I was talking to someone today and I've been hearing a lot lately about how ugly Bucuresti can be, all the blocs, compared to some other European cities. To be fair, I suppose that's true in the sense that much of the city is not aesthetically pleasing, not the way you'd see the architectural crowns of Europe. These buildings with air conditioners sticking out and colors like rust and brown. I'd like to have seen it before Ceausescu razed a quarter of it to the ground.
There is something beautiful to it to me, though. Maybe not the blocs, but the whole city. Maybe I'm just still taken in by the fact that I live in Europe. Because it isn't the pollution, it's not the dog poop or the blocs. The churches are beautiful, the National Theatre and the monuments to the Revolution or Stefan cel Mare or the one for the unknown soldier at Parcul Carol. The view from the top of those steps, the People's House off to the left. It's a sweep of it all.
That walking toward Universitate and then to Unirii, the buildings stand against stark blue sky, I think, this is Wilmington sky if I quiet everything else for a moment, and it's also a sky over Europe, one full of a vast history. I think of the wars and the farmers and the hills rolling into flat places, green Europe, gray Europe, a placid sky that reaches over so many centuries rolling into one another the way history does.
I think, south of me, not so far even, Paul walked dusty Roman roads and the world was changed. North of me, Poland invaded and bombed out, Warsaw rubble.
Recently a friend was telling me about studying in Prague, this feeling of a shared human history, a rootedness in that. My own Wilmington has its history, and is even the only city in the States to have had a coup. The racial tensions run deep, run old. But it seems to me on the margins and that here I am so close to the center, in a place that holds so much. Imagine the tree, its farthest branches stretched out to a brand new country still shooting off new branches--the US feels this way to me--and closer to the trunk is Europe. Thicker, solid branches, ones with lines reaching out and tangling all of it, so much passing through one place.
And meanwhile life goes on here, riding the bus in a city with 2 million people, "American Woman" playing over the bus speakers. The farmers are still doing what farmers do, and it's still the same sky. We have somewhere to be, and we are city-people so we go there quickly. But it's still new enough to catch me off guard--the lines of this Eastern European city, its buildings and crowdedness stand against something that will watch it all press by, in a hurry, and then will still be there. It's this, I feel that I am in the middle of a spinning, rushing history, one that is also powerful and rooted deeply, and you see it in the outline of blocs against sky. It's beautiful in this way.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
more cultural observations
I've realized something in the last few weeks. And it's a funny thing. I think I'm freaking the Romanians out, and in some strangely inverse way they're freaking me out. Imagine that game with the ball on a long string attached to a pole and now imagine us hot-potatoing that ball back and forth like to touch it for a second would burn your hand off.
So for me it's the money questions. No surprises here--we got those when we came the first time, so they don't catch me off guard, but I don't particularly like them. Mainly I don't like being asked how much money I make each month. Just freaks me out, makes me uncomfortable, the most vocal of my weird mixed-culture backgrounds making a face that says: slow yo roll.
But here's the thing. I'm doing it to them too. It's the vulnerability issue--it's happened with several different people recently. Someone says something to me, example, I don't know, "I don't trust Hungarians." (*No one has ever actually said this to me*) Probably the worst hypothetical example I can think of in terms of being loaded and more extreme than the everyday example, but it illustrates what I mean in that it is not just a surface-level statement but clearly has something that can be fleshed out. (I'm using words like clearly but let me note that I'm only referring to myself--that's the whole cross-cultural deal, of course, that we're thinking differently, coming at it differently.) So my first and most natural reaction to a statement like that is to follow it, find out where it goes. I ask, why? Not because I'm nosy but because a) I assume if you make a statement like that you're comfortable enough talking about it to go further with it; b) if we're having a conversation at all chances are I'm interested enough in you as a person to hear more--it's part of why I do this job: I love to know people; c) there's the cultural part in that the culture I come out of is just much more vulnerable as a baseline; and d) there's the lack of language skills right now which sometimes translates into a lack of conversation skills--the ones I have in English disappear with limited vocabulary and sometimes it's easier to word-vomit de ce? without thinking and let the other person talk than it is to think of a more appropriate response and then formulate the sentence. So it just kind of happens. And meanwhile, the Romanian with whom I am attempting to converse is saying with his or her face in a language as clear to me as if it were English: girl slow yo roll.
And then the conversation dies, boom, just like that. Clearly not the desired outcome. And until I can do conversational gymnastics in Romanian...
Now I'm certain that there is an equally long and logical explanation as to why Romanians ask the how-much-money questions. And I would love to know--time to go have this conversation with a Romanian.
In the meantime, though, I want to be aware. There's the cultural side of this, but then I also think I have spent the last five years with the same people and that's longer than I've spent anything since I was about ten. So there's a certain level of intimacy with people that I'm used to, and it's easy to forget that even in the most conducive of circumstances that takes lots of time, and even if I'm comfortable others may not be.
Certainly openness is something I value, and there is space for it here for sure, it just looks a little different than in my culture. What to do in the meantime? Something more like softening it, molding it within the culture here, I think. Being aware.
So, new goal for now: quit harassing Romanians. Sounds like a plan :)
So for me it's the money questions. No surprises here--we got those when we came the first time, so they don't catch me off guard, but I don't particularly like them. Mainly I don't like being asked how much money I make each month. Just freaks me out, makes me uncomfortable, the most vocal of my weird mixed-culture backgrounds making a face that says: slow yo roll.
But here's the thing. I'm doing it to them too. It's the vulnerability issue--it's happened with several different people recently. Someone says something to me, example, I don't know, "I don't trust Hungarians." (*No one has ever actually said this to me*) Probably the worst hypothetical example I can think of in terms of being loaded and more extreme than the everyday example, but it illustrates what I mean in that it is not just a surface-level statement but clearly has something that can be fleshed out. (I'm using words like clearly but let me note that I'm only referring to myself--that's the whole cross-cultural deal, of course, that we're thinking differently, coming at it differently.) So my first and most natural reaction to a statement like that is to follow it, find out where it goes. I ask, why? Not because I'm nosy but because a) I assume if you make a statement like that you're comfortable enough talking about it to go further with it; b) if we're having a conversation at all chances are I'm interested enough in you as a person to hear more--it's part of why I do this job: I love to know people; c) there's the cultural part in that the culture I come out of is just much more vulnerable as a baseline; and d) there's the lack of language skills right now which sometimes translates into a lack of conversation skills--the ones I have in English disappear with limited vocabulary and sometimes it's easier to word-vomit de ce? without thinking and let the other person talk than it is to think of a more appropriate response and then formulate the sentence. So it just kind of happens. And meanwhile, the Romanian with whom I am attempting to converse is saying with his or her face in a language as clear to me as if it were English: girl slow yo roll.
And then the conversation dies, boom, just like that. Clearly not the desired outcome. And until I can do conversational gymnastics in Romanian...
Now I'm certain that there is an equally long and logical explanation as to why Romanians ask the how-much-money questions. And I would love to know--time to go have this conversation with a Romanian.
In the meantime, though, I want to be aware. There's the cultural side of this, but then I also think I have spent the last five years with the same people and that's longer than I've spent anything since I was about ten. So there's a certain level of intimacy with people that I'm used to, and it's easy to forget that even in the most conducive of circumstances that takes lots of time, and even if I'm comfortable others may not be.
Certainly openness is something I value, and there is space for it here for sure, it just looks a little different than in my culture. What to do in the meantime? Something more like softening it, molding it within the culture here, I think. Being aware.
So, new goal for now: quit harassing Romanians. Sounds like a plan :)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
to my favorite boy in the whole world
Today you turn nineteen years old and I can hardly believe it at all. I don't remember much about the day you were born except that I was at Gann and Papaw's while Mom was at the hospital. Actually, I'm trying to remember my first memory of you--they seem to jump straight from the baby pictures of you to when you were three or four. Remember when you cut your own bangs? I remember you used to crawl under the recliner part of the couch. And then the time we put on a play of Jack and the Beanstalk. I think one of my favorites will always be when we would lay on the living room floor with our hands and feet in the air, screaming and pretending to be the two kids in Jurassic Park when the dinosaur tries to eat them. We were so weird :) It seems not much has changed.
Nineteen years, and Josh, all I can say is that I am proud to be your sister and that I love you dearly. I think about you all the time over here, how you would love riding the metro and probably hate all the walking. I think you'd like the mountains, though, and I would take you. It has been seven or eight years now since we've lived together, even in the same city, and I suspect we'd be better at it now. But whether we ever will again, I don't know.
But there is something I know. Even if it is from across the globe, I will hear good news about your life. You have survived nineteen whole years--and I think in your case this word survive really applies--and the ones coming will be full to spilling over with hope and promise. You know how much God loves you and how much I do and it seems I can't write you without talking about it, but I want to tell you a little about who you were named after.
Joshua David. Joshua led the Israelites after Moses died. God said to Joshua, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you... Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua, meaning, 'to deliver/be liberated' or 'to be victorious.' You see?
And David. There's so much with him. When he was young he was anointed to be king, God said he would become king of Israel. And I don't know exactly how long it took, but he didn't actually become king until he was thirty. And in the meantime crazy King Saul tries to kill him and he ends up fleeing into the wilderness and living in caves. And oh goodness, there's so much more about when he does become king, what happens then. But you see that sometimes God's promises feel impossible, more like wishful thinking than something true, that sometimes a lot of junk has to happen first--but the promise is good, God is faithful. And he will be with you wherever you go.
It's finally Spring here in Bucuresti. It's been pretending to be and then changing its mind for a few months now, but it seems to really be here this time. I even got a little sunburned in the park today. Everyone is out and about on bikes these days, and I realized today just how many memories I have of us on bikes.
Remember in the mountains when you crashed down that gravel road? You couldn't have been more than four--your legs all tangled up in the bike. And then in Richlands when we'd ride down to that bridge and it turns out we were playing in snake nests, cotton mouths. Some metaphor. We never knew. And then Rumley Rd.--flying down the hills, to the gas station, down the path to the river. Just wild little kids running loose.
You know what I remember though? Despite everything and even in the midst of very different memories, this is the way I remember it: the two of us running barefoot across a field, night settling into the trees. Two thick-skinned kids laughing because it was good to be alive in that moment, shouting in the dark, the whole of heaven filling up above us. We made it good, Josh. And we will.
This is something I think about a lot, but if I could change how everything was for you, I would. You are teaching me in your letters, though. You look forward so easily, so much less prone than I am to holding on and thinking through things over and over again. You have taught me about letting go, forgiveness not seeing the object because perhaps it is not forever turned toward it. It's for this, among many other reasons, that I am so proud of you. And full of hope about what's already being worked in you, what's next.
Happy birthday, buddy.
Nineteen years, and Josh, all I can say is that I am proud to be your sister and that I love you dearly. I think about you all the time over here, how you would love riding the metro and probably hate all the walking. I think you'd like the mountains, though, and I would take you. It has been seven or eight years now since we've lived together, even in the same city, and I suspect we'd be better at it now. But whether we ever will again, I don't know.
But there is something I know. Even if it is from across the globe, I will hear good news about your life. You have survived nineteen whole years--and I think in your case this word survive really applies--and the ones coming will be full to spilling over with hope and promise. You know how much God loves you and how much I do and it seems I can't write you without talking about it, but I want to tell you a little about who you were named after.
Joshua David. Joshua led the Israelites after Moses died. God said to Joshua, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you... Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua, meaning, 'to deliver/be liberated' or 'to be victorious.' You see?
And David. There's so much with him. When he was young he was anointed to be king, God said he would become king of Israel. And I don't know exactly how long it took, but he didn't actually become king until he was thirty. And in the meantime crazy King Saul tries to kill him and he ends up fleeing into the wilderness and living in caves. And oh goodness, there's so much more about when he does become king, what happens then. But you see that sometimes God's promises feel impossible, more like wishful thinking than something true, that sometimes a lot of junk has to happen first--but the promise is good, God is faithful. And he will be with you wherever you go.
It's finally Spring here in Bucuresti. It's been pretending to be and then changing its mind for a few months now, but it seems to really be here this time. I even got a little sunburned in the park today. Everyone is out and about on bikes these days, and I realized today just how many memories I have of us on bikes.
Remember in the mountains when you crashed down that gravel road? You couldn't have been more than four--your legs all tangled up in the bike. And then in Richlands when we'd ride down to that bridge and it turns out we were playing in snake nests, cotton mouths. Some metaphor. We never knew. And then Rumley Rd.--flying down the hills, to the gas station, down the path to the river. Just wild little kids running loose.
You know what I remember though? Despite everything and even in the midst of very different memories, this is the way I remember it: the two of us running barefoot across a field, night settling into the trees. Two thick-skinned kids laughing because it was good to be alive in that moment, shouting in the dark, the whole of heaven filling up above us. We made it good, Josh. And we will.
This is something I think about a lot, but if I could change how everything was for you, I would. You are teaching me in your letters, though. You look forward so easily, so much less prone than I am to holding on and thinking through things over and over again. You have taught me about letting go, forgiveness not seeing the object because perhaps it is not forever turned toward it. It's for this, among many other reasons, that I am so proud of you. And full of hope about what's already being worked in you, what's next.
Happy birthday, buddy.
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