people – Page 3 – a lover of the road

First week of the new year in Sweden. An identity loss/ change adventure

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

“Gott nytt år!” a tall, thin blond woman in a group in front of a house turns to us smiling as we’re walking down the street after the fireworks, about half an hour after midnight.

“Happy new year!” we’re both answering in English almost at the same time, as the whole group turns looking at us.

“You said they were not so friendly, didn’t you?” my travel companion asks me and we conclude they must be friendlier on account of the large quantities of alcohol on the menu on New Year’s Eve.

We’re walking, the two of us, along the narrow streets of Sollentuna, lined with their beautiful houses surrounded by quiet gardens hiding wild animals and numerous beings of the etheric realm, living peaceful undisturbed lives. This is our first walk together in the new year, hand in hand, quiet or talking in low voices, we’re looking around and inside. Every few steps we stop and kiss. And I can’t help thinking this is a beautiful beginning.

We then head back to the house and spend a couple of hours dancing and laughing with my cousins and our friends and playing foosball before I kidnap him. Later on, after we all wake up, we take our new year walk to the long and narrow golf in Sollentuna to visit the sea. Her majesty is quiet, cold and sunny. My cousin is taking pictures and I get my new year’s portrait and pictures of the two of us. Again, something new. I try not to think about it too much. Though that’s like trying not to breathe too much.

Stockholm is waiting for us after sunset and it does feel like I’m taking my travel companion on a trip through my life – showing him people and places and things that I like. If he likes it, he may stay, I think. If he doesn’t, he’s free to go. And I have nothing to lose, so I shouldn’t become too possessive or scared or controlling. I am just a guest house.

There’s this process of adjustment and disclosure and strings being tied between us as others snap with a sharp noise and a slap over bare skin. We’re reaching out, feeling and thinking, fearing, running away and returning, hiding and then coming out again. A hide and seek game of sore muscles and sweaty foreheads. Old wounds start hurting again and I remember this is what a relationship does to you – it changes you, it takes you out of your comfort zone completely, it molds you, it torments you, it makes you face your worst pain and your deepest fears and your worst flaws. I’ve forgotten… It’s been so long! Oh, and the happiness, too. Happiness is a terrorist planting suicidal bombs in every new lifetime. Plants bomb. Bomb goes off. Terrorist dies. Terrorist goes to the afterlife. Terrorist is reborn. Terrorist plants bomb… (You know the drill by now.)

Uppsala is as beautiful as I remember her and I love visiting Carolina Rediviva library at the university. The reading rooms here are making me feel like I’m taking a walk through a story in an English book and remind me of lives spent in monasteries, studying and writing and dusting manuscripts and feeling like I’m in the middle of a treasure, surrounded by so much knowledge a lifetime feels too little to take it all in. My skin so thin and yellowish like an old book’s pages. My eyes always smiling and my fingertips having orgasm after orgasm touching those hand written and beautifully decorated pages, rare and precious like fine jewelry. Now I’m just a tourist, my heart dancing as we’re quietly walking along these wooden floors, careful not to disturb the students lined at the tables, studying in perfect silence.

The day we go on a bike ride around the lakes in the natural reservation in Sollentuna reminds me of the summer and the ride with my friend, who was in love and so scared his lover might leave him for not being good enough that he was stopping every two minutes to send text messages and make short calls and scream. Am I now experiencing the same fear? I am stronger than this. Or am I actually experiencing the same pain? That of not being loved… Or have I finally met my match? Someone with a strength that doesn’t feel threatened by mine? Is it a shock? I need to let go…

Later on the same day we’re studying each other’s skin under the microscope at the Nobel Museum and I find it fascinating. Looking at those miniature creases, at the huge thick hairs growing like branchless trees in a desert, at bruises and scratches. We’re so vulnerable and pink at such a close look, so temporary, changing all the time… It’s such an illusion to think you ever really know somebody. Not even under the microscope can you truly know. So it’s like you’re with someone new every second, really. Exciting!

His blue eyes are laughing, his dry lips revealing his white teeth, one missing on the right side. Grey hair, weather beaten face, a two day white beard and gnarled hands. In his mid sixties, tall and thin, wearing a red fleece jacket and water proof pants over mountain boots, he’s talking to his friend who’s sitting on his left on the bus taking us to Stockholm central station.

“You know”, I tell him when we get off, “I was looking at those two old men next to us. You know, the ones chattering on the seats by the door…”

“I didn’t notice them”, he answers abruptly and I know that’s not true because I’d felt he was a bit uneasy about the attention I was giving them.

“Really? They were right there, how could you not have noticed them? Anyway, I was wondering… What’s making these people so alive and yet so centered, so calm in their apparent autism? I was admiring the life in them, their joy and ease.” I continue as he gives me no answer. “Is it sport? Is it the cold? Is it this place? Or is it a combination of everything?” I keep going as we’re making our way to the train station through the frozen snow.

The occasional solar plexus explosions are markers of fear and fighting to gain an illusory control over things. When one of us takes out his phone to send another text message, a silent workout of fine muscles takes place and pain takes over and the tension in the jaw bone threatens to smash a couple of teeth before it loosens up again and saliva can hydrate and soothe for a short, blessed time.

Only I can see the lesbian couple walking hand in hand in Gamla Stan as we’re walking from Vasa Museum to the Medieval Museum. Tall and thin and tough, they look like aliens come from outer space – invisible to everyone who hasn’t visited their planet at least once. A feeling of admiration and pride awakens in my heart and I’m feeling happy for their freedom. I clasp the hand of my boy and squeeze it harder and I don’t mention the aliens.

“I dreamed we had a baby. A very small baby boy. I was holding him at my chest. He was so small, I’d just given birth to him…” I confess one morning before even opening my eyes and right away I am met with the best way to start your day. This is new, too. I am careful with the ‘us bubble’, careful to allow it to be permeable, careful to look trough it and not seal it closed. It’s been so many years since I’ve traveled with a partner. Someone who’s not a friend, not a mere room mate, not a relative, not a stranger. The lover of the lover of the road.

On the other hand, my right eye insists on being swollen, itchy and ill every day and it’s frustrating because I don’t get it, no matter how hard I’m thinking. It’s been too long and I don’t get it. And on the last day, just as I wish I could disappear off the face of the earth rather than being betrayed again, my wallet goes missing. Lost or stolen. My ID, credit cards, driving licence, health insurance card, money and a couple of other things I cared about (such as a leaf from a Celtic church, a present from a dear friend) – all gone. The moment I open my purse and can’t find my wallet feels like someone has pulled the carpet from under my feet. I’m suspended, floating above the ground, nowhere. For a second, I believe I’m going to have a panic attack. But I don’t, so I have no idea how it really feels since I’ve never experienced one. I had my chance and I blew it. I’m crying as I make the call to the bank to block my cards and I feel the guy at the call center a little bit confused about how he should react. Professionalism wins in the end. Another first time.

Use me, lie to me, betray me! That’s what I should be saying instead of fearing so much and trying so hard to control what’s going on. On our flight back to Bucharest my travel companion shows me this story in his book about freedom. Someone was kidnapped and sold as slave and he didn’t fight back at all, but used his power in a much smarter way, dominating the others through going along with their plan and actually exercising a form of freedom people rarely know exists and rising on top of the situation. So now my sweet boy has actually managed to remind me that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to me that hasn’t already been done before. I am convinced fear is useless and I can always rise again, stronger than before.

Still, just as I’m writing these words, my heart reminds me not everything has already been done.

See the photos from this journey on Instagram.

Freedom and power. Fuel in my journey

Freedom has always been extremely important to me. I remember my childhood, full of restrictions and frustrations and my incapacity to understand why they were being placed on me, since most of them seemed improper, irrational and unfair. Not being allowed to stay outside after 9 pm, getting punished for coming home wet after playing in the snow, not being allowed to play with other children from the neighboring houses when I was visiting my father’s parents, being forced to eat food I resented, not being allowed to cross the one way street in front of our block of flats until a certain age, not being allowed to leave the house for a week when my father was upset with me.

“I can’t wait to come of age and leave home”, I remember telling my best friend in childhood. I must’ve been under the age of ten. We were taking a walk through the gardens surrounding some neighboring blocks of flats in our street. Independence street.

And so I did. I came of age and I left home. Packed my bags, put everything in my father’s old red Audi 80, took my boyfriend with me and had my father drive us to the capital city, where I was starting my university studies. We made a stop on the way to do some shopping for my new home – a rented studio not far from the city center, that belonged to my high school desk mate.

I can still feel that heaviness in my heart when I remember my mother’s eyes, trying to hold back her tears as she was kissing me goodbye before getting into the car and driving back to our home town. I was finally free.

A few days later, when my boyfriend had to return to our home town to his job and I was left totally alone for the very first time in my life, I was crying my heart out in my empty studio and made the decision to walk to university and back home every day so that I had less time on my hands to feel alone. A period of long walks and intense study started. Then friends and parties and beers and laughter. And freedom paid off.

“When I am not in a relationship, I am free to do whatever I want, with whoever I want”, my cancer boy tells me rolling on his belly and hiding his eyes, his cheeks red and a tremble in the tough muscles of his arms giving him away.

And all of a sudden I remember my long marriage and all my affairs and all the lies and all the loneliness and all the unhappiness and the desire for freedom. Had I given up on my freedom? Had I made my ex husband give up on his? Is this what I do? Am I so possessive and insecure that I take away people’s freedom?

And I also remember sitting on a park bench with a former lover and friend and giving a speech about how wonderful it is to feel so free as to have sex with anyone you find attractive and not form attachments, but keep free and affectionate at the same time. And I remember the violent storm that burst out in my lover’s chest and how the pulling of strings from my heart felt so painful. And my guilt. And the strong and clear feeling that I broke something precious and rare and ever so sensitive. Something that I can never put back together again, no matter how hard I might try.

“No”, I reply. “I am free and you are free. We are both free people. I am not willing to give up on my freedom. And I don’t want you to give up on yours. A relationship is not about losing your freedom. It is about being free to choose to be with one person. And this is a choice you don’t only make once, but every day for as long as you are in that relationship. In my freedom, I choose to be with you. And if you need to have sex with other people too, you don’t ignore your need and don’t give up on your freedom. You find a partner who can accept that. You are always free.”

2016 has been the year of my freedom. And in this freedom my personal power could grow more than ever before. And from my increased personal power has come even more freedom. And love. Unconditional love. This is the fuel in my life journey and the purpose and the destination. Love is my motivation. It is unconditional love that I wish to stabilize and serve with my great personal strength. Inshallah.

Don’t forget your lover’s ex-lovers

When we’re holding our lover I think many of us want to be able to erase his/ her past entirely. We avoid asking too many questions about the past and don’t enjoy getting too much information about relationship history or sexual experience. But who would our lovers be without a past? Who do you think made him/ her who he/ she is today? It all started with the parents in this lifetime, sure. But it continued with lovers.

So if you’re having great sex, please remember to send your gratitude to all his/ her previous lovers for providing good training. They’ve done so much work so that you can now have a wonderful time and only have to make small adjustments instead of starting from scratch. The same work has been done on you. So be kind and cultivate gratitude. The past is over and done with. So that we can now fully enjoy the present.

That’s what I mean about being (brutally) honest

“You are beautiful.”
“…”
“You know you are beautiful.”
“Yeah. You just told me, so now I know.”

“Red looks good on you.”
“That is a stylist’s remark and you are not my stylist. So you can tell me I’m beautiful.”

Only one hooker tonight

High heels, black leather pants, a stripe of skin showing between the belt and the hem of a tight jacket, arms folded over her ribs in a tight hug, long, curly, red hair, big everything. I look at her. She looks at me. Shortly, a taxi pulls up in front of her and she slowly walks to the back door on the right, opens it and gets in. Is he a regular, I wonder.

Having stopped to witness the scene, I rub my right ear feeling a little embarrassed and then resume my run. If I were a hooker, I’d probably look something like that, I think. Though my hair would probably be shorter. And not red. Probably. But the thought is quickly chased away by a wave of nausea. Dinner again. The same type of very fat cream. This time under street lights, while walking home.

When I used to smoke, if I was sad, I used to make myself sick. I smoked until the source of my tears became impossible to trace. Am I now trying to repeat the experience using cream instead?

Two guys fight over a parking space. One three times the size of the other. The small one is like a pekingese – hysterical, rude, not very bright and annoying. His opponent, a rare crossbreed between a pit-bull and a fluffy Newfoundland – intelligent, strong, quiet and with the self-confidence of knowing exactly when to deliver the final bite. I disappear before the show ends.

We, the nightshoppers

Some of us still wearing our office clothes, others just baggy pants and t-shirts, others bathrobes and slippers (yes!), squinting at the shelves in that tiring, artificial light that makes your skin pale, your brain foggy and suddenly so needy. Getting single beer bottles and the smallest pack of peanuts there is and then just walking among shelves looking for salvation.

I remember a night in Pnom Penh, Cambodia, when I went out and walked around and then just before returning to my hotel, I got into this shop and walked among the shelves and stopped in front of the beer fridge. And this short guy, in his late twenties or early thirties stopped next to me and opened the fridge door only to find we were both reaching for the same bottle. I don’t remember the brand, something local. We turned to one another and smiled and, with a short gesture of his hand, he let me have it and then reached for another one. I wanted to ask him if he cared to join me and have that beer in a park nearby, but before I got to the cash register he was already gone. I had no intention to pick him up and lure him into my den, I was just craving for conversation and companionship. At least we smiled and had a moment of connection there.

Here, in Bucharest, the fauna in the supermarket at night is much wilder. We never smile. If we see someone interesting, we just stare. Repeatedly. We lack the courage to smile, smile back (if an alien does smile to us) or say anything. If asked “Shall I wait for you?” we would probably collapse or just die through implosion. Such things are unheard of. In our autism, we simply move around like headless pawns in an electronic game of chess played by a slow computer on its own, in a demo version. And when we are out of the game, we cease to exist.

She was everybody’s darling

“I wonder… Why did you write that with the end of the world?”
“That it’s the end of the world as we know it?”
“Yes, that’s it!”
“Well, isn’t it. I sure hope it is…”
“What do you want this full moon to change?”
“Everything…”

PS The lower part of the T-shirt is self-made, while the poem is a collaborative writing piece by Bea, Andreea, Moni, Ilinca and me. Ilinca is eight years old and wrote the last line. The title is the image on top and the lines were written one by one, without any of us seeing what the others wrote. We just uncovered the whole thing at the end and enjoyed the surprise.

The photo of the full moon was taken by Bea.

All from the all girls Full moon & eclipse blockprinting party I hosted yesterday.

That wedding night in Porto

porto

The sunset had spread its honey all along my arms. Out on the terrace overlooking the river, looking at the stars, listening to stories, smiling and dancing, wearing high heels for the first time and a stunning dress, having decided Portuguese is very similar to the Moldavian accent, tasting yet another drink, my lips leaving soft plum marks on the rim of the glass before smiling again and sending more words to kiss your ears.

“Sorry, Mr Maker, do you know which way the river flows?”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA41Y4t9Rbg&w=560&h=315]

PS It must’ve been the proximity of the ocean that made everything much deeper and more dangerous. And slightly colder from the tide. Made everyone take good care not to let themselves dragged by some strong wave and lose themselves. So now, in the safety of our homes, we can look back.

Foray into the bank

I’m standing in a long queue at the bank as the branch manager comes out of his office, talking on the phone. When he sees me, he stops in front of me for a moment, looks into my eyes as he keeps talking and then pauses to say hello. I answer him. He goes into another office and then comes out again after a short while, walks past the queue and into his office again, leaving the door open. A few seconds later, he comes out again.

“Is everyone here for cash operations?” he inquires.

The people standing in line say yes and he’s looking at me as I nod.

“Can I help you with anything?” he insists addressing the queue and then approaches the man standing in front of me, who looks rather sick and has difficulty standing, and asks him what he is there for. The man wants to make a payment, so the guy shows him how to do it himself, using the self-banking robo (whatever its name is).

“If you are here for anything other than cash operations, please come into my office or go to my colleagues’ offices over there, who are counselors and can help you. So that you don’t spend too much time in our bank.”

He keeps looking at me and smiling while addressing the queue, so I smile back. Only for a few seconds do his blue eyes slide like melting ice from my eyes down to my neck, collar bones and cleavage.

I never forget to say thank you

I go jogging late tonight and, before leaving the hotel, I ask the receptionist, placing my room key on the reception desk, whether the party in the restaurant is gonna last long.

“Till morning”, she says, smiling while looking straight into my eyes.
“So… How do you suppose the other people in the hotel can sleep tonight?” I ask her, smiling back.
“Well… I am sorry… What floor are you on? Oh, the first… Yes… You see, I would change your room, but we are fully booked, I am sorry. It is not up to me…”

Then she adds something about some of the guests having to leave the country tomorrow and the party having been postponed from daytime to nighttime in the nick of time and other stuff I choose to ignore as I’m smiling and nodding.

I thank her and go out. And I am so tired and just want to go to bed but the least I can do is spend my time in a useful way if the noise is too loud to sleep. So I run. My legs hurt, my arms hurt and I yawn from time to time. But at least it’s quiet as I am moving further away from the hotel and I can listen to the crickets and the leaves rustling under my feet and I can see the full moon above, lighting up the sky like the sun at night up in the north.

I force myself to go all the way and, when I start running back, on the other side of the road, I stop from time to time to collect feathers from the ground, as I need them for the creative writing workshop I am teaching this week. So I end up running with this small bunch of black feathers closely tucked in my right hand. Listening to them whizzing as I am running, I make the decision to start working on my book in September and finish it before the end of the year. I have all it takes.

So I get back to the hotel, holding my small bunch of black feathers. The party is loud and quite a lot of people are dancing on the terrace or chatting in the parking lot. As I make my way to the entrance, three men standing in front of the main door, holding their drinks, sticking out their bellies and waving huge, imaginary dicks in my face, are quietly staring at my legs. I pretend not to notice and raise my chin, sticking out my chest as I walk past them and into the lobby. The receptionist hands me my key without a word. I say thank you and go upstairs.