Over the years I’ve come to realize that I’m living, just as anybody else in a certain place; and the state of things changes, for me, along with the meaning of home…
For over two years I’ve lived together with this family. A place altogether idyllic, run-of-the-mill, vibrant and grouchy, but nevertheless where every move seems to have a special meaning. And I can say for sure that I’ve never been so close as to where I am now to understanding how a house is run usually by folks, to uncover the mystery hidden in it for so long, the mystery that has shrouded it in time…
It would be silly of me to fool myself into thinking it was a perfect home. But I can effortlessly remember all the good things that happened around it.
Somebody could enter one day Nagy’s property and see just a house, a garden, like any other house or garden. But the one who enters and takes a closer look knows that it’s the creation of his own heart; and recognizes Nagy’s soul in every single thing inside the house. It’s not the stones, nor the trees, nor the animals that make the well known place a home, but the way they are glued together is what makes it a whole. All the hustle and bustle. And the fervor. Every single thing that can be found in this place can be found in many other different places and have a whole new meaning.
And after I moved in I realized how good it feels to wake up first thing in the morning. As a matter of fact I recall very well how I used to chose to be awake as early as 3am just not to miss the milky sunrise. And the sunrise has not once ever let me down. Because it wasn’t the sunrise that was different, moreover it was me who was changed and saw the same usual things in a whole new different light.
The garden of Old Nagy as we used to call him me and my buddies, was like an oasis of good times; It has been our personal space where we could play our game and rejoice. A home, a family, a simple story. He called her Bimbö and she nicknamed him Cootzi. No matter what the season, the hustle of the day melted right down in the heat of the sun or in the heat of the stove. Any nose choked by the smog of the town could be cleared right on the spot in the breeze of the garden. As a matter of fact, right now as I’m lying down the story I see how the seasons past so quickly without me even noticing. Maybe due to the lack of any worries… nothing more and nothing less.
First I started to take pictures as a joke, without foreseeing the outcome. Just like in Truman’s Capote “Other Voices Other Rooms”, childhood’s taste overwhelmed my mouth and Nagy’s wild garden has opened itself to my camera. When it finally came to my mind that the space where I was living in can be indeed, a story told by images, I had second thoughts as to not over do it. But what the heck! I was at my place. Or better said at our place. In no time I seriously took my role as a temporary member of the family, a role that I embraced with a great determination. I don’t know how many are blessed in a relatively big town (for Romania at least) to be able to chop woods in the backyard, to gather nuts, grapes, to rake the leaves and so on, just as the peasants do at the countryside. As a matter of fact I don’t know how many town folks can literally loose themselves in such a big garden, just behind their house, at a stone’s throw from the impersonal blocks of flats, which are true witnesses of long passed times, of glorious “golden era”, but nevertheless so tedious for the ones who own private houses.
Old Nagy laid down to me many things from the history of his property as well from his youth. He was born in this house. I won’t be insisting upon them in detail. He told them to me the same way he felt them at that time, with happiness as well as with sorrow. And I had the strong feeling that I shouldn’t be barging in so closely; the feeling they are personal things that need to stay hidden inside his heart. Maybe it was because a too detailed story set an inquisitor tone that resembled somewhat the debriefing of the “comrades” who confiscated his garden a long time ago. That’s why I decided that certain things should only be kept between the walls; besides that, the place will tell the unspoken things for him.
The day starts with Ciobi’s ride, (my dog) who’s eyes beg me to put on my shoes faster. So, after the morning coffee, when Old Nagy gracefully explains to me how “the cat teaches her kittens how to make love”, the most likely will follow a brief program of “culinary art”, of course in the kitchen. But I can’t compete with Ms. Bimbö no matter how hard I’d try. And as to try to talk Nagy into at least have a small bite of my delicatessen… there is now way in heaven that this will actually happen. It’s actually about my fish nuggets or other strange, never heard by him meals.
The point is that no matter what happens in the day time, as night falls, at the gate of Mister Cootzi and Ms. Bimbö you can always hear my buddies knocking. And as a sacred rule on weekends anyone could find us altogether making barbecues, drinking exquisite wines or liquors, always in good mood, telling jokes, having discussions more or less interesting, at the candle’s light, outside in the backyard. And I think that when we finally got tired of old contradictory discussions, as to why we were certainly have been born in the “wrong country”, on “the mistaken continent“, standing in the grass we got used to watching the sky more often. I can’t recall a different time when I took so many bad shots (without thinking too much of it) along with my buddies, fooling around in every possible way… in a single year… That was a bliss. I recommend it to whomever owns a digital camera. One cannot be certainly serious when he puts his mind into doing something “serious”. And to give a certain image the idea that it’s good or bad it actually depends on the whole. And the whole is… the home. The family. Or “The Family is the Small Country as well as the Country is the Big Family” (I.L. Caragiale). And I don’t know what one can do in the big country, but in the small one you can surely crack a beer late in the evening.
When this game started to catch me, any single detail from our house and garden became an obsession. And when even the most idiotic things around starts to be appealing, that’s when the real fun begins. And the fun is sure to last when you’re certain that you aren’t doing the things just as “something that needs to be done”… Wishing to be someplace else is not a bad thing. To be happy to be “here” and “now” to do “this” together with “these people”; to be happy to enter the room, to open the door, or that you turn on the light, or that you look back and… it is a good thing; you unravel something new; after so long! Somebody tells a new joke. Or the ax tail broke down and needs to be mended… but not today.
It happened like yesterday but it feels like Nagy’s Backyard lives forever.
