Lacul Morii
In the western part of the city, there is a big lake.The lake is surrounded by a concrete wall and a dike on which people walk and stroll and watch other people walk and stroll. Young people sit on the edge of the dike and drink beer and watch the drunkards (who are usually much older than the youngsters) swim in the water. Couples of all sort sit on the edge of the concrete dike, too, and watch the architecture in the distance, the movements of the seagulls who fly in circles above the water, they watch other people watch architecture, seagulls and other people and so forth. In the far distance, you can see industrial plants. Down at water-level, some fishermen are fishing. I could not tell what color the eyes of the fish are - maybe yellow, maybe greyish.
Some dead dogs are floating in the water.
But the sun is shining, it is spring, and there is enough good will and energy around for people to enjoy themselves, which is one of the big qualities of the City of Bucur.
Monuments and the bees
The bees have not returned yet. But very soon.... already now, their future seat, a huge bee hive, is placed in the center of the city, in form of a monument. The returning bees will go into the floral decorations of house façades, and mix this pollen with the pollen from city trees and the pollen of imported plants. Their new honey, a new encyclopedia of memory, will write the history of the city of Bucharest. This new honey will be of an exquisite sweetness, with a bitter aftertaste. The city will recover from its amnesia. The people who eat this honey will be able to look through façades and history and to bring their memories into a coherent form.
1977
An earthquake shakes the city. The clean-up becomes a pretext for radical operations on the organic body of the city: churches and whole neighborhoods are razed, thousands of people are kicked out of their homes. Abandoned dogs, like their former masters homeless and aimlessly wandering around their lost city.
Cioran dit:
" Le traditionalisme est une formule commode qui refuse tout engagement. Il exprime une solidarité avec la nation mais non une volonté de lui conférer un sens important dans le monde. Tout traditionalisme accepte les limites immanentes de la nation. Dès lors, il n'y a plus rien à faire, la nation se rendant vers l'avenir comme les boeufs à l'abreuvoir."
Observation (2)
Behind the Ministry of Finances, a man comes out of a shag. He crosses the street and starts to beat up a sleeping dog.
Observation
Both very educated people (of the "not-yet-younger-generation") and beggars speak French.
Circuit of merchandise (3)
Emigrés of Bucur grow and pick tulips in Holland. The money they make is sent to their families back home, to children or parents they left behind.
The tulips are transported to the flower market of the city of Bucur, where they are sold to the children and parents of people who emigrated (in order to remember them.)
The tulips are transported to the flower market of the city of Bucur, where they are sold to the children and parents of people who emigrated (in order to remember them.)
City growth
The city of Bucur has always grown like a fractal - it has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales and it is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.Some say it still grows like an oil patch - uncontrollably, in a thick black swamp, impossible to regulate and impossible to soak up. The city grows uncontrollably towards North, West, South and East, but also into the sky, making it a city for people of different scales and different ages.
Of course, Masterplans have always existed - only nobody ever cared to realize them truly. (one exception, as everybody knows, but that is a story from "once upon a time", that does not count today)
19th century
During the 19th century, Kiselyov took particular care of the city: he acted against the plague and cholera epidemics of 1829 and 1831, instituted a "city beautifying commission" (first time the IMAGE comes in) comprising physicians and architects, paved many central streets with cobblestone (instead of wooden planks), drained the swamps formed around the Dâmboviţa and built public fountains, settled the previously-fluctuating borders of the city (it now measured ca.19 km in perimeter and was guarded by patrols and barriers), carved out Calea Dorobanţilor and Şoseaua Kiseleff (major north-south routes), mapped the city and counted its population, gave Bucharest a garrison for the newly-created Wallachian Army and improved its fire fighting service.
Covrigi
People eat a lot of covrigi (pretzels) around here. It is like bread dough, but it is baked in a special shape, in a shape like angels crossing their hands or a shape like two people embracing one another. People like covrigi because it reminds them of the organic substance of life that is on the base of all this, even of this city, where blocks and concrete walls dominate the view.Moreover, if you eat your covrigi when it is still warm, you can feel the warmth of the sun reach right down into your stomach and lift you up. Have you noticed that people eating covrigi do not really touch ground with their feet?
you should try...
Circuit of mechandise (2)
The patients bring small "presents" to their doctor in the hospital, such as a glass of honey or a pack of cigarettes. The doctors sell these cigarettes to the salesman in the cigarette both in front of the hospital, where the next patients will buy cigarettes to bring a small "present" to their doctor.
Circuit of merchandise (1)
During election time, the political party prints their logo on lighters to hand them out to their potential electorat. When elections are over, the gypsies get the lighters, scratch of the logo and sell them on bus stops.
2010 - 1948 - 1989 - 2010
2010: The man who sells flowers on the street is counting his 1-Lei-Bills. He has built his house on a small piece of land. Now the land with the house on it is in the hands of a French lawyer, who bought the land from an Arab man, who bought the land from a Rumanian, who bought the land from an old French man in Paris, who lost this piece of land in 1948, and to whom it was returned after 1989. The man who sells flowers on the street knows nothing about all this.
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