Houses

Throughout our lives we usually have more than one house. Some we grow up in, some we spend holidays in, some are ours, temporary of for more than just a little time. Some we adopt in the secret of our souls just because we can feel them speaking to us and for some we may be longing our entire lives...

A house exists outside our physical person as well as inside, and sometimes from the inner house, carried in our soul, a sort of spiritual distortion of reality emanates outwardly. This happens for most people with their childhood house. I grew up in a partially moldy house, who forced all the members of the family to reunite in one room for the winter period. Tall ceilings, wooden doors and windows. Ice flowers on the windowpane in freezing weather, a mushy black stuff in the lower margins of the window in wet weather. The house sometimes scared me when it was squeaking from its floors, sometimes warned me of all that was missing in its human inhabitants when it was almost echoing under the pale electric light in the evenings. It felt a big too big, yet it had peaceful corners, and its own smells. In times of not so much happiness it allowed a kind of retracting into those corners, into the neutrality of its brick-wall entity that was re-comforting. I sometimes blamed a certain kind of aloofness in my own life on the out-of-time character of this house. It was, at that time, trending flats... studios, one bedroom, two bedrooms, whatever. Sharing a block of flats with a bunch of characters that tended to enter their neighbors' life... I wanted us to have a flat. finally we got one, we moved, and a bit of me remained there. It was never the same. I still wonder the rooms of my childhood house in my dreams. I think it is mostly because with houses we almost never get closure, we are not able to visit them later and acknowledge how they "betrayed" us now, and have grown to love other inhabitants...

I have sometimes established a link, known just by me and the house, with completely foreign buildings, with old flats that seemed out of place in the large buildings with many steps they were in, with some nice marbled staircase, wide and flooded by sun rays... some other houses just wink to me when I pass them on the street.
But it remains yet to be done the feeling of having a home, as if something in my soul refuses to settle to a new building, or maybe it isn't the right time for this... the nostalgia of the childhood house is still present, despite all odds.

There are also houses that I've considered obnoxious or boring, and then there are all the hideous productions of uninspired modern design which have no voice of their own, no corners to hide in for a relaxing lecture, no significant windows to frame the outside world as viewed from a house. And the long dreamed for meeting of a city house with the nature around it, of a city house with a garden... maybe an illusion of well being and comfort, with the illusion of a little cat and a few flower beds. Sometimes I can hardly tell if I am just kidding myself or my intuition still works and if what I feel would be nice really would be so...

We have dwellings and houses in our soul, empty or furnished, windowed or closed. We have people that feel like houses, in a positive way, if we are lucky. Are we a house, a home for others?

And when in my dreams I walk through the rooms of my old houses or of my grandparents' houses, am I there or are they just shadows in my soul?

Work

Via the same site quoted in my last post : "hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do" (Oscar Wilde).

I would say these words are witty. I would also add that I used to know and still do know quite a few persons to whom these apply.

Moreover, I would extend this nugget of truth to a present truth: after decades of brainwashing people into the idea that work is a must, a natural requirement and a duty, even if it turns out not to be the right work for a person, not the activity sprung out of his or her talent, we now live in a society that for the masses is made by workaholics and creates workaholics.

Maybe the link is a simple psychological step: an empty life pushes a person towards an unhealthy addiction for work, after which, by a mean, robotic effect, the standards of time spent working are set by this type of persons, thus leading to empty lives for those who would not have had such alienations.

What do I mainly remember about my working parents? That usually they were... not there. Time went by, and they were working and working, until my feelings of something missing turned into indifference. And it was the same for many of my friends.

Why are some hating so much what makes people better? Spending time with one's family, getting bored sometimes, celebrating through the year, taking a walk in the park, slowing down the hectic crazy rhythms of today's life...

It is a huge lie that people should be extremely busy while working because there is no alternative. There are professions which require a presence per time duration, indeed. one cannot do his job and then go home because he fulfilled his duty for that day, even if he managed to be very skilled and did what one had to do quickly - in some jobs. In these positions the full days of work should be compensated by free days, by alternating with a job partner.

But most of the jobs, the huge mass of the less qualified jobs, presume tasks that can be completed quicker by certain individuals. An average worker would do the standard amount of work in X hours. but if one does it in X minus t, why not let him go home for the day, if the job is well done?

Because it would create a precedent in flexibility and freedom. I read somewhere that the Nordic countries are actually trying such different approaches to work. But such news are unpopular, they are barely seen in the spotlight, they might give ideas to the people so hardly forged by the evil twins: socialism and capitalism.


Better make fixed amount of work per fixed number of hours, and if someone is managing to get everything done quicker, keep him at work to get bored and to use his time in vain, or (the modern management idea) throw some more work at him, taking advantage of vague contract provisions and of the power position the employer is in in such "crisis" times...

Thus the personal life is turned into dust permanently, the classes are kept separated by falsely created privileges (the mere worker is glued to his post so many hours, while the manager is mobile, yet has to account - officially- for his whereabouts). The rich dad can, if he makes a mentality effort - spend more time with his kids, the poor dad barely has quality time to spend with them. The firm has to consume electricity and space to cover for all the exaggerated task-time work dynamics.

Some, giving more freedom to their employees, give them work to do wherever, if the activity permits: at home, in the park and so on. Not supplementary work, just work. As long as you deliver on time, you can choose where you function better. Reciprocal advantage. You use your home electricity to power the computer, but you can watch your kids playing in yard in the same time.

Caring for people and growing intelligent future generations apparently is labeled as a luxury. Not many states are bothering to try human approaches to work. Most just apply the street rules and push around some paperwork to pretend they are supporting the human rights. And the "human rights" package, actually mocked enough in the modern society aka counting in the bigger more developed states and being just a prop in the less powerful ones, should be a minimum, not something for granted, never to be surpassed...

Why bother to even talk about state policy - some think. A new decoy is trendy nowadays, the idea that the state is expected to do nothing because the citizens have taken it upon themselves to manage their problems, individually or in smaller communities. I would say it is a nice idea for a theory, yet a very transparent excuse for the faults of the state and those who are "milking" the state's budget remains... and the purpose is to make it seem like it is the wish of the people.

Who knows, soon the people will be convinced it is their idea, considering that this mantra of "managing ourselves" is repeated with the same dedication with which the socialist and corporatist ideas were repeated, straight into the minds of everyone.

Work should be healthy, in equilibrium with free time, and with family time. For family time is not quite free time, it is a separate type of work, forging the future through the new generations. And free time gives adults energy for both.

The best work scheme turns talent and skill into activity and rewards efficiency instead of punishing it, on all levels. An unskilled worker can come up with a new solution as much as a boss, each in his own way, and each good thing should be rewarded. And the option of taking free time should be right there, available as a reward.

Where do the ideas of "one is normal to hate his work" or "one has to suffer professionally if he if he has a family" come from? Why are they so viral? Why nowadays it is non important if someone is a drunk or an immoral person, but it is a problem if one has family obligations, in the sense that many jobs are fit with "socially free" persons rather than parents or grandparents?

Maybe the legal frame tells a different story, but when one feels ashamed to ask for some time off work because one's kids require it, while others are proud to take free time to go to the concerts or to go shopping or cure drunken headaches, the position of society over the private life via the work regime seems to tell in fact quite another thing, scripted by the people who really have nothing to do at home or in the middle of their families.

What to say...

Lately, I see a habit: one post in Romanian, one in English. So I guess it's the turn of the English post, therefore "What to say?"

No news about the plants of this year, haven't seen them in a while, no garden visits lately.

I miss the old atmosphere, the one I've known as a child, the temperature, the perfume of the flowers in the trees of the city, the noises, the uncrowded streets, the night light flickering through the branches. Of course, it was a different city I am talking about, but even if I visit the same place this entire picture is not there, I have tried and I know. This way, being at a distance, I can bask in the lie that all the nice urban feelings from the past are still out there.

I found myself wondering yesterday how are younger people perceiving the streets and cities they walk on and live in. All that matters is the age, and the busy robotic cities of today look different in the eyes of younger people, or nobody cares, nobody has their sensitivity open to the beauty of daily places?

The unaesthetic streets of today that mean nothing to me are full of meaning for youngsters, or they just don't notice such outdated details, and they are all about the mp3-s sounding in their ears, their phones, their overcrowded social relations, electronic and face to face?

I miss the poetical misfits, who didn't look for adrenaline rush in bad habits, and preferred to gather around some coffee or wine, smoke and talk about their random questions on life. Now the gatherings are planned and not a moment must be left unorganized, the coffee is bad for the organism, the cigarettes are unhealthy...
And the conversations revolve around politics, and jobs, and eco this and bio that, or just grownup talk, children, education, banks, all in a serious, head-achy way.

Oh, and the former good for nothing misfits, to see some of them so different and solemn, almost not remembering the way they used to look at life, with high hopes, with mysterious hopes that something great is going to come, and that if not, they would just keep protesting to all that is bad in their parents generations...

There was a witty reply in a movie "I was so worried not to become my mom, that I didn't notice I am turning into my dad". the sad thing is that we are becoming a bit of both, and not in the good way. We are becoming the old, the rival of the next generation, and we haven't even got the chance to fully live our childhood.

Playing house just got upgraded to playing family, playing job, and we have acted so intensely that the leading personality is now the play one.

So, where are the may evenings with the intense linden flowers smell, almost materializing on the streets like a dense fog? All I missed then was a soul mate to share the magic with, and I never even remotely imagined that today, having who to share all that with, I will discover that it 's all just in my memories now...