Post Category → Eseu

Season Closed

Long-long time ago, the gentlemen had to hunt the ladies they liked. Not so long ago, the ladies went out and started to hunt for their Mr. Perfect.

Today, however, nobody’s hunting anyone. People of both sexes sit and wait. Sometimes, every other weekend, people like to take other people for granted, as they come their way. Ladies and gentlemen of all ages and social conditions don’t even BOTHER to invest energy in hunting. Chasing is ridiculous, shooting is forbidden. Nobody wants somebody THAT much to consider chasing, nobody wants a stable relationship THAT much to actually consider shooting.

We enjoy saying that we live in post-religious times. How come nobody’s noticing that we’re directly engaged in post-relationships? People already live with the disillusion of the disengagement without EVER being emotionally (or officially) tied to another person.

„But why should we hunt really?” ask the young. „Isn’t hunting degrading, after all?” No. Hunting is flattering! And healthy. For both, the hunter and the hunted. Hunting is a commitment in itself. And a paradoxical partnership between the “venturer” and the “victim”. Even if for a short time, the hunting brings exclusivity: one hunter, one prey. Also, it brings very specific desirability-criteria that holds the prey valuable and the hunter focused.

People SHOULD DARE and SHOULD BOTHER doing their worst and their best for the ones they could love. Otherwise, they might as well hang their weapons on the wall and buy a good popcorn machine.

season closed 1(Foto: historia.ro)

MONKEY-BUSINESS

(To be read by men only)

Worthless things seem to gain in value once they enter the area of a woman’s interest.

If it’s about the lamest man alive or about a Louis Vuitton replica purse, women love to make the worthless seem praiseworthy and the other way around. Nothing excites her more than making up strategies and tactics for turning cheap into dear, and gold into trash. She is the acknowledged governor of all understatements, and the crowned queen of all overstatements.

She can make everything happen, in any (im)possible way. More precisely, she puts a great deal of wit and a generous piece of passion in making up a new reality, conformable to her wish.

It doesn’t matter how striking the dissimilarity between her PR tactics and the actual object is, she’ll do everything to enforce her own truth on the most skeptical people.

Her determination is perplexing yet pathetic, puerile yet perfidious, and, above all, frightfully efficient. Trust me with this one: even often than assumed, the whole world ends up believing what she believes.

Dear Sir, for your innocent eyes, it may look comfortable to let her talents guide your views, because she gladly bends the reality until it suits your expectations. Yes, she’ll do that for you. If she really wants to. But she’ll tear everything down and declare it null and void the minute she changes her mind, leaving you aimless, overwhelmed by contradictions.

It is her natural condition to constantly work for you or against you; so don’t worry, or watch out. Nothing warms a man’s heart more than noticing how – if the woman wants it to be so – his mediocrity turns to sheer wisdom, right under his very eyes. Oh what a treat. Oh what a threat.

monkey business

(Foto: thepioneerwoman.com)

The Fillers

Some people look back over their shoulder in anger, in anguish, in vain. The world is moving ahead, so marvellously wrong and wide, but how were they supposed to know? They drag themselves along the ground, licking the dust off that narrow path back to themselves. They wouldn’t trade their own little „Kingdom of Good Ol’ Days” for anything in the world.

Some other people have already set their foot on the Next Year’s shore, and set the bridge on fire. If they would ever feel like looking back, there will be nothing to see; not even a damn burnt shoe. These people are their tomorrow-s; or else, they’d be nothing.

Indeed, some march forwards, some crawl backwards. But most float aimlessly. They fill the interstitial spaces between two years, two days, two seconds, they fill whatever gap, whatever crack, orifice, pause or void, they fill whatever can be filled, they are the fillers.

There is something grand about their superfluous nature, I sense their hidden will to conquer the world by topping off its holes, by stuffing its pores, making it BURST with confusion. I fear these people. I think they possess some kind of twisted, grandiose knowledge that enables them to feel comfortable in their idleness, to float above the hard facts, to sneak between two crinkles of the world. Even when, for a moment, caught in the convulsions of life, they’ll break the chains eventually. And they’ll eternally return in that liminal zone of do-nothingness, filling the interstice between 2016 and 2017, between here and there, now and forever.

the fillers

(Foto: Tabloul autoarei, ”The Comfort of being Small”, foto: Andrei Ținu/StreetLenser)

WHAT FOR WHOM?

Not every missionary has a mission, and for sure not every mission is entrusted to a missionary.

Sometimes, a true mission gets lost in the sea of absurd ideals and abandoned hopes, or melts into the boredom of the common guy next door like ice into water. He would never fish it out; he didn’t even know he was supposed to.

Some other people are born with the obsession for a mission they’ve never been entrusted with. Which is even more tragic: there’s nothing sadder than a missionary stuck in a false mission like an ant stuck in the mud. What this missionary lacks is the distance from himself and his own beliefs. Not all burdens have to be carried and certainly no obsession can turn into a “true call”. It takes no more than a twist of mind, a banal psychological turnover for our missionary to be no longer interested in his “vocation”.

Eventually, almost every comfortable belief is false. And almost every indisputable vocation is a mixture of sheer vanity, paranoia, honest enthusiasm, and imposture.

A true missionary will most likely feel that his mission is beyond him.  Yet, “the call” cannot be resisted. The missionary will not release himself from his obligations, but he will hesitate. He will doubt himself and his vocation to the point of capitulation.  And it is precisely this peculiar, ambivalent relationship with his “true call” that certifies its realness.

You cannot seek it and you cannot avoid it. The moment you make a choice for any of these extremes, you are disqualified. And look around, the world is full of tasks that will never by found by  their proper achievers; and full of apostles that will never come across their gospel.

missionary

(Foto: en.wikipedia.org)

Broken Wisdom

Clever words, sayings, mind blowing, penetrating ideas and sophisms – they circulate everyday on social platforms. They’re un-dignifyingly called „inspirational quotes”. Bits of brilliant knowledge that, for years and centuries, were kept prisoners between the covers of books and magazines, hidden deep in strange, dark places like archives and libraries when no man ever set foot without a certain sense of purposefulness and commitment. They were made for few eyes; and for even fewer minds.

Now they’re everywhere, coming and going like clouds in a windy spring day. Sometimes they make you read them twice and mumble to yourself „good one this one!”. So you „like” it or „retweet” it. And then you move on to a YouTube jam and then you play FarmVill, and then you go shopping.

We like sophisms and „inspirational quotes”. We like them precisely because they were taken out their original context. Someone did the dirty job for is, kindly removing the trash out of our way, so that we can savor the pure beauty of some words of wisdom. Who needs context when we can have the essence? Who needs the story when we can have the plot? Get to the point, say it quick, say it smart! Don’t get entangled in a web of branchy explanations!

We have no time and no respect for broader, cumulative perspectives and, to be honest, we don’t even understand that s**t. It is hard to get, therefore irrelevant. That complicated stuff is not inspirational, it just give you a headache. Again, get to the point. Say it smart. Hit it hard. Be yourself an inspiration or find an inspirational quote to hang out there, on your wall.

You and your followers will forget it minutes after they liked it anyway.

And, in the large scheme of things, these quotes mean nothing. They change nothing and no one. They live gloriously a couple of minutes, hours, a few days at the most. Like insects. Like scattered ashes of some great man.

The internet is indeed the medium that glorifies the choice; anyone’s choice. It is the medium of all non-stake options, of false hierarchies, of derivations, and of everything that is irrelevant and reversible; a refined thinking is one click away from an obtuse debate and all platforms promote, as a rule, an abstinence from meaning. Good, bad, and neutral values, news, polemics and pieces of information are meeting and merging together forming a swarming orgy that not even a strong, ascetic mind could successfully dominate.

The use of online resources – inherently lacking in precision – easily leads to the “infantilisation” of us all: we have grown accustomed to ask more and more questions about everything, without taking the time to examine the profound nature of the answers we receive.

We have grown accustomed to wait for the inspiration to come in the form of some quotes coming from a great book written by a great man we know nothing about. We rely on nothing, but broken wisdom.

(Foto: darpanmagazine.com)

On Idiots (III)

All idiots are actively and enthusiastically idiots.

Imbecility is, among other things, a profession de foi.  Especially for the educated ones. They all live with the illusion of depth and omnipotence. So they talk loud and a lot. For the most part, they talk sports, nutrition trends, entertainment and sexist subtleties. They also love to exchange inconsistent arguments and re-launch clichés about life, health, and politics.

Commonly, they are vocal and critical about everything and everybody.

When they have to confront someone who is very different from them, they remain perplexed.

For a moment, the change of perspective is the end of the world. A conversation with someone who is inexplicably uninterested in their views comes as a shock. „The Otherness” leaves them in a short, but tragic state of frustrated speechlessness.

But once they overcome the initial difficulties, they have a new goal in life: to nullify that enigmatic difference between them and The Other!

For this grand purpose, they show some teeth and muscles. They laugh, bark, sniff, fawn, drool, snarl, yelp, bite. They’ll do literally everything that’s humanly and doggingly possible to affirm their status as qualified holders of  power and knowledge.

Once they start to make threats, there is no way you can escape their violence. Because one is not stupid enough if not malevolent enough.

Active, enthusiastic vileness makes a dummy grow into a fully stupid man, into someone who aggressively plucks you out of yourself and puts you in the shoes of his victim.

But how do they do it? After all, they are idiots.

All educated idiots have developed sly manners of getting what they want.

For instance, they insistently ask you the wrong questions until you end up playing a part that has never been yours. They instinctively RE-organize YOU in a manner that suits THEIR goals. They turn you into an „erroneous something”, into a kaleidoscopic monstrosity with indistinct opinions and weak arguments, into someone saying „no” when meaning „yes”, and „yes” when meaning „no”, into someone who has no longer access to one’s essential concerns, into someone who can safely be called a bleeding, pitiful prey.

They enslaved you with their vileness. And so there’s no other victim worthier of pity than the victim of an idiot.

Trust me with this.

(Foto: taurusarmed.net)

On Suffering

Giving wrong meanings to your suffering is a terrible (and dangerous) thing to do. The lack of meaning is often better than false meaning.

Actually, dealing with your misery is the most significant and crucial occupation you’ll ever have. Some say there is some kind of „existential dignity” in dealing with it „in style”. Well, I personally am not that sumptuous.

I believe that the only justified exigency in hard times of misery is to try to assess its actual depth, consistency, impact, and limits.

The planet as a whole may be a lot happier than a single person. But only a single person can be a lot more miserable than the whole planet.

Indeed, our capacity to suffer is monstrously great, incommensurable even. And we rely on it. We take advantage of it; we even manipulate our own enormous ability to suffer. We play with it; like kids playing the doctor game.

So every day, we make false claims of unhappiness. But God knows we’re slightly happier than we believe; and a lot unhappier than we let others know.

(Foto: dy0719.com)

On Idiots (Part II)

One of the most serious challenges a writer encounters is that of creating a credibly stupid character.

Curiously, it takes less talent and less wit to make a character act, talk and look smart.

Just to think how difficult it is to place a comma or to write a good dialogue! Everything you lay on your piece of paper is so miserably hard that it borders on the impossible.

Under such terrible circumstances, when everything stands or falls with whether or not this comma or that word should really be there, plausibly depicting an idiot borders on geniality. A genius writer has to master those hundreds of little nuances that would tell nothing by themselves, but eventually would show the reader a genuine idiot, in full bloom.

Indeed, there is nothing naive or shaky about the process of making a fictional idiot talk and act like a real one.

Every delusional writer can write witty sophisms and lovely essays about life, death, love, or sex. But digging right in the middle of the „crater”, where the most tragic human mystery lies like a sleeping monster waking up starved every time you try to get close to him, that is hard. That takes some serious narrative voice.

Besides, the more you explain stupidity, the less you’ll illustrate it. And the more you let it „talk” by itself, the less you’ll have it noticed by your readers.

It is hard to create (and nurture) an alliance with your readers when you intend to depict an idiot. Most of them do not feel like giving extra-thoughts to anything involving idiots and idiocy; some of them are afraid of not ending up identifying themselves with someone’s stupid behaviour, so they purposely fail to engage in deep analysis of certain fictional scenes.

If this was the case in regard to good literature, something extraordinary happens in mediocre literature: everyone acts, talks and looks smart – from sparkling quick comments made by some main male character to the dumb depth of some professional blonde, everything transpires epistemology.

The mediocre fictional world is poisoned with wittiness, just like the Hollywood movies are poisoned with beauty. As expected, both are fakes.

The mediocre writer shows his readers a world free of idiots. Building one, is beyond his mastery. Needing one, is beyond his reasoning and belief. That is why the alliance between the mediocre writer and his readers functions perfectly. Between beautiful minds, there are no misunderstandings.

All in all, I think there are two conclusions to be drawn from this Sunday’s text:

  1. The smart guy of a mediocre novel makes the perfect idiot for a respectable novel.
  2. Much like in real life, if you want to earn a reputation as a reliable idiot, you really should be looking for a reliable audience.

Do you see what I mean?

(Foto: yellowrosesgarden.com)

On Idiots (part I)

I have this extravagant need to document idiocy and people who suffer from this “condition”. Actually, to tell you the truth, I have quite a few notebooks. You never know when they come in handy.
We should all reserve our right to talk about imbecility, to challenge it, to exorcise it, or complain about it. It is neither arrogant nor masochistic, it is simply hygienic.
If each of us would listen to our hearts and sincerely approach one or two sorts of stupidity every day, then we shall live in a better world.

Today I want to talk about “base” players.

There is an enigmatic connection between stupidity and immorality. You knew it, right? And if you did not know it, you must have felt it.
Yes, stupidity often borders on evilness. I am not talking about Myshkin or windmills. I am not talking about those subtle ways of turning morality into a wonderful – yet absolutely necessary – paradox. For more of these, just read Cervantes, Dostoevsky, or the Bible. Or watch Derek on Netflix.

Today I am only talking about that feeble-minded man next door who lacks perspective. And obviously, he has no idea that he lacks it.

So he cheats on his wife over and over again without really intending to harm her; he lies for his own good over and over again without really intending to be dishonest; he is not sophisticatedly evil, but plainly lousy; he cannot place his deeds nowhere in the intricate chain of causes and effects; his notion of „consequence” is distorted, vague, or inexistent.

The imbecile ignores or violates the rules out of imbecility (one may delicately call it unawareness), but also out of disinterest and lack of comprehensiveness. He has what one might call “a simple mind” and so he simply cannot see the point in doing things that contradicts or diminishes his immediate wellbeing.

His non-programmatic approach of life makes him weak as an ant, stupid as a turkey, and abject as a despot. He’s not a “sacred fool” unable to adjust to the versatile rules of society, but a „base player” who plays the way he wants it to play, regardless of how horrific his music sounds. After all, he has no sense of music, just an instinct for rhythm.

We cannot make much of this world without a properly exercised comprehensiveness. And so it happens that kindness is comprehensive, dynamic, and very much aware of itself.

The dialectics of morality is more complicated than astrophysics. And it is not for the feeble-minded. It is an abyssal affair we often get lost in; which only goes to show that we have not quite fallen out of grace.

I will not let the „base” player rule your Sunday. I’m giving you The Bass Player: Ronnie Lane.

(Foto: cnet.com)

The Valentine’s in the details

Throughout centuries and millennia, so many imposing, memorable things were done for women!

Wars, castles, cities, poems, novels, church reforms, pop songs.

What have women done (for men), in return? Everything that was left to do:

They wrote in their hearts every single man’s unwritten biography, they recorded and indexed in their detail-oriented minds every single picture of men waking up, going to bed, agonising in their self-absorption, shuddering in their orgasms.

They’ve arranged millions of family houses, and they’ve invented quadrillions of lullabys, they’ve hated their children without nobody even knowing it, and they’ve killed all their rivals without a single blood-drop to be wasted.

They’ve led men to death and they’ve led men to fame, they’ve led men to marriage, and they’ve led men to bankruptcy, they’ve kissed strangers mutely and they’ve cheated without making a sound, they’ve played the victims and they’ve played the witches, they’ve seduced their little boys and they’ve envied their little girls, they fed everybody without bothering to cook, they took care of everybody without bothering to care, they loved „power” best from the „power of love”, and they loved „love” best from the „God is love”.

Woman is the world’s most sophisticated thing. And wherever there’s anything to be entangled, you will find her there, entangling; and brewing and spell-bounding; making fine little useful pieces of Everything, out of a huge, terrifying Nothing.

(Foto: indianexpress.com)