Chaos, Smooth Cities, And The Moves That Matter
“That night, in the deep heat of Greece, devoured by mosquitoes and reminiscences, I was thinking about all the doors I had closed in my life and what it would have taken to keep them ajar.”
― Deborah Levy, Real Estate
Rewriting this September edition at a café in The Hague vis-à-vis our new home. I spent the last hours taking calls from the pantry (the only room not fully covered in moving cardboard boxes, primer, paint, and leftover PVC flooring), using my washing machine as a desk to have a call with a mentor from Barcelona who is advising me on my business strategy and economic viability.
Life’s utter chaos these days, as we juggle moving homes once again, whilst trying to ignite my business plan, working a 9-5 full-time job, and preparing for a one month intense business incubator in Spain.
In this newsletter I am briefly reflecting on the notion of home, followed by a curation of the books, art, and ideas that kept me nourished this week.
On Eight Years
I left Romania for good in the autumn of 2015, exactly eight years ago, to continue my studies, and to build a new life. Since then I have been having a complicated relationship with the notion of time, since some years felt like months, and some months felt like decades.
My dad spent his early twenties fighting in the ‘89 revolution in Romania, fighting for freedom, the sort of freedom that he never experienced before. Libertate. Even if, after the end of the communist regime in my country, he could finally leave Romania and see new places, it took him over a decade to actually visit one of our neighbouring countries.
When he drove me 1024 km to Berlin in the autumn of 2015, I believe that was the first time for him to travel further than ever before. I felt excited for him, and as well very lucky to have been born in a country in which I can move more or less freely, knowing that I can always go back home.
On Three Countries
The first country was Germany and the city which welcomed me with open arms and a spot at a good university was Berlin. I wrote briefly about this five-year city affair on The Flâneurs Project.
Berlin was cinematic and always in motion. Little details of everyday life were intoxicating and my awareness was always sharp. I was mirroring myself in the life of the city, in its streets, neighbourhoods, in the hopes for a thriving future. Berlin was more than a witness, it was a close companion.
(…)
Relationships fade away when we don’t like ourselves that much anymore. Berlin didn’t stand a chance. I was already gone.
The next country to call home was Switzerland. I lived in a little village by Mt. Rigi and near lake Zug. I think I am still processing what I learned in those two years (2020-2022), but Switzerland felt like a dream, in the best and worst ways possible. It’s strange, it’s been more than one year and a half since I left, but there’s still a certain ache in processing the loss of this place and home. Maybe because it feels like that relationship which ended because it had to at that time, still leaving behind many unopened doors.
The third country is The Netherlands and my current home is The Hague, a Dutch city by the North Sea. The area in which we live should have been under the sea for centuries, if the Dutch didn’t claim their lands.
All this moving around throughout my early and late twenties left me somehow disjointed, always on the move, always seeking another type of a promising future.
Being an immigrant is a rewarding journey if you stay to reap what you sow. My only harvest so far has been in the lived experience of unrooting myself again and again, fully comprehending now its costs, dangers, and bliss.
Reading
“One of the things that impacts most on the quality of our lives is how much time we have to concentrate on things that we care about. Chess gave me this blessing: a glimpse of a life where it is permissible to have just one thing to think about most of the time, even if that one thing happens to be multitudinous in scope. Several years of my life were structured around the experience of concentration and I imbibed a great deal of silence in the process; you can’t put a price on that.
When Simon and Garfunkel refer to the sound of silence in their famous song I feel I know what they mean, as if I’ve heard it through chess. To see the chess pieces set up therefore looks to me like a gateway to a particular kind of freedom – the freedom to concentrate. In everyday consciousness we are compelled to make sense of uninvited stimuli and scramble through stories and memories to grapple with who we are. In chess, each position invites us to follow our thoughts; thinking becomes something that happens to us through us, with us, by us and for us. When we concentrate we are the charmer and the charmed.”
“René Boer argues in Smooth City that this new version of urbanity undermines the democratic nature and the emancipatory potential of cities, and hardly leaves any space for experiment, non-normativity and transgression. Although the book states that the desire for a safe, clean and well-functioning urban environment is understandable, it also provides a framework to challenge this obsession with perfection and to instead collectively work towards porosity in the urban realm.
Smooth City offers a critical analysis of the origins, characteristics and consequences of the smooth city and brings some very welcome reflections on the urban reality we are currently living in.”
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
Art
Benjamin Sack
Poem
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that.
Life Update
As life is pretty hectic these weeks, I am placing this newsletter on pause until I am joining The Break fellowship in Spain in October. Next time I will send this weekly curation from a little Spanish town, tucked away in the Ribera del Duero region.
Good luck in your new home. Keep writing. Thanks for mentioning my book- a nice surprise! J+