I love the village life ﻿
Born Dec 15 1976 in Timisoara, Romania to a single mother (no idea who my dad is), raised by my grandparents since I was 3 month old in Ramna. Ramna is a Romanian tiny hilly village of the beaten path, with orchards, running creeks and pleasant weather. The summers were warm with torrential rain, in autumns there were powerful storms that left the streets covered in walnuts. In the snowy winter, the power went out every night and we stayed at oil lamp eating "bou" (bull). Bou is potatoes mashed mixed with feta, shaped like a cock I could keep in my hand and dip in a mixture of oil and garlic. We didn't have bath or water in the house, and we all slept in one bedroom.﻿

My grandad (1916 – 2009), was gone working in the garden 14/24 in spring, summer, autumn. In winter he stayed inside waving baskets all day long. He fought 6 years in WWII in Yalta. In the war he made a pact with God that if God helps him escape the war alive so he can go back to his two kids, he will become a Christian. He grew up Orthodox, going regularly to church, praying one prayer again and again but was not satisfied and always searched for a deeper connection with God. He searched for churches that were more Christian like so after war ended, he came back home alive and went to visit Valeapai, my grandma's village, where he went to Valeapai Baptist Church. He loved how they were praying and singing in that church and decide to start a Baptist church in Ramna. After a few years some Baptist people from some city closed his church, took his authorization and took away the bibles. A year later another person from Bucharest helped him receive an authorization to open the church again as a Pentecostal Church and that's how he became the village's Pentecostal pastor for over 35 years. While he was pastor the church was overflowing with people. In winter the windows were sweating and drops of water were falling from them. He was a one man show- the pastor, the preacher, the orchestra and the choir conductor. He forced me to sing in church but I was too shy and couldn’t memorize the lyrics. He had Adi, the cute boy who lived across the street, sing with me holding my hand but I still couldn’t do it. I let Adi sing alone and ran to my grandma’s lap. I couldn’t understand why my grandad was so cruel and kept pushing me do things I just couldn’t do. Once, he broke my nose. He was preaching to the many brothers and sisters who gathered weekly at our house and I was laughing under the table with Adi. He got mad with me, pushed my head towards the floor and broke my nose. There was so much blood, that all the people left right then in horror. Once, he threw me in the street for stealing my neighbor's baby doll. He told me to leave his house and go wherever I can see with my eyes "he doesn't raise thieves under his roof". I went to the bus station, I wanted to leave. I had a feeling that no matter where I'll end up, I'll be alright. The whole village was afraid of my grandad. He was not just the pastor for Christians he was the wise guy of the village, the one who was called when there were knives fight and we got death threats too becasue his involvement. He knew to graft trees, select the best seeds, heal plants, cut all types of animals, council couples. A drove of people were in and out of our house pretty much all his life. Half of them were there for borrowing money, Even tough my grandad screamed every day that we don't have money, he was awesome provider and we had more than most. Romanians were very poor people.  About 12 house to the left was the village's pub. I was playing there and saw men so drunk unable to walk, fallen asleep in the ditch, smelling so strongly like alcohol. It was a different world for them and I knew I will never end up like them. Everyone looked down on them and shook their heads. I never thought that someday I will end up asleep naked on the floor too.  When people asked me "Who's are you" I was taught to say "I'm Jurca's". Jurca was my grand grand grandad, and he was Gypsy but was not biological. I have a photo, and my grandad’s mother’s brother is also Gypsy but I’m told that person is also not blood related to us

My grandma (1920 - 2013) ﻿
was born and raised in Valeapai, the neighboring village in a wealthy family who owned the cutting grain machines. She only stayed home cooking divine food and raising 2 kids and 3 grandkids. She refused, to my granddad's life long disbelief, to touch working the land.  Every time she went to town, she bought me something, candies, clothes, toys. I love my grandma so so so much I feel one with her. My grandma lets me roam alone wherever I want on the hills, in the village, past the village. She loves roaming too and we go way further. We take a big thick stick because on the hills are those big vicious dogs who take care of the sheep. She takes me to the village's cemetery up the hill, where the grass was tall and the wind strong, and reads me the poems written on the tombstones in a voice like she was singing crying. I start seeing photos on people's walls with their dead parents, brothers, sisters, even children. I start seeing some neighbors having very old furniture, some very old houses and I got fascinated. I wanted to know about those people who lived and died and slept in those old beds and lived in those old rooms, how they looked, what their life story was. It felt like their spirits were still in the house. 

The village house﻿
Our house was newer built red brick with large rooms and large windows that let in a lot of light but I liked my neighbor’s clay house that had very small windows, was very dark inside, had a musty smell, had only one room, was all clay, the floor was clay, had a small door with very high threshold and inside there was a big solid wood bed with an old smell. The neighbors were very old and their parents, I heard, they all slept in that bed. The bedding was inherited too and very old, it was different than what we had. My grandma said only poor people live in an old small clay house, but that type of house was what I liked, what I wanted for myself.

Afraid of seeing people, my brain shuts them out
I was so sensitive and shy that around people my brain shuts down, leaving me alone with just my breathing.  I neither see anyone nor hear. When somebody opens to talk, I cringe and my brain stops processing their words. I don't know what all the people of this world talk and do, I don't like it and I don’t want to know.
 
Loving to stay home alone. 
My grandma had to go buy milk, had to do work with animals but I didn't want to go with her. I loved to stay home alone. When I'm left home alone my joy increases 20 or 50 times. I can sing and dance all across the room and do and feel and dream what I want to exactly when I want and that makes me so happy.


Loving making love and dreaming of making love 
with my cute boyfriend Adi, a year older than me, who follows me all over with a love face. He's the only one I let touch my baby doll. He can even scratch it if he wants to. We tried to have sex a few times and that was my idea. Every night when I have to go inside, I don't want to. I want to stay out and play more with Adi. My grandma every night fools me. She tells Adi "go to your home and come at the window and she will be at her window eating and you can eat seeing each other". She told me “Come, come inside! Adi is coming at the window!!". I went in the room. She locked the door behind me, put the key in her pocket, and marched towards the window. I followed her to the window, but Adi was never at the window. Adi and his grandparents were not living in the rooms they had at the street, like us, they lived in the room in the courtyard, like most villagers. ﻿

Loving babies
We have to go three times per week to church, my grandma keeps me a bit in church, gives me to eat apple or pumpkin strudel then sends me to stay outside because inside is too boring. Outside there are irresistibly cute soft warm babies in their mother's loving arms. I can't have enough of watching them. When a mother passes me by, my heart starts beating fast. I'm in awe of mothers. Mothers to me, are out of this world and the most important. Adi, like all the others kids in church, is not allowed to stay outside. The church takes so long to be over and its so painful to wait outside alone with nobody to play with. 

Escaping village kindergarten
Adi starts going to kindergarten and my grandma decides to send me there too. When I got in and saw many kids, teachers, one long row of little tables with chairs, paper and pencils, I hated it. I hate pencils and paper they are so boring. Adi sits next to me and he seems he can go with the kindergarten’s flow. All kids came here do this, then all went there did whatever and Adi joined the crowd's movement. He didn't stay with me, he joined the crowd. There was nothing in there for me. Adi disappeared from the picture. I found myself alone in a disgusting place I didn't want to be in and I needed to escape. Finally, the lunch break came, and I got outside in the sunny courtyard to play. There was a merry go round, the kids got on it and somehow, I got on too. The kids spined so fast, for so long, that I got dizzy, my hand slipped, I flew of it, hurt myself and started crying to bring my grandma to take me out of there. And that was it. Nobody could make me go to that disgusting place again. 
 
Afraid of seeing animals 
The dog is chained, the pigs and goats are enclosed. The ducks, chickens and turkeys are allowed to roam all over the courtyard and I'm absolutely terrified of our turkeys. The turkeys are constantly angry and look like want to jump in your head for no reason like they are crazy.  I'm also afraid of the roosters who chase and peck on hens all day long. On the street many neighbors have geese who roam free and they are also crazy, they chase me for no reason and want to bite my leg with their hard beak. I had this constant thought of how much happier I'd be if the people would stop raising turkeys and geese  

Loving nature and seasons
Our garden, almost square shape, my grandad calls Paradise, The garden of Eden. Two houses down the secondary dirt road start the hills. Flowers, trees, the wind, the smell of seasons, colonies of bees, birds, butterflies, sunshine, rain. I keep all day long track of flowers, fruits and leaves, of their change in color, shape and texture. I sit on the stairs on the porch and keep track of wind, of the sunlight temperature on my skin. I see when the dark clouds came over the garden. I watch the torrential rain from the window. I see the sun rays after the storm coming over the garden warming up everything and shining a magic light. Storms make me feel so excited, so inspired, they make me feel like making love. ﻿

Fiercely protective of my and my people's peace, harmony, and good times. 
We had another girl, Mariana, me and Adi played with when she came to visit. She was not living year-round in the village and she was not exciting but she was alright. Mariana, like my grandma, never wore underwear and I always wanted to not wear either. One day, a new boy moved on the street with a green ride on tractor with big wheels that made a wonderful sound. I thought that tractor was the coolest toy in the world. All I wanted was to ride it. The new boy came to play at my house without his tractor. Problem was, he couldn't play. He had no understanding of us, of what we were playing, and no intention to try to understand. He was constantly running around like a chicken without head, like a blindfolded kid with a bat in his hand hitting in all directions. He didn't wait for his turn to the swing. Once on the swing, we couldn't get him off. He couldn't harmonize with us and us with him for one day, two days, three days. I couldn't stand him anymore. We couldn't play anymore because of him. I said "lets get him out and lock the gate ". We took him by his shirt, pants and one leg, got him out and locked the gate. The boy started screaming from the street to let him in. His grandma came, my grandad came, my grandma came, all to talk to me. All the talk about "we are all brothers and sisters in Christ let the boy in", couldn't make me change my mind. I couldn't stand that boy and I needed him out to restore my and my people's peace, harmony, and good times. My granddad looked at me, shook his head, turned his immense back and went in the garden to mind his business.


Liking myself
By the time I was 6, I was my own person. With the good traits and the bad traits, I liked myself. I felt secure under sun and felt a drive inside to celebrate every day. The dream of making love and having babies affected me in a very powerful way and is all that ever affected me. Everything else, I' don't care either way.


Escaping city kindergarten
 Because I was 6 and at 7 in Romania kids had to start school, my mother calls me from the village and puts me in a city kindergarten to get socialized and civilized. When I see myself in the huge city kindergarten I cry every day all day for three weeks straight. There were two shifts of 3 teachers each, in total 6. All of them, absolutely all of them, were insensitive to say the least. I thought when I'll be big, I'll make a rule "no insensitive adults are allowed to interact with small kids". There was a bully boy who couldn't stop bothering me and I broke his nose. Blood from his nose came on his mouth and shirt. The bully kids meant nothing to me the  bullies for me were the adults, almost all  adults were insensitive, disrespectful and cruel i felt especially with kids becasue they could. I refused to eat, to sleep, to play. All the teachers asked me to do, I didn't do. I didn’t hear them. I stayed all the time by the entrance door waiting for somebody to come through the door and take me from there. The teachers asked me "what would you like to play". I said "I want to play outside." All the kids and the teacher got in the backyard all fenced in. They had this organized game with rules and regulations I couldn't understand, or that game or another game. All boring, disgusting games. They asked me which one would you like to play? None! They were not the type of games I wanted to play ! I scanned for a hole in the fence to escape. There was no hole. One day, from sitting next to the entrance door I got out and went in the next room that also had a locked door. I slipped through the second door with a person and went to hide under stairs. From there I watched with what person I can get out of the building and I started escaping. If you are determined, and look like you know where you are going people let you go. Once on the streets, I had nowhere to go because home the door was locked and nobody was home. One morning, my mother didn't wake me up to take me to kindergarten. She said I was" sleeping like an angel " and she was sorry to wake me up. She had the Serbian neighbor next door, come to take me to her apartment to take care of me. When I saw that, every morning I slept like an angel with my palms like in a prayer under my face. That didn't work anymore. I started begging my mother to let me stay home with the neighbor and my mother finally agreed. One day the neighbor took me shopping in downtown, about 25 minutes walking from home. Once in the shop, my neighbor disappeared. I looked all around and she was nowhere, so I decided to go home alone the same way we came. The neighbor freaked out, thought I was kidnapped and called the police, who called my mother at her work. My mother told the police that she knows me and is pretty sure I was home waiting by the door. That's exactly where I was. My neighbor was about to have heart attack and didn't want to take care of me anymore. My mother found another neighbor to take care of me but I couldn't stand that mean, disgusting woman who's house smelled strongly. I told my mother how she packed me a red apple but that woman gave my red apple to her daughter and gave me a green apple. Red apples were more expensive than green apples and tasted better. My mother finally agreed to let me stay home alone. I couldn't be more excited and overjoyed - home alone doing what I wanted when I wanted. I could find all day what to play. I never got bored. My mother didn't feel good about leaving me locked home alone and sent me back to the village

City garden- my peace and dream place
Back to the village, my grandparents suddenly decide because of me to sell the village house and we move to Timisoara where my mother and my uncle had been living for a long time. Timisoara is a medieval city with cobblestone squares, fountains and cathedrals, with parks, rose garden and magnolia trees along the Bega River. We move in a clay house in the cheapest neighborhood mostly with Gypsies, Hungarians, Germans, and only a few Serbians and Romanians. My uncle found us the house from a Christian sister who just died. We move there with all the animals, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, chickens, dog, cats, bees and all their houses. The house has three bedrooms but again we sleep all in the small bedroom next to the kitchen. Like in the village, we heated with wood and that was expensive so we couldn't use too much. In the night the fire was off and was cold. We had duck feathers comforters, those were the warmest. In the morning, my grandma got up an hour earlier to start the fire. I loved the smell of smoke and the sound of wood starting to burn in the coldness of the dawn. My new city play kids are an Hungarian girl and a big Christian musicians Gypsy family with kids my age. All the gypsy kids play all the instruments and we played at their house Christian music and watched horror movies day in and day out until I started to be afraid of my own shadow. The house has a huge garden with over 60 mature trees - cherry, peach, apricots, plum, pear, medlar and a long pathway in the middle covered by old grapevine with strawberries on both sides. My grandparent's big beautiful city garden becomes my heaven on earth, my peace place, the place I get in touch with myself and dream. Dream of the day I will be only with my lover and my babies away from everything and everyone else.

Ignoring the school and the teachers like they don’t exist
When first grade started, I moved again with my mother in her one-bedroom apartment shared with two more sub renters, 45 minutes by public transportation from my grandparent’s city house. The school looks a cross between hospital and jail. Only the sight of it gives me constant anxiety and nausea. I'm afraid of school, of it’s hallways, all same classrooms, rows of tables, I'm afraid of teachers, I'm afraid of my colleagues. I don’t like how the school looks and feels, how the teachers look and feel, how my colleagues look and feel. I hate it all. I don’t want to be there at all.  In the beginning of grade 1, I walked out of school in the middle of the school day half a dozen times. The teachers didn't know what to do with me, were just asking "how can she escape". The school had locked doors and a doorman. Me escaping didn't help me with not having to go to school so I stopped trying to escape. Everything the teachers say and do, I'm not interested. I'm selectively deaf, mute and blind. Teachers' threats, praise or criticism of me don’t get processed in my head either. I can't  care less, I just don't want to be there. I had this idea that I can paint and I wanted to show my classmate that I can paint but when I tried, no good painting turned up. It frustrated and pained me to extreme. I read without any comprehension. I don't respond at all to any of teacher’s questions. I don't even try to think of their questions. I can't memorize and I don't even try. I copy at tests. I copy my homework. I’m constantly trashed by my classmates for copying my homework from them and they constantly ask me when I will start doing my own homework.  Whatever the teachers said to do, I don’t do. I don’t hear anything they say. I have no interest in anybody's opinions about anything. Only hearing the word "ideas" my stomach drops. I have no ideas in my head that the school would like to know about. I’m inside my head, into my own world, into my own feelings, dreams, and my own play and that's it. Everything is blocked off and there is no way anything I don't like will sip in not today and not ever. I know that.
We had some famous authors like Mihai Eminescu a poet and I hated poetry because I couldn't understand a thing. Then there was one called Ion Creanga and his famous "Childhood Memories" book. What disgusting boring horrifying that book was. Only hearing some words and how he stared the book made me sick. To make things worse, almost all the kids in my class were raving about how much they loved that book and how they read it even a few times. The book was named "a book all the kids loved ". Sickening and horrifying the writer, his boring weird childhood and all the kids who either loved that book or pretended to. I don't even know. I didn't get to a point where I can understand exactly how comes most love what I can't stand and don't love what I love. Maybe I'm too sensitive and most are not. When all are one way and I'm alone the other way gives me a feeling of life doom. I didn't have a library card and didn't know how people borrow, what is that "borrowing" and I was afraid even of that. When my colleagues went to the library to return their books, I waited for them outside. I couldn't even get in the library. I felt I didn't belong in the library, like I didn't have the right to be there and I thought the librarians didn't let you be there without a library card. Just seeing rows and walls full of books and feel the smell of old books scared me. There were a few kids heavily into make believe and fiction. Only seeing the faces of these kids I felt stressed out. Almost all kids could play pretend games except me. I could not. I couldn't even try becasue I didn't even like those games. At school, every Friday, last hour, as a treat after a week 's hard work we played a word game named "Oranges". That game terrified me more than the school. Everything that is named fun or games and is not, feels so sick. I couldn't understand the game and I didn't even try to understand. When it came my turn I would stay sickening mute and everyone was puzzled with me because it was a simple fun game everyone understood, "had fun playing" (or pretended to have fun, I swear to God if I know) and could play, except me. I so wanted to not be there, to not participate in the "fun hour", to be left to go home but I had no choice. That horrible game went on and on for years. Once, I passed a note to one of my neighbors who was sited on a different row. Usually, the teacher didn't catch our notes but she caught exactly that one. I wrote on it "Is penis a country?". The teacher read my note and turned completely red like a lobster. Her face, her ears, her neck. Everything turned red. I felt sooo bad. She didn't think I was the type of person to write that, and I didn't think I was either. People have very strange opinions about me and their opinions are usually a projection of themselves becasue their differ widely from one person to another. By the time I got to grade 4, the teacher said I had flashes of brilliance in math but I didn't believe her because my grades in math were average. I honestly believed anything difficult, books or school were for the smart kids, not for me. I kept mute, good, and invisible and I survived by luck, by reading the room, by reading the teachers, by copying, by teacher’s merci but not by learning. The school was the hell but even home I had no confidence in anything.  The other kids I played with were not listening to me at all like I was invisible.  I was the only one dirty all the time.  My face was dirty, my hands, my legs, my clothes. It made me feel so bad and confused but I had no understanding how I get dirty and others don’t. The only thing I could do and the others couldn’t was run the fastest in PE. Later, when in grade 7 they introduce Geometry, I was the only one who saw the problems on the graph. It took my colleagues 2 weeks to see what I saw. Then in grade 10 in psychology class they gave us an hour-long test with only patterns and shapes. I scored so high that the teacher never found out because he started to call hands up who scored 30%, 35%,…” by the time he got to 65% 70% there were not hands up anymore so he stopped calling, he never got to call 95% which was my score. I was to shy to say anything and I never knew what that test meant, I didn’t really care. Psychology could have been the only subject in school that interested me because I wanted to understand myself and to understand how to live my life the best way but I understood nothing from psychology class. School was way, way too difficult for me. Was all too much  difficult mambo jumbo, to much deeply boring everything and my barain blurred it all out

Searching for somebody to love
In the city, I searched and searched but couldn't find a boy,  like Adi, to love, to play with and to fuck, and that hurt so bad. I thought is everyone in so much pain as me? Almost nobody seemed to have somebody to love. School for me was only about seeing some boys I liked, studying them, sharing my desk with them and dreaming in the night to make love to them. I liked about 4 very cute boys in my school. I liked maybe the most one but he was not in my class. I focused on the 3 I liked in my class. One was the class chief and I observed he was very good in languages and in all the subjects but here and there was not as good in math. Besides, I felt he was too school smart for me. I was not part of the school smart kids and I thought he won't like me. The other two cute boys I liked, were good in math and struggled with languages - exactly like me. One of the boys tried to care about school, even though he kind of failed at it, and also was a bit sickly. The other, could not give a shit about school and seemed like me, to ignore it like it doesn't exist. I liked the last boy and he liked me too. I don't know how, but I shared my table for about 4 years out of 8 with this last boy (in Romania we had same classmate year after year) He was silent and we never ever talked. Fit me perfectly. He loved watching and playing football and I loved boys who love sports. 

Loving my granddad
When I was 8, suddenly I saw my granddad. He was always around but I didn't see him until then. I like him a lot. He is so cute, silent, focused, passionate about working in the garden. He always complains that we don't have money, that he's the only one working and nobody helps him. I decide to make him love me more than he loves my grandma. I start working in the garden alongside him. I learn to plant tomatoes and bell peppers exactly the way he wants. He says when my grandma plants, the plants dry and die because she doesn’t push the soil down and all around the plant. I learn to prune the grapevine. I take the weeds out by the root (not just scraped them like my grandma). I go to the farmers market, pulling a cart full of fruits and veggies to make money for him. He starts talking to me more and more. I listen fascinated to everything he says. He is the smartest, coolest man on earth, he becomes my entire world and we become the closest in the family. My mother is caught in her dying drama (she believed she was on the death bed all her life), my grandma and my uncle are caught in my cousin’s drama praying, crying and begging every day that God brings the boy back to church (one of my uncle’s kids stopped going to church when he was 13 started smoking, drinking, smashed school’s desks, left home and became a vagabond). Me and my grandad, we just sit in the garden minding our own business, we don’t get involved at all in anyone’s drama. All the kids I play with together, are not as cool as my grandad. He said "people who love each other understand each other just by looking at each other, they don't need to talk and they even physically kind of look alike".  He would often say "don't follow me, follow your own mind". I thought that was so cool of him to say. He was allergic to me laughing in church and threatened me until I was 16 “If I'll catch you laughing in church, I’ll come up at the orchestra, take you by your hand, take you out and slap you over your face until you see green stars". My grandma didn't like that I started loving my grandad more. She loved her son and grandson more than she loved me too and I understood. I hope she understood me too. 

I'll take people with appetite like me, hungry as me for same things as me - the rest are too painful
 In the city I craved excitement and thrill every day. At church for New Years Eve the kids gathered for parties and we had this physical competitive games based on speed, agility. We were two teams of about 20 kids each competing and I was crazy about those games. In my mother's neighborhood there were a few dozen kids my age and I got excited. I thought the more the merrier. I could see how well we could play some team games I knew from church. Every time I opened my mouth to propose and explain new games people looked at me like I wasn't there. I didn't have the face and the presence of a person they wanted to listen to. I don’t listen to others and others don’t listen to me. I couldn't make them play what I wanted. I was first out to play after school and last to go home. I was available to play with any kids at any time of night and day but they were all busy with excuses, doing "more important things" like homework, reading, swimming classes, chess classes. I wasn't doing my homework, their parents said I was a bad example and forbid me to come at their door. By the time I was 10, I realized that most kids don't crave excitement like me. Excitement is not a priority, not something they live for day and night like me. I couldn't find anybody to share my passion for play, for excitement and that hurt so bad. At that moment, out of my too long frustration, suffering , wait, disappointment, pain, I decided I won't ever wait for anyone, I won't ask twice, I won't beg again. It's too painful. Most have excuses, any excuses, they will find an excuse just to always have an excuse. When I was very little I discovered that most people are insensitive to say the least (cruel is more correct to say), now that most are not craving excitement and that are busy doing important things. I'm nothing like them! I wanted people like me but I couldn't see anyone like me. It’s easier to be alone with myself in peace and hope and dream. I decided I'll go alone to play and roam after my heart's desire. If I'll find on the way somebody with appetite for thrill like me, hungry as me for same thing as me, easy as me,  ready as me,  I'll be happy and I'll take them, if not, it is what it is and it's how it goes. I don't feel like convincing, waiting or dragging anyone. Too painful. After a while, I found an adventurous boy, three years older than me, with whom I went exploring. We took buses, trolleybuses and trams and went to the end of the lines to see where the city limits are. Went to walk on the train tracks, to explore abandoned buildings. At some point we got in some rusted pipes and rust came on my hair. Late at night I arrived home and threw myself tired on the bed. Rust from my hair got on the white sheet and my mother beat me up with a whip until my butt blended. She said "I beat you up for one and only one reason, for being adventurous, because adventurous is dangerous".

Rides on music. 
Next to my mothers apartment there was a huge park that before got all fence in, and started to be called "botanical garden", and started to have many new plants all tagged with their Latin name, and you had to pay a fee to get in, to look at the plant, and get educated, it was just a huge park we could get in from anywhere. A park where we sled in winter on its hills, picked colored leaves in autumn, picked elderflowers for juice. Sometimes there were scary naked men in the bushes. In that park, every summer they brought a few rides on cool music. I lived for those rides. I gathered all the money I could and hid them from my mother who didn't like rides at all. Once I'm on a ride with music (and only with music, preferably music I like), I immediately feel excited and start dreaming and I love it. I was the only person who stayed there and went again and again and again on one ride I loved the most. Everyone was going once, I had to go so many times I was embarrassed. I thought people will think I'm crazy. Then one summer the rides didn't come. Next year the same, didn't come. The third year didn't come again. I started asking all around, where are the rides, did they move them? I started searching for them the whole city and asking around. Nobody knew about any rides. It hurt so bad. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't understand how all the best things are disappearing. I couldn't understand why other people don't feel like me, don't love what I love, don't crave same things like me because for me they were the best. 

My love for Adi is dead
Back to the village with my grandma to visit. I meet Adi, we play all day every day, and I discover that my love for him is dead. Still, it feels so good to be with him that my grandma returns to the city, but I stay in the village one more week sleeping not at Adi but at another neighbor in their guest street room on a mattress filled with straws. I came back to the city changing two buses and that marked my first long distance trip all by myself (Adi when he was 19 and I was 18 did come to the city at my grandparents house to look for me but I didn’t care anymore). 

Falling in love with mountains
In the same summer, my mother forces me to go in my first church mountain camp organized by kids choir and I initially don’t want to go because I’m so shy. The thought of sleeping in the tent with others horrify me so much that I can’t see myself able to do it. In that camp, I fall in love with mountains, with the way they make me feel, with the feeling of waking up in the mountain's strong fresh air, seeing dew on the grass and mist over the valley, hearing cow bells nearby, hiking for hours at a time, cooking on fire every night under the sky full of stars. I enrolled myself every year in all the mountains camp I could until I was 15. 

Overjoyed to be a woman
When I was 11 my period started and the day it happened a got overjoyed all day long. I was so happy to be a woman and future mother. I felt blessed. I felt so much love for life.

Music and mountains 
In the city we joined the Pentecostal church where my uncle was a loved preacher charismatic evangelist (loved because when he was preaching was telling stories, was screaming and was crying). My mother forced me to join the kids’ choir where I sang four years, then I had to move up to orchestra where I played mandolin two years. In kids choir I loved the Palm Sunday when we sang with lilac, tulips and other spring flowers in our hands and the whole church smelled so good. Every Christmas I went singing carols with kidjs choir two nights all night long until 6 am. We walked on streets, singing carols in exchange for cookies and cakes filled with cream. Cream can be apples, pumpkin, cheese, walnuts, poppy seeds, chocolate, vanilla, maple, milk. Sometimes was snowing and we walked all night in the snow, slipping on ice, having our fingers frozen. We went in neighborhoods I never been to and in the night, some were so beautiful, strange and magical. Singing in the night on empty streets on 4 voices sounded divine. It felt like we were in a different world. The lady, the conductor, her name was Sister Barbu, was rather severe. Her gentle smiley husband, was on accordion. We had brother Radu on contrabass and he made the whole church, the balcony where we were at, and the windows, shake with the bit. Brother Radu had very dark skin, was my uncle's friend and the main attraction at my uncle's weekly Friday night house praying and singing gathering where Brother Radu had visions from God for each and every one of us. Sister Barbu and her husband were passionate about music and passionate about mountains. They were poor, but building slowly over many years their mountain cabin. While they were building it, we were camping right next to it. My first few camps in the mountains were with them and the kids from choir. The camps with them were just singing, playing, cooking, eating, picking berries and free time to play on our own every afternoon with an occasional praying out loud which I dreaded. When I was 14 I was too big for kids choir and had to move over to church orchestra where I played mandolin 2 years and planned to switch to violin but I was fired after two years because the conductor asked me to sing solo for her to test my voice and I refused - too shy. 

Blubbery Hill 
In this camp we were about 100 kids coming back home from a long hike in the mountains, still had about 2 hours until the tents. All kids were walking on the path in the forest but I see that on the left side there is this meadow full of some long very thick slippery green shiny grass. I started to slide on that grass on my butt because it was a good slope. Two more kids came after me and was so fun! We got some good speed and it was such a long way down. I thought I want to do this for the rest of my life. Then the two kids quit and went back in the forest to walk in line with the rest but I continued like a mad person my slide down on my butt thrilled out of my mind and faster. I couldn't understand why nobody came after me and why the other two quit. I arrived down way ahead of everybody else and I was waiting for them very proud of myself. When they finally caught up with me, I see from the distance their faces looking at me and smiling in a weird way. They asked me if I feel anything with my butt. I said no. They asked me to look at my butt. When I looked, my baby blue pants were soaked with smashed blueberries. Underneath all that long green grass were small bushes of blueberries I hadn't seen. I loved those pants, they were soft, cute and you could make them two lengths but I could never get the blueberries out of them and had to throw them. The feeling, the experience, the memory though was thrilling, was unique and maybe I will never get that experience in my life. I love when an opportunity comes and I freely take it right then and nobody stops me. I live for moments like that.

My uncle the light
Until I was 13 I only played and played. It never seemed to be enough daylight for me at how busy I was playing. When I was 13 I got so sick of playing and I was hungry for doing it for real. I wanted to do everything, adults did but my mother said "you have to stay in school and become a doctor not occupy yourself with low level jobs and moving from place to place like a gypsy." They forced me to stay more years and more years in the School Prison. Until around 13, for me, all people were beautiful. When I was 13 something changed in me because I looked around and hardly anyone was beautiful. Hardly anyone was happy. Almost all adults looked lifeless, like walking corpses waiting for the death to come, except my uncle. My uncle was different. He was so cute, so alive, so passionate, charming, charismatic, energetic, so wealthy. He had a job with the railways he loved and worked at from 8 am to 4 pm, then came at my grandparent's house where he worked on his clothes business, making blouses on his knitting machine until 10 pm. While making clothes he was singing his heart out alongside his Christian cassettes. In weekend he was an evangelist traveling and preaching in villages all over the country. At the end of the month he collected rents, lots of money, from his three apartment rentals without doing any work for those. He also had a cow for milk. He was offered to be chief of railway station, pastor of church in Romania, pastor of church in America and he refused them all. I liked all that. I said "life is so good and beautiful for him, life is good". My uncle was the only bright warm happy light I saw in a grey cold world and that gave me hope. 

At my rawest
When I was 13 many things changed in me including my nose which suddenly became so ugly it made me feel like a monster. I didn't even want to walk on the street for people to see me. My boobs suddenly got a size C facing upwards and no other girl in my class had boobs yet. Then I got way too much hair for a girl on my legs above my knees. It's not that I couldn't shave, it's that you could see where you shave and it made me feel so bad. In summer at PE everyone was having a good time in shorts and t-shirt, only I was hot sweating in long joggers and zipped up top, to hide my hairy legs and my boobs all the boys were staring at. I was not doing any PE I was just showing up at the beginning when they called your name then I would disappear because I hated exercising so much I could not do it. Boys were passing by and were constantly "aren't you too hot? unzip your top!". Boys always feel comfortable to hit on me like the rooster do with the hens.  From 13 to 15 were my toughest years mostly because of my nose. Lucky one of my colleague's dad was the best plastic surgeon around. I had three nose surgeries with him - one at 15, one at 17 and one at 18 years old. He did them behind my mother's back because my mother didn't let me. She said "you can't change how God made you. If you do that, that's a sin". So yeah I'm a sinner.  I broke God's law. That law was by far the hardest to break. The boys liked me anyway from before I had any surgeries. They made a top of the most beautiful girls in the class and I got on 3rd place with the mention "she's not beautiful, her nose is wavy, but there is something about her". My mullet type of hair is my own creation. I cut my own hair. I don't know what I'm doing but I just go ahead with what I feel and mullets feel good to me. If I go ahead with what I feel, I'm confident, I feel good with myself and in my skin and that's exactly what I’m after.

Hearing the mountains call 
When I was 15 I found myself skipping the bible study hours that were part of the camp. To escape those, I hid in the forest. How I ended up in the forest initially was with a girl who needed to pee and asked me to go with her during bible study. Once in the forest I loved it so much there that the girl returned to the bible study class but I didn't. I thought that they could catch me, but I did it anyway. The thought of staying for hours on a blanket with the sun hitting on my head being asked bible questions I was clueless about was unbearable to me. In the forest was shade, was cool and quiet, you could feel a light breeze and hear the sound of wind through the trees. Day after day I hid in the forest and nobody realized I was missing. I want to be invisible and it seems that I AM invisible. In the forest I heard the mountain's call. An overwhelming feeling inside to go explore all the mountains after my heart's desire, and I said Yes! I felt ready and confident I could backpack alone with some boy I could fuck who looked appealing and wanted to come with me. That camp was my last camp. In camps, I couldn't stand the bible study that went on and on every day for hours, the afternoon word games playing which I hated and refused to play. In the same time we were nor really doing any hiking, which is what I want to do when I go in the mountains. Every night they were having a big bonfire and staying around the fire singing until 12 am. Well, unfortunately as much as I love looking at the fire (my aunt even told me "you will never work in your life, you are the type that only sits by the fire watching the wood burn") I can't do that. My body when 9 pm comes, starts to close my body functions one by one until I fall asleep of my feet. At 10 pm I headed towards my tent half asleep and I hear the crowd behind my back "Don't dare wake up tomorrow morning before 8!"

Falling madly in love with a man I didn't like
When I was 14 I started having about 4 guys from church obsessed with me like I was "the one". I didn't like any and I was running from them and they were running after me. There was one who followed me for years, was so only into me that I felt like I will never escape him. Another one forced me to say why I don't like him and I said "because I can't stand you". It was my first lesson in blurting things out straight to free myself. It's when I learnt that truth sets me free. I liked some other guys but they didn't even look at me. That's how it goes. It's hard to find someone you like who likes you back in the same time. When I was 16, one summer day, I came from orchestra practice where we had a new person joining us, a guy who, I heard, used to play in orchestra but now was working overseas and came for summer vacation back to Romania and back to visit the orchestra. I remember him trying to talk to me when I was 14 but then I got scared and ran away. Now I was 16, not overly scared and he made me fall in love with him despite the fact that I didn't like him. I didn't exactly have a type in my mind but I had a "I'll know him when I see him" . He was 24, was working in Germany painting houses, and said, while wiping blobs of sweat on his forehead "I wasn't born to live in Romania, Romania is a dead end". The way he said it, touched me. I loved Romania. I loved the climate. I was crazy about the beautiful mountains, medieval towns, cute fairytale hilly villages, I was hiking, and roaming like a mad person, I never thought to leave Romania, but he made me believe that out there are other better lands. I wasn't able to do school. I needed to escape doing college, I had no thoughts of career, or job, or work, or future, or becoming anybody important. I just wanted to make love, to have babies and to be left alone. I needed money. I didn't even have 1 dollar to buy a pair of cheap stockings. I had to wait three months to be able to buy the stockings. There was no easy work and money possibilities for me in Romania. I thought instead of dealing with all that, I will escape to a country where I'll have an easier time making money. Money was a huge problem in Romania, an opportunity of escape idea came along and I hanged on to it single minded. Any ego idea that I may have had in me because my mother, my grandad and society, after falling in love with this guy I was completely cured of for forever. 

Marrying my two loves men and mountains
When I was 16 I started going out with multiple men in the same time without them knowing of each other. I stay away from labels like boyfriend, partner, husband. I don't think labels, I don't say labels, I’m better of without labels. One of the man, was 21, and was from Resita, a small town next to Semenic Mountains. We liked each other and he wanted to show me the mountains he knew, loved and grew up on. I said Yes! We took a train from Timisoara, where we met, to Resita. He showed me what supplies to buy, rented one of his friend's tent and we hitchhiked up in the mountains. I spent some of my best two nights only me and him up in the wilderness, in the breathtaking beautiful mountains, cooking polenta on fire and making love under the black sky full of twinkling stars. Both him and me wanted that experience and we had it and it stays in my heart for the rest of my life. We never saw each other again, never expected to. I loved that feeling, that encounter, that experience, that memory so much that I started LIVING ONLY FOR MAKING LOVE AND BEING IN THE MOUNTAINS with one man or another over and over. Year after year I hiked in summer and autumns colors and skied in winter and spring until the snow melted. I took with me whoever looked appealing and wanted to come with me. Not all the men I liked and liked me were willing to come in the mountains with me. I chose only the ones who were into mountains. Then I started alternating mountains with exploring Romania. We visited nudist beaches, isolated villages, new medieval cities, big cities, salty lakes. 

Starting skipping school
In elementary school, in breaks I tagged along my neighbor friends but I didn't like them. It felt so difficult to be with people I didn't like and do things I didn't like. I dreamed to be able to be alone so I can do what I want, but that meant looking like a lone wolve and in elementary school I was not ready for that. So in grade 9 I moved to this new high school with completely new classmates. I felt ready to walk in breaks all alone like a lone wolf. Just freedom and hope. I always found the lone wolves the coolest and the most sexually appealing to me and I started looking for one. In breaks, I walked on all the school's hallways and around the school checking out all the boys in the entire school, or I went straight as fast I could in downtown to do window shopping. I went especially to two shops. One shop was a new clothes shop with unique clothes. I was always looking for dresses or skirts. No item of clothing was in multiple sizes. The other shop was an old books shop in the cool stylish fortress Maria Theresia Bastion that had occasionally old maps with Romanian mountain ranges I needed badly because they were not printing new ones anymore. I wanted to find and buy ALL the maps with ALL the Romanian mountains ranges because I planned to explore them all. The school break was 10 minutes and it took me 6 minutes to get to this shops, 3 minutes too look around and check out what new came in, and 5 minutes to come back, because back I was running. I had this thing with maps that when I opened the map and saw all the lines that were tracing the valleys, the crests, the mountain peaks my heart started beating fast, my entire body would literally start shaking with excitement. I was already right up there in those mountains. The time I spent looking for maps and clothes felt so good that it got longer and longer to the point that I realized I had no chance to make it back to school on time and I started skipping classes. I started skipping one hour, then two hours, then four hours, then one day then two days, then half a week. I was very stressed out about being out of school roaming on the downtown streets when the entire earth population was in school but I couldn't make myself go to school. Walking on the streets felt sooo good. On the streets in the morning the sun was shining a certain light, and I went past underground Jazz clubs where in the night had live music and in the morning people were smoking and drinking coffee. I went past the Intercontinental Hotel where foreign people were eating tasty Romanian grill and fries.﻿

Fired from church orchestra, I quit going regularly to church﻿
At the beginning of grade 11 the orchestra conductor decides to go through all of us to test our voices. When it came my turn I flat refused because I'm too shy. I know there are lots of shy people in this world but I'm the shy who doesn't even try, I flat quit. There are a few things I care but I don't care about almost anything. The conductor  was  a math teacher, the daughter of our band conductor. While her dad was crazy good upbeat and soulful, his daughter was not great and into classical music and I hate classical music. She said either sing or get out of orchestra. So I walked out right that moment. I was happy I escaped becasue my mother wanted me to be in choir and orchestra, I didn't. I realized I escaped  even from even having to go regularly to church. When I go with how I feel things always fall into place and turn out well for me.  ﻿
﻿
I quit going to school 
At the beginning of grade 11, one sunny morning in class a thought came to me "what the school has to do with me? "...."Nothing" So after the class ended, I walked out of school for good with no thoughts of consequences. My capacity to tolerate the drudgery of school ended after that one thought. I could not take it one more minute. I stopped going to school about 80 % of the time and I got in trouble. The chemistry teacher had been threatening me since the beginning of grade 9 that my place is not in that school and that she will kick me out because I refused to memorize periodic table of elements and I refused to deal with anything theory. She thought I was rebelling but I wasn't. I didn't want to wipe the theory and memorization from the face of the earth, I just wanted to not touch me. The anatomy teacher, who was an old stylish man always wearing suits, who jumped with both his knees on a lab high desk to try to catch me copying also failed me. I was supposed to learn all summer Anatomy so I can pass the class but I didn't learn anything. I simply could not. The literature teacher who called me "Angel" also promised me to not let me graduate and keep me there with him for as long as it takes. To escape, I moved myself from the best HS to the worst HS in the city. The worst HS in the city was also in the medieval town in one of those beautiful buildings and even closer to the heart of downtown. I thought this worst HS was with mentally challenged kids but I was surprised to discover it was actually full of kids who lived in the nearby villages. Even that worst HS in town was way too difficult for me . Its hard to keep up with anything in school when you are missing school all the time and pretend that school doesn't exist. To graduate HS I had to pass 7 tests called Baccalaureate. I was scared to death and sick about those 7 tests but the fear didn't make me study at all for any. Not that I didn't want to do school, I wanted, but I couldn't. I would open a school book, look at first page and close it. It put me to sleep instantly. The dislike was too big. It was like somebody forcing me to eat shit. I could never.﻿
Moving out of my mother's apartment to protect my mental health﻿
Talking about my mother is too hard for me and I'd rather not got there. Since I moved from the village, I could not stand my mother. I  had often ear aches, tooth aches and she would blame me for playing out underdressed in winter, for eating only sweets. When I had this pains I could not take even more pain, I could not take My Mother The Pain and her blaming me and I would scream "I can't stand you, call my grandma to come stay with me.! " My grandma came often to stay with me. Until I was 9 both my grandparents came to my mothers apartment weekly or every two weeks and brought us fruits, veggies, eggs, flowers, cooked food, fried chicken, apple strudel. When I was 9 they said "we are not coming anymore, you come to our house and take everything you need.". They stopped coming. Both of them never came again. I felt they left me alone with my  mother on my head. My mother hated everything under the sun except flowers. I didn't want to be left alone with a person who felt like that! I was just 9.  My mother the hateful hell + the jail hospital difficult mambo jumbo school + the circus church = I didn't want any of this.  My mother felt a burden to me and my grandparents clearly abandoned her but  I didn't want either. They thought at 9 years old I can take my mother but I couldn't. I had a sweet life to live, I couldn't wait to live but I felt stuck in hell with my pain with every interaction  mother talking in my head. At 9 I stared going to my grandparents house every Friday after school and brought from there a lot of food.  Right after I moved in with my mother I saw that she was the most beautiful mother and I told her becasue it was true. I wanted to kiss and hug her but she puled herself aside and said "I don't do that, my mother was cold with me and I'm cold too". I swear to God that's exactly what she said. I took my love back and wrote her off. I kept myself detached , mute and all to myself. I managed to move her sleep in the hallway, the two renters sleep in the living room and I took the bedroom all for myself where I kept my door locked with a key and I listen to music all day long when I was in the house instead of doing homework which I couldn't make myself do. Most of the time I was outside waiting and waiting for the other kids to come out and play and most of the time they didn't come. They were busy doing homework.  All weekends and holidays I spent at my grandparents house and in their beautiful garden. My mother worked 10 years in factory the night shift because she didn't have HS diploma, then she finished HS and worked 15 years selling lotto tickets in a small booth, then she retired on "medical made up reasons". I don't know what to say about my mother becasue she is a complex difficult person and I neither can stand nor understand anything difficult and  complex expect a few things I'm interested in like knowing myself and knowing how to live my life the best. At her worst, was her believing and acting like she was on the death bed all her life. When she was 14 was sent on the field with cows , a rain came and she got sick and started to cough and never stopped coughing. Since then, she believed she has cancer. She moved from lung cancer to digestive cancer, to kidney cancer etc. She did medical tests over medical tests and x-rays and would interpret the black spot on x-ray as cancer. I did not get myself involved in her dying drama. She was three times divorced and in between had  many lovers. Most of all my mother's lovers were opera singers, poets, flute players, ballet dancers. She was going often to Opera and Ballet dragging me along. That's where she got all lovers from. The walk to theater from her apartment was a 20 minutes walk. First 10 minutes through a botanical garden and the next 10 through the old cool medieval town. She would do that walk in high heels, seamed stockings with her purse under her arm, swinging her big butt in white pencil skirts from side to side. She had an eye for beauty and style above average. There was almosty nobody on the streets looking as good as her. She had purple dresses, green dresses, high heel shoes, boots, belts and clutches that matched which each other all for going to Opera. She had a long afro curly hair but was arranging it, making it even more curly with rollers, pins and hair spray. She would get all dresses up then would spin around saying "va va voom" asking me "how do I look? " She looked like a dream. Like she lived for Opera. Had real fur coats, silver fox scarf and many types of hats. She loved hats. Men were attracted to her until she was in her 60s. My boyfriends told me they felt attracted to my mother. My mother was crazy in her head and crazy attracts. I know crazy attracts me too. She liked the most a tall man, elegant, always wearing suits or in winter long coats and hats. She called him Mr Rusu (Rusu in Romanian mean Russian but he wasn't Russian, that was his family name). Everyone she called by their name but this man she called Mr. He has never been married, never wanted to. Never had kids, never wanted to. Never owned anything and lived all his life in a rented modest room. He was working at the same lotto agency as her. He had big blue eyes, a big nose, a white face a bit red like he was alcoholic but I haven't seen him drinking. He was  a bit smiling somehow all the time. He was very respectful, a very different man who kept all to himself. She loved that man the most. I said why? She said because "he lies to me". I could not believe my ears. I loved the truth the most and she loved lies. They two did make a very unsual stunning looking couple and they'd been toghther on and off for a long time and in between other lovers. But then, she would criticize him saying "how he didn't care to own even a car in his life". She would get in relashionships then down the line she would start to be gealous and suspect they were cheating on her. All her high flying romances were going down in fights and tears. I was never sure if my mother was crazy or not but when I heard her suspect her lovers of cheating on her and telling them "the proof" she is sure they were cheating I was sure my mother was a crazy person. As long as she was not focused on me and was focused on her dying and on her lovers was actually the better part of my life with her. I kept mute, I didn't get myself involved in anything, I was like a wall flower, and everyone treated me like I wasn't there. I saw a lot and had no opinions about anything. Same as at church. I observed everything in church but had no opinion about anything and people didn't ask me for my opinion either, I was not involved in anything. I was exactly like my grandma . My grandma felt, observed, knew,  kept track of everything but had no opinions about anything.  I guess if you feel deeply and know, you don't need opinions. Except neurosis and sometimes psychosis diagnosis I haven't seen any other mental diagnosis written on any of my mothers medical records. She went so many times to so many doctors that surely somebody would have figured out what the mental disease she had.  The hotels, the striptease clubs ( we did go to striptease clubs and I was a minor but by the time we were caught and escorted out, my mother already had a glimpse of the club wich is all she wanted), the opera, the caffes she dragged me to, her clothes, her style, her romantic mind  and all her lovers at the door  were maybe the best of her because she created in her head a world that was more beautiful, more romantic, more sex obsessed  than the reality. When I  was  17 , I woke up with  a sub mandibular ganglion inflamed. My mother immediately said this is a sign you have cancer . Me and her go to the surgeon who did my nose becasue he was also  ear/throat specialist who checked me and he said I'm healthy but said to double check with the top maxo-facial surgeon who was his friend . So I'm going with my mother to this doctor for a second opinion and the doctor says " lady, you daughter is so heathy she is on tack to live 100 years, the inflamed ganglion  is a reaction to some infection she has either in her throat or at some tooth, nothing to worry about . Happy I'm coming walking home with my mother and  on the street she says nothing. We get in the apartment she closes the door and says "you know, you do have cancer but they don't want to tell you". I had enough of this. I said nothing, turned around, went to my room, filled two bags with clothes I liked the most I walked out of my mothers apartment and I never looked back. I felt it was not good for my mental health to be around such people. I moved myself in our studio apartment. My uncle gave us 2k, my grandparents the other 2k and we bought a 4k studio apartment  (the cheapest possible in the city) to rent out like my uncle to help ourselves with the money. The apartment being empty that day I moved myself there. First thing after I moved alone I realized I was not a romantic person like I thought I was while living with my mother, I was a earthy person like I always dreamed I was and I got overjoyed when I realized that. I was so happy that I danced all across the studio apartment with joy. It was like huge burden was lifted from me, and the sun started to shine again. My mother is in Romania has some people taking care of her for money. Before this set of people there was a couple with a  very strong woman who said "oh I'm strong and I will take care of you mother". After three years the man ended up sick in hospital because of my mother and the woman said she never seen any person as strong as my mother in her life. They quit tacking care of my mother. I never ever even tried to stand up to my mother, neither my grandparents. I suggest anybody who attempts to take care of her for money  to treat her like the rip current she is. No way you can fight her, so don't even try. It's the best if you can be deaf to anything she says and blind if she figures you are a visual person. People say my mother is mean but me and my grandparents think she is mentally ill. Its hard to have a mother like this but its even harder for my grandparents to have a child like this. Parents suffer more. It's not her fault she is like this and is not my or my grandparents fault either. Life has easy parts and hard parts. She was the hard part. That's how it goes.

I love roaming 
Roaming for me is not like travel which I dread. Travel is planned, exhausting, high energy and about seeing places. Roaming is going to go to see what turns up. Roaming is going to go with a lover or hoping to find a new lover on the way. You have an idea about a place and just go to go. You will see what you will see if you'll see. In roaming the excitement is in the new lover or the dream of the new lover is not in the place itself (places are soulless, they are just the background).

Thrill - getting lost in the night in new breathtaking beautiful medieval city 
One of the most thrilling experiences was getting lost in the night in a new beautiful medieval city. It was late November, me and the man I was with at that time, we took a 2.30 pm bus in Timisoara and had to arrive in Sibiu by 9.40 pm. Sleep at the closest hotel and next morning take a bus to Paltinis, a small ski resort. Around 5 or so pm at the sunset we were driving through some out of this world beautiful mountain villages. The houses, the streets, the people who lived in those villages were different, the architecture was different, the people were white skin blue eyes and blond hair. They were Romanians from Transylvania region and it felt like I was in a different country, in a different world. Romanians from Banat, the region I came from are mostly dark skin, dark color eyes, dark hair. Seeing those places inspired and excited me to extreme. I felt like seeing new different places at sunset my entire life. I felt I was going crazy overjoyed. A bit past 9.30 pm, we were driving through the night and I barely saw anything. It was only me and my boyfriend left in the bus, when the driver stopped and said confidently and shouting "this is it, get off, this bus doesn't go any further!". I look through the window and I see nothing, just pitch dark. We got off, the bus closed the doors and drove off so fast. I looked after it like "where is he going driving like a crazy". We found ourselves in a dark street with medieval buildings all around. No phone, no map. In any direction we looked it was the same, dark streets, old charming building, no people, no shops. It looked like we were dropped in the thick of a strange medieval suburb not a central location and at the city's bus terminal location as I expected (Romanians do that type of shit). Had no idea which direction to go but it was too late, dark, cold and we didn't have time. We started running straight ahead until the first corner. Then we had to pick a direction. We started to run towards more lit streets. For the next 2 hours that was all we knew " the next corner". We found a person and asked " Is this place Sibiu? 
Do you know a hotel close by? Yes was Sibiu! No hotel around. Which direction is the city center? That way! " So we started running that way and that way only lasted that long before we asked ourselves which way is that way again? Any! We lost the direction again. No other people on the streets to ask again. Every corner I turned yet a another dimly lit stunning medieval street with old houses and cobblestone. Narrow streets, underpasses, markets, fountains, old buildings. I was ecstatic, I was completely lost. I started laughing, drunk with joy, thrill and tiredness. Hopeless. We were not going anywhere. It was 11.30 pm, we stopped, I was sleepy and cold. Then a tiny woman opened a big door and got out from one of those old medieval houses. We asked if she knows a room for us to rent for the night. She said "come with me!". We followed her in another medieval house, went upstairs. The apartment had high ceilings and was so poorly lit I barely saw anything and I knew they were really poor. In the kitchen around the table there were three man and two women who looked at us suspiciously. The woman showed us a room on the left with old white big doors with glass and see through curtains. We asked when to pay now or in the morning? she said in the morning. We got in the room and I usually lock the door or put something heavy at the door but this time I didn't. I thought what does it matter, we are at their mercy. Went straight to sleep. In the morning I opened my eyes and thought first thing "I'm alive". We paid and left. I didn't want to say anything. Once in the street I felt good and safe, it was daylight and we had options. We found the bus terminal and caught the next bus to Paltinis on time. 

"The one" - who wanted to kill me.﻿
 It was New Years eve, and decided to get myself a man for New Year Eve. I went to a church that had more young people. I see this new stranger, curly hair, beard, tall, super cute, but his mental, and how he felt to me got me crazy after him. I felt THIS IS THE ONE, not that I ever believe that there is one written in stars for me but I thought he might be the one from my dream. We left together that night and went straight to his apartment and made love. For the next two years I was with him and this man was by far the most intense person I have ever experienced. We were not boyfriend girlfriend, we were nothing. No labels. We just saw each other becasue that's how I felt. Me not having friends, family or awareness of any other people living on this earth, I didn't have to have any label of what sort of thing I'm in or doing with a man or another. I kind of like this freedom, this distance from all people. Every interaction with him was charming and intense. Even doing simple things like cooking felt crazy good, felt more than I have ever dreamed. He took away my mind completely. He was not talking much but when he was talking he was fascinating. He talked about having his own businesses (which he had) and not depending on society or on anyone with anything. He had unmatched style in his walk and the way he talked in the way he laughed. He had a mind looking at the world from an angle almost nobody looks from. He liked to explain to me how the world worked and all he said made sense. I couldn't really tell at all if he liked me or not. He called me "sex kitten". All men objectify me, I’m their pleasure receptacle and that’s all I am and I feel really good with kit, it turns me on too. Ideally I’d want to me more than that but I’m content, I love love sensuality. I love being objectified. He lived mostly in a village of the beaten path but had this big apartment empty in the city was coming to every few weeks. Being with somebody, seeing each other from time to time constantly over years and not living in the same house or even town is very intense, exciting, romantic, liberating and attractive to me. Once, I took the train and went without him knowing to visit him in his village. He wouldn't have let me go If I would have asked. First time, I missed where I was supposed to get off the train for his village and went well past. Lucky I was used with trains and knew to come back but it took me the whole day to get back home. So the second day I tried again and this time I asked a train conductor where to get off, so I got off at the right station. Once off the train I got distressed when I saw that the train left and I was all alone in the middle of nowhere, no houses, there wasn't even a railways station, not even the station's name written anywhere. For a moment I started to worry that I might have fucked up my adventuring like never before. Thoughts of not having where to sleep in the night, like sleeping under a tree, thoughts of bad people getting me or animals getting me crossed my mind. The village had only a few houses with a lot of distance between them and it was so far away from the railway that there was no way you could see it. It didn't even look like a village. A stranger gave me a ride and I found his house. His parents got shocked when they saw me at the door. They treated me nicely. His parents were Christians and with christians if you make love is a sin so you keep it hidden. We made love in his attic and it felt so crazy intense and good. I slept in my room, they gave me good food and the second day I left. About two years in our time of being together I was at his apartment in the city sitting on an arm chair the cool type low on the floor becasue he was so stylish not only in his clothes but also his furniture was so cool, so different. For a couple of months he started saying that I cheat on him. That he saw me at church talking with another man. Then that he saw me in a red car with another man covering my face. He said, if it wasn't me why would I cover my face. I was not cheating on him at all, I was crazy about him, I wasn't in any of the places he talked about. He stared telling me all sorts of ways he can kill me and nobody will find out. For a couple of months I believed he was joking or just talking or maybe he needs more time to know me and trust me. So one day I was sited on this stylish armchair and it just hit me that he wasn't joking. It hit me that he hadn't been joking for all the few last months. Mute, I got up. Went to the door in slow motion. Down the stairs. Crossed the street. Took a tram. Went to my own apartment. My mother was vi siting at my apartment and I opened my mouth to say something and no sound came out. I couldn't speak. I laid down in bed and tried to relax for about 3- 4 hours. I didn't dare try to speak again. I was scared that if I'll try again and I won't be able to, I will panic. I wiped the killer lover completly from my brain and I was focused on my one and only prority, my one and only problem - my inability to speak. By the time evening came I started clearing up my throat , hearing some sound, I figured I could speak again. I never seen that man ever in my life, never wanted to, never missed him one second. He doesn't exist for me. I know that I'm a sucker for cuteness, beauty and style, I fall for what my eyes see and can't help myself. I will fall no matter what. I also observed that many people who are mentally ill have a sensitivity for beauty and style too. I attract them and they attract me. When I see a person with above average style I'm asking myself if the person is crazy or not. There is un unnecessary sophistication in unwell people like my mother that you pick up if you pay attention but that sophistication wasn't in this guy. This guy was way different.

Two jobs in my life, fired three times﻿
 I was around 21 when for fun I wanted to try a job so I got a part time job, 4 h/day at one of my uncle's friends. It was a multimillion dollar company, I was doing bookkeeping and most employees were from the same church I grew up in. I was working from 2pm to 6 pm and my morning colleague who worked from 7 am to 2 pm went on vacation so I was replacing her for about 10 days when the biggest customer seeing me there every morning asked me "when is your colleague coming back" When people talk to me I feel them, I trust what I feel and I respond based on how I feel. So I'm telling him "my colleague is not coming back you are stuck with me". So he goes to my boss and I get fired just for saying that. After I got fired, a few days later the boss called me back and I went back. Then the boss’s girl starts dating a guy, and her boyfriends starts staring at me too much. I get called in the boss’s office who orders me to wash the grocery's store wall windows right that moment. I have no idea how to wash windows, never done it in my life, I'm thinking is way to difficult and I'm scared to climb that high ladder and I know why he asks me to wash the windows so I'm telling him "I'm not doing it, I was hired for the bookkeeping job, not the cleaning windows job". So I get fired a second time. In total my first part time job lasted 9 months. Then I find a job part time selling vitamins. After about 6 months of work I go skiing at Vatra Dornei this time with a group. We stay there for about 4 days and its' not snowing at all, we struggle to ski on old snow. In the last day it starts snowing with big snowflakes nonstop day and night. The group is returning but I can't. I just can't. I need to stay skiing on fresh powder and I stay two more nights and I'm not calling the boss to let him know because I'm too scared, he won't let me stay. I finally return to work two days later than I said and the boss is really angry, like mute angry, and is firing me. My second and last part time job of my life as an employee lasted 6 months 

Falling off the mountain﻿
I was on another mountain skiing another time with a group of people at Straja Ski resort in Romania when I fell off the mountain. It was 10 am, we went up the chairlift and we discovered at the top was still too icy. The others went to check if its' just as icy on the backcountry side of the mountain where they skied before because is all about where the sun touches the snow first thing in the morning. I tried to catch up with them, then I wanted to do short cut .The way I came in and positioned my body, my skis should have cut the snow and stop. That didn't happen because the ice, and I fell. The moment I fell, I started rolling, then took a few long, long minutes accelerated flight with some fraction second touch downs. I was lucky there was no tree, no rock in my way becasue i'm not sure if I was still here telling the story. I finally stopped down in the valley on the backcountry side of the mountain right where one of my skies arrived before me. The other ski took a left turn, and end up in the forest somewhere. When I stopped I was shaking, my face white and sick from my heart. In the same trip a chair lift hit me in my head and in 1 second a huge bump grew on my forehead. In the same ski trip I fell from a rope tow and had to ski down on a black diamond nearly vertical slope. People ask me if it hurt to fall of the mountain. No, it didn't hurt because I didn't hit anything I just rolled on snow. It hurt when I fell from my grandparent's second floor city house. Before they installed the final stairs with two flight of stairs and a landing in between, they had a straight up ladder going to their second floor where my uncle finished two rooms and a bathroom. I had my arms full with a box with books and I was so fast that I missed the stairs right at the top and landed on the concrete down below. 

Doing IT college while missing classes 95% of the time
After graduating high school, for 4 years I did nothing other than trying to emigrate and trying to find true love which I failed both. Being in love since forever, I got so sick of falling in and out of love with people I didn't even like. Falling in love means nothing to me. Truly liking somebody, is important to me but I found nobody to like. This love thing is so exhausting. I didn't believe anymore that true love even exists. Seeing that all people who emigrate are programmers I enrolled in an IT private college that took me for my money and where I missed classes 95% of the time, didn't learn any programming (too hard) but I didn't drop out because I needed a diploma and I trusted that I will learn programming after the college, on the job. All school is useless theory and abstraction and I hate theory and abstraction. I like practical things you can touch, pull apart, look at, push, see how they respond, adjust, stuff like that. 

Take me as I am or leave me
In one of the churches, I was visiting I saw a guitar player singer super cute who hit me as being extremely easy. He felt like a white serene cloud floating above the crowd. He was a programmer too, super cute and eager to sleep with me, make me babies and emigrate with me. I so love to be alone but I can't make and raise babies alone and I did not want to emigrate alone. I told him I liked him and he said "he likes me too because all the men he knew liked me". The word of me being a whore spread all around. Women were afraid I'll take their men and went to warn him about me. Some went to him to say I was a dumb person unable to talk anything other than hair and clothes. Other went to him to say I don’t talk any politics. He asked me if I will stop sleeping around and I blurted "No! I won't do that". I’m glad he asked. I never felt limited or imprisoned in my life. I've done only what I wanted when I wanted my entire life. Both my grandma and my mother were like that too. They didn't have any limits for themselves or for me. I had no dad and my grandad was busy minding his business and couldn't had put any limit on my grandma anyway, she was way too stubborn. I don’t know what a limited life is and don’t want to know. I don't feel good only hearing about limits add prisons. Me and my grandma kind of  hide in plain sight.  I  told him "I love myself and my life the way it is more than I love anybody and I'll never change, take me as I am or leave me." He said he needs to think about. He comes back the second day saying he thought about it, and takes me as I am. I discovered that some man love whores and I discovered that I love those men the most. They are like me, loving life to much to limit themselves 

Words like “wedding” “marriage” "family" don't exist for me
I've always dreamed of making love and having babies but I never thought of horrible words like “wedding” “marriage” "family". Words like this don't exist in my vocabulary. The word "marriage" sounds like a soul crushing boring cage/prison. The word "wedding" sound like a circus for other people, not for me. I don't know what the word "family" means. I don't even think of such words. The things I don't think about, come to hit me and when it happens, it hits me hard. I bend, but eventually recover and find my way. 

Oops, missing part of my wedding reception
When it hit me that I have to have a wedding I got mortified. I wanted to wiggle myself out of it but he couldn't conceive not to have a wedding because he was a social person. For the church service, we rented an over one hundred old Lutheran beautiful church in Union Square in Timisoara. We rented a simple dress. He bought white gold rings. I did my own hair. He had a lot of music knowledge and CDs and we picked every single song that played on CDs. One of them was B.B. King ft. Eric Clapton Riding With The King. We both liked that song the most. During the restaurant reception his cousin "stole me" (she said its a tradition where the bride is stolen and the groom needs to find her - I never heard about that tradition) and we went and stayed at her apartment waiting for the groom to find me. We waited and waited, but the groom had no intention to search for me. We finally called him to see if he's still searching and he ordered me back to the restaurant where all the guests were still there. It was rude of me to be gone for so long but I just don't think at all. Besides my weirdness of not being present for my own wedding reception that was all caught on tape, some guests said they were so inspired that were mentally hooked on my wedding for a whole week. 

Feeling a deep pain in my heart
 I did feel a pain in my heart for not finding true love because even though I don't believe in true love and most people never find it in their lifetime was still at the back of my mind, still my dream since I was 4 or 5. It's a dream I can't escape, it's what drives me, what makes me feel so good inside. I hold tide to my dream because it's all I have. But then I don't believe my dream. I don't think I believe dreams at all. I think maybe is foolish to wait, to waste your time and life for something that may not exist. Some dreams do come true. Some dreams come true way better than you ever dreamed. I don't really know. I think it's good to not ignore the dreams, to keep them at the back of your mind but to also get your hands as you go on anything you can, anything that feels so good, anything that helps you. I do believe that the best time to prepare for the future is living your life today and I think I've done that. 
True love in my mind is a fucking experience that feels in a certain way. Maybe feels like somebody gives you a kiss on your pussy but you love the person. Maybe sex + love= true love. Love is so abstract, what does it even mean. I guess I'll know when I'll experience. A dream of person who's in tune with me and I'm in tune with him. We don't need to talk because we both deeply feel and completely understand each other. A person who likes me the most and I like him the most. A person with whom I feel the highest feeling of love imaginable. A man with whom I feel like the whole world had disappeared and I'm only me and him living on earth surrounded by beautiful nature, rain, storms, snow, seasons and nothing else. I maybe looking for myself. 
There are a few quotes about true love I don't know if are true or not “True love is like a pair of socks: you gotta have two and they've gotta match." Eric Fromm "True love is something that helps you suffer less and helps the other person to suffer less. True love is something that makes you happy and makes the other person happy. True love can help you to have more freedom" Thich Nhat Hanh. I don't know what true love is but I'd surely love to find one and experience. And if I'll find someday one true love, I will want to see if I can find two and so on. In the meantime fucking whoever you can get is exciting too. 

"Honeymoon" word doesn't exist for me
For Honeymoon he asked me where I would like to go. I never thought of "Honeymoon" and in my mind I hoped to escape whatever that scary societal expectation drag was. When I hear societal labels my stomach drops. I don't think of them, I'm scared of them. I never know what they mean, how I'm supposed to act, people expect me to be this way or that way, to say this or that and I don't know anything and I don't want to know anything, I feel uncomfortable and I want to skip them altogether. Anyway, I immediately said Maramures. Maramures is an area in Northern Romania. Since I was 16 until I met him when I was 22 so for about at least 5 - 6 years all my roaming around Romania was organized and led by me. All the men I've been with came along for the ride. My style of roaming was completely not in any big city, all were just mountains, hills, villages, little medieval towns so I was left to go North of Romania and then I wanted to do North East of Romania in Moldova again not in any city. For me all my roaming was unplanned, unpretentious and with no interest of seeing anything in particular. I had an idea of a beautiful place, a direction and I just went, I saw whatever I saw whenever I saw if I saw. If I missed all of tourist are supposed to see I couldn't care less. I was a roamer, not a tourist. For me it was all about fucking, eating, hiking, being with a new or old lover in a new place, having a  good time and being really chill, taking it one moment at a time, moving on impulse, improvising, deciding based on the moments weather and we feel like in the moment.
 

Italy and France ﻿
He said "oh no, we can't do Maramures. For Honeymoon we have to do something special, let's go to Italy ". I said sure. We visited Venice, Rome, Florence and some friends of a friend had an old aunt who had a cool empty apartment in Chiavari Italy. We stopped there also for a few nights and from Chiavari by train we visited Cinque Terre and Portofino. I used to call it Trinque Cerre. For me Cinque Terre or Trinque Cerre is the same thing. We stopped in each of the five villages for a swim. The water was very warm, clear, blue, a pleasure and a breeze to get in. While walking in between those villages on that rugged terrain, I broke my sandals and didn't find any shop I could buy shoes from. Then we went Monaco and Paris. 

Pregnant in the last month with my girl
dropped at church surprise baby shower party organized for me with only women, mothers, soon to be mothers. I could not feel worse. I hate parties, I hate groups and I don't know for whatever the reason in a group of women I feel the worst. Four months after the wedding I got pregnant with our first baby. My girl was one week past due date. I gave birth fast with no pain medication. So I wake up in the morning with a constant surge of energy in my body and head. Is Sunday, my grandma was in hospital at her yearly one-week retreat aka escape from cooking for my grandad for a week (she had her heart enlarged and "checked "on her heart yearly even though she had zero problems with her heart. Poor Romanians do that, get their vacations yearly in hospital to sit in bed and be brought hospital food. My mother was going yearly to sanatorium up in the mountains because "she had neurosis" . Again a week for free getting cooked food in the most beautiful Romanian Mountains.) I cook something home and decide to walk to my grandad's house to give him some food because is Sunday. So I walk 2 hours to his house pregnant in the last month with my baby being overdue 1 week . I give food to my grandad then I walk to visit my grandma in hospital and I buy to her fast food because that's what she asked for. So I walk another 1 hour to my grandma's hospital. Then I walk another 30 minutes back home. Home I start to fight for absolutely no reason and 10 pm I go to sleep with tears in my eyes because of the fight. I can't sleep and at 12 am I wake up saying I feel some contractions but the doctor said to no go to hospital too early so I wait. At 2 am my contraction start suddenly to hurt unbearably. I feel like dying and I take a taxi and go to hospital. They put me on the giving birth table and said "DON'T push!, don't push! you are giving birth, why did you wait so long until you came?." I arrived only 20 minutes before giving birth at the hospital and they had no time to give me any pain medication. I breastfed my girl exclusively 5 months and breastfed her in total 15 months. When my girl was about 3 weeks old the Romanian doctors and nurses said I don't have enough milk and had to supplement with formula. For the first 3 weeks of my girls life I was reading this American book "What to Expect the First Year" where said give to eat every 3 hours and keep her in her own bed, so I did what the book said. My girl hated the schedule so did I, but I followed it anyway. After 3 weeks my milk seemed to dwindle and my girl's cry sounded just as annoyed with the 3 hours program as she sounded in the very first day. In 3 weeks she adjusted zero to the program or worse became more annoyed with it. I called up a few mothers who breastfed for over a year because I wanted badly to breastfeed for more than a year and one mother gave me to read one American book "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding " that book said the more milk you give to the baby the more milk your body produces. I go it! I threw out the window the 3 hours program, I removed on side of railing from her little bed, I pulled her bed next to mine, I tied her bed to mine and just gave my baby more milk more often, whenever she wanted. I gave her milk for food and for comfort . In a few days my milk went way up and I had an abundance of milk to give my baby for 15 months.

Altitude sickness 
Climbing 1000 m difference in altitude in one day. It was raining. We hitchhiked to 1000 m and had to climb another 1000m until the top where we planned to stay in a tent for 2 nights. My cheap improvised equipment/tent gathered a lot of water, got heavier and on top of that I just gave birth 10 month ago, and I didn't realize I was so out of shape (I was still breastfeeding, I just went for a quick 2 nights camping). I did 10 -12 hours hiking/climbing before and had no problems except that night. Once I arrived on top of the mountain, because of the altitude, effort and still not recovered after giving birth I could not sleep all night long. My heart beat super-fast and I couldn't breathe. I knew that if I fall asleep, I will die. The second day I had to come down the mountain half way, I think I came down to 1450 m and rented a cheap cabin 

Bears encounter 
In 10 years of camping in Romania I never put my tent in organized camps. I put my tent wherever I wanted and far away from people. In 10 years I had never seen a bear, never heard of one and I didn't even know Romania has so many bears. I knew I supposed to not keep my food in the tent and I partly wasn't. I didn't have a bear spray, never heard of bear spray . It was a cloudy night. I was cooking food by a creek with some bears next to me I didn't see becasue it was too dark but I heard them breathing and I tell the man I was with "I hear a bear breathing down by the creek" . He said "nooo, there are some people who just went to get some water". I chose to believe him even though I clearly heard the bear breathing. When I got in the tent, two bears came at the tent and went round and round the tent. I was so scared I didn't know how long I can hold before I'm losing my mind. All I could think of was my daughter I left home and how she will be left without her foolish mother. We had a cell phone ( we were actually touring the country by tents with another couple in their car, who exactly that night, because the girl twisted her leg and it got hugely inflamed, were staying at a hotel down in town ) and called our friends who came at 12 am up in the mountains to save us from bears. We left the tent and all belongings behind and came the second day to pick them up. 

Emigrating to Australia
When I landed first time in Melbourne, Australia I was impressed with how fresh the air was, it felt like you were in a resort. There were lots of bright colored flowers yellow, pink, purple that had a strong smell that made me sick. There were Eucalyptus trees I didn't like how they looked with hundreds of noisy white cockatoos with yellow crest. At Safeway they were selling kangaroo meat and I ate that because it was the cheapest. In Australia I initially enrolled in a Romanian Baptist church, and after a few months or a year I felt horrible about it and I decided to move again. I was with a big group of Romanian friends from church when they heard I want to move asked me "and what would the community think that you want to move?". I asked "what community?". In my head the word "community" doesn't exist. I moved to an Australian Pentecostal megachurch but before I moved, the Romanian church called me to ask me before the church committee why I want to move. I didn't know I had to give explanations. I asked how long will this committee keep me there. They said at least 20 minutes maybe an hour. I thought "oh God", it frightened me. They ask me “why do you want to move ?”. I said ”because the Romanian church is backwards and I’m afraid will rub off on my kids”. That was it. They said I can go. In 5 minutes I was out of the committee’s gathering.  I moved to CityLife Australian megachurch where was pastor Mark Conner. At this Australian church I also felt sick. I couldn't stand to see the people, I couldn't stand to hear their talking, I couldn't stand to see what they were doing. The Australians were very cute, they looked a lot like Europeans or even better, maybe not better than Italians.

Pregnant in the last month with my boy
After 2 years In Australia I gave birth even faster to my baby boy. Again I wake up in the morning with way too much energy and a need to fight for no reason. I knew that's a sign I'll give birth but I feel absolutely no pain and my boy is one week before due date. At 9 :30 pm I'm a bit worried I'll give birth and I know I'm so fast .I'm 50/50 if I should go to hospital or not. At 10 pm I feel some faint pain and decide to go to hospital to check. I though I'd rather sit by the hospital door waiting like a cow just in case. Sure I was giving birth. I told the nurse "I'm hypersensitive give me less pain medication than you give a normal person". Not sure what she did, but she knocked me out and then panicked that I was giving birth unresponsive. First time I got no pain medication, second time I got too much. After I gave birth the nurse said "I'll give him a bath , you get up and go to your room I"ll bring him right away". I said What? she said "get up and go to your room!". I was surprised becasue with my daughter I couldn't get up from bed for a day. I thought they will take me to my room on some wheels. I got up from bed, as she said, like nothing happened. I felt no pain, no discomfort, no dizzy, no nothing. I went to my room, my boy came too and we went to sleep until 7am when the doctor comes in and starts "Guys, hey guys, guys, how can you sleep like that?". I'm not sure what was he expecting us to do at 7 am. I breastfed my boy exclusively 5 months and breastfed him in total 15 months. I got my girl in the mountains when she was 7 months old and my boy when he was 6 months. I kept both my kids sleeping next to me for their first 4 years because little kids are afraid to sleep alone. Their little bed was next to mine. I removed a rail and tight their bed to mine. 

I can't live without beautiful mountains to run to
I'm sensitive to beauty and I love mountains but I don't love ugly mountains, in fact ugly mountains make me so mad. Especially ugly mountains called "Mt Beauty". I can’t stand when something looks and feels one way and people call it another. I like to say it (blurt it ) as it is because truth sets me free. Ugliness sickness me. I can't take the lack of some sort of appeal. There were no beautiful mountains for me in Australia and I decided I need to move to either back to Romania or to USA where one of my uncle’s kids already moved. I felt I was going crazy in my head. I was in a constant state of not feeling right all across the board. I didn't listen to music in months. A sure sign I was not feeling well because I listen to music every day all day. I wasn't living for going anywhere because there was nowhere to go. I felt dead inside, buried underground and I needed to escape. I blamed it on ugly nature, lack of ski resorts, lack of mountains, isolation from the rest of the world, closed mindedness about businesses, too expensive real estate, lack of roaming options, muddy waters. People think Australia is a tropical place but is not. It has a tropical part, but in Melbourne was actually too cold in the night to stay outside even in summer. In winter once I spined the car with both my kids because it was black ice and neither saw it nor expected it. I don't like watching TV at all but I watch sometimes documentaries about nature, about national parks, about natural disasters. I'm in Melbourne, Sunday in bed watching Mt St Helen, WA eruption. I see this winding road shot from above through Pacific NW conifers and I swear I'm falling in love with what I see and I say "that's exactly where I'm moving" 

Moving to States
In August 21, 2008 I moved from Australia to Oregon. In Portland and the whole pacific NW, the nature was breathtaking beautiful. I drove to Mt Hood and I felt excited and overjoyed. I was so happy to finally have beautiful real mountains that look, smell and feel like real mountains. Mt Hood is a beautiful snowcapped mountain so close to Portland, I could go ski and hike on in an hour. Had blue green clear lakes I could kayak on, beautiful waterfalls and heavenly autumn colors. I drove to the Oregon coast and found it not pretty but peaceful. Everything was so much cheaper than in Australia. I looked at people and I got shocked of how they looked. For a whole month I kept looking at people, and still felt shocked. After a month I was not sure I wanted to live in States anymore. I looked at the culture and I didn't understand at all what people wanted. I realized that no mater what society I'm getting myself into I want to escape. I thought Romanian society doesn't fit me, but once in Australia, Australian society didn't fit me either. Then when I moved in American society I discovered, it doesn't fit me either. I may fit it with some people but not with groups of people and societies. I went to shop for clothes and I could not believe how ugly all were. Then I stumbled in a shop called Abercrombie & Fitch and that was the coolest shop I have ever been in. I've been window shopping in Venice, Florence, Portofino, Paris but I loved this shop more. The perfume smell, the lighting, the music, the clothes’ colors, the arrangement. They had on the wall a big cool Moose head like you see in the mountain lodges but this head was cooler. That shop gave me hope and hope is all I need sometimes to keep going. That shop was the only American light I saw in my first few years of life in States. 

Lost﻿
In Jan 2009 my grandad died at almost 93 years old of old age and it took me a while until it hit me and I started drinking Chianti Classico. When he died, I died too. I got completely lost. I realized for the very first time that I'm going to die someday too. I just haven't thought of that before.  Everything I didn't think of when it happens to me, it wipes me.  I started to write too about him and about me because that’s how I felt. Once I started writing I felt I could find myself. Once I start drinking I can only stop if I eat or if I fall asleep.  I have an addictive brain and I never touched drugs or any alcohol harder then red wine. I struggle enough with my red wine addiction. I'm also snob. I could drive half an hour to buy a good wine but I can't possibly drink any of the red wines they sell at Albertsons.     

Going temporarily crazy
 Dec 2011 My kids are big and I get this impulsive idea of opening a business because having a job is not for me. I always knew that if I will ever work will be some craft, some solitary business of my own doing. So I go online and I open a business without even knowing what business I’m opening hoping that nobody will ask me and I will figure it out as I go. While completing the form it actually asked me what business and I said web design. Web because I finished IT college and design because I always liked design and I was already on the internet using WordPress and other websites. With absolutely no idea of any web design I get my first client to learn on my first client. Oh my God. Unlucky. So I get this client with money who wants a website for her job consulting business. I create a one page really beautiful simple, with just the right shade of baby blue I chose from hundreds of shades, with just the right stock photo I chose from thousands of stock photos. It kind of tried to say it all visually. It was simple, beautiful, functional, I like it and I present it to her and she doesn’t like it. Way too simple! She sends me back a link from another competitor job consulting company and she tells me this is what she wants.  I see on this website a group of fake scary people in work suits in a high level corporate setting with a board in the background and I read pages and pages of blah blah blah I understand nothing from and I get so fucking scared. Like I just got drooped in hospital with last stage cancer. I can not possibly do what this client is asking me to do. I don’t have the mental capacity. The writing  s foreign to me and scares me to death.  I got so afraid that I lost my mind for a few days or a few weeks. I got locked in maddening fear. Like I realized for the very first time in my life I can not possibly understand, stand and relate to the people who inhabit this earth let alone work with them. It became a life problem for me. I wish somebody understood how I felt and unlocked me like telling me about my grandma and how me and her were alike and how she was loved , was happy and survived just fine because I’ve become sick in my head. I got fear in my brain that imprisoned me and drove me insane. I could not see any way out. Even my ability to quit was not working for me anymore. I got completely frozen in fear. After a few weeks I could finally say  that I just can't do it and ended my website deign business and I don’t want to ever again work for anyone because I can’t. I just can’t do what others want me to do. I only can do what I want to. If my first client would have asked a website for their pineapple orange juice product maybe would have been a different experience for me but job consulting corporate groups of people work pages and pages of blah blah God NO! I should have said no from the start. I waste so much by not being able to say no. It doesn’t even cross my mind to say no. "No" is such great ticket to mental health, to love, to life, to  freedom if I could only use it sooner.

Hearing the adventure's call
I'm more the adventurous type than relationships type. When my kids were small I was only focused on them, the whole world disappeared for me. I was not interested in being with other men at all. I was just loving to stay home with my kids. When my youngest turned 6, something in me changed. I heard adventure's call again. A deep feeling inside to go and explore in search for true love, sex and excitement/thrill until the end of earth, and I said Yes! I missed the pleasure and intensity of being alone with a man and making love which is my favorite thing in the world. Having babies is in me but my babies were not babies anymore one was 10 and one was 6. I missed the adrenaline of a new place, of a new lover, the excitement of roaming in hope of colliding with another bum, another vagabond like me. I was ready to live again like I was 5 or 17 for only sex in nature, for roaming, for following inspiration, for not staying in a place too long just exploring and experiencing and what last, lasts and what doesn't doesn't. I need excitement to run through my blood or I get sick. Boredom and not feeling in love all the time scares me and makes me sick 

Discovering Bob Dylan
Nov 2012 Because I thought to start a business to make my own money, I started researching people for inspiration, for figuring out what I could work. I never liked the word "work" and never thought about work much if at all. On the Seth Godin blog, a blog recommended by Mark Conner the pastor I had in Australia, I see Bob Dylan name dropped and I read his Chronicles book and read a few of his quotes and I instantly feel "this person is like me". A current of overjoy went through me from top to toe - I felt liberated. I didn't have to change myself to fit the society anymore not that I even tried to but I thought I might have to once I start working. I had no idea who Bob Dylan was. I never heard the name before.  I thought if he could be himself and make money, I can too as different as I am myself. Despite connecting with him as a person, I didn't relate with his work. I love music but I thought its too late for me to start learning an instrument which I know is hard because I tried, too late being a singer songwriter performer, so I kept on looking for another person like him, that I'm a lot like, but who maybe has a work that I could do. Still I kept reading every quote, every interview , every song of his and I stared realizing he is so wise, he says things better than anyone around and I don't want to miss a thing he says. the he stared to have painting and i love all his painting like I was in all the places he was too. I have a 28 GB a folder with everything he says, all the photos I like and many videos I downloaded becasue you never know when they disappear from internet.  I kept searching and searching but never found another person that feels to me like Bob Dylan and possibly I will never find. I  realized that you can express same feeling in many ways music, paintings, app, books, clothes, restaurants

Dating apps﻿
After I moved to USA I did not make any friends (the word friends doesn’t exist for me), I did not enroll my kids in any after school activities, I rejected all invitation for any parties and  socializing, I didn’t  volunteer with the school, I did not even go to my kids concerts and choir performance because I hate school music and I feel horrible in school seeing parents and teachers. I’m not into  keeping in touch with relatives either. I don’t really get myself into things I don’t like. Maybe I haven’t got myself in 90% most people are involved in but I love sex and love and romance and roaming. Not being the type to go in bars to meet men I started to enroll myself in on line dating apps where I'm looking for somebody sensual, appealing, fun, sensitive, with fire (passion) and light (wisdom/understanding) but most people seem exactly the opposite. Being on dating app makes me feel worse than not being on dating apps so after a few years I took a break. One in a million maybe you do find an interesting person on a dating app so its worth looking but it's hard and feels pretty horrible
My first Bob Dylan concert in Portland, OR
Oct. I heard Bob Dylan's fans bragging about how many  of his concerts they went to, they follow him all over  and I decided to go too. At the end of the show, I got out first from the building while the crowd was asking for an encore.  I also do things like that. Once outside, it was dark and I suddenly see a guard next to a bus. I see his extended arm because he  stops me from walking and tells me to walk on the other side of the road. That moment I see Bob Dylan right in front of my eyes, the length of his bus away, getting in his bus. I thought he was inside responding to encore but no, he was outside rushing in his bus. 

Born with a  drive inside to celebrate but not society's way﻿
2016 I'm the same freespirit I have always been and  I figured there is nobody else like me around anymore. If until 35 years old I could maybe find a few free spirits (fake most likely), after 35 I'm left alone the only free spirit. I’m on my own driving my own life. I'm alone on the road standing on my two feet holding onto myself. I don't feel alone, I don't know what feeling alone is. Nobody is going to drive my life for me. It’s up to me to lead myself. My style is always focused. People say "you are focused because you can’t organize yourself". It doesn’t matter why I’m focused but I need to do some cleaning up. I need to conserve myself , my energy, my time.  So I decide to scrape all birthdays, anniversaries, 4th of July, Valentines day, Christmas day, New Years Day, travel, restaurants, walking in park/hanging out with same faces too often. So I say “count on me to not show up for any anniversaries, b-days, societal celebrations at all." I love Christmas but I can’t cherry pick to show up for one and not for others because people get confused. Once I said I won’t participate in any,  things got very clear and people know to not expect “different people” like me to show up. I just freed myself from a lot of boring  burdens and I feel so so much better.  I've done way too much of all this soulless boring shit. I'd rather drink myself to sleep than do any of this "fun things" society does.  Wanting to have kids doesn't mean I want to be dragged in boring lifestyle that makes me sick with all its unappealing unexciting non stop nonsense activities that people who are tough and insensitive, who are lacking a heart, a soul, eyes in their head  can put up with but I can't and don't want to. I was not born to be bored and to suffer. I always felt a drive to celebrate life every day and to be with people who feel like a celebration, like a holiday. That's my way of celebrating. If all these societal celebration makes others happy I'm happy for them but I don't want to be dragged in. I can do a thing once or twice but from three times on most things are very boring, especially things that have no soul. The only people who are not that boring are sensitive people.  Most of my life I knew for sure everyone feels like me and when I woke up to reality, recently, I discovered everyone was NOT feeling like me and  now I think about it and I see it everywhere. I woke up living in a cage called Society where everyone finds it easier to fit in but I can't fit in with something I don't like.

 2018 41 years old﻿
 Discovering Thich Nhat Hanh ﻿
2018 Nov Discovering a person who feels so peaceful. This person feels exactly like my grandma, but is way better becasue he has so deep extensive knowledge and can explain deeply everything  I need and want to know. When you are in a village ia easy to feel and  see everything, to have this clarity and security that you understand the world you live in with the good and the bad. Once you leave the small village everything gets scary and  confusing and hold on to somethng but you don't know what you are holding onto. Thich Nhat Hanh could explain to me everything and the entire world became to me like the village. Everything si the same as in the village but takes somebody else to assure you of it.  I read him and read him and I can't stop myself from reading. I want to know everything, everything he says.  Discovering this person took my life to a clarity, a depth of understanding my feelings and life I didn't have before.  When you can  understand yourself and life you get peaceful because you know. Both my kids got hooked on him too so I'm  happy. Even small kids can understand this person, he is that good. I got a 97 MB folder with his quotes mostly .There is maybe one thing I don't agree with him or I don't care about but it's fine. There is no person on earth that you can align with on everything.  Besides I don't like monks all that much. For me sex is life. I don't understand  why anybody would want to be a monk. He has  a quote “Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing" . I don't want to learn anything, I'm tired of learning I want to celebrate and enjoy life. Learning for me was a need because of confusion and losing my dream and my path  but I know all I need I don't want to ever learn anything. I don't want to have to think of anything. If I have to think is because I don't understand and that's a horrible place to be in.

Got my brand new Jeep.
 Hitting the road makes me instantly feel so much better. I always wanted a Jeep and never thought of another car. I love cool stylish cars that look so good but I love my Jeep by far the most. There is no car that I like second best. When I get in my Jeep, turn the music on and  I get so happy, excited and I start dreaming, like the whole world is a playground and I can go wherever I want. It's not easy to drive because is essentially a truck but I got used with it. I drive it everywhere. Being on the road every week and sometimes every day makes me happy. It makes me hopeful of people with zest for life who've always followed their heart, vagabonds, true love, romance and adventures, of seeing new faces and new places. It makes me believe that something exciting is going to happen to me. I just go, and go, and go and I feel myself at my truest and on my path. Going is the medicine that keep me free, sane, happy and loving.

Got my own apartment in Portland - starting living alone part of the time
I need to be alone with myself a lot of the time in peace and quiet. I can only relax alone. Only hearing steps in the house or noise scares me. Having to answer question for my acts , for who I am is unbearable. Insensitive people have a way of making sensitive people feel uncomfortable, you can't escape, you can't say no, you know you can't change anybody so you disappear. Its good for everyone to have space, to have their own place to go and recharge. I need to be free to do what I want when I want like I need air. I don't want others to schedule me or expect me to behave like a "normal" person, to keep tabs on me, to look at me to align themselves with me, or to try to align me with them. I don't even look at anybody to try to align myself with the crowd and naturally I don't like to be looked at. I need to have days and days uninterrupted by anyone.  I'm hyper sensitive, feel deeply everything  and people who feel deeply don't like to talk.  Most people are tough, don't have a heart to guide them and putting up with all the societal boring activities  starting with kindergarten, moving on to school, college, carrer ladder is natural and normal. Step by step instruction most people are happy to follow and  are even good at it.  Follow instructions for 8 hours then go in park to relax and walk for an hour and I would die if I would do any of this. It would drive me crazy to follow others instruction and I would die of boredom to walk in park.  Telling others what to do is normal to them but it's not normal to me. I can't take being told what to do and I can't tell others what to do. I observed that the only people who can deeply understand like Bob Dylan, Thich Nhat Hans, Charls Buckowski are deeply sensitive and aware of reality as it is. People who are not sensitive, talk. The less they understand the more they talk. People who are blind to reality not only talk the most and ask question the most but want to be leaders (that's my mother). People say to me "you are happy because you do only what you want" and they say it in a voice like they hate me. Why don't you do what you want too? Most people repress themselves because they are fearful. Their own fear repress them, nobody else. They hate me for not repressing myself.  I'm fearful too just that I fear different things and others opinions about me is not something I'm even aware of, let alone be afraid of. But is not easy to do what I want. Painful sick lovers take me for a ride, family takes me for a ride, the society takes me for a ride and I'm sick of it. I had enough of this. I don't have time anymore. Life is short. I need space, I need distance, I need four walls to keep me safe. The apartment is decorated like my clothes are, like me. I feel so good from the very first second I step in my apartment. Moving partly in my apartment I discovered I moved closer to the homeless with whom I relate more than I relate to society. I hear their rants in the night and I relate. I saw a homeless person sitting on the bench. I saw him there at 4:30 pm at 6 pm and 7:30 pm. When the night came and there was nobody around he started shouting "help me!"...."help me!"... that's all he kept saying "help me!".﻿
My second Bob Dylan concert Portland, OR
 2022 May I arrived at venue at 7:15 pm for 8 pm concert and decide to walk around the block. On one of the streets, I see two buses and two women looking at the bus. One said that she's been there since 2 pm and Bob Dylan has not got yet from the bus. I decide to just stay there and not walk anymore because I may get to see Bob Dylan. 5 minutes before the concert starts, I see Bob Dylan getting off from the bus, so I'm again the length of his bus away and he walks to the concert building. Looking at him he felt so good that I was moved by how good can a person feel just by walking from the bus to the building. I don't remember meeting anybody who felt so good. 

My man - my 3rd Bob Dylan concert﻿
My grandma's first cousin moved to Chicago a long time ago, possibly before I was even born, where he became a wealthy American owning hotels. He sent us a post card 3D with Chicago skyline we kept in the kitchen buffet for years until it curled on the corners and split in three.  My grandma kept talking on the phone with her cousin all their life. Since I moved to States in 2008 I wanted to go visit Chicago becasue of this uncle. Then Bob Dylan had a concert Oct 7 and 8 and I said its an opportunity for me to go visit Chicago. I walked the whole length of The Magnificent Mile back and forth. I walked by the river but I did not get it. I felt was a bit like Disneyland. When I go to Disneyland I don't get it either. Everyone is happily seeing something that I don't.  Its a sickening scary feeling when that happens. I loved the lake though, it had a nice color. Maybe Chicago is about the lake. I tried Chicago pizza and I liked it. Anyway, walking on the street in the rain and seeing Rough & Roundy ways on Cadillac Palace Theater with a Chicago Skyscraper in the background I had this so good feeling I never had before "This is my man!". I was there for the  Oct 7 concert and I loved it so much that after the show I went to my hotel room which was in the same building and bought online one of the only 3 tickets left for Oct 8, to go again. It feels so good to be in the same room with this person. 

Milos
A romantic small island with very few people, warm blue green beaches, some old buildings, beautiful architecture and the best climate on earth. Sitting outside in the night only in a summer dress feeling the breeze and dreaming, not talking anything, is one of my favorite things to do and a great climate is perfect for me. 

Discovering Charles Bukowski﻿
I love some people, they are the only fun and fascinating thing in life for me, they grab me and I want to know everything, everything about them.  Too bad I find so few people to like and most of them are dead. Another person who feels and thinks like me, a person who has the guts to say it how I feel "I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores." " I give you soul. I give you wisdom and light and music and a bit of laughter. Also, I am the world's greatest horseplayer. ""How do you know that you’re the one? You don’t know. It’s a shot in the dark. You take it, or you become a normal civilized person from eight to five. Get married, have children; Christmas together, here comes Grandma, 'Oh, hi, Grandma! Come on in. Hi, you.' You know. Shit, I couldn’t take that, I’d rather murder myself (laughs). I guess just in the blood of me I couldn’t stand the whole thing that’s going on, the ordinariness of life. I couldn’t stand family life, I couldn’t stand job life, I couldn’t stand anything I looked at. I just decided I either had to starve, make it, go mad, come through, or do something. Even if I hadn’t made it on writing – I could not do the eight to five. I would have been a suicide, something. Something, I’m sorry. I could not accept the snail’s pace, eight to five, Johnny Carson, Happy Birthday, Christmas, New Year…to me this is the sickest of all sick things." "I could scream down 90 mountains to less than dust if only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body, but there is no chance, my god, no chance". A cool person that gives me hope that there exist cool sensitive wise intensely alive fuckable fun people with soul and style on earth.

Healed for a month
 This year I went for a month back to Europe. I couldn't believe how good I felt. Where I stayed, in the middle of nowhere, just peaceful nature all around, at this charming inspirational beautiful old Tuscany house with red brick floors, stone walls inside and out (more like a small castle), with tasteful exciting art, with an old usable piano, its grounds with red and pink geraniums, roses, plum, fig and pear trees, olive grove, grapevine, cypress trees, umbrella pine trees, no other house around, with 360 degree views of the surrounding fields, hills, valleys and old towns (inspiring Montepulciano town with very few people ), with it's location in Val D'Orcia (an area listed Unesco's World Heritage). It had a covered outdoor area you can stay or eat when is raining. It also has fireplaces with wood and I think would make a romantic getaway in colder months. In this house I immediately got in touch completely with myself became one with nature and my dream and the whole world, any sense of time completely disappeared. I thought I want to live and feel like this for the rest of my life. I could see myself living in that in nature with my lover through springs, summers, autumns, winters forever. I had a feeling that I won't be able to go back to States or I if I do I won't be able to function in States anymore 

Bob Dylan Outlaw Music Festival - my 4th Bob Dylan concert
From the list of places and concerts I picked Somerset, WI because was next to Minneapolis and wanted to visit the area Bob Dylan is from. I know he only spent a little time in Minneapolis because he was raised in Duluth and Hibbing but it doesn't matter, I wanted to go somewhere. I was looking for inspiration, for a feeling, for a dream that I may have forgot about and for whatever reason I knew I could find it there. I buy myself a second raw concert ticket and I said I'll Uber back to Minneapolis. I'm trying to reserve an Uber for 9.20 pm but I can't. It gives me "reservations not available for this location". I thought I'll have a f* adventure with how I'm going to get back to my hotel in Minneapolis. At 9:23 I'm placing my first booking attempt to Uber. After 10 minutes, it failed. I place two more calls with Uber when I see my phone is 24% charged only. By now was 10 pm. I place a car request with Lyft and that fails too . It's 12 C degrees I'm in a red tank top dress, flip flops, some light black socks I I already put on since the concert's temperature dropped rapidly from 19 to 13 C , a REI all weather thin soft jacket with hood, and I say "I think I have a problem". I'm going to the first gas station that was actually already closed and where I find a father and daughter trying to get to Woodbury with no luck in finding a Uber or Taxi. I said "guys can I come with you? " and started to tag along them. They go on a secondary dark road but I wanted to keep on the Main Road so I'm going to Sportsman's Bar & Grill that was open until 2:30 am. In front of the bar I find a couple who was fighting. She was so drunk she barely could talk and he was "not as drunk" trying to be nice with her. He told me they need to get to Stillwater where they are staying, they can't get an Uber or Taxi and she wants to do the trip on foot but it takes 4 hours on foot!. Then another two man come and they can't find a Uber or Taxi either and said “lets all relax!!! the key word here is relax. We won't find something at 10: 30 pm and we won't find at 2:30 am but in between there is a sweet spot where we will find someone available to come and get us". One of the men was going to St Paul and the other also to St Paul but said he actually needs to get in the morning to NE Minneapolis ". The two men get in the bar and I get too. They got their own table with real beer and I go at the bar and get an nonalcoholic beer. I called a few Minneapolis Taxis who said they don't come to Wisconsin. Then I called a Wisconsin taxi that didn't answer. Then I called my Inn and told them I've been to a music festival, I want to come back to the hotel but I'm stuck in Somerset, WI. The hotel called a Taxi who said they can get me between 12:30 am and 1 am. I said sure, I'll take it ! In meantime I tried to place one more request to Uber and my phone dies. I thought that was so reckless to not have a power bank with me. I wanted to stay and wait for the Taxi in the bar where was nice and warm but I couldn't because I had no power in my phone just in case the Taxi needed to call me and just in case I need the internet again. I see through the window there was a gas station right next to the grill called "Holiday" . I saw that name before but didn't think it was a gas station, I thought was a hotel. I needed to buy a charger and a cable to charge my phone so I pay for my one beer and leave. I get out of the bar and I see the "dad and daughter" passing me again coming from a secondary street again. I go in the Holiday Gas station, thanks Lord open 24h, because it was cold outside and the bar was closing at 2:30 am. I find a charger I could try if it fits my phone and that lady let me charge my phone. In the meantime at 12:20 am my taxi calls letting me know they are at the gas station waiting for me. So I got back to Minneapolis Old Town. The hotel was locked so I had to ring the bell but somebody came fast to open and I couldn't believe that I got to my warm, comfy, soft, cute bed. I couldn't love that bed more. I was so sleepy I fell asleep at least 4 times in the taxi while the taxi driver tried to do conversation with me. He was like "do you have Tualatin River?" I said "Tualatin? Oh yeah we have Tualatin". He said "Do you have Columbia River?" I said "Columbia? oh yeah we have Columbia". He said how do you like Minneapolis ? I said "I like it, it’s peaceful, like country side, I cross the street, I'm not worried a car comes and runs me over" . Then I realize oops is not country side. Too late. I said it. Portland is like country side in many ways too. 

"A complete unknown" movie
 My son loves movies and he studies to make movies. He heard a movie called "A complete unknown "about Bob Dylan will come out in theaters on Christmas day and knowing I love Bob Dylan said so confident and excited "Mom you and me, will go see this movie on Christmas!". He longed all his life to watch movies with his mom but his mom can't watch movies. Movies are fantasy, are like school , are like church, like most crowd people - all too insensitive, too fake/pretend, doing too many things I would never do, too boring for me. Like in school and like in church if I'd like the actor I would watch the movies to see the actor but I don't like any actor. I only watched "The snowball express" with my kids about three times (I liked that movie for whatever reason, not for any actor even though they were all funny ). When I heard him talking about the movie, I initially told him I hate fiction and that movie is probably fiction, some person's opinion, analyzation and interpretation so I'm not interested. A few days later I thought my son will be home for Christmas and we have nothing else to do other than skiing so why not go see the movie who knows maybe I like it. We bought the tickets for Dec 26 . I liked Timothée Chalamet's hair, sunglasses, green with dots shirt, a jacket he wore with a shirt and his motorcycle. The first 2/3 of the movie dragged on then in the last 1/3rd started to speed up. That's all I can remember. I don't know what the movie was about, I was pretty much not there. For me what I like, what excites me, what inspires me is reading "Eleven Outlined Epitaphs". I like Bob Dylan Chronicles book, which I read a few times. Reading about his beginning in NY, the rawness, the scraping to get by, his energy, his guts, that's exciting to me. I real exciting man in a real exciting place (Manhattan) doing an exciting thing getting money playing music his way. I felt so inspired when I was living in an Airbnb for a couple of days in Greenwich Village very close to where Bob Dylan lived. I felt so inspired, so much peace, and joy visiting and staying in Minneapolis for a couple of days and seeing where Bob Dylan lived in Minneapolis. I watched the movie "Renaldo and Clara" three times and loved it. I watched "Masked and anonymous" twice, understood it and loved seeing the man himself. I watched "Eat the document" once or twice. "No direction home" three times. "Hearts Of Fire " once. "Don't look back" once. " Roads Rapidly Changing" once. "Pat Garrett and Billy the kid" once. I like to see the man himself, his spirit, his aliveness, his passion, his sensitivity, his sensuality, his wisdom, how he looks, how he feels from moment to moment, what he says - that's what excites me, that's what inspires me, that's what's interesting to me. 