Article magazine # 107

 

Editor’s: Holiday scenes with Mars in the background

Post de: Constantin Goagea
 

5.32 GMT

Curiosity is a car with big wheels, similar to a tractor. It is 3 m long and has almost the same width, and it explores Mars. It landed there very early on 6 August. It has 17 video cameras which send the images it collects there via the radio. Once in a while, the people on earth see Mars through the electronic eyes of Curiosity.
 
23.00, Kiseleff Park
A perfectly sculpted boy, a great athletic body, sits on a bench. He is so beautiful that he does not care about it: he sits in undershirt and shorts and is very pleased. He has a small doggie, curly and playful. He throws a toy to it, and the doggie runs after it, then it brings it back to the base. It is the second time I see him this week. He graduated the physic education academy, practised athletics, bodybuilding and he says he works now as a DJ and in clubs. He stayed eight years in Ibiza, working as an event organiser in bars. He talks about Ibiza as a kind of Mars in his life. Intense, colourful, yet far away. I think he is not very busy now actually. The crisis, everything works badly. He sits on the bench and plays with the doggie. 
 
20.00 In front of the TV
At any innocent zap on TV or net, I come across various people who claim that they love their country more than others. They call that nationalism. It is sometimes a feeling, other times an ideology, other times a religion. When it is about the cultural stuff, for instance, nationalism means that one is angry with contemporary art. The love of country at the TV is a kind of resistance against the new, the foreign, the technology or the performance. 
These people, who keep on saying that they love their country, get angry with the word global usually, although they have mobiles and send letters on internet. They probably want a Romanian internet only. With “R”. 
 
00.00 h in Victoria Square
A kid aged about 14 dressed up as a Spanish footballer comes up from around (this city is full of arounds) and goes to the crossroads to beg. What a luck for him: a sports car gets near to him. The kid says something about god helps, compassion and god help us. Ok man, the merry guys say: take here. 
 
16.00, in a book, o a beach 
I read that the former prime minister in Singapore, now aged 70, thought to direct all country resources to education and technology development. In a short while, the labour market had specialists able to work advanced industrial equipment. This made the production of electronics work out perfectly. They also developed the research, to create brands, new refined products, to compete. On the global market. They attracted scientists from all over the world, but it was difficult to keep them in Singapore as they did not have… a cultural life. So, all of a sudden, they started a cultural assault support all types of culture, from theatres to exhibition, music halls, cinemas and others. Billions in culture. That’s too much, I said to myself, and closed the book: is this nationalism as well?