I write short stories (except for the one novel, which used to be a short story too). That’s how I started, back when I began using English as a way to prevent my mother from reading my diary and realized it actually worked (Oh, the delight when I knew English was the perfect disguise). After I wrote my first story in Romanian, on a few pages of an old and yellowish notebook, pages that I couldn’t just throw away with the notebook because you just don’t throw away blank pages that you could fill with words, my mom took my creation from my hands and started reading. I watched her face transform as she started smiling, and I liked it, it made me feel good. And then she started laughing, and that…well, let’s just say I swore she would never read anything of mine again… or anyone else, for that matter. Stupid me! I didn’t dare ask her why she was laughing. I was too young to interpret that on my own, I still believed that laughter only had one meaning… the one you mean when you want to make fun of people. So I isolated myself even more, and wrote more, and refused more to let anyone read anything. I was in college when I was finally able to have an honest conversation with her about it. This time she cried. Because she felt bad about not telling me why she had laughed back then. And she had laughed because she was proud and couldn’t believe how hysterically funny my story was, and she couldn’t believe I could come up with something like that at my age. We cried together over the lost time during which she wondered if I ever wrote anything again, while I wondered why I continued writing when my own mother had made fun of me, as I thought. The point is I could have had her support all this time, if only I had dared ask a question when I was 12. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, no matter what they are. Question everything, to exhaustion, until people get annoyed with you, until you have answers to keep your mind occupied for a while, and then start asking again. Ask questions when you’re confused, and don’t be intimidated by the one in front of you, they don’t know everything either. Ask when you want to understand something better and the person in front of you is saying “That’s just the way things are.” No, that’s not just the way things are, things are for a reason and you can usually find it, if only you ask enough questions. Ask even if you feel ashamed or embarrassed, there is a slight chance that the answers will take that away and you’ll realize you’re not the only one wanting to know. Just ask. It’s really not that hard to open your mouth and put a string of words together to form a question. Oh yeah, don’t forget the question mark/intonation at the end. If you do, then whatever you say is just a statement and then you really might feel a little stupid.
Category: Blog
Hot Water Should Not Be Taken For Granted
I was at this Texas country wedding today. On someone’s pasture, with cows mooing all over the place, hay bales as seats, stepping in cow poop everywhere, tables under huge trees for shelter from the sun. We got there early, before most of the people showed up. I was sitting at a table, with two people I once met at another wedding six years ago (and didn’t remember at all) who were having a casual conversation. The woman said: “I had to go take care of my mom for a little bit, and had to take my shower at night, and I hate taking my shower at night, it is SO inconvenient, it just doesn’t go with the rest of my routine at all.” The reasons for that are completely irrelevant. What she said reminded me of being back home and waiting for the hot water to come. During communism, we had two hours of hot water a day, between 5-7 pm. The rest of the time, all that came through those pipes was ice-cold and rusty-looking (and only helpful in the morning to wake you up). We lived on the fourth floor usually (the cheapest apartments were always on the fourth floor as four-storey buildings did not have elevators). There were four apartments on every floor, and if we assume a three-member family on average in each apartment, that’s about 60 people needing to shower in two hours (we have a ground floor back home, plus first, second, third, and fourth floors). The hot water was used up by the ground and first floor residents, and second floor ones if the others did not all shower at the time. There was never any hot water on the fourth floor. We always had to heat it up on the stove, which meant gas spent on it, which meant less gas for cooking every day and more money spent on gas overall. I was used to taking a bath ONCE A WEEK. You might think that is disgusting, but that’s the way it was. The rest of the time I took what Americans call “whore baths”, at the sink, washing your arm pits and your privates with cold water and soap (soap if we were lucky; incidentally, we were lucky because my father smuggled soap into the country – topic for another post). There was never plenty of anything back home. And these people bitch about how inconvenient it is to have to take a shower at night. I would have given anything to be able to take a shower every couple of days. Just saying…
Memories
I found an old diary today. It is hand-written, in blue ink, with letters well-formed in cursive, with ideas that I’ve since forgotten and thus never realized I missed. One entry, dated July 4, 1997 (17 years ago) notes: “Happy Birthday, America! I wish I was there with you…” At a time when I was still in high-school, alone with my mother, estranged from my brother and father, with no means, no money, no way of going anywhere and in a country so far away from the States, one teenager dreamed of coming to America. And I talked about it as if I knew it would happen. I always hoped it would happen, but truth be told, I knew there was no way. Still, here I am… 17 years later, sharing my thoughts with anonymous readers, through this marvel we call blogging. Sometimes I wish we could turn back time to where there were no cell phones and people actually had to open their mouths and utter sounds and form words to speak to each other… but I go with the flow myself, so I can’t really blame anyone for it. We have to adapt, and the ability to do that, to me, shows how smart someone is. I’ve been studying IQ-related material for quite a few years now, and the more I study it the way it is presented in books and the way we have to test for it, the more I believe that being smart has so much more to do with one’s ability to adapt to the environment and to not freak out over every little thing that seems to be posing a problem. Adaptability, I believe, is the key…
How to Drive Successfully in Bad Texas Weather
- Make sure your phone is glued to your hand (any type of glue would do the trick) so you can text all your friends and tell them how bad the rain is and how slippery the pavement; for your moron friends, there should also be encouragement to go out and drive around even if they don’t have anywhere to go.
- Make sure you drive 40 miles either above or below the speed limit (because traffic signs are just a suggestion, after all), preferably in a jacked-up truck that occupies both lanes easily, and with your music blasting because everyone absolutely adores country music, just as much as you do!
- Make sure you ignore all the traffic cops who flash their lights behind you (they wouldn’t really get out of their cars in this weather, would they?).
- Make sure you have a mug of hot coffee that you can spill on yourself (this might also help with driving 40 miles under the speed limit, especially in the fast lane), so that you can swerve consistently and to the horror of every other driver around you.
- Make sure you admire the deer coming out of the woods (because zoos are sooo expensive to go visit), and who knows when you might see them again (it’s Texas!!!)
- Make sure you cut other drivers off, and box them in between two 18-wheelers whose drivers don’t give a flying fuck about the weather (the sense of self-entitlement everyone has worked so hard to instill in you all your life will definitely help with that).
Read (adj.) – Having Knowledge Gained by Reading: My Favorite Kind of Person
If you wonder what I mean by that, allow me to explain: you’re unique, one of a kind. You’re just as unique as your fingerprint is. You have your own history and background, life experiences, hopes and dreams just like any of us, desires and expectations, problems and solutions, and the list could on. AND you’re well-read. You love to read, and gain knowledge and meaning from it. That makes you my favorite kind of person, simply put.
So tell me this: how do you distance yourself from… stuff? What do you do when you just feel like you need to put everything on pause (have you seen the movie “Click”?), when you just need a break from your day to day life, or when you simply want to relax? If you’re a reader, and I know you are because otherwise you wouldn’t be here, you can use that power and let it guide you into new worlds where anything is possible. I call it a power, yes, you read that right. Because it lets you access someone else’s brain (I bet you never thought about it that way, have you?), it lets you dive into imaginary worlds you love or love to hate, it teaches you that others feel just the same way you do even if their experiences are different, it does show you that anything is possible.
You haven’t answered me yet. What do you do? You pick up a book (do you love the smell of newly printed pages as much as I do?) or, if you prefer reading through other means, you pick up a device. Then you quiet your mind and you let it wander, instead, into someone else’s. The writer’s.
That’s where I come in. I like to write. No, let me correct that. I LOVE TO WRITE. It’s my own way of distancing myself from everything. And I use you, my reader, as inspiration. I use your life, your experiences, your dreams and hopes, your feelings, even the way you look. So then, why not get together and see what we can accomplish? My job will be to write for YOU. And your task, if you accept it, will be to read. That’s all. What can be easier than that? Between the two of us, hopefully a peaceful space is born to foster, once again, your hopes and dreams.
So go on, don’t be shy, click on something and start reading. If you don’t like it, tell me why. If there’s something wrong with it, tell me what you think it is. If you have an opinion, feel free to share with me and with the world. If you do like what you read, tell me that as well. If you want to read something different, by all means, please do tell me *pleading and begging*. I won’t be able to do my job right without you telling me how to improve. I’m not kidding, I really need your help:)
If you like reading something way longer than a short story, try my novel. It’s FREE. You can download it in pdf. format on your computer and take your time with it. You can find it under the Bookshop tab. I hope you like it. I know what you’ll think when you see the title. I promise you the old saying is true: “Don’t judge a book by its covers”. Well, in this case, by its title:)