Zece seara cu zâmbetul pe buze

 

Scurt fragment din discuţia cu fratele meu mai mic.

Eu: Alex, ce vrei de Crăciun?
Alex: Nu ştiu. Mă gândesc. Dar mai întâi trebuie să mă gândesc ce vreau de Moş Nicolae.
Eu: Ei, doar ştii că Moş Nicolae aduce doar portocale şi dulciuri. Orice altceva rămâne pentru Moş Crăciun.
Alex: Ba nu, nu zice nimeni asta.
Eu: Hai, nu-ţi face iluzii. Aşa trebuie, aşa e tradiţia. Dar ce le luăm părinţilor de Crăciun?
Alex: Nu ştiu, mai întâi trebuie să văd ce vreau eu.
Eu: Nu trebuie să fii egoist, gândeşte-te mai întâi la ei.
Alex: Nu sunt egoist. Uite, mă gândesc la ce vrea Alex de la Moş Crăciun, aşa privesc obiectiv.

 

                                                                       ****

Convorbire telefonică după o serie de mesaje prin care eu, aflată în alt oraş decât cel natal, îi amintesc mamei că mâine seara îmi voi scoate ghetele la geam, iar ea, foarte sigură pe sine şi simpatică, de altfel, mă avertizează că risc să rămân fără ele.

Eu: Oricum nu le scot de acum, mâine seară, dar ţi-am zis doar ca să nu uiţi.
Mama: Dar Moşul nu mai vine decât la copii, tu mai eşti copil?
Eu (determinată să câştig războiul început în cunoştinţă de cauză): Moşul vine la toţi copiii, iar eu sunt şi voi fi mereu copilul tău, deci e logic că Moşul va veni şi la mine. Mereu.
Mama: Lasă, că Moşul ăsta o să vină împreună cu celălalt, la Crăciun. Sunt bătrâni amândoi şi vin împreună.
Eu: Dar ce, sunt în criză, e benzina scumpă şi s-au decis să facă jumi-juma?
Mama: Exact. Apoi, nu mai vine la fratele tău, la 14 ani, tocmai i-am explicat asta, şi tu vrei să vină la tine?
Eu: Asta chiar ar fi incorect. Adică eu să mă trezesc cu ghetele pline cu cadouri timp de 19 ani şi la el să se oprească la 14?
Mama face încercări amuzante, eşuate, să mă opresc din detalierea acestui fapt, în baza faptului că fratele meu mă putea foarte uşor auzi la telefon.
Eu: În plus, eu doar te-am sunat să îi aminteşti Moşului. Nu am nicio pretenţie de la tine.
Mama: Ei, oricum nu mai ajunge mâine seară la tine.
Eu: Dar trebuie să ajungă poimâine dimineaţă, de fapt.
Mama: Dar ţi-am mai zis că nu mai eşti copil.
Eu: Şi eu ţi-am explicat că voi fi mereu copilul vostru.
Mama: Atunci şi eu sunt copilul mamei, mie de ce nu-mi aduce?
Eu: Dă-mi-l pe Alex (fratele meu) la telefon şi rezolv problema.
Mama (deja în hohote de râs): Da, da, sigur. Lasă, poate vine cu bani…
Eu: Nu, Moş Nicolae vine cu portocale şi dulciuri şi o pereche de mănuşi şi o căciulă care nu-mi plac, fix ca acum 15 ani, ţii minte? (trimitere la un cadou de Moş Nicolae primit aproape cu lacrimi în ochi chiar acum 15 ani, a cărui mărturie stă o poză în care nici măcar nu fac vreun efort să par mulţumită de căciula şi mănuşile respective)
Mama (râde, parcă  gândindu-se că nu o să uit niciodată să-i amintesc acel eveniment nefericit pentru copilul de mine): Păi tocmai de-asta nu mai vine, iar vrei să-ţi ia ceva ce nu-ţi place?
Eu (ignorând spusele ei): Ah, am văzut ceva foarte interesant aici, la noi nu-mi amintesc aşa ceva. Vând nuiele frumos colorate, cu fundiţe…
Mama: Ia-ţi una. Şi pentru Alex poţi să iei.
Eu: Ştii, am văzut un ou Kinder mare, cred că ar merge.
Mama: Unde?
Eu: În toate magazinele, e la vreo 18 lei.
Mama: Vezi că ştii să îţi iei singură? Deci Moşul vine cu 18 lei în cont, da? Să nu mă faci să mă simt prost apoi.
Eu (insistând): Doar nu vrei să ne certăm în luna cadourilor. Cadoul trebuie adus de Moş, nu are farmec dacă îl iau eu. Eu doar îţi spun ce să-i transmiţi Moşului…

LMTY: 2/31.Routine (and the safety that comes with it)

day 2

 

Anything is possible when you are young. Then you get older and the thing about getting older is that you don’t need everything to be possible anymore, you just need some things to be certain.

LMTY:1/31.Home

day 1

 

“I am homesick all the time,” she said, still not looking at him. “I just don’t know where home is. There’s the promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it’s like chasing the moon-just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”

                                                                                   Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Of Broken Bridges and Broken Friendships

broken

I still don’t know what a true friendship really is.

I mean, it’s not as if when you find your soul mate (and I use this word purely for its friendship-related use) you also get a chart showing you how to get from point zero of your friendship to infinity and beyond; some friendships actually never make it past a certain point, some start from minus infinite and build up towards a more positive goal and some, unfortunately or not, get stuck at that beginning point – zero. And let me tell you, no matter who you are and what you do, you will go through a huge amount of the so-called zero friendships in your life. Like it or not, they are necessary and only time will show you that.

Back to the point, though. I have managed to gather clues from my scattered (and some of them, already ended) friendships in my heroic attempt to define true friendship. I do admit that to a certain degree I have done this influenced by the way-too-many detective shows and books I have read during my existence. Maybe a pretty big degree. Yet a huge part of this job was done unconsciously; I always feel a mixture of emptiness and joy whenever a friendship isn’t meant to last. Emptiness because, well – do I need to make it any clearer? And that tiny feeling of joy comes along because I somehow feel free from a sort of useless and time taking friendship. But it is temporary. The joy, I mean. In the end, I always learn something from every single one of these experiences, so no time was wasted after all. I am not sure I can claim the same about the amount of feelings and tears and frustration and worries I end up investing in such friendships, but I guess there’s no such thing as only winning, so I’ll let this be. So I was trying to tell that this played a huge part in forming a coherent sentence that would and should define true friendship.

If you expect me at this point to actually break it down for you in a list or a guide that would help you separate true friendships from not-so-true friendships, I’m sorry. It’s not going to happen. And it is best not to ever happen. Why, you ask?

True friendship can not actually be defined – it continuously defines and redefines itself throughout its phases. When you think you finally get it, the key to just go out there and label friendships, you couldn’t be any more wrong. Somehow, destiny or God or Buddha or whatever deity you believe in decides to change the plot and bring something new in your believed-to-be-unmasked friendship. And it will be exactly what you need when you need it. And if  that’s not wonderful - having the Universe give you exactly what you need without you asking for it using your true friend as the perfect carrier(most of the times, you don’t even know you need it) – then I don’t really know what is.

And it’s all glitter and champagne and laughter and star-gazing and memory-sharing and a thousand more breathtaking little moments and joy in life that carry this forward, acting as the surface that protects the very fragile, yet evolving, core of your friendship. And even if you tear apart all these layers trying to reach the bottom, like erasing your make-up after a long day trying to rediscover yourself, you won’t be disappointed. You can’t – rock bottom is the foundation on which you build such a friendship, and those layers are nothing but bonuses life keeps on giving you.

I may not have that definition ready – and never will, as a matter of fact – but I have a better grasp at what ruins a supossedly true friendship. Believe it or not, some of them are not meant to last – you just thank for what you had an go on. Some of them maybe weren’t even part of this category, so it was only a matter of time until they crashed down.

So, yes, sometimes things are different. Little cracks start making their way up from the outside world. And while you can get away with a couple or more broken layers, you know the cracks may reach the bottom. They may shatter that basis of your friendship and if that happens, don’t blame it on the other one involved. If those cracks made their way down, letting doubt and lies and lack of communication bloom, you are both at fault. And it’s a sign that something is wrong when only one of you takes action. I mean, it is a given that usually one cares a tiny bit more than the other, but it is no excuse to let things destroy such a beautiful relationship.

I sometimes see friendships as bridges. We, humans, are so different from one another that it’s actually unbelievable that we also find people with similar tastes and opinions and I call those ones soul mates. Well, even soul mates have an abyss separating us; it’s just that its seize is way smaller than in the case of two strangers. So we build a bridge. We build this connection between us and in a miraculous way we build it simultaneously. I am standing on one edge of the abyss and my soul mate is on the other edge, but we both have the desire to meet halfway. So we make that wish come true and we build this bridge. A strong enough bridge to overcome storms and floods and whatever else (human) nature can bring as a destroying weapon. In time, we’re supposed to make sure our bridge is stronger than never; we have to care for it or else we start losing parts of our friendship, irreplaceable parts most of the times.

And that’s when bridges break. A broken bridge is nothing more than a broken friendship. Maybe it loses a nail or maybe the wood is coming off and no one cares enough to replace it; it just slowly starts disintegrating itself. Sadly, the outcome can only be anticipated.

If things escalate quickly, the bridge will turn to ashes and those two standing on the opposing edges to strangers. It’s back to no talking, back to the pursuit of a true soul mate.

If a veil of casualty covers the bridge, it will remain in its broken state for a long time to come, while the two involved will carry on with their separate lives and from time to time try to meet on the now shaky bridge to talk about the past. Yet they will never attempt to fix the bridge, the friendship – it is already at that frozen point on the friendship scale. All they have is the past and the lingering feeling of what used to be, yet the future is more than uncertain; it’s nonexistent.

So do not build too many bridges at one time. You risk having them breaking down sooner than you would expect, and  we all know once a broken bridge goes down, so does a part of you.

Letting It Go


Take off your coat.

Take off your coat of hatred and just let it go. You have been wearing it for way too long, and you may soon start to identify yourself with what you do not want to be. You do not want to be someone full of not-so-beautiful feelings towards the others. Yet you are slowly turning exactly into that person. Do not let what we see, what you want us to see, become the same person you are. It is just a coat, a shield for you to protect your feelings by trying to hurt the others. But you know what? It does not hurt the others. The little pieces of hatred you throw at others only come back to you. They never reach them; they never did and never will. The only scar they leave is the one that is getting deeper and deeper in your soul. 

So take off your coat of hatred and stop pretending.

Cuvinte prăfuite

 

DSC03609

Când toamna încă era blândă și timpul răbdător…
Când zâmbetele răsunau zglobii pe potecile uitate de mulți…
Aveam un cerc al nostru, noi cei care ne hrănim greșit cu iluzii…
Noi, visătorii.