Comfortable With Self

Eva slid me a stack of old Newsweeks last Friday, across her desk at the Ministry of Defense. I took them with a smile. She had finished them, fine-tuning her English, and was now offering them to me as a gift from the MOD. They are quite the gift to be appreciated in these parts.

I blew through them, thirsty for information about the world larger than Heves. One quote, from Oprah Winfrey, interviewed in a November edition, made me think. I thought so much I wrote it down.

"...the things that matter:

How do I accelerate my humanity?
How do I use who I am on earth for a purpose that is bigger than myself?
How do I align the energy of my soul with my personality
and use my personality to serve my soul?

My answer always comes down to self.

There is no moving up and out into the world unless you are fully acquainted with who you are. You cannot move freely, speak freely, act freely, be free, unless you are comfortable with yourself."

Sometimes, being or perhaps becoming comfortable with yourself looks like walking alone, for almost two hours, down the streets of a dark and deserted European capital at 3 o'clock on the morning, wandering your way home

My state of mind is almost always reflected by a song, a dizzying tune stuck in my head for moments or days or weeks. Finding both an outlet, but also a constant reminder of state-of-being, I've latched onto and belted out lyrics like "I'm sending an S.O.S. to the world," "How long, how long will I slide," and "When the world gets in my face, I say Have a nice day" this year. Message in a bottle, Otherside and Bon Jovi's latest hit have all made my Hungarian soundtrack.

But another phenomenon, not simply the reflection of mindset, is the creation of mood by a song. It's not as common in my universe, but might be even more powerful. Saturday, it was sxz frdxHaddaway's chance to haunt.

The song pulsates. You know the one. Haddaway is a one hit wonder. You can feel it, from the moment the DJ blends it into the previous song. Your head starts to bob, side-to-side. Gently at first. Then, as a smile creeps onto your face, the bobbing becomes borderline violent. Before the words even come to play, you're swept into the song.

Haddaway certainly has pursued advanced degrees in psychology, theology, sociology or living. The questions he asks, the lines of though he traces are profound to the core of humanity.

Oh, I don't know, what can I do?

Like an archaeologist, he digs deeper, until he finds the remnants of truth, the foundation of so much more:

What is right and what is wrong?

And reconstructing his way back to questions and answers that are timeless and ageless and unanswerable and haunting and captivating and still somehow eternally relevant and contemplatable:

What is love?

And the only answer that philosopher Haddaway gives?

Whoa whoa whoa, oooh oooh

I was left, after three minutes, a little unhappy - exhausted from sideways-head-bobbing and completely unfulfilled with settling upon "whooooooaaah" as an answer to that question "what is love?" I took to thinking, horrors, and could understanding nothing more than shades of craziness in my surroundings and love. So I was left with no choice but to walk the Danube, upstream, for long hours on end. And write.

There was a craziness to love in that room. A lot.

There is a craziness to love in Hungary. A lot.

There is a craziness to love in War and Peace. A lot.

And there is a craziness to love in my mind. A lot.

That's why this will be a four-part story...