Mircea Vulcănescu

Due to some sound problems, subtitles haven’t been added to Part 2, but they will be, soon. Many, many thanks to my friend Rodrigo, from Brazil, for his invaluable help in uploading this on the internet.

Sighet Memorial

Victims of communist prisons were commemorated today in Sighet, Romania. Visit the Sighet Memorial, a must-see and a place of remembrance for all those interested in recent history and the useful lessons that one can derive from it.

Romanians Talking about Their Lives before ’89

AUGUST 23

Party instructors would go to factories and schools and would recruit employees or pupils.  Preparations for this day would start two months ahead of time.  The whole show would take place in the Aviatorilor Square, where two tribunes would be set up: to the right, the tribune for Ceauşescu and the Central Committee members and to the left, the tribune for the foreign officials.  The asphalt was marked with chalk, so that you would know where to place yourself.

The convoy would start off in Piaţa Unirii and follow the whole boulevard on foot, until it would get to Piaţa Aviatorilor.  You felt like dying until you got there.  You were not allowed to eat or drink until you finished your march.  Once the marching was over, you could eat and drink. 

The Shadow

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdpKCqsZV8]

Back to the days when just about the only way for us to hope to “speak out” or “get a message out there” was folk music. It was after all these years that these lyrics suddenly hit home and revealed what I think they were really about, although we have always enjoyed their beauty and deep-sounding tone, as it were. Lyrics speaking of pain and suffering in a muffled voice; hurting hopelessness; souls like “shadows”, all but deprived of their wholeness of Being/Love, save for a tiny sparkle of divinity, which only keeps them aching; in a closed, hopeless world where faith is but a fallen Mast and there is so much “bad” and “yes” around, that paradoxically, it all gets turned upside down into “good” and “no” – a strange play of denial leading to yet more longing – for the true freedom – and God. Lyrics rife with the Ultimate and Eternal symbols. I’ve tried to do my best to translate/adapt this poem according to what I feel is its true underlying purport, stuck as we were under communism as under a glass dome. The capital letters are mine. To me, all that was yesterday.