Passing through

February-May 2024

For the past four months, I’ve been in-between worlds, experiencing a state of transition between the city and the countryside, in the process of moving out.
I realized that, since birth and until adulthood, my whole life had been an interplay between places, always pendulating back and forth, never quite finding where to remain.

In the depth of my mind, I felt the transiency of my own home, of my own roots, slowly – and painfully – trying to adapt to new spaces, people or situations.
I never got the chance to choose home – it was either hereditary or contextual, always chosen by others. For the first time in my life, I was being faced with choice.

So I chose the wilderness, the mountains, the unknown. Leaving the plains, I was called into the highlands, from flatness to altitude, from familiarity to unexpectedness, from earthliness to beyond-ness.
Along the way, I spent a lot of time with the children and animals that I met here, in this new habitat I am building, seeing life – and myself – in a new light.

One thing I kept from my past life was the memory of my own childhood, when I would spend the summers at my Grandparents’ house, in rural Romania, where Grandma used to hang lace curtains or adorn the tables with embroidered cloths. I took such reminiscences with me – together with all my bruises, all my hopes and all my childhood games – and intertwined them with the life I am now living, even though I know I might be only passing through.