1.
Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

4.

Good advice. I’ll go eat. And then sleep. and then …

Thoughts are bubbling away, bubbling away in the cauldron that is my mind.
There are leaves on the surface, leaves from this autumn, from this fall. We fall, we spring back up.
Sometimes we get caught in the fall and forget to get up and rub our bruised knees. Keep walking, keep walking. If you’re caught staring at the mud, you’ll keep seeing mud until you lift your eyes.
There is no sun, no sun, no sun. I cannot see the sun. There is no way out of here. But then you turn your vision around a bit, and the sun stings your doubting eyes. The eyes shed tears that mirror the sun, the sun that wasn’t.

Thoughts are bubbling away in this whirlpool, second-rate jacuzzi that is my mind. It seems to have no on/off button. Some jacuzzis do. Why can’t I have one too?

It is summer, the air is hot and alive. The night is old and I am not.
The cactus in the yard is pricking away at my fingertips, and even if it hurts, I lick the blood and keep pricking my finger into it. It’s all my own doing, but I say to myself: “I’ll learn my lesson soon. I’m bound to.”
But we’re not bound to anything, are we? We’re only bound to what we want to be bound to.
That is the irony of it all.
We have so much power to let go, but with that very power, we hold on so tightly to the thoughts that make us feel bad.
A really good friend said, in one of his numerous moments of wisdom that I shall always be thankful for, “Saying that you want to believe, when you don’t -is like screaming you want to shut up.”

It is fall, the air is dull and gray. The night is young and I am not.
The tree outside my window is shedding its leaves with every blow. I too am shedding mine. Shedding so much skin that the one revealed has no time to heal. Open wounds, blood pumping itself into oblivion.
It’s like those scabs on your legs when you’re a kid. You don’t want to have any signs left on your legs, but you keep scratching the scabs, eager for them to heal faster, to see what the situation is underneath.

It is winter, the air is a dead dagger. The night is everywhere, and I am nowhere to be found.
The lights of the supermarket make shadows on the wall, moving paintings of light. There is no clock to be heard in the room, but my own heart keeps me awake, continuously announcing the passing of air from the outside in. From the inside out. Such a waste, such an absurd process. Or is it?

Era o dimineaţă de primăvară. Sau era o toamnă călduroasă? Nu mai ţin minte.
Culoarea aerului era caldă – asta e clar- şi tramvaiul mirosea slab a transpiraţie şi a relaxare. Praful aluneca pe razele de lumină şi, văzându-l, fiecare răsuflare-mi purta greutatea acestei constatări.

În tramvai erau puţine persoane. Atât de puţine încât sudoarea noastră se împrăştia şi devenea aproape insesizabilă, iar praful cu atât mai greu cu cât ne era împărţit cu dărnicie.
Tramvaiul şerpuia violent, dar lent deasupra şinelor spre cine ştie ce destinaţie finală avea; eu nu îl luam niciodată până la capăt.
Din acea zi şi acel fragment de călătorie mai ţin minte doar trei persoane din tramvaiul nr 23.
Câinii din spatele mall-ului se aruncau cu toată puterea tendinţele lor sinucigaşe spre şinele tramvaiului, casele din jur îşi mai aruncau şi ele din tencuială la trecerea zbuciumată a vehiculului, iar eu mă uitam pe furiş la un cuplu aşezat spre mijlocul tramvaiului, vis-a-vis de mine.
În spatele lor stătea – sau mai bine zis încerca să stea – o fetiţă de vreo 4 ani, blondă, o culoare nisipie de blond, cu nişte bucle tinzând asimptotic spre perfecţiune, ochii cafenii şi la fel de fără stare. Era fetiţa cuplului, fiinţa pe care doar eu păream a o sesiza.
Părinţii erau tineri. Poate prea tineri pentru ea, dar ea nu ştia asta încă. Nu avuseseră pasămite suficient timp să-şi soarbă unul altuia toate secretele şi secreţiile şi discretiile. Copilul venise când nimeni nu îl aştepta, şi ei … ei mai aveau atâtea să îşi zică. Se uitau unul în ochii celuilalt, şi niciunul la copil, tatăl cu spatele la fetiţă şi cu faţa la tânăra sa soţie. Din când în când, când îi auzea prea mult şi prea clar răsuflarea de copil neliniştit şi nebăgat în seamă, când privirea ei îi încălzea prea mult ceafa lată, tatăl se întorcea spre ea şi îi zicea să stea liniştită pe scaun, că deranjează lumea din tramvai.
Aşa că îşi cânta resemnată un cântecel, o amestecătură de cântec adevărat şi limbaj de copil care trece orice versuri străine printr-o sită invizibilă şi le transformă în ceva sunete magice, cu un sens pe care adulţii nu îl pot pătrunde. Se ridica, se prindea de bara de metal şi făcea o piruetă în jurul ei ca apoi să fie mustrată de unul din părinţi, şi trimisă la loc pe scaunul osândei. Se juca cu fusta de culoarea piersicii, îşi număra degetele şi apoi îşi îndesă unui cu avânt într-una din nări.
Mă uitam la ea tot acest timp şi din când în când îmi prindea privirea şi mi-o întorcea, pe furiş. Cântecelele deveneau astfel ofrandă adusă singurului spectator interesat de lumea proaspăt creată. De zâmbit însă nu îmi zâmbea, fiindcă totul era în secret.

Ultima mea staţie se apropia. M-am ridicat din timp şi m-am postat lângă un set de uşi, aşteptând să fiu eliberată.
În spatele meu am auzit-o :
-Mami…
Linişte.

-Mami? Mami!
Mama se întoarse:
-Da, ce vrei? uşor ofuscată de întreruperea conversaţiei cu soţul.

Tramvaiul se opreşte în staţie şi aud pentru ultima oară vocea ei:

-Mami… întreabă-mă cum mă cheamă!

Well, tehnically it´s not as if I wake up in the dead centre of the city, with the Reichstag shining through the morning clouds.
I wake up in Wannsee, a little quarter of the city (Stadtviertel…:P), next to a lake, or more precisely a bay called…Wannsee. There´s another similar yet smaller lake very close by called der kleine Wannsee -very inspired folks, eh?

If I cross the street I can already start walking through a big pine forest, with its severeal acorn tree intruders that, leaving their fruit on the ground, have spawned a big enough wildboar population to make you afraid to wander off alone during the night.

It´s fine by daytime, you walk the already trodden paths and see the earth freshly dug by the hoves of hungry or maybe frustrated juvenile boars.

Sinking from Eastern US heat and humidity into this cold little nook in North East Germany makes it all the more exotic to already see the leaves sighing their last sighs under my shoes, in their colourful goodbye pijamas.

Got the whole gear: warm jacket, fluffy sweater, scarf, silly hat that keeps me warm so I don´t care what they (the fashion critics of Wannsee forest) think about it, I even have gloves that refuse to match the rest of my outfit.

The week is opening up to me, and the pressure is on – will I manage to take every second of my time here and not regret having wasted it? Will I prance about the streets, meeting all the people I could meet, taking in all the beauty around?

Game on.

Zilele astea libere, cu posibilitatile lor nelimitate, cu lenea care le inconjoara ca o aura.

Zile libere, cu bicicleta pe dealuri, pe langa paduri, speriind caprioarele, cu greierii care incep sa se auda deja cand se lasa seara.
Cartile stau teancuri sub birou, aratandu-mi copertile si strigandu-ma sa le citesc. Ele stiu ca pe unele le voi sacrifica, le voi da cadou si acum incerc macar sa le cunosc pe cat mai multe.

E un cerc vicios. ma trezesc dorind sa fac cat mai multe, iar dupa o plimbare de vreo ora pe afara cu ghidonul strans in palme ma intorc mai obosita ca dupa o zi de munca. Libertatea e obositoare cand esti obisnuit sa fii in priza.

Si ma arunc pe pat cu o carte pe burta, sperand ca atunci cand ma trezesc sa incep sa o rasfoiesc. Miroase a vechi, cu paginile ei galbui. Cine stie ce gandeau ultimii cititori? Si dorm, somnu-i adanc si geamu-i deschis ca sa intre in camera aerul de toamna.

Ma trezesc si vreau sa scriu. Cuiva, Nimanui, Mie. Dar mi-e lene. mi-e lene sa imi pese de ceva scris cum trebuie, de ceva scris cu grija.
Asa ca iau cateva caramele si ma prabusesc din nou in pat.

Zile libere…ce faceti din mine?
15 septembrie 2009
—–

Au trecut cateva saptamani bune de atunci, dar validitatea celor scrise persista. Zilele libere s-au mutat in Bucuresti. Not for long.

Five more days more, or even less. That is how much we have left, my love.
You’ve been great, my love. I barely knew you when we started out. As every little thing we spend enough time with, you grew on me, my love, and I think I love you unconditionally now. It’s just the time we spent together that makes us so attached to eachother.
It’s your streets that I have walked every day to work that make me shudder to think that soon, ever so soon, I am leaving you far behind, taking drastic measures : putting an ocean between us.

Every place that I leave is like this. The first impressions change slowly, leading to a radical new image.
At one point, after you’ve done enough relocating, you get used to this ritual and you arrive in some city you’re going to spend time in and you look at it and say:” by the time I leave, you and I will be good friends. You’ll lseem all different to me, because you’ll soon become part of me and my thoughts will stem from the sidewalk I tread on, my dreams will fly above those shape-shifting clouds of yours. Yes, you and I will be good friends, chap.”

And so it was. Waking up, walking to work. The ten minute stroll, or the 5 minute quick step, I’m-gonna-be late-walk.

Settlement Drive into Ironbound Road into Treyburn, taking the short cut across a lawn that has a sign “please do not step on the grass”. Reverse psychology, and so my work shoes -slip resistent, restaurant approved hideous things- get wet from the freshly sprinkled lawn.

Sometimes the weird wild geese are grazing on a big piece of lawn and I pass them and they raise their heads up above their long necks, and look at me suspiciously, with their beaks open. Then they just continue their grass eating routine.

This solitary walk to work, then the walk back.

Then there are the bicycle rides that lend you wings, riding fast downhill, not caring to slow down, cause you are on the bike lane, on the pavement. How bad a biker could you be? (let’s not jinx it, though…)
You ride past the forest, you see deer sometimes, barely out of the woods, they see you too and run startled back into their haven. When it gets late you sometimes see raccoons crossing the streets in their unique suicidal manner, to get to the trash bags people have neatly put out for the truck the next morning. They rip and tear and burp and whoosh…back into the woods, garbage bags defiled, mission accomplished.

And then there’s the weather. Not like anything you’ve lived before. It used to be hot and sticky and sweaty in July and August. You’d walk back from work in your long black work pants thinking that somebody will soon smell the burning flesh.
Now the sun is more tender and loving, it touches your cheeks with a breeze accompanying it. The first day of September brought in fall with a punctuality never before seen. So it rains every once in a while and you’re stuck in the house, in this little nest you have tried to make your own.

Williamsburg. Why did you come here? some of the customers ask. I tell them a lie…because there was no concrete reason for it. It was a sum of small reasons that added up to this place that I had barely ever heard of.

But I was lucky enough to land in a town so peaceful and full of treasures, a town that was just what I needed: a bit of history, a good position on the East Coast (close to DC), a beautiful campus that I discovered only a week ago.

I wandered a lot this year. I soon will be able to say that I haven’t spent my birthday home two birthdays in a row- and that’s a first.

But travelling means leaving chunks of you behind when you say goodbye, and taking bits of the places with you. It’s like planting yourself somewhere, learning to grow there, in the conditions given to you…and then having to relocate. The information you absorbed remains with you, no matter where you insert your roots next. You drew water from that ground, you had that sun shine on you and that humid air touch your body- it doesn’t just go away.

Leaving a town is like parting from a loved one, one you got so used to. Someone who you’ve shared every side of you with, in sickness and in health, days off or days at work, rainy or dry, burning days.

Goodbye, my love, goodbye. My heart shall soon heal and find another. But you don’t care, do you? You’ve had many others too.

Cerul si cererile noastre sunt uneori de aceeasi inaltime.

cu durere ne intindem pana ne plesnesc calcaiele
in incercarile noastre triste de a nu ramane atat de aproape de pamant.

stam cu fata la soare
cu bratele deschise in imbratisarea unui vant

doar-doar
Macar de ne-ar
duce departe.
mai departe?
cat de departe de noi,
noi insine – mici, goi
si mucosi si manjiti de noroi.
noi. doar noi.

Nu mi-e rusine sa recunosc:
mie una mi-e bine,
intinsa asa,
orizontal, lipita de pamant
in odihna-mi lenesa si
atat de aproape de mine.

*pic via http://karizza.deviantart.com/art/Sleeping-in-the-grass-60122214

Early morning.
Cottony clouds above, blanket of foam on the water, gray in the sky and reflected underneath.
The waves are rising menacingly, like sharks would, like predators.

This is not the sea. This is the Ocean. It is deceiving.

Many die at shore, we have been told, the sheer force of the seemingly small waves pulling them under, making them spin in the water like lifeless puppets in the hands of nature.

It´s just water, wind and tides. However simple the combination though, it is effective and we´re small enough to die from it.

The lifeguards blow their whistles once every two minutes and at first you think ” they´re crazy, exaggerating like that”. “The water is closed”, they yell with sand in their lungs, from up on that little hill and their high lifeguard throne.

You just laugh and think “Closed? The water is not close to me…I´ll open it up with a swish of my hands.”
But just as these thoughts form in your mind, your feet get buried deeper and deeper in the sand as the waves are speeding backwards, reverse mode, into the ocean´s womb.
You look towards the beach to see where you left your towel and in the next half a second you´re dragged under by the whirpool caused by a coming wave.

Bubbles and foam and spit with salty sand. You surface out, on your knees, bruised by the intense rubbing of flesh against the sand. How can this happen when you are knee deep in water? You quickly walk away, stumbling half blinded by the wet hair stuck to your face, deciding that you were made for sandcastles or other such peaceful activities.

The surface of the water shimmers on under the sky, imperturbed by your close encounter with the afterlife and its brightly lit tunnels. The water only seems peaceful, but you foolish mortals should know better…

This is not the sea.
This is mother Ocean, where it all began and where it often ends.

There´s always something quite intriguing about trips. It´s not the fact that you are heading towards the destination, nor the act of distancing yourself from the place you just made some memories in, but the actual trip, the queues you stand in line at, the people on the bus, the anger when the bus is delayed, the excitement when you actually catch the connection for your final destination known.

It was just like that this weekend, coming back from yet another visit to Washington DC, their nation´s capital, a city with a European feel given the fact that the centre was designed by a French architect.

In America, if you do not own a car you might as well not dream of getting too far, for you are no more than a mere fleck of dust on the surface of the USA. As a consequence, train connections are few and far between…only meant for those unfortunate folks who cannot drive themselves where their hearts and engines desire.
Buses are cheaper versions of train rides, but their reliability is somewhat nonexisting. An example: having bought a ticket for the Greyhound line at midnight so I could make the most of my days off and get to DC in the morning, I found myself waiting in the station for 2 hours(until almsot 2 am) , no bus in sight. The ticket had been purchased online, they had even requested my cellphone number (heaven knows why…cause it sure as hell wasn´t in order to call and tell me that their driver just didn´t wanna come pick people up that day. Neah…he might have said. Too tired. Let the carless half-humans wait. If they don´t have a car they won´t have enough money to sue.)

The effort and adventure of getting to DC left aside, the trip back was just as eventful in the delays, the ticket machines not working unless you literally hit the screen as hard as you could (whoever invented touch screens never took into consideration the fact that someone with anger management problems would ruin them in no time), the bus drivers slowly opening the luggage trap when you could see your connection bus almost leaving. “Calm down, please. Relax.” …”But sir, my bus…”

Once you are actually on the bus and you know that you will make it home (at one point, for sure not the one n the ticket), the view out the window captures you: trees with trunks immersed in swamps freshly created by some strong downpour, houses lost somewhere in the woods, coal trains zooming past you, heavy on their old tracks.

But the most surprising thing I saw was the huge amount of tires at the edge of the road. Here one tire, torn in half, there another one, intact, to the right a small, baby tire, belly-up, on the grass a huge truck tire. Back home you see cats and dogs, smashed. The variety comes only from the degrees of injuries caused by the impact.

Here, the only roadkill spotted was a racoon, notorious for his species´ highway suicidal tendencies.

Tires. Tires to take you home, tires to leave you waiting for help. I wonder where they all came from, and what happened in the end to all the cars that lost them, all the people that left them there, willingly or not.

But that is all behind me now. Almost a week behind me.

Fresh is only the memory of arriving back to Williamsburg, to see the eagles in the air like kites, serenely floating towards the deepest of blues.

This is the life. The simple life.

You wake up. You work. You come back, you sleep. You eat, ponder about your purpose in life. You sleep again.

you dream of trays and strawberries on the side, water orders that you forgot to bring your customers. We do really dream about our days…and if my days involve running to and fro with plates of pancakes, how could I dream of strawberry fields forever? no, my strawberries are on the side, or on the order of buttermilk pancakes.

In life you must not take things for granted. Yes, that is a must. Rule number one.

For one month I took my free wireless internet coming from an unknown benefactor living nearby for granted…until I saw a big pickup truck hauling furniture away and I said to myself “I sure hope that is not my wireless internet moving away.”
But it was.

So now I am sitting in the shade,in a parking lot. It is 5 pm and I have the rest of the day off.

I am sitting in a parkin lot from which I can see our apartment. We tracked down some wireless internet here, so this is the new place to be.

Some neighbor’s cat is out and she is keeping me company, occasionally rubbing itself against my feet.

In a way it is nice to have no higher purpose to worry about every day. Just the workschedule and then the gratifying hours off that seem neverending. So much free time, so many possibilities *you think, until the hours go by and you realize you’re waking up to work again next day*

You go to the thrift store and buy some more books that you pile up and cuddle with before you go to sleep, you go swimming at the pool that your Romanian coworkers have at their motel.

Simple.

But I cannot help thinking that I am suuure glad I want more from life than this. Yes. More. More time for thoughts, more thoughts in my work.

But for now I will leave this parking lot, cause the ants seem to like my sweet sunlotion and are tickling my heels.

The cat (Grace is her name, since that is what her nametag proclaims) is coming towards me again, her lazy moves contagious.
I’ll go back home and sleep.
Or perhaps I’ll snap a photo of Grace first.