ON FEAR

Fear kills one's soul and mind, it stops one from thinking and feeling right. Fear is panic, stress, blindness at heart. And it's so hard to resist its temptation, to have faith, to trust your inner feelings, believe in what is just, the right thing to do, resist threats, bribes, the psychological pressure of an uncertain future that may see you dragged down. People that fear the consequences and fear to say out loud what they think ask for more harassment.

On the other hand, why some people think that fear can control better than love does? They think they can take control over others through psychological harassment, alternating gratification and punishment. They probably are afraid themselves and look for protection on the wrong side.

I noticed that it's so much easier to convince people when you do your best to be loved and not feared. Thank God that I grew up in a family of braves, that faced every life circumstance with great courage and honesty, and kept their back straight, no matter how heavy the burden. It's easier to fight fear when I think of them. And of love, as long as I am around beautiful souls that love me, I feel strong. And their strength grows from mine, it is a circle of light, an unbreakable one, I hope.

WINTER TRANSIT IN ROMANIA - Jan 24, 2012

Bucharest, crows at dusk

Already one month since I reached the port without a sea...home. I can't say I badly miss Barcelona, for the time being I enjoy being close to my family and old friends, discovering and rediscovering the good people and interesting and fun places around my beloved city. No matter what, Bucharest is my city. I love the theaters here, some places in the old town, the parks, the 1900-1940 neighbourhoods, some of the old fashion shops and beyond any doubt the best and cheapest street food in the Western world (I guess we belong to it a little since we are part of the EU:) I discovered a great art gallery and new theatre spaces, happy also that some of the old spots like La Scena, hosting theatre, jazz concerts and tango nights in an old classic house, are still there.

It finally snowed by the end of January, and I enjoyed it, with the sun shining bright and the million sparkles all around, covering the grayish parts, the garbage, the dog shit. There is a cold dramatic beauty, made of contrasts, tree branches reaching the up the sky, black and white, crows at dusk, kids with colourful clothes in the white park, with their sledges or walking clumsily around, wrapped up in heavy jackets.

The down part lays in the terrible traffic conditions once the snow has settled, the metro is the only decent way to move in town. And I had to move a lot, running through different offices for my future job and trying to solve administrative problems related to the place I own. A full energy draining programme.

Two weeks of vacation in the French countryside, Rome, Naples and a bit of Tarquinia and Tuscania lessened the weight. I've learned some tricks about keeping the wood fire alive in the fireplace, played with three lovely boys and walked around the frozen pound, trying to laugh when we would wake up in the morning and find out that there is no hot water because the pipes were frozen solid. Roma keeps being the most beautiful city I've ever seen, Naples still has the most impressive bay and sea views (plus MADRE, a fantastic contemporary art museum), the Terme dei Papi were pure bliss in the middle of the snow and, above all, my Italian friends are still the most amazing, warm and hospitable people, God bless them!

Napoli, Posillipo, Palazzo Donn'Anna

P.S. I finally got to leave on Feb. 24, exchanging a gray winter, with icicles threatening to fall, water dripping from every roof around, huge puddles and mounds of dirty snow for a burgeoning bright spring. Fulfilling my dream and start working in cultural management. Feeling extremely lucky and grateful.

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.

WHAT'S GOING ON

The financial/ economic crisis is still rising and we don't seem to know the way out yet. People go with the flow, protest a little, live and work, party and have sex, going on with their lives, according to the means. I hear some of them around me complaining about their low (actually not so low) salaries, their social&professional position, the importance of their personal development, the value of their studies and knowledge. On top of it, we are accustomed to the welfare state, to go out, to satisfy our whims, eat in restaurants, drink and dance the night away, dress well and go shopping according to the season's fashion, take care of our feet, nails, hair, skin. And boom! a lot of us lost part of these privileges, that are seen as part of a normal, ordinary life, middle class routine.

Let's put it plainly, comfort (read hedonism) became our ideal in life, and our society is packed with personal development gurus, life coaches and counselors on how to become prosper and happy . The self rules: self-help, self-development, self-fulfillment, self-awareness, self-esteem, self-assurance, not forgetting the oh, so sweet!, self-reward. Love thyself first. This should be your daily thought "I deserve the best and my purpose in life is to get it". As soon as we miss something we feel unfulfilled. If we don't get the perfect job (including a matching salary), the ideal husband, the house of our dreams, we feel that our life is not complete and therefore we can't be happy. Because we are all taught that we are exceptional individuals and we have to struggle to achieve better and better and better and better... Companies produce more, many of them in other faraway countries, eventually overworking and underpaying the workers, so we can consume more, filling the inner void with objects of desire.

Our parents and grandparents did what they could in most cases, what the society conditioned them to do. They were raised with the idea that they should get married and build a family, didn't plan on how many children they should have and just struggled to maintain the family without thinking that much at their self development and personal growth. The main purpose was to raise the children and lead a decent life, giving something back to the society if they were richer. Lonely artists and scientists were eccentric exceptions. Of course, I am aware of the advantages of our freshly acquired freedom, especially when it comes to women (it wasn't too bad in the Roman Empire either). But I also think that this wild individualism with a strong hedonist orientation is not taking us too close to a peaceful mind and a serene soul. Learning to live with less and rely more on ourselves and less on things would do the trick.

I am no exception, I search for pleasure as much as everyone else, while I am trying to exert some self-criticism and keep it under control at the same time.

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.

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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.

Perspective

My grand grandparents: two World Wars, a financial crisis and an incipient communist dictatorship;

My grandparents: financial crisis, one World War and almost 45 years of dictatorship;

My parents: communist dictatorship, a never ending transition and this financial crisis;

Me: 15 years of communist dictatorship and 20 years of transition to the crisis time.

Really, so far I think I am luckier than the preceding generations!

Toys for grown-ups or how about slowing down a little

I had the opportunity to work at World Mobile Congress by mid-February. It looked quite interesting for a global research about nowadays "civilised" society. A research about how addicted we are to technology and its gadgets, to the point of getting to ignore what surrounds us.

I made my mobile phone contract with Movistar a few months ago, over the phone, at a time when my number belonged to another company.Lady Bermudez, the customer service employee who attended me, wanted me to choose my ideal phone from a whole list of technical marvels. Smart phone or BlackBerry, I could have chosen any of them to be included in my contract. Or maybe not any, I don't know much about these things. For me telephones are what their name says: telecommunications devices that transmit and receive sound, most commonly the human voice. (according to Wikipedia). And to Merriam-Webster too, pretty much the same definition. Britannica says: an instrument designed for the simultaneous transmission and reception of the human voice.

Apparently mobile phones are a whole different story, they transmit voice, video and data. You can play games on them, find your way, send and receive money, and God and telecommunications engineers know what. Sincerely, I feel more carefree and free in general with a phone that only serves its original purpose, to talk. I'm not very fond of text messages either as I am more at ease with computers, that offer me the same dimensions, more or less, as a letter size sheet of paper. And I prefer to read on paper rather than on computer screens as I like e-mails more than chat, for allowing me to develop my ideas at a different pace. At the end of the day it looks like it's more a question of time and space: speed and text size. I'd rather go slow than fast and rather long than short. Most probably I belong to the paper cultureand I get addicted to technology applications that remind me of it. Obviously, I am not a busy business person. From their point of view I totally agree with the necessity of smart phones.

Now, back to the congress. At some point I was at a welcome desk and the three girls around me were busy with their phones, buttoning and reading the screen. I felt like an alien, or rather like a normal flesh and bone person among aliens, the busy business world. But somehow I felt comfortably so, floating in my bubble, free to watch the beautiful museum hall and observe the people around me, ready to make eye contact and welcome them when necessary. At the congress a whole pavilion was dedicated only to applications, Skype had a stand there, a free coffee bar, tables with phones and even mini-computers/over-sized phone screens from where you could call anywhere in the world for free. Google Android had a whole stand for itself in the hall where I worked every day. It looked like a fun park, all green, with a big slide and huge Android toy like replicas everywhere. There were green fruity candies in all congress locations, at the stand they were giving away pins and fruity smoothies named after Android features, the litchi-honey one was called Honeycomb for instance. There were also Gingerbread and Donut flavours. They were also giving away mini-Androids designed by Andrew Bell, on the box one could read that it was an art object and not a toy, recommended for 15+. All together most places looked very colourful and had great visual impact, with lots of big screen and different types of projections. It was hard to believe it was all about this small personal device we all use.

On the last day I went out for a beer with a friend and a guy at a bar had a funny fluffy toy bird, looking like a plush ball. I asked him if it's a grown-up toy and he was amazed that I didn't know what the Angry Birds are, and even more so when I told him I use my phone only for talking. It reminded me of my Canadian boss at the Hilton in Romania who couldn't believe that I had no idea what Macy's was or what an amazing Christmas parade they had. Our cultural references seem to move farther and farther away from the word culture, or the meaning me personally I give to it.

Giving all this a common sense I would say we are becoming more and more addicted to toys and technology gadgets, absorbed by our phones and computers, finding harder to get closer to people in more direct and simple ways. All these games and applications make us less observant, lazier, dependent on accessories that are not really a necessity, but that we consider so and feel lost and nervous without. We are also becoming more selfish, less responsible and responsive, behaving like big kids, for whom entertainment is their main interest. Obviously we become easier to manipulate too. And to me here is the clue, to transform us in a crowd willing to work more so we can consume and play more, without any deeper thoughts.