www. Everybody knows what it is. World Wide Web.
I remember in HS i once read a quasi autobiographical book called just like that. The Spider Web (1938). Or maybe, On the Spider Thread of Memory (1977). One of the two. Written by the a Romanian author, Cella Serghi.
One of these days i thought. What if conscience does not reside inside our body but is the Universe itself by which our brain is linked through literal threads. Infinitesimally small but physical whirls like threads of AEther used to entangle particles, making up for our memories. Maybe created by the lightening of engrams. Shooting out of our brain, entangling with many others.
Interestingly, the name of the character of the first book was Diana, reminding of Dianetics.
Scientology also believes brain is not where our soul resides, but just an interface. To the individual Thetans.
The ancient Egyptians were discarding the brain during mumification. They said it was a useless organ (in the afterlife anyways). A burden to carry all our life? I remember the title of a poem written by Romanian poet Adrian Păunescu. The Unrepeatable Burden. Cause what is brain? Something that takes lots of precious resources of our body, for sure.
When i was at the age of 4 of 5 my father went for a trip to Soviet Union. Must have been nearby Moldova. He brought back a photo enlarger for my grandfather and I think a camera, and a tricycle for me (that was later converted to a bicycle). After i got bored of three wheels my father one day made it two only but it lacked a freewheel mechanism. Which means the pedals were always linked to the rear wheel.
One day maybe at my repeated requests my father took me to ride on the street that was paved with asphalt. They were very few cars (for lack of cars in Romania at that time) maybe just a few a day. We went and climbed a long slope beyond the milk processing factory. Then when we got back, i took my feet off the pedals. The pedals started to turn so fast i could not put my feet back on.
At the base of the slope i think i had maybe 50 kmh (30 mph). A group of gypsies on a side of the road were gesticulating and yelling at me to keep focused and not give up which i think helped me a lot. I continued out of inertia for several hundred yards or until i could control that bike.
At the base of the slope i think i had maybe 50 kmh (30 mph). A group of gypsies on a side of the road were gesticulating and yelling at me to keep focused and not give up which i think helped me a lot. I continued out of inertia for several hundred yards or until i could control that bike.
Believe it or not, this picture was taken by my sister Angela (coincidence of name) who was 3 or 4, during one of those days in Suceava.
Grandfather was not biological, he married my grandmother when my mother was a few years old. He was a many years war veteran, was a driver on a truck carrying other soldiers and a piece of artillery. I remember he also said something a mare he was riding. 6 years of war. I once asked him, when i was about 8, why people do go to war. He said "they were too many people".
Besides Romanian he spoke German (and he always said, Ukrainian and Russian). He spoke German with my grandfather when they wanted us not to understand (witch was drawing me crazy) but never wanted to teach us. He also played violin and was the motor behind me learning how to play the accordion from that blind teacher.
Here in this picture we were all smiling better said laughing because of the way my sister was holding the camera. The reason the picture came out crooked.
Here in this picture we were all smiling better said laughing because of the way my sister was holding the camera. The reason the picture came out crooked.
One night tante Miți drove me really mad. She said i was fat and my tits were big and kept giving me bras to try. Finally could go to sleep. I heard a very loud noise that briefly awoke me. In the morning i saw a big branch ot the tree (walnut maybe) in the courtyard was down. It was hit by lightening, they said.
I remember here a story my mother told me. When she was a kid they once went with the school to destroy mole mounds on one of the many hills around that part of the town. It started to rain and they came back dragging their hoes on the ground behind as the teacher taught them. And here came this lightning and hit the hoe of the kid right in front of her.
Was it that evening or the next when we went to visit other relatives or theirs. They were in a front yard some sort of flowers (queen of night they called them) that were making a smell so strong it was choking me.
I remember i was playing in a barrel with collected rain water (they did that a lot back then because the rain water had very few minerals and needed not carrying from a fountain) with a little boat that had an electrical motor in it.
They gave it to me to take home în Câmpulung (Suceava). I played a lot with it but in the end i took it apart (like i always did with everything i ever had, maybe it broke) and my father built with that motor a little metal propeller thrower. I remember later i made a drawing with a man on a backpack with a motor in the back and a propeller above him.
Because it took piano lessons between 5 and 7 with a teacher named Redlov(e) and had to write (copy) notes for homework, i kinda learned how to read and write before i went to school. But i remember the first thing i ever read was the word PHILOSOPHY (FILOZOFIA) on a cover of a HS book of my mother, who abandoned HS after about a year "because of headaches" my grandfather said. She later went to a medical assistant school, but never graduated because of the weird test she had for finals and she could not do it.
They later bought me a small accordion, with 32 bass buttons, but could not play with it mostly because i could only play by notes at that time. So my grandfather brought me an accordion teacher was was literally blind (was brought in by his daughter). In the end he taught me a few songs and after a few years i forgot about notes and was playing only by ear.
At some point i started to hate that accordion because the teacher asked me to bring at school where i was playing so the other could dance traditional folk dances while rehearsing for the end year celebrations. So i was the only one who didn't get to dance with the girls and that was the reason i could not dance at the end of grade school, like others.
Also that year when we lived downtown and I went to another school they hired me to play at a kindergarten dance rehearsals and then Christmas celebration and I got paid with enough money to buy a couple of flashlights which I was fascinated with.
They gave it to me to take home în Câmpulung (Suceava). I played a lot with it but in the end i took it apart (like i always did with everything i ever had, maybe it broke) and my father built with that motor a little metal propeller thrower. I remember later i made a drawing with a man on a backpack with a motor in the back and a propeller above him.
Because it took piano lessons between 5 and 7 with a teacher named Redlov(e) and had to write (copy) notes for homework, i kinda learned how to read and write before i went to school. But i remember the first thing i ever read was the word PHILOSOPHY (FILOZOFIA) on a cover of a HS book of my mother, who abandoned HS after about a year "because of headaches" my grandfather said. She later went to a medical assistant school, but never graduated because of the weird test she had for finals and she could not do it.
They later bought me a small accordion, with 32 bass buttons, but could not play with it mostly because i could only play by notes at that time. So my grandfather brought me an accordion teacher was was literally blind (was brought in by his daughter). In the end he taught me a few songs and after a few years i forgot about notes and was playing only by ear.
At some point i started to hate that accordion because the teacher asked me to bring at school where i was playing so the other could dance traditional folk dances while rehearsing for the end year celebrations. So i was the only one who didn't get to dance with the girls and that was the reason i could not dance at the end of grade school, like others.
Also that year when we lived downtown and I went to another school they hired me to play at a kindergarten dance rehearsals and then Christmas celebration and I got paid with enough money to buy a couple of flashlights which I was fascinated with.
(Later i had a regular size accordion and while still in grade school i learned lots of stuff from a teacher, also by ear, at the House of Children and got pretty good at it). He was conducting an ethno band (taraf) with oher children playing violins, bass, trumpet and drums. He was reading notes and thought us old folk songs from a collection book.
Together we once went to Bucharest and recorded a few songs that were aired on a Sunday morning for children broadcast on National television. Yes we were all wearing the local traditionals sleeveless jackets made of polecat fur (borrowed from generous neighbors).
At the age of seven i once cried all day until my father bought me a camera, 70 lei or one day's wages. Again my grandfather was probably behind it. He once told me that one of his sisters had a photo studio back in Storojineț and she taught him.
When i look at it now i even remember the smell, it was made with formaldehyde resin. Wide film covered with red and black paper with numbers on the back read through a little red window when advancing the film. Could make pictures with it in a darkroom directly with paper under, without an enlarger which my grandfather did. With it i did take some pictures before i broke it (was pretty brittle material).
Together we once went to Bucharest and recorded a few songs that were aired on a Sunday morning for children broadcast on National television. Yes we were all wearing the local traditionals sleeveless jackets made of polecat fur (borrowed from generous neighbors).
At the age of seven i once cried all day until my father bought me a camera, 70 lei or one day's wages. Again my grandfather was probably behind it. He once told me that one of his sisters had a photo studio back in Storojineț and she taught him.
When i look at it now i even remember the smell, it was made with formaldehyde resin. Wide film covered with red and black paper with numbers on the back read through a little red window when advancing the film. Could make pictures with it in a darkroom directly with paper under, without an enlarger which my grandfather did. With it i did take some pictures before i broke it (was pretty brittle material).
I started school at 7 and i remember i was very excited about it but my mother warned me, it was not like kindergarten, the teacher gives you grades (it was from one to 10 in Romania back then) and that saddened me. I remember my first note was a 9, at Romanian language. My 1-4 grade teacher, Valeria Mihalea, did look a lot like Italian actress Claudia Cardinale. Acting kinda b...y (they called her a severe teacher). But she had another side (funny, laughing) that she showed during a trip with the whole class to Bucharest.
I remember that day we were waiting a lot for the bus to come. The driver, who also looked like an Italian actor (dark skin, blue piercing eyes) had to fix the oil pan which got broken (by a rock?) or somebody tried to sabotage the trip? (Bus was most likely an Ikarus - 55).
Here is a pictures with my class mates in second grade (fall of 1968) at the age of 8. Probably done by my grandfather who became the photographer (weddings, funerals, colorized portraits, etc.) in that part of town after he got pensioned from his painter job in Sadova. I am at the right of the teacher, bottom row (white collar). I was taller than anyone and now i suspect some of the kids were actually 1 or 2 years younger than me. Like this guy second right bottom.
Three of the girls were wearing same traditional polecat vests.
Ok so here i am with my next big memory at the age of 8. My father was at some sort of supervisors school again in Suceava (for the factory they were building in Câmplung across the street) and had a room in a condo there and my mother was with him and they were both working at the wood processing factory in Suceava. Again with my grandmother and grandfather we went to visit them.
He had a small transistor radio and because the regular AA batteries were expensive, he used a bigger, cheaper battery external to the radio and of course i started to play with it. Was attaching and detaching those wires kinda like i was sending morse code messages and my father asked me what i was doing and i told him i was trying to contact the aliens.
In that day i saw my father and grandparents looked scared. It was the day of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet Union and the famous Ceaușescu speech which opened for him the doors of west banks for borrowing money and building the industry that made so many things like condos and jobs for half Romanians.
Who quit those ancestral lands that were confiscated anyways by the pro Soviet regime and moved into cities.
Later i learned from my father it was also rumored that Ceaușescu had a secret weapon, built with the help of Coandă, Tesla's and Einstein's friend, with which they melted the Soviet tanks that were about to cross the border.
But in the end those loans ruined Romania, financially, leading to what historians have called "the 7 years of hunger by Ceaușescu".
But i believe that was triggered by the defecting of Pacepa and cut of low interest loans. Could the invasion, the speech have all been scripted, to allow Soviet Union to get some proxy access to western technology.
We moved for one year in downtown Câmpulung were my father had a job (and where he worked a lot to finish his graduating project for that school of supervisors). We were close to that repetitor in down town so we had a good signal for the TV to see the Apollo moon landing (and also heard about Apollo 13 accident). The TV was by the brand Orion, made in Hungary, and had a contact problem at the channel selector and was flickering all the time and needed tweaking and sometimes hitting, yelling and praying.
Then they finished the factory across street in west Câmplung and we moved back there. He became the head of a wood carving department where they were making medieval French style furniture for export i believe in Germany. He was making good money there.
BTW, i never knew what my father did with his money. He always kept saying he did not have any, wasn't drinking or smoking and went to borrow from neighbors when my mother forced him. But now i think he was borrowing from himself.
We were always hungry, my mother was spending her salary in a few days (yes, on cakes, coffee and cigarettes), and we were eating at grandmas. I remember day 11 and 26 of the month when was jubilation day, or when she was coming with a paper plate with the cakes.
Most of my neighbors inhabiting that town had traditional small subsistence farms including milking cows, pigs and sometimes sheep and didn't have to buy food like milk, potatoes and sometimes meat and also had a job in one of those factories, but we had to buy anything. Climate there at 2000 ft did not allow growing crops like corn or grapes, which were abundant were my in laws lived, some 50 miles east from there.
My in laws had also cow, sheep, pigs.
In there they were organized in so called cooperatives, made with the confiscated land, where they did lots of manual labor and they were allowed to have like one acre so called "helping lot" where they were growing corn for animals and grapes for wine and they were also given some share, in the hundreds of pounds of wheat and sugar. But they had absolutely no money. Maybe for cigarettes and liquor. My father in law was using shoes i was throwing away for example.
Yes there was another factory across the street there, milk processing, built around year 1960 or the year of my birth, by the Swiss. They had these cisterns and were driving around that mountainous rural area, gathering surplus milk from those farms. My mother worked there for a while. They had a siren that was going off three times a day, at 6 AM, 2 PM, and10 PM for at least one minute.
The furniture factory now is a mall, like so many others factories in Romania. Finished in 1968, it was there were all my family worked. I did so during HS vacations. There is something i have to say today about it. They had these gigantic vacuums on top for different machines for cleaning saw dust and small debris and i don't know if they had any filters in place, thing is there was many times this irritating wood dust in the air. Maybe that's why i started to love the rain.
There was an airfield behind both (now it's just a pasture or something) where i learned how to ride the motorcycle, around 10. I heard a story about my mother when she was a child being taken in a plane by one of the communist dignitaries (confirmed by her), maybe Dej or Botnăraș who was from Bucovina and had a villa în Câmpulung. Today i suspect small planes could have landed and quickly taken off during the noise made by that siren, especially at 6 and 10 during shorter non summer days.
In 1972 i went to a summer camp in Hamburg, Germany. My grand grand father was in Germany, my grandmother wrote his address on the back of the suitcase lid, other boys in the dorm must have seen, the director of the camp (Klaus Meine from Scorpions) pushed me to call him, i think the plan was for me to stay there but the guys in charge at Bucharest Children's Palace scared me pretty bad before we left.
Yes it was the year of Munich terrorist attack that happened 2 months later.
Good thing i didn't stay, for the little time i spent i already saw some gay behaviour at the one of the boys from Germany (we were all 12 years old). And my gran gran father Andrei Lehaci (Andreas Lechatsch, not sure of the spelling, from Tübingen, then Stuttgart) was too old to take care of me anyways.
He died in a hospice when i was in HS and his wife Anna also from Romania didn't like my grandma when she went to see him, i think in 69 when she came back loaded with cheap gifts (i was given a watch and a suite and a tumbling monkey). He had i think a boy with her who was working in South Africa at the time.
And she told my grandfather who had, like in Romania (Pojorâta), a small shoemaking shop was called an Ausländer all of his life. Also because i think he was part Jew and part Gypsy with some Romanian in him.
And she told my grandfather who had, like in Romania (Pojorâta), a small shoemaking shop was called an Ausländer all of his life. Also because i think he was part Jew and part Gypsy with some Romanian in him.
