[Have Fun in Romania]

In March of 2009, my good friend and colleague, Brian Oliu, came to visit me in Brasov, Romania, where I was spending a year teaching via the US Fulbright Program. Early into Brian’s visit, we knew that this would be the kind of shared experience that we needed to do something with, something more than the snapping of some photos, the writing of some facebook status updates, and the reminiscences we were bound to share whenever we met again for the indefinite future.

After just a few days, we decided that we needed to turn the events transpiring into an occasion for collaborative writing. What better way to remember than to create something lasting of this trip? If I remember correctly, the first ideas were hatched on a shoddy train running through the north of the country. It took us months, long after Brian had returned to Alabama, and even after I had left Romania, to finish the project, but the process felt as much a journey as the train ride where I recall us laying down the groundwork for it. And the result found a way for us to work through our understandings of the mountains, beer, ubiquitous techno, bowling, karaoke, trains & more trains, superstition, ethnic television programing, expat French folk, pork, pollution, women, and, of course, vampires we met along the way.

We have named the collaboration, “Have Fun in Romania.” I’m happy to announce that a selection from these lyric essays have now been published and can be read online in Super Arrow #3. My thanks to the editor of Super Arrow, Amanda Goldblatt, for taking the pieces, and thanks to Brian for being a great friend and excellent collaborator.

I also recommend you take the time to check out the rest of Super Arrow #3, which features fresh & lively poetry, prose, & art, but also a sizable section devoted to collaborations! (Among the collaborators is another friend & favorite of mine, MC Hyland of Double Cross Press.  She wins on both talent and kindness.)  Super Arrow is an interesting new(ish) journal that we can expect to continue to do exciting things in the future.  I, for one, look forward to following it; I hope you will too.

[I took the image above in Brasov and it remains one of my favorite illustrations of the kinds of surprising juxtapositions I became accustomed to in Romania.]

[House on the Hill]

This morning in Transylvania it’s raining like the Hoh rain forest and while that’s generally good for my level of indoor productivity, it’s not what I’d hoped for during my last week in Romania.  Still, back home in New York my friends and family have had it much worse with precipitation; I shouldn’t complain.  I can say, at least, that I’ve had plenty of good outdoor experiences this spring, as you can see from the above picture.  It comes from a small village, Măgura, in Parcul National Paitra Craiului, where some friends were gracious enough to take me.  The house belongs to one of those friends, and boasted an amazing view of both Paitra Craiului and the Bucegi mountains.  Have you been to Transylvania?  You should visit.

And that’s all I really wanted to say today.  It’s not a hard-hitting blog post about unrest in Iran, but I think other people have that covered.