Whenever It Strikes, I Will Be Ready

 

 

Why does my inspiration strike me at the most inappropriate of times?

While I am cleaning the house, my thoughts go round and round in my head like a crazy carousel. I have to stop whatever I am doing at that precise moment, look for a pen and some paper and write everything down.

While I am sitting with my husband at the hospital surrounded by pain and suffering, something or someone catches my attention. Tears fill my eyes and I hear the words whispering to me.

While I am in bed, dead tired, the moment I close my eyes and drift to sleep, ideas like demented Jack-in-the-Boxes just pop into my consciousness. Good bye, sleep!

While I am walking home from the supermarket, laden with shopping bags, an interesting image appears in my mind. I have to stop, put down the bags and type it into my phone.

Because I am not losing another image, another idea or another sentence. Not again.

 It happened to me too many times in the past. I let those moments slip and they were lost forever.

So, I don’t care if I burn the food or forget the clothes in the washing machine, I will catch those thoughts and bring them to life on the paper, instead of leaving them trapped in my mind.

And if Pitzi the cat tries once again to sleep on my keyboard I will coax him down with a tuna snack and will carry on writing until I have nothing left to say.

Down Memory Lane, One Golden Fry at a Time

 

Today, for the first time in a while, I fried potatoes on the stove, in a frying pan.  I usually bake them in the oven, it is easier, less mess and healthier, too.

Whenever I fry potatoes, I think of them as “cartofi pai” as we call them in Romanian – “straw potatoes” and I am instantly back in time as a child in communist Romania. Having “cartofi pai” at lunch was really a special occasion. My grandma didn’t approve of them because you had to use a lot of cooking oil and oil was on the ration card. So, whenever my gran wasn’t at home (something that seldom happened) we asked our mother to make us “cartofi pai”.

I can still see all four of us waiting impatiently as the heavenly smell of frying potatoes filled the house. We would grab them the moment they were ready, burning the roofs of our mouths because waiting another minute simply wasn't an option. Then came the real competition: keeping a watchful eye on everyone else's plate, ready to rescue a golden fry from any distracted sibling.

Of course there weren’t enough for everyone – we were four kids, and we had to fight for every morsel, every piece of “straw”. If we were lucky we would also receive one fried egg, ou ochi – “egg eye” in Romanian. And if we were really good, pickled cucumbers, a delicacy only my gran could make. All eaten with copious quantities of bread.

When we were kids we ate a lot of bread with or instead our meals. It was cheaper and there were times when there wasn’t enough food for all of us on the table to eat our fill. Our favorite was “piine cu unsoare” – bread and dripping. With a pinch of salt, some black pepper and paprika. And when times were really bad and money scarce, bread with mustard. I’ve no idea why even during the darkest days of communism, when grocery shops were empty, you could find jars and jars of mustard on the shelves.

So today I am thankful to the humble potato because it took me on a trip down memory lane. Even though I was a child during a difficult period in Romania's history, and my childhood was different from that of many other children, it was also a time of discovery and wonder, of small pleasures and quiet joys that I will never forget.

The Resurrection

 

On how a manuscript came alive but didn’t eat me

 

It’s three o’clock in the morning when a strange rustling sound wakes me up. After listening attentively for a couple of minutes, I am almost sure I’ve located the source of the noise - under the bed. I sigh…I’m certain it is Pitzi again, playing with the dust bunnies that live there. But no, Pitzi is asleep on the pillow next to mine, his paws in the air, tail twitching.

That noise again! It is definitely getting louder and coming from under the bed. I lower my face to peer into the darkness…I squint, my vision is not that good in the dark…I blink…And I see a corner of a white page emerging slowly from the “Sugar Plum” collection box from Sabon where I kept the manuscript of my book.

What is happening?

Now more pages are materializing from the box, one after the other, dragging themselves across the floor, like a rustling white river of printed words.

I stand on my bed looking down. It seems that my own abandoned creation decided to stage a rebellion.

Pitzi is still sleeping peacefully. I hope he’ll wake up because of the noise and maybe seek vengeance on the attackers.

And out of nowhere, I hear a faint whisper: “Whyyyyyy? Whyyyyyyy did you abandon me, Ramonaaaaaaa?”  The raspy voice is getting louder:” Why did you put me under the bed in that box smelling of cinnamon and burnt sugar, together with the plastic Christmas tree and the artificial flowers?”

“I am sorry”, I reply.

Am I talking to some pages I once called proudly “my book”? Am I still asleep and this is a nightmare?

“I am sorry”, I say again. “But you know how busy I was…”

“No”, it interrupts me. “You bought books, you read them!” it finishes in a higher, indignant note and with a papery huff.

“You know how many problems I had. You know I was sad and depressed and lonely. The books helped”, I press on.

“Well, I could have been your companion and friend”, it replies bitterly.

I don’t know what to say. Of course it was right. I had no excuses to abandon it like that. Yes, I had a million bad things happening to me, my life wore me down to the bone, but still…I felt ashamed. So ashamed.

“I am sorry”, I say again, like a broken record. “I am going to fix it”.

“If you’re still willing”, I whisper.

I get down from the bed, paying attention not to step on any pages. I kneel on the floor and gather them holding them to my chest. The familiar scent of old paper and ink wafts around me. I get up and stride to my desk, putting the pages on it. I then spend some time smoothing them down, putting them in the right order.

And I take a deep breath and I say: “Now, where were we?”

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

On rediscovering creativity after years of neglect and how some seeds survive beneath the weeds

 

Twenty years ago I’ve put a part of myself in cold storage. I tried to revive it some years afterwards, but the experiment failed. And so, a part of my soul remained in stasis. Like in those sci-fi movies when you see bits of people floating in big plastic tubes filled with green liquid. That's how it felt. My alter ego. The creative piece of soul. The writer. The dreamer. The gardener – planter of ideas and reaper of harvest.

In a sense, I was dead. My soul was dead. Until, one day, when suddenly and out of nowhere I decided to defrost myself. To give myself another chance…And I did it. It was a slow process, thawing a part of myself that was frozen for so long…It felt like walking through a barren, deserted place that once was a beautiful and lush garden. Now? Only weeds and some feeble plants here and there…a small sunflower and some withered wild flowers.

How does one replant a derelict garden after years of neglect? What could survive after such a catastrophe?

A few ideas, some words here and there, a forgotten manuscript in a box under the bed.

During all this time while I left myself to wane, to rot, things have changed in the outside world. People I knew disappeared, communities just shriveled and went away. Meanwhile, new ideas, new fellowships formed. And truly? It feels more like a jungle than like a deserted garden. Paths I once knew and followed simply disappeared. New plants have appeared and old trees have died…

The work of replanting a forsaken garden will not be easy. But if I begin with a few seeds and seedlings, if I will tend and care for them, I hope a new garden will appear. Maybe different, definitely smaller because I don’t have that much time anymore, but definitely a place where things will grow.

And do you remember that butterfly with a broken wing that I found near Emmaus and brought home? It will be there, too.

 For me, writing is life. Writing is breathing. Writing is waking up in the morning. Putting one foot in front of the other. Surviving. Since I remember I used to cope with life by putting it on paper. Words helped me through some very dark periods of my life.

So, I'll carry on writing.

I don't know if anybody draws anything out from my ramblings, and, in a sense, I don't think I care. Not anymore. Sorry, I don't. I used to. It was like, oh my God, I am writing and people are going to read it and oh my God what are doing to say? Are they going to be interested at all in what I am writing?

Maybe it is the journalist in me, always writing with a purpose in mind, like making the world a better place. Kafkian, I know, and oh so pointless.

So, I'll be here, writing away. 

If you want to be part of this, I don't know, journey, circus, whatever, you are welcome.

If not, that's Ok , too.

Me? I have to write in order to survive.