Having left Harmony street, I now live in Gardners’ street. So I grow stuff. Looking back now, it does feel like I have started a whole new life altogether, not merely changed the one I used to have. It has not been exactly a walk in the park. But it’s been totally worth it. Two years ago I finally put into practice a decision that changed everything. I feel so grateful for the power that was lent to me so that I could go through with all of it. A leap of faith, a jump into the unknown, no guarantees, nothing and no one to cling to except faith. Faith like a thread of light pulling me forward to a future that was only dreamed of. Knowing it is possible to make your dreams come true is the only thing we actually need to rely on the moment we make that scary jump. The rest is details. And balls.
A short trip to Amsterdam
We stop in the Rembrandt Square and check the GPS for directions to the Red District. This annoying giggle makes my head turn and I see this couple accompanied by some friends. They’re in their early thirties. Chubby, dark hair, loose jeans and a black leather jacket, he’s proposing, holding the open box to reveal the ring between him and her, somewhere in front of her heart and feeling so nervous and shy and hoping to disappear before getting any attention from the passers by.
No one stops and no one stares. No one seems to be noticing, actually. Except me. And I try to be discreet. She seems high and surprised and unable to escape the “Is this for real?” vs “Oh, my God!” lines she keeps bouncing between, all the time tucking her straight blond hair behind her ears as if trying to grab hold of something she’s considered real for long enough to give her some comfort. Finally, they hug. She’s now wearing the ring, waving her hand in front of her friends, in front of her own eyes, in front of his face, in front of the whole world spinning at light speed around them.
I eventually turn my back to them, giving them some privacy and feeling a little bit ashamed by my intrusive presence. We head for the Red District. Hand in hand. Our friends are having dinner somewhere.
“No pot, no alcohol… Why have you come to Amsterdam?” one of them inquires on the lawn by the Van Gogh museum while passing the joint to another one in the group.
“I’m in a religious sect, I told you. I don’t eat meat, either…” I answer sarcastically. Keeping a secret feels delicious. Yet, I do feel like an alien.
I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien, I’m Dana in Amsterdam in the spring of 2017.
I’ve loved Van Gogh for as long as I can remember. And now, in the Van Gogh museum, I feel this distance between myself and everything that he used to represent for me. I am out of the valley of the shadow and doubt, out of the weeping song, out of the dark era. I am grateful for everything that was and everything I have learnt from the hard journey through all that.
The overcrowded city is so relaxed and so mentally blurred no one seems to know exactly what’s happening to them. They all seem to be wondering around like headless chicken. I used to be like that. Ten years ago or so this place would have seemed like heaven. Now… well, now I’m just enjoying the boat ride along the beautiful canals and a tasty dinner in an Italian restaurant. The Red District is too noisy and too sad. The girls are so beautiful and so wrought they awaken motherly instincts (?!) in me and a kind of exaggerated compassion on the fringes of love.
Our hotel, with its almost vertical staircase, is convenient enough. The big windows overlooking the main street make me suggest organizing a peep show for the passers by and the neighbors across. We push the two small beds together as soon as we arrive and pull the curtains in a rush.
“Have you got any non-alcoholic beer?” I almost whisper and blush as the waiter stares at me in disbelief. “Ok, don’t worry, just get me some water.” I add, giving up.
“Do you wanna go? I want to get more drinks? Can we stay longer?” my friend asks.
“Are you kidding? I’ve still got so much water in my glass. And if you dare me, I bet I can have one more!” I answer and we both laugh.
It’s her birthday. Last year we celebrated it in Istanbul. A life-changing experience. This year it’s Amsterdam. This is why I am here now. For her. Not for the pot or the drinks or the hooker spotting. Not even for the experience. And it’s all over so soon as we each head back to her own life and resume where we left off.
Getting ready to leave Harmony Street
“Look how beautiful this is! A clear road ahead, we’re walking, the sun in shining, the air is fresh… No one pushing, nothing like the crowded morning underground ride…” I hesitantly say as we’re walking to the city center this morning.
Four more weeks before I move house. It’s hard. I live in my favorite area in Bucharest, where I’ve wanted to live ever since I first discovered these quiet narrow streets, lined with old houses, some run down, others still retaining some of their former glory in sumptuous ornaments and elegant architecture. Most of them date back to the period between the two world wars or even earlier, before the first world war. They belong to times when rich people were stiff, elegant, conservative and stylish, but also generally well educated.
I moved here at a time in my life when I was going through great changes. I had moved out of my own apartment, where I’d lived for nine years and in which I not only invested finances, but also hopes and dreams and ideas and feelings and a great part of my heart. “The bed I’m going to get pregnant into” was left behind along with painted radiator masks, chairs and so on. I have to admit I went through a gradual process of letting go that started long before I actually left the place. I cried for every object. I admit. I cried for the wooden floor in the living room as if it were a dear old friend I was leaving.
But when I left, there were no more tears for objects. I never looked back. Never felt sorry for anything anymore. Cut the cords and moved on. From time to time I would go to the fridge to pick up something I’d left in my other fridge, but that didn’t take long, either, and made me giggle eventually.
Before I found the house in Harmony street I made a list with everything I wanted from the new place I was moving into. This place met every strict requirement. I knew immediately it was going to be my new home and that I was going to love it. And that it would only be temporary. Though my initial ‘plan’ has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening in my life now, it still prevented me from forming too close attachments to the new place.
Nevertheless, now, that I’m preparing to leave again, I’m trying to enjoy every detail, every second spent here, every walk to work and back home again, every bike ride along these beautiful streets. I’m making mental lists of things that will remind me of this place: how happy I was here, how free, so much travelling I’ve done, the open terrace, the run down attic, the cracks in the walls, the dancing during earthquakes, the trembling floor when the washing machine is on, the comfortable bed, the decorations, the marble steps, the sound of the wind blowing last autumn, the piles of virgin snow covering the tiny front yard one winter morning as I struggled to pushed the door open to go to work, the crazy guy downstairs paying me a surprise visit around lunchtime on a Sunday, the parties, the skype conversations, the nighttime jogging last summer and poetry while jogging, hooker spotting and so many other big and small details that will keep this place and this period in my heart for a long while.
I am moving on now. It’s a leap of faith, just like every important move in life. No guarantees. There were no guarantees when I moved here, either. And yet I felt that the happiest period in my life so far was starting. I was right. Sometimes I feel confident, other times I am so afraid. I keep telling myself it’s an adventure. It will take me somewhere. I don’t know where yet. But I know I’m not stuck, I am moving. This time last year I was looking forward to my second trip to Istanbul and talking to my Syrian boyfriend every night on Skype. Now it’s like I have died in the meantime and was born into a new life already. I still have some memories from the previous one, but it’s a totally different story now. I have no regrets. I have moved past the threshold. More about my new life as it unfolds.
Poetry while still not jogging (yet?)
It’s been a long winter
The hookers have come out of hybernation and are now in full hunting season to make up for lost body weight
A traveller is making plans to settle down
To and fro
To and fro
Conquering fear and learning to grow
Life changing at a speed of 1000 km /second
Dizziness and queasiness befriending uneasiness
Freedom recalculated, renegotiated, regurgitated
Definitions reinvented
Breath shortened and deepened not effortlessly
Happiness exists
I swear I held it in my hands one night and put it in my bedside cabinet drawer for keepsake
It’s pink
Ever since
It keeps coming back to me every five seconds or so
A weekend in Hungary
We’re walking to the conference room, on the side of this big lake that’s Hungary’s equivalent of a seaside. New houses are being built, with tiny gardens overlooking long strips of land growing vineyards in the flickering light of the blue water.
I’m nervous. There’s this secret question bugging me and, on top of it, I’m wondering what in the world I am doing in this group. How did I get here? What are the elements of resonance between us? Never before in my life have I cared about money. I have always been focused on finding and fulfilling my life mission, on becoming a better person but not with the goal of becoming a rich one. So how in the world have I landed here? A long overdue task, perhaps?
He’s holding my hand at all times as if for fear not to lose me to some imposing Hungarian hunk set to kidnap me. Well, actually, for fear I might become oversensitive and try to leave (again). I’m friendly and talkative, but still keep a safe distance out of love for my personal space I do not want to see invaded by some skilled marketers and made their own turf.
I live for the moment and rarely write lines in my head like I used to. I am here, feeling the asphalt under my foot soles, the crisp evening air, the pink sunset, the loud music in the conference room that’s a little bit too aggressive for me and my sensitive disposition.
The hotel room is comfortable enough, although the two mattresses can’t be convinced to stick one next to the other, so there’s this no man’s land, a hole yawning at us from the middle, luring us in when we want to come close. We lose an arm to it, a knee or an entire leg and sometimes the whole body. We make jokes about it and laugh and take turns pulling one another out in desperate attempts to save the other and bring him into our own world.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment the whole day. Ever since we got out of bed this morning.”
Bus ride across Bucharest
After the morning subway ride, having appreciated how my contact improvisation skills helped me get on the packed train through body surfing and gliding, it’s around 1.30 pm and I am now riding the bus:
the sun shining in puddles and on top of dirty snow piles
three middle aged gypsy women dancing in front of a block of flats, in their long, large skirts
a car crash
three angry drivers swearing and spitting words in each other’s faces from just a few centimeters’ distance
traffic police dancing at a crossroads, rushing everyone on their own way in life
unzipped coats flapping around hibernating bodies like worn out wings
A very loud phone conversation:
“Say, doc, what’s up? … Oh… Aha… Ok… His name? Wait! Wait a little! … Iulian Feather! Iulian Feather! Feather! … Yes! Ok, Violin, bye!”
A dialogue:
“I’m sorry, please excuse me…”
“You know, we are all relatives actually. It’s just that we are too embarrassed to talk to one another. So we’d rather keep our eyes stuck on the screens of our phones.”
I am thinking about a dream I had the night before, walking through a quiet village in plain spring and stopping next to the fence of a luxurious garden to feel the smell of a lemon tree and get the title of a book I’m supposed to write.
Winter serenade
I’m sitting at my table, browsing the Internet and waiting for him to call and tell me he’s downstairs. My stomach and my thighs feel tense and my lips are pursed and my jaw stiff. I can see myself from the outside but I still cannot relax. I am so afraid of a tragedy I think it would take a miracle to avoid it, with my strong attraction force.
What if he changes his mind? This is his first time too and he is clearly uncomfortable and weird about he whole thing. What if my first Valentine’s date ever doesn’t even happen…
Then I hear something at the window and I think some snow must have fallen off the roof down on the terrace below. And then I hear it again, a little stronger. And again, much stronger. I start thinking the radiator might be slowly and almost quietly exploding, piece by piece. So I reluctantly get up and, before I get next to the window, I have this whole film in my head about hot water splashing everywhere and pieces of radiator metal stuck in my flesh and my first Valentine’s Day date ever fucked. (Perfect word choice, I know.)
I get to the window, grab the curtain and pull it away from the radiator to check it out. I am looking down and, from the corner of my eye, I see movement downstairs, in front of the terrace. I look up and see him waving at me.
I start laughing. I know now his phone is dead and realize he’s been throwing snow at my window. Nobody’s ever thrown snow at my window to call me out. I like that. The dead phone is the best gift. I am giggling as I am going down the stairs and I know it’s gonna be the best Valentine’s date ever. (Especially since I have none other to compare it to and it is actually happening.)
Valentine’s Day caught between fear and love
I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day and have been terrified by it for years. The strongest memory I have of it is since I was fifteen and my first love cheated on me.
Ten years older than me and a lieutenant, he was living in another town. He came to see me the day before Valentine’s and the next day I had to go to an English contest in the county capital. So he said he was going into the mountains to ski because he was training for an international competition.
“I’ll be back tonight!” he told me that morning in the bus stop and kissed me before I got on the couch and we went our separate ways. Forever.
I waited and waited and waited. We had no phones back then and no computers. There was no way of getting in touch. It was Saturday. On Monday I asked my neighbors on the ground floor to allow me to use their landline to call his mother, thinking he might be dead or something. I was in love head over heels, we were planning to have kids when I grew up and he said he loved me, so not showing up that night meant he was either dead or unconscious in the forest or in the hospital.
“He left, darling. Yesterday.” his mother said.
I was surprised to see I could get out of my neighbors’ apartment and back to my room. I knew for sure I was not dead because everything hurt. No explanation. No idea. No way to get in touch except letters. I decided to wait. Actually, I don’t remember if it was so much a decision I made or just the only thing I could do since I was unable to do anything else, really.
A few days later he called my neighbors’ phone number. I hated the weight of the receiver pressing against my ear, resting in the sweaty palm of my hand, smearing grease and dust and filth on my skin. I later had to rub everything off with a sponge. Still, the ghost of it was hard to banish. It stuck to me like a leech. Made me rub my ear and palm so much they became red and hot. My right side was burning.
“Something happened…” he said in the same voice I had loved with all my heart. “I met someone”, the lips that had kissed every inch of my teenage body continued. “I am sorry. I never wanted to hurt you…”
I cannot reply. My neck is broken in his fist. No air can go through. No words can come out. Kneeling next to the bedside cabinet where the phone is, the fifteen year old who had only lost her virginity to this man two or three weeks before, is dead. Never again would she get up and walk out of that living room in her neighbors’ ground floor apartment. The ghost that does get up and leave is trembling all over and cannot breathe. She keeps staring at her sweaty hands shaking uncontrollably.
In the meantime, I miraculously managed to get over all that. Well, countless hours of regressions, homeopathy and energy work helped a lot. We even met a few years ago, me and him, and made peace and then continued on our separate ways. And here I am, twenty years later. I hated this time of year for twenty long years and was always expecting something to go terribly wrong.
This year I decided I want it. I want Valentine’s Day. This morning I woke up in the arms of the man that I love. He’s far from being flawless. We have that in common. But I made the decision to believe again. For years I have been criticizing Valentine’s Day for being such a superficial and commercial holiday. Well, life itself is commercial. The media educates us into believing we need so much stuff. Ultimately, Valentine’s Day, just like any other day of our lives, is what each of us decides to make of it. I have decided to step out of the drama and the sarcasm and the superiority complex. I have decided to celebrate it and celebrate joy and life. Am I afraid? Terrified… Does that stop me? Not a chance!
Letting England shake us
“It’s supposed to be blue. Blue air…. And it’s white air…” I hear a kid at my back saying, as we’re flying up through the fluffy cloud blanket, leaving the thick London fog below, before getting into the blinding sun burning the sky above the clouds.
It was my fourth time in England and it feels so much like home that I don’t even feel like I was very far away… Although it is extremely different from Romania, it does remind me of my home town and the weather there during my childhood, before the effects of global warming became impossible to ignore and we could still joke about the weather, me an my mom, saying “Last year we had summer on a Thursday.” Now all that has changed and it’s much warmer and drier. But England still has that damp air and the fog and the perpetual spring scent that I miss. And I love it for that.
“She was donated to us”, an elderly curator starts telling us the story about the huge elephant skull on the right of the staircase in the Peterborough museum. “She had her own coach on the train when she came to us from London. They got bored with her there. Sometime after the war…” And we have a pleasant chat before he politely rushes us out of the place so he can close the museum. And right before we leave, I miraculously find a green stone (peacock ore) in the museum shop, just like the one I dreamed I was buying the night before, together with a small, hand carved wooden broom for erasing debts.
The next day, I find London as I remembered her: a wrinkled chic old lady wearing high heeled sandals in winter, no tights, a thick layer of lipstick in military red shade and colorful clothes in an outrageous mix of patterns and prints over nude silk underwear. All topped with a stiff Victorian collar. She’s still got it in her. I’ve never managed to fall out of love with her. Never even tried, to be perfectly honest.
“Now I understand what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity, how you tried to set them free. But they would not listen, they did not know how, perhaps they’ll listen now… For they could not love you, but still your love was true, and when no hope was left inside on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do. But I could’ve told you, Vincent, this world was never made for one as beautiful as you.” I hear my own voice singing in my friend’s ear at the National Gallery, before Van Gogh’s paintings. And I love my voice. I sounds so full and soft and brave, as if I could actually sing. Amsterdam is waiting.
Spent two days in London, going places and having beers in pubs, getting all permeated with the London atmosphere like a green, soft moss under heavy rain. I absorbed everything like a sponge. I still have the same feeling it gave me the first time I visited: no matter who you are or what you are like, you find your place here, there’s something for you, too. The city feels like a huge salad with everything – all colors and textures and tastes, enough for everyone. And the morning being woken up by the chirping of the birds in the park across the street from our artist friends’ basement apartment in Islington, where we spent the night on a mattress in their living room… priceless!
The third day was King’s Lynn day. A small medieval town about an hour and a half bus ride from Peterborough. The center is packed with hair salons (literally, three or four in every street) and shops and the greatest attraction was a beautiful antique shop kept by some friendly old ladies wearing thick knitted jumpers and vests to insulate their fragile bodies from the penetrating cold that conserved their impressive collection of antiques, all polished and well kept.
“What is there to do here?”
“Hmm… I don’t know… Have kids, I guess… I mean what else can one do here?”
“Yes. You’re right. We should move here and have kids.”
“And a new haircut every week.”
We make the plan and then head back to Peterborough and the next day it’s York. We loved York. So neat and red and English to the bone (well, to the timber beams holding all the red bricks in place). We climb up to the highest tower in the York Minster (where we have tickets that are valid for a whole year, so we really should go back and visit it again) and take pictures and laugh a lot through the nausea caused by the narrow spiral climb. Later on, after a boring visit at the Museum of York, we get a beautiful game of story cubes from a lovely shop called Traveling Man and then play at a pub with a fireplace, igniting our imagination and when the beers kick in we laugh and create funny collaborative stories, following new rules every round. We continue the same game the entire train ride back to Peterborough, making the beautiful young Asian student sitting next to us get up and find another seat where she can learn in silence, away from the ridiculous thirty something Romanians playing their weird game.
And that was our last night in England on this journey, so the next day we are back to the airport and back on the plane. This time, for the first time ever, I spend almost the entire flight sleeping. I remember not being able to understand people who slept during short flights. For me the view out the window is so spectacular I couldn’t understand how anyone could sleep through such a marvelous display of beauty. Now, flying so often and sleeping so little, I can understand. So, having my eyes flooded by the white air that funny kid at my back noticed, I let them close and rest my head on my travel companion’s shoulder. And there’s this precious moment, right before falling asleep, when I feel my mind skidding like a car wheel on a patch of ice unexpectedly encountered on a dry road, when everything feels perfect.
See pictures from this journey on Instagram.
You should come with me to the end of the world
“Is there any chance you might come to Cambodia with me one day?”
“Cambodia?!” I ask, turning on my mental gps and trying to locate it on the map. Is it in Africa? I wonder, but I quickly cover up my confusion with a smile and decide the best answer to a question you don’t know the answer to is another question: “Why would I want to go to Cambodia?”
“Because it’s beautiful…” he replies squeezing my arm.
We’re walking together in Cismigiu, the oldest park in Bucharest. He’s my oldest friend. 84.
A long conversation follows as I’m trying to figure out why he wants to take me to the end of the world, since I can’t afford to pay for almost anything on such a long and faraway journey.
“I tell you, if I were fifty years younger, you’d be having a very hard time trying to get rid of me. But I’m not, so I can just be your friend”, he says laughing, trying to assure me of the terms of our relationship and help me relax into the proposal. But I still find it difficult.
“You like travelling, don’t you? So why then can’t you accept that life is giving you a present?” he finally asks the question that manages to convince me to say yes.
“Really?” he asks. “You are coming?” Now he’s the one who’s surprised. It’s the first time he’s met someone who’s as crazy as he is, it seems.
This is who I am. Once I know it’s something I want, I jump in head first and I go all the way. There’s no half measure with me. And I am brave enough to go to the end of the world with someone I’ve known for a very short while. I am thirsty for life. I have been so since I decided to live, after having been so close to death in early childhood.
It’s been one year since my journey to Cambodia. And it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. It has changed me. Now, a year later, I’m going on another journey. This time with a partner. Not a friend. Not just a lover, either. Someone I’ve decided to give a chance to. It’s hard, I’m not gonna lie. Every day I am a battle ground for these two inner forces – the one saying I should leave and travel on my own and the other one, the softer one, that wants love and companionship and dreams of domestic bliss, both on and off the road. I try to love them both. Last year this is what I asked for, keeling in all the temples I visited: “Send me my partner. Send me my travel companion. And I will serve You forever.” This is what I got.
PS More about the current journey and the one in Cambodia soon on the blog.
PPS The title of this blog post is a line from a song by Aphrodite’s Child that I like – End of the world.