(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 6)
Everything is about image. Self-suggestion. Today, image turned into the most powerful weapon. If you are sick and tell yourself it will be all right, you come to think it and you really get well. “You just need a strong enough reason,” as Americans say. They had “the American Dream,” which translated into the “American Way.” We are unable to look in the mirror and see the truth. We still cling to the “Romanian Way.” We do not like the fact that the West pictured us as the “country of Gypsies, physically and mentally challenged and of the AIDS affected children.” We do like the fact that they send us humanitarian aid worth millions of dollars just because we show such a poor image. I heard the words: “Romania is a poor country” so many times it makes me sick. Let’s go over a few statistics. I look down the street and I see that two thirds of the cars are beautiful and expensive. I look at the passers by and I see that they are not the desperate and shaggy hordes we see on CNN, fighting or protesting in Russia, Albania, Moldavia or some African third-rate country. In the weekends, the restaurants, the clubs and discos are overflowing. The owners make enough money to last the week. In any high school courtyard, if you look at the teenagers smoking you see the latest cry in fashion. In the street, our women are well dressed, perfumed and beautiful making all the men turn their heads and bump into light poles and the drivers break some traffic rules. The number of homeless people is no bigger than that of Paris or Milan. We have no middle class. Perhaps we lack a CERTAIN middle class. Still, the fashion companies sell like crazy. Something is not adding up. The good, the beauty, the positive are no longer spectacular. They are regarded as normal. However, dirt, misery, poverty, illness, these are hot items. They sell because they impress. Images are powerful. They touch the hearts and make rivers of tears and ink flow. I believe it is the fascination evil holds over us. If you talk about the beauty of a woman people look at you with contempt and bill you as obsessed, womanizer or superficial. But if you talk about how you witnessed a traffic accident or the explosion of a gas pipe, everybody looks at you with wide opened eyes. If all goes well, we move along. If we hear about a catastrophe we light a cigarette, grab a beer and try to guess the outcome. We must start caring about simpler things. Let’s discover this thing they call mirror and learn how to use it. If you see a zit you squeeze.