My Very "Robert Rodriguez Kind of Movie" Week

Fade in. 
The classical freeze-frame: the main character, wearing boots, a skater winter jacket is alone in a cemetery, on a Saturday afternoon at dusk, with the snow falling down, the ground muddy and the dogs howling someplace in the distance. She is trying to get her car to start, hood open, frozen fingers clutching a 10-key. 

”This is me now, you probably wonder how I got here.”

This is either the beginning of a horror movie or of a very demented comedy. Choose the latter.

My week started slow, with a cold and lots of work, continued with exciting discussions on business intelligence with Qlik, innovation and the new Innoteque, blockchain and the BLOCKS project.

Thursday was the turning point. All morning at work, lots of meetings, new projects, the usual suspects stealing ideas. Nothing new. The day was supposed to wrap up rather quickly, around  3-ish. It dragged into the evening, pleasantly, with conversations about OUG 114 (do not Google that, you will get annoyed) and the lack of morality in the current global society. I got home, the cold still raging, got ready for bed. Wishful thinking. A loud knock on the door, panic. The neighbor from across the street, a lovely lady aged 93 that seemed eternal, was found dead in her house by her grandson – the source of the bang on the door. We got dressed, crossed the street to her home, met another couple of neighbors there. They had already called the ambulance. Apparently, you don’t need to call the ambulance. Anyhow, it came. And said that the procedure is to call the police. Which also came: one car, then another. More neighbors. „What happened?” …. Surreal scenes in which the four cops are asking each other about which form to fill in. Overall, nice people all of them, compassionate, solved the issue quickly and left. We also left, the family remaining to deal with the usual…

There must be a lot of anthropological material in the way Romanians tackle death issues. Far from somber images, the funerals are a mix of circus and grief, old traditions and imagined ones, everyone has an opinion about everything. What else can you expect from a people that have as favorite dessert a „meal of the dead”’ – sweet wheat porridge only served at funerals (and hipster restaurants with ice cream)?

Friday was calmer, with the other old ladies on the street, her posse, so to speak, becoming Miss Marple and trying to piece together the details of the previous evening, adding to the story, imagining earthquakes at the wake, remembering other funerals… I grew up here, the crowd got smaller with the passing of the years, members of it moving from the seating position to the table in the center of the room. One by one. Leaving memories of laughter and tears.

Saturday was cold and snowy. The kind of day that you would hate being out unless it is on a slope and there is mulled wine at the end of it. Mushy streets, the priest saying that he will arrive after 2 pm. There is a new priest in the neighborhood. The previous one retired. He knew all the old ladies, this new guy is disconnected, he can’t understand the quirks. Didn’t pass approval as of yet. He felt the need after the funeral rite to say a few words. Nice ones, about the need to be kind and atone. They reached deaf ears because everyone was stressing about the snow and the fact that dusk was coming. It all sounded very Robert Rodriguez. The night is coming, and we must get this over with.

The cemetery was muddy, cold, snow came down faster, the rite went by quickly, there was another funeral coming, and they needed to wrap up by nighttime too. Going back to the car, contact. Dead. The battery that is. Suitable for a cemetery. Get people out of the car. Call an Uber. Send them home. Call for help reliable friends. They send back ETA: 33 minutes. Dusk is coming. The other funeral wrapped up too, people leaving fast. The gravediggers finished their business and went, after asking if I need any help and if I am sure it is because of the battery. Nice people, compassionate.

The snow is falling faster, the raised hood of the car cannot keep all of it away. Success, I manage to make it start, dusk at my heels. If it were a movie, it would be incredulous: the heroine managing to start the car, in the nick of time, zombies approaching… There were no zombies in the Saturday snowy cemetery. Just memories of laughter and tears. And of kind people helping when necessary.

Some other time, I will tell you about the story of my grandfather’s funeral – a series of unfortunate events which are the food for a very Balkan movie.

Nighttime. I am home, a bit freezing, a bit cold. All is well, the car is in the garage. The dogs are not howling. My neighbor from across the street was a lovely lady. May she rest in peace.

The main character sits in front of her laptop, very Carrie Bradshaw, typing away. A full moon rises.

Fade out.

Beach Reads

Mid-life crisis continues. Inspiration to write is elusive so when a friend asked for a recommendation for something to read during the summer holidays, I jumped right on the topic. I am, by no means a literary critic, nor am I very up to date with the current listings on the book market, so here I made a short list of the books that have been in my beach bag for the past years. Some in Romanian, some in English, they range from thrillers to historic, from biographies to essays. About 20 of them, with Links from Amazon, because Kindle and Carturesti for Romanian.

• Every list I make shall always start with Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I am preaching about this book over and over. Because it is something that I keep on coming back to whenever I need to understand what I am and why I am. To say it is a book about a Jewish psychologist during WW2 is to say nothing about it. It is not really long, so give it some time. Here, the version in Romanian.
• If I don’t start a list with Frankl, then I start it with Ion Baiesu – Balanta. Because I can quote pages of it by heart. Communism in Romania in the 80s. And “the stupidest people in the world is the Americans” and “if we make a kid together, we don’t stop, we make the second one, because an old beauraucrat once told me everything you make in life, make in duplicates, because you may never know”. Only in Romanian.
• David Sedaris – anything from. All from. Because laughter and sarcasm and joy and sadness. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good first read, but I cannot chose only one. Here in Ro.
• Mihail Sebastian – For 2000 years. Eye-opening quasi-biography from a Holocaust that was waiting nearby in a very racist Romania. Here in Ro.
• Javier Marias - Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. A rather noir, rather mystery book about secrets and infidelity. His The Infatuations reminded me of The Girl on the Train a bit.
• Elena Ferrante – Neapolitan Novels (Tetralogy). The most intellectual of easy reads, stories about women.  Here in Ro.  
• E. O. Chirovici – The Book of Mirrors. A mystery, thriller, noir about secrets, easy to read. Here in Ro.
• Clarice Lispector – Near to the Wild Heart – a book about growing up and marriage and missing out. Strangely a book about FOMO written in 1943.
• Bora Cosic – My Family’s Role in the World Revolution. A gem of a satire  that I could not put down. It talks of war and survival and communism and family and the Balkans.  Here in Ro.
• Mihai Radu  - Extraconjugal – Only in Romanian, about family and sexuality and boredom and tiny towns and Romania as it is. Provincial. But all novels are about provincials, aren’t they?
• Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North – a story of war, relationships and survival. The Japanese POW camps, the Burma Death Railway, and books. “He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.” 
• Jean Teule – The Suicide Shop. If suicide was a commodity and people could become entrepreneurs from it and everyone should be miserable, except the main character? Here in Ro.
• Muriel Barbery – The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A funny one about neighbours and blocks of flats.   Here in Ro.
• Matei Visniec – Negustorul de inceputuri de roman.  A fantasy about dying and living and love of life and starting a novel and how everyone is a writer, but mostly how everyone is a dreamer. Here in French – Le Marchand des premieres phrases.
• Junot Diaz – This is how you lose her. About relationships and love and losing . And I must give a shout-out to Black Button Books, for the Romanian version. All their books are simply wonderful. Here in Ro.
• Andrei Kurkov – Penguin Lost. AKA The Snail’s Law. A funny one about life and survival and corruption and surrealism in post-communist Ukraine.  Here in Ro.
• Susan Sontag – On Photography. But literally, any sort of book by Sontag I tend to devour. Here in Ro.
•  Marius Chivu – Sfarsit de sezon. Only in Romanian. A collection of short stories about current urban Romania.
• Telespan – Cimitirul. Only in Romanian. Being gay in a provincial town in Romania is no fun. Moving to London to work in a cemetery is.
• Oliver Sacks – On the Move: A Life. Full circle to Frankl’s joy. This list wraps up with another psychologist who wonders about what and how and why in a sort of a biography. Here in Ro.

The list could be longer, and perhaps I may add to it. But the beach calls and I’d rather read than write J

Photo from Pixabay

On Identity and Mid-Life Crises

Image via Pixabay. Unfiltered. 

Going through a mid-life crisis when you are 37 is uncommon in modern day and age, but I am. Hence not writing anything here for the entire month of February.

I struggle to find spots of balance, so I turned to my usual: research. No place better than the book near my bed. I am not the first one to write about Hume helping someone out of a midlife crisis, and I probably won’t be the last. What resonates is not that we have both walked the streets of Edinburgh, albeit two centuries apart, but that feeling that he was going through the same. Written when he was 27 (basically at his mid-life), A Treatise of Human Nature asks questions about what and who we are, what makes and breaks us. Issues of identity, utility, and meaning have been to the forefront of my mind for the past months, ever more present and overwhelming to some extent. But Hume comes and says

“I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” 

He talks about reflection and the fact that we are not at any moment away from our perceptions. We filter reality through biases and lenses. We are a plethora of Instagram worthy images we build inside ourselves, often skewed by the Lo-Fi or the Kelvin or the Valencia of hurts and joys.

Is this sudden awareness of the passing of time more rapidly, of lack of impact, of loss of utility and meaning as a person the reality or just the Maven filter of a distorted perception? The Maven is the one that darkens the shadows and increases the gloom. But even the Maven enhances the right image, it fits with derelict buildings and empty branches. So perhaps this filter of sadness just supports the embrace of unexpected beauty in things that are useless and just take out space that could be used more efficiently… Hume answers this one as well:

 “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them, and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

Perception again. Biases. Lenses. Filters we apply to ourselves and to others. I am testing a different filter now: empathy. There is this book that brings the latest thoughts in my soul to page, because it talks about clinging to banality while thirsting for significant barometers, it deals with pain translated via metaphors to communicate, it brings the need of an effort to travel to the pain of oneself and to the pain of other like to a new country, expecting disaster, but also encountering beauty. The Empathy Exams.

Do I fail these exams now? Probably. Not about others. Jamison says that empathy is listening. I still listen, I still inquire, I still let myself be immersed in the metaphor of other people. But somewhere along the way, I lost the metaphor of me. Viewed through the lens of Hume, I perceive external elements, but the internal is empty and numb. This is perception as well. I perceive that I do not perceive anything there. I am inquiring, so I gather this is the first step of the effort that Leslie Jamison talks about in the next quote. I just need to find the energy and the curiosity to take the following steps as well…

“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.” 

On Organization

 I  find I am most creative when the ordinary things do not take much of my time and my mind. This usually involves some sort of order or routine, which may be done automatically almost. I am not, however, one for minimalism, so no Marie Kondo for me (does this object bring you joy? Yeah! That’s why I have it. Otherwise, it would be thrown out).

I am also not one for uniforms. I seldom wear the same style during a week, not to mention my entire life. I vacillate between sporty, casual to straight up glam. But the common thread here is easy, simple, straight-lined.

I found some things, call them hacks if you wish, that work for me.

1. Have a drawer with all the chargers, batteries, cables for all your electronics. Don’t leave them in the box the gadget usually came with: you will forget where you put the box. Have the drawer section for each type of device. I have one part for cameras, another for phone cables. When I leave for a trip, I just gather from the drawer what I need and when I return, it goes straight back there.


2. Have a binder (like this one or this one) for all the bills for a year. The trick is to organize it like this:

a. Write on the back of the cover the frequency of the bill: for instance: phone: monthly, water: quarterly. 

b. Have separators for each type of utility. 

c. In each separated section have the exact number of plastic sheets needed: e,g,, 12 for phone and 4 for water. 

d. Write on each plastic sheet the month in which it is supposed to come. 

e. When a bill is paid, it is put inside the corresponding plastic sheet, alongside the receipt. 

f. At the end of the year, all the contents of the folder go into a large envelope, and the binder is good to go for another year. 

3. Scan all your relevant documents and email them to you, save them in the cloud, have them on your computer. I have all my diplomas, insurance policies, car documents, house documents, etc.


4. Have copies of all your necessary documents. I went to a print shop and spent an hour or so making 2 copies of each document. Have more copies of the stuff that you know will need more (for instance, in Romania, they ask for a copy of your ID card, so I had more of these done).


5. Have all your essential documents in an easily reachable, preferably resistant to fire and waterproof, bag. Here you have some other valuable tips about what to do in case of emergency.


6. Put down in your agenda (I use Google calendar) the dates of expiration for essential things (insurance policies, car documents, etc.).


7. Buy neutral cards in bulk (like this or this). I bought a pack of 50 (including the envelopes) from Jysk (They don’t seem to have them on the website) and had used them for all events. It saves a lot of time trying to find a proper card, and I don’t have to run to the bookstore/supermarket every time I need to go to a birthday party or wedding.


8. If you are on medication (including vitamins) make a note of the dates until you have the pills (how long the current batch will last); for instance, my vitamin D batch will last until February 5. Keep the list somewhere visible ((it may be in your task list, on your phone – I keep it in my vitamin pack, so I can check it daily, see what I’m running out of)


9. If you are on medication or your significant other, parents, kids, etc., learn from hospitals, and make a list of medicine, dosage, and frequency, placed in an easily reachable spot, that everyone knows. Like this, in case of emergency, everyone, including the first responders, has an idea about what to do. I have my lists on the back of a drawer door.


10. Invest in sous-vide bags or vacuum sealer bags (like these or these) to use with your vacuum. I store all the things I don’t wear throughout the year in them, as well as my comforter, which takes a lot of place during the summer.

There it goes. The first ten things that keep me organized that I could think of for now. There are some others, but where is the fun in listing more than 10?

What are yours? Any good hacks to share?

Photo source: Pixabay (Karolyn83)

On Frivolity

The Baroque Gardens of Het Loo

I started to write about frivolity. I thought it would be a suitable topic for my first post-birthday monologue. How to cling to frivolity and superficiality as crutches of normalcy. It is normal not to be ”on” the whole time, focused, intense. It is normal to be slightly light-headed, picturing the next pair of shoes you might buy next (replace shoes with anything you might consider your guilty pleasure. By the way, don’t you dislike this? The idea of pleasure being criminal? Very Catholic. Pleasure should no breed regret…).

I started to write about frivolity. About Derrida and his archeology of the frivolous. About the resistance to the societal norms that levity allows for. But in the end, I guess I just failed at being frivolous myself. See, I tell you about Derrida when I should make a list of the top ten trends in shoes this year. But I have no idea about shoes, except I enjoy them tremendously. I know, like Jon Snow, that I know nothing. This week I even found out I don’t know how to light a candle. Did you know there is a proper way to light a candle? You didn’t?! You savages! :P

I started to write about frivolity, and then I realized you cannot write about it. This, in itself, defies the purpose. Is a frivolous action devoid of its essence just because it is genuine? I was pondering whether this blog is such an action. A mere pretense of life. A “life” style. Or better yet, a “life” “style.” Virtual shadows of life and of style, purely subjective and thus, not replicable.

I started to write about frivolity and failed. Because it is in the eye of the beholder. Is Baroque frivolous? Is simplicity the antidote to it? Can we solely live in minimal spaces, black and white ghosts, wandering around in streamlined, utilitarian uniforms?

I started to write about frivolity and realized life itself is frivolous. Do tulips really really really need all those colors? Do we really really really need to sing out loud in the car when a favorite ear-worm appears? Do we really really really need to shake that booty when Ricky Martin belts out a long-forgotten dance tune? You betcha!

What would life be without those tiny frivolous moments?

On Extraordinary and the Power of Ordinary

(Photo source: ValenciaGroup)

We like to imagine ourselves as extraordinary, heroes of our very own legend. Slightly challenging to be exceptional in a world of billions, and there is power in being ordinary but better. Picturing ourselves as unique and having a society more often than not prove us wrong leads to frustration, to a bitter aftertaste of a stale lemonade that was meant to be refreshing.  We seek the extraordinary, but we need to struggle with everyday tasks, bills, angry neighbors and boring encounters. There is nothing remarkable in feeding your cat, but there may be.

After all, resilience comes from ordinary processes. When life gives you lemons and all that cliché…

Fascination, pure enjoyment, and curiosity may transform dull tasks and mundane hustles into sources of extraordinary. Stay at the moment: there are tiny joys to be had in doing the dishes, decorating a Christmas tree, watching a bird rest on a branch outside your window… Don't you have the time for it? What do you have the time for? Does it sound like New Age annoying empty speech? Perhaps. Writing about turning prosaic into poetry may seem… well… prosaic.

There is this book I love a lot: An Extraordinary Absence by Jeff Foster. And Jeff (who does sound New Age-y with a more rational twist, and he keeps this tone in all his books) talks about how we seem to get the thirst for life when we are in limit situations: we value breath more when we don’t have it quite as easily. So why do we need to wait for the limit, for the extraordinary, to enjoy life?

I know that my psychologist would agree that I should adhere to this quote by Jeff as a mantra, she seems to tell me this constantly: 

“Stop thinking your way through life, always trying to work it out before living it. Life is to be lived, not analyzed to death. Feel”…

.