I must say that London has become my third favourite city in the world (after Targu-Mures my hometown and Bucharest which both started in times immemorial). There is something about it that either makes you fall in love on the spot now matter how hard your life is, or you hate it and don’t know how to escape from it.
The book is basically a series of interviewswith various Londoners, from the lady who gave her voice to the London Tube, to tourists, immigrants, people who became Londoners, who were Londoners all their lives and those who are no longer Londoners.
Well, I’m not going to comment much, for the ones who know how the (not only Communist) propagandisticwooden language sounds like, this post will be as clear as the day, for those who don’t – read my comments, and don’t take any quote literally!
Romanian history is not a chronicle of kings and queens such as British children, learning the history of their own country, once had to commit to memory. True, there were Dacian kings, but the last of these, Decebalus, took his own life when his forces were overwhelmed by the Roman Emperor Trajan in A.D. 106. When the Emperor Aurelian withdrew from Dacia in A.D. 271 a long period of chaos followed until the separate principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia emerged in the fourteenth century. These to principalities merged under A.I. Cuza in 1859 and he may be said to be the first prince of Romania. His reign, however, was brief; he was deposed, and in 1866 Prince Charles de Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, an officer in the Prussian army, was elected Prince of Romania. He was crowned king in 1881. His descendant, King Michael, abdicated in 1947, so the reign of the Hohenzollern kings may be said to be a comparatively brief one. (pp 15-16) (more…)
As I was reading Alice Walker (best known for her book The Color Purple) collection of essays entitled Anything We Love Can Be Saved, I thought her ideas only represented me on an abstract – perhaps metaphorical level. I can relate to her situation only in certain aspects, others I can’t even begin to understand. In my opinion, she is rather centred around a purpose and she definitely has a leit-motif (the Goddess, for example), but, as I said, I don’t fully understand her situation, so I won’t be judging her for some linguistic clichés (I know I have mine, and I’m pretty sure each individual, social/enthic group or country has plenty as well!).
In any case, from the whole book, I chose an essay that I think is still very much current, even after fourteen years. It’s about Christmas and its sometimes empty, sometimes ideologically charged stories. First, the subtitle is quite interesting and very much poetic: “seed catalogs like paper flowers”. (more…)
Strong words relating to a vague, ethereal group that represents an unseen but really dangerous enemy – or so we are let to believe! – can identify a rhetoric or another for the connoisseur, but they are as liable to become a cigarette thrown into a tank at the gas station. Such words as “terrorists”, “nazis”, “activists”, “environmentalists”, nowadays “occupiers” (or as I keep hearing in a so-called democratic Romania words like “golani” – punks, “tineri” – youth or “studenti” – students used pejoratively as the ones who don’t work and are like leaches on the respectable workers and peasants who keep the country going, and so on). Using these words it’s quite easy to fall into the trap of generalized non-action and perhaps even opposition to change, unless change is imposed by the Man. Even terms of endearment can be dangerous when used in a work environment, for example in a place where all participants should be equal, but the majority is male and the women are addressed as “dear” or “darling”, or with terms otherwise reserved to the bedroom. Therefore, words are both positive and negative. They are positive if we know how to defend ourselves against them (even insults can be kept away with a shield!) and understand that a word can have countless meanings and we should use and interpret it according to a definite context and combination. They are negative if we don’t acknowledge these facts and only take words out of contexts and for what we think they mean. In any case… Is there a reason for why “word” and “world” are such close brothers (sisters, or siblings if we are to include all readers in the equation)?
I didn’t plan to take on this subject at the beginning. But, at the same time, a so-called democratic president … sings the tunes of the Securitate & co? (Securitate was the Romanian secret police during the belle epoque – for the unitiated, before 1989, when it was a Communist dictatourship under Nicolae Ceausescu) Bashing the Royal Family was en vogue then, for obvious reasons. But what does this prove?
Going beyond the obvious insult (recited a la carte from the How to Be a Good Boy – girls are obviously left out, they are supposed to stay at home and breed a future glorious generation for the Party and for the country – handbook printed in the brains of so many people…), this is an intriguing – and terrifying – Freudian (Stalinist?) slip from a person who is supposed to promote a certain set of morals, convictions and act as the representative of the many. What is even more disturbing is the thought that, even though he has lost a whole bucket o’ points in the hearts of his *cough* subjects, Basescu still shows no sign of stopping his destructive ways. He’s like on a bloody rampage with nothing to lose!
Well, anyway, this is from the point of view of an insider who can pledge alliance to the King at any time. How does this appear from the outside? I’m really interested to see if this little slip will hurt Basescu (and Romania?)’s international image. My question is … is a president supposed to recite such offensive poems?
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