The Flying Romanian / Romanul Zburator

Going back to the roots of this blog, and the list of Romanians present in France ( do you remember it? ), I will talk today about the “intellectual worker”(or modern worker).  As I was mentioning then, “the intellectual worker” is probably working in La Défense, like most “white collar” workers in France. The majority work in IT or engineering. What’s interesting about this category is its invisibility . Unlike others that “normal” people could cross in the streets of Paris, like Romanian sexual workers, beggars, thieves or construction workers, n o one remembers having crossed the path of a lot of Romanian white collars working in France . However, when I say that I’m Romanian, almost everyone in my friends circle can name at least 1 or 2 Romanians (mostly women) belonging to this category. Which means that they are more invisible than numerous. Why ? Several reasons to that : First of all, they are nor easily identifiable nor easily “taggable”. They look li...

Exile is embedded in Romanian history and soul, as described in the intro for this blog . Whether we left or we stayed, we are all impregnated of it.   Future generations will have it in their genes .   This is why is so important to know our past - to exorcise our past.. But exile was and still is a way for certain people to fulfil their destiny, to use their particular experience in order to feel the universal soul of humankind. If one thinks of famous European thinkers or artists with Romanian origins, Cioran, Eliade, Princess Bibesco, Anna de Noailles, just to name a few (with parity in mind), they spoke to many because they melted their origins into the universal mold. For a visual representation, take Brancusi. His " Bird in space " is the essence of The Bird. It is how a peasant sees a bird up above in the air, a flash of winged flesh and in the same time the idea of Bird flying away. In some people, exile brings exactly this out: their universal so...

Do you know what the social elevator is ? In France this expression is used a lot when speaking about elevating one's social position , extracting them out of their social environment and "elevating" them towards a higher social status, if not the highest (one can't make an aristocrat out of a farmer’ boy), at least higher than their parents. During the post-war era, the social elevator was functioning really well. Everybody was called to "elevate" the country, or to rebuild it, and one could only live better than their parents. But now ? At least since 10 years, but numbers say since the ‘90s, it seems that the social elevator is not functioning well, or is even broken. For a Romanian, the social elevator does not mean anything. Besides, in the 80s in Romania, all elevators were always broken anyways.. as they were not functioning in the way would have normally functioned in “normal” times. So, going back to the French social elevator : if...