Writer Between Worlds

Soulful writing about humans and places

Category: ROMÂNĂ

Quote of the day

“Understanding a people’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (…) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.” Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)
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Words of wisdom, cautionary words

On creativity: “If too few opportunities for curiosity are available, if too many obstacles are placed in the way of risk and exploration, the motivation to engage in creative behavior is easily extinguished. (…) So, if the next generation is to face the future with zest and self-confidence, we must educate them to be original…
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Quote of the day

“Plato (…) also discovered the very insecure position of truth in the world, for ‘from opinions comes persuasion, and not from truth’ (Phaedrus 260). The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want…
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On migration and diasporas

“To live “in diaspora” is to reside in one place but to keep in motion an emotional, cultural, or political relationship with another, whether it is the site of one’s nativity that subsequently became a point of departure or an ancestral “homeland” virtually conjured but never visited. (…) Diasporas (…) are platforms where received notions…
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Quote of the day

“To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of ‘historical necessity’, but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. (…) Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous (…). It means, rather, examining and bearing…
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Scrisoare către Biserica mea

Simt cum alunec. Simt cum mă pierd: tot mai adesea pe margini, tot mai adesea departe. Simt cum mă smintește fiecare creștet de femeie încovoiat și îmbrobodit, de parcă demnitatea luminoasă a făpturii umane, suficient de bună ca Dumnezeu să coboare în ea, e o vinovăție perpetuă ce trebuie mereu împilată și pironită cu ochii…
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New Year’s Eve 2020

You can tell by the fireworks. To this day, people’s hearts are set to the clocks in their homelands, far away. They go off at different times, then the smoke clears and the sky remains mysterious and quiet until the next full hour. You can tell by the fireworks. To this fateful day, the last…
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Falling in Love

In the dead of night – In that longest of nights he came to me, all aglow. An illumination of love. I was ready to let go, having run out of things to hold on to. “The world has done violence to your spirit”, he spoke through my sleeplessness, and his voice was husky. “But…
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Questions

Setting: Catholic religion class at school. Characters: New teacher – a man. A bunch of 9-year-olds. Open discussion about covenants. (Based loosely on recollection, don’t shoot the messenger!) Girl in my daughter’s class, with genuine curiosity: Why are all the priests men? Why are there no women priests? Teacher, gently: Well, you see, Jesus was…
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The Pond

How the landscape changes With the moving seasons… No rebirth without dying Water and cut grass Shoulder-high saplings And all the encounters with pain. The piercing shrieks of white gulls Plunging, and us happy to disintegrate Why is it that in nature The lost are found, and dying Is grand and mollifying and fearless Like an embrace?…
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September reading

here I am, sitting on a bench next to autumn absorbing the last of the scorching sun and watching the ants move like clockwork in a playground we call our own. here they are, mapping the maze with staccato precision. I am reading a poem, like every other year. later, I’ll get up to go…
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Spirituality, modernity and Brownian motion

Just a thought… So many of us feel depleted, drained, stressed out. Our beings flogged from within, our lives – our biggest gift – turned into empty chases. Pursuing a zillion things that we can grab and touch and display, but which aren’t real. We live in societies that prioritize task efficiency, competition, action, and the accumulation of stuff over…
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