Be careful what you wish for...

On the move...again, almost there, like a wave you see approaching knowing it will drag you away. I could stay indeed, I love Barcelona, I moved here because I wanted to, I made my choice out of all the cities in Europe, this part of the world that makes me feel I belong.

And still, when I found out at the end of July that I was offered my dream job in a city I am also very fond of I said YES without giving it a second thought. The second thoughts came afterwards and it wasn't easy not to change my mind. I actually did, every day, looking around me at this charming city so comfortably nested between the mountains and the sea and wondering why shall I exchange the good with the better. When I first heard that the organization I work for opened offices in Barcelona I wished I could get a job there, it was rather wishful thinking, as I was still in Canada at the time. Then, before leaving Montreal, I wrote to a public institution that was also on top of my interest list, I was offered an interview as soon as I got home, with no consequences, I thought.

Then I moved to the city of my Mediterranean dreams. After struggling, with dignity, for eight months in Barcelona, having some interesting interviews that ended up in nothing, I finally got one in the international organization I was interested in since 2008. And right after the last interview I left for another one with the person who interviewed me one year prior, this time it was a concrete proposition.

Surprisingly enough, back in Barcelona I got the first job I wished for, not exactly the position I would have liked, but it was still something incredible to me, to work in a palace in the middle of a pine and palm trees park, full of green parrots and with a few ponds for the comfort of the resident ducks. Spending my day in an international multilingual environment, very enriching, with nice people around, organizing every few months meetings with representatives from a whole range of countries and cultures, around a very ambitious and generous project. Like a fish in the water. Or a duck?

Then, boom! four months after I started working I even got to make a choice. I have a theory about contemporary stress and anxiety being generated in great part by the variety of choices, from yogurt to a suitable life partner. So here I was, trying to decide what's best for me: I love both cities, one is bathed by warm waters, the other by cold ones; in Barcelona I have some nice new friends, there I have guaranteed lifetime friends, that received me with open arms after 13 years of absence, a few handwritten letters, postcards and emails. The job, well, the other job, that I will take in January, is what I always wanted to do, organize and promote cultural events, so I could join my expertise to my private interests. A beautiful challenge...that after all I could not avoid, it's stronger than me, as usual. I love change and change stresses me, but I simply don't take comfort as the best thing I could have. And I have comfort in Barcelona, even more than the city I love its geographic position, the closeness to the Pyrenees, to France, the Mediterranean embrace that created the amazing landscapes of Costa Brava. I will miss my beach afternoons and twilight swims, the hikes, the possibility to get abroad in three hours by train (last Saturday I passed from Spain to France and from France to Spain once in train and three times on foot). Otherwise, as a city, my next destination has its own undeniable spells to cast.

I shall be very very careful from now on with what I wish, either I meet the little gold fish or not, he might be under disguise.

GENTLY SETTLING AND DRAWING LINES

A few months more since my last post and there are so many changes I contemplate now from a short time distance.

No. 1: I managed to get a stable job, after a one year not-easy-to-live-with gap. I work in a park inside of a palace, with a big window that lets in the sun, the chirping of the birds, the smell of resin in the heat. When I look outside I only see the various shades of green of the many types of pine trees trying to reach the sky. At lunch time I can have a half an hour break reading in the shade, eventually looking at the cotorras argentinas or the urracas. The ducklings I saw a few months ago swimming in the ponds and fountains are now as big as momma duck. My fellow workers are fun and kind, almost all of us get along nicely and I get to use almost all my languages on a daily basis. At the beginning of July I had to organize a reunion of about fifty government experts coming from 21 countries from Europe, North Africa and Middle East, everything went very smoothly and my department head thanked me in front of everyone at the end of the meeting. My writing skills were also put to work for the final public information text. So all together I feel useful and well treated. I was never extremely ambitious and the more I grow inside, the more I learn how to enjoy and be thankful for the good side of things in my life.

No. 2: My stand-by relationship got to a very inglorious cold end after my Cuban (future) ex paid me a one week visit enclosed in a six weeks trip to Spain. We started talking about marriage and a common future here and somehow on the way I realized that for one whole year I was floating in a beautiful and fragile soap bubble that suddenly broke and let me fall on the hard evidence that after all distance and time torn us apart. We were and we are very different, in terms of background and lifestyle, and this year our ways split to the point of no return. It was an emotional break for me, that I had to cope with after he left, that very moment was very short and I didn’t realize what was happening, that it was the last time we were seeing each other as a couple. When I left Canada and we said good-bye in the airport, there was sudden pain and many doubts about doing the right thing or not. It was a separation between two people that were in love and shared a home. It still hurts to know that the three years we were together and the one year of waiting and hoping were reduced merely to memories in no time. But at least I know there is no other way, it was a fine, sharp and clean cut, I can almost imagine a steel blade, guillotine style that suddenly falls and leaves no shreds.

No. 3: I managed to move from my cage aux folles, the Romanian run home, crowded and filled with cigarette smoke and too many times with strong cooking smells. My room was nice though and they were good people, but living in a different bubble. Now I stay in the same Sagrada Familia neighbourhood, on a street that bears the name of one of my favourite cities and above my tree level balcony there’s a blue metal plate that reads “La Ciudad de Buenos Aires”. I share with a nice Catalan girl who’s almost like a younger sister to me, and her dog, Ganja, a lovely half-blind and extremely affectionate cocker. The sitting room is big enough to be able to invite people for dinner again. When I wake up in the morning and I open my door, instead of cigarette smoke there’s Ganja happily wagging her piece of tail waiting to be cuddled.

No. 4: Last but not least, I managed to start moving around (one of the main reasons for coming back to mother Europe) and go visit friends in Lisbon and Toulouse that I have not seen for 13 and 15 years respectively. I was received with the utmost generosity, more like a long lost parent than like a friend that’s been away. Their home was my home and I was moved to tears to find out once more that friendship after all is probably the most beautiful and deep thing in my life.

Lisbon was celebrating the national day and Santo Antonio, the streets were blooming with colourful decorations and the smell of grilled sardines filled the hot air. On Saturday night I went alone to a fado concert set inside the Sao Jorge castle on the hill, overlooking the Tejo estuary under the stars. Besides, the city is as beautiful as ever and I got to visit other spots in this small and charming country by the ocean: Alcochete, Montemor-o-Novo, Evora, Cabo da Roca. Fabulous blue, green and pink (roofs) landscapes, great food, not to mention the company…so I’m going back in August, to spend more time with my Portuguese soul sisters and keep discovering the Lusitanian hidden treasures.

Toulouse, la ville rose aux bords de la Garonne, en plein Midi, with amazing Gothic buildings still standing up, especially le Monastère des Jacobins (I have a special weakness for cloisters) and the scrumptious French desserts. Not far, on the shores of the Tarn, there's Albi, home of Toulouse-Lautrec, dominated by its high episcopal palace and the Ste. Cecile cathedral, masterpieces of pink brick Gothic, so far from the cold gray stones that usually served as building material.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I am at a point in life where I dreamed and wanted to be ten years ago, is it still the same, am I able to enjoy it and appreciate as much as I would have then? I won some things and lost some things on the way, I’m a little stronger, a little emptier, a little wiser and even bitterer and less ready to believe in the beauty of things and expect the unexpected. But the sense of balance is here; my life is in Barcelona now. Although, after changing places quite a few times, I know nothing, no one and nowhere is for life, there´s no real security in anything, and that’s probably close to the Buddhist teachings about accepting change and transiency as unavoidable. I feel peace, there's only love missing.

Between 2010 and 2011

Barcelona (Montjuïc)


Bucarest (from the plane)

I had a two months break which haven't brought many news. The winter cold joined to the lack of general heating in most Barcelona homes tempered my initial enthusiasm that gave way to reason and pondering. Against all odds my good mood stands still, facing the gloomy situation. I live with little, but enough for housing, food and going out every now and then. I suffer for having lost my routine, soon there will be a year since then. Mornings are terrible, I stopped enjoying having them to myself, I need to be active, to have something to do, somewhere to go to , that's not the library or the seaside. Nevertheless, I can't stop enjoying Barcelona, disfrutar is a good word. Just the way you enjoy an exquisite meal, Thai for instance, every bite it's an opportunity to savour the different flavours reaching perfection.

Luckily enough, I go on with my Catalan classes three times a week and my poetry group performances, which got great press coverage lately, partly due to my efforts to get in touch with the local newspapers and people interested in poetry. I keep meeting fantastic motivating people and this keeps me convinced that I made the right choice, even if my job search seems a neverending job itself.

Even the apartment I live in now it's a life lesson per se, I found an announcement in the Romanian goodies shop. I love my room, it has a balcony , the light I was longing for and enough space for a desk, beside the big bed and the huge closet (plenty of place for all my skeletons). My roommates are the most unusual I've ever had, they belong to the Romanian working class and came here from different smaller cities, like many others, to make money they invest in housing in our beloved country that we don't live in. Or to bring half of their family here, if it's the case. So they don't care much about going out or doing things, as they care about saving to the limit. Enjoying life is a strange concept to them. They're people I had very tiny chances to meet anywhere else but here and now. It's touching and a bit scary at the same, to see how different we are, and to notice that I am so lucky after all to have studied and traveled the world. Having enriching friends and relationships and good interesting jobs on top of it.

Christmas home was delightful, after 6 years of absence at this time of the year. And still, the gray Bucharest, the general feeling of laisser-aller that reigns in the streets and most public spaces filled me with sadness and disgust. Even the Health Insurance Bucharest headquarters were a shameful mess, bordering an area of dull apartment buildings and humble houses where street dogs still roam dangerously free. On the other side the first shopping mall that opened in 2000, Bucharest being the same patchwork of miserable baroque post-communist post-modern post-civilised world. I managed to feel the season's joy only by leaving the outside behind the closed doors, sharing with very special friends and close to my family, now richer with my sister's new born son. Although I don't have a home there in Romania anymore, our home is now rented and I had to run between four houses at some point, looking for my winter clothes, staying over with mom and visiting my sister and the baby. In a way it's better to know that somehow I cut my way back, didn't I always wanted to live by the Mediterranean, cradle of European civilizations and cultures? Well, here I am, now I have to live up to it, or better said, to work out my place here.

No November rain

Barcelona, full of sun, full of colours, a few warm autumn shades here and there. I was in Madrid for a job interview, it had a stronger autumn smell, matching the season's foliage, more obvious than here. I look at my photographs from last year's hike in Vermont, the trees branches were already nude and the mountains turned brown. It seems like ages ago, so faraway, in a different life. And still, I feel a little nostalgic when I think about the firtrees smell and the bright blue lakes. Nostalgic and grateful for all the great moments I spent there.

Today I went for another hike through the Collserola area, less green and dustier, more urbanized, but still pretty woods.



Life is made of different patchwork like places, people and experiences, what matters is to know nothing is forever, you have to let go when you can't hold on. And be grateful for what you get, I am probably one of the luckiest people I know.

Tourist 2.0

Barcelona beyond Sagrada Familia, Ramblas, Parc Guell, Mila and Batllo houses.

Monasterio de Pedralbes




Hospital de Sant Pau i Santa Creu, by my favourite architect, Lluis Domenech i Montaner



Sarria neighbourhood, under Tibidabo - former hotel, former clinic, possibly a future office building



Teatre Grec garden with some nice neighbourhood people who just came to play and sing some rumba catalana and flamenco, a sunny Sunday afternoon

Lingering

No time to waste, no time to linger, precious moments of intense activity until you drop dead. Working, seeing people, watching films, cooking, always doing something, keeping crazy busy. Having the cell and Internet always at hand. Too busy to think.

These months of laziness and zen attitude fed my soul alright for the times to come, beyond the tears and the doubts. I feel like a dot under an exclamation point, complying only with the fact of existing. Life is so complicated, applying for jobs, using rigid words to express your professional exceptionality, trying to find a dignified subject for a PhD thesis, when it could be so simple - this is what I know, this is what I can do, take it or leave it, just don't make me wrap it and sell it. Sometimes my hands are restless, I enjoy cooking and ironing, I regret not having learned a manual profession, something with a practical meaning, really useful. A words' child is clinging to relativity itself.

The other day a hostel receptionist was explaining me how bad it is to live in Catalunya and that he would consider moving to Canada. I think that anyone that hasn't lived in another country would think his is the best, or the worst of all, not appreciating its positive sides. And it's always a very personal choice, that involves taking risks, again, not something everyone would do. There are always miscalculations that you have to take the philosophical way. I didn't realize that my Canadian Master of Arts degree needed to be legalized in Spain because there is no bilateral agreement. As Maître Pangloss used to say Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.

Catalunya is amazingly beautiful, joining the Pyrenees with the Mediterranean. It's drier and less green than Romania or Canada, but we can't have it all, right? Spain was a target when I was 20, then I first visited Italy which got me under its spell. Now Costa Brava conquered my senses with its crystal clear cool waters guarded by the yellowish green hills that form long bays all along the shoreline, up to the French border. Living on the shores of the Mediterranean has been an old dream of mine and like every dream becoming real it has its price, which I cannot even evaluate right now.