Mystical Diary

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Mystical Diary

by Dan Sociu translated from Romanian by Alexandra Gaujan

Last night I was watching A Serious Man with mom. In bed, next to each other, she, large and broody, was fidgeting. Perhaps she hadn’t lain next to someone in a long time. The movie starts with a Jewish story about a ghost’s visit to a couple. I told my mom about the night and the day with Florinel. She got a bit scared and asked me if I hadn’t been. I hadn’t been scared when I’d taken him home, but still, I’d hidden the knives and the hammer. Mom told me she wouldn’t have done such a thing, though a while ago all sorts of shady dudes used to sleep at our place. I thought of toxoplasmosis and the lack of fear. An asymmetrical face is a sign of toxo, according to Jaroslav Flegr. We have crooked faces, I told her, and she went, “yeah, and I have a smaller eye, when I was little I kept it closed, dad used to say, yo, what you lookin’ at. I once dreamed of dad, your grandpa, I was in the old town center and I lost him in the alleys and never found him.” She fell asleep and I went to my room. In the night I woke up and cried and prayed shaken by sobs for the girl in her, the little blonde with a closed eye, the brooding and crooked and now paunchy girl, with a denture now and a child’s voice. I cried and prayed for her to find her daddy. And in the

morning, when I woke up, it had snowed a lot and mom was cheerful and energetic. We went out to run some errands, mom was wearing a big Russian countess’s cap and had something of one’s stateliness. And a light blue scarf, her favourite color. At the drugstore we submitted two red coupons for the raffle, to win a red car. Maybe we’ll win two, mom said, and she believed it. She’s like me, she’ll believe anything, like a child. Gabi’s brother believed my story about Florinel unreservedly. And his mom said that, at the end of time, children’s hearts turn towards their parents and parents’ hearts, towards their children.

Viorel is begging at the shop in front of the apartment building. Mom says all the money is taken by some guys who come by in a black car in the evenings. He gets bored sometimes and throws the food he receives on the shop roof. He’s dressed in pink, lightly, and doesn’t shiver from the cold, doesn’t stomp. He looks as he did 15 years ago, his beard is perfectly groomed and so is his hair. He never smiles, sometimes he dances, without rhythm, joy or clumsiness.

The other night, with mom in front of the TV, Lidia Buble was talking and I felt love only for everything. The second or third day after I sent Florinel to the Underworld, I woke up next to Eli and dashed to a church in the neighborhood. I cried almost immediately after I

went in. All those poor, ugly people, old or trampled, like me. And a little boy in green, playing in front, close to the altar, after he’d dutifully kissed the icons. His mother, in white, was talking to an old man all in white, he seemed too much in white, from his socks and sandals to his trousers, his shirt, his beard and hair. Too much of a naïve painting, but what else, after all. And as the little boy was throwing a pillow upwards, the old man suddenly grabbed him and turned him upside down. A while back I had seen a huge dervish at the Turks’ festival, with his head elongated skyward, in Titan Park, doing that to a dervish child, and then he had bitten his ear too. The little boy cried, a bit terrified but incited, and the old man said, you thought I’d drop you? I was still shaken by the previous days and the scene reached me right on time. The priest wasn’t looking at me at all while I spoke to him, like all those in black in the streets who warded me off and grimaced, whose heads ached and who got hot flashes around me. When I went home I got some stum for Eli from “some theaters”, the ethnic variety, as Cosmin, her brother, used to say, and I asked the shopkeeper, also in black, if it was alcoholfree. First he said no, then yes, but I tasted some and it seemed alcoholic. Eli also said it was. But that guy had first told the truth. Like the rest of the black-clad beasts, they first told the truth, they had no choice. Or maybe he’d delivered a double negative - no alcohol etc. Perhaps I was too much on my toes and hence saw poisoning all around. Still, it was fermented. The other night, Lidia Buble, who has 10 siblings or so and is lively – “you lose me and you catch me too.” And last night, when I thought mom would die someday and got awfully low and then remembered how Eli had run, goofily like she did, after Filou, our dog, when he’d broken loose at the park, the same run after he’d died and she’d been

running away from me some days later, because I wouldn’t let her lie at the Forensic Service, say that dog actually wanted to attack her, perhaps it was true, but she hadn’t known for sure and she’d said, why won’t you let me, I’m afraid of you, and had run, and I’d felt, I’d foreseen I didn’t know what, but it had made me so low, so shocked, that I’d gone home and slept, I, who don’t sleep during daytime – and last night I remembered and realized how I’d ruined her girlish love with my junkie trips and my pride and I cried and dozed off for a moment and got a message from Eli, I’ve got two Eli contacts, the same number twice, I don’t know why, “How are you? Last night I plated you with gold.” I replied, told her about the image of her goofy run and went to the bathroom, sniffed a tube of lily cream, and when I got back, she’d replied (“I meditated and came to you with gold and light, don’t be sad, it’s funny:)” and the time was 00:01. Eli the Alive, who’s writing through her, who’s giving me dreams, counselling and soothing thoughts. “You lose me and you catch me too.” And now, as I’m writing, I keep bursting into tears. And just by thinking of the song or hearing it, as with “My feet hurt badly”, played by the accordionist on the train, when he told me I would see heaven. The day the fighting dog killed Filou, I was at a seminar at Cinepub, I’d gone out for lunch and when I returned, there was a large, black dog on the sidewalk, that slowly turned its head and looked at me, it was extremely sinister, Chupacabra – and I felt a weakness such as when you get the flu and feel the virus inside you. And in the evening, after we buried Filou, we got on the elevator covered in blood, and Eli’s bloodstained phone started singing but it wasnt even open. PJ Harvey, little fish, little fish, swimming in the water, bring back my daughter. A year earlier she’d (we’d) had an

abortion.

After Deea’s wedding to the Syrian, when we got home, Eli was drowsy with drinks and I interrogated her. I was at the combat stage and I needed to know my enemies and allies, as I thought back then that they were two fully distinct things. I asked her why she wasn’t enjoying life and she told me, as if hypnotized, that it was like a French film with several fellows called Pierre lost in a forest. And at some point they came across a Kaufland. So it was for her, sometimes she came across a Mega Image, which was ordinary, earthly reality, and it seemed somewhat funny. And that she had a demonic sensibility, but also a real one. She was looking at me with eyes half closed and talking directly, from somewhere afar. Perhaps it wasn’t her, perhaps it was Florinel’s specter, lingering in our room, where he had slept, talking through a medium. I don’t think that film exists, but I haven’t looked either. Pierre wanders around Borodino, in Tolstoy, “like a bumblebee”. Gaddis, whom I’m currently translating, says that Pierre has no principles stretching over time and space, he does not understand what once worked and didn’t work and what will always work. Last week, when I climbed the hill at Răchiți, on the land left by grandfather. The skies had reddened and I knew then that I’d been given permission to tinker with the machine code. When I went back to town (and on the way someone was saying in front of me – it’s getting further away, and the other one, that’s fine, as long as it’s still moving), two young people were in front of a food kiosk, and

one of them tells me: I’m so upset with this life. And I – why? And he – it’s so hard. Couldn’t one refresh it? he said and tapped his fingers as if on a keyboard and smiled at me suggestively. No worries, we’ll make it better, I said, and both of them rejoiced, and one said, yeah, when at our worst, let us not be worse than now. In those days I was furious and striding and stomping – and judging all those who scorned life and others, those unjust. Cars whirred by and some, those in black, fell flat on their muzzles on the sidewalk (a kid was yelling disbelievingly, “gee, he fell on his muzzle like so, he walked and he feel”). Baked pumpkin and sour milk in front of the TV with mom in the evening, until she falls asleep, and in the morning, work. “Peace, food and work”, Tesla. Or Pushkin, translated by D. M. Thomas: “It's time, my friend, it's time! the heart is craving peace – Days after days are flying, And every hour bears off a fragment of our life, while we Prepare to live... and suddenly, we die. There is no happiness on earth, but free is the mind. Long have I, a weary slave, Dreamt for myself a distant sanctuary Of uncorrupted pleasures and of labour.”

Livia Cotorcea says that Pushkin died because he sealed off his options, ended his path, attracted by the illusion of family and leisure (like Florinel, like he said in the end, on the way to the railway station – “we think God is isolated from people and from family, in magnificence, but He is my own daddy”). But Pushkin

died ‘cause he made himself the slave of the Tsar and of a conceited woman, he was fooled by conceit. That’s how I involuntarily fooled Florinel, by giving him the pricey suit from the baron. I was worried that he had no ties to physical reality and I wouldn’t let him wander the streets like that. I believed he was a mystic and I believed what he was saying, he was like an echo of my preoccupations, and perhaps I was also a little defiant to possible danger, but what was the danger, that he would murder us? I hid the knives and the hammer and I was more or less watchful, but after all he didn’t seem dangerous; only when Eli told me on the phone, bring him in if he’s not dangerous, did I think that he might be. But I really was interested in what he had to say, I liked him, especially since, though separated from physical needs and including his bizarre white cap, he didn’t seem to be a psychotic, he seemed a believer, a seeker of transcendence like me, and his presence brought me a lot of joy, it confirmed that I wasn’t the only one. And I found what I was looking for and how could I regret that.

This morning mom went to church with her long akathist list, where she includes everyone she likes or who helps us. When my brother and I broke up with some girl, she wanted to erase her, but we asked her to leave her there. When my brother applied to ECLA in Berlin, she put “The Commission in Berlin” on the list and amused a colleague who saw her in the teachers’ room. Faith is simple, it’s the simplest thing – some wretches were talking on TV about angel therapy and theta-something and a priest about fasting, piously and

unctuously, but with threatening underscores, and he intimidated us a little, but after some five minutes mom and I burst into laughter at the same time. Such sinister shit, when it’s so easy, you ask and you shall receive, what you need but sometimes also “as Ivan wishes.” And about extreme fasting, she likes to tell the story of a priest who said, “I let my wife eat an egg now and then, she wouldn’t wish to go into Heaven by the main gate, would she, she can go in by the back as well.”

While I was watching The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu with my ex-ex, Ioana, towards the end, when Lăzărescu gets to the last hospital, she was peeved, in her genuine and delicious manner, about how slowly the doctors and nurses were moving, tired after a night on call, I was deeply touched by their kindness, two equally right and necessary perspectives.

After the train left with Florinel on board, I went towards Basarab along the tracks and pissed on a wall, like any man after a fight. And there was writing on the wall, in whitish silver, “all I have is love”. I still felt the danger within me, though I didn’t know why there had been danger, but I sensed it in my bones; if I hadn’t hurried, if I had let myself be dragged down, burdened by his way of slowing me down, like a snake which had swallowed stones to tire and slow down the bird that was carrying it in its talons, if I hadn’t pulled back

in time, when I stepped into the train and hugged him and the train whistle had already blown – in my human, earthly mind, I’d merely escaped a possible inconvenience, being stuck with Florinel in Bucharest, and having to take care of him, get him somewhere to sleep and then, to quote the baron, “he’d be running into the walls of Bucharest like a bumblebee”, but I already somehow knew that the stake was much greater, there was that little guy wearing glasses, reading in the train door the book titled Underworld, who reads in a train door, on departure, standing still, paying no attention to what we were saying and prior to that, all those people I’d seen through the windows, ghostly, heaving their luggage, and the overall atmosphere and the talk before, at Pronoia and Darius`il’s, I’d already started to grasp there was something more. And when I escaped, I felt I had escaped something absolutely terrifying, deadly, and I went to Eli’s salon and sat behind a corner and wept, my soul seemed to have returned to me, I loved everyone, those doggies brought in for grooming and their owners and the employees, I loved them with such forbearance as I’d never had. We went home and I talked and talked to Eli about what I felt, about the revelation and everything was easy all around and inside me. I was cooking mushrooms and talking to her and suddenly a phone went off in the kitchen, the old-timey kind, it rang hard, she heard it too, it wasnt mine and it wasnt hers (a phone or something like an old alarm clock). And then I told her I had cheated on her with more than the two women she knew about and about whom I’d told her a while back and she’d forgiven me, as much as she’d been able to, ‘cause then our happiness had spoiled; real repentance struck me, deep regret and humility, I got into the bathtub and felt I was going down, into Hell, for an infinite moment I

felt Hell’s dreadful hopelessness, I was sinking and I slapped my palm hard against the washing machine many times and Eli didn’t show up immediately, but she did show up, she popped her head in and she said, I’m isolated now, you know, but I’m with you, or something like that – and she saved me. If she hadn’t come then, I would’ve sunk into despair completely, I would’ve condemned my own soul. God, bless her as You already have, and I thank You for bringing her by my side, even as much as it lasted.

I must write everything down, Florinel also told me as he got on the train that I’d be inspired and I said, I don’t know if I’ll write anymore, I’ve lied so much in what I’ve written (I was exaggerating) and he went, no, you haven’t, no, indeed, forget it, write. When I got home, mom didn’t let me in via the intercom, she hadn’t known I was coming, it was late. But the door opened. And she told me, “you opened it.” In Bucharest, at a crosswalk, two teenage girls in black, after looking at me out of the corners of their eyes (teenage girls in black could look at me, perhaps they hadn’t yet erred much? There were two of them in black at Ionuța’s table as well, and one of them looked into my eyes): “We should be wearing white.” I heard it clearly, I didn’t dream it. At the shop, at Damasc (which I went into not because I was going to a Syrian wedding, but because it was open and close by), I got a suit and Eli, a yellow dress. Before we went out, a shopkeeper in

black showed her some black stockings. I got out of the shop, the white-haired Arab said “see ya.” It was sunny, I felt strong, shiny possibilities were crossing my mind. Eli somehow seemed an option among others, all of a sudden I could’ve left her there. But I also felt that I had to go back and get her. I was thinking of Orpheus, who looked back. What if I made a mistake and lost because I didn’t trust her not to let herself caught by that witch? The way the Arab had said “see ya” had terrified me. When going in, I’d had a bag saying Fortuna coffee. The Arab had sternly told us to leave it at the entrance. In locker number 17. “See ya.” A girl in yellow entered the shop. I knew I had to follow the yellow. But I’d already decided before seeing her. I went in and got her out, the shopkeeper was annoyed (about losing a customer – in both senses, the earthly and the other, as everything goes). Outside I felt huge relief, I’d escaped some danger again. I kissed her with happiness and glee, on the mouth, on the face, I cupped her head. At home, I asked her to marry me. To reinforce the choice. My whole life I haven’t considered the consequences of my actions, now I feel them all as crucial and cosmic.

17, this number has appeared to me many times, they say it’s the number of Jesus. I found a diary entry from a few years back, after I’d gone to a massage parlor and some days later guilt had worked like instant karma. I got my first role as an extra in a movie, “shady prisoner” in a batch of 7 who got in the defendants’ dock in handcuffs, brought in by a guy in a mask at the end of a 17-minute scene. Before going in, we waited in a decommissioned toilet, all 7, packed, with the guy in the mask and the one who gave us the

signal to go in. After the first rehearsal, when I found myself squeezed between the others, I realized I’d have to wait until the rest got in, to be the first who got out. That way I had more space in the toilet too, but I also appeared first in the scene. Second, in fact, because my handcuff mate, the only one I sensed as threatening, got in first some two takes and dragged me after him. Unacceptable. So the following time I got the handcuff on my right arm, so he’d have the left and be forced to go in after me. He could’ve still overreached, but something in him yielded. He was content to be in front in the defendants’ dock. I liked him, but I doubt he’ll get far. His stupid tattoos were revealing his limits. The first time we had the handcuffs on, before the scene started, he dragged me after him to the bench his chick was sitting on and made out with her showily, and kept moving his arm to manoeuvre me. I didn’t tell him yo, chill, I calmly waited to steal the spotlight from him later. Before leaving, he went into the costume trailer before the rest, before me, though the dresser hadn’t arrived yet, and got his green shirt. I could’ve done the same, I even wanted to before he went in, but the guy in the mask had a fit, he’d been there first and it seemed wrong for us to go into the trailer without the dresser there, what if something got stolen and we’d be blamed, he said. In another, subtler way I also beat my nemesis at the art of patience, towards the end of the day nervousness had got him, while I was calm. Now, listening to Rupert Sheldrake, Is the Sun Consciouss, I’m searching for Botoșani on twitter and I come across something posted yesterday at 7:55 PM (when I was at the railway station with Daniel) by one “person generator”, a menagerie of saints and

scounderls randomly generated – On the outskirts of Botoșani you meet Elwood Bahamonde, an anxious scene-shifter in a gold wetsuit. Sheldrake talks about Newton’s idea that space is God’s sensory organ, the way He knows what’s going on everywhere (hi!).

I went the long way round for a bit, aimlessly, when heading to the Conservatory to look for a drummer. That boy I found there in the basement said he drummed hard, but he wouldn’t be coming with me unless an official “project” was set up. And he even said I wouldn’t find anyone willing to at the Conservatory. And I smiled in comprehension and he smiled back. I went on at speed, and various people kept trying to stop me, phone calls had intensified, a girl who couldn’t have known I had set out was calling unrelentingly, Darius`il was after me, Dan, let me give you something, Vlad as well; I went on like that, drumless, and by Izvor Park I found a PET bottle of Neumarkt beer. I recalled a book title, Neumarkt Gardens. With that little bottle, I went on tapping my hand and shouting with a voice larger than me, as I’d never had, perhaps only when I’d been a kid and I had bellowed for all the valley to hear. The first row of gendarmes told me there was no one still in the Palace of Parliament and that anyhow that wasn’t the entrance. Only by the third gate did one of them try to stop me – the phone at the gate went off. He told me to take that and I said you take it, it’s your job. He took it and I sprinted to the main entrance. Some officials elected by the people or whatever were getting out and I performed my show. “Daddy’s here, you’re finished, get out of here!”. I went in and fought this bulky cop and then another one. I somehow felt I was fighting at half strength, that I could’ve done a lot more but that

wouldn’t have been right, and the cop felt it too, I saw the fear in his eyes and he was sweating. He looked exactly like all the bullies who’d ever picked on me. I told him, let me go so I can send the message, d’you want this ceiling to collapse over you? Technicolor, Hollywood in the ‘50s, but how else? They put me in handcuffs, the sort that hurt (and the next day my wounds would disappear – I would show Eli and she wouldn’t make any comment, though she’d seen them too – that’s how it was meant to be, for me to be alone in my faith, still, how could one accept something like that, I would’ve searched for explanations). The gendarmes liked me ‘cause I talked pretty and stood up for them, it hadn’t been their fault that I’d gone past them, and I was saying sensible things and I was dressed nicely, blue jacket, white shirt, blue shoes, Human Energy. And one of them, the one at the gate, said: “Everything was being recorded anyway, you didn’t need to go further.” But then, “but it’s better this way, to have it on paper.” I say madness is too pure like mother sky.

A woman who was shouting in the streets and in church and swearing, possessed, calmed down when she got close to me.

How can anyone tell me I’m delusional, when something out of the ordinary has been happening to me daily? A few days before everything accelerated, I went into a bookshop and opened a book about the devil, where they talked about a red car (as the

temptation of women, a semblance of vitality, which is eventually cruel, the way Karenina fell for it) and as I was standing and reading, that strange, long-legged woman, whom I’d seen many times around town reading, leaned over and lifted her jacket, she had about three sweaters of different colors underneath, one of them white, and she lifted them one by one, as if showing them to me. Then she invited me to sit down. I sat down and read and she was circling me with a book and kept saying, uh-huh, aha, every time I saw a connection (with the Red Cabin, which we’re filming, for instance). Right afterwards, I went to see a girl who’s been making collages lately, lots, daily, and her latest was with a red car with the cover of my book, Vino cu mine (Come with me), glued on. A red car also appears in Godard’s Contempt, which Pronoia asked me if I watched and which fit the story of our film to some extent. A red car also appears in Captain America, when that guy is selected for the experiment. And how have my handcuff marks disappeared, do I have such good immunity? And how did my infection drop after I was under surgery every day, though it was growing daily above normal parameters, so that the doctor was telling me I should have been dead? And how come the tomography showed I had nothing wrong anywhere, though I had been smoking and drinking so much, for so many years? And how come I walked through the subway cars, I strode obtrusively, as if on inspection, and all, all, all of them kept their heads down, all, all, all mournful, except a few, who wore normal clothes and spoke normally?

When he was in the train door, Florinel found the little cross in the inside pocket of the suit (I’d placed it there earlier – but why was he checking the pocket? It made no sense). And he told me with a smile, hah, I suppose I must wear it from now on.

I was to meet Daniel a few evenings ago and he showed up at “the end of 1”, as we say, from the right, though he lives to the left, let’s say he’d gone to the kiosk, though he hadn’t bought anything. I’ve always felt he’s been hiding something, but lately I’m very sensitive to this. We went down and the midget from Curcubeului Park started walking behind us. It’s the park I grew up next to, after I moved away from Răchiți, to Curcubeului Street. There’s a panel at the entrance with all the colors. The midget and some witchy friends of hers are sometimes in the park, they talk trash, with ugly voices (I should always rely on voice, on voice only). And they don’t look at me at all. She was walking behind us and taking photos with her phone right and left, ceaselessly, and yelling David! David! Who’s she calling? I asked Daniel and he said – she’s talking on the phone. But she wasn’t. And when I turned and looked, she wouldn’t look at me for a second, like so many others lately. When I was at the railway station, waiting for Eli, I’d stretched out on a bench listening to the large minute hand of the clock move. Suddenly a policeman with those traditional Jewish sidelocks hurried towards me. Where are you going? he asked nervously. I’m waiting for someone, I told him and he calmed down. In Berlin, when the rain caught me outside, at the Gallery, by the clothes, a similar, enormous Jew in a white shirt passed me by and when I

looked after him, on a clothes rack, there was a white shirt with no security tag. I put it on, it fit me. The night before I’d slept at Liana’s place, 10 years later Liana was still in Berlin, where she’d moved at 22, the year I’d been there too. So beautiful, slender, with a dead eye, which made her even more special, enthusiastic and angry, both with intensity, always on guard – now too, but more muffled, more mature. We had spent about 4 months together, I’d been 29, I’d quit drinking and taken up drugs. I’d gone to clubs with her, where she would get on the DJs’ lists, they liked her a lot, she stood out even in Berlin, once a rich Iranian kid, who used to indulge her whims, said we seemed to be high on LSD all the time, we were somewhat alike, perhaps that’s why we didn’t fully get together, once, when we were sleeping together, I touched her and she pushed my hand away, but we were doubtlessly somewhat in love with each other, I saw some signs in her too, though she hid it well and was even hostile so many times, and I have trouble believing there’s something there unless I see it clearly. In fact, I think she did as I did, kept large mental distances to protect herself. Everything was beautiful and mystical, we haunted the city on dark autumn and winter days, trains and places with new people, and I even felt like a ghost, posthumous, it’s hard to explain such a state to someone if they haven’t experienced it, but I’ve known it since I was a kid, it’s the daydream state where I truly feel at home, not necessarily a psychedelic daydream, but a break with everything around, so deep that, if I see anything of external reality, what I see has an aura. When I got to her, L. had just quit her job as a garbage collector at the Berghain club, which she’d taken mainly for the drugs she found on the floor. She hasn’t lost her beauty, though the nights of the last ten years can be seen on her complexion, but perhaps, after

prolonged abstinence, she’d look fresher. Besides that, she is still as charming, with an aristocratic pain in her voice, like a sublimated affectation, and she intuits anything with the same accuracy. But around 3 AM, after we’d smoked a lot of hashish, while we were talking in the kitchen one long step away from each other, when she leaned backwards, I saw another. There was a completely different woman, with different traits and a somehow different voice. A more dull and earthly woman, from a small town, who had completely given up sophistication and was speaking normally and staidly, realistically and so on. I almost knew that woman, or at least her type, and what she was saying and the tone she was using was different from L.’s usual manner. If it was a hallucination, it was a long and strange one, if I may say so, strange because it was very natural, the other woman’s face rested there perfectly, there were no changing outlines, she wasn’t turning into anything else, just when L. leaned forward, the face I knew emerged, but even then it went back to the provincial face, which I liked, for that matter. I wasn’t frightened at all, I didn’t think I’d gone mad, as I haven’t thought about that in a long while, though I have the most schizophrenic perspectives in my head, but I thought I saw her shadow, what she would become?, or what she kept away from.

When Eli slept over in Botoșani, towards the morning, I dreamed I was in Berlin, falling, frightened, and I was saying – why are you letting me fall. I had the other nightmare next to her too, in Bucharest, after all the unrest, after I went into the Parliament Building, the day after Abbadon visited us, apparently to talk, but he

wanted to examine me, he spoke so very haughtily, like a blown-up self-important doc, I was afraid he’d hospitalize me, I told him he wasn’t even a psychiatrist and kicked him out. But before kicking him out, I had to drag him a bit, ‘cause he wasn’t budging. I saw his yellow eyes and he was big and inert. So I dreamed I was in the stairwell fighting one like this and behind him there was somebody watching us and I yelled, who are you? And I was terrified, I went towards the door to get inside my place and yelled, Mihai, help me, and then, mom! And when I woke up, Eli was touching me, but with a one-quarter touch somehow, not quite convinced, not the way I’d hugged her when there had been an earthquake and she’d woken up scared. I took some things and left. I got downtown to pay my Parliament fine, at CEC Bank. A teller dressed in black had a frightened, nervous look and the other tellers were smiling, pleased; she’d probably tormented them, she seemed the type. The printer wasn’t working, I told her I was going out for a bit, when I went back in, it worked. Then the way to Botoșani, with the initiation and its dangers. The next morning, when the sun came up, I went to Orofteana, where Mihai lives, he’s my mother’s man, an army captain. I arrived extremely fast, just as by train to Botoșani, it seemed like five minutes. It was cold in Dorohoi and the guy at the bus station, at the information desk, didn’t let me wait inside. I went out and it got warm. On the way, I hitched a ride and dozed off and the driver woke me up, come on, he said, even the fog got upset you were sleeping and ran away – and he smiled. He didn’t want to go with me further than the end of the village, he was afraid. And then I saw Heaven, like the accordionist had told me on the train. Everything was new and clean, lots of yellow flowers and intense green, the color of healing. An old woman in orange was going up

slowly with a bucket of water. I was determined to go to Mihai and ask him to get me over the border into Ukraine. I didn’t want to leave but I had to, to prove my faith. As I was advancing through the fog, I heard his cough. He showed up from a trail. I’d gone past his house. Dan, what are you doing here? I’ve had a dream. What are you, eh, Luther King? I guffawed, God, such a release. He took me to the pub to have coffee. He said underneath it there were Jewish cellars, as in Răchiți, under my childhood home. He told me I couldn’t have crossed the border, if I’d walked on a bit longer, they would’ve shot me, ‘cause the whole area was a restricted area. An old man there, who perhaps didn’t like the world anymore, said it wasn’t so. I visited his mother, who is 91. She was cheerful, we talked, she told me about her life, her lost love. I would’ve wanted to stay there, but Mihai told me there was no room. The old woman wanted me to have some bean soup, but I said no. I didn’t drink the coffee either. I felt that if I got lazy, I’d stay and die there and the old woman would take my life, add it to her own. In theory, there was little time before the bus back to town arrived, but it passed very slowly. In the end I caught it, the old woman became sad. On the way out, I saw the red, red apples. In Dorohoi, the watchman at the information desk asked me – Have you been to Orofteana? And back? Well done. I gave him some brandy Mihai had given me for mom. He didn’t want to drink it then, I poured it into a half-liter bottle picked off the ground. Then he started talking to someone, emphatically, about a flood. The sun came out, I was happy.

Before Florinel, we’d had another wanderer over at our place, some

years back, when I lived in Obor, Ștefan I. had brought him to me, it was a guy he’d been in love with; it was cold outside and that boy had received some money from an American who loved him, Ștefan was taking a tax of it, ‘cause apparently he was wasting it on slot machines. They both came over with lots of weed and shot ketamine in the kitchen. Eli didn’t like the situation, but I pushed it, Ștefan had convinced me to shelter that guy for one night and he also lured me with the weed. I was somewhat afraid of that guy, I felt threatened by him, as a man, he seemed the type Eli would like, she even said he looked like her first lover. We talked a lot and tackled each other, at some point he’d entered her room without knocking and I told him so. He said he was “a headful horseman,” I liked what he said, besides, he talked a lot of metaphysics ravingly, like Mitoș (but Mitoș has such pleasant humor and he can make such surprising connections, when he sets metaphysics to the side), nothing was sticking to anything. I saw him fear the stove flame and I calmed down somewhat. We made his bed in the kitchen and the whole night I kept a belt by my side, its buckle fastened, ready to defend us. Eli said she could feel my tension. When he walked to the stove, he had a walk like he was an animated corpse, his head down, lifeless. I went into the kitchen that night and asked him if he wanted a blanket. He took off before we woke up.

In many Bibles, a phrase is translated as “alas” but it’s “Wow!”, it’s the astonishment of faith confirmed, as it was for me.

Yesterday I opened a book of short stories by Cervantes at a page marked by a bent corner, at the story called The Lawyer of Glass. It‘s about a young man who, at some point, is in the company of a beguiler – that’s what Cervantes calls her – who wants to take possession of him, but, failing to, she adds a special powder to his drink. Afterwards, the young man suffers from a mental disorder, be believes he is made of glass and shouldn’t be touched, because he’s fragile, but he begins to tell the blunt truth to everyone. Today I google Lilith to see her facebook profile picture (I don’t have an account any longer, but I can see their profiles). She’s wearing black, with a grin that seems perverted to me. The cover photo says BEGUILER in large letters (it’s a women’s magazine, but that doesn’t matter). When I told her that she’d slipped some powder into my coffee, less than two years ago (perhaps the rape drug she said she was taking? “What have you done on New Year’s? I took some rape drug but nothing happened”, it seemed funny to me, but in fact it was very sad), because I felt a change in myself, a softening, but as if from drugs, not from feelings, and it was distinct, it had happened without a doubt, and I followed her everywhere that night, though she didn’t get more than the satisfaction of seeing me moved around like a puppet – and she said I was “paranoid like her mother”. The night hit refresh in my mind and I saw her again with her beautiful smile, she was Lailah, but she’d had to be Lilith then, so that I’d truly learn inner submission to someone – Layla got me on my knees, just as Abbadon was in fact also my old, dear

friend Mihr, because whom is it really hard for you to fight, so you feel you’ve fought truly?

I got to Împăratul Traian Street, near the passageway I dream of sometimes. I dream I’m stopping there, ‘cause there’s danger on the other side. I went past. On the other side, there were Moara de Foc and the valley I used to sledge down on the sledge train, head first, no fear. I remembered, but I didn’t feel nostalgia any longer. As if it had been in another life. But different from how I used to say, until recently, “in another life”. It was exactly what I said now. I know I’ve been in death and there is no death. But I should tell the tale, at least briefly, as there are too many details. On the Florinel evening, I met a woman I’d talked to first on facebook. I had an erotic impulse towards her, as I’ve had towards so many, only for it to turn into a therapy session, as I knew it would be, as with the others, that she’d be one of those who wanted to change their lives but had no impulse, and I, who had changed mine radically so many times, could inspire her. It was, as I was to find out the third day from her facebook picture, Uriel. Then with Camael. I quarreled with her, she claimed you couldn’t move to another place so briskly (I told her I’d move somewhere else with Eli), that you must plan for it. And I insisted moving was no big deal, especially if you’d done it more often. That time I faced her powerfully, unlike the old times. She said she was leaving the table and I said scram. I avenged the moment she’d kicked me out. But, subtly, I also conveyed to her that it hadn’t really been a problem, that she hadn’t kicked me out into the cold, that I could handle

finding a place to rent anytime. On my way to her I’d walked by that Italian church on Magheru Boulevard and I’d been striding, but I had stepped in for a sec, enough to be merrily anointed by the passing priest. When I went home I was feeling the mystique in the air, the unreality. It was then that I met Florinel. He was enquiring for the way to Constanța, he was walking all the way there. No one wanted to show him, everyone ran away from him in a fright. He was wearing a white cap and had something weird about him, as if he lacked natural, instant reactions to anything. At the same time, he did not seem to be a schizophrenic or some ardent prophet. I liked him a lot, I took him home. At first I wanted to send him to Adi, then I thought I’d shelter him, since I lived nearby. Eli said it was OK, if he wasn’t dangerous. Since the first Florinel, the one brought in by Ștefan, she’d gained more trust. I got canned beans and cooked for him. He went into the bathroom, I told him to shower and he was in there for a long time without turning on the water, as if he didn’t know what to do, how it was done. When Eli went in she said loudly what’s with this guy, and I told her to shut up, not to offend him. I gave him my clothes and he looked like me. Sometimes, when he was standing, it seemed to her she was seeing me. We talked a lot about religion and morals and he had stern opinions, which I countered. He would say “poor dear”, glancing sideways, as if talking to someone, when he liked something I had said. He talked exquisitely, wonderfully, it was a pleasure to listen to him. His legs were extremely swollen, like two pillars up to his knees. I said I’d give him an anti-inflammatory drug and he said no, he wanted oil. He oiled them. While we were talking about the tribes of Israel and other things, Eli said running herds and other correlations would appear on TV. He would talk nonsense, he’d say he lived in

Alba Iulia and had no heating and electricity (like me in Ștefan V once) and sometimes made coffee over a cardboard fire on the balcony. At some point I told him I did things for other people or something like that and I can’t remember what he said, but Eli told him – you operate at a greater wavelength. When we went to bed, I stayed awake. When I looked at him he would suddenly turn and look back, all smiles. At some point I woke up sharply and saw him making his way to the bathroom. He was making his way exactly like that other tramp, like a spook, like a reanimated corpse. He was going past our bed slowly, not seeing anything to his left or right. Eli told me she’d been dreaming someone was covering her with a black blanket and when she had woken up, I’d been looking at her and soothing her. At night he said his stomach ached and I gave him some random pill, as a placebo, ‘cause I couldn’t find the good ones. In the morning he read Psalm 50 to me and Eli, exquisitely, but like an actor. Eli went to work and we were left alone. I told him to give up his tramp outfit, that I’d give him new clothes. At first he didn’t want to, then he did. I gave him the suit I had from the baron, that I’d said I would wear at Eli’s colleague’s wedding. I also gave him slick shoes, of the ones I had from Marian the stylist. He was thrilled to have a cufflink shirt. It suited him very well, he even moved very smartly. He also tied his little beard, said he’d got himself the beard of a beranger, a shepherd. I asked for his white cap in exchange, he wouldn’t give it, but in the end he had to, I got it somewhat by force. The thing was for him to catch the two PM train to Alba, I had convinced him that he must go back home, I mean, I had rather urged him to. Afterwards I thought of calling Pronoia to have him filmed at our red cabin, Hell’s Gate (or Heaven’s?). I took him there and on the way we talked about lots of

stuff. Mom also called, she told me to give alms, for it was the day of the dead. He was delighted at Isma`il and Pronoia’s, he wanted to smoke weed; I told the two not to give him any, ‘cause he had arrhythmia, he’d told me so. I left and let them film him, just in the other room, not at the cabin, which wasn’t ready yet. I went and had some borscht. The baron called me. I told him of our guest, would he want me to bring him to him (I was thinking of placing him somewhere, in case he missed the train), and the baron asked what the deal was, and when I said God had sent him over, that he’d walked all the way from Alba Iulia, he told me: “I was afraid of that; there’s been another one like this and we’re stuck with him, he’s been running into the walls of Bucharest like a bumblebee; I can’t, Dan, I’m afraid I’m not kind enough.” Pronoia called me, c’mon, are you getting here? I went over, Isma`il had left. Florinel (that’s what he called himself, Florinel, and he spoke of himself in the third person, he’d say: “Florinel also liked cufflinks”, and his ID said Paul Florin, I’d looked when he had forgotten it on the washing machine, but the following day he hadn’t understood how I knew) had changed. His face had fallen somehow, I thought it was from the weed, I rebuked Pronoia for having given him any, she flushed, but it wasn’t that. He’d figured something out, I learned that he’d watched the recordings of me. I sat next to him on the couch and he wouldn’t even look into my eyes, he said: “I slept at daddy’s last night and I didn’t know.” What were your parents called? I asked, yeah, Pronoia said, smiling, what were your parents called? But he wouldn’t answer. Later he said we acted in the play called Judgment, subtitled Tramp, but I played a Moldavian tramp in a tracksuit, drinking plum brandy, directed by Dabija, and he played a dashing one, directed by Lelio. Yo, who’s Lelio? I asked (the Lion,

as on his ring, the Lion of Judah, he’d say, or the devil roaring like a lion?). And then, like the night before, much sophistry, which I kept dismantling, careful to escape its traps at the last moment, not to waste energy on false baits. Anyhow, he was somewhat enraged and there was no time left to the train, I rushed him and he was stalling, he was telling the tale of the adulteress, but spinning it out, and I was c’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Pronoia called a cab, it wasn’t coming, then an Uber, little time was left, but first I went out of the room and returned with the black jacket on, the suit jacket, he’d left it in the hallway. When I sat next to him in the jacket, he said why did you put it on, why. I was cold, I was shivering next to him, but could he have been frightened because I had the little cross underneath? And before we’d opened Facebook so I could check out his page, he’d said he was Didi the Shy in there and there were many with this name, too many and a lot of them with no picture, no nothing. I spurred him on, hurry up, and he kept stalling, eventually I took him downstairs and there he cheered up, his mood changed, he seemed at peace, he told me, “we say that God is far from people, but He’s our daddy, He’s mine.” Upstairs he’d also said something about how “four hours he fought the devil”, with me? Whom with? The camera recorded none of it, video only, not sound, ‘cause it had no batteries, though Pronoia had told me to get some at first, then not to get any. He’d also said “you’re given a gift like a time bomb, it blows up in your hands” and I, “oh well, so what if you die, if we die,” but I hadn’t really known what I was saying and I’d also said “come on, give it to me, let’s be done with it”, I’d already started to test whether he was the Angel, whether he had something for me. The Uber wasn’t coming and he was glad, was it because we were late, we were missing the train? I told him he’d let

himself get caught in the competition because of Pronoia and he said, with an honest voice, “wha’, we fought like two men, not like two fuckers.” He talked as if the weed had fully worn off, clearly and beautifully. The Uber arrived, though we had 10-15 minutes left. But we got there in time, at the railway station the driver said “the ticket office is over there” and pointed to international and I, “no, it’s that way”, with a sense of ultimate emergency, and he kept insisting it was over there, to confuse me. There were huge queues inside, like I’d never seen, so I handed him a million and told him to give it to the inspector. I also got him some water and a croissant and he said there was no need. Some days later, when I took the initiation train, I would understand why he hadn’t wanted them, ‘cause you mustn’t drink and eat anything on the train, but perhaps I’ll tell this tale some other time, or perhaps I shouldn’t tell it. And I sat him on the train and that same evening I started seeing clearly on Facebook the spoof of some, the demonic sneers and all the rest. I went to the christening (the next day? I can’t tell anymore) and about three girls were dressed in black, plus the groom’s mother, Eli would’ve wanted to as well. Then to the wedding, with a new series of tests, the last when stole the bride and asked the groom, the son of the director of the gas company in Syria, to play the drums. And finally the drummer arrived, large, curly-haired, and taught them to play ritualistically – “for your people.” As if he had known from the start that it would be on the schedule. And after the drums everyone quietened down, resigned. They’d understood that their time was gone. Just so those on fb or in the streets, I saw them take a turn for the better and perhaps even forget what they’d had. Others didn’t get it. Perhaps that’s why I must say all this, to let them know.

God help, God have mercy on us.

I was in Arad (this was a dream) and there was more, but I’ve forgotten, towards the end I was heading to the hotel and I saw a woman going through a red door and a kid yelling some jokes at her, I went and opened the door and got in, what’s here, I asked, well, what is it, a massage parlor (in Arad, in reality, some years ago I was actually searching for a parlor, on the festival days, when I had nothing to do, but I never really went), and I climbed down and there were girls, and a rather unpleasant one quickly jumped out to serve me, but there was a more beautiful one behind her, how much, I asked her, 10-20 lei, it seemed very cheap but it was in the provinces, of course, I left, I said I’d be back and the unpleasant one said come now, but the beautiful one, shut up, you might scare that one off, I didn’t like that she said that one, I got out and some guys with carnivalesque faces were climbing down, and when I went out into the street, I saw a boy I knew, he seemed gay to me ‘cause he was very delicate, he’d put his musical instrument in a windowless phone booth which he was tying a tricolored cord around, and I asked him what are you doing and he, I’m storing this here for now, I told him to leave it at my hotel and he, don’t worry ‘cause whatever, we said goodbye and when I held out my hand to him I fell in front of him, on the ground, into a garden, and, embarrassed, I said, I’ve fallen, and he, oh, not really, and I stood up, walked towards the hotel, but I took a wrong turn and found the way to the train station, the station was in sight and I didn’t understand how, I told myself I might even leave, but I had my

money and all that in the hotel room and along came a beautiful girl, with full, beautiful lips, in an orange T-shirt, joyful, she asked me how to get to I don’t know where, I forget, ‘cause she was with a bunch of friends and they needed to stay somewhere, and I said come to my room, ‘cause I was thinking I’d leave anyway, are there many of you, and she, come see, and she grabbed my hand, she was joyful and nice, she talked a lot and we got to some stairs in front of a house, there were some blond-bearded, long-haired guys there telling religious jokes, one was just saying that a thing, a devil or an angel? had come and called him, and he mimicked the thing coming, when you call me like this, I come to you like this, when you call me another way, he said and appeared on the other side, I watch you with lustful eyes, I didn’t know what to think of them, whether they were fools messing with all things holy, but they gave me the impression they were, in fact, wiser than me and purer and joking just because, and on a couch in that semi-basement house with white steps a guy was sitting with his head down, I knew him from somewhere, I even wanted to tell him, he was dressed in rather dark colors and we all left, only that guy said what would we go for, let’s stay here, and on the way she kept holding my hand and they were loudly coming with us and I couldn’t tell what way we should take and I said to her, smiling but also embarrassed, I might not find it right away, will you be disappointed? And she, why, and I, ‘cause I can’t find it, and she didn’t seem to have any problem and suddenly I saw a large cat in front of me and then to my left, at the base of a statue or something, a large, golden tiger, and I told the girl to stay put, I realized it was my moment to impress her, I took hold of her as we were holding hands and took her away from there and soothed her, the tiger began to climb down quickly and I

climbed onto something with her, the others had stayed behind, one of them came over and said let’s find something to fight with and grabbed some object to strike it and I, with that?, better with this, and turned on a water tap like a pump and tried to keep the jet well targeted, meanwhile she’d disappeared I don’t know where, but quickly reappeared, and the tiger came all of a sudden and a fanfare passed between us and we got away, immediately after it looked as if someone was telling the ending and I was watching it too, as if she and I found a long street with white houses, like in American suburbs, and we moved in, or was it just her?, she moved there, they were a gift, and when her little daughter went to school, daily, the tiger came, but The Burning Bush fanfare passed by and warded it off - it was nothing that happened to me, as in all the dreams, it was something I did, like a narrative solution.

On St. Nicholas Day I went to church to Răchiți, where they say they have some particles of the saint’s relics, but I found the church closed. Then I went back up to town, and around Săvenilor Street I saw a pink church a little further, one I’d never seen before or hadn’t paid attention to. I reached it by Antipa Street, the yard was filled with crows, the church was exquisite, Russian. The main gate was closed and I saw someone in red lower, going in by another gate. I went down and came upon a blue, nicely painted gate. It was closed. I knocked, not loudly, but as I knew, knock and it shall be opened unto you, there was no chance I’d be heard on earth, but it wasn’t earth I needed to be on. I went a little further down, looked at the windows, and a red-bearded priest came out. He

opened the gate and left it ajar. I asked him whom the church was dedicated to and he said the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I asked if I could visit it and he said yes, but there was scaffolding inside, didn’t sound too convincing. I went in and there was some scaffolding indeed, too little to have been a problem though. A beautiful, peculiar church. I crossed myself and got out. When I stepped into Antipa Street (Antipas had been so faithful that Satan had settled in his town), almost all the crows rose and flew away from the yard and the tree. I went into town, to the Mall, and there it seemed to me there was great sorrow in some. That song was playing, “at least we stole the show”, but even the singer’s voice seemed sluggish. I went to St. Elijah’s Church from my childhood and went in, kneeled and prayed. When I got out, a white-bearded priest had come out on his doorstep. His gaze followed me. I left, and on Unirii Street, by the cinema, out of nowhere, as there’s nowhere to go from that corner, there’s a fence and beside it a restaurant with steps that light up in the evening, but not from there, some guy with metallic red pants popped out, synthetic orange rather, and started shouting: “The Maker fucks with His creature!”, with a sort of grief. I went to him, asked “who are you?” and he twisted and turned away, as if fending, I asked him again, “who are you?” and I said Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and then he turned back and bellowed wrathfully, “Christ?” and said something again about “but how can the Maker fuck with His creature?” and “how long are we gonna hump on this earthly globe? Endlessly? What will we do?” and he said some stuff about powers and whatnot, but I didn’t even try to get it, I said “well so what, it’s good to be alive”, “be alive? What’s so good?” – he spoke beautifully, sadly, smartly, I’ll give him that – “you can breathe, eat”, I said and

he went “but how will I live, when I don’t even exist? Eat? What, am I nuts?” and then he said some complicated stuff again (he even said to me, “why do you talk like the twin, don’t you know it’s dangerous to talk like that?”) and I told him that was too complicated for me and I left. I got two pretzels from the kiosk up the street, where the lady who handed them to me wasn’t looking friendly at all, and I went down with them. I gave him one, eat this, see how good it is. And he went: “Why have you brought this to me? Have I spoken to you in secret and asked you to bring it?” and I, “I don’t get what you’re saying” and he once more, “I haven’t spoken to you in secret, why have you brought it to me” (didn’t he know that from then on there was no point in speaking in secret, as he wouldn’t convince anymore?), “to eat it, to see what it’s like” and he, “but who’s eating? only nutcases eat”, but he was no longer enraged, arrogant; I left him with the Lord. I started towards the sun, the sun was strong and the bells were tolling. In the evening, many were crying in the streets, but spite, not tears, and they were swearing furiously, including Viorel from in front of my apartment building, who’s usually so angelic. And a large group of guys and girls in light colors was climbing the lit steps beside the cinema, laughing beautifully. I’m putting it down here as if it were poetry, but it’s not literature at all, it’s pure recounting.

In Faust, the devil comes as a black poodle, like the one Eli and I had – and it was too beautiful, its name in documents was Sun

Gate. And later, had it lived, we have seen photos of others like it, it would’ve looked like a devil.When we got home, after we buried him, her bloodstained phone went off all of a sudden with PJ Harvey’s song, Little fish. And when we were upstairs, the phone camera switched to selfie mode on its own. Eli tapped and an alien face appeared. The next day she fearfully told me that I seemed to have grown younger. Perhaps from the adrenaline. But perhaps also from the emotions, as I’d felt them.

Some windows of the maternity building are lit in silvery white, others in gold, others in light green, others not at all. I wanted to light a candle for Florinel and I didn’t know whether to light it for the dead or for the living, I chose the living, it’s all the same. He died in 2019 in the spring. He said he’d taken off to make a report of how people were around the country and that was why he needed to get to Constanța, to complete it. He didn’t get there, he lacked constancy. He missed the target, but he aimed high and anyhow, he’s not the only specialist, an enterprise cannot rely on just one specialist. If no one had taken him home, perhaps he would’ve truly scorched the world, like he said.

Gabi: “He sent me a photo of him and Florinel and I saw how frightened he was. I’d never seen him like that before. The second time I opened the photo it came together with a song from the void. I

closed the photo and the song went away too. (When I told Ioana the shaman, she said one of those mornings she’d drawn the Devil tarot card and she’d taken it as a sort of mystical energy and I’d popped into her head then, that is, she’d thought of us. If you don’t believe me, go ask her.) We were to meet the next day. Before I left home, I did a thing I hadn’t done so honestly, I think, since I was a child, – 12, clearly, so I kindly kneeled and prayed. I didn’t know how to, but the words somehow burst on their own and I prayed not to tell Dan any nonsense. As if you asked for your thoughts to be inspired. I did it sort of like that. I can’t see how else I could complement all the insights he laid out to me one after the other, those he’d apprehended following his fight with Florinel, with various quotes from the Bible that came to me from my memory’s memory. We met at a church and walked around the city and he narrated to me what he’d later write in Wow! and much more, all sorts of things recounted like ping-pong, complementing each other. We walked through a crowd of people dressed in all colors and I was starting to see those in black and red as I’d seen them before, with their outlines distorted and brutal. Exactly so! I had an unnatural energy, I walked a lot and I wasn’t careful about cars at all. Which is superweird, because usually I’m always careful about cars and careful that those around me do not get hurt. That time, though, Dan pulled me back from in front of 4-5 cars which I’d suddenly become unaware of, though I somehow knew they were there. (Those days, when I gave my phone number to Elena, Dan’s girlfriend, I gave her a wrong one, which is beyond me, I mean, I don’t do this kind of thing, but still I did it. As if I did stuff with my eyes closed. Moreover, before I left the house that time with the Palace of Parliament, I

dropped my phone on the floor and it nearly cracked. Once more, doing this sort of thing is not in my character at all. When I was at the Palace with these guys, waiting to see what would happen with Dan, at some point I wanted to leave and I really did, but I went back, I asked a gendarme what the deal was, he said the gentleman requested the fall of the government, and I said, so what’s the problem, isn’t that what the whole country wants?, and he loosened up.) In Ferentari, Adi went past us on his bike and I called him and he asked in a sugary voice, it seemed, Who is it? He told us he was in a hurry, ‘cause he thought he’d forgotten his key in his door, and he vanished. In the apartment he drummed on the furniture to expel the devils, and on my Facebook he searched for did and Didi the Shy, his Florinel, showed up as a suggestion, which made no sense, because I’d never ever searched for this name - on the other hand, maybe there are lots of people with this name and then it automatically turns up as a suggestion - if he went paranoid, he got over it quickly and truly believed me when I said I’d never searched for that guy. Besides, it was the first time I heard that name. Then he left and came back, after Adi had returned too, and he started drumming around him, striking his palms at an intense pace against the table in the room and the sides of the wardrobe. So intense, that the downstairs neighbor got wind of it, the one who terrorizes a child with an unnatural hatred, but is otherwise sweet as candy when she talks to neighbors. She was stressing then about some knocks on wood. Dan left, and Adi started to say, scientifically, that he was on coke or on speed, though I told him he wasn’t, it was something else, but he couldn’t believe me, he went no, he’s surely on something, I was wasting my breath telling him what it actually was. Later, Elena asked me

on messenger what we’d taken. I told her we hadn’t, we’d just walked all day. She said she was worried, that he was somewhere at the Government, drumming on dumpsters. I called him and he said he felt so good and freed, as he hadn’t imagined. The next day, from the Palace of Parliament, I went with Dan and Elena at their place, after we waited at one of the gates for him to get out. (I only knew he’d broken and entered, I think, and that he was under investigation - Dan has already written about this.) I had more and more trouble walking, I had blisters on my soles, and when we got to their place I took off my shoes. Dan teased me a bit for fun and said that Florinel had slept where I stood, and what should I do, I asked, move away? We ate tangerines and made fun of a friend and his stilted way of speaking. I left and stopped by Ciro, and there I found everyone with their phones in their hands, somehow preoccupied, anyway, I’d let them know he was fine, he’d calmed down. Dan called and told me that the baron had invited him to a Black Tie themed party at the Parliament.”

That pretty girl, with the eyes of a kind person, who writes poems and paints and whom they tormented at home – and nobody gave her a like ever, no high school mate, no one, absolutely no one, months on end, because she’s lame, has a loose tongue, says what she feels on facebook? Not just the great injustices, but also something like this can be the last straw, because it says something ugly about this world.

There was this guy, Chihaia, he attacked me when he caught me

on the way to school. I’ve passed by, the Department of Labor is there now, and there was this skinny, toothless vagrant, with something white around his mouth, like dried up foam, his blue eyes very close to each other and a pup that barked at me. “He won’t harm you, he’s protecting me”, the vagrant told me. “Talk to him.” I talked, he was still barking. “Something’s not right.” It wasn’t, I felt filled with anger, I had the fire inside. The dog ran off and the vagrant went after him. “Why do you hate me?”, he asked before he left. I walked on and after some five minutes I turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I looked between two apartment buildings, that man was half-hidden by a garage, looking towards me. When he saw me, he stayed for a bit, then scrammed. I went after him. He was some steps ahead and pointing a finger to the sky. He lowered his arm and waited for me, I went to him. I asked him why he was afraid of me. “I thought you wanted to beat me up.” I asked him if someone had beaten him of late. He said some thugs, next to the Department of Labor. “Look, this pup protects me.” The pup was the size of a cat. He was elated, when he saw him run he shouted, “watch him!”, affectionately. I gave him some money, all I had in my pocket, he said he’d give me some brandy, I said I didn’t drink, but I went with him so he’d give me some coffee. I waited for him outside a pub, while he was in the dog kept jumping up the door, all heart, as dogs are. The door swung open and a raging broad came out, she was yelling for him to take away the dog, it was getting the door dirty. “But it’s just snow”, the man said. She became more enraged. “There’s just snow on his paws”, he added and turned to me smiling with his toothless mouth. “Animals”, he said then. When he left, we put our arms around each other’s shoulders for a moment. “OK, fella. OK?”, “OK.”

When he drank, Mihai, my mom’s man, shouted and went totally ballistic, he broke doors and once, when I received the Eminescu prize, he chased me with a small meat hatchet so I’d give him the money to gamble at poker, ‘cause he felt he was going to win. But it wasn’t real-real, it was just a play, that’s why I was laughing, I sensed his fundamental kindness, I knew it. Nothing can kill it, when he was young, at the military academy, he was the most promising boy and some guys beat him in the head with a hammer, they held him and beat him, and when he drank, his trauma awakened. But he was still an enthusiastic and generous man and mom took him back no matter what he did, just as we didn’t stay angry with each other over anything.

I was talking to Yvonne-Marie, who’s been with me on the chat daily these months, because she is experiencing similar things and she thirsts for them, talking about how our close ones don’t believe us, about how they ask us to get over it, to carry on with our lives, and I was saying – who is schizoid, we, who are trying to be in unity with all this, with the numinous but real events, which an entire world has been testifying to for tens of thousands of years, or they, who want to break away from them, so that they won’t bother them? Or do they ask this of us because they know something more and are hiding it from us? Yvonne’s parents hid from her the fact that her

real father died before she was born and the secret floated in the air for years. It’s the secret of the world, that the Gnostics were talking about – our father is different from the one who is seen and who lies, no matter how loving he claims to be, and we know it well, we’ve always known it. He keeps us safe from there, no matter what, because Yvonne too has liquid luck, like me, she’s caught the guitar picks at two big concerts and once, when we were passing each other by, at Eroii Revoluției, we dodged at the same time, with a brief, fluid motion, on the go, without hesitation, and we kept walking at the same eagle-diving speed. I saw her in a video flying down on skis fearlessly, as I used to fly on my skateboard, in pitch darkness, in the rain, among cars. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will walk and not be faint.

When I told Marius Ștefănescu, some years ago, about the signs I saw everywhere, the unbelievable coincidences and other stuff, at first he told me delightedly that he knew what I was saying, then he said with eyes frightened somehow that perhaps they were from the devil, that perhaps at first it gave me these interesting, good things, to later give me things that would lead me into despair. Perhaps he had them too, perhaps that was why he became a monk? Let the devil be, it doesn’t scare me. Should it come with a nuclear missile convoy, I’ll go out to meet it and fight with my PET bottle.

When Florinel came over, after he showered, he was very

interested in having his clothes washed by the washing machine, he was fascinated by the machine, Eli told me he even searched behind it, as he’d moved it; I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with my back to it, cutting my nails. When Eli leaned forward to put the laundry in, Florinel scratched his balls and passed a hand through his hair, with a coquettish woman’s gesture.

They thought I was the priest, but I’m the priest’s wife, the tiler said in the initiation train.

Daniel told me he felt he was going mad that night, he was in his bathroom, cutting his nails to the quick, pressing with all his might and feeling something dreadful, like never before.

I didn’t go to the Parliament like a fool, I’d had the certainty since the evening before that God had cleared the way for me. It started in Ferentari, when I was walking with Gabi and Adi passed us by on his bike, Gabi called his name and Adi said, frightened like never before, glancing backwards furtively: “I was rushing home ‘cause I forgot to lock the door, that’s why I didn’t stop.” I called mom and she also sounded cornered, “I’m burning up…” and I, “why are you burning up, mom?”, “because it’s cold in here…”. I got to Adi’s place right away and he wasn’t home, hadn’t been there, wouldn’t have had the time. I dropped him a message, said, “come on, it’ll be half an hour, tops, and then you’ll be happy”, he called and replied,

“I can’t right now, ‘cause I’ve been drinking, tomorrow either, ‘cause I’ll be hungover and cursing life.” I went and looked for him in the neighborhood pubs. I went back to his place and he stayed behind the door for a bit, behind the viewfinder, before he let me in, stalling, “Sociu, iiit’s youuu”, still, he let me in. I drummed on his table hard and on his closet, the downstairs neighbor rang instantly, the one who tormented her child, I’d heard her shouting at him viciously so many times, but this was worse, in a mean voice, she was outraged that I was drumming, though previously she hadn’t minded the loud music. I left and drummed on fences on the way, then in the streets when I became increasingly aware that they were staying away from me, after I stopped by a pizzeria and those usually haughty hulks wouldn’t look at me for a second, except for a kind-faced employee, who you could see had been bullied by those guys and was now smiling, the same happened at a kiosk some way ahead, I called mom and drummed for her too next to the phone - and when I truly realized it was so, nothing could stop me. I walked down Magheru shouting loudly, in a voice more colossal than the boulevard, “daddy’s coming to get you right now!”, I called collage girl to come make a revolution at Victoria Palace, but she played for time, I called Eli and she also played for time, I called Antibody and Cosmina and on the way my voice kept growing and police cars were passing me by and not pulling over, I shouted at the National Bank ahead, then never a bother, and cops usually cluster there, and those in black in the streets went on giving me a wide berth, when I got to Victoria and shouted, a gendarme told me they’d all gone and I should come back the next morning. Antibody, Eli and Cosmina also showed up and Antibody was saying, “come to our place to drink some water” and eventually he got me some

tea from a vending machine, he thought I didn’t know what he meant to do, what water does when you pour it over a fire (and the next day, as I was heading towards the Parliament, Anticorp was saying from the other side of the road – Dan, come drink some water). Cosmina also gave herself away then, said something about cycles and the world that begins anew but then degrades again, though we hadn’t talked about that and everything she and her boyfriend said was like an acknowledgement of the hidden meanings of the story. For years I had roamed the streets of Bucharest looking people in the eye, I didn’t know why, to search for something in them or because I wasn’t looking down, as in the old days, and they’d always had some reaction, always made some sort of contact, it was only now that some didn’t anymore, at all, not even when I went into their shops, where they were the owners, and I talked to them, Gabi saw it too, and Eli, some halted and talked to them, but they wouldn’t look at me for one second and they were nervous and wanted to slip away hastily – and Gabi and Eli also acknowledged it was so, but then they started finding meagre explanations, all of a sudden it seemed they no longer feared God and the enormous stake of the moment, all of a sudden they would’ve wanted to go back to their lives as if nothing had happened, but they wanted to return to humanity, as I do also and as we must.

Some years earlier I had suggested to some artists we make a happening at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is next door to the Parliament, that a group of us go in as if we were visitors and turn the visit into a protest, shout at the wall towards the Parliament,

give it all, like a sample of a rebelling people. Those I’d suggested it to had given me opaque looks, I hadn’t asked too many either, Dósa had wanted to come straight away, without too many questions, just as I’d expected, perhaps others would have wanted to as well, but I had stopped searching. I hadn’t been convincing, God hadn’t given me the nerve yet, as to Othniel and the other biblical fighters.

“Shout out loud! Don’t hold back!” – Isaiah. From Florinel’s facebook page. Where he also writes – in 2016 – “Romania 2018 infinity.” I didn’t know he liked good suits when I gave him the one from the baron. I even told him: “No worries, if you’re dressed like this, a wealthy woman might take you, ‘cause you look elegant.” Then, that evening, I found out that was how he’d lived. “The year of your death is the good year, the year when you start liking good clothes” – said a poet, Aurel Dumitrașcu. When the baron gave me the suit, I even told him, “I’ll be buried in this one.” And I went to Modulab, where Matei was digging a hole, he’d got to two meters. I had a presentiment, a weariness. He has a photo on his facebook (it seems taken at his place, not shared from someone) of a black dog and a white cat muzzle to muzzle, and next to them, a white, newborn puppy.

When I returned from Răchiți with Gabi and we were lightweight, as if we didn’t even touch the ground, and the skies seemed lower, as if the world was smaller, I was talking to him about the salvation of

all, I was saying all will be saved, he was saying the devils will not, they’ll burn in the lake of fire and it seemed absurd to me, for you must love your enemy, we went through a passageway and there was a guy lying there, among the weeds, his head was covered by a coat, out of sight, a small PET of Neumarkt by his side and Nike sneakers on his feet, like me, Victory. I left some money next to him and Gabi did too, and we both seemed to calm down, the debate became meaningless.

I was coming from the railway station, I got to the city and on the way I met Brașov, tall, huge-handed – he put a coin in my palm and told me straight, cheerfully: you’re a Dacian! And I’m a... Thracian. Then we put our arms around each other’s shoulders and walked on. Girls and women in black and red were passing us by and he yelled after them – look at her, the eyesore! Oy! And look at that one! And then he said: what, so you didn’t know about Daniel? That he, too? But anyhow, he’s our friend. Let’s have some brandy. After I told him I didn’t drink anymore, after I said it a few times, he started to mumble and his energy seemed to go down fast. He stood still, behind me, hunched, his arms drooped, grumbling.

The bull is almost always killed at the corrida; only when the public wants it (because it’s been very brave but not violent, dangerous, because it looks like a fine specimen or for who knows what other reasons), it requests that it be spared by white handkerchiefs and

shouting. The presidente also has a series of colored handkerchiefs and he displays them as the stages progress. If he spares it, he displays the orange one (the mother of a bull that kills the matador is killed). I saw a video of a spared bull, at the end, a woman all in black sat up from her chair in disappointment.

Florinel said he was in training in the village of Negrești. In Nice, he stayed with that old woman at Hotel Negresco. Eli’s last name is Negrilă. All coincidences.

One day she pulled me into an alley with long rows of black cats, standing still, lots of them, which we walked through – it shocked her so badly, she felt like throwing up; and those in the old town center and those in St. George’s Church, in black, the way they got in and looked at the icons in confusion and all the thousands of details, what I told her, but also what she saw herself). And then she admitted it, but she said she wanted life to be like before, that was why, but how could it be like before. To me, denial was like betrayal, not of me, it was the betrayal of faith And I had her as my witness, and Gabi Pavel, Cosmina Moroșan, Ramona Iacob and Iulian Doroftei, whom I called to say I was shouting in the street, downtown, and no one was stopping me, no one was even looking at me, I’d been shouting for fifteen minutes in front of the National Bank, where cops usually cluster, that the old town center was starting and nothing was happening. They heard me but didn’t see me, I was seen only by a Jewish tourist who asked about a casino and who was delighted with my state and by three lady sweepers

who saw me coming very noisily towards Victoria Palace – “daddy’s coming to you, what did you expect” – and the streets were booming as I shouted. Not I, the gift of God.

But her interventions were crucial at the wedding, when she said, “something’s not right, look how they’re gloating and surrounding Deea”, I realized what I had to do, that I had to steal the bride.

Eli: “He called to ask me to look at google maps. He wanted to help someone find the way to Constanța. I thought it was some people in a car. He seemed set out to help and I thought he wasn’t very open with people he didn’t know and he seemed glad and somehow set out to help. After a while he calls again and says there’s this guy who wants to walk to Constanța, this homeless. He asks if it’s OK to bring him to our place, ‘cause he has nowhere to stay and he feels sorry for him. I would’ve said no, but I thought I didn’t want to be that nasty person who wouldn’t help a man when he needed it and had I said no, it would’ve meant mistrusting Dan again and judging by appearances, as I often did, right. I think he said he’d come by foot from Alba Iulia, he had a mission, and I thought that Dan surely empathized with him and understood why he did it, ‘cause he’d do it too. I told him to bring him over if he thought he wasn’t dangerous. He seemed to hesitate a bit, but he said he wasn’t. And I started to put things away around the house as if expecting a guest, so that he wouldn’t laugh at us, though, yes, ironically, and the idea lingered in my head that he was homeless, what would he have

cared, but I went on getting the house ready. They came in, Dan, then he. He seemed as tall as the ceiling, wearing a white sea captain’s cap. I thought, fuck, this guy is crazy. I was trying not to act weird, not to embarrass him, make him feel bad. He was playing the humble, kept apologizing endlessly for bothering us, saying he’d be out fast, we wouldn’t feel he was in the house. And I, embarrassed by his apologies, said it was OK, curtly, trying to change the subject, maybe I was dismissive. Dan told him to take a bath and I thought, shit, this guy is using my bathtub, I was comforted by the thought that I’d buy disinfectant the following day. Then I thought, yes, a bath’ll do him good, he needs it, Dan knows what a homeless needs. He kept talking and excusing himself, apparently he didn’t want to feel like a third wheel, but that was what he was doing. He took his cap off, got into the bathroom, I breathed a sigh of relief that he had left the room. Dan and I laughed at each other, and I told him, this is you in a few years, I wanted to imply I knew why he’d brought him, that he’d brought himself, in fact. And Dan chided me for speaking too loudly, the man would hear, why was I so nasty? I kept calling him Sorin and thinking of my friend’s dead father. But apparently his name was Florin. He’d been in the bathroom for a while, but I couldn’t hear the water running, strange. I tell Dan and he says maybe he doesn’t know how to turn the water on. That seemed funny, he didn’t seem the type who wouldn’t know. What the heck was he doing in there? Dan asks him if he knows, he answers that no-no-no, he’s had a lot of clothes to take off. For half an hour? Weirdo. He was in the bathroom for a good while, meanwhile Dan prepared some food and I set something on the floor where he would sleep. I didn’t want to pick on him for having brought him over, that’s that, maybe we

are really doing good. He came out of the bathroom, Dan had given him some clothes of his own. He looked normal, in that he didn’t seem to be a homeless tormented by material deprivation, who got on the streets because he couldn’t do anything else. His complexion was very clean, his eyes the eyes of a child, his hair shoulder-length and he had a beard. I thought he looked like Jesus, like an icon. His legs were pillars up to his knees. Again I thought of Sorin, my friend’s dad, whose legs were the same. I felt sorry for him, but I also relaxed, I needed something to be wrong with him, something to confirm his story, otherwise I would’ve tripped. I offered to give him something for his legs, he said he didn’t want anything, “I oil them.” Dan called him to the kitchen to eat and Florin reactivated his excuses and appreciation, “oh, the dears, you’ve made me a meal too, oh, the dears, you’ve got that spot ready for me to sleep; noo, don’t bother, I don’t want to be any bother.” You’re a bother already, shut the fuck up. And Dan went, “ah, forget it, forget this”, as he does. And then, “oh, the dears, but you shouldn’t have. (Very humbly) I have a few clothes I’ve been carrying with me, something thicker and some T-shirts and bla bla, he was listing them (I didn’t get the scheme), if I could rinse them a little bit, would I have where to?” (at your mama’s, a voice from somewhere behind was telling me, sensitive to manipulation. But the front one wanted to be OK). And I leaped, it’s OK, we’re putting them in the washing machine, why would you hand-wash them? And this slimy game annoyed me. I was trying not to be too much at his disposal, for fear he’d smell weakness and do I didn’t know what. But, somehow, I already knew that both Dan and I seemed weak. But I didn’t play along. He said he didn’t eat beans ‘cause he’d had nasty stomach issues (and I thought of my stomach

issues), but he’d make an exception that evening. He went and ate up. Dan was on his laptop, I was on my phone, pretending it was a normal evening. He’s done eating, does the dishes and comes back humbly, slightly hunches like the servant facing his master and asks, beating around the one-km bush again, “I’ve seen two other mugs in the sink, I was thinking since I’ve done the dishes I’ve eaten from, I could do those too, would you mind?” No, no, no, it’s OK, I say, trying to send the message that his speech is overdone. They put the clothes in the wash, but again, it seemed a complicated affair and it took a long time, as Dan says, he tended to postpone it all. He sat on his bed on the floor and started to oil himself with sunflower oil. I offered to give him Voltaren, he said he only used oil, it was enough for him. A discussion about medicines ensued, Dan said it was OK for him to take it if he needed it and he said it wasn’t, medicines did harm, they were not from God, the mind could heal. It was a sort of battle in which Dan spoke v rationally, it seemed he was trying to pull him away from madness and isolation and bring him to earth. I was glad to see Dan in that role. I was proud of him. Suddenly we seemed to be on the same side. I liked our lack of superiority, that we could face this impostor, Dan with reason, I with gentleness, which was transferred to him. In fact, I liked that he wasn’t conflictual, as he often was. My tendency was to go out of this triangle, not to get involved, there was a tension and I feared it would escalate. I was an observer, but not really, ‘cause I wasn’t always present/attentive. I seemed to want to hold my breath and for it to be over. He asked him why he’d left, he’d been requested to. He wanted to do justice, his cap gave him superpowers. Do you know the effect this cap has, you should see it on people’s faces. Because you seem crazy, yo, that’s the effect,

Dan said. I was glad. And he, no (tentative), the cap was given to me, have you seen the emblem? I glued it with an egg. It was a tough journey, but when it got bad, he was taken over, as he was now. The last combat, and the nastiest, was at Negrești. But he wouldn’t say anything definite and I didn’t feel like asking either, it would’ve sounded absurd, what could be definite? I’d been in Negrești with Dan, the last year had been horrific. Where had everything started, since his parents had died, after his mom had gone it had been bad. Apparently he has an older brother. And do you have an occupation where you live? He seemed not to understand and beat around the bush. What do you mean by occupation? If I do something like that? If I know how to do something, like people do? It seemed he didn’t know anything. He lived in Alba Iulia. And how do you get food, how do you pay for electricity, for gas. I don’t any longer, I don’t live like normal people. Sometimes, for example, if I get a craving for coffee, I make myself a small cardboard fire on the balcony, but quickly, so the neighbours won’t sense the smoke; he was making it up. He spoke of himself in the third person. Dan was skeptical, rather to dare him, ‘cause he was playing the martyr too much. He was saying he wasn’t equal to people, he, who lived such a sacrificial life, sleeping on the streets, ‘cause that was what he’d been requested to do. Do you think I wouldn’t like to have a big house, live in luxury, have a red car. I like cars so much, and he turned into someone else, the other emerged – Florinel. Who was me in this battle, he served it to me. I was on the side of the money, the luxury, he seemed to wait for me to come in, but no. And Dan said that the one with money had his combat too, he wasn’t getting away, even if he didn’t live a life like his. Yo, you long for this life, implying he was an impostor (I

was afraid when he said such things to him), and Florinel, “poor dear, poor dear”, he kept calling Dan. Meanwhile a documentary was on TV, the images synchronized with the tension of the discussion. It seemed unreal. After a certain point, it had become tiring, it was late and he wouldn’t finish. I went to bed fearful, but Dan’s presence soothed me, I felt defended. Florinel got sick during the night and kept going to the bathroom to throw up, going back, groaning, going again. He was struggling, throwing up the evil and the black, so I thought. It was a tough night. At some point in my sleep I felt someone was laying a black veil over my face, I woke up frightened. Dan was waking up too, we seemed to take turns. When he went back from the bathroom, he walked hunched over, stealthily, his hands clasped. The room smelled awful, though he’d showered, of something acrid that also made me sick to the stomach, it reeked from within him, not from the vomit. In the morning we woke up and he slept a little longer. When I got out of the bathroom, he was by the window, his back to me, in Dan’s clothes, and I thought it was Dan, I looked at the bed and there was Dan too. And that’s about it. He obviously didn’t leave early, like he’d promised in the evening. He wanted to give us something in exchange. He read two or three psalms to us. With grace, I almost wept. It was about this too. Use your grace and put down the cap. I went to work, though he was taking his time. He stayed with Dan, who had a hard time making him leave. They spent the whole day together and I think if I had been there too, it would’ve been better. It was a hazy couple of weeks, I wouldn’t be able to say what we did those days, with Florinel over, what we did after or before. In the evening, Dan was in a sort of rapture, inner upsurge. Happy he’d sent him to Alba Iulia and found gentleness, real empathy, love.

With this openness he made some nasty confessions to me and the true combat began there. We’d both requested that absolution and sadness and pain. And it was visible on the outside too, like a sort of large movement, the sadness on people’s faces and other stuff. As Dan noticed too, a lot of people were wearing black and had fallen. I’d retripped on black too, I wanted to cover myself, to become the priestess again, Negrilă, to be consistent with what was inside, as I had all throughout my teens. When dad died nobody noticed I was in mourning, because I always wore black, that annoyed me so much. We went to a wedding, a lot of people were in black, my friends too. It didn’t seem odd to me, but Dan was v upset that I wanted to wear a black dress, my nails were black too. But I told him no, I wear golden a lot, you’re exaggerating, we looked at his feed and, same thing, a lot of people with contorted faces too, and the same on TV. His upset is like paternal care, something nasty has happened and he wants to redeem them. But last night as well, in Constitution Square on New Year’s Eve, we took mom out, 80% were in black, ugly and sad. One day we were on a walk and we turned left at random. This black kitten appears, runs away. I thought of Filou. We walk on for two meters, another black cat. Damn it, I say. We turn the corner, three more black cats. Fuck me, the clan they’ve got. We walk a little longer and, as we go forward, one black cat, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in a row, all black. Around 11 in all. Exactly as I was doubting the oddities of the previous days. I instantly felt sick. There was other stuff I’ve forgotten, I’ve deleted out of fear, though this year has been full of such obvious, explicit slashes for fearful, stunned, faithless people like me.”

That guy at the cinema who told me he wasn’t living (and above the same song was playing on repeat) – a virus is dead until it infects a cell, until it mimics its host. And the way they make artificial meat – they take cells from an animal and feed them with plants. Our cells are all the same, so a sort of morphogenetic fields shape them, otherwise why would we have different parts? (Rupert Sheldrake). Florinel kept his ID in one of those covers that the deaf and dumb give on trains, that had Ministry of Internal Affairs written on it, toylike. The evening before he left, he was saying he didn’t want to go on the train without a ticket, though, he added, “If I show them my documents and they see I’m from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there’s nothing they can do to me.” Eli also said that, in everything he did and said, he seemed not from around here. And he oiled his unbelievably swollen legs and his soles. And in the night, when he went to the bathroom, he moved like a zombie. They day after he was at our place, he seemed to come alive. And he unearthed his memories as if he was just discovering them. That was why the tiler on the train said it was best to keep the ticket (or receipts from the shops, I say), because you never know when a double might appear somewhere and do some crime and get you into trouble.

I went to the railway station and got there exactly as they were getting off the train from Bucharest. A girl with the air of a kind, pure person got off, she was holding a 2.5-liter bottle of soda in her hand, of which she’d only had a sip, like my bottle when I had arrived. Who drinks a sip only on such a long journey.

I wonder why the maternity clock has no needles anymore. Mom says it used to. I remember it too, I looked at it when Ionuța was born. It broke and they thought of tearing them out, so they wouldn’t mislead any longer?

And I told her there on the hospital lobby that I’d be the main one to raise it, if need be, since I was staying at home anyway, that it would give me a purpose and joy – and she told me that the company, that she’d just grown wings, that her youth. And what was she supposed to do, she didn’t really know what she wanted either, why she should want it, like me. Black is the color of repentance in Bulgakov the theologian, but I judged them by the western symbol of mourning. Yes, they were repentant, but this means they knew something, they felt that great wave crossing the world and what enraged me most was not what they’d done, ‘cause I can take anything, but I didn’t like the concealment – and it didn’t even enrage me, it amused me, as if I were playing hide-and-seek with some (mean) kids. It’s a permanent game, a continuous exam (and continuous

tension, as if I kept going through dangers), as I discovered at the railway station, on the initiation train. At the cash register, at the station supermarket, when I first pressed the green smiley button – that gave the cashier a point or something for her employee assessment. And when the others on the train were quick to say “bless you” to the woman who kept sneezing, apart from me – but I reassured her when she started to worry that her pension vouchers weren’t OK, because they weren’t validated for that month, though it was absurd, ‘cause once you’re a pensioner, you can’t stop being one. And on some seats to the front, two men wearing sunglasses who were looking at me looked at each other, smiled and took the shades off. Also on the train, the woman in front, next to the one in black with the black cat in a cage – “I know we shouldn’t drink any liquids, but I’m sipping a bit, to moisten my mouth”, and she sipped from the soda bottle. I did not dream it and I see no natural explanation. Drugs have trained me for the mental tensions nowadays, especially LSD, with its eight-hour inner shake-up, the fire. As I sat next to Florinel on the couch, the second day, during the second round, a cold fire was burning me, I was shivering on the inside like I never had from the chemical fire on weed. As Gabi said, after I sent him the photo from Pronoia, which set off a song on his laptop, he’d never seen me that frightened. And on drugs I also learned how to distinguish between states perfectly, so I know well I’m not delusional – and you aren’t even delusional/hallucinating on drugs, that’s a pop culture fake, just as there is no brain frying, I have translated 20 books in these years and I’ve met a thousand people, I’ve got humor and warmth, I get hard as I did at 13 and I shoot a bow in VR like a crusader.

In vain would I lay out implausible details (the two people dressed in white on the train, he and she, face to face, listening to music on earphones on the same ancient walkman, with serene, invariably serene smiles – and the rest of the story on the train); for those who don’t recognize them, it would be as if I recounted a dream, but they are nourishment for the Electric Monks, those who believe eagerly. I was with Cosmina Moroșan and Vlad Moldovan, who were married back then, two poets with mystiques permanently on their tongues, always open to the possible; I was thirsty and I took a soda cup off a tin can on the sidewalk. It seemed shady to those two and I told them they were cups from God, that He was always providing water and coffee and soda to me in the streets, everywhere, otherwise what would explain the fact they were nearly full almost all the time, do Romanians have such money as to drink like billionaires, a sip and then discard it?, and as they wanted to get some beer, I told them perhaps He would give it to them too and what do you know, some steps ahead, on the sidewalk, two large, full Noroc PET bottles, with sealed caps. They didn’t take them and Vlad found an explanation, that they belonged to some guy who slept around there – sure, alcoholics, especially homeless ones, who guard their rag bags, would leave two PET bottles of theirs on the sidewalk. People scarcely bear transcendence if it descends – Gabi had an ease in talking about the Bible and religion, until all of this started. Afterwards, he suspected I was possessed, because, he said, “you can’t meet something like this and really be OK.” And he was right, and his instinct kept him perfectly safe, but I know the digital well, the metaphysical theater, where you can be involved as if in real danger, at the same time knowing that the film ends well. After a

few weeks of rapture, now he’s afraid to admit it. Or he knows more and doesn’t tell, as I’ve had the feeling repeatedly, not only with him – I think those who know should start telling it, I think it’s time for secrets to end, because they are tormenting us.

Ionuţa has told me that oddities occur to her all the time and that since I arrived, lately, especially since January 1st, it seems to her the world has changed, but she can’t say how exactly (and she has also noticed the weird skies, too azure or too colorful, like the one in New York, blue during the night).

When I went down to Răchiți, the evening of the reddening skies, somewhere on the way, where I used to go down on my skateboard with the bags of waffles for grandma long ago, there was a yellow car with “Grandma’s ice cream” written on it. “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will walk and not be faint.” But I believe neither in verses, nor in anything literal, I believe there are rules for coherence, but that there’s also a different kind of coherence, as Shestov said, we are on God’s palm, how can we err, we should just be as present as possible, even in Satan’s disco (where there are no truly extreme emotions, some of your fascination wanes pretty fast, it’s dullness).

When he walked by our bed at night, Florinel had his hands

clasped.

There was another fight, in the attic at the People's School of Art, a theater critic came to talk about the great plays and the great creators and the great theater, which is no longer made these days, and some actresses were echoing him, they complained about the public’s ignorance, in the traditional aristocratic manner of our kulturniks – and I intervened, I said they should be content they had a public, ‘cause they got a salary for art anyway, a privilege after all. All those who replied were either extremely aggressive to me, disdainful or opaque, you could feel a wall. But the few young ones agreed with me. The chair in front of me had “Victory” written on its backrest. And I felt the unearthly atmosphere. At the end the critic, dressed in black, with strange eyes, told me, “I’m sorry you’ve come”, then he corrected himself, “I’m sorry more people haven’t come.” At home, I instantly, “incidentally” came across a story about the fight with Lucifer, which was held as a debate against his sophistry, with a jury, which is the future, and about the angels who participated and immediately announced the victory.

“I have come to oppose you (to be your satan).”

Marcela also said someone had knocked hard on her door, several times, from the room next door, when she was sleeping at her

mother’s and there was no one in the other room. Then we talked about that singer, she said she couldn’t stand her and the next day she drowned in the Danube in her car, in Moldova Nouă, where Marcela was from. And these past two days three trains derailed. A while ago I watched a film about this, One Evening, A Train. There’s this Moira in the film whom Val, the younger character, goes after. On my train, too, there was a woman with a black cat in a cage, she wore black too, beautiful, but with a shine too glossy in her eyes. And when we were close to her station, a boy sat next to me and didn’t leave until she was completely gone, as if guarding me lest I go.

I took long walks back in time to fix things and I got to Drumul Tătarilor – a Jeep with three huge men with shaved heads returned home. Their mother was waiting for them, a cruel-faced woman – she opened the gate wide and they got in. They were downcast, they didn’t like it. Around 14:40 I was in the park, next to Ștefan cel Mare’s statue. 17 minutes were left until he’d have been enthroned (but I thought that until his birth). I stayed there, waiting, and I read a prayer. So uselessly, but I felt it was the right thing.

When I wanted to throw away Florinel s clothes and torn shoes, the dumpster was clogged up all the way. I put them there and two days later I went down a few floors and threw them away. The third day I heard their voices in the stairwell, mean, dirty, they were rummaging through the dumpster. One of them even said – they’re not here and another one – but they were supposed to be here.

Hysterical voices. Lately such voices could be heard from every neighbor, repulsive laughter.

He calls mom in the morning, on January 1st, and he says he’s from the cement factory on the moon (that’s natural, Daniel says, there’s all that dust there). He talks a lot, fast, as on a radio show. I call him back too and he talks the same, he’s the sort whose words you forget instantly. I ask him, “who are you?”. He says, “I can’t understand anything.” I ask, “why can’t you understand?” – and he laughs. Where did he get the number? I entered my mom’s on Twitter. Some man used to call her sometimes, before, he said, “Maricica, stop calling me.” Or, “Maricica, I’ve been to the grave.” He called her again recently and when she picked up, he told someone else, “she won’t come.” The same kind of voice, of a slightly cracked trickster, we laugh about it. On January 1st also, during the night, a car crashed into a pillar here, right next to the building. And recently another one has crashed in the same spot. That night, on the 1st, Daniel was at the psychiatric hospital. Three days before I’d called him to meet, he’d told me to wait, he’d be down right away. I went to his door, it was cold. He shouted something, I mean, he didn’t shout, he made another sound, harder to describe in writing. I knocked. He opened. What’s with you, man? The serpents, he told me. They are real. I don’t know if he was messing with me. He was drunk, he can’t remember it. The next day he got to the psychiatric ward. The night of the 1st one of his roommates there died. He was crawling on the floor. That was how he normally walked, not just before he died. He stopped moving. Another one passed by – this is Crab, yo, give him some water.

He’s dead, someone said. How could Crab be dead. You must give him some water. They left him on the floor, until the medical examiners arrived. Daniel has quit drinking, in the evening we go on walks, ‘cause he has nothing to do and I’ve known what that’s like for 11 years. His brain is happy now, since it’s rediscovered REM sleep, after more than 20 years, like I’ve rediscovered my city. The skies stay cloudless, crimson, for a long while during the day. They say crimson light seldom reaches us, because of the spectrum length and the water in the atmosphere. On the satellite there are clouds all around, except over me, over the city. In the requisite mathematical theory of the 10 dimensions, multiple possibilities begin from around the fifth, but continuing the initial conditions; later, from around the seventh upwards, the initial conditions can change as well. Maimonides talked about this long before modern science. The Dogon people have symbols and rituals expressing it. Getting to change them is royal, lower initiation. Getting to change them and not doing it, because you accept the world with your soul, you don’t just think it with your mind, that’s sacerdotal initiation. Afterwards you need only be kind and you’ll keep the world in balance.

There is no happiness in the world, but the mind is free. Every time I try to emboss something set and perhaps useful of all this, something else turns up to fuck up the embossing, inside me and outside or both or either. “The world is sick with a spell” and the only religious sense revealed to me is whim, freedom. I’ll lose it too and I’ll settle into one useful, acceptable mold or another, I won’t forget anything of what’s in here, but perhaps it won’t last me daily,

with such a maelstrom, just a radiance, now and then. But until then, I’m having so much fun, frights and all, because reality has shattered. Deea hasn’t been given the photos from her wedding yet. At heaven’s customs, devils dance around the one who goes up, to take him, like they were dancing around her.

When I searched for angel names for this text, I found an online generator and I was picking them instantly, as they appeared on the screen, right away, without logic, and they all fit. I find out now that Pronoia is from Greek mythology, she was the mother of a sort of Noah, whom the god came to; he and his wife received him as their guest.

“My dear friend, she loved me boundlessly, and in my turn I loved her infinitely, but we were not happy together. Though we were both unhappy without a doubt (because of her strange, mistrustful nature, her pathological imagination), we never ceased loving each other, in fact, the more unhappy we were, the stronger the connection between us became” (Dostoievski).

That summer we met I was living on my own in a studio in Tei. One

day I opened a book by Deleuze at random, I couldn’t read him any other way, only in bits, and he said something about wizards, that they live on the outskirts. The place where I lived had once been the outskirts of the city and you could still see that. If I took enough steps, I got to wastelands, among warehouses, the places I’ve always liked the most in cities. A tall, bony old man with cold blue eyes was following me. He looked like a famous communist torturer, whose process had just started. I was on the bus with my raffia bags, I was moving into the studio and he shoved me roughly at a stop and muttered something mean. Another time I saw him at the supermarket, I was getting something expensive to eat, some expensive fancy thing off the top shelf, something organic, and when I turned my head he was behind me, glaring at me with hatred, he seemed to say to hell with your fancy thing. I saw him next to my apartment building, down by the dumpster door, searching for something inside. He’d let the little door open and the smell of garbage would go up to me, to the first floor. The dog days were there and I was keeping my window open. I heard him once, I softly went by the window and looked down. He sensed me and took off. He hid on the sidewalk, behind the hedge, and waited tensely. As I was alone, I strongly left the mystique, that state I can’t call anything else, a sort of permanent rapture and a presence, enhanced by moments of synchronicity and bizarre occurrences. I’d lived in the studio for almost a month and I was always going into the kitchen and still, only after I met Eli did I see that there was a large reproduction on the wall, over half a meter in height, of Dali’s Meditative Rose. I sometimes also dated a puppeteer in the evenings, and when Eli first came to my place, she saw some red marks on the wall above the bed, as if made by nails, and she

asked me if they were the puppeteer’s. I was thrilled with her sense of observation and the speed of her obscene, dramatic imagination. I also found out that her dad had died the night I’d undergone surgery. I imagined having met him there, in the antechamber of death, and him having spoken to me of his daughter. Who knows, I said to Eli, perhaps it’s for you I’ve come back. In November, when I ran off to Botoșani, to mom, and after I saw Heaven, I dreamed I was crossing an abyss by funicular, reaching the other side, where Heaven lies, and returning to the funicular, not for Eli, who’s further back, dressed in black, but for someone with silver legs. For your large eyes have never gazed upon this world, it’s a verse by Ioan Es. Pop, that’s what Eli’s eyes were like, large and black and opaque, as if there wasn’t anyone by their window, as the poet then says. But sometimes someone flicked on the light there, beyond, and, as it occurred so rarely, it was all the more touching. The way it was when she climbed the airstair of the plane to Paris. I’d purchased a trip and it was the first time she got out of the country and the first time on a plane. As soon as she climbed the first steps, her eyes came alive as they would in the presence of a miracle, but also with complete mistrust and perhaps fear. Childlike eyes, and I knew what she was feeling, she even told me, it doesn’t seem real, I’d felt the same one time, at a similar moment, I always feel the same, as if reality isn’t real. Our dog, Filou, had eyes like hers, mom noticed first, and when I looked closely I agreed with her, the likeness was shocking, as if they were of the same species. Eli groomed dogs, she was the owner of a salon and sometimes she dubbed the dogs passing by in the street, especially the small ones, she made them a voice, one and the same, funny and

endearing in the simplicity of it and of what it expressed. She seemed to outright understand their needs and perception, their real needs and perception, not those of a puppet show or cartoon. She dubbed them as if they were children, that’s true, but after hearing her, you had no doubt that was what they were. Me, I’m just passing by, look, said the short-legged doggie, without anyone asking, and she went on naturally, simply, without imaginative games, which created a striking effect, for a few moments I thought I heard him. When I had met her, on some evenings I’d sensed her dog’s smell so strongly that I’d dreamed of bitches masturbating and I’d thought some of the powerful sexual spell she had me under came from that too, from the animal scent. The dog cost her over 2000 euro, it was a purebred poodle and, when she saw him, she burst into tears. As if I knew I’d have him for a short while, she told me the evening he died or one of the following evenings. We were lying in bed, watching our long and wide TV, taking up a tenth of the room, and she seemed to be watching the movie, just that she said this and that at times, so I could tell she wasn’t watching at all. She was reminiscing about our dog, our baby. The annoying friend, rather, that was how I saw him. Our annoying gay friend, always trying to kiss me. As soon as I opened my eyes, he’d jump on the bed and try to kiss me with his long muzzle. I hid under the blanket and Eli dubbed him: I love you, Dan. I’d wake up and take him out, in the rain, in the wind, poop bags in my pockets. We went behind the apartment buildings, me holding a cup of coffee in one hand and maneuvering him with the other, I had come to maneuver him with great skill, neither strangling him, nor spilling my coffee. There were ugly mornings, cold and desolate, chilly puddles, and Filou turned his head now

and then, looking at me with his opaque eyes, to make sure I was there. You two were buddies, Eli said the evening we buried him, in the park. I was getting teary and she seemed to be crying, but somehow without tears, and vomiting without vomit. I grew up in the country, so did she, and we knew that the death of animals wasn’t such a big drama, though my grandpa, the butcher, used to weep when one of his animals died and he wept when he took a calf to the slaughterhouse, he saw its eyes and pity overwhelmed him. It wasn’t a drama for the cops in the neighborhood either, but rather a comedy. We asked them to investigate and they didn’t do anything. Whose was the killer dog, why had it been allowed out without a leash and a muzzle on, weren’t there any cameras in the area. Someone down the street of the killing gave us the recordings after a while. There was a house where three brothers in their teens lived without a father, and their mother, and the wife of one of them. Some people constantly came round with dogs, fighting dogs, perhaps, we thought so, ‘cause a vet in the area had told us there had been other dogs like ours, killed by larger ones, too many within such a short time span. They trained them on small dogs, on cats, perhaps. In the recording you can see the Amstaff, unleashed, moving on the sidewalk, and a boy with a cap on. And the dog suddenly darts ahead. Eli and Filou were there, where it headed, but you can’t see it on camera. The boy starts running too. Then the dog returns, goes past the gate of that house, behind a car, the gate opens and it no longer shows up. That evening I’d been out to get food for Filou and then got into the bathtub. I could have stopped by the salon to get them, she finished work around the time I got the food, but I was feeling a slight enmity, a sort of obstinacy to her and I went straight home. I ate

and, just as I got into the hot water tub, the phone rang. She howled – Daaaaaan!!! I thought I’d die. I thought I’d go mad. I’d been through something like that once before, at the seaside, when my daughter had gone to the bathroom and lingered in there, I’d gone check on her and heard her scream, the door had gotten stuck. For a moment, I’d thought of the worst. That someone was doing something sinister to her. That some guys were doing something sinister to her, that’s what I thought when Eli was screaming. Some guys, several, I don’t know why. And then I calmed down, because she said: It killed Filou! God, what a relief. It wasn’t her, it was Filou. I got dressed in a hurry, ran down the stairs. I didn’t know where she was, I just took off. I got in front of the building and some kids said – are you looking for a girl with a dog? She went that way. I caught up with her, we went into a vet clinic together. Eli was screaming, a nurse came out, she knew her, she took us somewhere in the back, a doctor came out and told her – calm her down, she’s frightening my patients. I calmed her down, I gave her some water, she wouldn’t drink, I insisted, the nurse seemed to be looking at us with envy. I saw the envy plainly. I’ve always thought I have this charisma, of reading minds, but I can’t prove it, not even to myself. But suddenly I thought I saw that the nurse and doctor were together, and the doctor was a cold person, or so he seemed to her, that he didn’t express himself, and that I was a warm man, who knew how to reassure a woman in a moment of crisis. He knows how to reassure her or he’s willing to do whatever it takes, he has read books with gentlemen and watched movies. She told us the dog died, she wrapped him in a blanket and I took him in my arms. He had the weight of my daughter when I took her in my arms at the maternity ward. And he was just as warm and just as

nice to hold. I often took him in my arms when he was alive too, he was afraid of other dogs and I took him in my arms until we got past them. He leaned against me with such sweetness, like a child or a lover does. And now he was dead in my arms and smelled of warm blood. That day, I had attended a seminar for screenwriters. And during lunch break, I’d seen a large dog on the sidewalk, its back towards me, but it had slowly turned its head and looked straight at me – I’d never seen such a monster. Chupacabra. It had a somehow square-shaped head and a killer’s eyes. I felt weakness enter me, the way you feel when making contact with someone who has the flu, if you’ve got the virus from them. I went home, I didn’t go back after the break.

Two opposite moments – the second day after Florinel, when the streets began to fill with those in black, cars often passed me by swiftly and the drivers shouted from inside, straight at me, this was no impression, they were looking at me, even when I was on the crosswalk with a green light, and on the sidewalk. The other one – during the summer Iulian Doroftei had recommended a powder for memory to me, I forgot its name, he’d said you’d have vivid memories, and I went to a herbal drugstore in Tei to get it, except I got caught in heavy rain on the way and got on a bus, which I stayed on until the end of the line, at Fundeni, at the Oncology Hospital, where it got sunny and I felt a certain way, I thought you’d go there to die, and I wasn’t afraid or anything. I got on another bus, the streets were shining after the rain and a pregnant little gypsy sat

next to me. After less than a minute, her left leg slowly moved and her knee stuck to mine, remained like that for a little bit and only then did she notice and flinched. The left leg only, not the rest of the body, as if it had been moved by someone else inside her, not by her.

Why have I always been finding bottles and cups almost brimful of liquids? Do Romanians drink like billionaires, a sip and bye-bye? And why are there small PET bottles everywhere, in unlikely places, sometimes more in one place, but never do I ever see someone drink out of them?

I’ve never had such a thing, imagination, and that’s exactly why I couldn’t ignore the millions of synchronicities and correspondences, couldn’t pretend I didn’t see them or say they were coincidences; what enrages me more than ignorance is a sort of callousness, of sluggish opacity, saying of an immense quantity of unusual occurrences that they’re mere concurrences – and that’s why I’ve been glad mom has seen there are nonetheless too many wearing all black on TV and an explanation like “that’s winter fashion” or “that’s this year’s fashion” doesn’t hold water, especially since some have been dressed completely differently from their usual. Last night I was telling mom about next year’s color, coral (and since I’m here, I’ve come across a book on color symbolism in Chinese emperors) or vermilion, as a variant, and how I’d get such a shirt, to

go with my blue jacket from Damasc, to go with my rank in the Army of the Lord, as Eli dreamed me wearing two months ago, and at church there was a little girl who walked between the rows all in vermilion, mom saw her too, and then a blind man came to mom, came into the church and walked straight to her – but perhaps this is just a concurrence, as perhaps it’s also an overinterpretation that the priest greeted me “with high regard” at confession and he also gave me a little red book with a golden cross and held it out to me as if he were awarding it, and as perhaps it’s a concurrence that when I read a prayer from it in front of the prison, and it happened to be one for outlaws, the woman in black talking on the phone disappeared, I went one step past her and when I finished and turned around, she had gone, perhaps the liquids are also a concurrence, the fact that for years on end I’ve been finding cups and bottles only a sip or two have been had of, I wonder why they discarded them, and it’s a concurrence that now I’ve just found a 7 Up in front of my building, just a sip gone, are there others who drink just a little bit?, so I’ve gone from Neumarkt to another level, past another customs house, as I’ve also discovered earlier at a secondhand bookseller this book, fun maths, that I read about yesterday in an article I wrote a while ago, that dad had in his bookcase and there was something in there about magic squares, that I’ve read something about online this morning, the ones with three numbers on each row that add up to 15, and there’s no synthetic hierarchy among the rows, though each is stronger than the rest on two levels, and perhaps no matter how much I talk about all these things, about how they fit the eschatological tales in the Bible and in other writings (even the apartment building where Eli and I lived was on Sion Street and then I discovered that Yvonne

lived there also in the same time, in the same building and now I live with her), for the reader they’ll be like a ball in the air above the roulette, and only his faith will place it at the right number, out of the other 35. I have no doubt and I know God is not “a deceptive brook.”

Florinel was telling me about the adulteress, that that’s why Christ was finally killed, because he broke the law out of pity for that woman – and I cut him off then, I said it was a stupid law, lapidation for something like that. I have a photo of Eli from two years ago, but it seems to be from her childhood and her innocence, which you feel like laughing at, affectionately, is the image of my soul – the way I left for Orofteana in the morning before sunrise and didn’t take anything, just 50 lei, Robert Walser’s little book, my high school diploma (but why?!) and a small flashlight from a deaf and dumb guy on the train, to be able to read at night in the woods of Ukraine or where the Lord would take me. At this detail, with the small flashlight, I burst into laughter, this is my soul, like that photo, and as long as it stays this way, I’m fine.

At the Hilton? :))) “Where I’ll sleep isn’t an issue, God will blow everyone out of town and I’ll sleep where I want, at the Hilton, even.” A friend of his has told Eli that he’s now in France. Of course, with the suit I’ve given him. And the cap? I threw it out of the window the following day, behind the apartment building.

I made myself a fake, woman’s account and asked Florinel how he was doing. He said: “Well, about the same I do everywhere, but at Nice Nissa la Bella there’s been a spécial movie which is over at least the first part some 3 years or so, or 3 thousand years. At the moment the movie’s moved to Paris for a lil bit. On spécial missions in general… Very special, a star’s mission to shine is mine, to shine in the dark, to give reassurance, to be tough, and a smile to those who are not of this world and the final report mission, to alert people to be different from the people, so they won’t get the same pay the same salary as the rest of the world, which won’t be a very pleasant one, like the pay at Nissa 2 years ago where 300 parents and children were scattered into several pieces...”. Parents and children – he has a problem with this, like so many, he doesn’t even make the connection between things and their origins, between people and their origins, he’d probably claim he’s completely different from his folks, probably socially, in the first place. He said he didn’t want any stomach pills because they contained chemicals and he was surprised when I said there were chemicals in medicinal herbs, in the oil he used on his legs as well, that they served us for that, like food, for bringing the chemicals inside us.

A few days after I returned from Botoșani, during a chat with Ionuța about how to refuse mom’s demonic, mechanical, Russian tank insistence to have us eat, even after we’d just eaten and even while

we were eating, Ionuța said: you just say no to her and that’s it. I had a revelation. I learned, at 40, from my 15-year-old daughter, that I could refuse, she wouldn’t pry my jaws open. And here I was revolting against oppression, because I’d experienced it as a child, always, always, also when she made me wear tight and prickly caps and sweaters and didn’t believe me that they were too tight and prickled. I revolted and tried to explain it to her, I got angry, inflamed, and recently I’ve even simulated feeding her by force, so she might understand, and all I needed to do was to refuse. Say no. That was all. Because afterwards I did as suggested and it worked. I’ve had full respect for Ionuța since then.

Dr. Richard Gallagher, a professor at Columbia University, has no doubt that demonic possession exists. Jung said of the introverted sensation type that sometimes they saw demons on others’ faces. Dostoevsky too. Before but especially after the 1st many of the people I knew calmed down, firstly I did, could I have exorcised them? Or was there a great exorcism, that I felt? But whatever it might have been, the main transformation firstly took place inside me. I saw my monster – when I simulated forcing mom to eat and got out of the apartment, I saw fear in Viorel’s eyes and calmed down. I had known what I was capable of ever since childhood, when Ciprian Nas had beaten my brother and I had kicked him exactly in the piece of skin that served as his nose – and blood had sprung from the hole like in Tarantino. But that had been good, the ambulance had picked him up and sewn him – and he had stopped

picking on my brother.

I saw on TV images from that party at the Palace of Parliament, where the baron had invited me, the same day I stormed in there, but he didn’t know, was he planning to invite me beforehand? – all were in black, only Delia the singer was in colors, as is her soul. Do you remember, Ilenuța, how that phone rang loudly in the kitchen, next to us? After I’d taken Florinel to the railway station and I was telling you – and now what will occur? Will a ladder full of angels appear? And it rang, hard, like a landline phone in the old days? Why didn’t you tell the doctor and the others, why didn’t you tell all the rest and why did you allow me to appear crazy? I had taken mushrooms and was reading the Book of Enoch. Elena was sleeping next to me. I thought I needed to break up with her and was deeply saddened. There was an earthquake (this had happened to me before, with the same decision). She woke up frightened, I hugged her and soothed her. The meeting with Florinel came the second or third day. I started seeing those in black. I shaved my head at the barber's and I went with determination to the brothers with the Amstaff that had killed my dog. One of them was shaking really bad and I said to him it is OK and I let him alone. There were Victoria Palace, the Parliament and the wedding. At the wedding, someone’s observation, “you’re so smooth, not even the sensors see you.” Lights didn’t turn on as I passed. At the restroom, later, two guys – “come on, we’ve waited enough.” And they looked at me. When I got out with the bride, one of them made a sign of encouragement. The faces and stunts were going on on Facebook.

After the Damasc shop, before the wedding, I asked Elena to marry me. She threw up. FB wouldn’t let us announce the engagement. It kept rotating our pictures, all sorts of things occurred to stop us. 666 people gave us a like. I announced I wasn’t getting engaged anymore. I announced I was writing a book about demons, to avoid being locked up in a nuthouse, as my friends kept intending to do. Elena told me, “you’re smart, it’s a smart move.” At the wedding, the one next to me at the table, who was wearing a humongous wristwatch, like Elena had had when I’d met her, and who had something of Florinel, made some demonic sounds at my nape when he was passing me by. After the drums were played and people started brooding, he was holding his palm on the pram handle (there was a baby there) and suggestively said to me: “bodyguard”. Meaning that was what he’d do from then on? I was walking with Elena in the old town center and there were few people at the tables, in black, gloomy. And we were passing by, talking loudly and laughing, and none of them looked, like never before. And she was seeing it too. But later she denied it. And other things, I have no more patience to tell them. Too many. But after a while they changed, they were cleansed. I was seeing it on FB. I met an older friend and later she told me she was feeling alive. She called me and asked for forgiveness, but I don’t know what for. And so on, exorcisms. That epileptic who kissed my hand.. Anyway, I have won. God is with me. He’s shown to me a few times these days, tangibly, that He is present even here, next to me. I’d seen it before, but it’s been clearer now.

“... while entering the yard of the Palace of Parliament, he fled the interception of the sub-officer on guard, making noise by shaking and hitting a PET bottle and insulting the institution and expressing his grievances by screaming and shouting, causing outrage in people located in the access area.” I told them, “please change that, I have not expressed my grievances, I have delivered a message from God – and I haven’t screamed either, screaming means something else.” And they, “let it go, you’ll change it during the appeal” and I insisted, “no, change it now, it’s important”, and one of them said, “it doesn’t matter what you say here, it’s our internal declaration, and anyway it’s not us you need to convince.” And the big one, the one I’d fought, told another one: “and from now on they’ll need the little icons and crosses again?” Well, yeah, boss, a bit of tethering.

Last night (in fact, a month ago, but I arranged the fragments in a different chronological order – it’s January 1st now, it’s been a sunny day, last night at 12 I toasted with the neighbor, with whom I’d had a conflict ‘cause she gossiped about me to mom and I’d torn a red flower of hers in the stairwell, she’d filled the stairwell of the building with red flowers, with mom, with the “cleaning woman” and her daughter, who doesn’t know how old she is and has no teeth and I think she’s a superior creature; the neighbor was all in black and I had a hard time coming, but at 00:00, without checking the time, we ended the conflict, the eternal feminine rose me higher, and today a profound tranquility came down upon me and on the sidewalk I found a few Pramiracetam pills, and home I read about

Piracetam and how it makes you tell the truth – while that movie with Jim Carrey who can’t not tell the truth was on TV) I passed by the maternity building where I was born, but I didn’t know that, mom told me at home, when she also wrapped me into a camel hair blanket, as we had in my childhood, ‘cause I was cold more than I usually am around here, and I was weak, and she told me how it was again, how I was turned and they made a c-section, how dad found out at his dorm and kept it to himself, just strutting proudly and mysteriously among his mates. I passed it by with Gabi and Daniel and on the way home Daniel turned into the wise, kind old man he’s always been. I wrote to Eli that I was reborn and she told me she knew, that she was sorry I’d suffered so long in the womb (with a mother with around 7 planets in Leo, how else), but she was glad. I found out everything, like you know everything when you’re born, then you forget. In the morning, with mom, at church –

– The censer's bells like jingling bells on a sleigh coming through the sky for the child lost in the snow