Cav's Place

Was saying I may turn a message I sent into a post, and I guess this is it. Will probably be quite a mess, as it ended up significantly longer but probably not much clearer, but nobody’s reading this anyway. And, in case of this particular post, I’d say that’s a good thing. Probably shouldn’t be here at all, after all, yet here it is regardless…

With the recent serious money issues and the taxes for dad’s firm and the fact that a good part of said taxes result from the fact that my parents insist on having me employed there on paper, after “hiring” me as such back in 2004, the matter itself was once again brought to the forefront of my mind. Whenever that happens, I once again say I want to be “fired” because I’m feeling absolutely rotten about it, an utter hypocrite, shouting everywhere to end the culture of jobs and paycheck slavery and the need to “earn a living” and specifying in my profiles on various sites that not having a job in the current sense of the term is one of the main requirements for the people I’d care to talk to, yet here I am, having one. Sure, it’s only on paper, not in practice, so both no actual work and no actual pay, but it makes me feel awful nevertheless, and has done so for all these years.
Plus, in terms of purely pragmatic aspects, we apparently can’t do what I’ve been asking for the past 15 or so years and set aside a certain specific amount per month to know the funds for new computer components and other such things are readily available whenever needed or desired, but this makes me responsible for significantly greater amounts paid to the state in taxes for the sole “benefit” of making me feel like a stinking pile of shit because of it! I mean, so far I didn’t even need the medical insurance that comes with it, though from now on the risk does increase, as I’m over 30 and not getting younger. Still, that can now be paid separately as well, at a rate equivalent to the tax for it paid by someone earning minimum wage, so it’d no longer be an issue of finding a sufficiently good private one instead, which’d cost much more than this.
Yet whenever I bring it up, I’m told no way, and that there’s also my retirement fund to consider on top of the medical insurance, to which I reply that it’s not like I’ll make it that far. And that’s as far as I got with actually telling them this, but sure was, and still am, close to snapping and spelling it all the fuck out. For one, there are the moments when my mother catches me in the kitchen and asks, as she usually does, what could she possibly cook next. And, as nearly every time pretty much since I was little, I say it doesn’t matter, just something edible and not particularly unpleasant. And then she continues by saying that can’t be, because it needs to be varied, enjoyable and other shit like that and I may say there’s no such thing. But closest to saying more was when, recently, she was in the kitchen when I came back from a run and she asked whether I feel the need to run or push myself. I asked if there’s anything I don’t push myself to do and said I wouldn’t even get out of bed except to pee if not pushing. To that, she said she thinks running any distance would be a hard thing to push herself to do, but there are things she does just because she likes to… And I said there was a time when some things could be enjoyable, but that ended over ten years ago… Could hear a pin drop after that.
So that’s as far as I got with that talk so far, but if I hear that part about retirement again… For fuck’s sake, do you see me getting there somehow? Or wanting to in any way? How? Or do you see me making it, managing in general, somehow? They’ll be gone someday, and dad no longer able to earn enough for all of us to get by even sooner, which is in fact obviously already starting to happen even if it’s not a matter of him being unable to do the work yet, and we don’t seem to be heading in a direction of no longer needing money anytime soon, and I’m as I am, so at that point I’ll be thoroughly fucked. And that point is likely to come in, what, ten years? Most probably less…
Even from this point of view, and not just the purely personal one of finding something to live for and to make me want to do anything for and to look for some rainbows in the foul acidic sewage raining down on all of us in this society humanity created and maintains, I had one chance in this life, with Andra. And I was launching myself into further explanations here, but deleted them, so I’ll just say that, after that went down the drain and seeing as I was too much of a coward to do what needed to be done back then when it had a point, it’ll soon be 11 years since I just keep waiting for it to end on its own, while at the same time of course all the time passing and the suffering accumulating is making me feel it’d be more and more disappointing if it does end without something to make all of it have been worth it happening first. So, in short, at least after a year and a half or so after she left, wanting to neither live nor die, and unable to do anything relevant towards either even if I did care to. Barring miracles, I’m not looking at any other future than that.
But at the same time, I’m always shitting myself in terror that things will get worse, because they always can get so much worse, and often do. So I just keep thinking and hoping they’ll at least stay the same, if I’m used to something and it’s at least somewhat acceptable. When it comes to major issues and bigger pictures, there are clearly desirable major changes I’d obviously want to see, though if they don’t happen just that way then I dread others, usually for good reasons. But that goes far more for matters of daily life, where truly desirable changes would be nothing short of miracles, as they’d imply one obvious particular one first and I’m terrified of even good ones going all wrong otherwise, so I just need things to at least stay the same and keep shitting myself that they won’t and will get worse and I just want to keep those things and situations and know they’re not worse because they’re the same at least. And they keep going on about needing to change and vary things or how I need new clothes or shoes and how can I keep them for so many years and keep using them when they end up looking like they do, and always to vary food or that it’s been several years since my room was painted and that needs to be done again and who knows what else. For fuck’s sake! Leave it the fuck alone! Leave me some shreds to cling on to, some I can at least know aren’t getting worse because they stay the same, and fuck off!
But things always get worse anyway, see even the current situation and the state I’m in now, which is another issue. Yet, to get back to the original issue, if the matter is brought up they go on about a future I’ll never have and retirement funds I’ll never use and the recorded experience on a supposed job that makes me feel like a stinking pile of hypocritical shit to have, even if just on paper, and which is responsible for all these expenses that in good part cause these other problems that make things worse even now. One thing which I really don’t want to stay the same, I guess, because it has always been intolerable. And, like I said, causes others to just keep getting worse.

Even the few you’d think might have an idea don’t actually have an idea of how fragile and easily shattered any sliver of stability I manage to maintain is. And I keep wondering why or how there’s any left, more and more often and with greater surprise. Which at least means there’s no surprise when I end up like this, and that I can’t dig myself out of a state and even if it may appear there’s a hand poking out and making room for some air to come in, it all crumbles again at the slightest breeze.

And on top of the usual and the rest and the particular triggers added now, which I won’t even get into here, the fork I liked to use broke and it doesn’t seem to have even been kept by my parents. It was the last of the old ones that I recall from even back when I was little, and I always used it, but it always bent at the neck, or whatever that part at the bottom of the handle part is called, and all that bending back and forth eventually, after so many years, caused a crack to appear in the metal, and then it quickly got bigger and last time I used it I only used it for the peas, where it was used pretty much as a spoon, switching to another for the eggs because I feared it would just fall apart. And after that I didn’t see it anymore, so I guess one of my parents wanted to use it too and it either just fell apart or they noticed how badly cracked it was, and I guess they simply threw it away instead of at least keeping it somewhere.

But at least I finally finished reading that book I was the “alpha reader” for. Took me two full months and really struggled to manage even this, at about two and a half hours per day on the few best days and four or more on many, if not most, to just go through an average of just marginally over six pages of the file per day. Sure, not quite an hour per page, as it was back when I was still trying to edit my own story, as I wasn’t editing that deeply and the style was usually better than anything I could hope to produce anyway, so that wasn’t an issue, but I was clearly in “edit mode” and my brain was frying because of it and I had to keep going over the same sentences and words over and over, though it took me a while to really start sending comments other than mentioning the odd typo, and always felt bad for doing it.

And I also ran again, Tuesday, and did go for ten kilometers again, for the first time since May 10. Knew I could beat that time, so just tried to see how well I could do and I’m thinking I could have pushed myself just a little bit harder. Should have, too, seeing as I was trying to release some of this mess somehow. But I guess it was what it was at the moment, and the time was 50:48, with sector times of 4:39, 5:20, 6:12, 4:39, 5:19, 6:17, 4:53, 5:25, 6:14 and 1:50, making for lap times of 16:11, 16:15 and 16:32. Which I guess means I should be able to get under 50 minutes under good enough conditions, which not long ago seemed too insane a goal to even truly consider.

Was wondering whether I’ll manage to make a post out of a rant I sent Alma at the start of the week, after struggling to hold back on actually spilling it all out directly to my parents during a recent conflict, despite not being caused by the conflict or by what caused that, but simply being a breakdown and my view of my future, or more exactly lack of any, and somewhat connected to what caused a part of what caused that. A bit hard to keep track of, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter; not like I’m writing this for anyone else.
Either way, not going to do that now. Maybe I will the next time I’ll end up in such a state or, more specifically, in such a state and with my mind working, or not quite working, in the same way. That may well be soon, or maybe it won’t, or maybe in part I even already did write at least a good part of that, can’t say I recall anymore, after all these pointless and hopeless years like this.

Right now I’ll just say that, if last week I was screaming silently after waking up from a nap, this morning I actually woke up screaming, and did so twice. Actually woke up at least five times before actually getting up, but only clearly heard myself scream those two times, which I believe were the first and third but I’m not entirely sure of that. The first definitely was like that, and I also know that was a little after 7:30 AM, so after sleeping for only about an hour and a half. In spite of that, was considering just getting up and then going back to bed at some later point, as I did every time I woke up, but eventually managed to get some sleep, interrupted as it was.
Also clearly recall what I was dreaming that first time. Apparently my mother was talking to an otherwise unidentified friend in her bedroom and I happened to hear that friend mention the name Andra in connection with my worst fear. Had no idea who she was truly referring to or how could she possibly know the Andra I was thinking of, but I rushed there and tried to get information regardless, and then they left the room and someone which in my dream I identified as a friend of mine, who looked like Andra but otherwise had no other identity I can think of, joined me there as I was lying on the bed and reading a message apparently posted by Andra somewhere which was projected on the ceiling. There were four lines, but I got as far as the second and saw she was making fun of me in it and I was trying to keep reading and just couldn’t, struggling to focus while my vision was spinning and letters were getting messed up and I was just drifting away. Jumped off the bed, trying from another position, but that unidentified friend of mine who looked like her also got up on the other side and turned off the projector, and then reached to press a button that I knew would delete the message. She might have actually managed to press it, I’m not sure about that, but I launched myself at her screaming, and woke up actually screaming, and sort of watched myself in that state between dreaming and awake as in my dream I elbowed and punched her and she smashed her head against the heater with my mother and that unidentified friend of hers watching from the hallway.
The other parts of dreams are less clear in my mind, the first being fixed both because of the impact and the fact that I went to the bathroom after waking up. I really don’t recall how the second one got to its final part, though it does seem to have been an attempted continuation of the first, but at the end I recall a giant mosquito that I meant to kill but which was taken on a hand or foot, possibly also by my mother, and pushed towards me as I was trying to get away. Really don’t know if that was the second time I screamed or not, nor many details about the third part, which I believe ended with me staring into some large recipient with some milky fluid that was obviously draining through some hole at the bottom and something or someone was caught in it, spinning and spinning and getting sucked in. And there may be one I’m forgetting completely here, as I seem to recall thinking right away that there were four parts that were somehow connected and I believe the next two weren’t.
Or even those might have been, or at least one of them, but they don’t seem so anymore, just seeming somehow connected to each other though I seem to remember thinking they weren’t. Either way, one had something about an experiment that had to be done on sick tiger cubs and some workers were trying to figure out which tiger cubs to grab according to which tiger mothers may be aware that their sick cubs that are taken away by humans may come back cured, but may be an affordable loss if they’ll now learn that sometimes they may not come back at all. And the other was about a group taking a trip on a road running through a forested area when they came upon a few bear cubs playing, with no sign of the mother, and those leading the group had gathered together on the other side of the road from the cubs, trying to decide what to do.
Now I’m wondering whether the second scream didn’t come at the end of that dream that I think I forgot, while at the same time wondering if I forgot any at all, because the number otherwise seems right. Also, wondering if I didn’t also scream when I took a nap and at first dreamed I was battling a demon trying to possess me and losing, and it didn’t seem that I was dreaming, everything being otherwise just as it had been when I got in bed and not recalling falling asleep. Also wondering whether that was yesterday or two days ago. Everything is a mess… And I sure used to be good at lucid dreaming. Guess I’ll need some practice again, if this keeps up.

Later edit: I was in the kitchen, getting ready for dinner, when Micky walked in and curled up on the seat, which reminded me of the dream part I had been forgetting. Didn’t remind me of too much, but I know it had something to do with Bubu, old and arthritic, positioning himself to sleep on me in such a manner as to ensure he’d be in pain if I moved. May have involved him doing something else after being woken up as a result of this, as I remember looking at him on the floor, and may have been a part of the same dream that ended with the giant mosquito instead of a separate part, but I remembered this much at least.

I’d like to be able to say that something’s being done regarding the manner in which green spaces are being massacred in my Sector, as that was bad before and has now gotten significantly worse after the Sector 3 mayor was reelected with over 60% and also has the full support of the new mayor of Bucharest. Sadly, the known groups and activists don’t seem to be taking on the matter, so there’s nothing to state here about that and not that much visibly done either way. A few locals and some of USB’s local councilors are trying to document as much as they can and file complaints for possible lack or violation of approvals, but there’s no significant public action or any real call for anything of the sort and, either way, work continues unabated and trees 30 to more than 50 years old are being hacked apart and chopped down at a truly frightening rate.

I’d also like to be able to add something new about the proposed new public gatherings law I was mentioning in the previous post, but there has been almost complete silence on that as well, even the page created for it having no new posts since July 11. Alex included it in a post about the issues that will be tackled in the near future, but even that promised method of submitting comments is still nowhere to be seen and when I asked him about it he said it was decided to delay releasing it and any other actions regarding this are likely to wait until autumn… Which seems very strange from where I’m standing, because while it’s true that summer is a bad time to get any significant number of people together to do something visible and the real fight regarding this issue will probably come after the Parliamentary elections, a project such as this shouldn’t simply be formally submitted and then pretty much forgotten about.

But to get back to actual public events in Bucharest, there was a sort of flash mob yesterday, between 11 AM and 11:30 AM, across the road from the City Hall. It was also posted on the group, but was actually organized by an NGO that actually filed a notification for it and came to an agreement with the authorities, which obviously also meant the participants were fenced in on a stretch of sidewalk, but this time those fences were actually useful in at least stopping the larger balls from ending up in the street, as long as they didn’t bounce or get thrown over them. Unfortunately, one went over the other fence and into the river.
The reason for this protest was that, after one of the first statements made by the new mayor of Bucharest after taking office was that she was bothered by Kiseleff Boulevard being shut down to traffic over summer weekends in order to open the area to people wishing to play sports, she wasted little time in moving from words to actions, canceling the Via Sport event, which was currently in its seventh year. At first she proposed alternate locations, such as parks, but the entire point of the event was to take over a central road and hand it over to people, the motto being specifically: “Stop traffic! Start playing!” So, when the organizers didn’t agree with her proposal and their approvals were in order, she decided the markings must be repainted on that stretch of road and that will take a long time and the location can’t be used for such events during that period.
As such, a first visible response was this event, people being asked to come and play right across the road from the City Hall during working hours, albeit only on the sidewalk. There were obviously never going to be many participants, being on a weekday during working hours and also in the summer, so somebody else tried to create another event taking place in the same spot at 8:30 AM, but I heard pretty much nobody showed up then, while a few dozen people did attend the 11 AM one. And I was one of them, though other than wearing my running pants instead of those I usually go out in and stretching a little and awkwardly lifting myself up on my arms on that fence by the river a couple of times, I stuck to taking some pictures.

As for the Certej issue also mentioned in the previous post, after last week’s good news came the bad on July 27, when it was shown that work continues in spite of the court sentence and people were asked to file complaints, the call being taken up by known groups and activists. The police did already investigate to confirm the obvious, but it remains to be seen what, if anything, will actually be done about it and whether it’ll actually have the desired effect.

This month’s story should be the proposed new public gatherings law, which a few activists and Remus Cernea worked on and which he submitted to the Parliament on July 1. However, after a brief initial push to announce this as a major event and promises to quickly release tools to gather comments and suggestions for improvement before taking to the streets and staging various other events in order to both create awareness and show support, the matter seems to have mostly been dropped, which is quite strange and worrying in itself.
As such, with these posts mainly being protest reports and there being no protest or other public event to report regarding the issue, I had little reason to mention it so far… And equally little reason to write more about it now, other than to say I sure hope things will change, because that proposal needs massive changes in order to actually be a good thing, and then it will need to be pushed through against the will of the politicians, so the only chance is to push them in every way possible, and at the moment none of that seems to be happening.

So what I’ll be writing about now are the two silent, “standing man” protests that took place in front of the Turkish Embassy this Wednesday and Thursday, as a reaction to the “witch hunt” that was the Erdogan regime’s response to the recent attempted coup, seeing how it was used to purge all sectors of any trace of known or potential critics, suspend human rights and entrench an obvious dictatorial regime, making the foreseeable future terrible and terrifying to even think about for anyone except the loyalists. There was a petition at first, released on July 17, demanding a reaction from our authorities, but what official statements were released were even in explicit support of the regime, so somebody had to at least react to what was happening in some visible manner and any members of the Turkish community who may have been inclined to do so failed to make that position public, probably out of fear.
As a result, a first such protest was announced for July 20, starting at 7 PM. While I didn’t attend myself, I did see a few pictures and a little description, plus one more picture better showing the group of supporters of Erdogan, which I heard was in large part made up of embassy staff, who were already there at the time. Obviously, that made for quite a tense situation, all of seven Romanians showing up to silently protest outside the Turkish Embassy against a regime that a larger and noisy group of Turks was there to support. Don’t see anything about actual incidents though, but it remains to be seen whether there will be any fines, since the gendarmes definitely weren’t happy about the protesters.
It was somewhat different the next day, when I also at least showed up, though I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t actually take part in the protest, feeling too edgy in spite of the much calmer situation and only sort of hovering around and taking a few pictures. A couple of minutes after 7 PM, when I arrived, about a dozen protesters and a similar or even larger number of journalists were already there, and the number of protesters eventually peaked at around 20 around 8 PM, when I also left, after seeing one or two peel away from the group, what I saw later saying that the rest left very shortly after that as well. There were no supporters of Erdogan this time around, so the event was calm and silent, and I made note of the great discipline of most protesters, who truly stood pretty much motionless during that time, also not interacting with the gendarmes except to calmly and silently present their cards when asked for identification. There were even at least a couple who refused to move at all even then, prompting the gendarmes to search their pockets and backpacks until they found their cards, which they also calmly put back after copying the information.
No other events were announced after that, so we’ll see whether anything else will happen. It depends to some extent on what else Erdogan will do, but I’d say it depends mostly on what the Turkish community here does, as the lack of reaction of those who oppose that regime sends a terrible message. Back in 2013, it was the Turkish community that quickly reacted and came out in support of the Gezi Park protests and against the regime’s reaction to them, before a Romanian NGO organized a protest in front of the embassy for the same reason, which Romanians and Turks attended in similar numbers, but now there’s very little public reaction and what is there is usually unfortunately in favor of the regime. The notable exception was the General Manager of the Lumina University, part of the Lumina group of educational institutions, who took an explicit stance against the regime, not shying away from calling it “pure dictatorship” and the real coup taking place after the Turkish ambassador requested all institutions belonging to the group to be shut down. However, even he mentioned he personally dissuaded a person who contacted him wanting to protest in front of the embassy because of it, saying they’ll take the necessary measures to protect themselves through official channels, protests not being the way they do things.

On a completely different note, some good news regarding cyanide mining came on July 22, but the event itself took place the day before, when the construction permit for the site management facilities of the Certej tailings dams was suspended by the Court. This is the second attempt to obtain a permit and the second one struck down, though not even this particular battle can be considered over when an appeal is to be expected. The war itself, against cyanide and open-pit mining in general, has a long way to go yet, but Certej is at least the second major project successfully challenged so far.