Howdy, Practitioners. Long time no see.

There’s a reason for that, as a bunch of you well know. I’m working on a book. Well, two books. Well, I got a book that’s finished which nobody seems interested in publishing and a book that’s currently being written. I suppose it’d be more accurate to say that I’m working on becoming a novelist. A contemporary Romanian novelist, writing in Romanian, being published by a reputable Romanian press, and being read by his countrypeople. That’s my current dream or, if I can be so bold as to call it that, my goal.

To that end, I have decided to end my nigh on six year social media fast and make a fresh Facebook account. I’ve been led to believe that Facebook was the place Romanian writers flocked to online, and practice shows this to indeed be the case.

Therefore, from now on and for the foreseeable future, ye shall find me there.

Reacheth out to me, if thou so wisheth, and I shall be more than happy to rekindle our connection on the big-blue-square-with-a-white-capital-F.

Until further notice, this newsletter will be on an indefinite hiatus.

If you wish to read more of my work…learn Romanian. Just kidding. I hope to be able to share more of my future stuff with you, in some form. I’ll keep you posted, if there’s anything to report.

Until next time, whenever that will be, stay safe, and keep on reading and supporting us writers. It makes a world of difference.

Yours,

A.

For a time, when I was five or six years old, I pretended to be allergic to mayonnaise.

It did not come from nothing.

At one point a few weeks earlier, I had developed a slight rash after eating a McChicken. Since then, whenever I ordered one again, I specified to the person at the counter—while lifting myself on my toes to be able to see them— that I was allergic to mayo, so they should make sure not to put any on my sandwich.

Looking back, it seems that I have always had a problem with how healthy my body is. I have written before about my anxiety caused by not having broken any bones yet.

I have also never been extremely sick, other than a bout of pneumonia as a child. I suffer from no chronic illnesses, have good, straight, strong teeth, am naturally rather muscular (especially in my lower body), boast a full head of hair, and nothing about my face stands out as out of place.

Paradoxically, perhaps, the resilience of my body has always made me feel a tad isolated. Surrounded by people being markedly affected by viral disease, genetic bad luck, and just their own folly and laziness, I alone stood untouched by the vagaries of cosmic chance. And because I did not share other people’s problems, I had a hard time relating to them.

The allergy pretension, I see now very clearly, was an attempt at belonging.

Presumably because I had seen it in some cartoon, I had gotten it into my head that it was cool to have an allergy. Hence, I took advantage of the little rash that went away after a few days with no treatment and never reappeared, not even after, years later, I began eating mayonnaise again, and whenever someone asked—and I’ll have you know that a few people did ask—I would proclaim with chest-swelling pride that yes, I too had an allergy, that I too was as feeble and vulnerable as the questioner and all the rest of humanity. And it felt good. Boy, did it feel good.

What I’ve just told you is quite weird, I realize that.

And this is exactly my point.

The desire to belong is an integral human need. It no doubt stands as one of those old-as-the-species facets of our survival instinct, a way our reptilian brain makes sure we are not left to fend for ourselves in a wild, unfeeling world.

In fact, according to a paper I read recently1, the need to belong has been proven to be one of our fundamental behavioral motivations. In other words, being accepted as part of some group is crucial to us, so important, in fact, that failure to meet this need can have severe pathological consequences.

And sometimes, in order to belong, we end up doing some pretty crazy things.

Here are a few more of mine:

1. To fit the mold of the American movie “high school boy”, as a sophomore I joined together with two guys I barely knew and formed a punk rock band called Red Twist (it was to be called Green Twist, but the guy who owned the studio we practiced at thought it’d be too much of a Green Day rip-off—as though substituting green for red could take away the fact that 50% of our repertoire consisted of covers of their songs). As the bass player of that band, I even dyed my hair blonde. I admit that it was loads of fun, but I never quite got over the feeling that I was playing a role, that I was trying—and shamefully failing—to fake it till I made myself into the kind of person for whom partying and getting drunk and dancing on stage felt natural. The fact that I’m sitting in bed drafting this essay instead of practicing guitar against the backdrop of protesting neighbours may serve to show you I never succeeded.

2. In law school, in order to seem to have more life experience than I did, I pretended to be an occasional smoker. For a while, whenever I went out with my mates, I made sure to buy a cigarette off of whoever was loaded that time, just to have it on me, ready for the rest of the night. If the others began to light up, so would I, and I would hold that cigarette until it succumbed to its own combustion, taking just enough occasional, shallow puffs from the death-dealing thing to look like I was helping it along. In fact, there exists a picture, taken at a students’ union party, of me dressed to the nines and looking thoughtfully at a night sky as devoid of stars as a cup of black coffee, all while holding a half-consumed cigarette the way only a neophyte would.

3. Once (and this story still makes me cringe, so consider yourselves lucky I’m telling it to you), when I was in third grade or so, I went with my father to a one-week karate camp on the beach. At that point in my life, I was a thickly-bespectacled nerd and chronically friendless, so I was comically unaware of just how one did make friends. We went there as part of a larger group representing our club, and one night, after the day’s activities were done and beatings dealt and taken, I took the proverbial bull by its black belt and asked the other kids, who were about to collect in one room and hang out, if I could join them. Most were older than me, so that night, I felt I had to prove myself to them, to let these karate kids know that I was tough enough to be amongst them, that I was street and worldly and wise beyond my years. So I began swearing like a sailor. In fact, to hear what filth was spewing out of my mouth that fateful night, I think any sailor worth his salt would have turned lobstery with shame. I was swearing so much that I began to forget all those people’s names and just addressed each one using the previous insult I’d used. I became so unhinged that the group—and I can scarcely blame them—made a secret plan to get rid of me. At one point, faking a stomachache, one of the oldest boys asked everyone to get out of his room. Then, using what I can only assume were the balconies, the others climbed back into that room. I was utterly confused, and made even more so by the cacophony that could soon be heard from beyond the door. Surely, I thought, they couldn’t have…One by one, I started banging on the doors to all their rooms. I hit the wood so hard and so thoroughly that at one point, maybe one or ten or thirty minutes later, the clatter subsided and the guy with the stomachache opened his door, with nothing more than a towel tied at his waist, and pretended everyone had gone to sleep. Judging by the muffled laughter coming from behind him from voices I recognized, I understood that to be a lie, albeit a graceful one. The next morning, I apologised profusely to the few of them who’d still meet my gaze, but it was no use. In trying to act the way I thought would ingratiate me with them, I had alienated the karate kids.

It seems to me that quite often, belonging is nothing more than a role-playing game. In order to fit in, we assume the guise of someone appropriate for the task. We become a rogue, a fitter-in, the kind of person who belongs.

Thus, like many other endeavors we undertake in this circus we call our modern society, belonging becomes a game of pretend.

And we are experts at that game, aren’t we? We’re full-time, professional, award-winning pretenders.

We pretend to be stronger than we are. We pretend to be happier than we are. We pretend not to care about our outward appearance. We pretend not to mind that our best friend of two decades hasn’t called us on our birthday. We pretend to respect the neighbor who throws his trash out the window each weekend morning. We pretend to be happy in an abusive relationship, or that it’s not as bad as it looks. We pretend to like what’s on TV and how Instagram makes us feel. We pretend to know where we’re going and how to get there. We pretend to be serious adults, all while yearning for any opportunity—a funny T-shirt, a drinking game, a Marvel movie—to let the children inside us see the light again.

Just like that, I believe that we pretend to have much more in common than we actually do.

Recently, I read a short novel called Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au. In the book, the unnamed narrator takes her mother on a trip to Japan, outwardly as a gift to the latter but really mostly because the daughter wants the opportunity to be alone with her mother, to engage her in uninterrupted conversation and have a chance to get to know her better.

To her surprise, things prove confusingly difficult. Over the course of a hundred or so pages of plotless narrative, the narrator-character begins to realize how difficult it is to truly know another person, not just because it’s hard to get anyone to talk about themselves or understand the answers they give to your questions, but how hard, in truth, to even formulate any pertinent questions. How do you know what to ask somebody?

What is the limit of our capacity to know one another? This is a question my wife and I have pondered quite a lot over the last few years. If you live with another person for long enough, you expect that you’ll arrive at a certain level of understanding of that person. That they, in effect, will no longer be able to surprise you. But that’s so not the case! We surprise each other all the damn time, in ways mostly good but also, sometimes, bad. So the question has stuck.

And yet, even if there exists such a limit to our understanding of each other’s minds and hearts, the need to belong still exists. We want to be accepted, to be loved, to be validated, to be seen, to the extent that it is possible.

That’s all well and good so far.

The issue is that there are healthy ways to fulfill this need, and there are more destructive ones.

A lot of people, I’m sure, after arriving at the height of human folly in their youth and treating themselves to a look down at their lives from there, eventually sober up and grow to form healthy, lasting relationships with other people. But many don’t. All around me, I see examples of adults stuck in the minds of children2, adults who stay in stale, cold relationships because it’s less of a bother than breaking up, adults who strain to purchase automobiles they can’t afford because they believe the rest of us care what brand or model they use to get around the block, adults who drink because it used to be cool and they think it still is, adults who talk dirty because all their buddies do, adults who have children because everybody else is doing it and they don’t want to miss out.3

Adults who betray who they are in favor of who they think other people want them to be.

But if we sacrifice so much of ourselves on the altar of belonging, if we replace our likes and dislikes, our hopes and fears and dreams and uncertainties and talents and passions and styles, with ones which do not and have never belonged to us, then who is the one actually doing the belonging? Is it still us?

Or is it the kind of person who would do the kind of thing we are doing, the kind of person who, by our hypothesis, we are not?

There is a way to do it right, of course. But it means coming to terms with the reality of rejection, of people finding out the real you, and some of them potentially giving you the boot. The process of belonging is, in many ways, the natural continuation of the process of self-discovery. Only by looking at ourselves not through a glass darkly, but with honesty and openness and courage, can we discover who we really are, or as much of that as we are able to piece together at any one time, and only once we’ve done that should we begin to contemplate searching for people of our ilk.

Unless we approach this process honestly and without shame, we might live our lives surrounded by people, some of whom we may even consider friends and family, but we will still feel empty, our need to belong severely unfulfilled.

This is not an advice column, but let me tell you how it’s been for me. Every time I tried to fit in by changing something about myself or adopting something new (a phrase, a whole speech pattern, an article of clothing, a certain behavior or activity I’d never tried before because I instinctively knew it wouldn’t be a good fit and it always turned out that it really wasn’t), no matter the result, I did not feel good. Among people who were genuinely like that, I was out of place, a tortoise in the sea.

Instead, all the true friendships I’ve made, all my achievements in activities I’ve stuck with for years, have been the result of self-honesty. No, I never made friends with the cool people (the tough guys, the bullies, the popular kings and queens). No, I never became a professonal athlete or received a black belt. And no, I never stopped eating mayonnaise—though it turns out I don’t even like it.

But I did learn who the actual cool people were (the down-to-earths, the readers, the wide-awake-dreamers, those for whom popularity is an alien concept). I did learn how to listen to my body and let it instead of my dictatorial mind show me what it needs. And I did embrace my nerdiness, my love of comics and video games, and my flat feet.

In truth, I don’t have many friends. I don’t belong to any secret clubs or openly secret societies. I’m not a popular, in vogue writer or really anything else. I don’t smoke, seldom drink, and I don’t gamble or drive a powerful car. I’m just a late-twenties writer with a wife, two cats, and a dozen or so people I hold very dear.

Some might call me boring.

But I feel like I fit in.

Where?

In the only place that matters.

My own life.

I did it again.

I guess we all have our weaknesses. Our obsessions, our proclivities, the holes we always seem to stumble into no matter how well we think we’ve cemented them over.

For me, it’s pushing when I should be letting rest.

More specifically, it’s the belief that no matter what else is going on in my life, no matter how much I’m struggling or how tired or morose or uninspired I feel, I should be writing.

I’ve hinted at this before, though never said it outright. In 2023, I told you I’d be taking a lengthy break from Substack because I was approaching burnout. What I did not tell you was that, at the time and alongside writing to you here, I was also attempting to write a book. This was supposed to be a realistic novel called Alexandru (the Romanian version of the first name Alexander), which would present the life story of a boy with humble beginnings, who eventually immigrates to Germany, changes his name and becomes a bigshot writer. It would have been many things: the first full-length work I’d have ever finished, my first piece of fiction composed in my native tongue, and maybe, why not, my literary debut. I had high, no, huge hopes for it.

Naturally, I did not finish it. I couldn’t. Early on I realized I was way out of my depth. I had not taken the time to plan ahead, so the novel had no structure. But more importantly, I had pushed myself too far again.

This came after, a year before, I had gone through a massive spell of writer’s block because, you guessed it, I’d pushed myself nearly to the breaking point by trying to write newsletter pieces while also studying for a legal exam.

Looking back on all the years that have passed since I started writing seriously in the late days of autumn of 2019, I have been doing this exact thing every year. Pushing myself too far, not listening to my body and the desperate cries of the little person inside my mind who writes all my stories.

Naturally, then, it standa to reason that this year, it was bound to happen again.

In early summer, I finished the book I’ve been working on for nearly a year (working on it even though I also needed to study for the most brutal exam I’ve ever taken). I then spent a few days drafting a synopsis and a book proposal, and sent the manuscript to two major local publishers.

What did I do afterwards?

Did I rest?

Did I revel in my own awesomeness and allow myself to feel good about what I had just accomplished?

Did I even stop to take in that special moment, the moment when my index finger clicked the left mouse button to close the Word doc which contained the final version of the manuscript for the last time?

No. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not.

I started another fucking book.

This time, I did not get stuck. I planned away, did my research, and in close to three months wrote a 17k word first draft of a new novella called Cezar, about a blind dog and the criminal who becomes his newest master.

When I set out to edit it, the irresponsible use of my mental resources these past few months finally caught up with me. I found that my creative well had dried up. No matter how much I tried, no matter how many passages in the book evoke more complex thoughts than those already written, no matter the potential I can see and feel this book has, I could not in any way bring myself to further develop it.

So after mulling it over for a few excruciating, humbling days, I decided to shelf it. I closed the printed manuscript, put it away next to my pile of unread books, and surrendered to the chaotic whims of the universe.

I have not written a single word in over a week (excepting, of course, this little missive to you), and it feels kind of weird. Like, who am I, now that I am not writing? And when will I start again? And what, pray tell, will I be working on when I do?

Will I continue developing this new book? Will I write more of my patented personal essays I used to publish on this Substack?

For the first time in a long, long while, maybe ever, I don’t know.

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​

Bob loved being fat.

​The sixth of seven farmer’s sons, he relished occupying more than a broomstick’s worth of space, being all but impossible to ignore or budge without consent. His bigness grounded him, made him feel real.

​There was also a simpler explanation. Bob liked food. Reallyliked it. As far back as he could remember, there’d been a hunger inside him, a bottomless pit demanding attention. When his first paycheck enabled filling that pit, he found he could not stop. Satiating his hunger was the most fulfilling thing possible. Being fat, then, meant he kept doing it. Kept being true to himself.

​Eating at night was best. City life took its well-earned rest then, and it felt like just Bob and his food existed in the world. It was his mindfulness practice. Nightly he ate not for sustenance—not for energy to face another day behind the cubicle—but pure pleasure. He paired his baked, broiled, fried, frozen, and double-fried friends with horror favourites, so that in time, they intermixed. The Thing meant caramel corn as much as it did Kurt Russell, and The Fly would forevermore be grafted onto a plateful of pickled onion rings.

​One night, however, Bob posted himself in front of the open fridge, scanned its shelves for treasure—five pizza slices, a two-pound bucket of strips (extra crispy), a five-pound bucket of coleslaw salad—and found he wasn’t hungry. Not in the usual way, anyway. The feeling still existed, but came dulled, like a scream from a faraway room. The fridge’s contents seemed too heavy for such a hunger. As though trying to feed a newborn Spam. He grabbed a pack of munchies from the kitchen cabinet and returned to his room.

​Bob lay on the bed and explored his body. He touched below the sternum, whence regular hunger would radiate. Then went lower. No mistaking it. The feeling came from inside his belly button.

​Truthfully, it had always been deep. He’d always sort of wanted to stuff something in there, see how big of a thing could fit.

​He dropped one of the munchies in. With a timid pop, it disappeared. The hunger went away as well. What might it all mean?

​Before he could think up an answer, overwhelming relaxation spread through his body, and Bob fell asleep.

​He woke hungry, ate his usual heap of breakfast cereal, and went to work. At night, the belly button stirred again. Bob tried feeding it another munchy. The star-shaped thing popped in, then got spat back out. One munchy, it seemed, was no longer enough. Bob fed it an extra crispy strip. That quieted it. And Bob fell asleep without his nightly meal again.

​Night after night, it demanded bigger meals, until Bob had to pour the entire coleslaw bucket into his umbilicus. Its hunger grew bottomless, like the hole itself. Like Bob’s own used to be.

​Two weeks in, Bob stopped feeling hungry altogether. The only hunger left was the belly button’s, and its demands had gotten oddly specific. It seemed to have discovered a way to communicate with him. Not quite like hearing voices, but what the hole wanted was no less clear to Bob than if it had been whispering into his ear.

​One day, a tire iron. The next, a whole truck tire. A bag of coal. A bottle with a special mix of grease, surgical spirit, and Sriracha sauce. A wooden mock-up of his company building.

​Soon enough, the loss of his hunger began changing Bob. It showed in how people perceived him, or, for that matter, no longer did. He wasn’t used to checking himself out in the mirror, but sometimes he’d get the urge to step on the bathroom scale, then sigh with relief at the number, inevitably bigger than the last. He’d weighed 325 pounds the week before the belly button woke up. One month later, he was at 152. He stole a look into the mirror. Flaps of skin hung off an emaciated face like cheese strings from a burger.

​He tried forcing himself to eat. Bad idea. Not only could he not keep down food, he couldn’t even keep it in his mouth. Everything tasted like seashells dipped in ash. The days of Bob the foodie were over. 

​The weird thing? He found he didn’t really care. For decades, he’d defined himself by what he stuffed inside himself. Right now, he was just… Bob. The corporate IT guy. The lanky dude from troubleshooting whose last name nobody knew. The man with a seemingly infinite, talking belly button.

​And boy, did it feel good getting it to shut up.

​Six weeks later, Bob saw a sack of bones in the mirror.

​Skin stretched so tight across it that his sharp-edged skull looked about to poke through. That should have scared him; it didn’t. By now, Bob was no longer in command of mind or body. All he wanted to do—could do—was provide his Master with everything It required. The plan was nearly complete. Just one ingredient away. 

​Bob sank into the mattress and removed his billowy Videodrome T-shirt. No need to ruin a beautiful thing. He looked towards his right hand. Was it ready? It looked healthy. He’d washed it, rubbed it with lotion and a mix of spices, applied a tenderizing massage. He wanted to do it slowly, finger by finger. Savor his part of what was coming. But when the first finger entered the hole, this was no longer his moment.

​The entire hand went in, then his arm up to the elbow. The hole pulled further, and Bob’s spine began to break. There commenced a horrid symphony as slowly, relentlessly, his body broke apart.

​Crack. Shuffled.

​Squelch. Turned inside out.

​Screech. Remade itself.

​And Bob was no more.

​“At last.” The newborn stretched, its fresh jaws popping as it spoke. “At last, the Belly Button lives!”

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I used to know this boy. Let’s call him D.

D was average to a degree that it became his first defining feature. Average height, average weight, average intellect, average looks. He possessed an average level of kindness and every so often could tell a good joke. His skin was mildly brown.

D’s second defining feature was being bullied. While he was my classmate, I tried to shield him from the worst of it, though even I had to admit some of the jabs were on point. We parted ways for high school. I got into the best school in the city, he into a more average one.

There they bullied him. God, they bullied him. It was said that once, at recess, someone turned the classroom lights off and six boys began pounding D like a sack of meat. They beat him so badly an ambulance had to be called. Another time, and this during class, someone set his hair on fire.

Dear D, I think about you often. They say we’re all the heroes of our own stories, but did you ever feel the hero? Or were you nothing more than a background character in your own life? I hope things turned around for you in the end. I have no way of reaching you these days, so all that’s left is the sadness; the guilt, too, because I could’ve helped you more; and the vague hope that despite it all, you found the strength to save yourself.

Pachetul ajunge pur și simplu. Niciun SMS, niciun e-mail, doar un scârțâit de roți și, deodată, o berlină neagră cu folie pe geamuri în fața casei mele. Ușa din dreapta se deschide fără sunet și un tânăr într-un hanorac negru, cu gluga trasă peste ochi, se dă jos din mașină. Mâinile-i sunt ocupate de o cutie voluminoasă, și totuși reușește să-mi întindă bonul și un pix albastru deschis.

Cutia nu-i doar mare, ci și grea, ceea ce e un semn bun, zic eu. Aud, sau mi se pare că aud, un gângurit ușor venind dinăuntru. O așez pe masa din bucătărie și, cu foarfeca pregătită, încep să tai banda adezivă din jurul cutiei, cu meticulozitatea unui maestru croitor, având grijă să nu-mi deteriorez noua achiziție. Cutia se deschide.

Bebelușul e înăuntru; un miracol roșiatic, cu aspect sănătos. Bebelușul meu, exact cum promitea broșura.

Prietena mea Berta era tare sceptică cu privire la toată afacerea și a reușit să-mi transmită și mie o stare de anxietate. „Bebeluși la comandă”, a râs duminica trecută la telefon. În timp ce vorbea cu mine, își ținea fetița pe genunchi și alăpta. ”Dragă, dacă eram în locul tău, la cum arăți și la cât de deșteaptă ești, aș fi folosit banii ăia să mă întorc la facultate. N-ai făcut decât să hrănești mașinăria capitalistă pentru o promisiune goală.” În fundal, se auzea suptul fetiței. Ce târfă ipocrită, m-am gândit atunci. A fost nevoie de toată forța mea interioară să nu trântesc receptorul.

Mâinile-mi tremură. Bebelușul—Finnegan, de acum încolo îl va chema Finnegan—îmi zâmbește, dezvelind o gură lipsită de dinți și niște gingii roșii, acoperite cu salivă. Un smoc singuratic de păr blond îi împodobește capul ca o coroniță.

Acum sunt și eu mamă. Berta poate să se ducă naibii.

For example, a scant few years ago, I was a cat-less bachelor. That state of affairs is so far removed from my current experience that I cannot even begin to picture what it was like.

For another example, just last year, if someone were to ask me what kind of writer I thought I was, I would unabashedly have answered something along the lines of: “An essayist, are you daft?! Have you even read anything I’ve written?!”

Well, ladies, gents and nonbinary friends, today I stand before you as something else. Something new. The kind of writer which, as the years went by, I stopped believing I would ever be, nay, could ever be.

A novelist.

Because today, more precisely fourteen hours ago, I put in place the final edits of my book.

So I can finally say it. Scream it, were I the kind of person that manifests themselves that way.

I. AM. A. NOVELIST!

OK, if you want to be a nerd about it, what I have written is closer to a novella than a novel.

It is a 35k word literary narrative, written in Romanian, about an old widower who has convinced himself that he cannot live without his beloved wife, so he’s decided that, on the first anniversary of her death, he will hang himself.

On the day of, however, through the window he has left open—so the stench of death would not bother the neighbours—enters a cat. A skinny, dirty, wounded runt of a cat. And that cat may just turn out to be his salvation.

You likely see why I say this is closer to a novella than a novel. But you know what? If The Old Man and The Sea is being marketed as a novel, then why not this one, too?

Anyway, I am now entering the third and (hopefully) final phase of the journey that has been this book. I have drafted, edited, and now am pitching my manuscript to local publishers.

I think I do not even need to say this, but I will anyway. The experience of writing this book has changed me profoundly. It has forced me to face every single one of my fears and uncertainties. I have learned to plot, develop characters, write long-form, realistic dialogue, fix pacing and continuity issues, and likely most important of all, have patience.

With patience, I have written a book.

With patience, I may write many more.

With patience, and a little luck, I’ll find my name in bookstores sometime soon.

That’s all for now.

I just wanted to check in, let you know I’m not dead, and that I’ve been keeping at it.

I hope to have something more meaty to share soon, including an English translation of the first chapter.

I also hope I’ll bring myself to cease neglecting y’all and write on here more often.

Until then, peace.

God knows all of us need that right now.

—A.

A lot’s happening behind the scenes, including, but not limited to:

• drafting a story for a Molotov Cocktail flash fiction competition in May

• further edits on the book—the second draft of which has been well-received by friends and family

• final preparations for my exam

The unfortunate result of all this has been that I’ve had neither time nor creative energy left for newsletter-exclusive stuff.

Apology delivered, I hope you’ll enjoy this collection of bite-sized essays, originally published nearly two years ago to fewer than a quarter of you.

Prater, 2005

I don’t remember the first time I left my country. When I was little, my parents and I did a lot of sightseeing. After Communism fell, the world opened up, and they wanted to see it all. They believed travel was integral to one’s education, and looking back, I think that’s true.

It was on a trip to Austria that I received my first lesson in darkness.

I think I was about eight. We went to Vienna to see Prater, one of the oldest European amusement parks. I’d only glimpsed these shrines to entertainment in American cartoons, so when the real thing flooded my senses it felt surreal. I remember roller coasters, a ferris wheel, and a ride with spinning sombreros that made my father instantly sick.

I also remember we never left the hotel after dark. There are pimps and whores out there, I was told, though of course I didn’t know what those were. I pictured grotesque figures in black overcoats several sizes too big for their wiry frames, with sharp knives wedged between their thin lips, lying in wait for a hapless boy to fall into their grasp.

During the day, as I ate sandwiches so big I had to hold them like steering wheels, I wondered where the pimps and whores were hiding. Had they squeezed further into the dark corners of the world, or had they simply gone home to sleep away the light? Did they even need to sleep?

At times I wish I was that child again, a child who could afford to separate monsters from men.

I think I know why children’s stories teach us to love people, and fear monsters. It’s because the world feels safer when you have only the latter to fear.

Wood

A boy once gave himself a test. His girlfriend sometimes cut her wrists, so he told her every time she did it, he’d hurt himself too—he’d rub his hand against the margins of his desk until he drew blood. He kept his word, and when next she did it, young flesh met wood again, and then again, and the flesh held firm, and he wondered could he keep it up, until finally a trickle of blood appeared. He proudly showed it to her, and she never mentioned self-mutilation again. He never found out if she’d stopped.

Porcelain

In our first year of college, I shared a room with my best friend. We were about to plunge into uncharted waters, so sticking together felt natural. We’d known each other for twelve years, so it would be like living with family. We could create a home away from home.

That year of living together nearly destroyed our friendship.

The signs were there from the start. The first night, I discovered he was a snorer. The room was so small our beds were close to touching, which prompted many a gay joke, and meant his snoring trumped whatever efforts my headphones could make. There was no way to escape that sound. And soon the problem grew worse. You see, I was a snorer too, especially when very tired, so after a few sleepless nights we began to duet. He’d fall asleep first, keeping me awake for hours with his snoring, and when I finally fell into sleep, I’d wake him up with mine.

Don’t get me wrong. We enjoyed ourselves a lot, too. We’re foodies, and his talent for cooking made dinner a delight. We washed down steaks and hamburgers with country wine from my uncle, and laughed about the stupidity and brilliance of people, and the senselessness of college life. At night, we shared ghost stories so terrifying they disturbed our already precarious sleep schedules for weeks.

But there were other things that bothered me. His discarded clothes lined every surface of the room, to the point where I had no space for my books. And he never washed his dishes, not even when he was by himself.

At our worst moment, I almost punched him in the face.

It was late December. A group of us were gathered in our room, drinking. Out of the blue, my best friend called me out for not having washed the dishes that day. I shot to my feet and went to the armchair he sat in, sprawled like a sheikh. Since he was the one who cooked, washing the dishes fell to me, and that day, indeed, I had failed in my duties. But coming from him, that accusation was the height of arrogance. A few weeks before, I’d gone home to study and left him alone for one week. At the end of that week, he went home himself, assuring me I’d find the room spotless. On my return, the place smelled like a pigsty. I looked in the sink and I saw he’d left a mound of filthy pans floating in toxic-looking water. In effect, he was admonishing me for swatting a fly after he’d killed an elephant.

So I shoved my hand in his throat. It was pure instinct. The room got silent like a cemetery in midwinter. And then he said, I’m joking, man.

We lasted like this until the summer holidays. The following autumn I moved in with someone else, and he decided to live alone. This is how our friendship escaped catastrophe.

That’s it. If you liked what you just read, could you let me know by clicking on the 💙 button below?

Acum doi ani, la muncă, mai mulți colegi s-au accidentat la genunchi. Prima dată când s-a întâmplat am rămas toți interziși, dar începând cu al treilea caz toată treaba devenise deja o glumă între noi. Locul nostru de muncă era locul unde genunchii vin să moară. Toți ceilalți râdeau, însă eu mă înfiorasem de-a binelea. Îmi masam proprii genunchi, dintotdeauna slabi, și-mi imaginam că era doar o chestiune de timp până când și ei vor exploda. Îmi era frică de acest nou soi de ciumă. Dar asta nu-i tot.

În secret, tânjeam să devin următoarea ei victimă.

Vedeți voi, eu nu mi-am rupt niciodată vreun os. Iar acest fapt aparent lipsit de importanță mi-a provocat o grămadă de anxietate de-a lungul timpului. Când eram copil, tata mă captiva cu povești despre aventurile lui de la vârsta mea de atunci, pentru majoritatea dintre ele fiind recompensat cu fracturi. Să-ți rupi un os părea insigna supremă de cercetaș. Îmi uram corpul sănătos pentru că mă priva de ea. Cu siguranță, ceva era în neregulă cu mine. Și pentru că a-mi urî doar corpul nu părea suficient—pentru că problema mea, în mod cert, depășea sfera fizică—în scurt timp am început să mă urăsc pe mine, cu totul.

Mai târziu, oasele rupte au devenit un semn de bărbăție. În a opta, un coleg a intrat în sala de clasă cu un ghips la mâna stângă, mândru, așteptând reacții. Când i-am intrat în joc și l-am întrebat ce pățise, a răspuns cu îngâmfare că „trăsese un pumn în pământ cu atâta forță încât nici corpul lui nu reușise să-i reziste”.

N-am crezut niciodată că ar trebui să fac ceva special pentru a-mi rupe oasele. Părea un eveniment corporal natural, la fel de inevitabil ca apariția primului coș. Atunci de ce eram tocmai eu ocolit? Cine mă numise nedemn pentru un accident cu fracturi? Da, eram un tocilar tăcut care nu știa nici să meargă pe bicicletă, însă luasem parte la destule bătăi, de două ori alegându-mă chiar cu luxații de încheietură. Dar oasele de găină din mâna și antebrațul meu rămâneau cu încăpățânare intacte. Cu fiecare an ce trecea, ca un coșmar de care nu mai scăpam, dorința de a-mi rupe oasele ocupa din ce în ce mai mult spațiu în mintea mea.

Un psiholog mi-a spus că am „tendința nesănătoasă de a mă compara cu alții”. În facultate, comparând trupurile pline de cicatrici ale colegilor mei cu torsul meu rușinos de curat, credeam că am descoperit sursa încrederii lor în ei înșiși și, prin extensie, sursa anxietății mele. Ei își rupseseră oasele în timp ce eu nu. Ei trăiseră din plin, în timp ce eu, nu.

Așadar, când colegii de la muncă au început să dispară, binecuvântați cu lucrul pe care eu mi-l doream de atât de mult timp, mă gândeam—nu, eram sigur—că aveau să se întoarcă schimbați. Mai încrezători, mai drepți, mai rezistenți la ale vieții varii capricii.

Unul câte unul, s-au întors din concediul medical, mult mai repede decât mă așteptasem. Dar inevitabilele schimbări nu s-au manifestat. Erau tot oamenii care fuseseră, întorși la viețile pe care le părăsiseră numai temporar. Niciodată n-au vorbit despre accidentările lor. Era aproape magie pură, felul în care tot episodul s-a evaporat din memoria noastră colectivă. Ca o frunză răzleață suflată de vânt.

Numărătoarea s-a oprit la trei. Ciuma genunchilor n-a ajuns până la mine. Dar dintre toți, eu eram cel pe care-l schimbase.

Știam acum.

Știam că nu pierdusem nimic.

The first time I ran away, Dr. Hao broke every bone in my body. He’d created me, he said, so I belonged to him.

Eventually, I escaped. But the outside was too much for a malnourished mutant. I made my home in shadows, and ate what I could take.

Then, one day, I saw him.

I’d heard of love, but never felt it before.

He was big and black and beautiful, with sharp, hungry teeth.

I reached out. When I moved, he moved. Our hands touched and I felt glass.

That magnificent beast was me.

Maria wakes at six. Before bed she ties her hair with red string, but come morning it’s always undone, a jungle of bleached white hair let loose down her back. She screams in her sleep, like my mom every night that summer in the motel with the pool, after we ran away from Jimmy. This is not the only thing they share.

My shirt engulfs her, covering the bruises from last night. I’m sorry, I want to tell her—feel like screaming at her—Forgive me, I’ll be better. But we both know that’s bullshit. I wasn’t raised for better.

Were you raised for better? Then why not feed some hungry kids?1

For the next few months, alongside (hopefully) lots of new stuff, I’ll be sending out translated versions of previous essays. As I’ve stated before, one of my goals for this year is to make this newsletter bilingual (English and Romanian), at least to an extent.

For this reason, I have created a new section called Practice Space (RO). English readers, feel free to unsubscribe from this section (instructions here) if you do not wish to receive future posts written in Romanian.

You can find the English version of the below essay here.

Cât despre tine, cititorule român, ți-am pregătit o mică introducere pe care o poți găsi aici.

Într-o piscină am gustat pentru prima oară moartea. Aveam cinci ani. Tata mă înscrisese la un club de înot de stat pe care el însuși îl frecventase și, mai impresionant, îl supraviețuise. Cluburile astea publice, deși destinate copiilor, nu se pretau bălăcelii fără noimă în piscină; erau terenuri de testare a viitorilor campioni olimpici, iar acești copii cu potențial suprauman erau cei care primeau toată atenția antrenorilor, în timp ce noi, restul (fraierii), rămâneam la statutul de recuzită sau, dacă aveam noroc, obstacole. În prima mea zi acolo, am pășit în capătul mai puțin adânc al piscinei împreună cu ceilalți cursanți și am crezut că pot s-o fac. Că pot să-l fac pe tata mândru învățând să înot în timp record. Antrenorul, un ochelarist burtos și mustăcios care aducea mai degrabă cu un actor porno ieșit la pensie decât cu un atlet, a suflat în fluier și a răcnit o serie de instrucțiuni ce s-au pierdut în învălmășeala ce a urmat. Lecția începuse. Ceilalți băieți alergau, săreau pe burtă și se scufundau, în timp ce eu înghețasem, neștiind ce ar trebui să fac și fiindu-mi frică să nu comit vreo greșeală fatală. Apoi, antrenorul m-a împins. Și așa mare cum eram—mereu fusesem înalt pentru vârsta mea—am căzut, ca un stejar tăiat cu drujba, pe spate. Nu apucasem să inspir, așa că plămânii mei erau goi. La fel și mintea mea. Nu puteam găsi în mine forța să ridic măcar un deget. Era ca și cum cineva mă învelise cu o pătură cu greutăți, invizibilă. Îmi amintesc cum stăteam în apa aceea—omoplații mei atingând din când în când gresia piscinei, ochii mei deschiși către luminile tavanului ce răzbăteau prin apă, neauzind nimic și nevăzând nimic altceva decât acele lumini tulburi şi difuze—și mă întrebam dacă voi muri. După câtva timp, antrenorul m-a ridicat. Nu m-am întors acolo niciodată. Și au trecut ani buni până să pot păși din nou într-o piscină.

…

Citește restul în revista Zugzwang.

Sunt Andrei Atanasov, un scriitor cu visuri mari născut în Constanța.

Probabil că nu mă știi—decât dacă suntem prieteni în viața reală—fiindcă până acum am publicat exclusiv texte scrise în limba engleză. Așa că hai să-ți spun câte ceva despre mine:

• Scriu de vreo cinci ani. Am început cu ficțiune (prima mea povestire a fost o chestie morbidă despre un tip care se sinucide dându-și foc în propria mașină, după care au urmat povești mai drăguțe), apoi, când am descoperit Substack, am trecut pentru o vreme la eseistică și memoir, adică povești adevărate care se citesc la fel de ușor ca ficțiunea. Mai nou, le combin, așa că nu vei ști niciodată la ce să te aștepți de la mine (mai ales fiindcă nici eu, de fapt, nu știu).

• Câteva dintre textele mele în engleză au fost publicate în reviste literare internaționale, cel mai recent în Sky Island și Short Reads.

• Mai nou, am început să public și în română. Eseul meu Lecții de înot a apărut în Zugzwang, iar Revista Ficțiunea (coordonată de Șerban Pavlu) a publicat un capitol din cartea la care lucrez.

• Am absolvit Facultatea de Drept a Universității din București, însă pasiunea mea adevărată e literatura, încă de când (în clasa a unșpea) am cunoscut o anumită profesoară de română care mi-a deschis ochii, să zicem, în sensul că m-a învățat să citesc ca un cititor, nu ca un critic învechit și formalist. Cu alte cuvinte, mi-a arătat că tot ce învățasem la școală despre cum funcționează cărțile era total greșit. Dacă știi engleză, poți citi întreaga poveste aici. Pot spune cu mâna pe inimă că dacă nu ar fi fost doamna Samson, eu n-aș fi devenit niciodată scriitor.

• M-am născut la finele secolului trecut. Copilăria mi-a fost marcată de desenele alea mișto cu supereroi (știi tu: Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman, Liga Dreptății, ș.a.m.d), dar și de popularizarea masivă a jocurilor video. Generația mea a fost, cred, printre primele care și-au petrecut mai mult timp jucându-se în casă decât afară, astfel că (încă) știu tot ce mișcă în materie de jocuri video, în schimb nu mă pricep la fotbal, nici la baschet, nici la volei.

• Andrei Atanasov e un pseudonim. E destul de asemănător cu numele meu adevărat, doar că sună mai bine. Am ales să public sub pseudonim pentru a-mi separa cariera juridică de cea literară.

Cam astea ar fi bazele. Vei afla mai multe despre mine citind acest newsletter. Mă rog, nu chiar atât de multe, pentru că până la urmă opera contează mai mult decât autorul ei, nu?

În prezent, mare parte din acest newsletter este în engleză, însă anul ăsta mi-am propus să traduc câteva dintre cele mai bune (și populare) eseuri și povești publicate aici, pentru a ajunge mai ușor la tine, cititorule român.

Sper să-ți placă. Iar dacă da, nu uita să te abonezi (folosind butonul din josul acestei pagini) și să dai un like (butonul în formă de inimă) povestirii respective. Lectură plăcută!

Momentan, sunt disponibile în română următoarele:

Hello!

I want to share an essay I’m really proud of, published by the awesome folks at last November. It’s about pets, and how they affect and are affected by family dynamics.

This was my first publication in a major outlet (Short Reads has published the likes of Dinty W. Moore, editor-in-chief of Brevity), so I was super excited when I got their email.

Some of you may have read a previous draft of this essay, but I hope you don’t mind reading the final version.

You can find the essay here. Enjoy!

Hello. Hi. How’s it hangin’? Welcome to

I’m Andrei Atanasov, an essayist, fiction writer, and criminal lawyer from Constanța, Romania.

Welcome to my corner of the World Wide Web.

I’m not a household name (yet), so you probably don’t know who I am.

Here are five rapid-fire facts about me:

• Andrei Atanasov is not my real name, though it’s surprisingly similar to it. I chose to publish under a pseudonym in order to separate my legal career from my art.

• I’m a proud late ‘90s child, with all that this entails, including but not limited to: a profound appreciation for animated movies; vague memories of a world without smartphones; a collection of CDs that includes Green Day, Bon Jovi, Eminem, and Iron Maiden; and an obsession with T-shirts, Mortal Kombat, and RPGs.

• I’ve been penning stories and essays for a little over five years. During this time, a few of my pieces have been published in literary magazines, including, most recently, Sky Island Review and Short Reads. You can find most of them here.

• I came to literature pretty late. Until my final year of high school, I hated reading, and spent my time button-mashing PS2 controllers and binge-consuming superhero media. Then, I met a wonderful Romanian language and literature teacher who showed me the magic of literature. It turned out, the way I’d been taught to evaluate books (using dry, technical, opaque language not my own) was dead wrong, and totally missed the point. Thanks to her, I became a voracious reader, and, eventually, a writer. You can read the whole story (and get a feel for my writing style) here.

• Like most people, I’m interested in lots of things. I read widely (anything from westerns to splatterpunk to YA romance to classic Russian literature is fair game), I watch a ton of stuff (big fan of anime, superheroes—yeah, that still—and A24 movies), I listen to a bunch of podcasts (among my favourites: Heavyweight, Everything is Alive, and Talk Easy), and I game, mostly on my Nintendo Switch (indie pixel art game squad, where u at?).

At the moment, this newsletter is on a bit of a wonky schedule, as I try to find pockets of time for it between my job and working on my first book (!!!).

(I’d rather not spoil anything, but I know you’re going to ask, so here goes: the book is an intense, emotionally-driven novella about an old widower who wants to kill himself and a stray cat who might just save him.)

Normally, though, I post twice a month. That’s about it, as far as rules go. And even that’s not set in stone.

What I like to do is let my gut dictate what I’m going to publish.

Over two years of publishing this newsletter, I sent out:

—essay-length memoirs (on childhood friendship, a braided essay featuring swimming pools, on how I made an unlikely friend in a dilapidated store, on my father’s rage, on broken bones, on death, on dreams, on dancing in supermarkets)

—a few short stories (Coda, Okamoto, The Box, The Worst Possible Moment, Snow-Fox vs. Leukemia, etc.)

—essays on various topics with nothing in common except my momentary interest in them (Dark Souls, Everything Everywhere All At Once, T-shirts, the vastness of space as a mindfulness exercise, animal abuse in the film industry, how to measure succcess, charging for one’s writing, cats as cruel killing machines)

—a bunch of weird, blog-like musings and life updates (adopting a stray cat, my new-found distaste for routines, dealing with writer’s block, being turned into a lover of coffee, a photo collection, writing for an audience of one, etc.)

—a series of haiku, inspired by household happenings

—a lot more, including a number of interviews and guest posts.

As you can see, it’s a mixed bag, to put it very mildly. It’s all in the name, really. This is my Practice Space—the dojo where I train for writing, and the place where I do my thinking.

A space in which I welcome you with open arms.

I hope to see you around here, watching me practice my craft (and maybe even doing some training of your own—the comment section is a lively, friendly forum for discussion!).

If all that sounds like something you’d like to do, why not subscribe below, and receive each new post straight to your inbox?

I meant to write you sooner, but I just couldn't get out of bed.

I’m exaggerating, though not as much as you might think.

Let me backtrack a little, so you understand.

A little over two weeks ago, the Romanian Constitutional Court decided to annul the entirety of our then-ongoing presidential election, the second round of which was due to take place on December 8.

This came as the culmination of an election season marked by the usual mix of anger, confusion, hope, and despondency, and also after a surprising first round win by a candidate many hadn’t even heard about, a former member of a far-right party which gained prominence during the pandemic for their vehement anti-Covid stance.

There’d be lots to say about this result, but my profession and my conscience prohibit me from doing so. That, and it’ll upset me too much to go over the whole thing again.

Suffice it to say that right now, democracy feels brittle here, like a piece of toilet paper left to dry in the sun. We are going to have to redo the whole election from scratch, and we are to be called to vote again sometime next spring. Until then, we wait.

What have these few weeks been like for me, as I was surprised, shocked, gratuitously and repeatedly shaken awake like the populace of a city encased in a snowglobe, and ultimately clobbered over the head by the annulment decision?

It’s been like someone had set a fire inside my belly, and kept stoking it and feeding it oxygen whenever they felt it die down. I’ve had trouble sleeping, eating, writing, and even, some mornings, opening my eyes at all.

Waiting sucks, I can tell you that, especially when the result is so goddamned hard to predict. These days, writing my little novella about an old man and a cat has felt less than unimportant, a luxury. But thanks to support from family and friends (online ones included, thanks a lot ), the book is chugging along on schedule. I am 20-ish pages away from finishing the second draft, upon which I will finally allow a few cherished people to see it.

This will probably be my last post of the year. I hope to return in 2025 with a bit more hopeful news.

Until then, stay safe and candid. Happy holidays!

Yours merrily (or trying to, at least),

Andrei

P.S. Linked below are a few English-language articles that go into further detail on the story, to peruse at your leisure.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/06/romanian-constitutional-court-blocks-presidential-run-off

https://theconversation.com/why-romanias-election-was-annulled-and-what-happens-next-245779

https://www.ifes.org/publications/romanian-2024-election-annulment-addressing-emerging-threats-electoral-integrity

We’re two years old!

Boy, it’s been a wild ride so far. I can honestly say that my time on Substack has changed me for the better, as a writer and even as a person. If you won’t believe me, believe my wife. I’m a calmer, more confident and assertive version of the guy who started this newsletter on November 18, 2022, a month after we got married.

Just like last year, I thought that the best way to communicate my continued excitement for this newsletter project and the platform as a whole was to invite a fellow writer, whose work I admire, to pen a guest post for me.

Today, I bring you , a wonderfully poetic writer and friend whose prose never fails to move me.

She wrote a brave, vulnerable essay about coming to terms with her feelings at the end of a bad relationship with the help of music.

I hope you find the following piece as wonderful as I did.

It was 2010 and my heart was broken, my body in flames, my soul misplaced. I didn’t know who I was anymore, the child in me slipping away, only a fragmented ‘I’ remained.

Mentally I was suffering from trauma of a former unhealthy relationship, physically from initial symptoms of Lyme Disease.

Only in retrospect did I understand how dealing with both, departure and disease, impacted the way I experienced life at the time. Almost each day felt like a spiral of stress, grief, isolation, rage, agony, and sickness.   

I didn’t know how to cope. I didn’t understand how I could suffer so much from a break up when others seemed to carry on so painlessly, so effortlessly, if not expressing to my face, then with their eyes that I should get over my pain already. Or so was my perception, naively not realizing everyone suffers from something or other, some all by their lonesome.

I didn’t understand how and why every fiber of my being was on fire, and nothing could put it out. One cold winter night, I swear, I wanted take a ball of snow and press it to my heart to chill the heat.

Instead I sometimes drank—alone, at night. To not feel, at least for a little bit. But the numbness only masked, and felt as terrible.

The infernal feeling was inflammation, a word foreign to me then. There were fleeting moments of freedom and peace—almost no ache, no fire—at least I had that.

One November evening my now belated grandmother invited me to a concert at a local community establishment. I didn’t know who the performer was, I didn’t know what to expect. I was hesitating to attend it, my body feeling heavy—an immovable rock—but a little light part of me propelled me to go.

As if the child in me crawled her way through and whispered gently, tonight there will be stars—healing lights.

Before the concert started, I found out the performer was Elisapie Isaac—a singer and songwriter from Salluit, Québec, birthed from Inuk mother and father from Newfoundland.

As Elisapie came out into the dark-lit stage and spoke in a tender voice, introducing herself and her first song, a little part of me sparked, that part kept sparking exponentially all through the starry night.  

When Elisapie sang, she was like a soft sparrow. I could feel myself taking flight and being transported to a northern starlit winter landscape where snow was shimmering and crisp, where humans and animals and wildlings co-existed in respect and harmony, where light and love reigned. Where my heart felt warm despite the cold.

I looked to my neighbors and I could sense they too were spellbound; she was an immersive storyteller.  

After the concert ended, I felt so much—catharsis, healing, euphoria—my body could explode with fireworks. I absolutely had to buy Elisapie’s album There Will Be Stars.

When I returned home, I burst out to my mother, “I’ve healed, mama!” It was a premature thought, considering it took me more years of emotional healing and re-healing after that. By re-healing, I mean the process is non-linear and chaotic and can often feel regressive although progress is still made.  

(And spoiler alert: I’m still chronically ill, but at least in remission from Lyme. I’ll take it.)

Nonetheless I had hope that night, and that was a good start.

Since then, I had There Will Be Stars playing on repeat.

There are several songs from this melancholy yet uplifting folk-pop album that resonate with how I felt at the time. Elisapie’s words were mirroring my life experiences, and it was somehow comforting; I didn’t feel as isolated anymore.

In the album’s second—rather bouncy—song, “Butterfly,” Elisapie coos delicately, a lament:

In my life there’s a dark hole
In that hole there’s a future butterfly
I become a shelter of fear and desire
Why, why why, I don’ know why
I just end up crawling when I try
To say the simple words kiss me goodbye
Why, why, why, I don’t know why
Always end up crawling when I try
To fly, to fly

For me, it was difficult to part ways with the former boyfriend. It was first love, and there was still love. But more importantly, the dynamics became unwholesome with manipulation being a commonly used tactic. Power and control, too. 

Every time I tried to walk away from the push, I was pulled back in. As if I was under a spell, thoughts not making sense, me not making sense, staying still and servile only making sense.

For far too long, I had my eyes closed to red flags, including how miserable and hopeless I felt, how I behaved out of the ordinary, how I was losing pieces of me that were good. How my intuition screamed for me to leave.

Disenchantment is inevitable. The veil can’t shroud forever. I finally opened my eyes.    

I felt like Sarah in Labyrinth trying to save her baby brother and escape Jareth’s overwhelming grasp; in my case, I was trying to regain the strength within me to leave a harmful relationship for us both.

Jareth was right to sing to Sarah, “I can’t live within you.” Sarah eventually found her words—her fire and grit—and assertively she uttered, “You have no power over me,” breaking the spell, undermining the Goblin King.

Eventually I also walked away from what seemed like my own Goblin King scenario when I was at my weakest but free from disillusionment. That’s when I recognized I do have fortitude and courage, and I must continue nurturing them to never go back.

“Butterfly” is representative of that looking inward to reclaim your strength and freedom in order to break away outwardly.

Years later, in my heart there’s a butterfly—winged and free.

I hope Elisapie was able to fill her heart with her own metaphorical butterfly.

“Why Would I Cry” is the seventh song in the album and is slow-paced, orchestral, fluid. Elisapie’s voice is soft but strong when she sings, “Before you take me again / I will run / Before you break me again / I will run.”

Here, she’s the embodiment of a river that is still and gentle but can nevertheless cut through rocks.

I felt such potency when listening to it back then. With every sung line Elisapie was like water collecting itself and rising upwards, boring through all obstructions, untamed and unfettered.

While it’s a sorrowful song, it’s still empowering. To this day, whenever I listen to it, I get teary-eyed—and it feels releasing and healing.    

“Wish Song,” which follows after, is my most beloved track in There Will Be Stars. The refrain goes:

I wish you, I wish you hope,
I wish you love and tenderness
I wish you strength,
I wish you dreams and happiness

Sonically, “Wish Song” sounds similar to “Why Would I Cry” in that it’s also slow-paced and symphonic. Whereas “Why Would I Cry” is escalating at moments, “Wish Song” is even throughout. It fills the listener with peace, comfort, and wisdom.

When I left the relationship, my perspective on love was distorted. I didn’t think I could ever find love again, let alone be worthy of being loved. I know now it’s not true.

This track gave me hope; it murmured to me, you deserve love and joy. In the meantime, I could daydream about finding my significant other while strengthening my resilience and confidence.  

In this song, Elisapie personifies an ancient, sage tree, which—with the rustling of its leaves—passes on truth you knew all along, but it was buried too deep in your gut for too long.

This song awakens love and wonder and fancy—that’s my experience whenever I listen to it.  

The ninth track, “Nothing In This World Is Free,” is a beautiful merging of two tongues: Inuktitut and English. This song is a perfect summary of the entire album.

The most poignant lines are “In this weary heart / There will be stars” and “Nothing in this world is free / But I will find the way back to me.” Elisapie acknowledges that she’s aching, but she has the knowing that she’ll be all right, she’ll find herself again.

If her spirit is an animal, she starts out like a trusting, vulnerable cub then becomes a fierce, spirited wolf after living through something traumatic but awakening. Her voice sounds brittle in the beginning then soon develops infectious poise.

Having listened to this track the first time, I felt I could heal from my own painful experiences, I felt I could recover my essence, find the child within me again. I truly felt that.

Time, love, compassion, and music did mend my heart. Patience, determination, action, and medicine still mend my body. I’m not the same after the effects of trauma—no one is after theirs. But I carved myself anew, innermost etches awkwardly healed but whole.

I couldn’t find my inner child again; rather, I grew up. But I learned to tap into her virtues—the playfulness, the marvel, humor, curiosity, and such.   

Like sometimes I envision Elisapie and I as two white wolves playfully running alongside each other in the Nunavut snowscape. We reach the deep north where the only sounds we hear are the kaleidoscopic auroras and our echoing heartbeats.

What a sacred place to be, amongst the healing lights.

Andrei & Nadia hope you have enjoyed this wonderful outpouring of feelings. You can subscribe to Nadia’s newsletter when hope writes here:

when hope writes

I write about a smorgasbord of subjects, always with a dash of hope. if you love reading about humanity, literature, writing, cinema, video games, and other related and unrelated stuff, let's connect.

By Nadia Gerassimenko

Good day, my readers.

I have a sad announcement to make.

For those of you who’ve been following my work over the last 23 months, this will be déjà vu.

Once again, I find myself needing to study for an exam. I have written so much about exams here that this topic could have its own category. Thankfully, though, this next one will be the last, at least for a long while.

Unfortunately, owing to the sheer amount of material I’ll have to revise, as well as the continued work on my novella, I have decided to suspend my missives to you for the next six-ish months.

This won’t mean complete silence. I have promised you at least one new post every month for the remainder of the year, and I will honor that promise.

This month’s post was last week’s awesome interview with .

Next month, to celebrate the second anniversary of this newsletter, I’ll be sharing an intimate, poetic guest essay by my friend .

Beyond that, only time will tell. I’ll mainly be using Substack as a reader. I may even delete the app and read exclusively on email, as I find Notes unnecessarily draining these days.

The writers among you will still see me in your comment sections, and I’ll likely be updating this newsletter randomly with important announcements and news.

For example, on the 15th of December I’ll be receiving results for a flash essay contest I participated in. I also sent a story about my cat to Chicken Soup for the Soul at the beginning of this year. I look forward to sharing those two pieces with you sometime soon.

As for when I’ll truly be back, my exam is due at the beginning of April, 2025. After that, I intend to return in force.

Speaking of, I plan on introducing some small changes here in the coming year.

With luck, my book will be finished by the end of my exam.

With even more luck, I’ll find a local publisher and sign a contract.

If that contract allows it, I will begin serializing the novella here, in translation, sometime next year.

If not, perhaps the publisher will agree to buy the English rights and you’ll be able to actually purchase the book in that language.

I also want to start translating some of my stuff into Romanian and, when I do begin publishing new essays and stories again next year, to do so bilingually.

These are the plans. What will actually end up happening is another matter, but I am hopeful.

That’s it from me at this time. I’ll see you in November.

From my cabin in the woods,

Andrei

This one has been a long time coming, and I’m very excited to share it with you.

Today, I bring a conversation with Substack fiction star of fame. For those who don’t know her (where have you been?), here’s her own description of the kind of writing you can find on her newsletter:

This is the world you know, but slightly off-kilter.

Haunted farmhouses, unlikely heroes, beasts in the woods, strange gardens, mysterious birdsong…

Talebones is an ongoing collection of character-driven speculative fiction with a spiritual, supernatural, or uncanny twist. A mix of historical, fantasy, horror, and literary fiction with gentle humor and hopeful depth, you can find short tales and serialized works here to suit a variety of tastes!

We talk about pets, mentors, writing recipes, and her plans for the future.

This is S.E. Reid.

Hey, S.E.! So glad you could join us. How was your summer?

It’s absolutely my pleasure, Andrei! Thanks for having me!

Summer was really good, actually! Usually I find the hot weather pretty uninspiring and exhausting, but since we adopted a new dog back in spring, I spent most of the summer months soaking up the sun and fresh air. We played a LOT of games of fetch, did a lot of training, and got our new girl acquainted with life around here. Tons of fun!

Now that we’ve broken the ice, let’s talk shop. What does writing mean to you?

What a question! Let’s back up while I ponder. 

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been pretty obsessed with stories. I just love a good story; there’s nothing quite like it. My dad used to tell me little stories before bedtime, stuff he would make up, and it always amazed me that he could do that. My parents also read to me early, books of all types. All of this started a lifelong desire to hunt for great storytelling wherever it hides, and figure out how to do it, myself. 

As a result, I love books, I love movies, I love theater, I love TV shows…I even love visual storytelling, like graphic novels and illustration. And writing, specifically? To me, writing was an early gateway into being able to tell the kinds of stories I always enjoyed reading/watching/hearing for myself. It was something I found came relatively easily to me when I was young, and I’ve been cultivating that skill ever since. 

Did you ever have a writing mentor? If so, what were they like?

Never a specific, single mentor. But I was blessed with a LOT of great school teachers and creative friends. 

All of the Language Arts teachers I’ve had throughout the years, from elementary school through community college, have been instrumental in helping me learn my craft in their own way, either by assigning and analyzing certain books—even if I didn’t love the books at the time—or through their careful editing and workshopping of my written work. I did have a particular Drama teacher in high school who was wonderful. She let me write two different plays, and each were performed as Dessert Theater by our advanced theater troupe, and that was extremely inspiring for me, to be given that kind of responsibility and creative space. 

I’ve also had a few wonderful creative friends and peer groups throughout the years. In high school especially, my close friends and I used to share our stories with each other on a private forum—my first crack at serialization!—and I had some good experiences with peer groups through National Novel Writing Month in my region, too.  

Your stories range from the more realistic to the mythical to the futuristic, but as a whole, most of your fiction falls under the umbrella of speculative. What do you think speculative fiction can accomplish that fiction limited by reality cannot?

When I think of speculative fiction, I think of wrapping the mundane in shiny packaging to make it more enticing. Like flower petals attracting bees. The more colorful and elaborate the petals, the more likely the bee is to pay attention, to come and sip, and the pollen—the message—spreads. 

Most stories in human history boil down to only a handful of truths and themes, but the way we “wrap them up” is what changes. Setting a story in another land, another time, or surrounded by strange characters, makes us contemplate these truths from multiple angles, the “speculation” part of “speculative” fiction. If you want to remind someone of their humanity, or teach them about your point of view, there are few better ways than to disguise that message in something unfamiliar, colorful, and compelling. We are hardwired to learn this way. 

And, at the end of the day, speculative fiction is also just fun. It’s the sweet nectar part of the flower. We get to enjoy a delicious escape, if only for a little while.

What’s your recipe for crafting a quick, compelling story, such as flash- or micro-fiction? Is your process any different when writing short as opposed to long?

The process is similar for all of my work, actually! Just varying degrees of control. 

For short pieces, I like to have the whole thing planned out in detail, beginning to end, before I start writing. This is because short pieces have less breathing-room to waffle. I want to know what it is I mean to say and why. Is this simply a vignette, a moody little scene? Is this trying to “say” something, a moral? If I only have less than 1,000 words to say it, then I need to know up front. First line and last line should be crystal clear in my head. 

My longer pieces can afford to be a bit more “sketchy” when I set out. There may be whole sections missing from the outline in a serial, for example, but I trust my instincts enough to know that I’ll know what to do when I get there, based on what came before. This sketchy method is less practical in a short piece. 

Whether microfiction or an episodic serial, one thing remains constant, and that’s my firm belief in character motivation. Anyone who has read anything about how I put my work together will feel that I’m a broken record, maybe, but I swear by this: 

To write anything, you need 1) a character who cares about something, 2) a thing that they want more than anything else in the world, and 3) something/someone standing in their way. Once you have those three things, stories practically write themselves as you follow that character around their world, attempting to get their heart’s desire and facing obstacle after obstacle. The story ends when they get the thing they want, or they don’t. 

There is no exact science in storytelling, but the above is as close to a recipe as I think you can get!

Are there any pieces of writing advice you got early on that you still hold close?

You know what’s funny? I’ve wracked my brain to answer this question, and I think my inability to come up with an answer is telling. Every piece of advice and every rule I’ve ever learned about writing has been contradicted, bent, or broken, in one way or another. 

Because of this, I think the best piece of advice is this: learn the rules so you can break them. Once you understand WHY a rule exists, you can find out whether it fits in your work, or whether there’s a way to bend it. The mindful bending and breaking of rules in art is called style. But if you want to find your unique voice, you have to learn the standards first. This is true of all art, but especially writing.  

Pick one favorite author in each genre that you write and tell us why.

This was kind of tricky, but I think I can argue for these being the top three writers I’ve learned the most from:

—Lord Dunsany (fantasy/speculative): I went through a phase in my twenties of being obsessed with Dunsany. I’ve read a huge majority of his short fiction, and I just love it. These early fantasy writers were writing before the tropes had really been solidified, so their wacky creativity is really fun to experience. Dunsany had a whimsical way of looking at the world, but there was also a macabre edge to his work that I really love. And could the man write a twist ending! Sometimes the final line would recontextualize the entire piece. Genius. 

—Shirley Jackson (horror): Shirley Jackson is considered a master for a reason. I particularly enjoy her short stories. They are bleak and unsettling and make the everyday feel super uncomfy. I’m a big fan of mundane/domestic horror, and her work typifies the genre. My favorite short story of hers is “The Man In The Woods”; it feels like a nightmare. 

—Tana French (genre-hopper): This one is cheating a little. I don’t write in Tana French’s genre, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include her as a writer who changed the way I write. Her work is so, so exquisitely beautiful, even though she writes crime fiction…a genre not known for being “literary”. But defies genre. She crafts these incredibly mythic narratives, tormented characters, and the landscape of Ireland (where her books are set) is as much a character as anything. I own all of her books and I read through them whenever I feel in a creative slump. 

What’s the meaning behind the name of your fiction newsletter, Talebones?

The truth? It was a typo. :)

About…six years ago? I was working at a high school as a special needs paraeducator, and I was writing an incident report. I tried to type in “tailbone” and accidentally wrote “talebone”. I thought this was entirely too funny and squirreled it away as a title for something, though I didn’t know what. I had never heard of Substack. I’m actually not sure whether Substack existed back then! But I put the idea away for later. 

In 2023 when I launched my fiction Substack, I didn’t have much of a plan, but I pulled out my commonplace book and saw my little “talebone” note and thought…sure! That’ll work, even if it’s just a placeholder. But it stuck, and I’m so glad. I really enjoy the name, and I think it does a fair job of giving people the tone of my work. A little strange, a little creepy, a little clever. At least I hope so!

How do you feel about pets?

Love them! My husband and I are big animal fans. Right now we have two dogs. Finn is a nearly-hundred-pound Bernese/Goldendoodle. He’s four years old, and we got him as a puppy, a gift from a dear family friend. He’s a big, friendly, stubborn teddy bear of a dog, and the best boy. His sister, Huck, came to us back in April. She belonged to a neighbor who needed to rehome her. She’s a Yellow Laborador, and she’ll be two years old in December. She’s a wiggly, snuggly, energetic noodle, and she’ll be your best friend forever if you throw a ball for her. We absolutely adore her. A perfect addition to our family, and she and Finn get along so well!

No other pets at the moment. We’re hoping to get some kind of egg-laying birds soon—either chickens or ducks—but will probably wait until spring for that. :)

Last question. What’s next for S.E. Reid? Any plans of expansion beyond Substack?

My next big adventure is to try and get my first self-published book—an anthology of my Ferris Island short stories—into the hands of readers as an ebook and/or print book this October. Having a library of such books available to purchase over the next few years is a real dream of mine. 

I know everyone’s idea of “success” as a writer looks different. To me, it’s the ability to make a living through diverse means: my freelancing work as an editor and copywriter, paid subscriptions, my merch shop, potential print books, etc. All the threads working together. I don’t want fame, and I don’t need wealth. All I want is to make a comfortable living so I can write for the rest of my life. That’s the dream. And Substack is literally the first platform that has ever made me feel like that dream is possible, through its community atmosphere and vast array of tools to connect with an audience. 

So. Unless something drastic changes, this is home. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

And that’s the end of it. Thanks for checking this one out. You can subscribe to S.E. Reid’s newsletter at:

Talebones ✨

Home of the Ferris Island Tales! Short and serialized fiction from S.E. Reid: speculative stories with a spiritual, supernatural, or uncanny twist.

By S.E. Reid

I wrote this piece in the beginning of this year, in an attempt to craft a more philosophical, less character-driven piece of flash. I don’t know if I quite succeeded in making it compelling, but anywho, I like how this one came out, and I’m excited to finally share it.

His feet had never touched the ground before. Jay closed his eyes, savouring the feeling. Stability, concreteness, matter. And warmth, despite the winter wind raging all around them. They kissed for what seemed like eons, but then she pulled away, disappearing into the snowstorm. He let her go. He had some thinking of his own to do.

That was on Friday.

Two days later, they’re sitting in a cafe within walking distance of her flat. The sun, a hearty orange ball of light and life, illuminates the lacquered surfaces so much they seem to be surrounded only by the colour white. The spell has been broken, and Jay knows that flight will never again be an imposition, nevermore a reminder of his slavery to The One Above. He feels powerful, like an angel should feel, as he sips the dark brew the pale waitress has brought without asking. It’s called “Coffey,” explains Maria, which Jay finds funny, because it sounds so much like somebody’s name.

‘You narcissists name everything after yourselves, don’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘You’re awfully opinionated for a higher power; did you know that?’

Jay has been protecting Maria ever since she was a baby. He shielded her during the raid that, at twelve years old, left her an orphan, and saw her safely past the border and into her aunt’s arms, in Gilbert, Arizona.

He knows everything about her. Embarrassing teenage crushes. The precise date and time of her first period. Her favourite bands, her dreams, her phobias. When she was born, screaming in her teenaged mother’s arms, he held her hand and calmed her down. Nobody saw it, of course. They believed Maria had quieted on her own, that she was just a good kid with a rough start. Which, anyway, is what she was.

Soon that kid became a woman. The day following her first kiss, when the boy she was certain she’d marry someday never texted her back, Maria smashed Tío Ramón’s guitar on the living room floor. Jay watched her let it out, then put a solemn hand upon her shoulder. She cried awhile. Then moved on. Many boys followed, and a few men. None of them keepers.

Yet Jay was jealous of every single one.

On the table, sticky with other people’s Coffey, he puts his hand on hers. She’s absorbed by a story she’s told many times before—her boss keeps her chasing boring leads for inconsequential stories, not seeing her true potential—but he isn’t listening. He lifts the hand he’s holding, turns it this way and that, looking for the mark.

One summer a few years ago, Jay left Maria alone for the first time. He’d been called upon to help quell a rebellion Below. It hadn’t even been that urgent—rebellions down there were cyclical events, not unlike Earth’s seasons—but leaving so quickly meant he’d been unable to secure a replacement.

In November of that year, Maria was diagnosed with a chronic disease. The following March, her fiancée Rick cheated on her with her boss—her male boss. Then, at the office Christmas party, she was nearly shot to death, when some guy from accounting opened fire with a Glock and tried to shoot janitor Pete, whom she liked a lot, and she got between them, trying to protect the old man, and the guy with buck teeth pulled the trigger, aiming for her head.

That’s when Jay came back. The bullet slowed in mid-air, allowing her to strafe left, so all it did was graze her right wrist. It left a mark, though. A reminder, embedded in the skin he loved so much, of his worst failure.

I’m here now, he thinks, finding the mark with his mouth, and I’ll never leave again. This he says out loud.

‘How do you know?’

Angels don’t fall in love. They’re creatures of the sky, purer than any human and complete in themselves. They were never taught to walk because they weren’t supposed to need it. Perhaps a mistake was made when Jay came to be. Maybe he’s defective. What if some crucial piece of his heart never made it to the production line, dooming him to seek his happiness in others?

Angels don’t fall in love, but they can see the future. The couple have chosen a hard path to follow. Closing his eyes, Jay sees outrage. Ostracization. Soon, people will start suggesting Maria should see a psychiatrist, then they’ll try to have her committed against her will. As for Jay, six months from now, he will be stripped of his powers. Exile: the highest form of punishment for a divine being. As if being divine had ever helped anyone.

Beyond this point, he can see nothing. It’s weird, like…being a kite without a string. An oft-heard human phrase, but one he’s never understood before.

“Trust me,” he says. “In this you can trust me.”

Exiting the cafe, they kiss for a second time. Then, he lifts her in his arms, and they fly.

No, they soar.

Earth and sky be damned.

P.S. If you liked this little piece, you’ll probably enjoy these as well: