Cav's Place

I guess I’m ending up posting a Sunday update after all, but instead of covering the whole week, this post will just be about one day, and that’s yesterday. Was sort of thinking of trying to post something non-personal, likely about the Women’s World Cup, even if it’d have been short, but certain events having to do with activists and protesters took place last night and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what happened and whether I mean to attend the response which is apparently being announced for this evening, so this will have to do, especially since I sent someone a message describing pretty much everything last night and now I’ll pretty much just have to turn it into something that may be posted here.

The first thing I did yesterday was go to a “free shop” organized by a separate group which formed after the past protests. I keep saying it’d be funny if it wouldn’t be so sad that the anarchists who attended managed to organize themselves, uniting with a few other radical anti-capitalists, feminists and a few who dared to take a more firm and public pro-LGBT stance, set up their own place somewhere and hold ongoing events all this time while the “United We Save” movement split and splattered all over and still largely spends more time and energy on internal struggles, egos and being suspicious towards and attacking fellow activists than on anything else.
But back to the “free shop”, the idea is to simply drop off things you no longer need and take whatever you want, without any sort of exchanges taking place, whatever’s left at the end of the day being donated to needy people. Been half a year or so since I first saw one such event announced and while I didn’t go then, I meant to have a look next time, as it was supposed to take place every month. However, haven’t seen anything of the sort announced by them since, so had five issues of National Geographic to drop off, as I had decided to keep them since then, thinking that if somebody’d want them it’d count as reusing, which beats recycling them directly, at least if the last user will recycle instead of throwing away or hoarding for no reason. Also dropped off two of the DVDs with full games I bought with issues of Level magazine in 2010, namely King’s Bounty: The Legend and The Dark Eye: Drakensang, and a pajama top which had been sitting in the wardrobe since last year, as the trousers had ended up too ruined to be salvageable anymore.
The games were picked up by a guy almost as soon as I dropped them on a table, but saw them back there when I passed that spot again, so guess he decided against taking them in the end. The magazines, on the other hand, I had dropped next to two boxes of old books that were near the entrance, and by the time I looked through said boxes the five had become three. Then, when I got back from looking through the two shelves of books that weren’t nonfiction in their little permanent “library”, the three had become two. Oddly enough, it’s the most recent ones that were still there, or at least the May edition was still on top, as I’m not entirely certain which the other one was.
As for what else was there, I can just say what I saw at that time, roughly between 6:05 PM and 6:25 PM, as the event was to take place between 4 PM and 9 PM and it’s quite obvious that items were dropped off and picked up throughout those five hours. But at that moment the first thing you saw as you entered were those two boxes of old books I mentioned, which contained mostly old school manuals, but also some really old actual books, a few without covers, and one notable new one which looked to be some sort of romance, judging by the cover, and which was already in some girl’s hand by the time I left. Next to those boxes were a few vinyls, a keyboard and another small stack of books that I had also placed the magazines on. Then there were a few other books scattered farther on, a couple of board games, a couple of computer games and a few movie DVDs. But most of the space was taken up by a few piles of clothes, and on top of that there were some accessories on the small table I had also placed my games on and probably seven or eight pairs of shoes lined up near the entrance, which included what appeared to be some Nikes still in pretty good condition, but all seemed to be in quite small sizes.
As I said, I looked rather thoroughly through the books, but didn’t find anything interesting, and the games didn’t interest me either, so I left without taking anything… And when I did I found a tiny all black kitten at the door, and it didn’t seem afraid at all. The two who came out after me stopped even longer, to pet it, try to figure out if it was a boy or a girl and wonder whether it belonged to anyone or whether they could adopt it. She was saying she’s seriously thinking of that, but he was pointing out the dog will eat it, and after she also asked me if I knew whether it had an owner, which I obviously didn’t, I left.

From there, since I had the book with me and also the camera and knew the day’s Pluto Time for here, I went first to Unirii Park, where with some difficulty I found an empty bench and read for a while, despite being assaulted by tiny insects. Then left in the direction of the Parliament, heading for Izvor Park, the sidewalks still being open for most of that stretch of road even if the street was closed to cars due to a concert taking place in Constitution Square.
I didn’t go far at first, stopping on another nearby bench to pull out the book again, but I ended up quickly needing to find myself another spot when some man just sat down next to me and lit a cigarette. Not that I could enjoy reading that much there either, as soon after I sat down again an older and, shall we say, particularly large woman sat next to me while a man who may have been her husband remained standing. Saw her pull out a package as well, but it only contained napkins, which she used to wipe sweat off herself before walking away again. Must say she reeked, and that’s saying something, as that sort of smell has to be quite bad for me to even notice. Also must say that, after they left, another guy sat next to me, but he just played on his phone… Which sure led me to wonder whether I had a sign anywhere stating there’s a free seat there and I welcome the company. I mean, I’m sitting here, I don’t know you, unless you absolutely need to sit down at this exact moment, move along and find yourself a free bench the same way I did!
Either way, stopped with a chapter left of what I meant to read that day and continued towards Izvor Park, following the stream of people as I had to go around when even the sidewalk became blocked for that concert. Eventually came out where I should have, entered the park, found another bench, finished reading what I meant to, then pulled out and tested the camera, and pulled out and put on the watch, which I had set just correctly before leaving, to make sure I’ll take the pictures at the right time.
That was all done at 8:30 PM, but the day’s Pluto Time for that place was 9:06 PM, so wandered around for a while, looking for a good spot and the right angles for the pictures, as I wanted to have a reasonably clear view of both the Parliament, seeing as capturing a local landmark is recommended, and the direction of the setting Sun, to pretty much only need to turn between the shots. Once that was done and I had settled on a spot, I wandered around slowly a little longer, returned to that spot with a good ten minutes left, and then just sort of stood there… And got assaulted by big insects, not sure exactly what. At first I thought bees or bumblebees, but probably, and fortunately, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Still, they were quite bold, as after the first one struck my head and circled me a few times I saw another, and another, and they struck my head and back a few more times, then were flying right in front of my eyes and moving as I moved. Couldn’t even take all the nine pictures I eventually ended up taking, to show how it looks in different directions and with different settings, within the planned one minute, as I had to dodge another assault through it. Still, managed it in less than two minutes, so was good enough.

Something that struck me as odd while in Izvor Park was seeing a girl playing ball with a guy on one of the main alleys, wearing a dress and barefoot. Her sandals were dropped right on the side of the alley, behind her, along with a few other things. Think the dog roaming freely around the area was theirs as well, and it was wandering off quite far from them, including sniffing around one of the tents horses were in, as there were horses there for some event. Had all been brought inside from the fenced ranges by then, and there were notes everywhere to keep dogs away so they won’t scare them, but nobody seemed around and that tent was open on one side, so was worried the dog will even go inside and make matters worse, as I already heard horses whinnying when it approached. But it didn’t, wandering away again after a short while.

And before ending this, I’ll also say that I’m quite sure I briefly crossed paths with Remus Cernea on my way to the “free shop”. Judging by his posts and the time and place, he was coming from a TV show where he argued for an adviser of the Minister of Education to resign after it was revealed he’s the president of a religious NGO advocating abstinence-only sexual education in schools, alongside their main goal of making the “religion” class once again mandatory, most preferably teaching only the Christian Orthodox dogma.
Either way, I raised an eyebrow, then turned to stare, trying to be sure, said hi, didn’t get a reply, we crossed the street together, then went in different directions. He may not have heard or noticed, since he did unblock me a while back and even replied to and “liked” a few comments I posted on his page since, so it should no longer be a case of making a point of ignoring each other due to, to put it mildly, major differences of opinion over his political choices from that period, as it happened the few times we met and even sat right next to each other during a few protests, while he was associated with PSD.
Does strike me as rather sad that it’s so weird to just happen to meet a member of the Parliament simply walking down the street, wearing, as he often does, a t-shirt with what appeared to be some band logo, though I couldn’t make out the name, and with a simple and rather worn bag slung on his shoulder. I mean, shouldn’t it be pretty normal for them, or at least for more of them, to also be and act like regular people, like the rest of us?