“My homeland dressed in forests, we meet increasingly rare near the springs. But tell me, aren’t you just as fond of the wild birds of passage?
I haven’t forgotten that here is where I first laughed, where I first cursed, where I first tasted the bees’ sweet honeycombs, or the salty taste of my tears in the mouth.
Clumsily, loving here the first time, I told you when I had not yet told him. You've watched, bent over me, the first hesitant steps of mine.
Today I am in love; there’s a rainbow arched over the world of my soul. The mountain sources are lit and sound, dancing in the rhythm of their mirrors, and my fir trees roar, with no storm present, in a deafening, stunning balance.
In vineyards, the transparent, silvery grapes vibrate - crystals of heavy songs, and scintillating drops of melodies are born, like dew, in all my herbs.
I flow entire in this holy song, I'm not myself anymore; a song is all I am. "
(Adaptation after a poem by Nicolae Labiş)
Who am I?
I'm the one who, from time to time, digs out the lyrics, songs and quotes from my "encyclopedic" memory's "archives" (as a personality test once described it) and uses them to "embroider" patterns of metaphors and analogies for all sorts of presentation stories about my school activities (readers of true stories who can understand my tongue can read them on the website of the school).Some would say that I have chosen the wrong career, choosing to teach biology as an object instead of the science of words full of meaning and musicality. But I’d answer them: what is more meaningful and full of music than Life?
I'm the one who, from time to time, digs out the lyrics, songs and quotes from my "encyclopedic" memory's "archives" (as a personality test once described it) and uses them to "embroider" patterns of metaphors and analogies for all sorts of presentation stories about my school activities (readers of true stories who can understand my tongue can read them on the website of the school).Some would say that I have chosen the wrong career, choosing to teach biology as an object instead of the science of words full of meaning and musicality. But I’d answer them: what is more meaningful and full of music than Life?
Do allow a biologist to exercise her "artistic gene" and try to tell a story (about nature and people), more for kids’ than for adults readers’ eyes. That’s because "children learn kindness from nature and wickedness from men". (Nicolae Iorga)
It fell in my task to write something "different" about "Brediceanu". Not a history article – one of those already exists on the site, neither a sober and maybe dull presentation, both pompous and self praising. SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
I thought about it, I changed my mind and I went back to the metaphors that define my style. When I remembered this old song written below, I finally found the starting point of the story:
"In the garden of my home there’s a tree, singing with its leaves and the wind, who knows everything I like and everything I feel, who knows the song I long have sung.
In the garden of my home there’s a tree who told me to be proud like him, who told me to always keep my head straight up, come rain or sun or clouds, just like him!
The worthy tree rises gently in my garden, full of fruits and heavy night. Enemies have tried to bend it down and to see it brought to its knees!
The worthy tree rises gently in my garden, dazed by the sun, by the heavy light; this tree is a part of the country's holy body, and it will always be!”
"In the garden of my home there’s a tree, singing with its leaves and the wind, who knows everything I like and everything I feel, who knows the song I long have sung.
In the garden of my home there’s a tree who told me to be proud like him, who told me to always keep my head straight up, come rain or sun or clouds, just like him!
The worthy tree rises gently in my garden, full of fruits and heavy night. Enemies have tried to bend it down and to see it brought to its knees!
The worthy tree rises gently in my garden, dazed by the sun, by the heavy light; this tree is a part of the country's holy body, and it will always be!”
People of my country, do you still hear, in a little corner of your memory, the voice of Aurelian Andreescu? What man in his right mind would label this song as a "communist" one? It’s obviously a metaphor. For me, this song is about the country, the hometown, the family, the school: places and people I have been surrounded by and defined by in my ontogenetic and ontological development, as a biological, social and spiritual being. The tree branches, where the "wild bird of passage" personality of a child strengthens its wings and learns the "techniques", but also the rules and restrictions of "flying" through life, are the school. The feared, annoying, time and energy consuming, rarely full of satisfactions, but much needed school...
Fortunately, my school is a prime one. Being an old institution (175 years, fulfilled this fall), has prestige and claims respect. The genuine quality of its good teachers attracts admiration and good students. Through their efforts and results, it acquires constantly a good reputation.
So our tree has a garden with rich soil, and it does not impoverish even if its older branches disappear. Went to sleep in the land of the country, the memory of their names (Emilian Iclozan, Walter Kina, Dan Popescu and many, many other light bearers of its more distant past) is still contributing to the strength of that treasure chest of knowledge where they taught or have taught others.
The sunny branches derive their power from this rich soil, using that support for young twigs’ development, and enrich year after year and decade after decade its crown of leaves and flowers. Of them, some have grown into powerful, new branches, coming to replace those defeated by time: the former high school graduates who, sooner or later, have returned as teachers, to carry and deliver to others the light of (con)science lit in them by their former teachers, now their colleagues or just memories from faded albums in the school archives ...
The biggest concern of the tree are its flowers; every year more, better or worse, stronger or more fragile, as time and times allow it: our children. Being their biological parents or not, we call them “ours”, anyway. All of them. Because at least for one third of the four or eight years time of school we are with them, raise them, teach them, defend them, listen to their questions, thoughts and aspirations, scold them when their tread away from the right path and we love them, as does any parent. Because of that, many of our flowers give good fruits: we witnessed whole generations of graduates becoming real, good people, more or less known, but individuals who look back with the pride and forward with the boldness that only the confidence (in their forces) and the consciousness (that the path they are following is right, guided by eternal values) can give them!
It is not the only one, our tree, nor the largest in the garden; its branches do not extend so far beyond it, looking for foreign lights and saps; maybe they are richer, but they’re foreign and ephemeral, sometimes incompatible with the delicate flowers they feed. The Creative Man fashioned also rapid developing and massive trees that give rich fruit, but only for a short while, from just a few branches supported by foreign and artificial saps. In their absence and that of the caring gardener, these trees dry out their power soon because their roots are not strong enough to support them...
Fortunately, my school is a prime one. Being an old institution (175 years, fulfilled this fall), has prestige and claims respect. The genuine quality of its good teachers attracts admiration and good students. Through their efforts and results, it acquires constantly a good reputation.
So our tree has a garden with rich soil, and it does not impoverish even if its older branches disappear. Went to sleep in the land of the country, the memory of their names (Emilian Iclozan, Walter Kina, Dan Popescu and many, many other light bearers of its more distant past) is still contributing to the strength of that treasure chest of knowledge where they taught or have taught others.
The sunny branches derive their power from this rich soil, using that support for young twigs’ development, and enrich year after year and decade after decade its crown of leaves and flowers. Of them, some have grown into powerful, new branches, coming to replace those defeated by time: the former high school graduates who, sooner or later, have returned as teachers, to carry and deliver to others the light of (con)science lit in them by their former teachers, now their colleagues or just memories from faded albums in the school archives ...
The biggest concern of the tree are its flowers; every year more, better or worse, stronger or more fragile, as time and times allow it: our children. Being their biological parents or not, we call them “ours”, anyway. All of them. Because at least for one third of the four or eight years time of school we are with them, raise them, teach them, defend them, listen to their questions, thoughts and aspirations, scold them when their tread away from the right path and we love them, as does any parent. Because of that, many of our flowers give good fruits: we witnessed whole generations of graduates becoming real, good people, more or less known, but individuals who look back with the pride and forward with the boldness that only the confidence (in their forces) and the consciousness (that the path they are following is right, guided by eternal values) can give them!
It is not the only one, our tree, nor the largest in the garden; its branches do not extend so far beyond it, looking for foreign lights and saps; maybe they are richer, but they’re foreign and ephemeral, sometimes incompatible with the delicate flowers they feed. The Creative Man fashioned also rapid developing and massive trees that give rich fruit, but only for a short while, from just a few branches supported by foreign and artificial saps. In their absence and that of the caring gardener, these trees dry out their power soon because their roots are not strong enough to support them...
We have chosen to preserve in our tree all its natural energies, without hindering too much the development of its branches, but further strengthening the roots on which the whole edifice stands. Because, in the end, our strength lies in durability, and the ability to survive and prosper under any conditions, not in speed and rapid growth ...
In the spirit of truth I've learned to respect here, we can’t all wear the laurel wreath. There aren’t only lights in our garden. Although "there is a place for everyone under the sun, some prefer to sit in the shade", as Jules Renard wrote. But, respecting the laws of Nature that kneels or raises us all in the end, the shaded branches often dry and fall off by themselves, or are removed sometimes by a more diligent gardener; even so, their presence can strengthen the tree, because diversity is one of the conditions of development and evolution, and their remains can serve as a vital energy resource for the good branches.
As in nature, we can’t all be at the top and all be survivors... and life has its time and methods to distinguish between winners and losers ...
However, I "I believe that truth is beyond us" and that each of us who are (still) HERE for our children and we want to be here, can become, together with them, "the change you want to see in world " as Mahatma Gandhi once stated.
Thus, in these times, when the Romanian education (and its future) has (have) become, for some subject of constant criticism, for others an object of bantering and even mockery, for others an ignored reality, swept under the rug of the “daily sensational”, for others an object used as a bargaining currency in the election periods, and to its people a constant cause for worrying about tomorrow, and also a fragile hope for better, I remain
In the spirit of truth I've learned to respect here, we can’t all wear the laurel wreath. There aren’t only lights in our garden. Although "there is a place for everyone under the sun, some prefer to sit in the shade", as Jules Renard wrote. But, respecting the laws of Nature that kneels or raises us all in the end, the shaded branches often dry and fall off by themselves, or are removed sometimes by a more diligent gardener; even so, their presence can strengthen the tree, because diversity is one of the conditions of development and evolution, and their remains can serve as a vital energy resource for the good branches.
As in nature, we can’t all be at the top and all be survivors... and life has its time and methods to distinguish between winners and losers ...
However, I "I believe that truth is beyond us" and that each of us who are (still) HERE for our children and we want to be here, can become, together with them, "the change you want to see in world " as Mahatma Gandhi once stated.
Thus, in these times, when the Romanian education (and its future) has (have) become, for some subject of constant criticism, for others an object of bantering and even mockery, for others an ignored reality, swept under the rug of the “daily sensational”, for others an object used as a bargaining currency in the election periods, and to its people a constant cause for worrying about tomorrow, and also a fragile hope for better, I remain
Teacher Daniela Mariana Popovici, a proud branch of the tree called "Brediceanu".
That’s because "the trees that grow under the strongest wind are the strongest." (Seneca)
That’s because "the trees that grow under the strongest wind are the strongest." (Seneca)
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