last post from Moldova

well, that's it. I am leaving moldova tomorrow at 8am. I finally finished all my documents, I bought my souvenirs, I said goodbye to my host family, partners, PC admin, etc. I'm happy mostly because I have managed to finish all the stuff that needed finishing.

Moldova is no paradise. All of the things I've said over the past 2 years are true. There is corruption, many public institutions are dysfunctional, there is very little work, people tend to be both poor and unhappy (because they used to be wealthier, or at least had a more guaranteed source of income), rural areas are devastated, etc etc. In spite of all this, I have gotten used to moldova, and moldova went and got used to me too. Generalizations about something as large as a country are fun to say, but the reality is there are great people and bad people everywhere. I've met some great people, and for that I am appreciative. I will be sad to leave, and I will be sad to leave them.

I am starting a romanian language blog which will be about my travels back in the states at scrisoridinamerica.blogspot.com if you want to check it out. I hope it helps me keep my language skills from dying completely.

Goodbye Moldova. Maybe I'll see you again soon.

Ghita

Moldova holds claim to a famous singer both in Moldova and Romania named Pavel Stratan, whose original style and lyrics that have captured the thoughts and actions of rural moldovans. He writes a lot about town life, about drinking and depression and family and relatives, among other things.

His three year old daughter Cleopatra has recently produced her own CD, and her video is on all of the MTV like stations in both Moldova and Romania. It's called Ghita (pronounced Ghitsa), and is best appreciated while watching the video. Check it out here .

Anyway, I like it, so check it out.

Shooting the moon

I am now getting ready to leave Moldova. I have complained about it for nearly 2 years, and now, at the end, the things I’ve come to like are surfacing like sunken glaciers. A typical life consists of 95 percent little things, and 5 percent big things. I thought I was complaining about a lot of little things in conjunction with the big over the last 2 years, but I wasn’t – they were just big things after all. Little things tend to be so little they don’t even enter our conscious mind. I guess that’s why when you make a big change in your life, you have certain somewhat unexplainable feelings which are your body’s reaction to the 95 percent of little things shifting suddenly, as if dumped all the marbles out of a chinese checkers board.

The thing about dumping out all your marbles is you start to get the feeling you have, in fact, lost them. Big things and little things get mixed up, as does cause and effect, means and ends, possibilities and opportunities. In putting my marbles back, I seem to want to use the last picture I had of them while in place – the picture from Moldova. I want all the little things from Moldova, because they are me as I know myself now. So in constructing my future, I am drawn to Moldova like a magnet. Yet being a self-aware person (even without marbles) I know that my future self will readjust and Moldova will wash slowly out of my list of internalized preferences as new little things build me up from new. This is natural, and understood by everyone, without any unnecessary chinese checkers metaphors.

However – we tend to forget something. We could decide to keep our marbles as they were – that is, I could decide to keep my Moldovan marbles. Our self-awareness gives us the realization that we can reorganize them, but it does not force that action upon us. We feel forced, but it is in fact a decision. Sometimes we plan so long for something we forget that we are living a life in which we decide, and we act, under the sole jurisdiction of our minds – not other peoples’ minds or preferences, and not even something created by our minds, like a plan or an idea. Every day we can completely change our lives, regardless of whether we actually do so.

Perhaps just realizing this is good enough. Changing the plan is risky, with uncertain outcomes, long odds, and probably lots of unhappy endings. Or so the thinking goes… so few people ever try it out, it’s hard to really know.