Faith or "I am master of my domain"?

Does the thought of not being in control of your own life bother you sometimes? What if we do the things we do because of a pre-designed scheme? And the most annoying of them all...what if a person, just like us, same wrights, same intellectual capabilities, same species, is controlling our life?
I'm really pissed off when the thought of not being queen of my domain creeps up on me. But if I think about it a little bit, there are some occurrences that seem to have a seed in my memory, right before the actual event takes place...deja vu or a game of the mind?...And what if you happen to stumble across the narrator of your own life one day? What then? Wouldn't that be Stranger Than Fiction? ;)

Choose to forget?

When we are kids, everything seems new and exciting, everything has the potential to entertain us: a funny shaped cloud, a big greenish caterpillar with blue spikes, a small rock thrown from a slingshot, jumping into muddy puddles, collecting pebbles...as we grow up we tend to enjoy the things around us less and less, probably because we get used to reusing/re-seeing/retouching/rehearing/re-smelling the same things over and over. A kid would always get happy while seeing how big the moon is, but an adult would seldom enjoy the night sky queen and take a moment to think about how beautiful reality can be sometimes (the not-in-your-face-reality).

Would forgetting things for a while (so that we can discover them as new) bring us the enjoyment we had as children? Should we choose to forget sometimes some things in order to really feel them, not just react as with a conditioned reflex?

On the other hand, forgetting things can be quite frustrating forgetting whether or not you locked the door on your way out, forgetting your messenger password, forgetting to feed the dog, forgetting to meet with a friend, forgetting your boyfriend's/girlfriend's favourite colour, forgetting to reply to a message etc. etc. etc..
What would it be like to remember new things and people for only 10 minutes and then forget them? What would you do to connect yourself to the things that you instantly forget, but that you also need?
Get the answer from MEMENTO.

Card Eating ATM

The stupidity of it all...There are many individuals that just cannot act as normal people (or at least decent) in an awkward situation. Today I went to a BCR ATM to get some money because the University bureaucracy inflicted by none other than the almighty secretary made me pay 10RON for a grade history sheet needed for my Embassy interview. The secretary told me, like I was supposed to have the information tattooed from birth on my retina, that I had to run to three faculty members in order to get my grade sheet released (Romania is truly the country of "walk with the paper") and on top of that, she was going to stay only 30 minutes more (the programme was from 13:30 'till 14:00 in the same day, not 24 and 1/2 hours of work, no, only a half an hour... wow, I don't know how they do it, so many back-aching minutes flipping magazines and hair dye catalogues).

So..I had only 30 minutes to pay my tax and drop the papers in the secretary's lap. But of course that, the pay office was in another building and I had no money...

I was in front of the BCR ATM, took my card out, put it in the hole, then, suddenly the message "Temporary out of order" appeared on the screen, I pressed Cancel and after a few anxious moments, the ATM spat up 3/4 of my card :((((...yes, it bit my card. When I thought things couldn't possibly go worse, a man with glasses came shouting in my face "Can you read? Can you read?"...I answered "Yes" of course...The man was a BCR employee who started working at the back of the ATM the moment I put my card in it...he was blaming me for the fact that in broad daylight, with a person already using the ATM when I got there, I had the nerve not to ask the ATM if someone was working in it at that particular moment. The irony of it all, I was blamed for using the ATM the exact moment before it went out of order, without even a warning I might add.

Usually, there are two workers that do this kind of operation in broad daylight (I repeat), the one behind the ATM and the one in front of it, who is suppose to say "Hey stupid, in just a second, this here ATM machine is gonna slice your card if you stick it in now."

No money (I can get the money from my account, but I have to sign a request that needs to be approved by the Chief of the BCR office and that will take more then a while), no card (actually there is a card, 3 quarters of it), no paid tax, no way of solving the grade history sheet problem before Wednesday (because the 1st of May is on Tuesday), the sheet is supposed to be in the Embassy file by Wednesday afternoon, because on Friday morning I have my visa interview.

Ergo...Who's to blame for it all?...the bureaucracy?...no, because people create bureaucracy and implement it as well...the secretary who's never there when you need her and when you do catch her she's about to leave?...no, because I would leave to if I had her job and her salary...Am I to blame?...probably, because I'm running out of culprits here.

Hope you have a great end of the week...do yourselves a favour and watch out for card eating ATMs or shouting bank employees.

Best wishes,
Lumi

PS: The interview is for my USA visa. I'll be in Edgewood City near Lake Tahoe this summer, on a work and travel programme for students...wish me luck...because, as you might have noticed, I really need a little bit more good luck than I already have :).

Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around...

The JT excuse...

Pure jaded morning in slippery sheets

I've never noticed how shhh-vibrant the city is at 05:30 AM 'till this morning. The bus was full of quiet people, the streets were crawling with early-to-the-job-individuals...nobody was talking...except for yours truly and Aida. The pure-polluted morning made me remember, I don't know why, the Jaded Video from Aerosmith, the end of it actually, when the pretty dark-haired-green-eyed-disoriented girl opens a trapdoor and enters a great forest, flooded by the morning rays...I felt just like that.

Then I thought how things are used and reused (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle from Captain Planet, for those who used to or still watch it), even the props. In Justin Timberlake's latest car-crashing video, he has a scene where he sings for the audience (cliche for many music videos) and the background is amazingly similar to the background used in Jaded (but the latter is more artistically motivated, whereas in JT's video it's just so that Scarlett Johansson would have a reason to dress in the '20s/2007 chic style).

After the two backgrounds collided in my mind, a third similar one resonated in my head, former Puff Daddy's, present P Diddy's video featuring the lovely Jenifer Lopez's ASSets had a decor just like in Jaded...Circus, Circus (and I don't mean the Las Vegas location where Tu Pack was shot).

Great ideas come hardly, good ideas come slightly easier, bad ideas are always on our mind, we swirl in a pool of jaded mornings, we try to hide our eyes in slippery sheets, but it always seems that dogs wake me up in the morning and the idiot on the 5th floor that plays basketball in his room wakes me up in the afternoon.

Life is rapidly turning into a nebula for me and my home into a menagerie...Jeremiah has grown a lot and he even snaps his beak at people - be careful and don't piss off your turtle by exaggerating the head-caress period - and he has a company now, a doggy called Cookie. This dog is the reason why I have reevaluated my respect for mothers in general and for my own sweet mother in particular. I had to stay up a few nights and feed Cookie once every two hours, imagine to have to do that for a few hard-passing months with a small human-being...I don't know how mothers do it.

I woke up this morning after approx 9 minutes of sleep, I never felt so untired in my life, it's amazing how our mind can fool our body ;).

Sorry...really

Wouldn't it be so easy if we knew when to shut up, when to quit acting stupid, when to let our guard down, when to appreciate when someone changes so that we feel more comfortable, when to work, when to have fun, when to live, when to sleep...when to say "I'm sorry"...
Sadly, we don't know when, we do what we feel like doing and then endure the consequences.
Sometimes I think that my brain goes on vacation exactly when I need it the most. Stupidity (yet again this subject comes into focus) is a real threat for the human race...some of the smartest people I know, tend to do the stupidest of things...why is that? Why do we tend to ignore simple points in a meeting that drive it onto a slippery slope, but, still, continue on that path...afterwards we want to bang our head on the wall on the "In the mood for love" soundtrack (for those who know ;) ).

So...
I regret making you mad,
I'm sorry if I made you sad,
I know you had a sucky day
and didn't need me anyway.
Still knowing that...I made you worry,
about some things your brain
really needn't carry...
All I can say...I'm truly sorry.

Dead Poets Society

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(William Henry Davies - "Leisure")


Like Dexter said...I feel my mind slowly slipping away. A hurricane of thoughts is stirring in my brain and the pain is physically experienced...no sleep, no food, no peace...I need a break...Rebreanu was right...time has no more patience. It's a fact that the Earth day is shrinking, we literally have less and less time. Is the Universe trying to tell us something, or is this an irrevocable sentence?...Maybe I shouldn't worry about how much time I have left and enjoy what the present time is offering me, but...well, I rarely act under the auspices of carpe diem and usually think about what has been and what is to come.
Who is the carpe diem type? Are you? Is the one next to you?
No...don't tell me, I don't need anyone's answer but my own :), you don't need anyone's answer, you don't need my answer, so I won't tell it...but I will give you the fortunate privilege of knowing that Dead Poets Society is a must...See it! Enjoy it!...and if you have seen it, see it again!