sit, smoke, yawn?

prometheus is a cafe i used to think of as the perfect place for me, the all too refined and jaded one, to sit, smoke and yawn, inertly perpetuating my so-called social life among dubious aging intellectuals. i never had the money it took to be a regular, though. and when i heard al jawala were coming to town to play there on the 23rd of march, i was downright startled. oh no. the place will be strewn with tables and packed with snobs just sitting, smoking, yawning. no room to dance, no money to drink. hell on earth.
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...and so i went. i thought hey, if my mom's shaking off her nausea and coming along of her own will, there is still hope. but as soon as i entered the venue, it was all physical and mental discomfort. my mind and body numbed as i sat, smoked and yawned. just another gig. by now i've seen so much that i'm immune. erm, i do love al jawala, at least i used to back when i gave a damn about things. whatever.
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then they came onstage and sparks flew. introducing: steffi schimmer (alto sax), krischan lukanow (tenor sax), markus schumacher (drums and percussion), daniel pellegrini (drums, percussion and didgeridoo) and daniel verdier le diable de marseilles (bass). surprisingly on time for us romanians, not for them pluriethnic germans. their tonic smiles and greetings triggered our laughter and applause instantaneously, even before they began to play. it felt like i'd missed them indeed. the place was not infernally crammed and the drinks were on poor mom. not to worry. balkan beatz flooded the club and awaaay i went...

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i closed my eyes to the sitting-smoking-yawning snobs and i felt my memories of stufstock and my longing for the seaside amplify. wind in my salty hair, burnt skin and al jawala. those were the days, my friend, and to get to see them perform live once again was worth all the enthusiasm i could squeeze out of my oh so tainted corazon. no lyrics to relate to, no ideas advocated, nothing to yell along. yet not the slightest shade of boredom. these people are born entertainers. not only is their music the heck of a spirited one, but the good mood they emanated as they spoke in between songs was contagious. and who needs lyrics when you've got the beat and, above all, the gift of melody? irresistibly danceable tunes of wordless rapture, those were. cheerful grooves interlaced with hypnotizingly dramatic passages. steffi and krischan's saxes sounded like human voices, both in harmony and in dialogue. the guys in the rhythm section pounded as if to their own pulses. so clean but full, so sharp but mellow, so envelopping a sound. german quality, balkan soul. i just wanted to whirl and twirl and swirl with my hands up in the air. they had to honour not one, but two encores. or they'd have suffered the wrath of the frantic audience. i can't remember the last time the end of any concert found me literally dripping with sweat.

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and yes, most everyone else too ended up anything but sitting, smoking, yawning.

the joys of being byron

it's been a bad day, please don't take a picture.

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mister, mister, can we can we can we? one shot, pleeeeeze?

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did you not hear me?

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what? no. the club's loud. come on, quick, we've got him. argh, he's getting away.

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quit shoving that camera in my face. and get these groupies off me.

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watch your mouth, sir. we're band-aids. we're here because of the music. do smile now. don't be scared. it's just us. you're in safe hands. you're lucky we need you alive and undamaged... mwahaha.

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geddem off me! sheesh. they think they're evil. just you wait. i'm gonna make a funny face and ruin the picture.

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keep still, goddam it.

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these groupies.

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band-aids!

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maaan... whatever. just another day at the office. oh well. boo hoo. it's not my fault i'm byron.

10 o'clock news

there's a huge crowd of me gathered in the main square of my state's capital, burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead. i think. they might as well be yelling we want barabas. the same crowd used to preach radiohead in my churches, teach radiohead in my schools, perscribe radiohead in my clinics, grow radiohead in my gardens, sell radiohead in my markets. only a few days ago did they all become aware of its destructive effects, as a consequence to the allarming increase in the number of reported cases of acute neurosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, insomnia and abulia. there is now talk of radiohead in the context of heresy, misleading information, malpractice, poison, counterfeit. the people demand compensation for the damage.

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offended by the protest, radiohead are sending troops over. it is feared they have already broken the defense line and are moving forth at full throttle.

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the news of this epidemia-revolution-war situation has startled the brain government. a decision will be made as soon as the right and left sides come to terms with each other and their weakness. the right are discombobulated and quite incapable of taking action, while the left promote a radically lucid approach that can be neither echoed nor carried out by the deadened nation. in the mean time, the illness is spreading, people no longer go to work, the economy is collapsing, villages are being plundered, laws are losing all credit.

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sometime around christmas i became obsessed with radiohead's ok computer. it wasn't a pot shot. their hunt was long and patient, and though it was my every intention to get caught, i just wouldn't. then i did. life in the age of shuffle and skip had made me forget how it is to listen to an entire album, to preserve the original song order, to see it how it was meant to be seen. the mood it creates. the world it contains. the vortex of emoness it drags you into. hehe. it is located right where two eras of radiohead overlap: pristine radiohead, with its innocent riffs and unpretentious lyrics, and dehumanized radiohead, with its creepy synths and hermetic poetry. rock but electronic, warm but cold, heartfelt but eerie, stirring but lulling, introspective but audience-friendly. two layers of meaning, just like le petit prince or gulliver's travels or the wizard of oz. there's more than meets the ear, and what meets the ear is great. no use. i could write a book on ok computer and still wouldn't find the words to pinpoint that something that does what it does to me. i haven't felt this way about an album on the whole since the hazy times of my early teenage addiction to linkin park's hybrid theory. ouch, me and my dirty past. i was not a fan of radiohead, but of ok computer itself, as an attitude, as a phylosophical system, as one hell of a record. silly me. what did i know? i was soon to be overthrown by the kid a - amnesiac - hail to the thief triad and dragged even harder into the above vortex of emoness. ok computer? happy bubblegum pop. outside world, leave me be. all of you. shush. radioheadness permeates my skin, turning me into something i'm not. this i have to see. be gone. i've lost my way back to the real world. there's nothing but radiohead around here. no palpable coordinates. in limbo.

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but no. lying in bed all day like an antisocial junkie chewing on those four albums and a couple of accidents on the bends was not enough. i had to get myself into the frantic chase for b-sides, unreleased tracks and live performances. this just wouldn't have been called a true obsession otherwise. what have i become? where does it stop? tomorrow i'm definitely joining that crowd of me that's been burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead.
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last minute info: if there were anyone sane left in this country, they would be perplexed by this strange occurrence. the rebels in the main square of the capital have all suddenly lain down on the pavement and drifted into peaceful slumber.
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crap. what do i do now? i can't go out there by myself. they'll arrest me on the spot. guess i'll stay at home with my radiohead.

i saw him

my hands are swollen. fingers blistering from the cold, palms numb from the clapping. my throat is sore and hoarse. i've screamed like a lunatic, a fool, an animal. i've emptied my lungs with elation, like those fired up sixties babes at beatles gigs, who didn't care much about the show but acknowledged the essential truth: it's him! it's him! it's him! plushenko.

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i've always been fascinated with figure skating. it epitomizes my childhood dreams of winter, ice and everything nice. the closest thing to flight. the gliding and the twirling and the leaping... and ah, those glittery outfits.

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and one time around, i spotted a blonde russian lad, angelic yet impish, huge nosed yet so damn cute, and i fell in love. i was almost 11, i had no perception of his skills, and he finished fourth. by no means would i have revealed my secret crush to my grandparents, who were watching with me. they'd have belittled it with their condescending giggles. i just reveled in its sweetnes and prayed to see him again. i used to force my limbs into the bielmann thing, stretch till it hurt, thinking it wasn't too late to become a skater, meet him and be his for all time. the following year, he came back and won me some gold. my heeero... i was almost 12, by now a brave young woman unafraid face her feelings, and i told the world! he has kept returning ever since. well sure i've "grown up", sure i've drooled over millions of others in the process, sure i didn't pursue figure skating. sure i had no problem accepting the fact that i'd never even meet him at all. but all these winters he's been my icon, my delight, mmmy preciousss.

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2007 was to be the year of goodbye-televised-competitions-hello-youtube. what do you care that i've been your loyal ardent fan this long, get lost, go do your stupid shows with that marton guy of yours. go now, before you see my tears. you ass.

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and then, shuffling along some street one frosty sunny day, i ran across it. the poster. kings on ice. evgeni plushenko and edvin marton. the national skating rink. bucharest. february 25th. hyperventilating and shaking all over, i stuck out my phone and made calls and... geez, i could never appear but a half-witted hysterical chick. i could never explain the joy, the sense of upcoming fulfillment that sprung within me. he was to skate out of the tv screen and into reality. life was being so unexpectedly and plentifully kind to me. i felt alive.

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all the dreams of comfort i had woven in sweet anticipation were torn when my mom and i finally got there. the whole place was barren concrete and looked almost scary, like a disaffected hangar. our seats were located in a dead area. we fastened our coats, nervously munching on popcorn to pass the remaining time. so here comes edvin marton, here go the opening acts, tears of joy down my cheeks, i'm actually seeing real skaters on real ice and it's sheer beauty. the chair is understatedly uncomfortable, it's freezing cold, the sound's bad from where we're seated. then...

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there HE was.

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in the flesh, he is thought to have been. dunno. was that flesh, mom? she says it was a ghost. immaterial. unabrasive. light. a hollogram floating around on and off the ice. those minimal orange plastic chairs may have disappointed me, but never evgheni. he was there, doing a second performance for the day, yet fresh as a daisy. not a millifraction of a notch below his own sky-high standards. a charming, tireless, breathtaking daisy.

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at the end of the day, there's not much clever stuff i can think of. just... ommigod!!! i saw him, i saw him, i saw him. i was there, i was there. i want more. this ain't over. we ain't seen the last of you. don't make me have to drag you by that beautiful blonde hair cuz i'm not scared of all the bodyguards. you're definitely coming back. and i'm buying front row tickets so you'd better kiss my hand and give me that killer look.

school or the pre-real life

on unrequited love

there was a little boy named edward. he had the crush on me, 3rd grade to 6th grade. oscillating between silent grief and gentle forwardness, he did his best to get his feelings through in a dignified but hearty way. there was something about him though, some bad vibe that made me loathe him. and then, who was he to diserve me? and then there was my opera choir of a class, chanting thunderously: "you like him, you like him, you like him!...", to which i, the leading soprano, would trill back: "i hate, hate, hate his guts!...". and they'd have never believed me, had i not proven my indifference through violent denial. more blood, more blood, the public is insatiable. so, on the stage of our collective amateur miniproduction, i made his pre-real life hell. then real life kicked in. and here i am, at almost 20, stepping into young adulthood with a questionably sane choice of men, ever unrequited and miserable, yet ever resisting love in my anhedonia. ever unable to gloam with another. frigid and stiff. resigning to spinsterhood. taming my hormones with half-read books and bitter tea. oh edward, you'd be laughing your ass off.
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on horizons

i'd first known her as ionela. she'd been this quiet, angelic, proper little girl all through primary school. as she underwent a generously transforming puberty, she embraced her other, more womanly name - roxana. a whole new persona. she didn't study much. she didn't think much. she didn't wash much. i do believe she had soap and running water at home. she also had an alcoholic father and a struggling older sister, busy both being an outstanding student and filling in for the mother, who had taken leave along with the oldest sister. but what she most gruesomely had was no survival instinct. so she rarely ever changed her clothes or removed her make-up before redoing it. ew, eww, bloody ewww. we used to walk home together. she used to call herself my friend. i'd burst into devious inner laughter: "friends??! nay, i'm going all the way up outta this manhole, honey." she must have ended up in the gutter. and i betcha g.b. shaw ain't told her 'bout no stars. maybe i could have said something. but you just don't have those kinda talks in the pre-real life.

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on windmills

she never was my true rival, this bianca chick. just the scratcher of my own pathological itch for self-waste on futile drama. her full red lips outshined my thin pale lips, her big brown eyes eclipsed my small green eyes. she had the long hair i yearned to grow and was always denied. indeed, she was the work of the devil. her graceful coyness - hah, wicked pretense. little did i know or care that beyond her neatly ironed dress lay a neatly ironed brain. i, the clumsy untidy sociopathic boyish four-eyed geek, smouldered in tenebrous lonely uncoolness, while she, altered in my donquixotean perception, stood as an evil dame who lived to scheme for my ultimate demolition. fact is, she did get all the attention, all the fun, all the boys i ever laid eyes on in school. i just don't think it was personal. neither was my utter hatred for her. seething over a secretly sworn enemy was just more immediate a thrill than leading my pre-real life as a healthy formative process. and hey, she was only the average beauty queen of junior high - i was meant to triumph in the real life. i'm still waiting. arms crossed.

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on friendship

not much was real in my pre-real life. the trees, grass, skies, rain, snow, food, books, furniture, carpets were. my glasses, my crayons, the ink that stained my fingers when i wrote were. muzzy and the beatles were. the not yet derailed four seasons, my not yet derailed family were. i had happiest, but scarce and most unconstant moments of awarenes. i'd always end up concerned with my share of the map. us kids were all engaged in a war game of unsteady alliances. nothing was amoral, nothing was true. none of us, including myself, knew what the bloody hell earning and cherishing a friend meant. strangely enough, trust and disloyalty never annulled each other, but joined in a symbiosis that made our world go round. side shifters went unpunished. it was primeval commerce. my fellow outcasts and i would contemplate nature and talk of dreams, memories and revelations. of unreal things that felt more real than our pre-real little freak show. good, clean, precious, uplifting, unordinary experiences. and as "the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool" (t.m. almost famous), with our pockets full, we'd then promptly cash in for comfy wet blankets from the cool.

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on wasted youth

boy, did laura hate my guts. so did all the rest, but she was loudest and proudest about it. she wasn't a bad person, she just had the unruly ghetto bitch thing going. oh, las telenovelas she played out. i myself was a conceited weirdo, untameable. well not to her. around 7th grade she thought she'd teach me some respect and literally dragged me into my one and only all-time school cat fight. but it was something else she'd dragged me into earlier that cost me not just a few hairs on my head, but my head itself. 5th grade came to a close with an afternoon dance. i swear i was gonna go home and read. that was me then. but she tugged the hell out of me. she even said it was her treat. anything for a laugh. such kindness i couldn't disregard. so i opened up to a world i'd always dismissed out of prejudice. thalia, ricky martin, azucar moreno! i began to transform. first it was the dance buzz (still got it). then, the hours of schizoid flirtacious anticipation in front of the mirror. then, the taste for bad music. then, the unfulfilled (thank mom) yearning for high heels and make-up. then, the boyfriend monomania. indeed, i was blooming. took me a long hard time to rearrange and catch up. i wonder who i'd be now if not for that wretched evening that blurred my road to real life. so yeah, blame it on laura.

damming my stream of consciousness

i woke up choking on a cold, long before dawn. it was eerily dark. i'm no creature of the night. nor do i just hang around until someone switches on the buzzing neons of life for me. i provide my own light. and it's natural. and it's warm. and it's pretty. ha ha.

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so i fixed me some hot tea with lotsa lemon, and waltzing feverishly i sang in exaltation: "paracetamole shall take me under its wing/ paracetamole, the end of all suffering"... then i lit a candle just to set the mood, turned on my square-headed partner and sank into oblivion with the daunting yet soothing sounds of late radiohead.

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i soon found roaming about the blog world quite galling. for it is the world of people who can write. and by that i don't mean people of great skill and knowledge, who can wield their sharp wit as scissors to taylor a language into delightful garments for ideas of true substance. i mean people who can actually press the freakin' keys to make freakin' words appear on the freakin' screen. i'm talking from emo confessions to pseudointellectual reflections on the world and from faint to picturesque. i'm talking spontaneous. i'm talking a dork who don't know much about much but sits down, signs in and types away. pours out the anger, the frustration, the confusion. and then rubs it back in. now i could never find it in my heart to patronize the above dork. because the dork has something i've forfeited: an unbiased train of thought. the dork does not get consumed in schemes and drafts and revisions. and nor do some at-times-not-all-that-dorky people i know. yet i self-destructively march on to derisory perfection, ever removing the extra words with my scissors.

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hey, i'm impulsive. impetuous, i am. i'm a goddam flood. yet i seem to be fine and dandy just damming my stream of consciousness into a festering little pond.