Ordinary Days' Parade

Going back

2011-09-05T15:06:00.001+01:00

Walking again on the streets of my youth. Back to Romania, after 2 years. Back to Iasi, after 11. I resisted. I found excuses, I delayed.
And when all my arguments were broken down by the tiny ring on my phone "Are you coming? You have a bus at 3pm", I packed a bag and I went. To Iasi. A whole twenty-four hours and I didn't even have the time to see everything I missed, everyone I thought I'd see. I was simply there, I passed by the Uni, the parks on Copou, the crumbling building in Ralet where I nurtured my dreams for 2 years, the place where I first met my husband, the Students House and Hygeco Pub - a stinky bomb full of cheap vodka. Then back again, home.
A day that has reconciled me with the past decade....

The rear view

2011-07-06T15:10:00.000+01:00

I have a soft spot for borders. Borders that exist and no one even remembers they are there (Belgium to Holland), borders that are real but some people ignore their existence (North-South Cyprus), administrative borders (England to Wales) or political borders (Republic of Moldova and Moldova region in Romania).
There are borders ahead of us and behind us and we are stuck in the space in between, with a limited view, trying to piece together a world without borders.

Longing and Belonging

2011-02-21T16:44:00.005Z

That's the leitmotif of the past few weeks. Granta 114: Aliens (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing), LSE's Space for Thought festival, my previous post.... what do we long for and where do we belong?

Every once in a while I rediscover the Romanian bloggs, newspapers and ever Twitter feeds.... and I fall in love again with a country where I don't belong anymore.
At alternative times I discover English, The Onion and McSweeney's, Granta or The Atlantic and I long to belong. Again.
Occasionally I fell good in my skin and I deny longing and belonging to anything else but my own world. Good times they are... when I can forge ahead to meet the latest version of my self-identity.

Legal vs Illegal

2010-05-06T21:24:00.003+01:00

Two books His Illegal Self and The Clothes On Their Backs: A Novel have marked my week. Both have been quietly sitting in my library for ages, neglected and unread. Thanks to a rainy bank holiday week-end, I managed to read them both. I loved Linda Grant's story of a Hungarian family in UK, though maybe 10 years ago I would have voted Peter Carey, who runs wild with an Australian commune.
Legality and illegality are blurred concepts when you look at them through an immigrant's eye - and these two books capture nicely the turmoil created by the blur.

The Face on Facebook

2010-03-10T15:38:00.007Z

Nicoleta Uzorka Ion | Create your badge

Open, Sesame!

2010-01-28T23:24:00.003Z

Just like about everyone else in the techie world these days, I spent a good half hour glued to my Mac's screen, watching Steve Jobs and the team present the iPad. I already know what I want for my birthday.
It's toyish and cute. And I can easily imagine lazying about with a good book - or even the newspapers on the shiny 9.7 inch screen. That does it for me - a cool book reader with all the added features of an iPhone, minus the annoying incoming calls. At some point during the presentation Steve Jobs ventured to suggest books that would include audio or even video clips. Open, Sesame! I'm a convert before even touching the thing.

Work

2010-01-14T14:45:00.037Z

Granta 109: Work - it sent me thinking about what was work and what is work, at a time when I seriously question "my" daily work.
For a long time, "work" was just a word to describe an enchanted, far away place where mum and dad spent their days. Once or twice a year we had the privilege to go along - for a disguised Christmas party ("No, no, no! Christmas did not exist in the 80s. The communists replaced Father Christmas with Mister Big Freeze / Mos Gerila) or during school holidays, mostly so that mum or dad's work colleagues can take a break from work and comment on how tall we'd grown or some other silly twaddle often accompanied by a gift of candy. In turn, my parents woudld make the same type of comments about their colleague's off-springs.
My mother worked in an open plan office with huge architect's desks separating the space into tiny boxes. My father worked in a tiny box of his own at the edge of an open plan repair hall for 2-ton electricity generators.
My naive 6-year old self aspired to "go to work" just like mum and dad. Maybe even trail my children along occasionally to show them the wonders of a 60s steel mill.
But my "work" took on a completely new meaning. I work from home - most of the time. I write and translate and spend hours on end explaining things to strangers. For my 6 year old daughter this must be anything but magic."Work" takes me away from her in a more direct way than it took my parents. They worked and came home - to me and my brother, leaving most of their work behind. I carry it along day and night - mostly on the phone. Physically here, mentally there.
Where is work? What is work?

This week

2009-12-08T14:38:00.007Z

Politics - Basescu has a second mandate.
Books - finishing Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.
Digital - this week I have to send at least 10 personal e-mails - it's almost like hand-writing a letter.
Pen and paper - obvious Christmas cards and a couple of pages for a short story - though they might end up digitally edited.

Last week I attended this course with Leone Ross and it was a great St. Nicholas' present. I'm nowhere near writing a novel - but at least now I have a clue of what it takes in terms of putting together a life-sized character. "Think narrow and deep!"
Interesting stuff!

more about the last 20 years

2009-12-03T09:24:00.000Z

I've been ranting about the need to put Communism behind us and move on. So does Slavoj Žižek in this article in LRB. Communism happened, anti-Communism happened - does anyone remember Emil Constantinescu? But how does that explain what is happening now? Basescu, Geoana. Is the new "socialism with a human face" having a go at it with Geoana? Let's see.

Votes

2009-11-22T23:31:00.001Z

The Romanians went to vote. Some of them at least. In North West London the polling station at Brent Council was overcrowded. At 12.00 there were too many people and I went back home. At 5pm there were even more people, but I gave it a try. Almost two hours later I had cast my vote. A useless vote - a vote with a 2-week life expectancy, but I cast it as a statement. On 6 December there will be another round and I dread going to vote. To choose between Basescu - who is against the recognition of the Kosovar independence, for the old Rhine-Danube link project I fought against while at T&E; and Geoana - who supports nuclear energy and comes with high recommendations from Iliescu....
I would have rather had Remus Cernea and Crin Antonescu instead.... though to be honest I kind of doubt there can be any improvement with change at the top only.

White noise on the wireless

2009-11-19T00:35:00.001Z

In a previous life as a journalist I was taught to always seek at least two reliable sources, or two sources at least - personal measurements of reliablility being utterly unrealiable.
These days I end up most often running away from multiple sources. Information makes it's way to me via the usual channels and then seeks reinforcement via Twitter, FaceBook, endless blogs and the all mighty Google. Whether I want it or not, I hear about the Transfigura injunction story, about Belle de Jour's real identity, about how to make more cash than I need online, about the weather, birthdays, climate change, coffee, anything that I may or may not want to know. The stories happen somewhere, they become news and suddenly everyone knows everything.
Then all these endless sources fight for attention, for quote, re-tweet and befriend. It is all of a sudden foolishness to ignore them but all I can hear is the white noise on the wireless (it's a laptop these days)... and I dare not say anything more. What happened to those reliable sources?

A time to start

2009-10-29T13:45:00.000Z

... doing something else.
there are times when I feel compelled to stop everything I'm doing, to cut off all links to reality and start afresh with new projects that, even though building heavily on past experiences, would have nothing to do with my present presentation of self. A time when I can look back, smile half-knowingly at the past and move on.
It's a pity that most of the times there is no specific project I have in mind. It's whatever comes my way on that particular stretch of time - I let myself be pulled in then make the best of it.
Does this work?

Nobel prize

2009-10-09T22:27:00.004+01:00

Obama is deeply humbled by a Nobel prize that has yet to be deserved. Herta Muller follows in the trend of little-known European writers to win the Literature Nobel prize. I don't get it. The Nobel Prize does not have to be popular, but inspiring - this at least is how I see it.
Obama inspires through his sheer existence as the first. Herta Muller inspires - but I wish she was just an image for the last... victim of communism, the last testimony of communism? The dot at the end of an era, crowned with a Nobel Prize - to be remembered, but just that. An end. A beginning of something new.

"24hr Book" project

2009-10-01T10:36:00.000+01:00

Getting hooked on all types of books it seems. Today is the 24hr Book project: The 24hr book will be based around a group of city centre allotments and the story will explore ideas of shared and private space and the real and imaginary barriers between a range of different city characters. The writing will be going on throughout Saturday, and then on Sunday 4 October, a group of volunteer editors and publishers will move in to make the story ready for publication.
I'm not too big on allotment stories and still grappling with the boundaries between shared and private space myself - so I'm sooo curious what will come out of it next Monday.

"The Wooden Tongue"

2009-09-29T08:51:00.004+01:00

About a year ago, Bogdan Tiganov published a collection of stories and poems about living in Romania, about childhood, immigration, kafkian realities. I read it as a sort of memoir of a young Romanian child transposed into English - language and culture.
It's a brave book and it was even braver of him to subject it to an open discussion with the CoeusArts - a group of fellow Romanians, fellow "exiles" to some extent. Unfortunately the discussion was hijacked at about the fifth question and went onto the never ending maze of communism, why communism, how comes communism, etc....
I find it strange that people are still so fascinated by this aberration of history. That people cannot move over it and start thinking of something new. I somehow hope, for Bogdan as well as for myself and all my generation - that this sort of books are our testament to those times. That whatever comes next will not be haunted by something we barely knew. That childhood during communism remains in the past and does not shadow the future more than necessary.

"Bringing Nothing to the Party"

2008-09-11T22:31:00.006+01:00

Borders is giving out "Bringing Nothing to the Party" by someone called Paul Carr for free download. I did the download out of curiosity... the second .com boom and all the fuss about it are good for a novel and I have not yet read one that ticks the boxes.
At the same time I read some Nigerian folklore - a cute story about the turtle who, invited to a party in the skies declared his name as "all of you" and when the food was brought in for "all of you" gulped up all and was stranded in the sky, with everyone turned enemy overnight... and he was let to fall all the way down and broke his shell... He did not bring anything to the party, either.

no title

2008-08-28T13:19:00.007+01:00

How do big, larger than life events come about? How comes on an ordinary day I cannot even think of something like that?
One of my friends is getting married - we haven't spoken in a long while and the news came as a surprise. And I cannot imagine it. Not because it is so outrageously inimaginable, but just because on a normal day - a marriage seems just stuff out of movies, chick lit or old memories ... It is something that happens to other people, in a different universe - it is not your every day, ordinary routine.
I try to imagine how little things, thoughts, actions, etc build up to big events. We work through them slowly, without aknowledging the bigger picture, which then comes rushing at us.... a big event, a day that changs life, a reunion, a break-up, a decision to give up a dream. A non-ordinary day.

insomnia

2008-08-27T12:51:00.004+01:00

Interminable nights, when I would rather sleep than listen to the neighbours' door opening and shutting every few minutes.
I was writing a few days ago about events... And here I am stuck in a hotel, on a holiday I should enjoy and instead of getting some rest, I'm in the midst of a wedding party. All around me. Is it a larger event? Only when compared to an ordinary night I guess.
Anyway... Tomorrow is back home. First day of the fall - the return to business as usual...