Surprises at the antique store

 

A Quantum Drunkenness – Goran Mrakić

A few years ago, I gave my nephew a calendar that featured a joke a day. This book reminded me of that calendar. And not because it treats everything as a joke; even if we wanted to, life makes sure to laugh at us first.

Told with humor, tenderness, and a love for traditions—for things that have vanished and that young people will never be able to understand simply because they lack the experience (my nephew doesn’t understand how we could have lived without a phone, especially since we didn’t even have a landline)— the stories for each day are a delight for any reader.

 

“Tales for a Bizarre World”— the subtitle reads—I’d say they’re more like tales in defense against a bizarre world, one that’s constantly expanding and for which I often can no longer find understanding.

 

I wouldn’t rule out keeping this book close at hand, to serve as a sort of calendar, as you mentioned above. 

Notti maghice

Through arguments

I walk past a barbershop. There’s a commotion.

“Can’t you see you’re just talking nonsense?” a woman yells.

“What? What did I say?!”

“Just keep your thoughts to yourself.”

 

I go on my way and come back five minutes later. The commotion continues.

“I get it. But what are you telling us?! Like we can do anything about it!” the same woman yells, seemingly even louder.

Nichita Stănescu – Breaths

Page by page, this book has shown me just how important poets are in opening our eyes to things, to beings we pass by. And, in fact, we don’t just pass by—we float. Both we and they. Until the poet makes us aware of their existence.

More than ever, I can’t write about what I’ve read, because I felt it more than anything. Yet feelings are so hard to put into words—perhaps even impossible. So I’ll stop here, I’ve used too many words already. But I’ll share below the few that carried me far, all the way up, and even now I don’t know if I’m writing from there or from here.

 

“The angel came and said to me: ‘I’ve been watching over you for so very long, hoping you’d become a scientist, and yet you haven’t invented a single thing!’

‘Of course I have; I have invented something—it’s just that the science I’ve created is so subtle that it’s sometimes mistaken for the natural order of things. It’s called hemography—that is, writing with yourself.’ ”

 

About the 1977 Earthquake

“My lifelong friend, the poet Grigore Hagiu, told me: ‘I had gone out barefoot onto the ground and held onto a tree. The tree was holding onto me, and I was holding onto it. We were both scared.’”

 

The Great Survival

“The realization of one’s own nothingness produces fear. Fear is the most powerful emotion. Fear is the only living emotion. Fear, in its primitive forms, is encased in an eggshell. Real fear transforms into words.”

 

“Like the eye, the word perceives light, but, unlike the eye, the word retains it within itself.”

Corporation in Cluj-Napoca

Given how many books are written and published these days, I can’t help but feel honored that, after more than two years, ‘TheCorporation: Typologies and a Survival Guide’ is still available in some bookstores in Cluj-Napoca.

Librarium Book Corner, Cluj

Humanitas, Cluj

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Humanitas and Librarium bookstores. 

And for you, the readers, I’ve signed some copies that wait for you there.

911

 

Traffic Updates

I was really impressed to see this message. 

I was so used to seeing cars with notes on the dashboard containing phone numbers, apologies, and assurances that the owner would come right away to move the car. Or notes with threats because the car had been parked in a private parking space.