i heard her whistling before she came into the room and looked at me with arched eyebrows and looked closer to see the title of the book i was reading as i was lying on the bed. i was going to get a portrait of the young artist as characterised by instability, full of passion and feelings needing to be expressed. that was one of the first things cristina said to me when describing herself: i am an artist.
later i said: what do you think it means to be an artist? she said something about being creative.
i said maybe you could say that every body is an artist in the sense that they create their own being in every moment. she considered this a may be
later she said: why didn't you smash your glass?
- i was going to ask you why did you smash your glass.
she had said: let us drink the last drops of muscat and smash our empty glasses. i thought she was jesting about smashing the glasses. i had only ever heard about that from joni mitchell "and we'll laugh and toast to nothing, and smash our empty glasses down". cristina wasn't toasting to nothing. she said that the wine represented luck - everything that we imbibed, everything that we wanted to affirm in ourselves - whereas the glass, in that glass-smashing ceremony, represented negative elements which we wished to chase away.
after she said that i marvelled at the human capacity to grant meaning to anywhich action in this ritual of life.
the next night i was lying on the bed again reading and evening had fallen when a young woman and a young man from the mountain rescue came in asking me if i had seen a girl who had borrowed a sleeping bag and not returned it. ten minutes later i could still hear them up in the attic. i thought i had better tell them that cristina had gone to sleep in the refuge the next valley along.
however, i didn't get to tell them anything.
when i climbed the outside staircase to the attic i quickly had to withdraw the light of my torch and climb back down again because i had caught them in a moment of passionate love-making. i knew that it was something that i shouldn't have seen. the contrast struck me, their officious arrival ten minutes earlier, "we are from the mountain rescue, looking for a girl and a sleeping bag" and then rolling and squirming on the beds. the thin line between our real passionate selves and the officious task of inhabiting the material world.
mihai bursesc had read my couchsurfing message about me coming to bucharest and had written to me saying "well, if your itineray changes there is a bed for you here, a place to charge your batteries"
at the rezetat national park, 600km west of bucharest, romania. i was happy to change my itinerary and charge myself with the majesty and grandiose feelings that come from being in the mountains.
mihai had a simple wooden cabin in the village salasu de sus with "free accomodation" painted bright and friendly on the fence. he loved to welcome travellers and offer tea made from the dried plants of the surrounding countryside. i spent the day sleeping in the room full of beds - after a largely sleepless night in the train from bucharest. mihai spent the day gathering wild berries. in the evening i was charged with sleep and walked up to mihai's other mountain cabin, also painted with the words free accommodation.
lots of stillness there, lots of ancient wisdom in the stones. in the early morning i climbed up and pricked up my ears to the Stillness and Beauty and Ancient Wisdom of that place.
i was thinking about hitchhiking all the way home but i didn't like the thought of all the waiting i might be letting myself in for. Paul had told me that i would struggle to get lifts in romania because i didnt exactly have a normal appearance and romanians only liked to pick up people who looked normal. i think he was talking about my abundant facial hair and less than elegant choice of shirt that day. when i heard his recommendation to slide through the countryside in the nicely-priced night train i decided not to ignore it. Paul stopped for me as i was walking out of town one evening. i said "bucharest?" paul said, "i am only going half an hour - you are better getting the train" i said "could you please give me a lift even for just for half an hour?" after waiting for so long i simply wanted to sit in somebody's car. first off paul wanted to see my passport. later he said "i don't know why i stopped for you, i generally never stop for hitchhikers". he invited me to a coffee at a roadside restaurant and we stayed up till 02:30 talking with Dan, another friend of his. english words came to them slowly, interspersed with rolling eyes and "ahh, talking philosophy in english is difficult!" we lost track of the hours. it showed the power of wanting to communicate, despite their imperfect grasp of the language. romanian words mostly didn't come to me at all.
i spent the next day at paul and adela's house, watching youtube videos of traditional romanian music and dancing, getting beat by paul at chess, eating adela's tastiness from the kitchen and tasting their neighbour's freshly distilled plum liquor. adela herself ate only a plate of vegetables at lunch, explaining that it was an orthodox custom to eat vegan on wednesday and friday. paul added that it was a fundamentalist orthodox custom and there was laughter. their son andrea was eleven years old and spoke near perfect english learned, as he explained to me, by discussing how to make software on online chat facilities. his brother bogdan was nine years old and communicated with very winning smiles. i told paul that he was like my good samaritan. i had been at the side of the road not knowing anybody or exactly where i would go. he said that i was also like a good samaritan for him, causing him to think about and reevaluate his lifestyle. i think he said that just to be nice.
coincidently, just as couchsurfer mihai's invitation of mountain repose came to me, paul and adela told me about their visit to that same part of the transylvanian mountains just the week before, and in particular the prislop monestary, where father Arsenie Boca - who can perform miracles if you ask him to - is buried.
i arrived with my rucksack in the rain. i was wearing my long indian skirt because i know that shorts want to be avoided by the monastic community. they saw my skirt and said "it is okay to wear shorts". i wanted to attend the evening liturgy in the church but instead they invited me to eat food with them in the dining room. there was maria - a very friendly woman who i supposed was a nun because of her attire - and a very friendly well-dressed man, and a young boy who spoke english well and translated everything they said to me. maria took me to father Arsenie's tomb after the meal. it was surrounded by a profusion of flowers. she told me to make a wish in front of his grave, but rather than feeling at ease and knowing exactly what to wish for, i was feeling that all my senses were pricked up and curious about this new social situation and what would happen. we were walking back and maria asked me what did i think of this place. the air was filled with cool moisture, the evening light infused the place with a soft rosy glow. there were church bells gonging softly and soft green conifer covered hills. i said: e foarte frumos. it is very beautiful.
the well-dressed man asked me where i was going to sleep. i said "i usually sleep in the forest"
we looked at the dripping wet trees and felt the moisture all around us.
he said, "you can't sleep in this monestary, but if you come with me to the village. . . come to my car"
i shook hands with maria, who always radiated genuine friendliness. i said, "mulţumesc... esti gentil"
they found it funny for me to say gentil. it reminded them of gentleman.
esti amabil.
her response was "sunt romana", as if that explained everything. she said "you are always welcome here when you come back"
in the village the man knocked on a couple of doors and found somebody with a mattress space on the floor. they told me they already had a room of people sleeping that night. it seemed they were used to accomodating people who had been at the monestary.
the next day i was sitting reading in the park in the town of deva, waiting for the bus that would take me to london, when i came in contact with some of the people that i had been told to watch out for in romania. "bad people" paul had said, "all they do is beg and steal" a file of women filed past me asking for money, indicating that they had babies to feed. i gave them my bread and when i had no more bread another woman came and asked for money, indicating that she had babies to feed. i said no and she asked for a "cuţit",
cuţit? i enquired.
she communicated the meaning of cuţit by making the gesture of slashing her dress
"cuţit, cuţit" she repeated.
why did she possibly want me to give her a knife?
when she shuffled off, i quickly left that park too. i didn't like the image of a knife slashing a person's clothing which she had implanted in me. most of all i didn't like the look in her eyes, or the tone of her voice. as much as i didn't want to give credence to that belief that some people are by nature "bad", i had the warnings of other people in my head, and the words of Jonus-the-Austrian-who-was-walking-to-Jerusalem, who told me that he had been surrounded by gypsies brandishing knives in the woods of romania, when, miraculously, the police turned up.
when your feelings tell you "get away from this person" it is better to listen to them.
i got on the eurolines bus which slid for two days along the motorways.
i slid into london slowly. ever so s l o w l y
i was biting my nails thinking "most likely i will miss my megabus connection" i was feeling gloomy about missing my megabus connection, then a reprieve came when i saw a clock and realised i had an extra hour of british summer time. those sixty minutes were being consumed in the 7 a.m. traffic jams of the streets of london. i was back to biting my nails. all i could do was grant myself more reprieve by reasoning that missing my megabus connection was a very minor detail in the big scheme of things.
and thus liberated from my gloomy nail-biting i ran with my rucksack through bustling victoria station to board the bus to glasgow which slide off thirty seconds later.
what a privilege to be rolling along the motorway towards glasgow. great britian seemed like a vast green island where a cool temperature was always maintained by a vast moist blanket of moisture. i loved to hear the glaswegian accent again. i was looking at everyone, all the elderly people, and picking up subtle british character traits which would have been lost on me had i not been abroad paying attention to everybody else's character traits. there is generally a lot of politeness in british people. a lot of respect and non-intrusion. generally. even the co-op employee in lochgilphead chose to say "excuse me, can i help you?" when she meant to say "what are you doing?" when she saw me looking in the bins.
there are a lot of fresh feelings in the british isles. swimming in the sea makes your blood go that much more tingly. there is always a little cool breeze coming from somewhere. when you have a direct view to the sun shining in the sky it is a special occasion. you can pass someone and say "lovely day"
and they will respond "aye, it is just glorious!" they really mean it it is glorious.
the clouds are always hanging about, ready to obscure the sun. every moment is a billowing shifting cloudscape. not always billowing, sometimes subtle and muted. in august. summer doesn't mean "very hot" it could likely as not mean rain. colours are dense and real, vibrant and profound. or else faint and airy and ethereal. there is a feeling of freshness in the air.
later i said: what do you think it means to be an artist? she said something about being creative.
i said maybe you could say that every body is an artist in the sense that they create their own being in every moment. she considered this a may be
later she said: why didn't you smash your glass?
- i was going to ask you why did you smash your glass.
she had said: let us drink the last drops of muscat and smash our empty glasses. i thought she was jesting about smashing the glasses. i had only ever heard about that from joni mitchell "and we'll laugh and toast to nothing, and smash our empty glasses down". cristina wasn't toasting to nothing. she said that the wine represented luck - everything that we imbibed, everything that we wanted to affirm in ourselves - whereas the glass, in that glass-smashing ceremony, represented negative elements which we wished to chase away.
after she said that i marvelled at the human capacity to grant meaning to anywhich action in this ritual of life.
the next night i was lying on the bed again reading and evening had fallen when a young woman and a young man from the mountain rescue came in asking me if i had seen a girl who had borrowed a sleeping bag and not returned it. ten minutes later i could still hear them up in the attic. i thought i had better tell them that cristina had gone to sleep in the refuge the next valley along.
however, i didn't get to tell them anything.
when i climbed the outside staircase to the attic i quickly had to withdraw the light of my torch and climb back down again because i had caught them in a moment of passionate love-making. i knew that it was something that i shouldn't have seen. the contrast struck me, their officious arrival ten minutes earlier, "we are from the mountain rescue, looking for a girl and a sleeping bag" and then rolling and squirming on the beds. the thin line between our real passionate selves and the officious task of inhabiting the material world.
at the rezetat national park, 600km west of bucharest, romania. i was happy to change my itinerary and charge myself with the majesty and grandiose feelings that come from being in the mountains.
mihai had a simple wooden cabin in the village salasu de sus with "free accomodation" painted bright and friendly on the fence. he loved to welcome travellers and offer tea made from the dried plants of the surrounding countryside. i spent the day sleeping in the room full of beds - after a largely sleepless night in the train from bucharest. mihai spent the day gathering wild berries. in the evening i was charged with sleep and walked up to mihai's other mountain cabin, also painted with the words free accommodation.
lots of stillness there, lots of ancient wisdom in the stones. in the early morning i climbed up and pricked up my ears to the Stillness and Beauty and Ancient Wisdom of that place.
Mountain therapy.
i was thinking about hitchhiking all the way home but i didn't like the thought of all the waiting i might be letting myself in for. Paul had told me that i would struggle to get lifts in romania because i didnt exactly have a normal appearance and romanians only liked to pick up people who looked normal. i think he was talking about my abundant facial hair and less than elegant choice of shirt that day. when i heard his recommendation to slide through the countryside in the nicely-priced night train i decided not to ignore it. Paul stopped for me as i was walking out of town one evening. i said "bucharest?" paul said, "i am only going half an hour - you are better getting the train" i said "could you please give me a lift even for just for half an hour?" after waiting for so long i simply wanted to sit in somebody's car. first off paul wanted to see my passport. later he said "i don't know why i stopped for you, i generally never stop for hitchhikers". he invited me to a coffee at a roadside restaurant and we stayed up till 02:30 talking with Dan, another friend of his. english words came to them slowly, interspersed with rolling eyes and "ahh, talking philosophy in english is difficult!" we lost track of the hours. it showed the power of wanting to communicate, despite their imperfect grasp of the language. romanian words mostly didn't come to me at all.
i spent the next day at paul and adela's house, watching youtube videos of traditional romanian music and dancing, getting beat by paul at chess, eating adela's tastiness from the kitchen and tasting their neighbour's freshly distilled plum liquor. adela herself ate only a plate of vegetables at lunch, explaining that it was an orthodox custom to eat vegan on wednesday and friday. paul added that it was a fundamentalist orthodox custom and there was laughter. their son andrea was eleven years old and spoke near perfect english learned, as he explained to me, by discussing how to make software on online chat facilities. his brother bogdan was nine years old and communicated with very winning smiles. i told paul that he was like my good samaritan. i had been at the side of the road not knowing anybody or exactly where i would go. he said that i was also like a good samaritan for him, causing him to think about and reevaluate his lifestyle. i think he said that just to be nice.
coincidently, just as couchsurfer mihai's invitation of mountain repose came to me, paul and adela told me about their visit to that same part of the transylvanian mountains just the week before, and in particular the prislop monestary, where father Arsenie Boca - who can perform miracles if you ask him to - is buried.
i arrived with my rucksack in the rain. i was wearing my long indian skirt because i know that shorts want to be avoided by the monastic community. they saw my skirt and said "it is okay to wear shorts". i wanted to attend the evening liturgy in the church but instead they invited me to eat food with them in the dining room. there was maria - a very friendly woman who i supposed was a nun because of her attire - and a very friendly well-dressed man, and a young boy who spoke english well and translated everything they said to me. maria took me to father Arsenie's tomb after the meal. it was surrounded by a profusion of flowers. she told me to make a wish in front of his grave, but rather than feeling at ease and knowing exactly what to wish for, i was feeling that all my senses were pricked up and curious about this new social situation and what would happen. we were walking back and maria asked me what did i think of this place. the air was filled with cool moisture, the evening light infused the place with a soft rosy glow. there were church bells gonging softly and soft green conifer covered hills. i said: e foarte frumos. it is very beautiful.
the well-dressed man asked me where i was going to sleep. i said "i usually sleep in the forest"
we looked at the dripping wet trees and felt the moisture all around us.
he said, "you can't sleep in this monestary, but if you come with me to the village. . . come to my car"
i shook hands with maria, who always radiated genuine friendliness. i said, "mulţumesc... esti gentil"
they found it funny for me to say gentil. it reminded them of gentleman.
esti amabil.
her response was "sunt romana", as if that explained everything. she said "you are always welcome here when you come back"
in the village the man knocked on a couple of doors and found somebody with a mattress space on the floor. they told me they already had a room of people sleeping that night. it seemed they were used to accomodating people who had been at the monestary.
the next day i was sitting reading in the park in the town of deva, waiting for the bus that would take me to london, when i came in contact with some of the people that i had been told to watch out for in romania. "bad people" paul had said, "all they do is beg and steal" a file of women filed past me asking for money, indicating that they had babies to feed. i gave them my bread and when i had no more bread another woman came and asked for money, indicating that she had babies to feed. i said no and she asked for a "cuţit",
cuţit? i enquired.
she communicated the meaning of cuţit by making the gesture of slashing her dress
"cuţit, cuţit" she repeated.
why did she possibly want me to give her a knife?
when she shuffled off, i quickly left that park too. i didn't like the image of a knife slashing a person's clothing which she had implanted in me. most of all i didn't like the look in her eyes, or the tone of her voice. as much as i didn't want to give credence to that belief that some people are by nature "bad", i had the warnings of other people in my head, and the words of Jonus-the-Austrian-who-was-walking-to-Jerusalem, who told me that he had been surrounded by gypsies brandishing knives in the woods of romania, when, miraculously, the police turned up.
when your feelings tell you "get away from this person" it is better to listen to them.
i got on the eurolines bus which slid for two days along the motorways.
i slid into london slowly. ever so s l o w l y
i was biting my nails thinking "most likely i will miss my megabus connection" i was feeling gloomy about missing my megabus connection, then a reprieve came when i saw a clock and realised i had an extra hour of british summer time. those sixty minutes were being consumed in the 7 a.m. traffic jams of the streets of london. i was back to biting my nails. all i could do was grant myself more reprieve by reasoning that missing my megabus connection was a very minor detail in the big scheme of things.
and thus liberated from my gloomy nail-biting i ran with my rucksack through bustling victoria station to board the bus to glasgow which slide off thirty seconds later.
what a privilege to be rolling along the motorway towards glasgow. great britian seemed like a vast green island where a cool temperature was always maintained by a vast moist blanket of moisture. i loved to hear the glaswegian accent again. i was looking at everyone, all the elderly people, and picking up subtle british character traits which would have been lost on me had i not been abroad paying attention to everybody else's character traits. there is generally a lot of politeness in british people. a lot of respect and non-intrusion. generally. even the co-op employee in lochgilphead chose to say "excuse me, can i help you?" when she meant to say "what are you doing?" when she saw me looking in the bins.
there are a lot of fresh feelings in the british isles. swimming in the sea makes your blood go that much more tingly. there is always a little cool breeze coming from somewhere. when you have a direct view to the sun shining in the sky it is a special occasion. you can pass someone and say "lovely day"
and they will respond "aye, it is just glorious!" they really mean it it is glorious.
the clouds are always hanging about, ready to obscure the sun. every moment is a billowing shifting cloudscape. not always billowing, sometimes subtle and muted. in august. summer doesn't mean "very hot" it could likely as not mean rain. colours are dense and real, vibrant and profound. or else faint and airy and ethereal. there is a feeling of freshness in the air.
being in britain for me means family reunion.
family therapy.
having roots
the conversation of familiar energy fluxes
fortified with connections.
the roots look for those special nutrients in the soil, and draw them up, and grow gladly.
Hi Carson. It's great that you are able to appreciate being the UK in a fresh way after experiences in many other countries. Thanks for reminding me about the nuances of life here (like polite people and clouds) that I don't notice because I've grown so used to being in their midst.
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