Sunday Brunch
Nothing New, Yet Everything Has Changed
A friend called yesterday. She was talking to me on speaker while doing her nails, choosing her outfit and getting her three sons properly dressed for the party. Her parents are celebrating fifty years of marriage. She just came back from a holiday in Agadir and struggles to get back into the groove, or grind, of life as a working single parent, who is also training to become a qualified nurse. Its a full and full-on life. What’s new with you? she asks.
Not much I say. I stick to my main objectives: my health (and sanity), and writing (purpose?). It really is all I do. I walk the dogs three times a day. I eat three times a day. Around those set points I plan the intake of my various tinctures and tablets. I see my physiotherapist twice a week. I write. I walk, I think. I sit, I write some more.
I get antsy, I get frustrated, sometimes I get somewhere. Underneath, there are shifts, as slow and subtle as the moving of continents.
THE WAY I SPEND THE END OF THE WORLD
First this. I have changed the name of my page, on a whim. My whims have deep roots. They appear whimsical, but they operate more along the lines of Francesca Sozzani’s words:
“You need to be light in life. Lightness for me, is when being profound allows you to fly high.”
I will still call this particular bit Sunday Brunch, but overall the name is now: The Way I Spend The End Of The World.
It is in reference to one of my favourite Romanian films: Cum mi-am petrecut sfârsitul lumii. Watch it, it is beautiful. Another movie gem, while I am at it: Tomorrow.
Watch them, and let me know what resonates. What does it mean to you? Do you get why the title means something to me? Maybe only people who have spend time in Romania or are from there will get it… but I have an inkling there is something universal if we zoom in a little closer.. anyway…
I have also changed the CTA for my Ko-Fi link; Tip The Story Teller… this is in honour of the week I travelled around Romania with a group of Dutch tourists, pretending to be a tour guide. I did not stick to the historical facts (most of which I had to research the night before in my hotel bed). I added songs (never travel without a soundtrack and a Romanian one needs to include it all… Subcarpati, Papa Rude, What’s Up, Irina Rimes..) and told stories about our lives there.
On the last day one of the couples gave me a huge tip and said: Never stop making up those amazing stories, You have a gift.
Everything I told them was true (not sure if that also applies to the historical facts I Googled, but I did my best..)
FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD
Life appears dull, lack lustre, on the surface, even on days where the sun is blazing and pushes temperatures up to 29 degree celsius. Every day I do get excited at the prospect of eating. It is a hobby. Blessed with a weird metabolism I can eat. And eat.
Two recipes.
Gordon Ramsay’s mac and cheese. Make it exactly according to his recipe. Then: get adventurous and mix up your cheeses. In my case it has been a hit and miss, but it’s also addictive… let’s see what happens if I swap Lancashire with Comte…
Oh fffaadddiifff: I just spotted Ramsay’s recipe of mac n cheese n truffle…
Squink Risotto with Saffron Aioli. Nothing more to add, except that SQUINK is now my new favourite word….
DID I TELL YOU?
Here on Substack I am getting to a point with you, dear readers, that you are starting to feel like friends I have now known for a while. And I now don’t remember which anecdotes I have shared with you. Did I tell you about the time I locked myself out of my apartment? And I tried to climb onto my balcony from my neighbours’ balcony? Only to get stuck in between. On the 13th floor?! Or about the time I was dating this gorgeous man in London? I thought he was a male model. That was, until the moment I found a loaded hand gun in the glove compartment of his very expensive car. Or the time I accidentally threw a door in Mick Jagger’s face? You get the gist. All illustrations that remind me of previous versions of me that were clumsy, clueless and possibly also batshit crazy.
I have lost track of what I have talked about as much as I am lost in the lists of topics to tackle, in notes on my phone, in Trello, or handwritten in a notebook. This week I was tempted to press publish on all unfinished drafts. Just as they are now (all 33 of them).
Reading those I may come across unhinged, all over the place. Which I am. Why are there so many loose threads, so much left unfinished? Because I have also reached a point (something I know from experience will fade again) where all my writing feels, well pointless. I can reason from 0 to 100 and back again on why something should or should not be written. Everyone has said it already, it’s too private, it is frivolous nonsense.
Anyway, this week I am sure the siren call of some of these unfinished pieces will draw me to them again, and with a bit of luck some will be done by next week’s Sunday Brunch.
In the meantime I leave you with a little insight into my meandering mind and writing process: the transcripts of a few voice memo’s on my phone: HERE.
UNFINISHED
These are the notes I jotted down for this week too:
The Ancestors
Grandfathers brazen spirit wanderlust (did I tell you about the time my granfather left for Algeria. Where he tarred roads. And then vanished. Because he had joined a bedouin tribe?
Devout Catholic vs Atheist bushwhacker
I take after them both
Paternal grandfather same nose, same ankles
Role in the war
Last memories of them. How my maternal grandfather, lost in the maze of dementia, would still help me with my Latin homework and recite entire Shakespeare sonnets he knew by heart…
—-
The Solitude
Not being able to live with others. I don’t like it. It does not suit me.
Distracted depleted
How much I wrote when living alone
Earplugs head phones
Link to comment Michael (Harvey how will we solve this when we have a family?)
Meeting him in Bucharest by chance…
—-
Love and The Lovers
Lovers modern love style NYT. Wrote about Max and our version of Until Sunrise… (linked to the new cougar essay…). Friendships. All the types of love…
Albert
Alex
Olivier
Unrequited love being the object of someone’s romantic affection not reciprocating
—
The Pulp
Watching simpleton TV. Easy to digest content as all else weight too heavily on the stomach…)
Romance novels we googled 4500 titles and counting
Consuming mindless pulp
Formulaic soothing of the expected, the familiar.. (also why we watch our favourites on repeat..)
—-
Self acceptance
This entire life lived on the outside. Never belonging. The discomfort, wanting to not feel that way. It is gone. Whatever I feel is perfect.
Writing from those places instead of running away, ignoring, wrestling, judging, rejecting.
Not the romanticised the suffering artist
Conversation with Mirella about health consciousness Part 1 here
Leave the hurt enough lessons learned
Spend the rest of my life “like the bridge playing crowd”
—
Moving On
The house home belonging
Letting it go
Muki mourn you when I feel safe
Soft landing a nest
In me
What no longer serves you …
ON VINTED
Lugging around my belongings also does not serve me. The amount of time I spend refolding, repacking and reorganising things is time wasted. So here goes nothing!!
Once upon a time I worked for Vinted. I had to transcreate their TV-commercials for the Dutch market and flew to Vilnius every other month. It is a really lovely city and I would love to go there again (I also have this bucket list type dream of finding pieces of Baltic amber on the coast), but I don’t have particular fond memories of the company itself. Anyway, sidetracked. The point is that I am now on Vinted, selling everything I have.
Every day I take photos of clothes, shoes, and bags and post them online. I am curious to see how far it will take me, in terms of minimalism and money. Whatever cash I make goes towards a new vehicle. In my mind I am already packing a campervan (Hymer 534 yes please!), and I mumble to myself folding a pair of skipants; this will be handy when I travel in winter… these storage boxes will come in handy in the campervan… this would be good to organise all the pet stuff in…
ANYWHERE BUT HERE…
Last night when out walking the dogs, I heard someone speak Romanian. I had been lost in thought about the house in Valea again, so at first I thought it was in my mind.
I turned around and saw three people, a young couple and an older man. Are you from Romania, I asked in Romanian. The young guy answered in English and then burst out laughing. There had been a little delay in his brain, picking up on the fact he was being addressed in Romanian by a stranger, in a Dutch suburb. The older man asked me if I was Romanian too. No, I said, I just lived there for a while. “Oh that’s cute” he said.
Romania. NL. Morocco. I think about Lonely Planet, not the travel guide but the daft film about a writer at a writers’ retreat in Morocco. The film is probably the most forgettable out of all the “new cougar” releases (I did actually forget to include it in my essay “younger”- unfinished), but the location, oofff.
“Would love to go to Morocco one day for a writers retreat. And if there is a young Hemsworth wandering around there, BONUS” I reply to my friend, back from Agadir, before getting lost in a day dream. Of travel by myself, but mostly of packing up my pets and setting off together.
I long for the unfamiliar. I have a strong desire to be somewhere else, somewhere different. A place where I recognise nothing, where nothing reminds me of who I am.
XXL