The Tower

A few days went by before I got the meaning of  ‘Welcome here. Welcome home’. I was hoping to have a home in this city, but in the end isn`t it what all immigrants hope for? Because yes, this is what I am, an immigrant. If I were some famous writer or misunderstood artist, it would have been called ‘an exile’. So I must settle for the immigrant tag for the moment. Isn`t it funny how many tags we got stuck on ourselves during our miserable existences? Thank God they are not actual paper or carton tags, like the price ones, otherwise we`d all look pretty funny but also more interesting. No one would get bored during a long bus ride: we`d read our neighbors tags, thinking ‘wow, that old nice man was once called a pervert or a bullheaded moron, or maybe… Let`s ask him to raise his arm! Oh yes, on his elbow there is a ‘heartbreaker’ tag.

You can now  understand why I am looking forward to getting old. Sins are forgotten, people are nice to you, try to be helpful and never think in their innocence that you might have been a jerk in your good old days. You can scream from your lungs: No! I do not deserve this consideration! Age is just an accident, I am the most despicable person ever existed! People would still smile with deference and say: I know growing old is  hard to bear, but we all are sooner or later, so let us help you and care for you, grandpa.  And so you end up being cared for and loved or at least have the chance of some clean diapers in an old mens home-that, if you are living your last days in a civilized country. That`s another reason I moved to Sweden. I think I know myself all too well and I do know that witches are not loved anywhere for what they are, except when they grow old enough to be called grandma.

Well boys and girls, it looked like I found my home in this city- in theory at least. And I also moved to my actual ‘new home’ after those days at the hotel I told you about. The apartment was nice and cozy and the previous tenants left some things behind. And a note: ‘Everything in the apartment is yours’. Good, so all of a sudden I had some more things apart from what I brought from my home country. It was a peaceful Saturday afternoon and the city was quiet. I was doing tours around the house, trying to get used to the new space. Imagine a cloudy day, an almost empty apartment and a thick silence covering your ears like a warm hat. So it was. And I opened a kitchen cabinet. They were there. Both of them: the Turkish coffee pot and a brand new-still-sealed Turkish coffee jar Mehmet Efendi brand. I froze.

I went to Turkey many times and never bought a coffee pot for myself. I bought some as souvenirs for almost every friend or family member, but for myself, although I love Turkish coffee. No wonder, since the part of the world I`m coming from is a melting pot of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Mongolians and God knows what other ‘ns’. Occasionally, they pop up from our now Romanian-called DNA taking the form of strange preferences. We find ourselves enjoying the spicy food of the Hungarians, the unbearable sweet ‘baklava” of the Turks and the long chats on lazy Sunday afternoons of the above mentioned.

I always got the things I longed for. So what`s so strange in getting the Turkish coffee pot I wanted? In Sweden, from a portughese-romanian family. Nothing strange at all.

The pot was nice, but the coffee jar was scary. About a year ago, I was chatting with my good friend and, after a few hours of complaining about men, life and human fate, we started to discuss our funerals. Yes, our own funerals. She wants to live forever and never grow old.  So she opted for a mausoleum-style crypt and maybe a long-lasting-Stalin-style embalming. I am not scared of death, so I was oscillating between a Jewish funeral and a cremation. Ultimately, I chose the cremation and I decided that my funerary urn should be a Mehmet Efendi coffee jar. I really hope someone would remember this and please, play Ishamel Lo`s ‘Tajabone’ when you flush my ashes down the toilet. I have a taste for grandeur, you know…

So there it was, my urn in my new home from Sweden. For those who are still wondering: yes, I`m planning to die here someday. And then I understood: the “Welcome here” sign was not just a simple courtesy of the Uppsala Kommun, but  my Tarot Tower.

‘No card scares a Tarot reader like the Tower - or the person they're reading for if that person knows anything about Tarot cards. It is however one of the clearest cards when it comes to meaning. False structures, false institutions, false beliefs are going to come tumbling down, suddenly, violently and all at once. Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey.’ (excerpt from ‘Tarot Meanings’)

The Fool

'In Tarot, the Fool is the card with infinite possibilities. The bag on the staff indicates that he has all he needs to do or be anything he wants, he has only to stop and unpack. He is on his way to a brand new beginning. But the card carries a little bark of warning as well. Stop daydreaming and fantasizing and watch your step, lest you fall and end up looking the fool.'

So there I was, staying for a few days in a youth hostel and wandering around the city I had previously visited just once, 10 months earlier. I wasn`t feeling lonely or lost, but a little confused about my own apparently inexplicable decision to move to a land I had nothing in common with. Humans develop this resistance to change even if they longed for it, expected it or planned it in detail. Humans do not like changes , but somehow they feel change is necessary and fill their lives with small decisions and sometimes major changes. I must be a gipsy at soul, since I never felt I belonged someplace and could adjust pretty much everywhere. I must admit, this ‘citizen of the world’ state of mind always makes things easier for me. Indeed, freedom is comfortable when you are The Fool and everything you own you carry with you. Inside, mostly.

I started to doubt about my decision to change countries when the previous tenants of the apartment I was about to let announced me that it had been some sort of misunderstanding. They were not to leave but two days later than the agreed date. No big deal actually, but it can become a huge deal in this city packed with tourists during the summer. The picture was like this: a goofy woman with a toddler son in an unfamiliar city, without friends and facing the possibility to sleep under the great blue sky for two nights. A sky like this:

I went back to the hotel praying that someone canceled its reservation. Bad news. The blond lady at the reception informed me shortly that it was impossible to stay for two more nights: ‘We are packet’ she said. Somehow fascinated of her cold beauty and her British-flight-attendant English, I insisted: ‘Maybe you can still find a room’. She glanced at me for a second and decided to be professional, in spite of the irritation I obviously caused her: ‘I can check one more time’. This ‘one more time’ lasted maybe for 20 seconds but felt like a plain fat smelly hour to me. With a steady voice as if announcing that we are approaching our final destination and sit belts must be bucked up, my flight attendant said: ‘Unbelievable, someone just canceled its reservation 10 seconds ago, so yes, you can stay for two more nights’. My heart almost burst with joy. I am so honored to receive this room, I must thank ProfilHotels chain, my parents, my friends and everyone who supported me in this endeavor. I am proud to be the chosen one who sleeps for two more nights in this shitty hotel, in room 212.

‘Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?’ asked Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.

‘I'm not a witch at all. I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas.’

But as you all know, Dorothy was wearing the witchy shoes. I kind of felt like her on that day, except my Converse trainers and the lack of the yellow path which is usually a good indication that you are heading to the Great City of Oz. So I headed to the Central Station.

I`ve always liked trains and train stations. When I was about two, my grandfather was taking me to the train station, spending there hours and hours looking at the trains coming and going. I can still remember and feel the same excitement and trill when a train approaches the stopping point. Trains are magic. So are planes, but that was a later discovery in my life, since most of the people never traveled by plane during the ‘70s in Romania. I always lived close by a train station. My grandparents were living just opposite the Central Station, my parents were living in a different town close by the train station, later on I bought an apartment from where I could hear the trains coming and going to and from Bucharest North Station. It wasn`t a choice, it was a sign. Central Stations from all over the world are my home, so I headed to the Uppsala Central Station on that turbulent day.

The sign I previously ignored was there. It reads: ‘Welcome here. Welcome home’.

Signs

I arrived in Sweden  carrying a backpack, dragging a huge troller and pushing my  son`s stroller at the same time. The laptop suitcase was leaning by my neck. I must have been quite an appearance, since a few innocent citizens stopped and looked at me smiling. It must have been a warm welcome after all.

The next couple of days would have been annoying in absence of the signs. But they started to show, one by one, as if someone kept them in store for me for a long time and suddenly decided to display them all, like a fortune teller displaying her cards. The first one was The Fool.