Metro people - The Curvaceous Monkey (on demand)

It was not planned to continue with the monkey, I would have rather told you about the All Star Generation, but that's what the curvaceous does, she draws all the attention to her. Like it's not enough she's a metro star and all eyes are on her curves, she is now requested by the readers too.

I would say she is one of the kind..but, hey....there are enough of them to populate a small village (I wouldn't do that though..the metro wouldn't be what it is without them.)

She is young (most of the time), probably in high school, therefore you cannot judge her too harshly. She will do her best to look older. Her skin tone is chocolate, sunset, brownish...the darker the better. Being white is so uncool... If she gets that skin tone from sun studios (see cool commercials like: "this week get sun at half the price" or "pay 5, get 6"...what a good deal..omg, you cannot miss this one) or from a much darker foundation that her original complexion, it doesn't really matter...the whole idea is to be as dark as it gets. Nobody knows her real skin or hair color anymore, not even herself probably.

In winter she wears tiny jackets and low waist, tight, jeans...she has a reputation of curvaceous to keep after all. In summer she wears...I can't remember to be honest...Anyway whatever she's wearing she is always naked...in the eyes of metro men.

We, the other girls, should be greatful to them, for they are the reason our male colleagues are more awake at work and our men more 'in the mood for love' in the evening.

Her aim in life is to be sexy. No, not sexy (that's so yesterday), but hot, geil*, hamma'*, shiny, gliterry, glossy, flashy, foxy, nasty, d-licious, and of course ...curvy-licious. I'm sure missing some very fashionable synonyms at this point (feel free to complete my thought), but at least one of the previous words will be found in her ids and nicknames on all the dozen trendy sites she has accounts on.

She always has an ultra expensive phone in one hand and headsets. She zaps quickly through her playlist and when she finally found the tune of the moment, you will sure know it, even if you are not on the same metro with her. But she doesn't possess just one cell phone, and she will make sure everyone knows that by the end of their trip. And she is important, people call her all the time. Whether on the phone, or with her gang of monkeys, she will talk loud, laugh even louder, quatschen* and gossipin' and being simply too cool to be true.

If she's aware of one thing, than that's her sexuality, the one thing she controls very well.

Not only she knows what Lindsay did at last party in Vegas, but that's what she aspires to do herself, if only she could grow faster. If only the rap-gangsta' wannabe would stop being a wannabe and would take her out of the metro misery. Then she could drive on his right side, into a mercedes decapotable with the same loud music.

As she meets her other curvaceous monkey friends, they will kiss each other several times...sometimes they lose track of counting. It will be a hello kiss, a goodbye kiss and sometimes a whatever kiss. This particular kiss has to happen somewhere at a distance of minimum 5 cm from the chick, depending on how many layers of make up are at stake. Everybody has to know how close this gals are.

There's no need to say she's not a faithful (to the metro) character. For her the metro is just a phase, one she'll try to forget as soon as possible. But in the process of getting where she wants, she will pretend the metro is her stage and all the passengers her spectators.

She's a star, she's an object of desire and a thrill of pleasure for the eye. So what if she's not a lady, ladies are deprecated, they belong to black and white movies.

She could be the perfect opposite of the Metro Junkie, but there is one thing they do have in common: they live the moment. She actually is the defined incarnation of ephemerality.

Oh, you wonder why I was so mean and called her a monkey. You though all this time I was unjust to her or, maybe to the monkey. Well, I called her a monkey because she is primitive, a primate, a being based on instinct, but as monkeys did thousands of years ago, she may evolve into a perfectly normal human. She could turn into the girl next door or even a lady. But she can always stay a monkey if she pleases. She is after all just a full-option teenager...uhh, full of options I mean.

P.S. Haha...this is way too funny not to share it with you guys: I was looking for a picture to display on this post, so I typed "tanned teenager" and googled it. Try this simple exercise and see the results I saw...and I could'n pick a picture from those without being banned :))

* = german terms

Portret de fetiță cu ochii verzi

Acest post e doar o piesă auxiliară pentru un alt mini-proiect. Drept urmare stilul telegrafic în care va fi scris. Poate chiar îl voi șterge după ce își va fi atins scopul. Am decis de ceva vreme (vreo jumătate de an) să mă reapuc de pictat. De la momentul deciziei și până la punerea în practică a trecut ceva...lipsea inspirația. Cum zilele astea ea m-a inundat, am zis să trec la treabă. Nu știam exact ce subiect să aleg pentru prima încercare. E o decizie grea. Astăzi am găsit obiectul creației: trebuie să fie clar un portret. Pentru

că expresia oamenilor m-a fascinat mereu (vezi și seria profilurilor "oameni din metrou"), pentru că nu necesită un efort de imaginație, ci mai mult unul de studiu aprofundat al subiectului. De aici și ideea că scrisul mă va ajuta să îmi cunosc mai bine modelul. Până la urmă e o altă formă de portretistică.

Sursa imaginii : portrait photos | portraits with a soul

Modelul e în imagine: o copilă. Nu știu cum o cheamă, câți ani are (poate are 9 jumătate), în ce localitate din ce țară merge la școală sau cu ce se ocupă parinții ei (poate sunt separați). Poate îi place și ei să deseneze. Poate deja a crescut și nu mai e copilă, poza nefiind datată. Când va crește mare va fi o femeie frumoasă, dar nu de o frumusețe clasică sau banală. Va frânge inimi cu ochii ei migdalati și verzi. Poate și inima ei va fi frântă...cine știe.

Nu știu nici numele fotografului, care probabil era trecut pe site. Îi datorez niște mulțumiri în orice caz...e clar că a avut mai mult decât un aparat scump si performant de fotografiat, are ochi .de artist.

Am ales-o tocmai pe ea pentru că e foarte expresivă, are acea inocență și drăgălășenie tipică copiilor dar în același timp simt că îmi ascunde ceva, are ea un secret bucuclaș de zâmbeste așa discret. Zâmbetul ei e abia perceptibil. Hmm...chiar, parcă ar fi zâmbetul misterios al Mona Lisei. Dar ochii Mona Lisei sunt triști, pe când ai fetiței nu.

Poate ar ajuta sa îi dau un nume? Dacă ar fi să o botez, i-aș zice October. Pentru că peisajul e unul tomnatic, judecând după ceața verzuie din fundal, după bobițele roșii și bluzița pe gât. Pun pariu că e și născută în octombrie...da, ca mine :).

Nu am mai făcut până acum niciun portret de copil, și cred că va fi mai challenging decât mă așteptam. Primele schițe au iesit aiurea...numai portret de copil nu sunt, de aceea am și apelat la blog. Dar persist, și de va trebui să scriu un serial de posturi despre ea sau să rămân fără culori.

Ce mai pot spune e că am ales "compoziția" asta și pentru paleta coloristică. Este un echilibru perfect: albul rozaliu al pielii, aproape translucidă - atât de candid, verdele ochilor - parca venit din altă lume (o lume în care m-am mai rătăcit, o lume pierdută și iar gasită, în care m-aș mai scufunda macar o dată), roșul rece și provocator al buzelor și cireasa de pe tort: bobițele de toamnă într-un roșu cald, cărămiziu, din nou pe un fond gri-verzui, rece.

October a mea ar fi fost material de înger, dar nu știu când și ce artist a stabilit (și cu timpul ne-au determinat sa fim convinși că așa e) că îngerii sunt blonzi, cârlionțați, bucălați și cu ochi albaștrii. Îngerii bruneți sau șateni sunt de obicei asociați cu cei exilați din rai, îngeri ai intunericului cică. O dovadă că există nedreptate, discriminări și dezinformare chiar și în artă...

Cam atât ar fi. Sper să nu mă dezamăgesc și să revin mai târziu cu rezultatul.

De azi ea e fetița mea...pentru o săptămână, "copil de imprumut". Sper să nu se supere.

Edit:

Proiectul "fetița cu ochi verzi" s-a încheiat, dupa 3 săptămâni, și nu una, cum estimasem total nerealist. Am întâmpinat tot felul de obstacole, mi-am amintit tot felul de chestii pe care le uitasem, am greșit, m-am enervat, am luat-o de la capăt. Mereu e loc de mai bine dar cred că era cazul să pun semnătura și să merg mai departe.

Metro People - The Junkie

The junkie is my favourite profile, and hence the subject of my first episode.

He's Caucasian. I haven't seen one single black, yellow or red skinned junkie (Don't forget, it's the Cologne subway we are talking about, not New York, not London, not Paris). It's not necessary a He, but more of them are, so, to keep things simple I'll refer the Junkie as a male gendered human. Again..it has nothing to do with race or sex. His hair is longer than a regular's, usually in shades of light brown, untidy and greasy. He is out of fashion, out of season. You can see him wearing a jacket in the summer or a t-shirt in the winter. So he's grown strong, immune to flu and cold, fearless.He is out of the time boundaries, out of schedules.

He is never in a hurry, he has no trains to catch and therefore no trains to lose, he has no meetings to attend and no appointments in his agenda (does he even have an agenda?... I doubt). The only time he is in a hurry is when he needs to get as soon as possible out of the subway to smoke the cigarette, the one he rolled with shivering junkie hands between 2 stations. His hands might have been shivering, but his joint is a masterpiece. He put all his precision and concentration that his blurred mind and shivering body could pull together at the same time.

He needs no watches, no iPods, no notebooks, no fancy cell phones with fancy ring tones, no modern gadgets at all. He would trade any time one of the things above for a bottle of vodka, that's how much he cares about t.h.i.n.g.s. If you see him in the morning, he will definitely carry a half empty (half full) bottle of beer.

If you see him in the evening when you come back from your boring insignificant job, you will see him already too wasted to carry that bottle. He has already spent all his allowance on booze. He doesn't give a damn about fortunes (that he learnt by now he will never get), about yesterday, tomorrow, healthy nutrition, fitness studios, sun studios, spas, what Lindsay Lohan did (stripped) at the last party in Vegas, who will lead the country next year, what secret conspiracies will brain-wash us all and take over the world.

But he's caring and has a tender heart, I can tell that by the dog he sometimes carries around. I could write an entire post about his dog, but that would make me look weird at least. His metis dog is educated, smart, cuddly, loyal, his eyes have a certain warmth. This particular pet is not only smarter than the spoiled, breed dogs but he's wiser than the curvaceous monkey and the rap-gangsta' wannabe all together. (You don't know yet who this characters are, but eventually you'll find out). So this dog is among breed dogs what his owner is among us...a pariah of society covered in filthy, discoloured, stinky clothes, but holding the secret of freedom and the subway wisdom. He has that immense sadness in his looks, that will get through you and haunt you...whether you like dogs or not. He follows his junkie master around (but never pulled by a leash, for he's as free as his owner), sees him getting drunk, wasted, behaving foolish at times. But he forgives him cause he's the same master that shares his poor meal even if that would make him half-starving for a while. He genlty closes his big eyes as the man caresses him with his big, loving, safety-providing, tobacco-smelling hand. How can this man that apparently doesn't have control over his own safety provide safety to another being...I don't know his secret but the eyes of his dog tell me he does a pretty good job. I don't think a junkie will ever abandon his dog. He didn't get this pet for his own amusement (like some of normal people do), but he got it for company, warmth, innoncence, loyalty and trust he couldn't find in people.

Enough for the "junkie dog" now. The junkie owner is a survivor. I don't know what money he lives from and is irrelevant. But I guess (hope) he lives from social support and taxes we pay every month. I honestly think that would be a good investment. I'd like to know that I can somehow contribute to his struggle, his surviving, his freedom. Cause he is the one as free and as close to God as a person can be. If someone will end up in heaven, that's him...and his dog of course. You may say: "well..if you want to contribute, give him some money out of your pocket" but here you're wrong. This metro junkie I am talking about is not a bagger, he has pride and dignity. No, he won't accept money for charity just like that; he will manage somehow to have in his pocket, in the morning, exactly as much as he needs to go through the day.

I also can tell for sure there are no metro junkies reading this post. Do you imagine that wasted junkie coming home after struggling existence all day to stay behind a screen and show off that he has an entire post written about him?

This is the junkie, the most real, true and faithful to the metro character of this series. You will go on avoiding his look, avoiding his stink, going as far away as the metro wagon allows you, thinking you are so much better than him, or being so damn tired from your day at work, so busy thinking about the update tomorrow that you won't even notice him, like he's just another metro piece of furniture...

Metro People - Intro / Pilot episode

Leyendeker Strasse U-Bahn Station (Köln Ehrenfeld)

Source : U-Bahn Haltestelle Leyendekerstrasse

My first post was dedicated to the source of my inspiration, my muse, the one that made me determined to starting writing in the first place, and it was also kind of a non-conventional description of little me. But there are many (maybe less significant) inspirational resources out there and yet more ideas that wait in the pipeline. One of them (an endless source of inspiration and analysing) are the metro/ subway/ underground /S-Bahn / U-Bahn people... you may call them however you like. I choose to call them simply metro people, from here on.

This is just an intro to a series of episodes to come. At first I intended it to be just one post. But that was more than one year ago, when I first stepped in a Cologne subway (actually in a subway. period).

But since then I've been travelling at least 2 hours / day, 5 days / week, circa 60 weeks. That leads to a total of approximately 600 hours. That would be 25 full days! Quite impressive, ha? Can you imagine how many things one can do in that time? For starters you can watch people, you can observe the prototypes, draw sketches in your mind. And that's what I love most. After some time, I learnt some of them by heart and the excitement grew smaller by the day. Then I started reading, fiction that is. That means another happy meal for imagination, but the other way around. When you see people, their "shell" and body language, their fashion style, their ways of walk and talk, their mimic, you try to imagine what they are thinking, what's the story behind the face/ mask/ beard/ glasses/ burka.

With books on the other hand, you know the characters, you know their deepest thoughts, their hidden agendas, and as far as their faces are concerned, you get so many pictures as many readers there are.

Then I moved to the west side of the city, so other metros, other faces and new excitement. So I went back to reading. But doing the reading thing doesn't mean I don't raise my head out of the book, at times, to watch, admire, judge and get intrigued by a random stranger.

So, not to lose coherence, all that impressive amount of time spent in the "subway"( not always literally subway), which by far I do not consider to be a waste, made me realize I will never make it in one single post.

There are way too many profiles and each one of them is unique, one of the kind and deserves my full attention (maybe yours as well, if my writing will get seductive enough, to keep you drawn to the text). So I figured out the only way to do things right is opening a series of posts, each post for a certain metro profile. I still don't know how many episodes or who knows, maybe "seasons" will be. But since I don't plan on buying and driving a car any time soon...this could be a loooong thread. So, once I became clear with this, there were 2 open issues left: language and authenticity.

Obviously, there's no need to say that there is no tongue I can express myself better in than the mother tongue. And I guess that applies to all common people. Still, since I was about to write about Cologne metro people, I felt kind of obligated to write in German. BUT... that would have been too much of an effort on my side, and how was I to share with my non-German speaking friends? So given these facts, and my will to reach a bigger target of readers (hahaha!), English seemed the perfect compromise between Romanian and German. English is always the perfect compromise. We do use at least an English word every other sentence nowadays after all, don't we ( especially on IM )?

So one issue to go: originality. And that's a sensitive topic to me! There's nothing I despise more in this life than fake: fake people, fake smiles, fake words and mostly fake art. I'd like my writing, like everything else I create to be , if not awesome, if not out of this world, if not genius, at least honest, authentic and true. So, just before writing these lines, I did a little google-ing and all I got were photos of metro people (that will be good material by the way) , commercials or casual stuff. But this was just a 5 minutes digging so I cannot really call it research and I still feel kind of threatened of being a second, a third or just one in a thousand bloggers who write about metro people. Who knows...maybe there are books, songs, poems out there..all about my favorite characters. But you know what they say... "Out of sight, out of mind"...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~TO BE CONTINUED~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Despre "căldura ciudată" din mine

Vreau să explic cum stă treaba cu căldura ciudată din mine. El zice că o vede și o simte și crede probabil că e acolo dintotdeauna. Nu a înțeles însă că el e singurul care o poate simți. Orice căldura are în spate o sursă, o flacără care arde. Ei bine, sursa acestei călduri ce îl atrăgea magnetic era chiar el...ce paradox. Dezvolt: azi noapte nu puteam dormi (din nou), de prea multe idei care dădeau valma in mintea mea, nu mai aveau loc, în urechi îmi ticăiau bătăile ritmice și mult prea repezi ale inimii. Conștientizam cum fluxul de sânge îmi străbate în goană vasele dilatate, îmi auzeam organismul vibrând. Forța ce m-a curpins era uriașă, era unul din acele momente în care nu mi-era teamă de nimic.

Atunci m-a izbit realizarea că dacă ar fi să aleg o moarte, asta ar fi: să mor de prea multă adorare, de prea multă inspirație, de prea mult extaz. Vreau să mor într-un orgasm spiritual, să explodez într-o ploaie de emoții. Nu știu cum nu am văzut asta atâta amar de vreme! Și aici intervine el...zburătorul meu care apare si dispare. Apare mereu să îmi aprindä focul stins de ploi, să îmi șteargă lacrimile și să mă aducă la țărm de pe marea vieții când plutesc în derivă.

El mă face să funcționez la capacitatea mea maximă, "mai sus" de unde mă înalță el nu există. El ma dezbracă de orgolii (iar orgoliile sunt putreziciunea sufletului), mă eliberează de propriile limitări și mă ajută sa îmi depășesc condiția.

El poate umple toate spațiile goale din povestea mea folosind un singur cuvânt. Dacă sufletul meu ar avea pereți, atunci numele lui ar fi scrijelit jur-împrejur pe aceștia, cu date calendaristice, cu mici desene prinse în pioneze, cu notițe, cu scrisori păstrate in taină, păstrate cu drag, citite de zeci de ori.

El m-a învățat că, cuvintele multe nu își au rostul dar că un sărut în colțul gurii (anunțând un nou început) și o strângere prelungă de mână (prevestind o lungă despărțire) te pot face centrul universului pentru o clipă ce durează o eternitate...că timpul se poate dilata și distanțele se pot evapora...

Singură am învățat, într-un târziu, că nu trebuie să ai fizic aproape cealaltă parte a ta, ci e suficient a ști că există, că drumurile voastre s-au intersectat la un moment dat, că vedeți aceleași stele pe același cer în nopțile de vară.

Am înțeles că avem nevoie de relații efemere, facile, mediocre uneori, ca să nu ne fugă pământul de sub picioare, ca să rămânem ancorați în teluric, să nu ne luăm zborul prea sus și să știm să aperciem clipa în care am cunoscut extazul.

Iar dacă mă inșel, și totul e o iluzie, dacă l-am proiectat în stele numai ca să îmi satisfac nevoia de sublim, atunci îi mulțumesc, pentru că e o iluzie al naibii de reușită și nu a încercat să îmi strice filmul, nu m-a dezamăgit.

Nici nu îmi pare rău că nu am dormit; mi-e teamă ca în somn, lumea mea să nu se năruie, iluzia să nu se spulbere...aș prefera ca inima mea să sară o bătaie, decât să pierd o clipă de magie, o posibilă idee revelatoare...