Octavian Gabor
I’ve written on a personal blog for nine years, more or less. You can check it out here: https://taviscorner.wordpress.com/. The primary purpose of the blog was to spread the word about a translation that is very important to me: the memories of six Romanians who were deported to Siberia from Bessarabia. If you haven’t checked it out, do consider to do so here. Brought together under the title of Do Not Avenge Us, the memories bring forward the suffering of a people that is very close to my heart because I am part of it.
At the same time, my writing went into other directions, witnessing to various tribulations or thoughts that came to me during these travels that compose life. I say this because life seems to be a journey toward a place that is fully known and unknown at the same time. For there is one certitude about human beings: we all die and our existence as we know it has an end. But there is also the unknowability of what takes place, if anything, after.
This completely known and unknown end governs our journeys here. It also makes us immigrants, and so in many senses. We do not travel alone, but with others, and our communications with these people can be described as an attempt to apply for visas in order to be accepted into their souls.
The blog then is a manifestation of an immigrant. An immigrant on earth, first of all, but also an immigrant from one country to another. On top of all these, the most important aspect of my status as immigrant is the fact that I attempt, like all of us, to journey into my brethren’s souls, for it is only there where we can truly find rest (unfortunately, we most often find war as well, but this does not deny the radical potentiality of a brother’s and sister’s souls to be places of rest for tired travelers).
This text explains, then, the name of the blog. But it also reveals its implicit purpose: I’m applying for visas into my readers’ souls.