Let's be SKEPTICAL!

I fell into the allure of the unexplainable a lot of times in my life, but, then again, that tickles my curiosity filling my body with dopamine, so you can't really blame me for seeking the stuff. Still, we can all benefit from the positive part of being skeptical.

Vacation time :)

Well,well, if it isn't the eager summer knocking on our perspiration glands, making us slippery and hot, turning busses into Hellmobiles and leaving love marks in the shape of sunburns all over our unprotected skin. Indeed summer has taken over. But with this reign of sizzle and sweat also comes a time for fun in the sun, leisure and relaxation, parading our skin all over town and maybe, just maybe, forgetting we ever had any money or future-money bringing activities...oh yes, it's vacation time.

I for one have already started a two month long shade loving, water splashing, movie devouring, sleep indulging period and I feel like being in secondary school all over again. I'm gonna visit my grandma' and take a dip in a nearby river, I'm gonna stop re-watching House M.D., five seasons in two weeks is a bit isolating from the real world, but the show has a certain je ne sais quoi, or maybe Jesse Spencer and Hugh Laurie have it :), the girls know what I'm talking about...I told you I felt like I was in secondary school :).

Everybody has a secret plan for this summer. The advice I'm going to give and you're not going to take is: INDULGE YOURSELVES!

This is a leisure post, so, I'm done here. I'm just going to leave you a little sketch and a secret:

Less, Lesser and...oh...even Less

I woke up with my heart beating like a lab mouse's before a live autopsy. My head was throbbing and my skin felt on fire. While my stomach was singing its Hunger Symphony, I got out of bed and looked out the window. The images came right back into my mind...so vivid and so disturbing. I had done terrible things and I only realized I was dreaming when I had done the ultimate terrible thing.

How sick or morbid or just plane gruesome can our imagination possibly get? Sometimes I think we're split between the nice, socially acceptable people we try to be and the really disturbed creatures we really are. Or is it just me?

Decision time does that to me, whenever it shows it's eager little face. Torn between two continents, two possible outcomes, two possible lives...Am I too small for big decisions? Or I am just as undecided as ever because both the outcomes are not what I had in mind for this time in my life. Or am I afraid I have less time?

I was joking with my best friend these days, when we had no money for food because we spent it all on stupid things like more food :), that it's both so weird and so funny still being a poor student after four years of college. A lot of my friends have to worry about pay cuts and getting fired, while I still worry about when my mom can put some money in my account, so I can eat at the student cafeteria.
Am I that attached to this student life - a life I wasn't so much looking forward to about four years ago? I had so many other thoughts about how my student life should be or should have been like and instead I am constantly surprised. I guess this is the beauty of not having things come out exactly as you picture them to be. Would predictability enhance anything except safety?
Do I want a safe snuggled life or do I want excitement? :)) I wonder if there will be a time in my life when I would pass up an exciting thing for the safe, predictable easy to deal with move.

Again I am tormented. I guess you can tell by the length of this post. I don't know what to wish for anymore. I feel as if as my wishes and desires constantly change, my focus becomes blurrier and blurrier until...No, I don't become totally unfocused, but I do tend to treat the things I experience as things experienced by someone else than myself.

I feel I'm not living in this reality anymore, except maybe when I go out. And even then I escape to my solitude and my detachment. Don't worry, I'm not going crazy, I’m just contemplating myself and what's around me more that usual. I feel as if I'm taking a leave of absence from this existence. I'm not saying I'm having a parallel one, I'm just looking for something. When I'll find that something, I'll probably write more on my blog and you'll have the privilege of being annoyed more often by my posts.

Hypocrisy. Our whole society is based on it. I would just like it if for a while, all the people on this planet would say exactly what they were thinking of, when they were thinking it. What would become then of our puny society? Such a fragile artificial organism, isn't it?
I always seem to stumble on the paradox of choice. The amount of time it takes us to just select our daily clothing items or our food or our deodorant in a supermarket. By parallel, how long should it take us to make a far more complicated decision, let's say which career to choose or which job to take or which person to marry or, ultimately, who we want to choose to be? How long does it take us before we stick to an idea of who we want to be in our minds, in front the mirror, in bed, in the eyes of perfect strangers?

One of my friends once said that only people who don't have a clear and focused agenda ask themselves who they are. That people who know exactly what to do and are constantly active don't ever wonder silly stuff like: Why are we here? and What is our purpose in life? Maybe I'm just not that busy or focused or full of plans and that's why I wonder about my place and purpose on this small planet, in this small solar system around this medium-sized star on the brink of this most probable universe out of all the possible ones. Or maybe the busy people want to be busy so they don't feel lost. Maybe they're afraid of being lost. Or maybe I'm just a bit hallucinating at this very moment. In any case, thanks for coming this far with me! And here's a Teardrop on the fire of your trouble:

Sometimes...

A lot of free time on your hands means a lot of randomness in the head, at least for me it does. This randomness parleys into thoughts, which trigger emotions, which trigger more thoughts than actions than I would like to admit...but am admitting.

For those of you who were able to follow that, here's another: The carpets would be foot-worn with the treading of my thoughts, if I had such carpets, instead I choose to tread the 2.0 part of my life.

William Butler Yeats once wrote:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Sometimes I think that the only things that are truly our own, are our thoughts. But then I become socially-labeled-sad, because our thoughts can be twisted and tweaked by circumstances and energies that we, many times, are so unaware of.

I might be so proud and so confident as to state that these are MY thoughts. But what is truly ours? Then again, what is "truly"?


It's raining outside. I'm actually looking outside as I’m writing this. There's a leaf hanging for dear life on a branch in the tree right next to my window...but the leaf is dead...

Charity Gift

Aida's good nature follows us around, even in the 2.0 world, so here are my picks from CharityGift, a site that sells really nice stuff and gives the money to noble causes:

1) The Fish Locket
because it reminds me of my favorite two fish A&A, they know who they are;
2) Nocturnal Floating
because it makes me feel weightless while looking at it;
3) The Pumpkin Broach
because I love Halloween;
4) The Idiot - F.M. Dostoievski
because I was so different when I first read it, than I am now and it makes me assess who and what I have become since then;
5) Musical Carrousel
because I used to have something like it when I was a baby and I think I was pretty happy back then.

Out of the five, here's my favorite:

Friends, Torture and Weddings

To what extent would you go to help a friend?
What is your level of patience and the amount of attention you would give a person you would consider a friend?

I think if the degree of friendship had to be measured by some unit of measurement, patience and attention should definitely be basic measurement units.

The people I care about get most of my patience and attention. They are the people I actually feel I need to talk to from time to time and they are the ones I want to share my good and my bad moments with. I don't know if they care about me, but there has to be something reciprocal in the relationship, otherwise I would probably not benefit from their patience and attention.

Another issue that arises is the fact that we sometimes get patience and attention from total strangers (and I don't mean the kind that want to rob you blind).
This may happen because these people feel some kind of connection, attraction between them and you and they feel the need to approach you even more than just a verbal greeting or a smile.

The last time I said: "Do you need any help?" to a total stranger on the street, I ended up with a friend and a two day discussion about life and films and the world. I don't know exactly why I asked him if he needed help on the street, but he looked kind of lost...and cute :). The odd part of it was that, picking him up was not the reason I made contact, far from it.

But enough about this, well, not enough, but I wanted to tell you something else.
I saw: "Dupa-amiaza unui tortionar" today, a very interesting and well-made Romanian film, that made me think about human relationships a little bit.

I also saw "Nunta muta" a few days back, which is a stroke of great inspiration for Horatiu Malaele and a very insightful journey into the human collective conscience.

Here's a peek of the two films:


Dupa-amiaza unui tortionar



Nunta muta

The Snowflake Man

Since I was a kind I have been fascinated by the beautiful shapes of the snowflakes. Even now, if I happen to catch one in the palm of my winter gloves, I stare at it until it melts. This is an amazing piece of nature's perfect handcraft.

When I was in kindergarten and I first saw a snowflake, and it looked just like in the cartoons on TV, I tried to tell my friends about it, but they didn't believe me. And I never got the chance to show them, because a certain kind of snow makes those shapes visible to the naked eye.

I'm so glad that now, I get to show everybody that didn't believe me...well, at least, the few of them who read my blog, what these snowflakes look like.

The pictures below were taken by a man who dedicated his whole life to snowflakes, Wilson Bentley, also called The Snowflake Man. He took his first snowflake pictures in 1885. You can read the short versin of what he did: here.

Snowflakes, Snowflakes, Snowflaaaaaaaaakessss!!!!!

I have a Dream

I was talking to a very good friend of mine a few days ago about what's worth doing in Romania, if anything.
It all started from he fact that a reporting crew from PROtv won an EMI for their scene broadcasts. That's great for them. I tip my hat to the talented journalists that managed to beat broadcasting crews from Brazil and Great Britain. But I also have to be a little disappointed about what they show in their broadcasts and also about everything shown about or from Romania that wins awards...that's right...bad things.

How is it that a film about an abortion during communist times won more appraises from international critiques than one about conquering basic human condition and rising above all unpleasant events and misfortunes? (4 months, 3 weeks and 2 day vs. California Dreamin’) How is it that only news about gypsies that allegedly kill ladies in Italy, high school hackers, deplorable asylums and orphanages get into the international public eye? There are a lot of good things that come from our country, just not good enough to overcome the bad ones.

Don't get me wrong now, I am as displeased about what happens in our country: the poverty, the fact that we don't have a decent educational system, the social programs that don't get enough funding although international funds are returned unused at he end of the year, or worse, budgets are used in a blink on fictive operations so that free money can be accounted for, the fact that children are burnt in maternity incubators in the care of inhuman nurses and a lot of other very unpleasant and disturbing things.
All these are sadly very true, but do we really have to accentuate only them when we present something to the international communities? What kind of country are we that we don’t even give them the chance to question the fact that we’re deplorable?

Like Chaplin and Martin Luther King Jr once let to be understood or just plain said it in their speeches, I too have a dream; a dream about people getting along, a dream about a country that can solve its problems by internal means and consideration from all its citizens, a dream of cooperation, a dream in which people actually consider de consequences of their actions, a dream of peace and prosperity, a dream of free education for the masses, a dream in which orphans in orphanages and old persons in asylums are treated like humans and not like rags, a dream in which the public international eye finds our emancipation efforts and the solutions to our internal problems truly commendable, I have a Dream...

Immersion

About four years ago, when I was studying, well, sort of studying, to pass my high-school exams and get into a good university, my body experienced something very strange to me at that moment. Mentally, focus-wise, I was quite alright, but my organism was channeling all the stress to the bone system, therefore I was in a lot of pain for a couple of months, all because of my joints.

Now, after a lot of exams and a lot of changes in my life, I find myself experiencing a huge amount of stress again. My bone system is not the source of pain this time, my subconscious is. All my dreams are totally messed up and make absolutely no sense (they usually have a plot, or some kind of action). I feel as if immersed in another Chien Andalus film, but this time, no ants, but a lot of teeth. I am not only dreaming them, but also clutching them in my sleep. Not a healthy thing for my maxillaries, but I just cannot control the unconscious clutching.

Stress is a very odd thing that our body experiences. It often has surprising effects. I'm glad that I don't feel it as accurately while I am awake and I can carry on with my business, but I would like to have it eliminated all together, not just in the conscious part of the day.

But enough about stress-related changes in humans. School has started, for a while now, but I haven't quite started it myself. I went to one course and it was only about organizing the course itself and not about relevant information about that particular subject, so I got fairly bored, like you probably are right now :), and I haven’t been to a course since.

Have a very un-stressful rest of the autumn and don't forget that Heroes is on its third season. A lot of related to stress and anxiety changes are going on there :).


Good Luck to You,
Lumi

Between

The will to succeed is in all of us, but few have the courage to go all the way to get what they really want and not what they claim they want.

As I see it, many times you're torn between what you should do (in order to be safe and in order to make your parents feel OK where you are concerned) and what you love and has a huge potential of making you truly happy (but you have to work a great deal to obtain and you have to make a lot of sacrifices, from little sleep to refusing to go out with your friends).

Today I went to a class. I don't know exactly why, maybe I was too pissed because the wireless network wasn't working and my mac couldn't make its updates properly.

In other news, I had my TOEFL exam on Saturday. The results will be available in 15 working days.

As you can see, I am truly bored and displeased with the world these days. Maybe the days to come will be more agreeable.

I'll leave you now with George Costanza, a man who always knew he wanted to pretend to be an architect.

New people

There comes a time in everybody's life when the need to meet new people arises. It's not that you get bored of what your usual entourage is saying of doing (although sometimes you do), it's just that, meeting new individuals provides you with a new and decent conversation for the day. It's like a job interview with no interviewer present. You can end up talking about oil drills and be fascinated by that. You never even thought that to be something you would do...ever.

I've noticed something rather interesting (for me at least) in the past years. Whenever I meat a new person (usually it's a guy), and that person is really smart and very good at what he/she does, we always end up talking about movies. And it's not your usual "Have you seen that movie? It's really good." crap, no, it's deeper than that. They know films, directors, actors, they know who Tarkovsky and Aronofsky or Foreman and Fellini are, they insightfully comment on Al Pacino's acting. Even if they’re usually very busy people, they have time for a lot of cinematographic experiences.

At first I thought WOW, these people are great. They have (or take) time to be very successful, they travel a lot and they also know their stuff about films. But then I realized, they don't actually have a lot of free time on their hands, and when they do, a quiet date with a non-judgmental, not-to-be-impressed, non-stressful, great-to-learn-something-out-of, emotion-triggering film is what they choose.

Films are a very comfortable refuge if you're not in the mood for human conversation. For some it is an excuse to make-out, but for the busy ones, the preoccupied and the always-thinking-about-their-job or their family or tomorrow's worries people, a film is an escape.

As I was in a film-watching kind of mood, I saw HEAT with AL PACINO and ROBERT de NIRO last night. It's two and a half hours of mounting tension, egos and careful planning put on reel. Plus it’s packet with action, an apparel for the psychology behind it all. So it’s a definite must for both the busy and the lazy :) .

We're messed up :)

Sometimes we just don't know or refuse to see that we do have loads of things to be thankful for. If complaining were an Olympic event, I would probably break more records than Phelbs did this 29th edition of the Olympic Games. I always complain and I'm sure I almost always annoy the people around me.

It got in my head that I was this complicated creature with a huge amount of insurmountable problems, but this is just balderdash and I know it. I have a lot to be thankful for and I know this too. It's just that, we people, at least some of us (myself included) tend to see the particularly empty, sad, moneyless, future-homeless and lonely part of the glass, instead of the part filled with great friends, health, Internet, Battlestar Galactica, fluffy clouds, frogs, endless conversations about nothing, smiles, trips, sunny days, rainy days, books, chocolate, music, wind, love that was, maybe is and perhaps will be.

Because I've mentioned Battlestar Galactica, you should check it out if you're in the mood for a phylosophical-mythology-based-end-of-human-race-thrilling-story-
packed-with-action-and-gorgeous-actors-and-actresses-SciFi.
As for the music part, I have finally found a song I've been looking for since last summer: The Fray - Look after you.





Really look after what you have! :)

To annoy or not to annoy...that is the...u know :)

Well, well, it seems that I have taken a small leave from my writing. I guess the whole degree thesis shenanigans wore me out more than I want to admit to myself, or maybe I'm just king of uninspired. Nothing very thrilling seems to happen. But I won't say more on the subject, Murphy's law apply when you lest expect or want, from my experience.

I am fresh out of a very uninteresting weekend. It was so uninteresting that I'm still recovering from the dullness. It’s so sad when you go home and the most exciting thing that happens to you is a conversation with your granny, which actually turns into an interrogatory about what you're going to do with you life now that you’ve graduated.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE?

That's actually a pretty good question. People around me kind of look like they know the answer or part of it. Many get jobs, others look for a future home, others stress themselves in the search for a good graduate school and I...I just annoy myself.

I started a nice book by Edward de Bono, called Lateral Thinking, you know it for sure. The book encourages us to think out of the box and find more than one satisfying solution to any given problem. Maybe I'm reading it because I want to find a way to annoy other people, other than myself...that's thinking out of the box for you. It's already starting to work.

Speaking of new solutions and ideas, if you want to know why a 9 year old thinks pockets should be detachable or how he turns a twisted and sad family tragedy into an exquisite string of weird happenings, you should definitely open Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close book. A friend of my mine, who left Romania about a week ago, gave it to me. I couldn't put it down until I reached the final page.

Returning to the being annoying bit, here's the most annoyingly pleasant tap dancer I have ever seen, in Top Hat:

We always want to be liked...don't we?

http://www.scaryideas.com/video/8056/

My work :)

I was looking through my poems today (the link on the blog works, but the site is in remodeling, so the poems are not available for non-users yet) and I found a poem I had forgotten I wrote. It seemed fitting for today, because it completes my being-lost feeling.


Start again

I begged them all to stop and cheer,
I cried so loud the depths could hear,
I shouted and I spat in rage,
I couldn't turn another page.
The story was so true and blunt,
It ignited my selfish heart.
It was a story about me
And what I finally come to be...
A big mass of information,
Decaying to termination.

Hope is just a feeble concept,
Money's only but a thing,
Life has palpability,
To which we all so dearly cling.
We give it up so hard and tough,
Even when we have enough.

Some give it with relief,
Others take it in a brief.
We all think with disbelief,
That it doesn't end so fast,
That we have a future and a past,
But we never know for sure.
That's why this life, I adore.

I don't want to see the story end,
Whatever rules I have to bend
Without hurting those apart from me,
I couldn't bear to do the wrong I see.
The wrong the world makes my eyes endure,
The world where nothing can assure,
That what you love will stay unharmed
And what you want shall be done.

I don't have the power to abolish,
Those who stubbornly want to demolish,
Peace and love and friendship too,
But I could fight with you.
For the sake of my existence,
I cold hurt you in an instance,
It's still survival of the fittest.

Whatever more we do invent,
I'm tired of hearing that
It's all built with good intent,
When all things have double usage,
They can destroy or do some good,
It depends on the dosage
Of the user's mood.

I close the book of no return,
I don't want to see the end.
The lines I read make my brain burn.
Before finish I want to turn
And start again.

Good or Bad?

Stop being way nicer than you really are! Stop doing favors that you hate doing! Stop helping others when you need help more than them! Stop thinking that you are indestructible, incorruptible and hard to manipulate?

We are feeble and bad and stupid and lazy and we stress ourselves about problems that we, many times, don't have. We are week and we can hurt those around us. The only thing that saves us from what we are is the will to do good.

It's always a matter of choice. Nobody says that doing good is the easy choice, it's easier to ignore the people who ask you for help, it's easier to avoid/be mean to your enemies than be kind to them (who does that anyway? who is kind to their enemies? that's the proverbial turn the other cheek business sent to the battle field of current society). Whatever you think of doing, ignore that and do some good, just don't be false about it. This is the trickiest thing ever: do something good genuinely, even if you don't want to do it or if it's too hard.

Sometimes it's a challenge for us all, to test the power of our will, sometimes we just make the easiest choice and do nothing and many times, we do something that, if we have a conscience, we regret after a while.

I'll always be sorry for being mean to my grandfather just before he died, or being disrespectful so many times to my grandmother. I'll always be sorry for killing a big, green and sparkly caterpillar when I was a kid. I'll always be sorry for hurting my mom by ignoring her or for hurting my dad by lying to him, I'll always be sorry for not being there for my friends when they needed to talk about what was bothering them, but I was in no mood. I am sorry for not making the right choice or thinking the right thing too many times. I'm sorry for flirting with guys that were hitched (not with me). I am sorry for all of this, but I don't regret one thing.

Being alive it's all about making mistakes and learning from them. If you learn from the mistakes that others have made, great, but, usually, we learn better if we actually experience the consequences of our mistakes.

Stay safe! Be good! Stay Alive!

Savour the moment!

Everlasting moments...as oxymoronic as it may sound, there are such things. These moments stay itched in your brain a life time. They're like small videos that you remember whenever you do something related to that particular moment. For instance last night was high school moments night.

In a room full of people my age, very nice and smart people indeed, with two hookahs and two bottles of red wine, we strolled down memory lane. People remembered they used to wear black instead of pink, their obsessions for 2Pac, the fact that we all knew the lyrics for Linkin Park's "In the end" may have struck a cord, we remembered cartoons and shows that we used to watch on Italian or other TV channels (this was a little before high school) - Sailor Moon, Captain Planet, Power Rangers etc. etc. etc..

In the wee hours of the night, smoke was everywhere, the bottles were empty and the room was full of Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, P.O.D., Stained, System of a Down...ahhh, sweet moments from high school that allow you to have sweet moments in college. It's like a chain of memories that trigger more fun memories. After all, what we have in our heads makes us create the next and next and next everlasting memories...circumstances might help too ;).

Back in action :)

Being too hot and all, it's been a while since I thought...on the blog, of course. With one more exam around the corner and a whole final thesis to prepare, time and the weather are not my best friends these days. I'm sure I'm not the only one in a time pickle, but I am sure that I'm amongst the very few who managed to be ostracized by their final thesis coordonator. Ah yes, the sweet sound of panic rings in my ears.

I came home a nervous-wreck-to-be. The warm, safe and smothering air in the room filled me with the joy of not having any more problems than I already had, but...surprize!!! In the late hours of this beautifully-wretched evening, I found out that the professor that didn't get my homework emails, also didn't pass along my new grade. Therefore, I can now consider myself flunked, until further notice.
Ahhhh, the satisfying grief of getting the maximum score in the seminar, passing the exam and somehow, still, flunkig the subject. Isn't it swell?!?

Maybe tomorrow the tables will turn and I will have a beautiful day.



Maybe your day won't be too bad as well. Maybe we'll be closer to happiness tomorrow or maybe stupidity and bureaucracy will overthrow it all, yet again. We'll found out in a few hours won't we? Until then: good night and pleasant subconscious trails!

Too Hot to Think

I thought that Romania was in a temperate climate zone...I guess I was wrong.
When it's May, you have more than 80% of your final thesis to write before June 30th, the last undergraduate examination period is in one week and all you can think about is shade, sweat and "Please not the bus again!!!", then people, we have got a problem!

For the past five years I have been saying over and over, every summer, that we should just have showers on streets corners and changing booths next to them. People should be able to slip in their bathing suit and jump under the shower....or...skip the clothes altogether and get on the streets in swimsuits: business swimsuits, casual swimsuits, skateboarding swimsuits etc. etc. etc..

We should also have windowless buses :).

Another thing, in case you're familiar with the street vendors that sell overpriced, cheep umbrellas during the rain in the main squares of Bucharest, well, they should sell sun umbrellas and ice on skewers during the awful heat that will follow.

Enjoy the months of smell hell!

Olboy, new Guy

Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone.



Imagine being taken from the street, on a rainy day and being imprisoned for 15 years for no apparent reason. Would you try to kill yourself? Would you remember all the wrong you've done and all the people you have wronged? Would you go crazy if you didn't get to touch a human being in 15 years?...and, most importantly: Would you turn your life after the imprisonment into a quest for vengeance?


We never know what we're capable of until we're pushed to the edge, until we are desperate beyond comprehension. Do you have something you would kill for? How about something you would cut your tongue for? Do you like ants? :)

If any of these questions press a key on your brain's piano, you have got to see Chan-wook Park's Oldboy.