I will be offline for a few days taking care of some personal stuff. If you’re the kind of person who likes to worry, please don’t.

If you need anything while I’m “gone” (including books), please do not hesitate to contact my colleague Iuliana at 0743-604-996 or email her.

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You know the other day I was hoping this country is going to get an old-fashioned kick in the ass. Looks like it’ll be more of a slow strangulation instead. Pretty soon Romanians are going to wake up to find there’s nothing left of the government but people who stamp papers and cops with guns.

Before I take off and handle my business though, I’ll leave you with a thought. Today I was down at a major bus stop, watching as a lady sold greasy, fried wedges of dough (placinte). Just then a man walked by, staggering and reeling, stinking of alcohol and suddenly an image clicked in my mind. I realized I had seen this all before somewhere else.

Many years ago I lived in the northern, central part of the United States close to Canada. And it was there that I met a lot of Native Americans (“Indians”) for the first time, descendants of the original inhabitants of the land where I was born and partly raised. I worked with these people, I talked with them, I cooked with them, I got to know them and I even attended a few of their cultural exhibitions. And I realize now that they have a lot in common with Romanians.

For one thing, a lot of Native Americans are alcoholics. The rate of alcoholism is far higher than in the rest of the American population. Many of them are obese and a lot of them are very unhealthy, suffering especially from diseases like diabetes and heart illnesses. They are often a listless, idle population who, with few exceptions, are morally devastated and prone to depression and very glum perspectives on life.

Their once great culture is now only a thing to be trotted out for exhibitions – almost none of them live “in the old way” anymore. Likewise their music and songs have been shelved and been replaced by modern American music. Most of their old customs are dead or kept artificially alive. Even their once abundant and healthy cuisine is now reduced to little more than fried pieces of dough, almost identical to what I saw today, thus triggering the memory.

A lot of people think of Native American history as a series of genocidal wars which they lost and mass deaths via infectious diseases (especially smallpox). All of this is true. But the root cause of a lot of these people’s suffering today is something known as cultural collapse. These people all know that they are Native Americans but what does that mean? Besides DNA and your appearance, what does it mean to be a Native American? When all of your old ways of living are dead and yet you do not truly belong to the “new ways”, which are the ways of another people, you have cultural collapse.

Quite frankly, this goes a long way to explaining what is happening in Romania as well. I’ve written several pieces on this (not to mention the title of my blog), asking what does it mean to even be Romanian? Okay your DNA says you’re a Romanian or your passport says it or you might speak the language, but what does that actually mean? When you’re driving a BMW and listening to Jay-Z and eating a Big Mac and sipping on a Coke and you’re wearing clothes from Zara, what exactly keeps you being Romanian, as in culturally a Romanian?

Some of the “old ways” are still ongoing here, not relegated to museums or exhibitions but still a part of some Romanians’ daily lives. But what else is there, especially for the modern urban dweller in this country? There is a thin veneer of the American capitalist dream, broadcast over the air and transmitted through cables and internet wires, shown in a million flickering images on televisions and computer monitors, but that dream is slowly being strangled as the seas of global economic instability are beginning to swamp the Good Ship Romania. What happens then? What happens to those who are too old to get in the game or those who can’t escape to other countries? What happens when the malls aren’t sparkly enough anymore and the smart phones become unobtainable and the taxes are too high and there are lines at the bread store? What then?

A lot of the people I see who are staggering drunk in the middle of the day are older men who have lost both the cultural vision of a stable Communist order (no matter how restrictive) and any chance at material prosperity. The women I see with the pinched faces and perpetual frowns are often older too, knowing they have been largely left behind as well. For them, especially those here in the cities, surrounded by neon billboards, they are already living in a world where their sense of identity has collapsed.

But I see signs of it too even in the younger generation, even those with money in their pockets and credit cards in their wallets. They feel that urge to grab what you can, decorate yourself and your life with gaudy gadgets and overpriced designer clothes, and damn everyone else. They see the cheating, the bribery, the fraud, the corruption, the calling in of favors and the sickening morass of shitty, selfish behaviors that are more and more necessary to survive in daily life. And who wants that? Who wants to be proud of that, to believe in that, to support that, to thump their chest and hold their head high and say, “Yes this is what being a Romanian means”? Very, very few.

It’s easy to look at me and my words and dismiss my positive statements as irrational delusions or as the result of a privileged status as a foreigner. It’s also easy to grow angry at my criticisms, saying I am denigrating a great people with a long and storied culture. But the truth is that we all know there is less and less Romanian culture that’s worth defending. A lot of the old ways do not appeal any more or are not applicable. And most of the new ways sicken us all, and so seeing me (seemingly) defend them makes me foolishly naive (at best) or downright insane (at worst). Seeing me criticize them puts in peril the last shreds of dignity and pride that are left standing.

And so for a lot of Romanians, the ship is going down, one way or another. Time to have another drink, dance another dance, kiss a few more girls (or boys), strut your finest clothes and stuff another bite in your mouth because the party, what little party it sometimes was, is about to come to an end. The smart ones and the ambitious ones have already jumped ship or are planning to and it’s too bad, so sad for the slow, the elderly, the uneducated or the unlucky.

But again, I live here and I choose to live here and that’s as true today as it was 10 years ago. And I do what I do not for money nor to advance some political agenda (of any nation or empire) nor to wax nostalgically about the old ways nor to pimp the capitalist dream. In some ways, yes, I do believe that Romania is a great place. But most of the reasons why I am here and why I do what I do concern the longer view. For me it’s not just the way Romania is today but the way it can and will be in the future. I’m in this for the long haul.

Developing those ideas is going to be a large part of what I do here on the site in this year 2012 but for now you’re going to have to wait while I take care of this personal stuff. If you’re new here, feel free to look around and get used to the place. In the meantime, if you need anything, call Iuliana. She’ll take good care of you.

Peace