An Enigmatic Capital
/Wednesday, August 10th 2011
Hotel Christiana, Bucharest, Romania
“Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane." (Mircea Eliade)
Source: Mircea Eliade Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierophany
The possibilities of this enigmatic capital “Little Paris” in southern Romania have been providing me with many stories: old women removing their diadems to prepare for death in long narrow alleys; young women with easy ponytails reaching for stars in search of fairy tales; men young and old trading their large feathers for more earthly needs; gypsies dancing between cars selling plastic flowers and USB flash drives; and then there are the dogs of Bucharest so lost and desolate they make you want to cry. The little flower shops, too, which are as ubiquitous as the taxis in this city. They do not fool me. Vlad the Impaler once ruled from here. In the afternoons I have been reading more of R. D. Precht’s outstanding philosophical survey into the fundamental question of human existence, Who Am I? (2011).[1] There is a marked difference between such ‘kaleidoscopic’ works for example, and the ‘self-help’ genre of the Eckhart Tolle type. I do not wish to trivialize the latter; even these efforts I understand as something within a sociology of knowledge framework. Some of it is certainly helpful, but falls short of understanding that any contentment in “self-realization” outside the passing through and not the going ‘around’ of suffering, is ultimately an excitement of short-lived durations. At its worst it feeds and fuels the appetites themselves it has been trying to collect and adds to the sense of hopelessness. A synthesis between these two approaches, the ‘Precht’ and the ‘Tolle’ I would reckon, is the Psalter in the Old Testament, the book where as one Athonite elder has said, “man speaks to God”.
It is raining lightly after the morning heat with the threat of something heavier to come. It has been pleasant most of the days and I have enjoyed my walks. I am watching a documentary on catastrophic earthquakes “which can happen at any time”, the narrator warns. Like most things I would suppose. It made me remember one of my dreams. It has to do with Istanbul, or as some of my compatriots still prefer Constantinople, and the devastation of this great city which is spread across two continents and between two seas. An awful nightmare. I have been thinking much on faith over the past few months and have been especially reflecting on Hebrews 11. Is not faith, also, to keep going despite the exhaustion; to keep getting up each day letting go of yesterday’s hurts and disappointments. To persevere in the belief that this life too, as it might be revealed to us after the storm, has to be lived? “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). A nice moment a few days back when I dropped by the National Library of Romania. I saw firsthand why some visitors have called this impressive structure with its glass shell ‘gigantic’. Directly to the left as I entered the building was a reading room dedicated to Mircea Eliade, the famous if not controversial for some, Romanian philosopher and historian of religion. [2] His theory of the “eternal return”, the returning back to the “mythical age” in order to interpret religious behaviour, caught my attention early during my undergraduate days in the classrooms of Eric Sharpe, the founding Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. Eliade also wrote stories, long ones, unlike mine which are very short! Last night downloaded Mozart’s “Requiem Mass in D Minor”, conducted by Karl Bohm. The bassoon and basset horn have rarely sounded better. A few hours before I’d been rocking to Cold Chisel’s power ballad “When the War is Over”. Wolfgang Amadeus side by side with Steve Prestwich? We make one of the most terrible and far-reaching mistakes of all [whether as individuals or as nations] when we start out on that dehumanising process of typecasting.
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Who-Am-Many-Philosophical-Journey/dp/0385531184