Time-traveler

Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.

This quote from Alan Watts (also written, ironically, on the first page of my Twilight Tales book) highlights quite well a prevalent pattern in my life: the huge and often dramatic clash between the things I know and the things I believe or imagine. I don’t know if it’s the fault of my snobbish education (where reputation & appearance were given utmost importance) or the fault of my turbulent INTJ personality type (prone to intuitions feebly rooting in reality), but the poll in the last article has proven me completely wrong. Instead of an expected reaction of 2-3 people giving a dispersed feedback, I got a firm & unanimous feedback of 26 answers telling me to continue with the blog, plus some very kind answers (which I will save in my email, by the way, so as to read them again when self-uncertainty returns). This was a huge blow and, proving that I am not a true archetypal Romanian (although I truly am one, in other regards), I will assume and acknowledge (something that, again, a true Romanian never-ever does):

I was wrong!

I wish my Romanian people could do one day this – at least this small step only – and assume their reality and not what they imagine themselves to be. This also includes my living family members.

Now, back to the practical stuff!

I have some texts lingering on my other blog which will also be gradually shared here. You will notice that I abandoned my explaining (teaching) voice and I now write in my natural voice. My real voice is different and you will see that I do not stop all the time to explain and I do not always put words in italic, in quotation marks or parenthesis. I expect and imply that you can sense the allusions and that you have sufficient general knowledge so as to know what I’m talking about. I also presume that you already know me well and you know that I frequently use multiple meanings, metaphors and symbols. I avoid to refer directly to persons and events, and although I write archetypally enough so that my texts can be of actuality even after tens of years, they often do refer to current events (which have the bad habit of repeating the past, by the way). I tried to monetize writing and it didn’t work, so what I write now is at the confluence between my itch to write and my desire to share what I write with others who might appreciate it. I have lost friends in the past because they thought I was writing about them when I was actually talking in general, so be aware that what I write involuntarily fits many cases, as I write about the human condition. It is also my constant worry that any patients I might see could find themselves in my texts, and for this reason I alter a lot of details and often the narrative time. But it is true that there is a limited number of problems one might have in life, and after some years of practice, one sees the repetition of the same old problems with little variation across many individuals.

Now, about photography. As the title of this blogpost suggests, I believe that we aren’t really travelling through space but actually through time. I do not remember a lot of the details of the places I visit or see, but I remember the conclusions I draw and the emotions or moods I got when coming into contact with those places or things. Travelling is, for me personally, rather a chronicle and less a well-checked travelling bucket-list. An adventure is equally going to the other end of the continent or getting out of one’s house and seeing a bug on a flower or the clouds in the sky. At the end of one’s life, I believe, we can have an emotional narrative made up of the things we felt while being in time, and not a simple and impersonal list of geographical locations we visited, often absentmindedly. This being said, I will take you with me through my voyages, not only in writing but also in imagery.

And speaking about time and time-travelling, the photos of this article are from Cluj-Napoca. If questioned about where I’m from – a tricky question given the many places I lived in – I would say that I’m from Cluj. I lived there roughly half of my life and I have a love-hate relationship with that place, a pattern also common in my personal life: the attraction for those things that are both cold and rejecting. The building in the first image is the Matthias Corvinus House where, in year 1443, one of the most renowned kings of this part of Europe was born. The second image depicts the Matei Corvin Street on which the house lies. It is always humbling to look at a house that is roughly 600 years old and still standing in downtown Cluj. It is also a benchmark, a point of reference in case we forget who we are and what our ancestors did. The city of Cluj is old; it was an ancient Dacian and Celtic settlement since time-immemorial, then the Romans have built the first city as Napoca in year 105 AD, then the Germans settlers have founded the present city as Klausenburg in the 13^th century. Then the Hungarians and the Romanians have coexisted here until the present times. It is an emotionally-charged experience to walk in the old city by night, when there are few people on the streets, and imagine how the place (and how myself also) used to be many years ago, hence time-travelling in a different way (and in different epochs). The eeriness of Cluj remains a distinct vibe in my soul and makes me return, again and again, within its walls…