My grandparents
The village and my granparentsBorn Dec 1976 to a single self absorbed mother who didn't work, could not have men helping her even though many would have love to, she could not attend to neither reality nor to me. My grandad said my mother was mentally ill, that she is the angel turned devil. My grandma also said my mother was mean. mean, mean. I don't know, I have no opinion, my mother was way too complex for me. I have no idea who my dad is. He must have been a cool person. I don't have any parents to speak of. My grandparents raised me in Ramna, Caras Severin Romania since I was 3 month old until I was 6 years old, after that I raised myself extremly poor, with bad teeth, often ear infections, had to go to the doctor alone but lucky to be born peaceful and joyful in my head with a celebration feeling in my heart even though people think I look sad. I'm not sad, I'm happy. I'm maybe sad becasue life it too sweet an short and I've been painfully aware of this since I can remember. Ramna is a Romanian tiny hilly village of the beaten path, with orchards, and running creeks. 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 was gone working in the garden 14/24 in spring, summer, autumn. In winter he stayed inside waving baskets all day long. He was the village's Pentecostal pastor for over 35 years. His grandad was Gypsy but was not biological. My grandma only stayed home cooking divine food. Every time she went to town, she bought me something, candies, clothes, toys. I loved my grandma so much I felt one with her. 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 old 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.
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 play and feel and dream what I want to exactly when I want to and that makes me so excited, so happy. My grandma told me "I love everything, everything about you except that you don't listen to anyone and don't want to come with me, this two are your bad traits" Loving making love and dreaming of making love with the super cute boy Adi, a year older than me, who lived across the street and followed me all over with a love smile on his face. He was the only one I let touch my baby doll. He could even scratch it if he wanted to. We tried to have sex a few times and that was my idea. Every night when I had to go inside, I didn't want to. I wanted to stay out and play more with Adi. My grandma every night fooled me. She told 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 had to go three times per week to church. My grandma keept me a bit in church, gave me to eat apple or pumpkin strudel, gave me paper and pen to draw then sent me to stay outside because inside was too boring. Outside, there were the irresistibly cute soft warm babies in their mother's loving arms. I couldn't have enough of watching them. When a mother passed me by, my heart started beating fast. I was in awe of mothers. Mothers to me, were out of this world and the most important. Adi, like all the others kids in church, was not allowed to stay outside. The church took so long to be over and it was so painful to wait outside alone with nobody to play with. Roaming My grandma let me go alone anywhere in the village, past the viilage, on the hills. I was gone all the time. I was usually searching to see what I can find. I was searching for shiny stuff like chocoalte foils and I was hoping to find gold. My grandma never worked the land, she was never busy with work and she loved roaming too. With her I went to visit relatives in the neighboring village, I went roaming on the hills across the village. She was terrified of dogs because on the hills were those big vicious dogs who took care of the sheep. She alwasy carried a big stick with us. My grandma took me to the village's cemetery up the hill, where the grass was tall and the wind strong, and read 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 was loke. It felt like their spirits were still in the house. Escaping village kindergarten Adi started going to kindergarten and my grandma decided 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 hated the sight of pencils and paper, they are so boring and disgusting. I didn't like all the kids and the teachers who told others what to do all the time. Adi sat next to me and he seemed he could go with the kindergarten’ s flow. All kids came here did 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, horrifying 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 place again.
Loving nature and seasons Our big garden, was almost square shape, and my grandad called it Paradise, The Garden of Eden. Flowers, trees, the wind, the smell of seasons, colonies of bees, birds, butterflies, sunshine, rain. I keept every day track of flowers, fruits, leaves, of their change in color, shape and texture. I keept track of wind, of the sunlight temperature on my skin. I saw when the dark clouds came over the garden. I watched the torrential rain from the window. I saw the sun rays after the storm coming over the garden warming up everything and shining a magic light. Storms made me feel so excited, so inspired, they made me feel like making love.
The village and my granparentsBorn Dec 1976 to a single self absorbed mother who didn't work, could not have men helping her even though many would have love to, she could not attend to neither reality nor to me. My grandad said my mother was mentally ill, that she is the angel turned devil. My grandma also said my mother was mean. mean, mean. I don't know, I have no opinion, my mother was way too complex for me. I have no idea who my dad is. He must have been a cool person. I don't have any parents to speak of. My grandparents raised me in Ramna, Caras Severin Romania since I was 3 month old until I was 6 years old, after that I raised myself extremly poor, with bad teeth, often ear infections, had to go to the doctor alone but lucky to be born peaceful and joyful in my head with a celebration feeling in my heart even though people think I look sad. I'm not sad, I'm happy. I'm maybe sad becasue life it too sweet an short and I've been painfully aware of this since I can remember. Ramna is a Romanian tiny hilly village of the beaten path, with orchards, and running creeks. 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 was gone working in the garden 14/24 in spring, summer, autumn. In winter he stayed inside waving baskets all day long. He was the village's Pentecostal pastor for over 35 years. His grandad was Gypsy but was not biological. My grandma only stayed home cooking divine food. Every time she went to town, she bought me something, candies, clothes, toys. I loved my grandma so much I felt one with her. 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 old 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.
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 play and feel and dream what I want to exactly when I want to and that makes me so excited, so happy. My grandma told me "I love everything, everything about you except that you don't listen to anyone and don't want to come with me, this two are your bad traits" Loving making love and dreaming of making love with the super cute boy Adi, a year older than me, who lived across the street and followed me all over with a love smile on his face. He was the only one I let touch my baby doll. He could even scratch it if he wanted to. We tried to have sex a few times and that was my idea. Every night when I had to go inside, I didn't want to. I wanted to stay out and play more with Adi. My grandma every night fooled me. She told 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 had to go three times per week to church. My grandma keept me a bit in church, gave me to eat apple or pumpkin strudel, gave me paper and pen to draw then sent me to stay outside because inside was too boring. Outside, there were the irresistibly cute soft warm babies in their mother's loving arms. I couldn't have enough of watching them. When a mother passed me by, my heart started beating fast. I was in awe of mothers. Mothers to me, were out of this world and the most important. Adi, like all the others kids in church, was not allowed to stay outside. The church took so long to be over and it was so painful to wait outside alone with nobody to play with. Roaming My grandma let me go alone anywhere in the village, past the viilage, on the hills. I was gone all the time. I was usually searching to see what I can find. I was searching for shiny stuff like chocoalte foils and I was hoping to find gold. My grandma never worked the land, she was never busy with work and she loved roaming too. With her I went to visit relatives in the neighboring village, I went roaming on the hills across the village. She was terrified of dogs because on the hills were those big vicious dogs who took care of the sheep. She alwasy carried a big stick with us. My grandma took me to the village's cemetery up the hill, where the grass was tall and the wind strong, and read 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 was loke. It felt like their spirits were still in the house. Escaping village kindergarten Adi started going to kindergarten and my grandma decided 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 hated the sight of pencils and paper, they are so boring and disgusting. I didn't like all the kids and the teachers who told others what to do all the time. Adi sat next to me and he seemed he could go with the kindergarten’ s flow. All kids came here did 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, horrifying 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 place again.
Loving nature and seasons Our big garden, was almost square shape, and my grandad called it Paradise, The Garden of Eden. Flowers, trees, the wind, the smell of seasons, colonies of bees, birds, butterflies, sunshine, rain. I keept every day track of flowers, fruits, leaves, of their change in color, shape and texture. I keept track of wind, of the sunlight temperature on my skin. I saw when the dark clouds came over the garden. I watched the torrential rain from the window. I saw the sun rays after the storm coming over the garden warming up everything and shining a magic light. Storms made me feel so excited, so inspired, they made me feel like making love.
1980 3 years old - sensitive, shy, stubborn scared of people, my brain shut all people out except the ones I loved
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 ride on green tractor with big wheels that made a wonderful sound. I thought that tractor was the coolest toy in the world. I wanted nothing more than to ride it. The new boy came to play with us 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 becasue of him. I said "lets get him out and lock the gate ". We took him by his shirt, pants and 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. I was aware of my good traits and my bad traits, of people I liked and people I couldn't stand. With all the good and all the bad I liked myself and I liked the life. I felt secure under sun and felt a drive inside to celebrate every day. The reality and dream of making love and having babies, the way the nature makes me feel affected me in a very powerful way and is all that ever affected me. Everything else, I don't care either way. Everything else may be for other people but not for me.
Escaping city kindergarten Because I was 6 and at 7 in Romania kids had to start school, my mother who lived in the city, called me from the village and put me in a city kindergarten to get socialized and civilized. When I saw myself in the huge city kindergarten I stared crying every day all day for three weeks straight. There were two shifts of three teachers each, in total six. All of them, absolutely all of them, were insensitive if not downright cruel. I thought when I'll be big, I'll make a rule "no insensitive adults are allowed to interact with small kids". I refused to eat, to sleep, to play. There were lots of toys I never seen in my life and I wanted to play with them but I had no idea how and that was so painful. Anything the teachers asked me to do, I didn't do. I didn’t hear them. I mean I heard them but I didn't process their words in my head. I didn't care. 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 downtown at Bega Shopping Center, 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 too 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 overjoyed - home alone doing what I wanted when I wanted. I could find all day long 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
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 ride on green tractor with big wheels that made a wonderful sound. I thought that tractor was the coolest toy in the world. I wanted nothing more than to ride it. The new boy came to play with us 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 becasue of him. I said "lets get him out and lock the gate ". We took him by his shirt, pants and 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. I was aware of my good traits and my bad traits, of people I liked and people I couldn't stand. With all the good and all the bad I liked myself and I liked the life. I felt secure under sun and felt a drive inside to celebrate every day. The reality and dream of making love and having babies, the way the nature makes me feel affected me in a very powerful way and is all that ever affected me. Everything else, I don't care either way. Everything else may be for other people but not for me.
Escaping city kindergarten Because I was 6 and at 7 in Romania kids had to start school, my mother who lived in the city, called me from the village and put me in a city kindergarten to get socialized and civilized. When I saw myself in the huge city kindergarten I stared crying every day all day for three weeks straight. There were two shifts of three teachers each, in total six. All of them, absolutely all of them, were insensitive if not downright cruel. I thought when I'll be big, I'll make a rule "no insensitive adults are allowed to interact with small kids". I refused to eat, to sleep, to play. There were lots of toys I never seen in my life and I wanted to play with them but I had no idea how and that was so painful. Anything the teachers asked me to do, I didn't do. I didn’t hear them. I mean I heard them but I didn't process their words in my head. I didn't care. 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 downtown at Bega Shopping Center, 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 too 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 overjoyed - home alone doing what I wanted when I wanted. I could find all day long 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
1984 7 years old
City garden - my peace and dream place Back in the village my grandparents sudenly decided becasue of me, to sell the village house and we moved to Timisoara where my grandparent's two kids, my mother and 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 moved in an old partly clay modest house on a huge land with over sixty mature fruit trees, at the edge of the city in the Gypsy neighborhood, the cheapest possible. Besides Gypsies there lived lots of Hungarians and Germans and only a few Romanians and Serbians. Me and my grandparents moved in that clay city house with all the animals, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, chickens, dog, cats, bees and all their houses. That was goofy. People in the city didn't raise animals at all. There were very few raising chickens. My grandparents looked differently also. They wore sheep skin vests, wooden clogs, wool knitted socks. My grandma had a huge black knitted scarf was wearing in winter over her clothes. The house had three bedrooms but again we slept all in the small one 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. The city garden had over sixty mature fruit trees, cherry, peach, apricots, plum, pear, medlar trees. It had a long pathway in the middle covered by old grapevine with strawberries on both sides. My new play kids were an Hungarian girl who lived 4 houses to the left and a big Christian musicians Gypsy family with kids my age who lived about 6 houses to the right. All the gypsy kids played 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. My grandparent's new big beautiful garden was my heaven on earth, my peace place. The place I could get in touch with myself and dream. Dream of the day I will be only with my lover and babies away from everyone and everything else.
City garden - my peace and dream place Back in the village my grandparents sudenly decided becasue of me, to sell the village house and we moved to Timisoara where my grandparent's two kids, my mother and 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 moved in an old partly clay modest house on a huge land with over sixty mature fruit trees, at the edge of the city in the Gypsy neighborhood, the cheapest possible. Besides Gypsies there lived lots of Hungarians and Germans and only a few Romanians and Serbians. Me and my grandparents moved in that clay city house with all the animals, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, chickens, dog, cats, bees and all their houses. That was goofy. People in the city didn't raise animals at all. There were very few raising chickens. My grandparents looked differently also. They wore sheep skin vests, wooden clogs, wool knitted socks. My grandma had a huge black knitted scarf was wearing in winter over her clothes. The house had three bedrooms but again we slept all in the small one 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. The city garden had over sixty mature fruit trees, cherry, peach, apricots, plum, pear, medlar trees. It had a long pathway in the middle covered by old grapevine with strawberries on both sides. My new play kids were an Hungarian girl who lived 4 houses to the left and a big Christian musicians Gypsy family with kids my age who lived about 6 houses to the right. All the gypsy kids played 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. My grandparent's new big beautiful garden was my heaven on earth, my peace place. The place I could get in touch with myself and dream. Dream of the day I will be only with my lover and babies away from everyone and everything else.
1985 8 years old At a neighbor b-day party in my favorite super soft white turtleneck top with some red hearts/shapes and red soft joggers. I knew that that's not how people dress for a b-day party but I didn't care. B-day parties scared the shit out of me and I had to feel good at least somehow.
Roaming in the cityIn the city I started roaming looking again for shiny stuff. I discoverd that at the communal garbages there were this shiny foils from the xmas tree chocolate that people were having in trees. Early in the morning after New Years Day when I knew people threw their xmas trees, thrilled out my mind I was at the communal garbages searching. I was embarased that the neighbors may see me looking in garbage and I went to diferent neighborhods. I took trams, troleys, buses, and went to end of the line to see where the city limts are and how they look. I played on train tracks and even took the train back and forth until the first station. I was scared to death because I never had any money to buy any ticket.
Roaming in the cityIn the city I started roaming looking again for shiny stuff. I discoverd that at the communal garbages there were this shiny foils from the xmas tree chocolate that people were having in trees. Early in the morning after New Years Day when I knew people threw their xmas trees, thrilled out my mind I was at the communal garbages searching. I was embarased that the neighbors may see me looking in garbage and I went to diferent neighborhods. I took trams, troleys, buses, and went to end of the line to see where the city limts are and how they look. I played on train tracks and even took the train back and forth until the first station. I was scared to death because I never had any money to buy any ticket.
1985 8 years oldIgnoring the school and the teachers like they don’t exist .The school looked a cross between hospital and jail. Only the sight of school gave me constant anxiety and nausea. Everything the teachers said and did and told us to do, I didn't hear, I didn't see, I didn't do. I'm selectively mute, deaf and blind. I only see and hear and talk what I want. Teachers' threats, praise or criticism of me didn’t get processed in my head either. I read without comprehension. I didn't respond to any of teacher’s questions. I didn't even try to think of their questions. I couldn't memorize and I didn't even try. I copied at tests. I copied my homework. Only hearing the word "ideas" my stomach droped. I had no ideas in my head that the school would like to know about. I was inside my head, into my own world, into my own feelings, dreams, and my own play and everything else my brain completely blocked out. 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 so bad. She didn't think I was the type of person to write that, and I didn't think I was either. The math homework usually had 10 problems from 1 to 10 from, the easiest to the most difficult and I would do 1 to 3 sometimes, 4 and the rest I copied from my classmates. Problems 5 to 10 I knew at firsdt sight that were not for me, so I didn't even tried, they were for the smart kids. I honestly believed anything difficult, books or school were for the smart kids, not for me. I kept mute, good, cute 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 only thing I could do and the others couldn’t was run the fastest in PE. By grade 5 the teacher said I flashes of brilliance in math but I didn't believe her, my grades were average. When in grade 7 they introduced Geometry, I was the only one who saw and understood 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 no hands up anymore so he stopped calling, he never got to call 95% which was my score. I was too shy to say anything and I never knew what that test meant. 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 the school psychology class didn't help me with understanding myself much if at all. In elementary school the only thing I got in trouble for was laughing. Not being the one to ever listen to what people talk, I look around and observe things that are funny to me like a fly on somebody head, or somebody makes faces when they talk and I start laughing unable to stop and I make one, or two or five more kids laugh after me so I got invited or escorted out of the class several times, I liked to be punished ans stay alone in the hallway
1985 8 years oldSearching for somebody to love
In the city, I searched and searched but couldn't find a boy, to love, to play with and to want 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 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 damn about school, had a zest for life in his eyes, face, body, walk and clothes and seemed like me, to ignore the school 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. 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 liked him a lot. He was so cute, silent, focused, passionate about working in the garden. He complained that we don't have money, that he's the only one working and nobody helps him. I decided to make him love me more than he loves my grandma. I started working in the garden alongside him. I learnt to plant tomatoes and bell peppers exactly the way he wanted. He said when my grandma plants, the plants dry and die because she doesn’t push the soil down and all around the plant. I learnt to prune the grapevine. I took 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 started talking to me more and more. I listened fascinated to everything he said. I thought he was the smartest man on earth, he became my entire world and we become the closest in the family. All the kids I played with together, were 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.
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 liked him a lot. He was so cute, silent, focused, passionate about working in the garden. He complained that we don't have money, that he's the only one working and nobody helps him. I decided to make him love me more than he loves my grandma. I started working in the garden alongside him. I learnt to plant tomatoes and bell peppers exactly the way he wanted. He said when my grandma plants, the plants dry and die because she doesn’t push the soil down and all around the plant. I learnt to prune the grapevine. I took 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 started talking to me more and more. I listened fascinated to everything he said. I thought he was the smartest man on earth, he became my entire world and we become the closest in the family. All the kids I played with together, were 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.
1987 10 years old. At a school carnival
Looking for people passionate like meIn the city I craved excitement and play every day. I was first out to play after school and last to go home. I was available to play with any kids at any time but they were all busy with excuses, doing "more important things". 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. It was hard to belive but I got it at some point. I couldn't find anybody to share my passion for excitment, for playing with babies, 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, they will find an excuse just to always have an excuse. They repress themselves and I don't. I'm easy and they are not. When I was very little I discovered that most people are insensitive, now that most are not craving excitement and they 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 passionate as me, with appetite 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. At the begining of second grade, a new girl moved on the street. She, like me, moved to the city from a small town next to a ski resort. She was so cute and kind and out to play with me every day , but she was not exciting, she was like most everybody else - fearful - apathetic. I had a baby doll I was passionate about and I couldn't let her touch it. I said "don't touch it, go buy your own". She did buy one, exactly like mine. I took my baby and went to her house to play babies. Happy, I thought I have somebody to play babies with because I was playing that game alone. Every day I was kissing, hugging, dressing and undressing, feeding my babies. I built from chairs a train and I took them in adventures with me. Of course we had to be caught in strong storms and blizzards for thrill and I provided warmth, comfort and protection for my babies. My babies felt so comfortable, protected, happy and content with me. This neighbor just sat there with her new baby doll looking at me. She was keeping it in a way that felt hopeless. I said, forget about it, lets leave the babies and play something else. She was not into babies. I wished she was exciting and excited about same things as me but she wasn't. She was not what I craved.
Looking for people passionate like meIn the city I craved excitement and play every day. I was first out to play after school and last to go home. I was available to play with any kids at any time but they were all busy with excuses, doing "more important things". 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. It was hard to belive but I got it at some point. I couldn't find anybody to share my passion for excitment, for playing with babies, 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, they will find an excuse just to always have an excuse. They repress themselves and I don't. I'm easy and they are not. When I was very little I discovered that most people are insensitive, now that most are not craving excitement and they 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 passionate as me, with appetite 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. At the begining of second grade, a new girl moved on the street. She, like me, moved to the city from a small town next to a ski resort. She was so cute and kind and out to play with me every day , but she was not exciting, she was like most everybody else - fearful - apathetic. I had a baby doll I was passionate about and I couldn't let her touch it. I said "don't touch it, go buy your own". She did buy one, exactly like mine. I took my baby and went to her house to play babies. Happy, I thought I have somebody to play babies with because I was playing that game alone. Every day I was kissing, hugging, dressing and undressing, feeding my babies. I built from chairs a train and I took them in adventures with me. Of course we had to be caught in strong storms and blizzards for thrill and I provided warmth, comfort and protection for my babies. My babies felt so comfortable, protected, happy and content with me. This neighbor just sat there with her new baby doll looking at me. She was keeping it in a way that felt hopeless. I said, forget about it, lets leave the babies and play something else. She was not into babies. I wished she was exciting and excited about same things as me but she wasn't. She was not what I craved.
1988 11 years old -Ramna village
My love for Adi is dead When I was 11, in the summer vacation, I went 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 was dead. I didn't like him that much anymore. Still, it feelt so good to be with him that my grandma returned 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.
Falling in love with mountains In the same summer vacation, I went in my first church mountain camp organized by kids choir and I initially didn’t want to go because I was so shy. The thought of sleeping in tent with others horrified me so much that I couldn't see myself able to do it. In that camp, I fell 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, sometimes even two per summer, 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 joy and so much love for life
Rides on music 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. 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 by far the best.
Falling in love with mountains In the same summer vacation, I went in my first church mountain camp organized by kids choir and I initially didn’t want to go because I was so shy. The thought of sleeping in tent with others horrified me so much that I couldn't see myself able to do it. In that camp, I fell 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, sometimes even two per summer, 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 joy and so much love for life
Rides on music 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. 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 by far the best.
1989 12 years old Pentecostal Church, Timisoara
Music and mountains In the city we joined the Pentecostal church and I joined 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 kids choir two nights all night long until 6 am. We walked on streets, singing carols in exchange for tasty cookies and cakes filled with cream. Cream can be apples, pumpkin, lemon, 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 soft spoken husband, was on accordion. Both were musicinas by profesion. 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. 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. I'm shy and I just can't sing solo.The orchestra only played classical music any way and I couldn't stand to hear classical music.
1990 13 years old church mountains camp. I'm the one I scribble over with a pen because I started hating my nose
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 thrilling! 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 but who can care. I arrived down way ahead of everybody else and I was waiting for the rest 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 slide 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 I was forced to stay 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. I liked all that. I said "life is so good for him, life IS so good, I want a life like that, I love a life like that". My uncle was the only bright warm alive light I saw in a grey dead cold world and that gave me hope.
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 I was forced to stay 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. I liked all that. I said "life is so good for him, life IS so good, I want a life like that, I love a life like that". My uncle was the only bright warm alive light I saw in a grey dead cold world and that gave me hope.
1991 14 years old. Timisoara, RO
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. 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. Then my hair got curlier and curlier and I had a hard time accepting that I'm a person with curly hair. I didn't like to have curly hair, made me feel looking like a sheep. I exuausted myself serching for products that made my hair straighter. I slept with a hat on my head. If in the morning I woke up still with a curly hair I was devasted, unable to function. I missed even church kids choir a few times becasue of my hair. If my hair was sort of flat I felt like myself, if it was curly I didn't feel like myself. Sounds maybe crazy and maybe it is, I don't know. In my class of 36 kids only 4 or 5 had curly hair and I couldn't belive that I'm one of them. 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. 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 want
1992 15 years old.
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 session but I didn't. I thought 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. In the forest was shade, was cool and quiet, there you could see magic sun rays hitting trees, you could feel a light breeze and hear the hypnotizing sound of wind through the leaves. 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, 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. In the mountain's too strong fresh air my body, when 9 pm cames, starts closing all my body functions one by one until I fell 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!"
"The one for me" made up shitI'm always in love with a person or another. So in the church there was this cute tall guy who is very shy and very silent and a lone wolve with a face that looks sort of like mine. I find out that he wants to become a doctor and at that time I though I will become a doctor too. His name was exactly the masculine form of mine, so all in all I related so much to this guy like I thought we are alike. I've been in love with his guy for maybe months or a few years and made up a story in my head about how much I love this guy and how we should be toghther. Once I found him alone at where the big choir keep their coats and I wish I rember what I said to him. I definetly said something about him becoming a doctor like me, and his name being like mine too but as I talked, I realized he had no idea who I was despite being from the same church and staying both in the same balcony for years. I saw him at church almost every week for years and I thought he saw me too but nope, he didn't. I realized then how my mind makes up shit. Him not even being aware of me and feeling so weird out by me being so into him hurt but I adjusted to reality and I forgot about him pretty fast. I saw him over time and I think he's definety not for me. Fear makes you make up shit but love does that too.
"The one for me" made up shitI'm always in love with a person or another. So in the church there was this cute tall guy who is very shy and very silent and a lone wolve with a face that looks sort of like mine. I find out that he wants to become a doctor and at that time I though I will become a doctor too. His name was exactly the masculine form of mine, so all in all I related so much to this guy like I thought we are alike. I've been in love with his guy for maybe months or a few years and made up a story in my head about how much I love this guy and how we should be toghther. Once I found him alone at where the big choir keep their coats and I wish I rember what I said to him. I definetly said something about him becoming a doctor like me, and his name being like mine too but as I talked, I realized he had no idea who I was despite being from the same church and staying both in the same balcony for years. I saw him at church almost every week for years and I thought he saw me too but nope, he didn't. I realized then how my mind makes up shit. Him not even being aware of me and feeling so weird out by me being so into him hurt but I adjusted to reality and I forgot about him pretty fast. I saw him over time and I think he's definety not for me. Fear makes you make up shit but love does that too.
1993 16 years old Timisoara, RO.
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 was afraid 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. Not my type. 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, and how he looked when he said it, and what he did when he said it, touched me. I loved Romania. I was crazy about the beautiful mountains, medieval towns, cute fairytale hilly villages, I was hiking, and roaming like a mad person. I liked the cute with passion ans zest for music and having a good time people, I never thought to leave Romania, but he made me think 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 but I needed money. I didn't even have one 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 of society, after falling in love with this guy I was completely cured of for forever.
1994 17 years old Alba Iulia, Alba, Romania.
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 understand labels, I don't think labels, I don't say labels. Labels feel so restictive, 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 or being in a beautiful exciting appealing place 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, salty lakes.
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 understand labels, I don't think labels, I don't say labels. Labels feel so restictive, 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 or being in a beautiful exciting appealing place 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, salty lakes.
1994 17 years oldTaking a late night train going somewhere far away. Drinking water from a baby bottle I just bought in the train station becasue in that picture perfect moment I felt only a baby was missing
Half the high school ignoring and half skipping In elementary school, in breaks, I tagged along my neighbor friends but I didn't like them. It was so painful, 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 weird person, like a lone wolve and in elementary school I was not ready for that but I promised myself that once I move over to high school with completely new colleagues I would not accept anymore the torture of having friends I didn't like. 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 and see who likes me back, 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 becasue they were not printing new ones anymore. I wanted to find and buy ALL the maps with ALL the Romanian mountains ranges becasue 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, becasue 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. In my mind I was already right up 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 and walking on the streets felt so good. 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 Intercontinnetal Hotel where foreigners in suits with lagguages were eating romanian grill with fries and profiterol a Romanian cake with whipped cream to die for. At the beginning of grade 11, one sunny morning in the 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 was losing my mind. I stopped going to school about 75 % of the time and I got in trouble. To escape, I moved myself to the worst HS in the city. 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 and made me sick with my stomach just looking at it and at everyone in it. Its hard to keep up with anything in school when you are missing school all the time and pretend that school doesn't exist. I was so addicted to walking on the streets, with spending days up in the mountains, with spending mornings in my boyfriends bedrooms when everyone else was in school or at their job, with roaming around Romania that nothing could have made me give up my addictions and make me start going to school again. It was impossible. 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 forced me to eat shit. I could never. I learnt in that HS out of necesity the art of bull shit. Don't give a blank page, don't keep your mouth shut, write and talk with confidence bull shit. They can't give you a passing grade on nothing.
Half the high school ignoring and half skipping In elementary school, in breaks, I tagged along my neighbor friends but I didn't like them. It was so painful, 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 weird person, like a lone wolve and in elementary school I was not ready for that but I promised myself that once I move over to high school with completely new colleagues I would not accept anymore the torture of having friends I didn't like. 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 and see who likes me back, 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 becasue they were not printing new ones anymore. I wanted to find and buy ALL the maps with ALL the Romanian mountains ranges becasue 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, becasue 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. In my mind I was already right up 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 and walking on the streets felt so good. 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 Intercontinnetal Hotel where foreigners in suits with lagguages were eating romanian grill with fries and profiterol a Romanian cake with whipped cream to die for. At the beginning of grade 11, one sunny morning in the 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 was losing my mind. I stopped going to school about 75 % of the time and I got in trouble. To escape, I moved myself to the worst HS in the city. 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 and made me sick with my stomach just looking at it and at everyone in it. Its hard to keep up with anything in school when you are missing school all the time and pretend that school doesn't exist. I was so addicted to walking on the streets, with spending days up in the mountains, with spending mornings in my boyfriends bedrooms when everyone else was in school or at their job, with roaming around Romania that nothing could have made me give up my addictions and make me start going to school again. It was impossible. 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 forced me to eat shit. I could never. I learnt in that HS out of necesity the art of bull shit. Don't give a blank page, don't keep your mouth shut, write and talk with confidence bull shit. They can't give you a passing grade on nothing.
1994 17 years on the way to Paltinis, Romania
Thrill - getting lost in the night in new breathtaking beautiful medieval cityOne 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.
Thrill - getting lost in the night in new breathtaking beautiful medieval cityOne 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.
1994 17 years Paltinis, Romania
Roaming for me is not like travel which I dread. Travel is planned, exhausting, high energy and about "having to see" places. Roaming is going to go to see what turns up. Roming is going to escape from whatever stale place you are in. Roaming is going with a lover or hoping to find a new lover on the way. You have an idea about a place and just go. You will see what you will see if you'll see. In roaming the excitement is in being with the new lover or the dream of the new lover is not in the place itself (places are soulless, places meant nothing, places go boring fast, places are just the background).
Sheep lice I stayed in another trip again in Apuseni Mountains, Romania in tent for several days with a man. A shepherd saw us and we got invited to his hut for dinner. Freshly picked mushrooms with polenta and fresh sheep cheese. While the shepherd went out of the room I saw a cute old mirror on the wall with a comb. I went to see myself in the mirror, I may have combed my hair, and I got lice. I went down in town to the doctor to help me get rid of lice and I got some treatment. After a week of treatment, I had more and more lice. Went again to the doctor and he figured my lice were sheep lice not normal lice. He sent me to the veterinary pharmacy to get a white dust for sheep to put in my hair to kill the sheep lice.
Roaming for me is not like travel which I dread. Travel is planned, exhausting, high energy and about "having to see" places. Roaming is going to go to see what turns up. Roming is going to escape from whatever stale place you are in. Roaming is going with a lover or hoping to find a new lover on the way. You have an idea about a place and just go. You will see what you will see if you'll see. In roaming the excitement is in being with the new lover or the dream of the new lover is not in the place itself (places are soulless, places meant nothing, places go boring fast, places are just the background).
Sheep lice I stayed in another trip again in Apuseni Mountains, Romania in tent for several days with a man. A shepherd saw us and we got invited to his hut for dinner. Freshly picked mushrooms with polenta and fresh sheep cheese. While the shepherd went out of the room I saw a cute old mirror on the wall with a comb. I went to see myself in the mirror, I may have combed my hair, and I got lice. I went down in town to the doctor to help me get rid of lice and I got some treatment. After a week of treatment, I had more and more lice. Went again to the doctor and he figured my lice were sheep lice not normal lice. He sent me to the veterinary pharmacy to get a white dust for sheep to put in my hair to kill the sheep lice.
1997 20 years old Valiug Lake, Romania
"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. He felt so good and looked so good! 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 if he liked me or not. He called me "sex kitten". All men objectify me and I'm fine with it, I see myself a sex object and I wish to be my entire life. At 105 I want to be asex obect, thay would make me feel content, satisfied. Anyway, 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 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 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. 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 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 crazy 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.
1998 Jan 21 years old Vatra Dornei Romania (my second time) with 115 cm used Rubin skis for kids becasue that's all I could afford to buy
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, a bread and pastries factory and a grocery store. 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 ignore the words, 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 bosse’s girl starts dating a guy, and her boyfriend starts staring at me too much. I get called in the boss’s office who orders me to wash the grocery's store windows right that moment. I have no idea how to wash windows, never done it in my life, I'm thinking I'll do a bad job, is too 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 and with a man who liked me in that 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 because for me truly there's is no tomorrow, I don't trust tomorrow, and I stay two more nights and I'm not calling the boss to let him know because I know, he won't let. I finally return to work two days later than I said and the boss is really angry, like mute angry, like black-blue in the face angry and is firing me. My second and last part time job of my life as an employee lasted 6 months
1999 Dec 22 years old Timisoara, RO.
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. If a man is not true love then, I thought, he must at least be cute and useful. I'm a fool who only likes cute. I can't help it. I figured I'm a fool as a teenager and decide to smarten up and to not fall for just cute. Next time I fell in love I fell again for cute. I gave up my idea of smartening up. I am a fool who falls for cute and I accept myself as I am. Anyway, I was so ready to have babies. I was ready to have babies since I was 4 years old and starteded looking for a dad for my babies. Also 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 hoped that I will learn programming after the college, on the job. I alweays had an easier time than my collegues to understand math and I thought programing is like math but its not.
2000 January 23 years old. Timisoara, RO.
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, stylish clothes and eager to sleep with me, make me babies, emigrate with me, play with me, do whatever I want with me. I love to be alone but I can't make and raise babies alone and I did not want to emigrate alone. Not liking almost anybody when I finnaly find somebody to like, its easy for me to know. I told him I liked him and he said "he likes me too because all the men he knew liked me". It wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear but at the end of the day I'm more practical than idealistic. He was leader in many ways. Churche's worship leader, student organization leader, church comitee ledership but I didn't obeserve any of that. I was not looking for a leader. The word of me being a whore sleeping with young and old with christians and unchristian, 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. Others 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. I had no parents to limit me and I don't even think anyone can limit me. Only my heart and my love can limit me. I'm the true wild type. I don’t know what a limited life is and don’t want to know. I don't like limits and prisons. Limits, labels and prisons are for fearful people who need them to feel better. People who are led by their heart like me can't have "others" limits. What if your heart like or loves more than one person? Its very possible. I told him "I love myself and my life the way it is and I'll never change, take me as I am or leave me". He said he needs to think about. I was ready for whatever he chose. I was rejected before for "not having done anything important in my life", for "not being serious and moving to much from place to place". I think people who reject me are not for me. It's how naturally things go. I don't like to force anyone. He comes back the second day saying he thought about, and takes me as I am. I discovered that some men love whores and I discovered that I love those men the most. They are like me, loving life to much to limit themselves.
2000 Sept 23 years old Timisoara, RO
Words like “wedding” “marriage” "family" don't exist for meI'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. 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 with church, family and friends. 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 At the end of wedding reception I felt a deep 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 a dream since I was 4 or 5. It's a dream I can't escape. 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 don't know where dreams come from. I think maybe is foolish to wait, to waste your time and life for something that may not exist, something maybe idealistic. Some dreams do come true. Some dreams come true way better than you ever dreamed. I think it's good keep the dreams at the back of your mind but to also to 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 without even trying.
Words like “wedding” “marriage” "family" don't exist for meI'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. 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 with church, family and friends. 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 At the end of wedding reception I felt a deep 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 a dream since I was 4 or 5. It's a dream I can't escape. 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 don't know where dreams come from. I think maybe is foolish to wait, to waste your time and life for something that may not exist, something maybe idealistic. Some dreams do come true. Some dreams come true way better than you ever dreamed. I think it's good keep the dreams at the back of your mind but to also to 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 without even trying.
2000 Sept 23 years old Chiavari Italy
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'm pretty sure I maybe looking for myself. There are a few quotes about true love and 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. "Love is not primarily "caused" by a specific object, but a lingering quality in a person which is only actualized by a certain "object.” Erich Fromm. 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 becasue there is nothing else I care about.
"Honeymoon" word doesn't exist for me For Honeymoon he asked 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 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 go 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 needed just a new background. 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 moment's weather and what we feel like in the moment. In the moment is the fun for me, the places is the background wich means not much to me but is good to be new and beautiful
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'm pretty sure I maybe looking for myself. There are a few quotes about true love and 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. "Love is not primarily "caused" by a specific object, but a lingering quality in a person which is only actualized by a certain "object.” Erich Fromm. 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 becasue there is nothing else I care about.
"Honeymoon" word doesn't exist for me For Honeymoon he asked 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 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 go 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 needed just a new background. 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 moment's weather and what we feel like in the moment. In the moment is the fun for me, the places is the background wich means not much to me but is good to be new and beautiful
2000 Sept 23 years old Venice Italy
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 for a few nights and from Chiavari by train visited Cinque Terre and Portofino. I used to call it Trinque Cerre. For me Cinque Terre or Trinque Cerre is the same thing. That's how much words mean to me. We stopped in each of the five villages for a swim. The water was very warm, clear, blue, a pleasure 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 so I wakled back to Chiavari barefoot. Then we went Monaco and Paris.
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 for a few nights and from Chiavari by train visited Cinque Terre and Portofino. I used to call it Trinque Cerre. For me Cinque Terre or Trinque Cerre is the same thing. That's how much words mean to me. We stopped in each of the five villages for a swim. The water was very warm, clear, blue, a pleasure 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 so I wakled back to Chiavari barefoot. Then we went Monaco and Paris.
2000 Sept 23 years old Venice Italy
2000 Sept 23 years old Venice Italy
2000 Sept 23 years old Cinque Terre, Italy
2002 25 Years old Retezat Mt, RO
2003 June with my girl in Arieseni, Romania.I gave birth naturally, easy and fast and breastfed my girl 15 months. I took her first time in the mountains when she was 7 month. My girl was always high energy, super easy going, always available and ready to play and go anywhere
2003 26 years old Fagaras Mt RO
2004 June 27 years old Timisoara, RO Last day of IT college
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, 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. I saw one beach, then a second beach and that was the last. I said enough, I've seen enough beaches and nobody could make me see another beach except the Tropical Up North ones. At Safeway they were selling kangaroo meat with a very strong flavour and I ate that because it was the cheapest. In shopping malls I looked at Australians and they were very cute they looked a lot like Europeans or even better. The Australian men had highligths in their hair and hair products and were happy, cheerful and upbeat. The clothes were allright, some were cute but so expensive I could not afford to buy any clothes at all. Initially I enrolled in Romanian Baptist church but after a few months I didn't feel good and decided to move. I was with a big group of Romanian Christian Friends who when they heard I want to move asked me "and what would the comunity think?" I responded " what community?". The word community doesn't exist in my vocabulary. I moved to City Life Pentecostal Australian mega church but I didn't feel good there either.
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, 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. I saw one beach, then a second beach and that was the last. I said enough, I've seen enough beaches and nobody could make me see another beach except the Tropical Up North ones. At Safeway they were selling kangaroo meat with a very strong flavour and I ate that because it was the cheapest. In shopping malls I looked at Australians and they were very cute they looked a lot like Europeans or even better. The Australian men had highligths in their hair and hair products and were happy, cheerful and upbeat. The clothes were allright, some were cute but so expensive I could not afford to buy any clothes at all. Initially I enrolled in Romanian Baptist church but after a few months I didn't feel good and decided to move. I was with a big group of Romanian Christian Friends who when they heard I want to move asked me "and what would the comunity think?" I responded " what community?". The word community doesn't exist in my vocabulary. I moved to City Life Pentecostal Australian mega church but I didn't feel good there either.
2006, July, Mt Beauty, Vic, Australia Mt Beauty - the ugly.
I need beautiful mountains 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 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 either back to Romania or to USA . 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 on impulse 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 clothes, to expensive homes, lack of roaming options, muddy waters. 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 want to live"
I need beautiful mountains 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 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 either back to Romania or to USA . 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 on impulse 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 clothes, to expensive homes, lack of roaming options, muddy waters. 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 want to live"
2009 Mt Rainier WA the most beautiful mountain I have ever seen becasue it has flowers red and blue. I gave birth naturally, easy and even faster to my boy and breastfed him also 15 months. I took him first time in the mountains when he was 6 month. Since he was about 10 month old was unwilling to go where I wanted to go. I wanted to go left, he wanted to go right. I would sweat and go right as he said becasue he would scream. I thought he was crazy but then that's exactly what my grandma thought about me taht I'm crazy. I didn't know what to do with him. We were constanly gone and he never wanted to come until we discoverd bribing. If we promise and deliver food, he comes. He is so easy!
2010 Aug 33 y old on the way to Mt Rainier, WA for the second time.
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 the mountain made me feel 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, cold foggy and with so many unleashed dogs that you had to go around carying a big stick to protect yourself from the many dogs that jumped on you . 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. In Europe people call Americans "ugly", "loud" and "fake" but I don't believe anything people say. Not that the Americans are ugly, I rarerly seen a truly ugly person, but their hair cuts, the shoes, the clothes, the cars, the houses, the cities are ugly. But here in Portland there is sare much beautiful trees that it covers the houses so you don't have seee them. I never knew what does "fake American" means but now it looks like it means being tough, cold, emotionaly dead like they don't care about me, but they don't care about themsleves, don't care about they work, they only smile a lot and say a lot of "nice" things they don't mean. It looked like they were dead and have been dead for a long, long time with and if there is some hope somwhere I don't know where it is becasue everything and everyone seem dead. The zest 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 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 don't fit in with any society and I'm clear about it and I'm not looking anymore for any society to fit in with. I don't like what most people talk, I don't even hear, so there is no chance that I will ever even know how the other people are or fit in with any society. I'm way too sessitive, way to in touch with my eyes, ears, heart and body. I like a person here, a person there but that's it. No liking groups for me. Anyway, 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, hope that there is somebody alive still somewhere in the country and hope is all I need to keep going. That shop was the only American light I saw in my first few years of life in States. Then that shop went down the drain and aligned itself with everything else to be just as average as everything else.
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 the mountain made me feel 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, cold foggy and with so many unleashed dogs that you had to go around carying a big stick to protect yourself from the many dogs that jumped on you . 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. In Europe people call Americans "ugly", "loud" and "fake" but I don't believe anything people say. Not that the Americans are ugly, I rarerly seen a truly ugly person, but their hair cuts, the shoes, the clothes, the cars, the houses, the cities are ugly. But here in Portland there is sare much beautiful trees that it covers the houses so you don't have seee them. I never knew what does "fake American" means but now it looks like it means being tough, cold, emotionaly dead like they don't care about me, but they don't care about themsleves, don't care about they work, they only smile a lot and say a lot of "nice" things they don't mean. It looked like they were dead and have been dead for a long, long time with and if there is some hope somwhere I don't know where it is becasue everything and everyone seem dead. The zest 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 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 don't fit in with any society and I'm clear about it and I'm not looking anymore for any society to fit in with. I don't like what most people talk, I don't even hear, so there is no chance that I will ever even know how the other people are or fit in with any society. I'm way too sessitive, way to in touch with my eyes, ears, heart and body. I like a person here, a person there but that's it. No liking groups for me. Anyway, 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, hope that there is somebody alive still somewhere in the country and hope is all I need to keep going. That shop was the only American light I saw in my first few years of life in States. Then that shop went down the drain and aligned itself with everything else to be just as average as everything else.
2010 Aug 33 y old on the way to Mt Rainier, WA for the second time. If I go one or two more times I know I'll get bored.
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, then I got sad, them depresed, then existentially depresed and I started drinking red wine by the bottle. When he died, I died too. I got completely lost. I started to think and think and think about dying. I started to write about my grandad (he wrote a journal about his life right before he died and that inspired me to write too), because that’s how I felt. 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. Wine makes me feel god, excited and makes me dream, fits me and is too dangerous. Drinking is addictive and boring and sure way to waste life. If something bad happens just don't think about it, don't start drinking. I'd rather be an workaholic than alcoholic. Thinking is poison and thinking only increases the stress, the fear, the confusion, the sadness and then you drink to feel better. Don't talk/think much or at all (or only minimu necesary), and don't drink (do drugs, weed etc) at all. Don't start. It's so wasier to not get involved in the first place than to try to get out.
Going temporarily crazy Dec 2011. I always knew that if I will ever work will be some solitary work or business of my own. So I go online and I open a web design business with absolutely no idea of any web design. I get my first client to learn on my first client. This client wants a website for her "job consulting business". I create a one page 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 liked 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. I can not possibly do what this client is asking me to do. I don’t have the mental capacity. The writing is foreign to me and scares me to death. I don't understand from where people write pages and pages and pages of blah blah. It makes me feel badly diseased living in a diseased world. I didn't know if the world was diseased or I was, buty if I didn't feel diseased before, I started to feel diseased right now with this client. I got so afraid that I lost my mind for a few days or a few weeks. I got locked in a 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 loved and 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 flat quit was not working 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, what I like, what I can. 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.
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, then I got sad, them depresed, then existentially depresed and I started drinking red wine by the bottle. When he died, I died too. I got completely lost. I started to think and think and think about dying. I started to write about my grandad (he wrote a journal about his life right before he died and that inspired me to write too), because that’s how I felt. 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. Wine makes me feel god, excited and makes me dream, fits me and is too dangerous. Drinking is addictive and boring and sure way to waste life. If something bad happens just don't think about it, don't start drinking. I'd rather be an workaholic than alcoholic. Thinking is poison and thinking only increases the stress, the fear, the confusion, the sadness and then you drink to feel better. Don't talk/think much or at all (or only minimu necesary), and don't drink (do drugs, weed etc) at all. Don't start. It's so wasier to not get involved in the first place than to try to get out.
Going temporarily crazy Dec 2011. I always knew that if I will ever work will be some solitary work or business of my own. So I go online and I open a web design business with absolutely no idea of any web design. I get my first client to learn on my first client. This client wants a website for her "job consulting business". I create a one page 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 liked 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. I can not possibly do what this client is asking me to do. I don’t have the mental capacity. The writing is foreign to me and scares me to death. I don't understand from where people write pages and pages and pages of blah blah. It makes me feel badly diseased living in a diseased world. I didn't know if the world was diseased or I was, buty if I didn't feel diseased before, I started to feel diseased right now with this client. I got so afraid that I lost my mind for a few days or a few weeks. I got locked in a 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 loved and 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 flat quit was not working 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, what I like, what I can. 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.
2012 June 35 years old Chamonix, France Slowly but surely back to a life of romance and roaming
Falling in love again with a man I didn't even like I've been taken for a ride, love bombed, fooled several times. I don't seem to learn my lesson. Its a waste of time. Some people love to be taken for a ride, to be love bombed but I don't. I'm incredibly emotional, I'm adventurous, I have a hard time getting a hold of my emotions and being taken for a ride lets me feel empty because its not what I want, its not my dream, it's not my path, it's not the person I chose. Love, sometimes is such a pain when love should feel like a balm, like a joy, like a celebration.
Falling in love again with a man I didn't even like I've been taken for a ride, love bombed, fooled several times. I don't seem to learn my lesson. Its a waste of time. Some people love to be taken for a ride, to be love bombed but I don't. I'm incredibly emotional, I'm adventurous, I have a hard time getting a hold of my emotions and being taken for a ride lets me feel empty because its not what I want, its not my dream, it's not my path, it's not the person I chose. Love, sometimes is such a pain when love should feel like a balm, like a joy, like a celebration.
2012 Nov
Discovering Bob Dylan, a cute man intensly alive, with fire (passion) and light (wisdom) who doesn't follow the crowd
Because I thought to start a business to make my own money, I started looking for people like me, 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 a business blog, I see Bob Dylan name dropped and I read his Chronicles book and read a few of his quotes and I instantly know "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 yet, but I thought I might have to once I start working. 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 and I always felt attracted to musical instruments but I thought its too late for me to start learning an instrument like guitar or piano 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, who feels like me , but who maybe has a work that I could do. Still I went back and back again to Bob Dylan and kept reading quotes, lyrics, interviews, and I stared realizing he has managed to remain so cute all across his life and is so wise, he says things better than anyone. I don't want to miss a thing he says. Then he stared to have paintings and I love all his painting like I already was in all the places he was or saw too. I have a 28 GB folder with a lot of what he says, all the photos with him and many videos I downloaded because 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 laso realized that you can express same feeling in many ways, through music, paintings, app, photos, writing, clothes.
Discovering Bob Dylan, a cute man intensly alive, with fire (passion) and light (wisdom) who doesn't follow the crowd
Because I thought to start a business to make my own money, I started looking for people like me, 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 a business blog, I see Bob Dylan name dropped and I read his Chronicles book and read a few of his quotes and I instantly know "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 yet, but I thought I might have to once I start working. 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 and I always felt attracted to musical instruments but I thought its too late for me to start learning an instrument like guitar or piano 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, who feels like me , but who maybe has a work that I could do. Still I went back and back again to Bob Dylan and kept reading quotes, lyrics, interviews, and I stared realizing he has managed to remain so cute all across his life and is so wise, he says things better than anyone. I don't want to miss a thing he says. Then he stared to have paintings and I love all his painting like I already was in all the places he was or saw too. I have a 28 GB folder with a lot of what he says, all the photos with him and many videos I downloaded because 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 laso realized that you can express same feeling in many ways, through music, paintings, app, photos, writing, clothes.
April 2013, skiing at Meadows, Mt Hood, OR. Bored out of my mind with skiing I decide to learn snowboarding
June 2013 camping on Oregon Coast. Going to the same place with the same people bores me so much it drives me to alcoholism. I'd rather drink myself to sleep than see same places over and over. I can't take boredom. I have a life and I won't be here again and don't want to live it neither bored nor drunk
2014 Aug 37 years old the photo I took in my studio for dating apps
Dating apps After I moved to USA I decided to not make any friends ever in my life. I never liked friends, never needed frinds. Friends feel like a drag. "Friends " word doesn't exist in my vocabulary. Friends are people that don't excite you like a person you can fuck does, friends are people that want you to talk to them and they want to keep tabs on you. Hell, no, I'd rather be alone than suffering that amount of drag, boredom and exustion. I'm fatigue by talking and I can't stand to have people who keep tabs on me. I’m not into keeping in touch with relatives either becasue I don't have any relatives I like. 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 romance and I'm extremly shy and sacred of people. 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 is such hard work, there are many peoiple who lie there. Being on dating apps made me feel worse than not being on dating apps.
Chill the fuckAt some point here in States I discoverd Iron Hair Straightener. It was a life changer for me. I started ironing my hair and felt so like myself. I started to have half a dozen of them, diferent types, for diferent countries until one day my hair stylist who was cutting my hair for years and had to straigten my hair said "you know the only reason I have to straighten your curly hair is becasue you are a stressed out person". He made sense. I went home, donated all my iron straighteners and never straightened my hair ever again.
Dating apps After I moved to USA I decided to not make any friends ever in my life. I never liked friends, never needed frinds. Friends feel like a drag. "Friends " word doesn't exist in my vocabulary. Friends are people that don't excite you like a person you can fuck does, friends are people that want you to talk to them and they want to keep tabs on you. Hell, no, I'd rather be alone than suffering that amount of drag, boredom and exustion. I'm fatigue by talking and I can't stand to have people who keep tabs on me. I’m not into keeping in touch with relatives either becasue I don't have any relatives I like. 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 romance and I'm extremly shy and sacred of people. 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 is such hard work, there are many peoiple who lie there. Being on dating apps made me feel worse than not being on dating apps.
Chill the fuckAt some point here in States I discoverd Iron Hair Straightener. It was a life changer for me. I started ironing my hair and felt so like myself. I started to have half a dozen of them, diferent types, for diferent countries until one day my hair stylist who was cutting my hair for years and had to straigten my hair said "you know the only reason I have to straighten your curly hair is becasue you are a stressed out person". He made sense. I went home, donated all my iron straighteners and never straightened my hair ever again.
2016 March 39 years Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Stop doing boring things
I realize I'm getting old and I don't have time for things I'm not interested in, so I decide to scrape all birthdays, anniversaries, 4th of July, mothers day, Valentines day, Christmas day, New Years Day, travel, restaurants, walking in park/hanging out with same faces. My grandparents did none of this, I think almost never. I always wanted to escape all this but now I feel I don't have time for this. I just freed myself from a lot of boring burdens and I feel so much better. I always felt a drive to celebrate life every day and to be with people I like 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 they are not for me. I can do a thing once or twice but from three times on, most things are very boring, especially things that have no soul. Things that have no souls get too boring too fast. The only people who are not that boring are sensitive people. Enrolled in family, enrolled in marriage, enrolled in relationships, enrolled in church, enrolled in school, enrolled in country's annual long celebrations list, enrolled in job. Where is the freedom I love in all this? Some people don't like freedom, don't have likes and dislikes, and need all this organized boxes to be put in, to feel secure, to know what to do, to keep tabs on all the others but not me, not anyone who follows their heart. All this lack of freedom, all this boring boxes, all this coffins, hurts and kills hearts. It bores to death, hurts and breaks down all people who follow their heart. It drives you to alcholism and workaholis, to craziness when you see everyone does all this boring things religioulsy. It makes you feel you are wasting your precious sweet life. Everything seems to be an enrollment, all my life day and night. What does this enrollment feel for me? It feels like forced and expected to do things I don't like and don't want to do.
2016 Dec
Discovering Ilie Nastase
I mean rediscovering, beacause I was raised with him. People say about him that he is crazy, that he has two hearts, that's how generous this person is. He has a way of putting himself on the line and looks like he's squizing life of anything it has to give. I have never seen more joy for life than this man has.
"My ambition is to do a good job. I never plan anything." Ilie Nastase
"I was always rather nasty. I was willing to be friends with the Devil, just to cross the bridge."Ilie Nastase
"Iubesc femeile pentru ca sunt romantice si ne vad ca pe niste cavaleri in armura care le salveaza, desi ele sunt cele care ne salveaza si care ne dau un sens in viata. Iubesc femeile pentru ca au nevoie de iubirea noastra, pe care ne-o cer si pe care altfel nu am indrazni sa o scoatem la suprafata. Iubesc femeile pentru ca ne lasa sa le protejam ca pe niste portelanuri fragile, ele fiind facute, insa, din cel mai dur otel, pe care nu-l indoaie nimic cand e cazul sa-si apere iubirea. Iubesc femeile pentru ca te invata cuvantul „acasa“ si iti umplu viata si timpul cu bucuria unui camin. Iubesc femeile pentru ca stau la capataiul nostru cand suntem bolnavi si fac liniste in tot universul pentru ca noi sa ne odihnim." Ilie Nastase
Discovering Ilie Nastase
I mean rediscovering, beacause I was raised with him. People say about him that he is crazy, that he has two hearts, that's how generous this person is. He has a way of putting himself on the line and looks like he's squizing life of anything it has to give. I have never seen more joy for life than this man has.
"My ambition is to do a good job. I never plan anything." Ilie Nastase
"I was always rather nasty. I was willing to be friends with the Devil, just to cross the bridge."Ilie Nastase
"Iubesc femeile pentru ca sunt romantice si ne vad ca pe niste cavaleri in armura care le salveaza, desi ele sunt cele care ne salveaza si care ne dau un sens in viata. Iubesc femeile pentru ca au nevoie de iubirea noastra, pe care ne-o cer si pe care altfel nu am indrazni sa o scoatem la suprafata. Iubesc femeile pentru ca ne lasa sa le protejam ca pe niste portelanuri fragile, ele fiind facute, insa, din cel mai dur otel, pe care nu-l indoaie nimic cand e cazul sa-si apere iubirea. Iubesc femeile pentru ca te invata cuvantul „acasa“ si iti umplu viata si timpul cu bucuria unui camin. Iubesc femeile pentru ca stau la capataiul nostru cand suntem bolnavi si fac liniste in tot universul pentru ca noi sa ne odihnim." Ilie Nastase
2018 Nov
Discovering Thich Nhat Hanh
a person who feels so peaceful and he is so well read, understand life and the entire world and can explain deeply everything I needed and wanted to know. He sees and functions in the world through his own feelings not through social norms and I do too. When I was 5 in the village I had this feeling of clarity, of understanding the world around me, of knowing what I like and what I don't and feeling secure and peaceful , feeling not only that I like myself and can deal with the world with the good and the bad but that I love the world and the life so so much. Once I left the village everything got scary and confusing and I felt I was holding only onto myself and my dream not willing to look at the world around me at all. I had a feeling that I shouldn't look at the others and I didn't and I did well to not look. It wasn't necesary for me to ever look. Thich Nhat Hanh could explain everything becasue he's master of feelings and has words to explain and the entire world became to me like the village. The whole world is ordered and clear to me now via Thich Nhat Hanh becasue my feelings are understood, ordered and clear in my head . I can like this type of people in this world, this places, this things, this work and I don't like this , don't like that, I don't like all the rest. I feel an ability to deal with the world becasue is finite, has limits, is oredewred now, and I keep my life small and simple. The feeling that the world is ordered and limited makes me feel secure in the world. Before I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh the world was imense, scary and confusing. Through Thich Nhat Hanh I could underestand my feelings to the core, I could understand the world and I could put order into my feelings. Everything is the same as in the village but takes somebody else who knows the world, who is well read to show you. Its scary to look at the world alone. He has no kids, no lovers and his job was only to study so he became so good at understanding human nature and the life in world. He contribute so so much to me. I could not have been able to figure it out by myself. I feel so lucky and blessed that I discover Thich Nhat Hanh . I don't know how my life would have been without discovering him. I read him and read him and I can't stop myself from reading him. I want to know everything, everything he says. When you can understand yourself and life you get peaceful because you know. I got a 97 MB folder with his quotes mostly .There is maybe one or two things I don't agree with him or I don't care about but it's fine. There is no person on earth that I can align with on everything. I don't want to learn anything new, I just want to go deeper, and I want to just celebrate and enjoy life and he brought me to a point where I'm done learning. Learning for me was a need because of confusion and losing my dream and my path but I know now 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.
Discovering Thich Nhat Hanh
a person who feels so peaceful and he is so well read, understand life and the entire world and can explain deeply everything I needed and wanted to know. He sees and functions in the world through his own feelings not through social norms and I do too. When I was 5 in the village I had this feeling of clarity, of understanding the world around me, of knowing what I like and what I don't and feeling secure and peaceful , feeling not only that I like myself and can deal with the world with the good and the bad but that I love the world and the life so so much. Once I left the village everything got scary and confusing and I felt I was holding only onto myself and my dream not willing to look at the world around me at all. I had a feeling that I shouldn't look at the others and I didn't and I did well to not look. It wasn't necesary for me to ever look. Thich Nhat Hanh could explain everything becasue he's master of feelings and has words to explain and the entire world became to me like the village. The whole world is ordered and clear to me now via Thich Nhat Hanh becasue my feelings are understood, ordered and clear in my head . I can like this type of people in this world, this places, this things, this work and I don't like this , don't like that, I don't like all the rest. I feel an ability to deal with the world becasue is finite, has limits, is oredewred now, and I keep my life small and simple. The feeling that the world is ordered and limited makes me feel secure in the world. Before I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh the world was imense, scary and confusing. Through Thich Nhat Hanh I could underestand my feelings to the core, I could understand the world and I could put order into my feelings. Everything is the same as in the village but takes somebody else who knows the world, who is well read to show you. Its scary to look at the world alone. He has no kids, no lovers and his job was only to study so he became so good at understanding human nature and the life in world. He contribute so so much to me. I could not have been able to figure it out by myself. I feel so lucky and blessed that I discover Thich Nhat Hanh . I don't know how my life would have been without discovering him. I read him and read him and I can't stop myself from reading him. I want to know everything, everything he says. When you can understand yourself and life you get peaceful because you know. I got a 97 MB folder with his quotes mostly .There is maybe one or two things I don't agree with him or I don't care about but it's fine. There is no person on earth that I can align with on everything. I don't want to learn anything new, I just want to go deeper, and I want to just celebrate and enjoy life and he brought me to a point where I'm done learning. Learning for me was a need because of confusion and losing my dream and my path but I know now 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.
2022 March 45 years old
Got my brand new Jeep. 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. It's not easy to drive because is essentially a truck but I got used with it. I drive it everywhere.Hitting the road makes me instantly feel so much better. With a wheel in my hand and four on the road my entire life is resetting. I feel like myself, like I'm where I m supposed to be. 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 . Being on the road every week and sometimes every day makes me happy. It makes me hopeful of true love, of people with zest for life who've always followed their heart, vagabonds, 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.
Feels so good just by walking May 2022 My second Bob Dylan concert. 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 pretty sure Bob Dylan is in the bus. I decide to just stay there 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 a 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.
Got my brand new Jeep. 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. It's not easy to drive because is essentially a truck but I got used with it. I drive it everywhere.Hitting the road makes me instantly feel so much better. With a wheel in my hand and four on the road my entire life is resetting. I feel like myself, like I'm where I m supposed to be. 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 . Being on the road every week and sometimes every day makes me happy. It makes me hopeful of true love, of people with zest for life who've always followed their heart, vagabonds, 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.
Feels so good just by walking May 2022 My second Bob Dylan concert. 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 pretty sure Bob Dylan is in the bus. I decide to just stay there 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 a 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.
2022 June 45 years old Got my own apartment in
Starting living alone at least part time every weekI love being alone. Being alone gives me peace, quiet, ease, freedom to do what I want exactly when I want as much as I want. Being alone was always so important to me that my entire life I fought to have my own locked room. I can only be myself in touch with myself and my dream wehn I'm alone. When I'm alone my alivness, joy, happines, hope, energy swell. I never feel alone, I'm my own company and I love my own company. I can only relax alone. Only hearing steps in the house scares me badly. There are two good things I've done in my life without even trying, I kept mute so other peoples toughts and questions didn't touch me and fought to have my own room locked. Better than having always my own locked room is having my own place, my own apartment (I would love a little house on a big land) I can run to often whenever I can, whenever I need, whenever I feel like wich is weekly. When I live alone I don't have anyone interrupting me, anyone asking me questions like judging me, making jokes about me or keeping tabs on me. I don't have anyone telling me what I should do, what I like, who should I be or who I am. Some people are motivated my love/desire but the reality is that most people are driven by fear. Fear is what keeps most people moving in pack. They hold hands with the pack all day every day and look what the others do and say all the time. They put the pack above their desire , in fact they don't have much of any desire, much of any like, dislike, much of knowing whats important to them personally. Most people are fearful, and the problem is that you are not fearful like them they hold hand with you, constantly look at you to se waht you do and don't and try to either align you with them or them with you. If you are not person who looks at others at all becasue you are lead my your heart and seires, others holding your hands and constly looking at you is exausting, it feels like you are invaded and inprisoned. It feels like they cling on you like a drawning person clings to a log. Fearful people make you feel fear, stressed out people make you feel stressed out, anxious people make you feel anxiety, insensitive people have a way of making you uncomfortable. It feels so good to be alone in peace. I think I'm pretty peaceful person. A sensitive person like me can't say no, can't constantly push back, can't tell others what to do so I like to disappear. Its so good to have space, to have your own place, your own hole to go and sit. When I get out of my apartment after a few days I feel so energized, so happy, so full of love. I don't want others to schedule me or expect me to behave like a "mainstream" person, to look at me to align themselves with me, or to try to align me with them. I don't like almost anybody and I don't look at anybody and naturally I don't like to be looked at or worse, stared at. I feel deeply everything and people who feel deeply don't like to talk and don't need to talk. People who are sesnitive are deeply aware that life is short. They have been aware their entire life and it pains them and they dont' want to be dragged into doing things are not important to them and don't want to be anybody important becasue we all going to die so why not focus on what's important. 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 up to their retirment and funeral is natural and normal to them. Step by step instruction most people are happy to follow and are even good at it but I'm not. Follow instructions for 8 hours at your job then go in park to relax and walk for an hour and I would go insane if I would do any of this. I would feel like my whole life would go down the drain. I can't follow others instruction, agenda and I would die of boredom to walk in park. I can't take being told what to do and I can't tell others what to do. 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 represses them. 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 live in a world that is mostly not like me. The apartment is decorated like my clothes are, like me. Colorful and unpretensious. 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!".
2023 Jan
Discovering Jack Kerouac I read his quotes and relate to him so much“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” Jack Kerouac "but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, “so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,” and “so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me? I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now! I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.” Jack Kerouac "But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." Jack Kerouac "Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much." Jack Kerouac
Discovering Jack Kerouac I read his quotes and relate to him so much“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” Jack Kerouac "but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, “so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,” and “so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me? I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now! I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.” Jack Kerouac "But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." Jack Kerouac "Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much." Jack Kerouac
2023 May
Discovering Rodney Mullen
"Do what you love and try not to look at what other people oc-cupy themselves with." Rodney Mullen
Discovering Rodney Mullen
"Do what you love and try not to look at what other people oc-cupy themselves with." Rodney Mullen
2023 Alaska
AlaskaI'm landing in Anchorage, Alaska. I keep thinking and saying I'm in Canada. I'm not in Canada. I rent a car and drive to Talkeetna where I sleep two nights and see all the neighbors going and coming home by little airplanes. I drive to Cantwell to my next rental from where I drive the next day to visit Denali Mountains. Denali Mountains can be visited only by bus. I take a bus and the bus driver points to a moose resting on a piece of unmelted snow and says "the moose is conserving energy". I thought I'm a lot like that moose. I get bored and fall asleep. I wake up and see the two people in front of me, the one next to me and one behind me all sleeping instead of admiring Denali Mountains while the rest of the bus keeps strong at looking out the window. I try to get next to Valdez but the car breaks down so I have to go back for a night to Anchorage to get another car. With a new car I drive all the way to Valdez barely making it before the dark because there was al lot of pouring rain, creeks flowing over the road and melted snow washing roads and many roads were in construction. The nature is not that beautiful but is very peaceful and wild.
AlaskaI'm landing in Anchorage, Alaska. I keep thinking and saying I'm in Canada. I'm not in Canada. I rent a car and drive to Talkeetna where I sleep two nights and see all the neighbors going and coming home by little airplanes. I drive to Cantwell to my next rental from where I drive the next day to visit Denali Mountains. Denali Mountains can be visited only by bus. I take a bus and the bus driver points to a moose resting on a piece of unmelted snow and says "the moose is conserving energy". I thought I'm a lot like that moose. I get bored and fall asleep. I wake up and see the two people in front of me, the one next to me and one behind me all sleeping instead of admiring Denali Mountains while the rest of the bus keeps strong at looking out the window. I try to get next to Valdez but the car breaks down so I have to go back for a night to Anchorage to get another car. With a new car I drive all the way to Valdez barely making it before the dark because there was al lot of pouring rain, creeks flowing over the road and melted snow washing roads and many roads were in construction. The nature is not that beautiful but is very peaceful and wild.
2023 Alaska
I get to Valdez and I get inspired and I fall in love with it. There are no traffic signs because there is barely any car. I said I want to live exactly here. While in Valdeze there is an earthquake I feel. It was only one jolt. From Valdez I need to get to Girdwood but I don't want to drive the same road I just came on. I want to go all around by ferry even though I know the online ferry tickets got sold out months ago. I go to the ferry station and there are no tickets but they said the day of departure to come at 5 am to get a walk in ticket which won't guarantee that my car will have a place but to try. I wake at 4 am and try to be at 4:40 am before others to get a ticket but I was late. In front of me there were already some kayakers and two other cars. By 8 am they managed to fit all the cars on the ship except my car and a motorcycle. Finally they signal to drive my car and I see that the only place left was barely to fit my car and the motorcycle. They fit all the cars so tight and with such precision that there was barely any space left all around my car on the ship. I absolutely love the ferry ride. It's bumpy, its cold, its splashy, its scary, its rainy, I love the ship food, I love it all. I get off at Whittier and drive to Girdwood, a ski resort I want to check out. I love the ski resort and I say I want to come to ski maybe I will even see the northlights. From Girdwood I drive to Seaward and from there I did Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise which was exciting and inspirational. The boat captain, Capt. Mark Lindstrom, was one of the most passionate about nature, fun, exciting and cool persons I have ever seen and he was actually from Tillamook, Oregon where I live some times. Tillamook is a bit like in a different world. Mountain people and cruise captains are some of the most appealing and exciting people on earth. There is something about wilderness and people who live in wilderness that make life feel so real and exciting.
I get to Valdez and I get inspired and I fall in love with it. There are no traffic signs because there is barely any car. I said I want to live exactly here. While in Valdeze there is an earthquake I feel. It was only one jolt. From Valdez I need to get to Girdwood but I don't want to drive the same road I just came on. I want to go all around by ferry even though I know the online ferry tickets got sold out months ago. I go to the ferry station and there are no tickets but they said the day of departure to come at 5 am to get a walk in ticket which won't guarantee that my car will have a place but to try. I wake at 4 am and try to be at 4:40 am before others to get a ticket but I was late. In front of me there were already some kayakers and two other cars. By 8 am they managed to fit all the cars on the ship except my car and a motorcycle. Finally they signal to drive my car and I see that the only place left was barely to fit my car and the motorcycle. They fit all the cars so tight and with such precision that there was barely any space left all around my car on the ship. I absolutely love the ferry ride. It's bumpy, its cold, its splashy, its scary, its rainy, I love the ship food, I love it all. I get off at Whittier and drive to Girdwood, a ski resort I want to check out. I love the ski resort and I say I want to come to ski maybe I will even see the northlights. From Girdwood I drive to Seaward and from there I did Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise which was exciting and inspirational. The boat captain, Capt. Mark Lindstrom, was one of the most passionate about nature, fun, exciting and cool persons I have ever seen and he was actually from Tillamook, Oregon where I live some times. Tillamook is a bit like in a different world. Mountain people and cruise captains are some of the most appealing and exciting people on earth. There is something about wilderness and people who live in wilderness that make life feel so real and exciting.
2023 Oct Chicago
"This is my man"
My grandma's only 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. 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. Thousand and thosuasnd look so excited , pay so much money to look and experience something that I don't know what it is. I have this feeling of perplexed and nausea often but it hits me more when its large scale. I loved the lake though, it had a nice color. Maybe Chicago is about the lake. I tried Chicago pizza and I liked it but then I like any pizza even if I don't like it that much. 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. Bob Dylan for me is the best since this Universe. What can be better in this life than a fine, fine person. Of course you don't really know how a person is until you talk with them, and live with them. I found my type of man: a men who feels so good, extremely sensitive, intensly alive, with zest for life, able to understand things at the core, following his heart not the crowd, who doesn't care what others think and so cute and stylish, and on top succesful and wealthy wich is very rare to have all this. But succesful and wealthy is not important to me. It's good to have them but they are not required. If you live in a country other than USA its not even easy or possible to be sucesful and have money. Bob Dylan is the only person who doesn't seem to bore me. I'm looking for a man like him. Who feels like that and looks like that and is exciting like that and doeans' fit in with the pack like that
2024 April
Discovering Charles Bukowski A man who has nothing to do and whos' looking for "the one" whatever that means, like me. Not many people are like that. 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 how I feel. A sensitive person, a realistic person, an honest men and well, cute. My type of people I'm looking for. Intensely alive and always available to love. There are too few of these people and they should find each other and be with each other and stay with each other."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 the real type that you can actually experience and make memories with, the type that what they do is what they say, the honest type, the type with a heart.
Discovering Charles Bukowski A man who has nothing to do and whos' looking for "the one" whatever that means, like me. Not many people are like that. 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 how I feel. A sensitive person, a realistic person, an honest men and well, cute. My type of people I'm looking for. Intensely alive and always available to love. There are too few of these people and they should find each other and be with each other and stay with each other."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 the real type that you can actually experience and make memories with, the type that what they do is what they say, the honest type, the type with a heart.
2024 June Milos Island Greece.
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 feeling the breeze and dreaming, not talking anything, is one of my favorite things to do and a great climate is perfect for me. There are two cute places one is called Pollonia where this photo is from. In Pollonia there are restaurants right on the beach and a promenade you can walk on. There is another cool place called Plaka. It's a old village up on a hill with niche architecture and good reaturants
2024 June Italy Tuscany Countryside
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 Tuscany Countryside, in the middle of nowhere, just peaceful nature all around, at this charming inspirational beautiful old 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/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 too. 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 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
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 Tuscany Countryside, in the middle of nowhere, just peaceful nature all around, at this charming inspirational beautiful old 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/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 too. 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 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
2024 June Italy Tuscany Countryside
2024 June Italy Tuscany Countryside
2024 June Italy Tuscany Countryside
2024 June Italy Tuscany Countryside
2024 June Montepulciano, Italy
2024 Dolomites Mt, Italy
2024 Sept 6 Minneapolis, MN
Outlaw Music Festival I listen to music a whole lot but I don't know what I'm listening to, I don't hear the words much if at all. I usually listen to a song on repeat until I get sick of it. I move from one song to another whatever comes next, whatver catches my heart, whatver I hear from radio or from others. I never really search for music. I never ever listen to a whole album. I took all Bob Dylan's albums one by one and listen to all only in Feb 2024. I listened before to his song here and there but not to any album. From all his albums I picked 34 songs I have on my Spotify playlist that I like. Most Bob Dylan popular songs are not on my playlist. On my play list I like songs like "this dream of you", "the man in me", "early roman kings", "you're a big girl now", "romance in Durango", "i'll remember you", "new pony", "slow train", "three angels", "Brownsville girl", "under your spell", "when did you leave heaven", "million miles", "one more weekend", "i shell be released", "born in time", "disease of conceit"., "gotta travel on". Bob Dylan is a story teller and these songs resonate with me. As a lover of Bob Dylan, I haven't been to as many concerts as his fans but I'm trying to make up for it (better late than never) and went in 2014, 2022, 2023 in Chicago and this Sept 6, 2024 and probably is the last. From his 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 booked 3 nights in Minneapolis ( Old Town because I heard has a European feel and I miss Europe),
Outlaw Music Festival I listen to music a whole lot but I don't know what I'm listening to, I don't hear the words much if at all. I usually listen to a song on repeat until I get sick of it. I move from one song to another whatever comes next, whatver catches my heart, whatver I hear from radio or from others. I never really search for music. I never ever listen to a whole album. I took all Bob Dylan's albums one by one and listen to all only in Feb 2024. I listened before to his song here and there but not to any album. From all his albums I picked 34 songs I have on my Spotify playlist that I like. Most Bob Dylan popular songs are not on my playlist. On my play list I like songs like "this dream of you", "the man in me", "early roman kings", "you're a big girl now", "romance in Durango", "i'll remember you", "new pony", "slow train", "three angels", "Brownsville girl", "under your spell", "when did you leave heaven", "million miles", "one more weekend", "i shell be released", "born in time", "disease of conceit"., "gotta travel on". Bob Dylan is a story teller and these songs resonate with me. As a lover of Bob Dylan, I haven't been to as many concerts as his fans but I'm trying to make up for it (better late than never) and went in 2014, 2022, 2023 in Chicago and this Sept 6, 2024 and probably is the last. From his 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 booked 3 nights in Minneapolis ( Old Town because I heard has a European feel and I miss Europe),
2024 Sept Somerset, WI
Stuck in the middle of the night I I buy myself last minute a second raw ticket and I said I'll Uber from Minapolis to Somerset, WI. First, played Southern Avenue and I see on the website saying Bob Dylan plays from 8:00 to 9:15 pm, so 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 9:15pm Bob Dylan is done with his part and I'm out of there. At 9:23 I'm placing my first booking attempt to Uber. After 10 minutes, it failed. I waited one minute, and placed again an Uber request to book a car, I place a third call for Uber when I see my phone is 24% charged only. Uber failed again and by now was 10 pm. I place a request with Lyft and also faild to find a car. I'm looking on google map and I don't see any hotel or motel or almost anything in that village. It's 12 C degrees I'm in a red tank top dress, flip flops, some light black socks 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'm thinking " 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 said 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.
Stuck in the middle of the night I I buy myself last minute a second raw ticket and I said I'll Uber from Minapolis to Somerset, WI. First, played Southern Avenue and I see on the website saying Bob Dylan plays from 8:00 to 9:15 pm, so 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 9:15pm Bob Dylan is done with his part and I'm out of there. At 9:23 I'm placing my first booking attempt to Uber. After 10 minutes, it failed. I waited one minute, and placed again an Uber request to book a car, I place a third call for Uber when I see my phone is 24% charged only. Uber failed again and by now was 10 pm. I place a request with Lyft and also faild to find a car. I'm looking on google map and I don't see any hotel or motel or almost anything in that village. It's 12 C degrees I'm in a red tank top dress, flip flops, some light black socks 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'm thinking " 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 said 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.
2024 Sept Somerset, WI
Stuck in the middle of the night IIThen 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 the 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 or I should have rented a car and not behave like I'm in NY. 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 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 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 peaceful, joyful, 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.
Stuck in the middle of the night IIThen 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 the 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 or I should have rented a car and not behave like I'm in NY. 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 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 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 peaceful, joyful, 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.
2024 Dec 48 years old
"A complete unknown" movie I can't really watch movies- 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 initially said I hate fiction and that movie is probably fiction, some person's distorted opinion, analyzation and interpretation so I'm not interested. A few days later I thought I have nothing else to do other than skiing so why not go see the movie who knows maybe I like it. I 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. "The Phylosophy of modern song" wich 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.
2024 Dec 48 years old 222 lbs the fattest I have ever been
2024 Dec 48 years old
2025 April Charles's Bukowski grave.Bums, alcoholics, looking for "the one". At least three things I have in common with Charles's Bukowski. Even though I don't drink anywhere nearly as much as him and plan to stop drinking completely. Its rare and it always feel so good when you find people who feel so good, dead or alive. If you find one it gives you hope that you can find another. There is nothing better in life, nothing worth spending your time on than some people.
2025 April Charles's Bukowski grave.I fly to LA often. I love LA, I love the sunrises and the sunsets. The LA breese does me good. They have lemon and orange trees there, is sunny and people are chill> If I want to chanage lanes they let me more than in OR. I rented this time a compact car. After driving my Jeep any small car makes me feel a good driver. I drove to San Pedro to visit Charles's Bukowski grave.
2025 April After the cemetery I went to eat at Charles's Bukowski favorite restaurant Senfuku in San Pedro
2025 April From cemetery and from Charles's Bukowski house you can see the port . There is also a promanade that you can walk on. A fish market will open there in 2026
2025 April 2018 Lbs
Alcoholic and fat no more. Better gardener more I started drinking red wine by the bottle when my granddad died in Jan 2009 but I felt off since I landed first time in Melbourne Australia in 2004, thats more than 20 years ago. I left Romania becasue I was damn poor. I never drank wine In Romania becasue I never had money to buy wine. Romania is a beautiful country with beautiful latin blooded people with zest for life who live for love, not that I fit with Romanian society becasue I didn't. There 85 % of people move in pack too. The fact that I don't like any society I'm getting myself into, is disapointing but it doesn't really bother me. It's not what its important to me. I ignored all people my entire life anyway. America is a brutal country with the toughest and most scary people. Americans scare me. In between the 85 % of tough Americans who look the same, talk the same, move with the pack and religiously do what are supposed to do, that their waste their life just doing that doesn't seem to matter to them one bit (its not their fault that they naturally put the pack ahead of themslves like is not my fault that I don't, its the way we were all born), the alcoholics bum Americans (of wich I may be one - but I really didn't drink that much and nothing else than a bottle of red wine every couple days) and the money hungry charming psychopats Americans who make me feel like all they talk about is how to make money out of me and scream at me (all men who can make lots of money, including my grandad, I observed, scream when they talk and it scares the shit out of me. Screaming means they are either scared or angry or hateful and none of this is loving, they are unloving people), I haven't found yet anybody to like and connect with in real life. There is a horible quote I hope is not true "Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact." Marlene Dietrich . But if it's true I'd rather look for sex/love/romance in other parts of the world. Besides I'm Romanian-American, I'm not just American even though I don't feel either. America is strictly for work/busines and money and obssesing/fantasizing, that's what Americans do. I see myself walking on a promenade with nice a breeze with a lover but where is this promanade? Here in States by the beach, and by river are freeways. No living the life, no true love, no love, no sex, no fun, no sexiness, no sensuality, no style, no charm, no good climate, no good food that has taste, no flowers that smell, no doing nothing. Just a pack of fearful people (fear blinds your eyes and shrinks your heart) out of touch with their heart and five senses, organized in school, work, money, family, friends, pets, community, countries, living rooms so large to fit in the entire neighborhod, political parties, societal celebrations, basically all the boring things I never liked, never connected with, never been important to me. I fit in with the pack like a nut in the wall. The pack scares me to alcoholism but I've ingnored most people my entire life. I only care about people I love, nothing else matters to me. What truly made me drink and being an alcholic is the sick lovers who grab me, manipulate me, fool me, make promises that don't keep, try to chnage me (I don't go around trying to chnage anybody) take me for a ride, , educate me, upgrade me, make money out of me and that pains me. A lover should bring balm, joy, and freedom to me not pain. Doesn't matter that I got taken for a ride half a dozen times before, I still fall for it. Emotional, dreamy, a loner, down to earth and adventurous, the right type to be taken for a ride. I guess lovers who sicknen me to alcoholism is part of my job but still I have to become a better gardener. My boy cousin who is also a bum and vagabond and roams the world and is also alcoholic, says taht I drink becasue I couldn't find a work to make money. Maybe that's how he feels, he maybe projecting. I know for bum mens its hearder to not have work that makes money. That's what this app I'm doing is for. For bums like me, like my bum boy cousin, like bums like Jack Kerouac, Charles Buckowski becasue for me, bums are the coolest most lovable most real most honest people on earth. I love bums becasue I'm one. Good gardeners take the weeds and the toxic weeds as they come, don't wait until spread so much that it takes over the garden. On a daily basis with one hand I select the seeds and plants, the people, I want to have, to love, to fuck, to nurture and with the other I get out and keep out the weeds, the toxic weeds wich are some people becasue the toxic weeds are what truly sickens me, makes me drink. I always blamne society for sicnesning me to alcoholism but no, I don't acre about society, it's the sick lovers. Anyway, I want to quit drinking altogether, not one drop, no more Chianti Classico and May 10, 2025 is the last time I had Chianti Classico. Help me God!
Starting losing weightI'm keeping track of how much I weigh. At how much I eat and drink I don't think I'll have any problem losing weight. I've never been the fat type and never had any tendency to be fat without eating and drinking. I don't plan to exercise. I hate exercising. But I will eat like a bird, very little and that will save me money and cooking so much. I cook way too much.My BMI at 5'3" 222 - 170 lbs Obese170 lbs -141 lbs Overweight140 -104 lbs Normal weight
Alcoholic and fat no more. Better gardener more I started drinking red wine by the bottle when my granddad died in Jan 2009 but I felt off since I landed first time in Melbourne Australia in 2004, thats more than 20 years ago. I left Romania becasue I was damn poor. I never drank wine In Romania becasue I never had money to buy wine. Romania is a beautiful country with beautiful latin blooded people with zest for life who live for love, not that I fit with Romanian society becasue I didn't. There 85 % of people move in pack too. The fact that I don't like any society I'm getting myself into, is disapointing but it doesn't really bother me. It's not what its important to me. I ignored all people my entire life anyway. America is a brutal country with the toughest and most scary people. Americans scare me. In between the 85 % of tough Americans who look the same, talk the same, move with the pack and religiously do what are supposed to do, that their waste their life just doing that doesn't seem to matter to them one bit (its not their fault that they naturally put the pack ahead of themslves like is not my fault that I don't, its the way we were all born), the alcoholics bum Americans (of wich I may be one - but I really didn't drink that much and nothing else than a bottle of red wine every couple days) and the money hungry charming psychopats Americans who make me feel like all they talk about is how to make money out of me and scream at me (all men who can make lots of money, including my grandad, I observed, scream when they talk and it scares the shit out of me. Screaming means they are either scared or angry or hateful and none of this is loving, they are unloving people), I haven't found yet anybody to like and connect with in real life. There is a horible quote I hope is not true "Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact." Marlene Dietrich . But if it's true I'd rather look for sex/love/romance in other parts of the world. Besides I'm Romanian-American, I'm not just American even though I don't feel either. America is strictly for work/busines and money and obssesing/fantasizing, that's what Americans do. I see myself walking on a promenade with nice a breeze with a lover but where is this promanade? Here in States by the beach, and by river are freeways. No living the life, no true love, no love, no sex, no fun, no sexiness, no sensuality, no style, no charm, no good climate, no good food that has taste, no flowers that smell, no doing nothing. Just a pack of fearful people (fear blinds your eyes and shrinks your heart) out of touch with their heart and five senses, organized in school, work, money, family, friends, pets, community, countries, living rooms so large to fit in the entire neighborhod, political parties, societal celebrations, basically all the boring things I never liked, never connected with, never been important to me. I fit in with the pack like a nut in the wall. The pack scares me to alcoholism but I've ingnored most people my entire life. I only care about people I love, nothing else matters to me. What truly made me drink and being an alcholic is the sick lovers who grab me, manipulate me, fool me, make promises that don't keep, try to chnage me (I don't go around trying to chnage anybody) take me for a ride, , educate me, upgrade me, make money out of me and that pains me. A lover should bring balm, joy, and freedom to me not pain. Doesn't matter that I got taken for a ride half a dozen times before, I still fall for it. Emotional, dreamy, a loner, down to earth and adventurous, the right type to be taken for a ride. I guess lovers who sicknen me to alcoholism is part of my job but still I have to become a better gardener. My boy cousin who is also a bum and vagabond and roams the world and is also alcoholic, says taht I drink becasue I couldn't find a work to make money. Maybe that's how he feels, he maybe projecting. I know for bum mens its hearder to not have work that makes money. That's what this app I'm doing is for. For bums like me, like my bum boy cousin, like bums like Jack Kerouac, Charles Buckowski becasue for me, bums are the coolest most lovable most real most honest people on earth. I love bums becasue I'm one. Good gardeners take the weeds and the toxic weeds as they come, don't wait until spread so much that it takes over the garden. On a daily basis with one hand I select the seeds and plants, the people, I want to have, to love, to fuck, to nurture and with the other I get out and keep out the weeds, the toxic weeds wich are some people becasue the toxic weeds are what truly sickens me, makes me drink. I always blamne society for sicnesning me to alcoholism but no, I don't acre about society, it's the sick lovers. Anyway, I want to quit drinking altogether, not one drop, no more Chianti Classico and May 10, 2025 is the last time I had Chianti Classico. Help me God!
Starting losing weightI'm keeping track of how much I weigh. At how much I eat and drink I don't think I'll have any problem losing weight. I've never been the fat type and never had any tendency to be fat without eating and drinking. I don't plan to exercise. I hate exercising. But I will eat like a bird, very little and that will save me money and cooking so much. I cook way too much.My BMI at 5'3" 222 - 170 lbs Obese170 lbs -141 lbs Overweight140 -104 lbs Normal weight