Măgura

Some departures are plain arrivals.

Most of them are pursued in search of ikigai – a reason for being.

I left Romania without knowing when I would be back.

I bore inside me the urge to see strangeness, novelty and to find a certain kind of freedom by traveling with a van across Europe.

11 days forward, I was back to my country, a bit disappointed, a tad hopeless, yet drunk by the feeling of coming home.

I arrived at IKI roughly two weeks after my return.

I told myself ‘no traveling for a while’, but there I was, sitting quietly, immersed and in awe in front of a landscape that was too grand to grasp.

Rapidly, yet steadily, IKI became a temporary home, doubled by an oasis of minimal, yet meaningful design.

Every detail felt significant to me. The smell of wood, the large windows, the books and the magazines, they were all part of the same carefully crafted story – one where the narrator was the Mountain and the listener was I.

For a moment, I felt I could live there more than just temporarily.

For a moment, I fell back in love with my roots, my country, my people.

I realized that the reason why I left – far, far, farther – was to find purpose.

Whereas the purpose lied closer than I thought.

It was merely within.