The Olympics Seep In

In the NYC Park and Recreation swimming pool down the block. I swim faster, vigorously, since on my retina the Rio Olympics unfold. I don’t understand the rules of the swimming competitions, or even swimming styles. All I engage in is my frog stroke. It’s an approximation of breast stroke and butterfly, I was told by savvier swimmers at the gym swimming pool in winter. They insisted I should sink my head in the water, but I can’t do that at our neighborhood pool. Swimmers share wide lanes during the early morning lap swim hours. I rotate my head like a periscope. I have to watch out for the careless back-strokers to avoid frontal collision. I surely don’t want to start my day in a Titanic wreck.

During day there are no lap swim lanes, the pool turns into a zoo. Crab hermits congregate on the pool ramp and steps, blocking your access. The floor is dangerous to step on, since queen conch shells covered in barnacles don’t budge, busily working on their pink pearls. Your serene swimming is hindered by papa sea lions dipping their squealing pups in water, majestic whales snorting menacingly at you, their calves frolicking under their protective bellies, or by dazed catfish with their fingerlings pulling at their barbel-moustaches, or alarmed frogs, basking on pool edges, squawking loudly as they dive to rescue their overconfident tadpoles engaged in underwater breath-holding contests, or teenage sea horses clutched amorously, or islands of rapping seagulls, or the occasional mermaid, slaloming through clusters of ponderous pelicans, searching for their mermen, attacked by quarrelsome Medusas, or lazily hanging out with Rastafarian octopuses, anyway, not to belabor my point, playful bathers pop up in front of you from the water, splash, jump, ignoring your ‘efforting’.

So when a teenage girl follows me around and finally asks me smiling what kind of swimming is that, I apologetically say it’s my one of a kind frog style. When she asks me how I move my legs, arms, I realize she wants to learn to swim. I demonstrate. She eagerly imitates my arm moves. She moans she’ll never be able to swim. I encourage her, she will swim in no time, much better than me, if she registers for free swim classes. I want to get on with my ten-lap quota, that is ten pool lengths. In the morning I manage twenty pool widths. I’m a slow poke, but I came a long way.

I grew up in a dusty little town with no river or lake or clean swimming pool, the seaside was 400 kilometers away, and mom was terrified of water, fearful I’d drown or catch diseases. When I swam my first lap a few summers ago I thought I’d die, my heart was pounding out of my chest, my lungs were agonizing, my feet were shackled in cramps. All this in a sad four-feet-deep pool surrounded by eight lifeguards. So to me frogging twenty laps in half an hour is winning gold at the Olympics.

What those swimmers do in Rio is unbelievable. I’m in awe that they manage to jump into the water timely. I’d be still gasping for air on my trampoline, debating if I heard the start signal or not, while they’d be finishing the race, go on the podium, take their medals, travel back to their countries.

But according to my Yoga teacher I’m a gold medalist just for the mere fact that I show up on Thursdays at her Yoga class. As far as she is concerned, I could snooze on the matt in Child’s Pose, well, maybe that would be uncomfortable, but in Corpse Pose, and still win a medal for my ‘efforting’. Well, the municipality pays for this class, so some follow her advice, but were they to pay from their own pockets I bet they’d like to get more bang for their money than a nap on a matt. Anyway, the teacher’s point is that Yoga class is not a competition arena. No judges, no judgment.

If only I could reach that stage of enlightment, life would be so much easier, so much rosier. It’s a daily struggle not to pass judgment. I blame it on being raised during Ceauşescu’s socialism. My theory is that officially we were supposedly all in it together, so everybody goaded everybody, criticized one another. Everybody’s choices and actions affected everybody else. We all had to attain Epoca de Aur/The Golden Age of Communism as a group, not individually, slow pokes and Olympians alike.

We stand tall in Mountain Pose, eyes closed, listening to our teacher about the new women’s gymnastics world champion, a nineteen-year-old that smiles effortlessly and treats herself to pepperoni pizza even when she doesn’t win gold. She is the greatest gymnast of all times ever, the teacher enthuses, she can do poses that even male gymnasts have trouble with, she is so strong, so playful. The best.

I just can’t keep my eyes closed. I squeeze my eyelids, but I just can’t meditate. How could this American girl, the new world champion, be the best ever?! Nadia Comăneci is the best ever. Ever, ever, ever! Without Nadia there’s no modern gymnastics! Plus Nadia was born in Romania, and so was I, and you are now telling me Simone Biles is the greatest ever, ever? No, no, no! Nadia Comăneci is ever, ever, ever! I was a child when I watched wistful Nadia, a child herself, competing in Montreal, making the billboards go 00.00, because the machine had no 10.00 score for her perfection. I watched the world go berserk with wonder.

Then when she competed in Moscow the Russians cheated and stole the gold from her, because Russia’s might would trample us under its boot. I watched in tears her trainers withdrawing the team from the competition. That was the last sports competition I ever watched. It made me sick for decades. Only this summer visiting a dying friend I indulged her and watched together one evening’s broadcast to see if a Hungarian swimmer would make us proud. To my surprise I was so happy to see so many driven youth. Nowadays it’s cool to drift aimlessly, alas. Those swimmers, faces so young. It was endearing to hear their rehearsed speeches of gratitude. If you beat your competitor with just one millisecond you became the winner. Ridiculous. I’d give all finalists medals.

And then, at the gymnastics there was Nadia in the bleachers. And Marta Karolyi. And the American team wins. There’s only one lonely Romanian gymnast competing, not even a team. It was heartbreaking. What happened?! Romania was a powerhouse! We defined modern gymnastics! And now America wins it all?! What happened?!

Well, dear Ella, funny you should ask. Where do you live? In America. Where’s Nadia? In America. Where are the Karolyis? In America. Who wins? America. The safe harbor we all seek.

Simone Biles is a sweet girl, from foster care to gold medal, what an inspiring, from-rags-to-riches story, sure, but don’t tell me she is the greatest of them all. There’s an entire team of Romanians behind her. The Karolyis gave America fifteen world champions, nine Olympic champions, over seventy medals, and on and on the list goes. I don’t know if Nadia had privileges in Romania, if she had enough food to eat or was starving like the rest of us under communism, if she was freezing in her home, like the rest of us, or if she treated herself to pepperoni pizza, but I know that behind her was the sadness and joy, the humiliation and pride of the little country of Romania.

And now they have nothing. That is partly their politicians doing, alright. That is partly our doing, because we ran away for dear life, alright. But it is also part of beloved America’s doing, gulping in everything. Look at the many Easter European names that American champions have.

Sure, it is for the greater good, for humanity’s good.

But, please Yoga teacher, even if you were not born when Nadia was a world champion, you surely have heard of her…

New York City

August 12, 2016

Switching from Corporate to Community Work To Make Bucharest A Pleasant Home, Void of Stray Dogs and Abundant in Green Spaces

Since bad news travels fast, I fear you’ve heard about Bucharest, the capital of Romania, in the context of the four-year-old child killed a few days ago by stray dogs in a park. I fear you think Bucharest is a horrible place.
Let it be said that there are people who have struggled to make it a better space. In the summer of 2011 while visiting back in Romania I wanted to meet shakers and movers who tried to make a difference against terrible odds, and here is one of them.

Ella Veres: We’re in Victoria Square, in a Starbucks, of all places, with Alina Kasprovschi, executive director of Bucharest Community Foundation.
Alina Kasprovschi: First, let me clarify how did we arrive at the idea of creating a community work foundation in Bucharest? It was a happy meeting of our desires to act and a national program that is developing this year focusing on community work foundations. I don’t know if you are familiar with this term? A community work foundation is an organization that gathers local resources and then redistributes them to local improvement projects, not necessarily our own projects, that is we help others with their community work projects, teach them how to create one, or others that already exist and need our support, be it financial or volunteer work, or experts like accountants, IT workers, physicians, and I’ll give you specific examples.
I’m aware that in the U.S.A. and Canada each locality has its own community foundation that deals with local issues and doesn’t wait for the mayor’s office, like we do, or E.U., to solve our problems.
It’s a gamble to establish such a community foundation in Bucharest, since it’s a large, divided city, each individual here is busy with his job, his family, and his small circle of friends outside of which he has no interest. Caught in the heavy traffic he curses, ‘Damn, I’ll be late again! And this awful dust and pollution! No green spaces! I’m powerless about all this. Well, then I’ll isolate in my own cocoon and I’ll try and go on with my life, ignoring what’s going on in this damn city.’
This is what we’d like to change, so people start involving themselves in community work. Our mission statement is to invest the time, money and energy of Bucharestians in our community, so we feel at home here, because we don’t anymore. Many of us have to stay here because this is where money is made, there are many large companies and work opportunity, but for a young family it’s not advisable to raise children in Bucharest. You have to because you have no choice, but otherwise, no. So this is what we’d like to change.
I’ll tell you a story that I love telling: I assume you heard of Habitat for Humanity? They build homes for people who can’t afford to have a decent house, they live crammed in one apartment or small house full of mold or other problems. People who have an income but not large enough to take a bank loan to buy a house, and this situation… Just the mere thought that they live seven people in one room and how horrible that is curtails their wings, their development. So Habitat for Humanity puts these people together with other volunteers, neighbors, friends, relatives, and they build their new house together. Habitat for Humanity gives them construction materials, the town hall donates the land, and they have to pay back in installments, interest-free, the money going into other construction projects for other poor people’s homes. Why I’m saying that it inspired me, is that three years ago I worked in a large American company, and we had a team building with Habitat for Humanity while we built a house. I loved it. I’ve never built anything in my life, only Ikea furniture, I feared I’d ruin people’s materials and I’d be of no help, but instead I found myself surrounded with positive energy generated by my fellow office workers. We knew each other from work, we made money together, but as human beings we were never together, so seeing with our own eyes what was our contribution, brought us very close together.
When you work in a large company, I had this feeling myself, that’s why I didn’t want to work anymore in a large company, you keep on asking yourself, ‘Okay, but what am I doing actually? What is the use of what I’m doing in this world, besides that, okay, the company value grows, and the company bond/share price grows on Wall Street, so on so forth, but what do I actually leave behind me in this world?’ and I wasn’t satisfied at all about that, though I worked very much and I had a lot of money and much professional satisfaction, but as a human being, no personal satisfaction whatsoever.
So then I decided I’d gather my friends and build a house thru Habitat for Humanity. It was the first time in Romania that someone donated their personal time, and didn’t participate thru a team building workshop. We paid our hotel, our overalls, our gloves and hardhats. After two days of working together it was an extraordinary feeling to have done something palpable and looked with our heads leaned back at the raised house and think, ‘Oh, I’ve never thought I’d be able to do such a thing!’ And I proceeded to do this for an entire summer. I kept on fetching my friends to build houses. Then this idea ka-chinged/this bell rang in my head…
This was happening in Bacău County, so we’d also drive five hours by car, we’d leave on a Friday morning at 6 a.m., stop at gas station, everything was dark and deserted, while we were all cheery that we go build houses. It was very strange to realize that people go at 9 a.m. to do office work, all morose, ‘Oh, I’m so very sleepy!’ while here we were at 6 a.m. and no one was whining sleepy though we went to hammer nails and paint walls using paint rollers.
That’s when I decided this is what I want to do in life: I want to do good deeds for people, and I want to put people together to do good deeds. And I thought about people exactly like myself: corporate workers, who keep on working while thinking, ‘I’d like to do something else. But I don’t know where, or when, so I’ll keep on plodding along with my life, and if something crosses my path, then alright, if not, it shall remain just a dream, like many other unfulfilled dreams.’
So when I… I have a child, today he is one year and two months, so in a way it’s his birthday since we still count the months. So when I gave birth I said, ‘Alright, I want to take advantage of the maternity leave,’ Romanian state pays two years of maternity leave, which is extraordinary compared with the U.S.A. where as far as I know is only about 10 weeks, so I said, ‘Okay, this is a period in which I can experiment. I can try one project and if it works out, then I’ll keep at it, if not, well, besides giving birth to a child, I also birthed a foundation.’
It was perfect timing because the community foundation movement was just looking for people who could fit their mission, so I started working out of the maternity ward! Skype conferencing with the other group members, before giving birth, then I stopped talking for about two weeks, and I discovered, ‘Look, how great it is that I have time to stay home to take care of the baby, and is so much better than taking him to a nursery school or leave him with a baby sitter, while I can also work.’ My previous job wouldn’t have allowed me to do this. I had to work a lot of overtime for that company, travel a lot abroad, from my p.o.v. it was an unacceptable way of raising my child. This was the most important thing, that I could raise my family and not sacrifice it for my profession.
Okay, so last year we got started. We understood the concept, that we are a kind of brokers of good causes, we look for those good causes and then we pair them with people that can give them support. We started gathering money, we didn’t want to put our own money, but we got smaller amounts of money from other people like us, and I do believe that our concept will work, even if Bucharest is a large, agitated city. It’s quite an effort to gather money from individuals and not go to a company and ask for sponsorship. But we wanted to do it this way, even if economically is not that efficient, because we wanted to see what support we have from the community.
Besides asking people for their money we also polled them on several questions, but the main ones were: what are the things they’d like changed in Bucharest, and what would they be willing to invest: money, time, energy, or their contact network.
So we chose five projects we’ll work on during our first year: the foremost by far was volunteering for the community. Exactly like we did with Habitat for Humanity, people want to invest two hours and when they look behind be able to say, ‘Wow! I’ve built something! I can see the difference!’ This was a recurring answer.
Then we’ll deal with children issues. There are many problems in this field: from education to, let alone I don’t even talk about abandoned children, but what happens to children when their parents work 12-hour shifts and they’re with the baby sitter or in an after-school program, lacking the kind of education we’d wish for them.
Another project that raised interest was creating green spaces, ecological cleaning, so on, and the fourth project is, very visible in Bucharest, probably you’ve noticed it, stray dogs, community dogs. Many persons said it was important and they’d get involved, but well, some said, ‘I personally want to work on this! I personally, with my very hands, want to kill them and turn them into gloves!’ Others would say, ‘No! I want to find shelters or families who could adopt them!’ The opinions vary, people are very passionate/fiery on this issue, which is why I think the dog problem continues, because people could never agree what we want to do with these dogs, and while we still can’t agree with each other, they keep on multiplying more and more and become an even huger nuisance.
Okay, so out of these five topics we chose four. Our first project we work now is…  
EV: But let’s talk a bit more about these dogs. I see them everywhere sprawled on the sidewalks in the sunshine.
AK: We’ll get to the dogs too. Our first project is called ‘Volunteering Bursa’ thru which we go to people like us, corporate workforce, who’d like to do something, but don’t know where, don’t know how, and we ask them, ‘Okay, in what field would you like to volunteer and for how many hours?’ Then we find them a project, not ours, but one that’s already running. We found out there are very many of them in Bucharest, and we had no clue they existed. It’s amazing how many are and how diverse and how beautiful they are, but nobody knows about them. So that’s what we want to do, connect people with these projects. We are in the phase of visiting and figuring out their needs. They are so diverse, from social problems of children, old people who need help, to health, ecology, animal rights, women’s rights, culture, art, architecture, urbanism. We found about 12 fields, which will help with matching volunteers to something they take real interest in.
Then we want to launch a project that will stretch for several years, that will have several rounds of financing, we call it ‘100 Tiny Ideas Can Change a Large City’. The idea is to find small projects that we can help develop by matching them with sponsors. We’d like to create blogs for them, so that people can read about the experiences of those who get involved with community work and how this impacts on their lives. Why is it important to do this? To educate the population. I believe it’s also a matter of education in Romania.
The third project is, there are many in London, and I heard also in Germany, called ‘Vegetable Gardens in Parks’. In London, I don’t know if you’ve heard, there are vegetable gardens in parks where, you might even have to pay an entrance fee, you can see how a tomato grows. People take their children over the weekend and hoe the tomatoes, and explain the children that, ‘Vegetables don’t grow in supermarket, and look what do the bees do, and the butterflies,’ so on, and then other topics connect with this, healthy food, how to cook it and so on.
Now we arrived at the dog project. Such divergent views, but everybody agrees upon that it’s not okay to have loads of stray dogs in the streets. So then what should we do? We arrived at the conclusion that we can’t have extreme solutions, like killing all of them. They did it in Botoşani, one night someone killed all the dogs in town. It was an inhumane act which you don’t want to repeat, no matter how upset you might be that a dog bit you it’s not acceptable to think about exterminating all the 100,000 dogs that roam in Bucharest. What would the simultaneous death of 100,000 dogs mean? It’s unacceptable.
But on the other hand they can’t continue being on the streets and multiplying, so on. So we had to look at the bottom of the problem, what’s the cause of it, since at present many dogs are fixed, and still puppies show up. Where do these puppies originate from?! If you take a look at them the majority have earrings, which signifies that they had been fixed. Veterinarians estimate that a street dog lives maximum five years. So in theory they should stop being a nuisance in five years, yet we struggle with this problem for the last 20 years.
Speaking with several animal protection organizations we found out that the puppies appear because people who own dogs don’t fix them, and they throw their new litters on the streets. So if we’d round up all the community dogs off the street, come spring we’ll have the problem again because dog owners will throw the new puppies in the streets, and they turn into community/stray dogs again and again. So we created a project to go to the source of the puppy problem, to convince yard dog owners to fix them. Well, they have various convictions that a dog shouldn’t be sterilized because then it doesn’t bite anymore and doesn’t protect the house anymore, turns fat and lazy, so we, together with a veterinarian, have to explain them it’s not so. Plus though we have free sterilizing services, still they don’t take advantage of them because they think that for sure it costs something.
We’ll have communication campaigns in which we’ll go door to door with our volunteers and explain that everything is free, and they’d get rid of the problem of throwing non-stop puppies in the streets. Let alone how many puppies die crashed by cars. And how many end up at veterinarian clinics. Puppies are thrown in the clinic yards over the fence, since it’s a veterinarian clinic, isn’t it, they have to love them, and so on.
We have a family friend who is a veterinarian. She is overwhelmed with despair. Each spring and fall, every morning she opens the gate and finds a crate of puppies, some barely born, and being veterinarian she loves animals and can’t kill them all, even that okay, euthanasia is a humane solution, well, it is and it isn’t, so all kinds of artificial solutions are floated, like international adoptions. But you can’t adopt thousands of dogs. And if you send them for adoption and the problem reappears next season, what have we done then?! This is our next project, we’re still researching, when are the dogs making puppies, when is the best time to sterilize them, so in spring we’ll roll our communication project to convince people to sterilize their dogs.
EV: Could you connect me with your veterinarian friend?
AK: Sure.
EV: I’ve never seen a stray dog in New York, or in London.
AK: From what I’ve seen on TV dogs are euthanized there. And probably is okay to euthanize 100 stray dogs, but we have 100,000 dogs! And many people are attached to their dogs, many live in apartment blocks. They take care of them, they sterilize them. It’s our case too, we have dogs, but I can’t take 50 of them in. I also have a cat, and a child… But it’s alright. If someone would come up and say they must be euthanized, which it actually happened. There are all kinds of absurd situations, like when people hear the hingherii/dogcatchers/dog-killers/flayers are coming, they hide the dogs in the apartment building, then they let them out again. It’s a horrific hunt/chase. People feel they are at war with the town hall, it simply doesn’t work, aside of the question of morality and justice, it doesn’t work. People will always find a solution to hide the dogs even if they don’t keep them in their house and after a day they show up again.
EV: So there still are hingheri/dogcatchers/dog-killers/flayers?
AK: Sure. But now they are not allowed to euthanize them. When was Băsescu the Bucharest’s mayor? In 2,000, around then. He won the elections because he promised to sterilize the dogs, so on, but in a year he changed his mind, he said: euthanasia, all dogs had to die. So what happened was that the dogcatchers/dog-killers/flayers/hingheri came, you had 24 hours to pick up your dog from the shelter, which didn’t quite work out, because until you figured out where was your dog, they didn’t quite wait for 24 hours, they’d euthanize them promptly upon arrival. All kinds of alarmed arguments and rumors broke loose. That dogs were killed by bludgeoning them up with bats. Everybody felt under siege, ‘Let’s protect our dogs! Let’s bribe the hingheri/dogcatchers/dog-killers/flayers so they don’t come, or announce us when they’ll come so we know to hide our dogs timely!’
Again, it was not a civilized solution, and it just didn’t work at all. So, they might be sterilized, but still here they are in the street.
EV: I never thought about what happens to them in shelters. I thought people adopted them.
AK: I watch a lot of TV and I know that they have very strict criteria. If the animal is showing signs of illness or aggression, they don’t have funding to deal with it, they euthanize it. Half of the animals ending in shelters in the U.S.A. are euthanized, which is again, a lot. And the adoption system is much more developed than in Romania. Here the problem is that you don’t have 100,000 people in Bucharest to adopt them all. They would have adopted them by now. There’s supply but no demand, economically/marketwise doesn’t work. [Gently laughs]
EV: We should move from dog issues now.
AK: Sorry.
EV: The fault is but mine. Could you recall any family model that made you want a more meaningful life? Or an anti-model?
AK: All I can say is that I was born in a country where isn’t much community work involvement. I think of my family as a family of kind people.
EV: Were you born in Bucharest?
AK: No, I attended university and settled in Bucharest, but I’m from Galaţi. My parents often let kids from the orphanage come to our house, and they’d give them stuff, but it wasn’t a constant thing, and we, their own children, weren’t coerced into following their example.
What happened was that before ’90 orphans were not allowed to get out of orphanages. They were like jails. You know how the conditions were, in two words: horrific, dreadful. [Gently laughs embarrassed] Then after ’90 they were allowed to go out during day, and returned in the evening to sleep. But since there were all kinds of shortages, they had no food, they started to beg. They’d knock on doors in apartment buildings and beg for food, for clothing. I remember that we became attached to some kids that came to us, and my mother called them to come constantly. She placed them at our table and gave them good clothing, not rubbish that she’d throw to the garbage anyway. And I’d give them school supplies.
But it’s not that it made a deep impression on me. I just discovered on my own when I was a teenager that I liked being kind to people. It makes me feel good. It’s in a way a selfish feeling. I nurture my positive energy by doing good deeds for people. This is how I function, without being able to say why or how. The more I do it, the better I feel, so were I to make a profession out of it, life would be beautiful. It’s every working person’s dream.
On the other hand I’ll never make the money I made working for a multi-national corporation working in a foundation, for you want to use the foundation money on good deeds, not on team-building trips abroad. We are three people working full time and we want to keep it as slim as possible, with a minimal overheard. We got our laptops as donations, our headquarter is in a beautiful villa, you’d think, God, we have plenty of money to afford it, but we were given office space by the Romanian American Foundation. They let us use their water and the internet, so we don’t have to pay anything. We try to find all kinds of ways of keeping it on a shoe string so we can use the money truly for the community.
EV: How did the family react when you informed them you’re done with corporatism?
AK: Everybody is okay with it. My father is a doctor. For him his profession, that he likes, means money and status. ‘Be careful what you do. Think: you have a nice position!’ He is more materialistic. My husband is very supportive of me. He is one of the ten persons involved in the foundation. He works in a PR company, and he helps us very much by connecting us with people. He is the one who supports us financially, since during this period I receive an amount of money from the state, but I work as a volunteer for the foundation. I’m in a totally different income bracket than a year ago.
EV: Haven’t you exhausted your contacts? ‘Oh, dear me, here she comes again!’
AK: No, no. They’d come to me saying, ‘I’d like to do something, I have money but I don’t know whom to give it to.’ They’d come to me like to their good-deed adviser, and they keep on coming. I try not to wear them down. When I see they lack interest I don’t force myself on them. Not everybody takes an interest in it, it’s alright.
It’s true, now, being a stay-at-home mom, and developing this foundation, and taking care of the kitchen, I don’t have much time for friends, but nor did I have time before to hang out in bars and restaurants, since I worked 12 hours a day, so it’s not like I lost my friends because I’m preoccupied by community work.
Some laugh at me, ‘Well, now, you got your insurance to go to Heaven.’ Or, ‘You’re an idealist. You’ll see pretty soon reality.’ Or, ‘People are mean, everybody just takes care of himself.’ And ‘Why do you need to rescue Bucharest?’ and such… But I don’t feel any need to rescue Bucharest, Bucharest doesn’t exist, it’s an entity without a soul, it’s us who make Bucharest.
Once we were arguing about what happens to Bucharest because they demolish the city, they build suspended highways, and there are many initiative groups and foundations that mount protests and they asked us, ‘What is your position on this matter?’ My answer was, ‘I don’t care much about the buildings, but about the people inside and outside the buildings. That’s where my interest is.’ A country might be utterly run down, but if its people are united, that’s the real richness, beyond statistics on income, and so on. It’s important how united are its people.
EV: As if there’s movement along the lines you march yourself. Or do you experience insularity?
AK: Not at all. Or, I do feel insular, but because there are many little islands close to each other and we’re just discovering each other now. Ten years ago few people did anything, Romanians didn’t get involved in community work. It was rather foreigners who came with aid. But nowadays many local people have a lot of good ideas. Only many stay at that stage, of good idea, or small project that only 20 persons heard of it. It’s a beautiful idea, but we can help it grow.
EV: So, the future?
AK: I think this will work out well. Not because I hope and wish so, but because I talked to many people, at events like Street Delivery we were talking about earlier, and we saw there is a common denominator, and many people we didn’t know, offered their contact info so we keep them informed about developments and they tell us it’s very interesting, and shoot us looks of doubt, ‘You’re idealistic. It won’t work.’ but with a positive, hopeful doubt, like they’d like it to happen, but they are in disbelief that it shall. There is real potential for people getting involved in community work, all they need is a movement to carry them over.
I asked someone how should we attract more people, and we were advised to, ‘Take baby steps, don’t mention rescuing Bucharest, because it’s a scary, daunting task, so far off, and they’ll flee in horror, better mind their own business. But if you tell them, ‘Look today I need you as a volunteer for two hours,’ and tomorrow, ‘I’d like a bit of money for another thing,’ then next week, ‘Would you bring your friends to plant trees?’ it’s not that scary any longer and slowly, slowly people realize that they are working for themselves, not for others.’ They don’t amass insurance points for Heaven, but indeed they do something for their own lives, and it’s a different way of spending your free time, than the usual mall, movie, club hopping, so on. It’s a way of feeling good about yourself.
EV: They all seem to mention the Heaven Insurance Policy…
AK: I don’t know how things are concerning Heaven, if this is your question.
EV: I do believe it is.
AK: I don’t know, I’m preoccupied about what I do here. Later I’ll figure it out if it indeed exists, if... I’m preoccupied by the present. I don’t want to see what shall happen from now in 50 years.
EV: Even so, how is your Utopia, how would Heaven look like?
AK: How would Heaven look like? Aside from my spiritual beliefs, an utopian society is a society that all resources, and I’m not referring only to money and food, but also energy, and time, are used exactly for what they are needed and not squandered. And there is a very good connectivity between people, between entities, since there’s talk about what are we doing for nature, or better said, against nature, and what happens with the climate warming and urban sprawling, so on.
Yes, Heaven is that state of equilibrium, of balance in which we all find our place where we are needed and where we can give the most. Utopia would be… yes… how it would be if everybody has, and not necessarily a communist society in which everybody has equal shares, but a society in which no one has overwhelmingly more, or the entities that have too much, willingly redistribute their wealth where it’s needed.
Utopian speaking, I’d like to see our resources going in the right direction, where they are needed and make things work.
EV: So people who are successful financially in their profession, you try to remind them of… All the media noise, so very loud about VIPs. Everything seems to be about money and the people who have it. That they are dubious, arrogant, they isolate themselves, and yet you have the belief that this is untrue… Do tell me: How do you change the tide of their bad press.
AK: Well, I don’t believe that anyone is born bad. And I also don’t believe that a person who has money turns into a bad man, or that making money is a bad thing, and it must be that you made it in a dubious way. I believe that people who have money are all the time besieged by demands and everybody expects that those who have money should solve their problems while they stau cu ochii în soare/bask in the sunshine, without moving a finger, and money should just shower down on them from somewhere. Well, that’s not alright.
I think a different approach is needed for moneyed people, so they see what is their gain, what’s in it for them. That’s why we say in our mission statement that we invest money, time, and energy, and not that we donate them, because really it’s an investment, and these people who have money can see palpable ways how their life changes if they do good deeds in a wise way. Support sustainable projects, that lead to an ulterior development.
As for the press, well, I gave up watching TV, not just because it’s unhealthy for my child to stare at the TV screen, but even before I arrived at the conclusion that if you watch TV you see the entire country is a disaster and nothing works, and everything is bankrupt, and we shall die of hunger tomorrow morning, and IMF will buy us out, if they didn’t already. At times I wonder if all those conspiracy theory of international order are true. But it’s better for me not to even know the truth, so I can live my life the best I can. In the end it’s within my power to do my best, apart from what the government wants, how much money is in our country, how much money we have to pay back to IMF. I think there are resources and values and capital in this country that can make things work. If we focus only on what doesn’t work, and we dissect and we split hairs into four, which is customary on TV, how horrible all is, and why nothing works, were we to look on the other side, how many good things do happen, there would be a different energy that would make things happen.
So I choose to network with people who do just that, focus on what works, on what do we want to build together, what is our responsibility and within our power to do. Street Delivery is such a project, I don’t know if you are familiar with it?
EV:  Like a street fair of good deeds?
AK: The idea is that the street is shut for cars and open for pedestrians, trying to make Bucharest a friendlier place. At Cărtureşti, they being the organizers, they bring in not necessarily foundations and non-profits, but all kind of projects and people who make you feel better in this city, from food to art, theater, music, so on.
We always say our target audience is Cărtureşti fans, people who read, who are interested about what is going on, who want to go places and feel good, creating their oasis of goodness within a desert/waste land of nothing working, badly paved roads and so on. These are the kind of people I choose to be in touch, and it might be an isolationist policy, I might not have an overall view, but what I’ve discovered is that looking only this direction, I see more and more people, and literally I have such wonderful encounters that at times I’m speechless when I realize we’re so many thinking the same way, and this gives me power to keep on going.
Well, now everybody discuses why half of the high school students failed the graduation exams, and our education system is a disaster, and how it would be better to leave the country. I have no clue if this would be better, but when I look at all the things that we could take care of ourselves, without waiting for the government to deal with, or whomever, to solve our problems, and rescue us, I think us individually we could do a lot of good things.
At times I do get scared, ‘What if I’m heading the wrong way? What if when I’m fifty I’ll realize I took the wrong turn and this is it, my life ends, what would I do then?!’
EV: You’d have about 20, 30 more years left though.
AK: Sure, but I might realize this only on the last day of my life, and this scares me. It’s rather against the tide what I’m doing. Well, when I get scared, then I say, ‘Thank you very much. I indeed got scared, now it’s time to get on with my work,’ which is a good sign.
EV: It’s a great thing that your husband is supportive of you.
AK: Indeed. Were I to have to argue about it with him, or justify myself, or be a single mom, probably I wouldn’t… Then our extended family is very helpful. Now my child is with my husband’s father, who is very happy to help us with this, so I never have the feeling that I have to sacrifice something to do what I do. This is very important.
EV: Having in mind that you lived in the corporate culture, you know how to dress, how to put yourself together, and interact so they don’t think you’re dubious. But still how you deal with it. I speak out of personal experience. Something made me think about wealth and kindness at length: Yesterday I met one of my high school friends. I live in America, but I’m a poor person by American standards. I’m an artist that, like you, doesn’t want to have a large overhead, and I operate on a slim, slim, slim budget, so can I maintain my life style, so I can do what I like without interferences.
My high school friend is a construction engineer and has her own company, together with her husband. And they are successful, yet honest people. She tells me they have auctions, I’m not very clear how this works here, but my understanding is that the government auctions its projects, and though they bid a lower price, the government needles them with all kinds of trifles, while others who bid twice as much, win the auction, since they bribe someone in the government.
But in spite of the fact that they maintain their honesty, they are prosperous people. And she told me, ‘Look, my son wanted us to buy him a Mercedes, though I didn’t want a conspicuous Mercedes. Yesterday we went with our shinny Mercedes to drive my mother-in-law to a village in Oltenia. I was awfully embarrassed, just awfully embarrassed, knowing how poor people were in that area.’
So she felt guilty that they were prosperous.
As we were walking in the Peasant Museum area and I told her, ‘How beautiful are these villas. Incredible what sophisticated people lived once here!’ It was strange that she said not that indeed, as I was under the impression that there lived people who were intellectuals, and professionals, who worked hard for generations, but that, ‘All this richness was made on the peasants’ back, they were exploited la sânge/to the bone. Even the museum was created to honor the peasants’ upheaval of 1907.’ I was a bit unsettled. Money is dirty.
Also you know, she owns a company, she needs to keep up her perfect looks. She goes to manicure, to hair salon, wears stylish shoes. I was in a summery dress with flip flops. This is how we go about it in New York. And my hairdo, as you see, is avant-garde, shower and go, no time for hair salons, and suddenly I felt self-conscious, ‘How does she feel about walking with me on her side?’ and I’d think about our income disparity, and things that shouldn’t be thought about in a friendship. I was thinking, ‘Is she embarrassed by me?’ But she actually had a great time! While I was agitated, ‘Well, now that she creates an event for me in her home town, now I’m to go to the manicure and hair salon, so she can be proud of me?!’
Do you have this kind of interior debate? Do you show up in jeans when you approach your potential sponsors?
AK: I do have this kind of interior debate. I know too well how much appearances matter in the corporate world, though it always annoyed me, since it’s a superficial matter. It was awfully annoying that I had to dress in a certain way, like a uniform, since I’m just as bright when I’m wearing a pajama. This is how I was raised. My father is the type of distracted savant, he is one of the… now he retired, but he was one of the best doctors in Galaţi, in the entire geographical region, in Moldavia, in his field. They’d send him patients from as far as Iaşi, saying, ‘You must go to that doctor only for your tests before surgery!’ so on, but on the street if you saw him, nu dădeai doi bani pe el/you’d not think much of him/you’d take him for a beggar/looser. He’d say, ‘What matters is what’s in my head. I don’t give a hoot of what people think about me.’ So I think I grew a bit like this.
But ending up in a corporation I conformed and I became a woman who wears high heels and goes to manicures and hair salons before an important meeting, knowing I had to look impeccable. So I’m torn now. I enjoy looking well put together but I’m not at ease. It’s not the real me. I’m comfortable like this, in a T-shirt and jeans, but indeed when I go to an important meeting, I give up the T-shirt and jeans and it’s alright, this is our convention, no problem. The way we agreed to speak Romanian and not French, so I accept I have to dress in this way. It’s a matter of standards, and it’s okay.
It helps me, comparatively to a person who worked all her life for a foundation, in a non-commercial environment, that I can understand the other side. When a person considers giving me money, he doesn’t do it because I ask him, or because my cause is a good cause, but because he resonates or because he gains something, ‘What’s in it for me?’ you know. Not necessarily that there is an exchange, but that I make them feel better if they give money.
I was thinking awhile ago, that our foundation should be very professional, run exactly like a company, efficient, professional, that sets some goals and pursues them. Not functioning on a whim, like, ‘Oh, well, today I don’t feel like doing this,’ so on. This is a big problem with donors in Romania, no one informs them how the money was spent, they never receive an update, nothing. There was a lot of arguing when with the 2010 flooding. A lot of people were raising money for help, but then later no one knew what happened with that money. ‘We used them for the flooding efforts, thank you very much.’ But we’re talking about millions of Euros. I want our foundation to be very responsible and accountable. If you give me 50 lei, I shall tell you what we’ve done with those 50 lei. Not that, ‘My thanks. I’ll give you a call next year when we’ll need money again.’ This is our principle: transparency, responsibility. Which I might have not had, were I to go straight from college to working for a foundation.
EV: Thank you. If there are any questions I’ve failed to ask you…
AK: Well, I’m passionate about what I do, and often I can’t tell if the one who listens to me sees a clear red thread running thru my speech. Well, there is a detail I’d like to add, they often ask me, ‘Okay, how did this idea come to you? You were all the time away, in meetings, when did you have time to even think things out?’
I always remember with joy how three or two years ago, two years ago, we were on vacation, on the beach, your mind free of the day by day worries, and it came to me, while reading Cousteau’s biography. Jean Jacques Cousteau, the sea explorer. He says there how when he was 35 years old, two children, having an ordinary job, so on, and one day someone invited him, he loved swimming, so he was invited to dive into the sea and test an autonomous diver swimming costume. You know how they used to be, like they were on a space ship, about 50 kilograms heavy, made of iron, and there was a hose thru which the oxygen came. Well, this was more like what we know nowadays, everybody is scuba diving with those things on their back. And he says how when he got in the water, he went for a weekend, and when he looked around in the water, he discovered a world he had no clue it existed, and his entire life changed.
So I often think about how I was on the beach, we were in Costa Rica on our exotic honeymoon. That white sand and those palm trees, everything perfect… and it hit me, ‘It’s not absolutely obligatory to lead a linear life, to keep on working in this corporation, like it or not, and when I retire I shall do what I really like, take my grandchildren to the swimming pool. No, something can show up and everything changes radically!’ and for me it was that moment. What does motivate me personally? And so, after three days...
EV: Did you inform your husband promptly?
AK: Well, it was a long vacation; we had time to discuss matters. Usually on previous vacations we’d try to settle in for three days, enjoy it for one day, then get depressed for the last two days because our holiday ends so quickly. Then we had enough time to thoroughly look at how it would really work out financially, since with our corporate-worker mindset we kept on focusing on financial projections. It seemed feasible. But then we returned to work, and we didn’t have time for much thinking. I wanted to have a baby, and it seemed incompatible to give birth to a baby and start a new project at the same time, it seemed to me you can’t put so much energy in two matters…
EV: One more question: how did it feel to be a Romanian hire for a multi-national corporation? Did you feel exploited, or less than your American counterparts?
AK: I never had the feeling that I’m not their equal. That’s what I liked very much. Well, sure, the corporate bullshit, ‘We’re one large family,’ blah blah blah, but when they restructure the company, the HR announces you your job is gone. But overall I enjoyed being their equal and able to speak to the company vice-president on the same footing, and he’d listen to my opinion and if it was a valid one, he’d act on it, if not, he’d tell me so, without firing me.
It was utterly different than a Romanian company where you had to get past his vigilant secretary to even talk to him, and you’d shake with fear when the director summoned you, what might he have to tell you, and you kept your head lowered, don’t ever contradict him, so on. I didn’t encounter such behavior in this American company. It was a straightforward work relationship and, in the end, efficient, because this is what’s all about, not that if we like it or not, but if it functions.
For me it was an opportunity to work in a multi-national company, as opposed to a Romanian company. Clearly I had many benefits, my salary was larger, the experience I learned, all that training and workshops, I still benefit from now. The most important thing I received from this company during the five years I stayed with it was travel. They had offices all over the world so I traveled more than I’ll even be able to travel to the end of my life. I’ve seen, I don’t even know how many continents. Alright, I’d go to the airport, hotel, then office, and if I was lucky I’d go an hour on the streets in the night, but still it was an extraordinary experience. This is how I’ve seen New York too.
EV: Thank you.
AK: I thank you. I’ve rather talked my head off.

Update: I wrote Alina to see if the foundation is still active, knowing how hard it is for them, and yes, they continue to do their good work. They have new projects, some of their initial ones were put aside, as their efforts got structured.

Here are the links to interviews with several other wonderful people who likewise struggle to make Bucharest a better place:

 

On Altruistic Garbage Picking at National Level, Charitable Head Shaving, Hard Existentialist Questions, and Nightmares of Teeth Falling and Dogs Jumping Off Balconies

The Lessons of Rescuing Centuries-Old, Wondrously Painted, Wooden Churches from Decay

Skinning Alive Frescos Is What We’d Been Forced to Do

Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being one of them, I’d be grateful.

 

New York
September 5^th, 2013

 

The Scourge Cycle: Miracles

In the summer of 2011, during my stay in Romania, I went through a period of spiritual anguish thanks to a jerk. I cursed him and the dame with whom he sneaked behind my back. But my cursing them didn’t help me at all. I then sought solace and forgetfulness. To expedite the process, I endeavored to go on a pilgrimage, since I saw posters plastered on city walls announcing one that weekend. I thought that if Orthodoxy wouldn’t help, maybe the beauty of the Romanian landscape would. And I was curious to see what would happen if I surrounded myself with believers. I walked the mountain paths leading to hermitages and caves of hermits with my fellow pilgrims, I slept in communal bedrooms. I remember fondly how loudly were snoring the blessed tired faithful ones.
Most fondly I remember Silvia, the organizer, a lively, beautiful and elegant woman, with a laughter like tiny bells that for me was more healing than the whole trip.
The names are fictitious because she asked me to avoid publicity for her spiritual endeavor.

I’ve wondered when you said that much of your life is made of miracles and pilgrimages, and you’ve told me about a few miracles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! My life without God wouldn’t exist. In God I trust and God forbid I should get to live without God. So I can say that my life, starting with my youth, I got married at 17, was very unhappy. Fate gave me a man who drinks, he brought upon me so much unhappiness, and I greatly took refuge in fasting and prayers, in the Divine Power. Only in God I found peace, only in God I found consolation.
You’ve started so young?
Yes, and I’d barely finish one fast and I’d start another one, that’s how I lived. Like, always on Fridays, and also other fast after fast, whichever I just heard of. I’d fast and fast, repeatedly, N times, indeed even N times, to make sure that I get good results, I had ambition and I hoped that God would not let me pray in vain, that eventually one day God would bestow on me His goodness.
Then, people knowing me and seeing how much I struggled with my husband who drank a lot, a woman sent me to the Franciscan Church in Cluj. More precisely it’s by the Telephone Company in the Museum Square, the church that is dedicated to Saint Anthony.
There were monks who’d sleep there, I don’t know if they still live there, but monks lived in tiny little rooms along a hallway that lead to the street entrance. And I was received by a priest, an older monk, and I started to tell him about my life, I began to talk to him like to my best friend. Indeed I never said a word about my sorrow to my parents, or to my brother, or my sisters. The only people on earth I’d tell about all my problems were the priests.
But why did you not say anything to your family?
I couldn’t because my mother was rather sickly and it was more than enough what they got to see happening to me. No need for them to know also what they didn’t see. I'm a woman that doesn’t like to cry on anybody’s shoulder. Always in the morning I tell my troubles to God. I kneel down and then I cry for half an hour, one hour, then I tell everything to God, and then I get moving, and I can keep on smiling.
That’s how I dealt with it, I’d say all my problems to priests and monks when I went to monasteries. So I arrived in front of this priest and began to tell him, but I couldn’t talk from crying. I sighed; I could hardly speak thru my tears. And I told him, “Look, how hard it is, and sure, I wanted to divorce him but he told me, he was very bad when he got drunk, raising hell with everyone, jumping on their heads, eager to fight with them, and so I was afraid of him, even more so that he threatened that if I get a divorce he’d kill me.
I also thought if I get a divorce I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t live in the same house with him; it would have been terrible, woe to me if I made him my enemy. And so I had to stay married to him and had to endure so I can raise my children. Saying all this stuff, very troubled, to the priest, at one point I said, "Father, I pray to God so much and I always fast, and God never," I said it with disappointment, "God never listens to my prayers." And then I wiped the tears from my face with my hand, my backhand, as if I see him now, and he says, "I’ll hold a prayer service every evening at midnight. If after this he doesn’t get cured from this disease, then I recommend that you divorce him. It would be a pity to spend your youth this way."
I then, hearing him telling me to divorce, I immediately thought of my children and then as if I saw a child, the little one, pained, my two year old whom my husband loved more, the one that now works with me. And then I saw in front of me how I pulled my older child away and my husband the smaller one. I got so scared and I said, "No, I don’t want a divorce," although nothing tied me to my husband, there was no love between us after so much anguish and suffering, 13 years of it, especially since I didn’t marry him out of love. I was a dumb girl who was ashamed to tell him, "No, man, I don’t love you." And so I had to continue my life. When I told the priest I didn’t want to divorce him, he said, "Well, you kneel down and I’ll pray to God to listen to you in your prayers, since from what you say I see that you pray enough." And I knelt down, I covered my face with my hands, and began to pray. He put his hand on my head, put some book on my head, I know he placed a book and began to pray for me to make God hear me in my prayers.
At one point, I know this stuff didn’t last long, but I prayed, I’ll never forget, I prayed, "Holy God, in whatever form You want and however You can, just stop him from drinking, whichever way You see fit." And then at that point I know I heard a man's voice and two hands appeared in front of my face. The two hands of a man, and the voice said, "Kiss my hands." I got hold of those hands and I desperately kissed those hands, like I never kissed anyone in my life.
I relive these moments... and I could not get enough of kissing those hands. The priest prayed further on and then at some point I didn’t see the hands in front of me anymore. Then I got up and I didn’t know what was going on around me anymore. I know I paid the priest, I took money from my wallet, I don’t know how much money I paid, and I went out. I worked at the Health Department, I don’t even know what street I took from the priest, only that I arrived in front of the Health Department, as if I woke up from a dream. Perhaps it was Memorandum Street or perhaps I came thru the Museum Square, but I don’t know what street I came on. And when I got to the Health Department as if I woke up from a dream and I said, then I saw those palms in front of my face, I saw myself kissing those hands, I heard that voice, "Kiss the hands!" and then fear, unrest, descended upon me, and I said, “Lord,” and I immediately thought that the priest said, “If my midnight prayers don’t help him, then nothing will help him.” And then I thought, "Lord, I offended God. How could I..." and I thought I must have kissed the hands of the priest. "How could I kiss that priest's hands so fondly?! I’ve never kissed anyone like I kissed those hands in my life. How I could kiss his hands! This priest is not sane, to ask me to kiss his hands. I’ve spoken with so many priests but no one did such a gesture.” And then I realized that only to Lord Jesus I would have kissed His hands like this. And that thought gave me no peace all day long.
I went home at night, I took care of the household chores, and in the morning when I came to work, on the bus, I was commuting from the countryside, and when I got off the bus such weakness took over me as if my legs and feet were tied up, like never before, I've always been an energetic person, I didn’t know what was happening to me. Somehow I arrived at the institute. I was alone, since every morning, since I was a commuter, I arrived earlier. Each time I arrived earlier, before the cleaning lady came in, I’d kneel down, I’d put a small icon in front of me, and I’d lift my hands and begin to cry out desperately to God. I was utterly wailing. Only there I could open up, voice all my hardships, knowing nobody could hear me. So that morning I started to pray as usual. I felt so drowsy and powerless. And I thought to myself, “I’ll put my head on the table, on the desk, to rest, just for 5 minutes, until this overwhelming tiredness eases away.” Well, I don’t know how long I rested, but perhaps little, perhaps just a few seconds or minutes, I can’t say, but I found myself in front of the sink at about two meters away from the desk where I rested my head. I woke up shivering all over, like I was shaken by electricity. A voice had woken me up. A female voice. She shouted and my ears could hear her words echoing, like in a forest when you shout in a forest and it echoes. Just that echo sounded in my ears and she told me.... Each word began so very, very loud, that it shook me, and then it faded slowly, gradually until one word ended and then another word began, but the words were very, very spaced out, the woman said those words at intervals, making sure I understood. And she said, "Why do you keep thinking that you did wrong kissing the hands of the priest? No!" And she stressed the no, "No! You didn’t kiss his hands but you kissed the hands of Jesus. And as fondly as you’ve kissed them, so fondly will Jesus fulfill your wishes." These were the exact words that I heard in my ears, the ones that I tell you, so she didn’t say, “Lord Jesus”, she said exactly these words.
When she finished the last word, "wishes", I woke up in front of the sink, shaking all over, and I was scared when I saw how I trembled, and I struggled to catch my hands, to keep my hands steady, to stop the shaking, and I asked myself, I looked around, if someone would have seen me, they’d thought I was crazy. I looked around and I asked myself, "Who has talked to me?" When I said the second time, "Who has talked to me?" a thought came to me, "Our Savior’s Mother shouted from heaven,” for I prayed a lot to the Virgin Mary, for so many years during fasting, for so many times I kept all sorts of novenas in the honor of Our Lady, and I so prayed and cried in front Our Lady’s icon and shouted, "Mother! Mother!" and I’d cry in my despair, "Mother! You’re my Mother who gave me life! Only You can help me! Why have You abandoned me? I am Your child, don’t You see me how I struggle on this earth?" And when I thought that must have been the Mother of God who called from heaven, then my shaking stopped. It simply went away and then I started crying with joy and said, I was convinced that it was Our Lady who called me, and I’m convinced even now that the Mother of God called from heaven, and I said, "Oh, Holy Mother!" I started crying, such a bliss and peace enveloped me. "Our Holy Mother, this means that You talked to Your Son and You know that He listens to my prayers. Then I have to pray even more to deserve His miracle." And then, I know it was mid-week, I’m not sure, I don’t want to lie, but I don’t know if it was Wednesday or Thursday. I think it was a Thursday, I think it was a Thursday, but I won’t lie, because on Thursdays I always keep Saint Rita’s novena. Any issues I have I passionately keep Saint Rita’s novenas. During those 13 years I’ve kept much of Saint Rita’s novenas. Starting with Thursday, that is from Thursday every day: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, until next Wednesday in honor of Saint Rita you don’t eat until noon, and even then only fasting, vegetarian meals, you fast. So one week I’d dedicate my fast to Saint Rita, among other saints’ fasts, among which some were for sure in the honor of the Holy Mother, in honor of Jesus Christ, in honor of Saint Thaddeus, in honor of Saint Theresa. I prayed both to the Catholic and the Orthodox saints. I desperately prayed to Saint Anthony of Padua on many Tuesdays during my fasting.
And, as I’ve said, I decided that I needed to pray more. The next week, I started to pray on Monday, and I hold fast for Our Lady on Monday, for seven weeks. Monday, the first day, the second week on Tuesday, the third week on Wednesday, so on, until the seventh week was on Sunday. Monday, as I say, I started fasting for the Holy Mother, Tuesday, the next day, I started the fast for Saint Anton, for nine Tuesdays, and just the same for nine weeks on Thursday, as I told you, I call Saint Rita my friend Rita from the sky, so I began keeping Saint Rita’s novenas on Thursdays. For a week I ate only from noon onwards.
At that time, oh, how many times my husband got fired because of his drinking! Now he had alcoholic hepatitis, and he wouldn’t keep his diet. When I got home from work I’d always find him drunk, sleeping, and sure I’d start doing the household chores and left him alone. And then one day he wakes up, he was drunk and fell asleep, so he wakes up and he was only in an undershirt, it was summer, and he was all red blotches on his arms and hands, his entire skin was covered in red blotches. And he comes to me scared and shows me his hands and arms and says, "Look how spotted are my hands!" I was expecting any moment, any moment now, to see the wonders and miracles of God, that God begins His work. And so I say, "But do go on drinking." Of course I thought it's from the liver, knowing that he had alcoholic hepatitis, and I say, "Just go on drinking, though you can’t force your liver to endure your bullshit, but do drink on." And I went on with my chores around the house.
Since that moment he didn’t drink for an entire week, in spite of being deeply alcoholic.
After a week he tells me that he’ll come to town to find work, he’d say that to cover up that his body craved drinking. And he went to his sister’s who lived in Mănăştur District. His sister, in vain she served him food, like any other drunkard he only wanted to drink, though his family scolded him not to drink, but this is how it goes with drunkards, you can’t do much. And so she serves him a drink. At that moment, his sister told me, at that moment when he first drank a drop of alcohol he began to tremble! He said it was as if he was shaken by electricity, shaking all over, and he heard in his head, he heard many voices saying, "You’re dying! You’re dying!"
He freaked out when he heard someone telling him he was dying, he cried aloud, "I'm dying, I'm dying!" while he was shaking. At one point the tremors stopped and he recovered, as if nothing had happened. His sister, when she saw how he trembles, phoned me at work, "Quickly, come quickly! Radu is about to die!" When I arrived, I rushed by taxi, when I got there, he had recovered, there was nothing wrong anymore. Well, then, in the moment, I couldn’t think straight and didn’t realize that that was God’s miracle. I said to myself, “Who knows what happened to him.” But I didn’t think, “This is how a Divine miracle starts and thru this trial he’ll give up drinking!”
A few days passed, of course when he drank I couldn’t leave my children in his hand because I could not rely on him. So then every weekend on Sunday evening I took my children to my mother's and left them for the week. So, as usual, on Sunday evening I take the kids to my mother and he enters the bar, he came with us, and he went to the bar as usual, that’s how he always said, "Go ahead, I’ll catch up with you," though my parents live close by, in the village center, and are close to that bar. But he always arrived after two, three hours, dead drunk, he couldn’t stand up on his feet. Well, on that day when he says, "Go, I’ll catch up with you," I don’t even get to my parents’ when he goes running by very scared, he walks past me and says, "It happened again!" When I get into the yard I ask, "What has happened to you?" "I tried!" he says. "Haven’t I told you what had happened to me at my sister?! Now I tried to drink beer, I thought I had allergy to hard liquor, and I tried to see if beer was okay, and the first drop I put in my mouth, again I began to tremble and heard those voices telling me I was dying, and I was ashamed of the people in the bar, and I slammed the beer bottle on the table and I ran out, so the guys won’t see me trembling."
This passed too, but still I didn’t think it was again God’s miracle, though I saw that he no longer drank for a week, and only when he started to, there was nothing wrong with him otherwise, only when he put the first drop of alcohol in his mouth it would happen again. And this repeated each time he tried to drink. He was so held up in this evil passion/torment, and of course the Evil One didn’t want to let him out of His hand, He didn’t want to let him escape His power, but I was still praying, I was praying every night at midnight, along with the priest, as he told me that we’d both pray at midnight with lighted candles. Even if I went to sleep earlier I’d wake up, I’d set my alarm clock, and I prayed with him at midnight for God to stop my husband from drinking. And so this repeated as often as he’d try to drink. It went like this for a year. For one year he didn’t want, though he saw that this happened each time, but still for a whole year every two, three weeks, one week, he’d try another drink. I think he tested every drink possible. Eventually he ended up seeing a doctor, “Look what is happening to me, I can’t drink anymore!” And the doctor told him, "Listen, Sir, if that sort of thing happens, though I've never heard something like that in my entire life, but if that sort of thing happens, it means that you have to stop drinking, and that's it. Stop once and for all." And since then, 14 years passed since he doesn’t drink anymore. Praised be the Lord, He saved me from this heavy burden and took off this cross from my shoulders. He saved him from this calamity. Now he too no longer suffers drunkards and I always say when he sees a drunkard raising hell, I say, "Look, this is how you were yourself! I don’t know how I put up with you for so many years."
And what does he do now?
Oh, well… It’s still hard on me, he doesn’t work much. I still have to carry my cross but not for that passion/torment. It’s still hard on me. My children, whatever they need they say, "Mom, we need this," and sometimes when I’m annoyed I say, "Don’t you have a father too?" But what can I do?
Will you tell me about how you started doing monastery tours? Did you go before as a pilgrim there?
Yes, I went on pilgrimages, I went because this was the refuge from my everyday life. My children were young. I can say I’ve been to monasteries for about 18, 19 years and the kids were small and I was so poor, I’d hid now and then one leu, two, one penny and I gathered them, well, when the occasion came to go on a pilgrimage, so I too could run and make the pilgrimage, so I could pay its cost. And so I started to go to monasteries and so much peace I could find there, and I found so much joy when I got at the monasteries. I wanted so much to become a nun. How many times after I started to go to the monasteries, whenever I entered a monastery I was thinking, "When my children grow older I’ll become a nun!" and I’d cry, oh, I cried so much at the monasteries and I’d think, "Should I come to this monastery?" After I saw another one, "Or should I come here?" But I was thinking of becoming a nun at a monastery closer to home, closer to Cluj, so my children could come to see me. But the first monastery that impressed me was the Posada hermitage. I went with other women on a Saturday night, it was the Transfiguration, so it was August 5^th when I went, I don’t know what year. The celebration is on the 6^th and we went on the 5^th, ahead of time, to stay during the Midnight Office on the Transfiguration Eve. Well, when I got in that courtyard, it was the first monastery I’d visited, I felt at every step that God was with me, I felt a strong energy overshadowing me with Divine Power and I began to cry with joy. And as long as the prayer service lasted during vespers, and then during the Compline and Midnight Office services, oh, there was his Holiness Vasile Someșanul, he was our Archbishop then, and Andreicuț who was the Bishop of Alba County. There were very, very many priests.
I was so happy that I put a blanket under me and there I knelt until midnight and I cried nonstop, so very happy to be there. When the Midnight Office Liturgy finished I said to the other women, “Let’s go to sleep.” There was no accommodation whatsoever, so I asked the priest to let us sleep in the church. And each woman put her blanket on the floor and we slept in the church. But the father said, "I let you sleep here but don’t talk because I sleep myself in the altar for I don’t have a place to sleep either, so don’t talk." We went to sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t sleep because my bones ached on the hard floor, covered only with jute rugs, like it was in the old times. So then, I thought about things and I kept on looking at the paintings in the church, I kept on praying till five in the morning. At five o’clock, there is a miraculous spring in Posada, so then I went out and talked with several women, "Let's go take Holy Water, Miraculous Water, because at six starts the maslu/ Holy Unction prayer service, and then after the maslu/Holy Unction prayers end the Matins Liturgy service begins." And so we did. I attended the maslu/Holy Unction prayers, then after that the liturgy on that great feast of August 6^th, the Transfiguration, and all was well and good. I felt so very good, and since the meaning of the feast of the 6^th of August is Lord Jesus transfigured on Mount Tabor, as I was up there on the mountain at the monastery I felt like I was on Mount Tabor where Lord Jesus Christ’ face was transfigured. I was so happy. I felt that I was where the miracle had happened. And when I heard Bishop Andrei leading us in singing, "Oh, Holy Mother!" since this holiday is during the fast of the Holy Mother of Our Lord, I realized that when the Sainted Liturgy service would end, I’d have to go back home, and I started crying. My heart was in such sorrow that I had to go back home, oh, why, when I was so happy there! I even thought, "God, why should I go home?! Living without love!" I had found so much love in God. And when the Mass finished, I kept on thinking how I could just not go home. But in that very moment when I was thinking how I could just not go home, "I have to go, I have young children!" and as I took a step towards our bus, and climbed thru its back door, I thought regretfully I cannot remain at the monastery.
And this is how my love for monasteries started. When I arrived home I told my husband, my children. I never thought that my children being quite small, I didn’t think that by telling them that I was sorry I didn’t stay at the monastery would affect my children. I cried and said, “I'm sorry I haven’t stayed there.” And Adrian being the smallest it remained in his memory and whenever I went somewhere to a monastery said, "Mother, please do not stay at the monastery!"
And when I returned from the monastery, being so affected and feeling such love for the monasteries a very strange thing happened to me, I can say now. I’d often, while washing dishes or cooking food in the house, or while cleaning, I’d hear in my head, I’d hear the choir singing, the monks from Posada. I truly heard them singing and I’d put my work aside, I missed hearing them, I so missed the monastery, and I’d go to the nursery, I’d sit on the children’s bed and listen to the choir. Upon my word, that's what would happen to me. If I talk about it people think I’m crazy, but it truly happened to me, I heard that chorus singing for me and I was so happy. At some point I’d no longer hear it and then I’d get up from their bed and go back to work.
And this is how I got my love for monasteries and so many divine miracles happened.
Another time I was at the Bistrița Monastery and I was, all my life I've worked everything if my husband didn’t kill himself with work, I had to work all day long, and I had to work as a hairdresser, which business had its years of glory, indeed years during which I was able to work as much as my powers let me, so I worked both at home and at work. But I got sick and I went to the Bistrița Monastery. I wasn’t hurting or anything but during the day working or walking on the road I had bouts of weakness in the stomach and I trembled. I felt so bad that I’d almost faint, fell down. Often while I’d cut hair I feared I’d fall on the client. And I’d get something sweet to eat and I’d recover. I did my blood work. Doctors told me that all my tests were good. Nobody found anything wrong but I had this problem at least once, twice a day I felt this dizziness and this weakness in my body. And, as I say, I went to the Bistriț

a Monastery. It was raining so hard when the bus reached the monastery that everybody said, "We won’t get off, the whole country rains down on us." It was a pouring rain. And I said to a woman, "Let's go in the rain, even if we aren’t dressed lightly for summer we’ll still dry off." And we arrived at the monastery. And when I entered the monastery it was the first time when I stepped in that monastery. I felt such a deep Divine Power on my side and I went to Holy Mother’s icon and began to pray. Meanwhile it stopped raining. I was praying, or visit the monastery, and we used to take group pictures in front of the monastery, and many in our group called out for me, for several people only got off the bus just to visit, not to pray, and so when they came out of the monastery they were calling me to take pictures together, and I was so, how should I say it, I just loved to pray and feel the grace of God there, and I couldn’t part with my prayer, to abandon my prayer.
At one point, standing there alone praying in the monastery, the rest of the group were already all out, I thought, “Let's go, they might leave me here," and when I was about to get out a very strange thing happened, I was with my hand on the door handle, I do it every time I pray at a monastery when I start going out I take a last look around, I look at all the icons as if to take my farewell, and only then I get out. That one time I did the same, and when I arrived by the door, in the top of the left corner there was an icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I knew that they displayed there the relics of Saint Gregory of Decapolis. And when I got to look at the icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ I felt that from the icon He was looking straight at me. I felt his eyes looking from the icon and then, as if, with my hand on the door knob, as if a wind, I don’t know how to explain it clearer, I felt someone was pushing me back, stopping me from going out. And feeling this I thought about the icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and when I got in front of the icon what do you think I saw?! The relics, placed in a black box made of wooden board, painted black. It looked like our wooden pencil boxes in the old times, the top of that box of relics was made of a glass sliding top that you could pull out. It was a piece of glass that you could pull out but only so far, without allowing you to fully slide it out, so as not to get your hands on that hand of Saint Gregory of Decapolis. He held his hand like I hold mine, this very way, the holy relics. Now they set it, I haven’t seen it since I didn’t go back yet, it’s covered in wax, probably to stop further degradation and to preserve it. Well, then it wasn’t preserved in wax. As if I can see it now, even the veins of the saint showed on that hand, like any hand, simply normal, only dried up. And when I saw the holy hand and read there that they were the relics of Saint Gregory of Decapolis, and that very many people were cured after touching it, then I was somewhat so nervous, wanting desperately to touch the saint's hand with my fingers, but, well, the glass wouldn’t allow me, and then I knelt down and started praying and crying, and I so prayed, "Lord Saint Gregory, I think you're near Our Lord Jesus Christ, please ask Him in my sinful name to heal me." In that moment, please believe me, as I was holding my hands on that box of relics, and kneeling down, I got so scared that I even stopped my prayer, because in that moment I felt in my right hand, this is how I can explain to everyone, as if a cold wind went through my bone marrow, as if a cold wind blew through my bone marrow from hand to hand, and from head to toe! When I felt this thing I stopped praying and I stood there, I think a few seconds I just stood there on the spot, and then I got up.
Well, since that moment, I've never had again that weakness in my body.
But another time, I had another day at another monastery at Saint Nicodim of Tismana, I went there to bathe, and for miruire/Holy Unction, that too related to my health, and because of that I have a great trust and always say that God is my doctor and I don’t trust doctors. I don’t go to doctors, only when I’m really forced to. Whatever problems I have, if I don’t feel good, I say it to God and put my trust in Him. God keeps me on this earth as long as He wants, not as long as doctors want. Doctors don’t do a thing for me. I had too many bad experiences like that.
So a wound occurred and I kept on treating it, and I had uterine fibroids and once when I did a Pap smear it turned out number 3, and when my gynecologist told me the results, I ask him, "Sir," scared, "do I have cancer?" So when your Pap smear is 1 or 2, it’s good, it shows that you are healthy, if it’s 3 or over, you have to worry.
And then he answered me, so as not to scare me. He says, "No, no! We have to repeat the tests." I take the test results to a close acquaintance who worked for another doctor, at the Hematology, and I ask her, "Mrs. Doctor, we know each other for so long. Please tell me, I know you don’t want to tell me everything, so as not to scare me. But were you to have these test results yourself, would you get worried or not? But tell me honestly!" And then she says, "Well, of course that I’d worry. It's only normal." I say, "This is all I wanted to know." And then I said I'd never go to the doctor again, and right the next week I had another pilgrimage to the Jiu Valley. And when I got to the Tismana Monastery, reading about the life of Saint Nicodim I find out that he made many miracles. I knelt down and worshiped his relics. Saint Nicodim has his grave in the nave, as they call it, you enter the first part of the church, and there is his grave. Knowing my problem, it was a Sunday, it was the Holy Liturgy/Mass, but I couldn’t care less that it was a crowd of people around me, or that someone would say something or laugh about me, I laid at the foot of the grave, I laid on my belly, I laid on the grave with my belly and I started to cry, to pray to Saint Nicodim to pray, to intercede on my behalf with Jesus Christ. "Saint Nicodim, you see that I have kids, please ask the Lord Jesus Christ on behalf of me, a sinful mother, to keep me alive to raise my children."
I sat there and cried and cried and prayed, and after awhile someone taps me on the shoulder. And I lift my eyes, face full of tears, it was a nun and she says, "Get up from the grave, it's not allowed to stay here."
And then I said, "Mother, let me stay just a few more seconds. I have a problem and I know that only here it will get resolved." So she didn’t say anything, let me stay there and pray, and please believe me from then on I haven’t had any health problem. I don’t take any medicine, and I didn’t need to have surgery for the fibroid.
It's been ten years. My Pap smear ever since then it’s 1 and 2, which is... I even went to a gynecologist and when she saw the results and that I have no more gynecological problems, she said, "Ma'am, what world do you live on? Do you live on earth? At your age to have such a splendid Pap smear!"
And this is how the miracles of God repeated.
Another time I went to Dragomirna Monastery in Moldova, and when I was about to get out of the monastery there was an icon of the Holy Mother on a black background. I’ll never forget it. When I’m about to come out, I had such a good feeling seeing all those icons, and so I look about and as if the Holy Mother was watching me with every step, as if I looked at Her, and every time I go there I have this feeling that as if She watches me with her eyes, and often I turn around from the door, I go back to the icon and I pray more and I kneel down before the Holy Mother. Because I feel that the Holy Mother watches me from that icon, follows me with her eyes.
And once, so the icon is up on the wall, I knelt down and I lifted my hands to Her icon and I started to cry, and to pray. Believe me when I prayed I felt my right palm moving. It was like when you get a nervous twitch in your hand, you know, like often you feel a nerve twitch. I felt exactly like that in my palm and I stopped praying and I looked and my hand moved on the icon, I felt a twitch in my palm. I got scared, and said, "Our Holy Mother wants to tell me something, but how should I know what, sinful me?!"
And so out of this love to go, because we are several women who go together regularly to several monasteries, out of this love to go to more monasteries, to get to know all the monasteries in our country, out of this desire is why we started to make these pilgrimages. This is where I find my peace, since I work a lot. Here at the hair salon I have no vacation. I never allow myself a vacation and these few days of retreat at the monastery, these are my holidays. Although it’s hard work, as you’ve seen. I give so much food to people, I often cook at many monasteries. It’s enormously tiresome. I can’t sleep on the nights before the trip. It’s enormously tiresome but I feel that I need to do this and even if I’m more tired, even if I work harder, but surprisingly God gives me so much power and look, since I go to monasteries I don’t call the ambulance anymore. Oh, how many times my clients were left... So, before making these pilgrimages it often happened that my clients were left with the hair dye on, because the ambulance came and took me. It often happened. The poor women love me so much my clients that she rinsed her head herself and her hair was only half dyed and when her husband said, "Woman, go and get your hair dyed properly!" "Until Mrs. Silvia gets better I don’t go anywhere else."
Yes indeed...
Can you tell me again what you said about my curses?
So when Mihai was little, three years old, I got sick. I began to feel weak, to throw up a lot. I lost weight, nothing hurt me, but I lost a lot of weight. Everything I ate I threw up and lost weight. In a year after I knocked on the door of all the clinics in town and consulted so many doctors, but everyone said I had nothing wrong, but I was drying up on my feet, mere bones and skin I was, I went to a priest and he opened the Pravila [which is a Holy Book about the laws of the church that is written in Cyrillic letters. The Holy Gospels will also do if in Cyrillic letters.] which means that you open anywhere the Holy Book and the priest who knows how to interpret it tells your fortune, what is wrong with you and what to do about it. Anyway, I didn’t know about the opening of the Holy Book. I didn’t know that priests can open the Holy Book and can see everything about your life.
He came with a thick book, he said, "Open the book!" I thought, "God, why on earth does this priest make me open this book?" And when I open it, he says, "Why haven’t you told me about your problem? A blonde woman who was a girlfriend of your husband put a curse to separate you two and if you two cannot be separated, then she cursed you to get sick. Either by illness or by divorce, you must be separated."
And my husband gets angry, curses God and says, "I’ll go and I'll burn down her house!" but the priest says," No, no, no! Let me hold a prayer service for your wife to make her healthy again. Let God take care of the one who put the curse. But," he says, "what I can do about her, is to pray that whatever curse she put on you to fall back on her very own head." But I said, "No, Father, my life is in God's hands. And if God wants me to live I’ll live in spite of all her curses, and if God wants me to die and to end my life now, then this is how it shall be. I don’t want that she, if she used devilish means, she did it out of recklessness and didn’t know what she was doing. She doesn’t know God and doesn’t know what God is and what Godly things are and what are ungodly, evil things. Please, let God decide if I live or not."
And with that I left the priest and I went to my priest in the village. I have a very good priest and he knew me since I went to church all the time and he loves me very much. He always asks my parents about me, always, he takes great pleasure when I go to talk to them, he invites me into their house, "Come, Silvia, let’s chat a bit!" and he always asks me in, ever since I became healthy with his help. And I went to the priest and I said crying, "Father, it’s been a year since I’ve kept going to the doctors and nobody finds anything and look what that priest told me upon opening pravila/the Holy Book. And," I say, "I’d like, I trust you, I'd like you to hold prayer service for me." And he prayed over my head he put under his stole. Believe me, when this priest began to pray, I felt in my chest as if someone stabbed a lot of knives in me, painful stabbing, it hurt so much throughout my chest, such stabbing that I wanted to cry and the priest put his hand over my mouth under his stole so as not to cry, not to disturb him in his prayer. I had such terrible chest pains. As long as this prayer went I had these chest pains and when the prayer ended the pain stopped.
He read over me three times that week, so he began on Sunday, Wednesday night, and Friday night. Friday night, Wednesday night nothing happened to me, but on Friday night when he read the third time, when he started to read over me, a vein started, I felt like it said tick-tick-tock like a clock, I felt the veins in my head throbbing. I thought, "God Almighty! I’m having a cerebral hemorrhage /vascular accident in the brain!" All night my veins throbbed just like a ticking clock in my head, and after that I got well.
But that's why I said it's not allowed to put a curse on people, you have to let them be judged by the will of God, since God knows everything and he who puts a curse, God forbid, it might come back and destroy himself. It’s not allowed.
You have to accept any misfortune that happens to you. For the misfortune is also happening with God’s will, perhaps God lets you go through a tough trouble so you return to Him. God wants, because He loves us, this is how He can make us return to Him. You'll never see a happy man praying. A man who has a good marriage, who has a good life, and is in everything doing well, what does he care about God?! But the man who has a problem today, tomorrow another one, who does he go to, if not to the arms of God?
Next time I'd like you to tell me stories about the pilgrimage, happenings that stayed with you, about monks you remember, how you boiled balmoş... Okay? Or how that priest told you to give up hairdressing, or how he criticized you that you dress coquettishly, stuff like that, next time, okay?
But I kindly ask you to please don’t advertise the pilgrimages, that would upset me very much. I told you that a journalist came to interview me and I told her, "Please, don’t write about it." Only to see myself in the newspaper, but nothing from what I actually said. And then she kept on calling and I told her, "Listen, forget about me, please! You guys are jerks! Crooks! Shame on you! I’m struggling to do God's will and all you do is concoct falsehoods about me. Jerks! Forget about me!"
What newspaper was that?
Foaia.
I don’t know, I don’t understand why they don’t write exactly what you tell them, it's so interesting....

My thanks go to Valentin Tarlete who voluteered the transcription of the Romanian language recording. Valentin unfortunately fights cancer and financial hardship. I'd be glad if you donate, so I can help him financially.

 

New York
August 30, 2013

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.