memories and it got me thinking about things i never thought about before, even if i should have, in a way in which the build up was more than two hours, it was so much of my life experience.

aurora could very well seem a cinematic aberration to some. maybe to the same degree it can seem a masterpiece to others. and this is a clue to why it is a masterpiece. there is no clear definition of whose side to be on, there is almost no information (till the very end), all rules are twisted and broken, the main character speaks very little, and when he does, he's always cool and collected or refractory. i believe the key of the movie is in understanding his drama (where "drama" is used loosely, as his drama is something you can't really comprehend, and once you do, for real, it doesn't make sense to relate it to anything).

his killings aren't fueled by hate, madness or what not. but that's again, relative. and he kills his "relatives", as his last resort to making sure his daughters end up right. or better, at least. this makes little sense to you, maybe, but it makes a whole lot of it to me (i used my utter subjectivity glasses, yet again): he's a man who knows he's going to die soon and he wants to leave things in order. his killings are like spring cleaning (spring killing), or, more like tidying up after yourself. in a very radical manner, yes. they are unjustly just and, if not, justified.

he doesn't find his wife fit to care for their daughters. he doesn't find justice fit to understand (anything). "i don't trust that justice would be able to understand the complexity of the relationship my wife and i had." and probably no one would.

to me, cristi puiu achieved what no one else did. i've never seen a movie that was so far away, and yet so invasive, penetrating and complex.

fondled in gastric acid

2011-04-13T23:29:00.002+02:00

the thing about idioms is that you often disregard their words for their socially accepted meaning. romanian folklore is loaded with such non-sensical but deeply-meaningful sayings. i'll enumerate a few, amuse myself at the fact that they make even less sense in english and then get to my point:

the little stump tips the big cart / don't trade the sparrow in your hand for the crow on the fence / good cheese in dog skin / he who steals an egg today will steal an ox tomorrow / where there's no head, beware feet! / he went as an ox and came back a cow / he who wakes up early gets far / the sparrow dreams of corn flour / don't put your nose where your pot isn't boiling / work is a gold bracelet / where you hit and where it breaks / the dog dies from the long journey and the idiot from caring about someone else / shard laughs at broken pot / admitting your fault means being half forgiven /

but alas!, my point is in the stomach. love passes through the stomach - the ultimate romanian genius cleverly mixing both gastronomy and love in the form of some kind of advice and/or encouragement, used abusively by elderly taunting aunts, who want to make a point that you should learn to cook, when your problem isn't that at all, but might rhyme with it (i.e. you look like captain hook).

so i keep repeating love passes through the stomach to try and make sense of it and its naked truth hits me like the last drop of ketchup in the bottle that wasn't stored upside down: the transformation of that which passes through the stomach (into that which passes through our pipes) is the most sensible metaphor ever used for love. that i know of.

later edit: romanian folklore might be rooted in dinosaur civilisation.

http://allosaurus.tumblr.com/

i never said i was deep but i am profoundly shallow

2011-04-05T23:19:00.001+02:00

(here's a post of shallow profoundness, hidden deep.)

(we dont make them like we used to.)

freeze, don't move

2011-03-23T22:49:00.002+01:00

just when i thought my late teens were over, proof otherwise hit me in the head like jet lee's shadowless kick: as i was uncomfortably sitting down in the tube carrying me from work to house, and as insecurities and questions about the future, about what will ever become of me, essential/vital trivialities that only grown-ups worry about were flooding my mind, the metro stopped unaffected at one of its stops and through a glass, darkly (i.e. through the forrest of big bellies and stretched armpits clouding my view) i could see the corner of an ad for a tate exhibition. more precisely:

the actual exhibition

i read it in my head and i smiled out loud (a clear indication that i still have magical residue in this old head of mine). now, we wait. (and very soon we go to tate).

you, kant, always get what you want

2011-03-06T01:42:00.000+01:00

you get what you need. and i needed to see this movie. and, oh, how i loved it.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

"One day in the late mid-eighties, I was in my early late-twenties. I had just been dismissed from University after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock 'n' roll entitled 'You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.' At 26, my academic career was over, I had never kissed a boy, and I was still sleeping with mom. Such were the thoughts flooding my tiny head on the day that I was sunning myself... in an old bomb crater I had discovered near the Wall. I am naked. Face down, on a broken piece of church, inhaling a fragrant westerly breeze.

[...]
My God I deserve a break today."

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

and i got it.

but extra came at extra extra cost.

they fed us to the lions

2011-02-23T15:27:00.003+01:00

but the lions were full

cause they were fed lies

for as long as they can remember;

which is around 20 minutes.

(or 00:17:12:20 if anyone measured exactly)

almost the same as

your conversation time.

almost the same lies.