Driving through one of the ultra-central parks the other morning, I notice a sulu near the lower edge of the hedge. What is a sula looking for in the park? (For those who may not know, as many things are no longer known in a high-tech, young and ultra-modern society, a shoelace is a shoemaker’s/bootmaker’s/belt tool, a sharp object for punching holes that can be pushed. either left bare or simply stitched solid materials before being stitched with threads/threads/needles.) It was evidently dropped there either late at night, or in the middle of the night, or at dawn. Perhaps one of the young men with the white weapons held sacredly in textile hiding places within reach of the attacking or defending hand. Maybe some smoker who just found it in his own pocket when he started waking up from a hangover, he didn’t know what it was or how it got there, maybe he took it or stole it as a joke from another colleague who was just him bragging about it last night, perhaps even with a weapon used as a professional excuse, by no means a knife, which any police would easily fine, a casual or stylish rapist. I speak almost infinitely seriously, without bordering on the absurd, because it is necessary to know that sula stands next to all the crafts of the Middle Ages and Antiquity combined, they are no longer known in the city and almost threatened. extinction. Old tools of work, once trivial, have become somewhat rare today (“sula-n coste” for many contemporaries is only a metaphor, with insufficient imagery/realistic-concrete view).

Good luck with the poverty that forces Romania, social and statistical, to stop giving up their old shoes or belts (as it was just done in the 90s and 2000s), returning to the traditional handmade pingiling, plachieri, re-soles, relips and hand sewing. And success with neo- or crypto-syndicate cinema chains, which have caused the re-emergence of gangs or gangs opening in strategic urban spaces, among or next to legions of rather expensive ultra-modern cafes (often housing only 3-7). meters), showcase, storeroom, storeroom, alcove, studio or kitchenette on the first floor with Shoe repair, Swedish, shoemaking or Watchmaker. Workshops, real mini-laboratories of needlework, the existence of which was very surprising at first, are returning, multiplying, making one wonder where and where so many (and only) relatively young men (probably premature retirees of former or current military) come from. Because almost all of them work at dawn – in cobblers/shoe workshops you can see people or queues, in watch workshops you can hardly catch a glimpse as they are more shaded. (Still…who these days repairs pendulums after pendulums, vintage watches, new Rolexes and Pobedes from the 1950s and 60s? Situations like this can’t help but remind you of so many books and movies that identify hidden Nazis precisely by their penchant for repair clocks, organs, jewelry, tools, machines, mechanisms).

Anyway, all I’m really saying here is that the sula is still a special, old, rare instrument, and if you’re still intellectual, or just cultured and especially retired (but not just obsessed with domestic concerns), and your own stomach, sick wife and children/grandchildren who keep asking and asking again and again), you have to wonder what she could be looking for in the park scattered around. All the more so that, torn from its own environment and professional context, it still moves to the rank of a white weapon. Or if you are one of those people who gossip left and right and are always criticizing, at least ask yourself if this is the case (many can’t help but collect, collect, carry home, collect), you can even hand it to the gendarme or the security guard (but you you yourself leave fingerprints on it, so it is not worth it), or call the police (to worry about such a trifle, as if you really want to make fun of the form and decide – a fine) …

On the other hand, it is at least good for associative-cioclopedic reflections, because if you think how easily Romanians use the expression “sula and prefecture” (with or without a question, in any case implying that between the two elements of the equation / there is no fraction, there was not, there will not be, because there is no way, there is no connection), you understand how simple a person is close to a mistake or a lie. Because, against, between awl and Prefecture this is a really big and very big connection of linear direct causality. Symbolically, firstly, it is more than clear that in the case of being endowed with the character type of Dinu Păturică (archetype of the poor ariviste), you can achieve no matter how high your smoking and ambitions are, even without any education/culture. In the second line, in the correct form of the word, indicating the progress from zero to the maximum, see the example of the shoemaker’s rag and the manipulator Nae Se (the one who became our president for a quarter of a century only and only “golden”). And you can also see how the permanent sula became a synonym or a perfect substitute for the expression of Romanian’s phallic fixation from the beginning and seemingly forever. Or how legions upon legions of Bula (the proper name automatically derives from the common noun and related euphemism sula) reach generation after generation in all administrative, public and political leadership positions on the entire territory of the patriotic homeland. And you also see the former contracts of commitment made by countless fellow citizens with State Security (renamed “sule-n-coast”), through which many representatives of former historical parties, many former persecuted or political prisoners throughout the period of post-89 the survivors were blackmailed and decided to cede information and academic or political positions to the descendants of those with whom they collaborated in vile secrecy during the time of Caucism. Or those who were let go by the dozens as spellcasters as soon as they stopped obeying orders or were no longer useful to the old guards. An instrument of great socio-political success, the metaphorical rolling pin has also become a weapon of dethronement or final enthronement. And if there was once representative honesty among communists and security forces, then the sula (and not the sickle, not the hammer) should have been a real symbol of identification with a badge, coat of arms, and flag.

I confess that all 1, 2, 3, 4 paragraphs above are just excuses, with my sincerest apologies. Or an introduction. In fact, according to the first part of the title, I wanted to address the growing number of colleagues who today are trying to be, become or establish themselves as anthropologists or as urban sociologists. And who do not know what to connect with, what to approach, study, discover, describe scientifically. And either they ask professors to “give” them a subject or topic (current and non-original studies, bachelor’s, doctoral studies), or they have already passed some stages, have a university or research job in the staff, and get stuck. more and more, repetitively, to grants, projects and sponsorships for items that either look like they were painted with indigo, called a copier, or are too similar to each other, as if changing names, dates and locations are exactly the same ideas, phrases, you can still draw conclusions about hundreds and thousands of other (similar) cases, articles, topics, topics. Plus traveling all over the country and in all foreign countries, as if little and little can be said about people from almost all places, from here and from everywhere, as if “peculiarities” and “identities” pulled from mythological hair and patriotism could not lie “even in the ditch” flow, not only at levels already classified, rigidly and simplistically, for centuries.

So, dear colleagues, go to work where it doesn’t cost you anything, where it’s very comfortable, like in the so-called green and banal space called a simple park. You go there not only to take your children to the children’s playpen with sand and plastic toys, or the dogs to the place for garbage, grooming and defecation, but also to pass through it to the pasture, to work, to the office, to the shops, to the institute, faculty, or take a breather while chatting on the android or communicate about important business tasks and meetings. Go again and for nothing, just to stay. The park is a horizontal mine, on the surface, in the sun, in the air, rain, storm. And the “subject of research”, “informant”, “agent of urban/street culture” is already here. Or sit down, because he appears himself. Read the entire article and comment on contributors.ro