The longing...

I remember even from the early literature lessons the history of the romanian word "dor". Romanian teachers used to say it cannot be translated, but if I come to think about it more, there are possible translations. The english word for "dor" would be "longing", the german one "Sehnsucht" and the list can go on.
The Romanian teachers also used to say it cannot be defined, tough some tried to explain it as a diffuse and acute feeling, triggered by the absence of a person, object,or place with which a person feels emotionally connected. In this case, if I come to think about it more, "dor" cannot be defined. The longing is based on a emotional connetion, but is it the same thing with sadness, love,hope, outrage, nostalgia, or is it a mixture of all those and many others? We love something that is missing, therefore we feel sad; the absence urges us to revolt against a fate that we call unrighteous. However, tired of asking ourselves questions, we come to terms with the so called fate, dwelling in our nostalgya the memories of the object that we are longing for. "Dor", or "longing" doesn't only imply revolt, but also sad acceptance, sometimes with a feeble flavour of hope, but also many other contradictory feelings. Can we get a coherent definition out of the description above? Not really, and if we tried we would inevitably cut from its complexity and magic, in our attemp to make it fit into a logical structure.
Ceasing to run for generalizations. there are two things I could say about longing. Firstly, there's a paradox about it - a multitude of feelings ,triggered by an absence. Secondly, there's something pure and unselfish about longing - it implies the kindest feelings, without expecting anything in return, since the object of the longing is always away from us...

Ducu Bertzi - Asa-mi vine cateodata (Sometimes I feel like...) -a romanian folk song about fate, bad luck and longing

The relativity of being home

We are all pilgrims in one way or the other... wether we travel with our minds in search for things that could fulfill us, wether we scour the world to see sparkling cities and breathtaking sceneries, or go afar to see the ones we love. Yet every pilgrim has a home - it might be place where they first started their journey, but it might also be the place where they arrived.

Some travel so much, as if they had thickets. Many leave their hometowns to go to other towns or even other countries, in search for something where they can feel they belong.

For my parents the question was: in which city from Romania should I settle down? For our generation the dilemma grows even bigger: in which country of this whole wide world shouldd I live? It is better to have more options, but it's also more frightening. So in such an uncertain and open world, what is the meaning of home?

Experience has taught me that home is more about having the people you love around you, than being in a certain location. I have felt home in Winnipeg, Montreal, Wildwood, in a little mountain town in Austria, in Iasi, Bucharest and neither of those is the place where I grew up in, but in those places I was sorrounded by people that made me feel like home. No matter how far, even across the Atlantic Ocean there are those places that I can relate to as home, because that is where some of the people I love are.

So that is the relativity of being home. It's not a place, but a state of mind, a feeling that the people around you can help you achive. It's where you feel you belong, where you feel content, even if miles away from the place you were born. We might not know where we are going to live, we might even go through more places of residence, but somewhere on the road we will eventually find that inner balance, that state of mind called home...

Enya - Pilgrim

Life in an amusement park

Round 'n round

Carousel

Has got you under it's spell

Moving so fast...but

Going nowhere

(Norah Jones - Carnival Town)

I have entitled my blog lifecarouselle and posted the song by Norah Jones long before I knew I was going to work for three months in an amusement park called Morey's Piers. Wildwood, New Jersey is where I spent all the summer of 2010, and Morey's Piers is the place where I met the most interesting people from all over the world.

Working in the park, having fun in all the rides,parties over parties, no worries and no future prospects to consider, just getting into the dazzling rhythm of the moment, that is what the life in an amusement park meant to me.

Everything was moving fast, there was always something new happening, some new people to meet... friendships, crushes, all moving with an increasing speed, just like the whirpool of a carouselle. You fly off the ground while in a carouselle, you lose your sense of ballance, you feel dizzy, yet excited. We flew off the ground during summer too, losing connection with our homes and going with the flow. Ouw world became the park and the ocean, and three months felt like a lifetime.

There was craziness, happiness excitement, but there was also goodbye. The carouselle is spinning in circles, it does not go anywhere. We have been spinning the same way, losing ourselves through the ride, but every ride had an end...

The carouselle does not go anywhere, it spins until it stops.

Summer left us, and we left the park. We left our world to go to our worlds...

Mads Langer - You're Not Alone