Ieselsbrécken, Eddisoen, an ee Stéck vum Gléck.

“How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city. Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the night of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and aloneness without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.
It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.
[…]
Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in midfurrow, or to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress? Shall my heart become a tree heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them? And shall my desires flow like a fountain that I may fill their cups? Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silence am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?”
[…]
“You give much and know not that you give at all.”
(K. Gibran)

“Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you should
It was good
As good goes
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you did
(…)
Making plans to change the world
While the world is changing us” (DMB)

I am not Almustafa. I don’t have any advice, poetic or pragmatic, to give to those I leave behind. I did not stay 12 years. My absence will be a lot less noticeable. I did, however, learn to love this place. I lost a bit of my heart here. I learnt the purity of its forms by heart. I had to do hard decisions. I still draw the shapes of its inhabitants, the lines on the ground, the crevasses in the buildings. I still carry the wind in my ears, I hear the steps of the horses, and I feel the sun set, and the rain shake the leaves. Four seasons have come and gone, in the middle of the fifth I am going away. I can theoretically envisage it, but do not comprehend it as yet. In the hope not to forget, I take with me a thousand mnemonic devices. Fieldwork as a multitude of moments that I refuse to synthesise and analyse yet. How can a time like this possibly fit into 5 neat chapters? It don’t and it won’t. Happiness, sadness, aches of various kinds, fury, elation, irony, exhaustion, desperation, peace, quietness, euphoria, and others were close friends in this year. Of course, along with the people I met, learnt to respect, to care for, and to love, and whose friendship I will hopefully honour. I am very grateful to them in the first place.
Thanks also to you, dear reader, for having been part of the journey.
This weblog ends here, the (PhD and other) journeys go on. There may be other weblogs in the future. Information forthcoming here...
Happy New Year!
Your seeker of the silences

Being (how is that for a pompous title? ;o))

“Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal. And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay.
[…]
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones? And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that built your city and fashioned all there is in it? Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else. And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.”
(K.Gibran)

I guess this kind of thinking makes clear the point about the limits of agency, and could make clear how Plato came to think about eternal shadows of being that we can know only through a glass, darkly.

‘Sie verstehen nichts von Realpolitik, die Armen.’

Allow me to copy-paste the following brilliant Kurt Tucholsky text about power, compromise and leaving ideals behind ‘naturally’ while being heaved up the ladder of privilege, politics and… filth. This was written around 1920, and you need only change a few terms and you get a pretty good contemporary picture. Des weiteren would I like to encourage reading the rest of Tucholsky’s oeuvre, because a lot of it is very funny in a very dark way. Besser driwwer ze laachen wi ze kräischen? Satire darf, wie bekannt, alles. I want to add to this that satire keeps its quality only if people are not disgusted in their country/politics/economics. If, like in Romania, where desperation has crept up on even the last idealist-cum-activist, satire becomes bad. Simultaneously, all news becomes satire, and hope becomes frail. It is not a pretty sight. Merry Christmas, for crying out loud...
I write this in the light of the most recent outrage surrounding the Minister of Transport, Ludovic Orban (PNL), who ran over a teenage girl on the zebra crossing with his large car, who tried to hush the story down with bribe-silence money paid to the family of the girl (3000 euro first instalment). The police omitted from their report that there had been a girl run over. Orban lied in public, to the press, about there having been only one victim, himself, that he had just touched a car that was parked, and who insisted the press should stop the ‘mediatic lynching’. In the emergency call made by a bystanding citizen, police (giving precisions about the location) encumbered the ambulance services by telling the operator that ‘Nothing happened. He only got her on the hood!’ Orban also made, under the influence of alcohol, a threatening phone call to one journalist named Robert Turcescu (who I admire greatly for his analytical clarity, and, his integrity) who had made a few reports on Realitatea TV about the case. The same journalist received a further threat call full of insinuations from someone who identified himself as the ‘godfather’ (nasul) of Orban. Minciuna continua!
This is a country where it is really hard to try to move things, and true political opposition is suffocated right from its conception. It makes me go nuts. I would prefer this environment to be less educational, and with more possibilities for change. As Mircea Badea puts it: ‘Traim in Romania si asta ne ocupa tot timpul’ (we live in Romania and this keeps us occupied all the time).

DIE VERRÄTER

Na, Verräter eigentlich nicht. Ein Verräter, das ist doch ein Mann, der hingeht und seine Freunde dem Gegner ausliefert, sei es, indem er dort Geheimnisse ausplaudert, Verstecke aufzeigt, Losungsworte preisgibt... und das alles bewußt... nein, Verräter sind diese da nicht. Die Wirkung aber ist so, als seien sie welche, doch sind sie anders, ganz anders.

Da wird man vom Vertrauen der Parteigenossen ausgesandt, mit dem bösen Feind zu unterhandeln, sozusagen die Arbeiter zu vertreten, die ja inzwischen weiterarbeiten müssen. Und die erste Zeit geht das auch ganz gut. Geld... ach, Geld... wenn die Welt so einfach wäre. Geld ist zunächst gar nicht zu holen. Der Arbeiterführer bleibt Arbeiterführer; leicht gemieden von den Arbeitgebern, merkwürdiges Wort, übrigens. Nein, nein, man bleibt ein aufrechter Mann. Aber im Laufe der Jahre, nicht wahr, da sind so die langen Stunden der gemeinschaftlichen Verhandlungen an den langen Tischen: man kennt einander, die Gemeinsamkeit des Klatsches eint, und es wird ja überall so viel geklatscht. Nun, und da stellt sich so eine Art vertraulicher Feindschaft heraus.
Kitt ist eine Sache, die bindet nicht nur; sie hält auch die Steine auseinander. Zehn Jahre Gewerkschaftsführer; zehn Jahre Reichstagsabgeordneter; zehn Jahre Betriebsratsvorsitzender - das wird dann fast ein Beruf. Man bewirkt etwas. Man erreicht dies und jenes. Man bildet sich ein, noch mehr zu verhüten. Und mann kommt mit den Herren Feinden ganz gut aus, und eines Tages sind es eigentlich gar keine Feinde mehr. Nein. Ganz leise geht das, unmerklich. Bis jener Satz fällt, der ganze Reihen voller Arbeiterführer dahingemäht hat, dieser infame, kleine Satz: „Ich wende mich an Sie, lieber Brennecke, weil Sie der einzige sind, mit dem man zusammenarbeiten kann. Wir stehen in verschiedenen Lagern - aber Sie sind und bleiben ein objektiver Mann..." Da steckt die kleine gelbe Blume des Verrats ihr Köpfchen aus dem Gras - hier, an dieser Stelle und in dieser Stunde. Da beginnt es.

Der kleine Finger ist schon drüben; der Rest läßt nicht mehr lange auf sich warten. „Genossen", sagt der Geschmeichelte, „man muß die Lage von zwei Seiten ansehn..." Aber die Genossen verstehen nicht recht und murren: sie sehn die Lage nur von einer Seite an, nämlich von der Hungerseite. Und was alles Geld der Welt nicht bewirkt hätte, das bewirkt jene perfide, kleine Spekulation auf die Eitelkeit des Menschen: er kann doch die vertrauensvollen Erwartungen des Feindes nicht enttäuschen. Wie? Plötzlich hingehn und sagen: Ja, die Kollegen billigen das nicht, Krieg muß zwischen uns sein, Krieg und Kampf der Klassen, weil wir uns ausgebeutet fühlen...? Unmöglich. Man kann das unmöglich sagen. Es ist zu spät.

Und dann geht es ganz schnell bergab. Dann können es Einladungen sein oder Posten, aber sie müssen es nicht sein - die schlimmsten Verräterein auf dieser Welt werden gratis begangen. Dann wird man Oberpräsident, Minister, Vizekönig oder Polizeipräfekt - das geht dann ganz schnell. Und nun ist man auch den grollenden Zurückgebliebenen, die man einmal vertreten hat und nun bloß noch tritt, so entfremdet - sie verstehen nichts von Realpolitik, die Armen. Nun sitzt er oben, gehört beinah ganz zu jenen, und nur dieses kleine Restchen, daß sie ihn eben doch nicht so ganz zu den Ihren zählen wollen, das schmerzt ihn. Aber sonst ist er gesund und munter, danke der Nachfrage.
Und ist höchst erstaunt, wenn man ihn einen Verräter schilt. Verräter? Er hat doch nichts verraten! Nichts - nur sich selbst und eine Klasse, die zähneknirschend dieselben Erfahrungen mit einem neuen beginnt. –

Photo: Melbourne, Australia, January 2006

Leo Tolstoi, Anna Karenina, chapter 2

‘There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life.’

Do you agree?

3 a.m. (like the matchbox 20 song)

As a consequence of sleeping pretty much all day to get my fever down and keep my head from exploding, I am wide awake now. I am headacheless through seventeen-hour-sleepy-spontaneous-remission-therapy. Monica and me spent time drinking tea and nibbling biscuits until well after midnight. We talked research, writing, people. I am actually so highly awake that my thoughts are racing. Everything is potentiality. I think in the dark and I imagine the entire neighbourhood population of socialist blocks around me fast asleep. I like the calm of the dead of the night. It is the time for second chances, a time with so much space it makes you feel little. I feel my stomach tingling. I turn on the light. I write, again.
I really feel fieldwork ending. Lots to do before the end of the year. I will cross the gates to the Orient, as they say here, then return home. Life takes me back to Scotland, and I will start writing the actual thesis. I may have reconciled myself with that thought. I have lots of material, I have lots of ideas, it is ‘merely’ a matter of putting them into a coherent, rigorous, beautiful fashion. Sayeth she, but little did she know.
And then, maybe, hopefully, slowly, I will get, like Aino said, to the more important things in life. I am not sure how it will work out, leaving here is the first step. I will get there in the end. Sayeth she, and tried to look at the stars, failing, for being in the city, in a flat, surrounded by concrete. Can we wish upon the stars if we do not see them? Course we can. Sayeth Paul Eluard:

‘La nuit n’est jamais complète.
Il y a toujours, puisque je le dis,
Puisque je l’affirme,
Au bout du chagrin
Une fenêtre ouverte,
Une fenêtre éclairée,
Il y a toujours un rêve qui veille,
Désir à combler, faim à satisfaire,
Un coeur généreux,
Une main tendue, une main ouverte,
Des yeux attentifs,
Une vie, la vie à se partager.’

Sayeth she: here’s another reason to start a new day in a few hours. Bonsoir. Bonne nuit.

Branza de Burduf

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Out of Season

Autumn is coming. I can feel it with the nights becoming chilly, and there is a quality of the air that comes with the cold mornings that makes me very happy. The fruits are ripe, and falling off the trees, hitting the ground with a thump. People are talking about a mushroom that grows on the hills about this time of the year. Firewood is being collected, cut and stored. The sheep will come from the mountains in a few weeks, and the cows will be back at home soon too. I like this colour of sky, just before night has fallen entirely. Does it remind me of northern skies? I was also reminded of a line in a song ‘clouds are stalking islands in the sky, I wish I could buy one, out of season’. My memory might have failed me though! It occurred to me that fieldwork does not last forever.

bells and flowers

Today I got lost in other people’s stories, on waking my head was light from having fought mosquitoes during the early hours of morning. I walked around the tarmac-ground softened from the heat and wobbly like sand, and thought of everyone far away I love. One man greeted me and I was amazed. Have a good day, Sir, you mistake me for somebody else. I crossed the iron footbridge over the Basarab railway station and looked down through the gaps that remained, stubbornly, square, in the smoothly worn brown-red iron trodden by many feet over a long period of time, each soft step taking with them a molecule or two. What I was looking at was mizerie, smelly garbage. I was half expecting to discover the body of a decaying dog. I did not. An old woman was complaining about the dust, and it settled on my body like a silky surface, mixed with the transpiration (that word choice should make my status of ‘ladyship’ quite obvious), and later on could be rubbed off like flaky skin. I could not stand the sight of one child standing at a crossroad and breathing into a bag. The world is too loud, too indifferent. One big man sat on the same spot as yesterday, talking to a quartier neighbour, an old lady with white hair elaborately strung together in a bun, carrying many shabby plastic bags. I had an acute sense of loss on Calea Grivitei, walking past a curtained shop window that a billboard with the opening times in these kinds of stick-on plastic letters, and a basket with a stuffed white cat plus several kittens with scary stary eyes. Looking through the ruins of one once majestic corner building, I could see through the holes the twinkling sign of a hotel, newly risen into the sky. Another project of modernity, only the context, this time, being capitalism. This environment, momentarily an extension of my self, decaying just like my body, and would not remain until I return. A fragment ‘il y a longtemps que je t’aime jamais je ne t’oublierai’ rhythmed my heart. It rung in my head like the church bells in the village, with the characteristic tierce that render them so distinctive. ‘… each hung bell's [Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name’ (G.M.H.). It made me understand separation, time, and nostalgia. A moment of lucidity in a fog, rhyming, producing consonance, while working towards that project-of-little-importance. In the meantime has become the work I do, because that’s what I get up for in the morning. My dreams, however, were flying off with the ceiling, I found myself looking at the stars. I dreamed I am going to explode, and I held my arms in readiness. I was certain of the cause: a flower was growing in my stomach, and I sat down near the piano and waited. I think I was smiling.

Singularity

As I sit and wait for the thunderstorm to pass over my head and the village, in the absence of electricity, in the smell of the rain and the sounds of cars wheezing through puddles and the tapping on the corrugated iron roof, the most complete singularity wraps itself around me. It makes my stomach turn and my head spin. I long for detachment from this world, but I would not have it if it was thrust upon me. Being is full of contradictions that seek conclusion, choices that fuel the burning of old wounds and long-lost memories, and moments needed for waiting, healing, interiorising. The thunderstorm resembles a point d’orgue in music. A lot can happen during that time, when the rhythm fleetingly becomes suspended, and a solo breaks into the space, with moments of silence weighing down on the audience like love on a heart-in-waiting.

june

Unfolding

"It is the direction that decides whether we are being released from the centre in a movement that is ever freer or whether we are becoming more and more attached to a centre that will ultimately destroy us: the question means nothing less than life and death".This is what Paul Klee had to say about the spiral. We are developing in ways that cannot be reduced to the point of origin. Time is a creative force in itself and sweeps through us, and we love and leave and werkeln and build and pray and hope and sing and feel our way through the dark patches of the sun.
What, they asked again, for the umptieth time, does it take for love to remain? You are drawn to each other, strangers, and yet you can recognise their humanity in an instant. You may have grown up differently, with different values, religions, interests, tastes, preferences, priorities. You can tell kindness. You can feel truthfulness, groundedness, lightness in the palms of their hands. The petals can poison you just as they can make you whole. You discover patches of each other, you talk, you disagree and get upset, you find the common ground back, you laugh, you are touched, moved, rocked, spiralling into attraction of a different kind. You take risks with willingness and eagerness and impatience. You wait for the other because they have filled your soul with crystals of honey. You learn how to make compromises, and to understand what the other one is saying, not just what you thought you wanted to hear. You learn to live with what you thought you could never accept. Things take time. That’s love.
I have been able to let go a bit of my tightly structured actions and started to enjoy living here. It is easier with the summer. The trouble is that this way of being makes me wonder how much of pulling-together and disciplining-to-the-extremes it takes to get the phd done, and how much I am allowed to live. It is thoroughly enjoyable though to swing with the rhythms that surround me rather than being in full dissonance following those rhythms not grounded in the present landscape. So I will dance a bit more. Let us see how long I can get away with it. kitty-gritty

Angels

I know that really they’re people. They appear and offer their help. They show me kindness. They make my cynical self blush and hide in a corner. They are genuinely interested. They say hello to me on the street. They tell me about their own encounters with strangers. They take me with them to the mountains to relax. They restore my suflet. They give me strength. They make me speak about what I feel and ease my homesickness. They make me laugh and dance. They make everything worthwhile.

Toes

I hit my little right toe against a wooden object that jumped into my way. Yes, it is the same toe that greatly handicapped me during the first months of my Masters year, causing some people only to inquire about the wellbeing of my toe (pars pro toto). However, it is not quite as bad, I think, the coloration is (as yet) not quite as extensive and beautifully blue… though it made me think about this particular toe that I had completely forgotten about for the last year and a half. I think our feet are not well designed. I think they should be much tougher, like horse hooves, so we could walk barefoot and not have a problem. It would serve a lot of different purposes. Even saying, I will give you a kick in the a*** would have entirely different connotations (I abhor violence). You could step on cow’s hooves, for a change. Pedicure would be interesting, so would football. I am afraid Pike Aer would also be around in this kind of world with these kinds of feet, offering tattoos for hooves, feet-painting and all kinds of cushiony stuff to fix below the hoof to improve jumping power. It would also be good for insulation, and I think one could have reduced the problem of cold feet, wet socks and ensuing pneumonia and fever. Now I am a limp-shell, slightly slower, but still moving, hopefully.

happiness is a mat that sits on your doorway

you'll have recognised the line by the counting crows.
aberdeen was full of movement. a lifetime crammed into a week resembling a poem by william carlos williams (no it is not pathethic to write that!). only after opening the fridge in bucharest and seeing the very same milk tetra packs that remained from when i left did i realise that i have only been gone a brief while. friends found back, scottish and salsa dancing, indian food, discussions, a flying spaghetti monster with mobile eyes, walks and seagulls. beats with my brother, coffee with mum. it was a magical time, with people materialising when i thought of them, and with sensitivity heightened to the extent that i could feel people better again. after some time i didn't need to explain about the last six months anymore. we had arrived in the same world again. flying north when flowers are starting to fade also means you get to see more blossoming. i found back the pleasure of reading and learnt about the enclave of gorazde, and the wind-up bird chronicle (still recommenging murakami for anyone who needs a journey of dreams and stories resembling a silk garment). real sadness came over me when the plane came down over english patterned fields, windsor castle and a lake with little dinghies. leaving to less comfortable places in the hope of learning. i miss you already.

Spring, Easter and Tuica

The Little Sunbeam

I had asked to interview his parents about their ‘traditional produce’ initiative. They led me into a chilly ‘best room’ and said, there is a problem with the other room, because their little son had a problem with his legs and this is why a teacher came everyday to give him lessons at home. He would have to have this plaster on both legs for about one and a half years, because there was a major problem with his bones. At the level of both his feet, the plaster was attached to a kind of wooden stick of about 70 cm. False diagnoses had caused that this had not been remedied when he was a toddler. I asked what he was doing with his time. They told me: watching TV, reading a bit, playing with his brother and with friends that come to visit. So later on it got too cold in the first room, and the teacher had finished for the day, so I got to meet this child. He was an energy bundle, very loveable, and apparently very happy. He asked to see the world map to determine where Britain was, and Luxie and thought it was very far away. He asked how I had come, with the plane or with the boat. His next question was whether I had read the paper in the plane. He was a bit disappointed to hear that I usually sleep in planes (yes, some kind of narcolepsy confined to pressure cabins, and, more generally, but less reliably so, public transport of various kinds). He wanted to know how many engines the plane had and whether I had paid for the petrol. He asked me what I was doing here anyway, and I attempted to explain. And then he made my heart melt, saying: ‘How do you say Alexandru in Luxembourgish?’

How to get old.

The heaviness of life becomes apparent in the features of a person. Its multiple disappointments, those periods of great distress and business, loss and bereavement, financial burdens, health problems and silenced annoyances and betrayals in often life-spanning relationships shrink eyes, fashion and colour skin, nails, teeth and hair, discipline gaits, and model bones and muscle tissue. More often than not, these shapes are recognised as mere effects of ageing, but their quality depends on a lot more than that. We forget to look at people, at the lines on their face and their hands that trace their steps into maturity and beyond (one haunting line from an admittedly soppy film: ‘I want all this marked on my body…’). We forget to show candour towards the personal tragedies, conflicts and duplicities that potentially rest with every person we meet. Everyday statements I encountered in the last few months make me very thoughtful about the kinds of futures that may be in store for me. They are no extraordinary statements, only striking in their commonness. You may know of people who, on the face of it, have had much harder lives, more spectacular fates, in war zones, dictatorships or areas of ecological disaster, for instance. I would argue, however, the scale of sadness, desperation, courage, and moral stance it takes to keep struggling cannot be judged by any Human.

My son is drinking, his wife left him; as a consequence I lost touch with my grandchild, as she emigrated with her mother to Spain. After I had my two girls, I got twins, one of which had a severe disability, and my husband did not assist me in raising the children. My husband died when I was 21, I am 94 and have lost everyone I knew and cared for in the course of time. My wife was taken from me aged only 56, in the space of a few weeks, and has left me with two old women and two children to support. My wife is dying of Alzheimer’s, I take care of her, the house, the animals, the children. My former partner made love to a girl when I was pregnant with his child. My husband comes home late, and I know it is not business that is keeping him, but other women. I am nearing 40 and I have no family, and am too set in my bachelor ways to hope to change. I have had 5 miscarriages, and my only child died of pneumonia. I realised when my partner had a heart attack that I have been depending on him too much, and how will I feed my children if he dies now.

When I look at pictures of me taken recently, I start to see the heaviness. Either it was not there before I left, or I did not know how to read it. Everyone is worried about getting old, but it depends on how you get old. I am including concerns about one’s desirability in relation to others here (and maybe this point is more valid for women), but I am intuitively considering this issue as somewhat tangential, and, possibly, engendered by pure personal refusal, without enough substantial backup. This how to get old, of course, means taking what you get from life with a dose of stoicism and base-happiness in the face of opposition, self-irony, a sense of proportion of one’s own importance or lack thereof, and, on the other hand, struggle, struggle, struggle, to get what you seriously want from life. Cutting away all the pieces of arrogance, inflated senses of self, self-torture, and all kinds of other reasons that make us choose what we do, I believe we can attempt to begin to see ourselves for what we are, and not distorted with all kinds of obsessions, quests for perfection and killing-ourselves-to-fulfil desires resulting from complex forces résultantes of the past. I, for one, was not made for being the lone anthropologist. Being outside of the ties of stability, of family, of friends is shaping my being in slow and painful ways. It makes me long for a family of my own, despite the risks, despite the fallbacks, despite everything. My desires are among the most banal, among the most common, as you realise. What makes us desire this kind of thing in the full knowledge of the drawbacks, I ask you. Normalisation? Truly the best possible thing? Egotism? Altruism? The grass is greener on the other side? What is it that makes us keep our faith in people, and our medium-to-high expectations, having encountered stupidity, recklessness, inconsideration, weakness, domination, abuse and cowardice? Is it true that the kind of person who wishes to subsist on their own, and who finds this desirable, is becoming more common? Why? Why not? Or am I missing the point altogether and this is about something else entirely? I beg you to exclude any strict neo-Darwinian and Foucauldian takes in your responses, for I will refuse to publish them ;-).

24.03.07

tonight

Tonight my life doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I am on my own in a country that I often fail to understand, with people who do not share my way of being, my way of feeling, and my aims and aspirations. The politics here are crazy, we are moving from one political crisis to the next. The spin of the moment is whether the European elections will be postponed. The spin of tomorrow is yet another deal with personal interests and business interests uncannily close and extremely dangerous. Becali, the richissime owner of Steaua Bucharest, leads the Party of the New Generation, without a programme, but the slogan that ‘politics is his salvation’ and a weird compulsion to talk about idealism, honesty, thieves (all other parties) and that he wants to build a right-wing oriental Christian democratic kind of politics. My true worry is that he might become Romania’s next president. People in the village take it stoically. They know regimes come and go and they are all bad, in one way or another. People are involved in very hierarchical relationships of dependence and services and yet, I am not sure whether community is the right word to use. All this and more makes me tired, prone to colds and, sometimes, grumpy and extremely vulnerable to whatever comes (or doesn’t come) my way. I miss my friends and I miss having a life that is filled with things I love doing: exercising in the gym, playing badminton, going to the library, having a regulated, tightly scheduled life, going to the cinema, going to the pub with people I share more than just location with. I am eaten by fleas and spiders and the people I want to spend time with for fun are the same who I hurt in their manly pride by telling them that I am not in the least attracted to them. The selection is not vast I must say, and those that do not consider me worth ignoring regard me as a child. I am not taken seriously, because people work in different ways here and do not hold appointments and delay, delay, delay, and then do not have any time left. It makes me feel like I am not achieving a lot. The child-woman lacks everything at times to defend herself in a manner that will not be considered impolite or reckless or un-womanly. I try to be a good anthropologist, but I do not know if even come close. I exhaust myself on one day, manically wandering through the village and being filled up with other people’s lives, and feel so elated I could eat the world, then follow three days of rain, of rejection, of ‘I have no idea what to tell you’, and of ‘this week I really don’t have time for this, maybe in the autumn’ (my hosts’ response to this was, ‘yes, but they didn’t say which autumn’), of broken promises and a ruptured tire to round it off. I do wonder at the methods we anthropologists use, and at all the time wasted to get just a bit of information, all these hours spent hanging about in pubs (unwomanly), in gardens with busy women, on the street just to get a bit of ‘data’. I suppose most research is like this, and how naïve I have been to write all the things about activist research, and similar patronising things.

tonight

Tonight my life doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I am on my own in a country that I often fail to understand, with people who do not share my way of being, my way of feeling, and my aims and aspirations. The politics here are crazy, we are moving from one political crisis to the next. The spin of the moment is whether the European elections will be postponed. The spin of tomorrow is yet another deal with personal interests and business interests uncannily close and extremely dangerous. Becali, the richissime owner of Steaua Bucharest, leads the Party of the New Generation, without a programme, but the slogan that ‘politics is his salvation’ and a weird compulsion to talk about idealism, honesty, thieves (all other parties) and that he wants to build a right-wing oriental Christian democratic kind of politics. My true worry is that he might become Romania’s next president. People in the village take it stoically. They know regimes come and go and they are all bad, in one way or another. People are involved in very hierarchical relationships of dependence and services and yet, I am not sure whether community is the right word to use. All this and more makes me tired, prone to colds and, sometimes, grumpy and extremely vulnerable to whatever comes (or doesn’t come) my way. I miss my friends and I miss having a life that is filled with things I love doing: exercising in the gym, playing badminton, going to the library, having a regulated, tightly scheduled life, going to the cinema, going to the pub with people I share more than just location with. I am eaten by fleas and spiders and the people I want to spend time with for fun are the same who I hurt in their manly pride by telling them that I am not in the least attracted to them. The selection is not vast I must say, and those that do not consider me worth ignoring regard me as a child. I am not taken seriously, because people work in different ways here and do not hold appointments and delay, delay, delay, and then do not have any time left. It makes me feel like I am not achieving a lot. The child-woman lacks everything at times to defend herself in a manner that will not be considered impolite or reckless or un-womanly. I try to be a good anthropologist, but I do not know if even come close. I exhaust myself on one day, manically wandering through the village and being filled up with other people’s lives, and feel so elated I could eat the world, then follow three days of rain, of rejection, of ‘I have no idea what to tell you’, and of ‘this week I really don’t have time for this, maybe in the autumn’ (my hosts’ response to this was, ‘yes, but they didn’t say which autumn’), of broken promises and a ruptured tire to round it off. I do wonder at the methods we anthropologists use, and at all the time wasted to get just a bit of information, all these hours spent hanging about in pubs (unwomanly), in gardens with busy women, on the street just to get a bit of ‘data’. I suppose most research is like this, and how naïve I have been to write all the things about activist research, and similar patronising things.

dear reader, it is v-day – call for contributions…

because this day has been increasingly hijacked by capitalism’s most awful spawn that is kitsch-gear (can’t buy me lööööööhoove), I have decided (beggars can’t be choosers I already hear you bunch of cynics snigger, but I can assure you, the pleasure is all mine) to help balance this phenomenon out by insisting on the creative side of friendship, love and social relationships. Instead of seriously encouraging people to buy each other silly ready-made presents, I want to see you lovebirds collaborate to create beautiful things to be exhibited here, practising thus what anthropologists always preach by making this blog collaborative: you name it, less of me, and more of you! this way you readers are not delegated to the comments section, but to the main stage, not just because it is v-day, but as a general experiment too... of course, those among you who are generally (or momentarily) classified in the category of lovebirds are of course by no means excluded from this project.
everybody must love something or someone in some way at least some of the time. you get the idea. all things lovely, beautiful or funny in the largest possible sense of the terms are acceptable, preferably in languages I understand (yeah I include romanian here, although it sounds a bit like a half-truth…), obviously in media compatible with the support, but I would love to see collages, pictures, half-built snowmen, culinary triumphs, texts (including the most obscure poetry), love letters and musical bits and pieces. the question I have in mind are as follows: what is it you really like or love (semi-permanently, momentarily, foreverandever) in this world? describe and elaborate.
please include instructions, dedications and so forth. so click-start those photoshops, corel draws and open offices and get cracking. first one to come up with something gets… to be first and is assured eternal glory, all the luck in love and recreation, and at least a brazillion dollars in their neighbours’ car boot. yeah! cause I say so (and of course I decline any responsibilities for anything, being a mere editor around this space)… mailing address included here on the page, ‘abuut’ section. over and out. yours truly, love-shell.
p.s. this i found rather nice, though too much e e cummings....