Letters from Tomis

So, if you’ve managed to trudge this far through my daily musings, you might be asking yourself: who is this audacious soul daring to pour their fragmented thoughts into the abyss? And why on earth should you squander your precious time sifting through my chaotic ruminations on socialism, literature, and the absurdity of life?

Let us begin with a confession, which is always a good way to disarm suspicion and create a bit of narrative suspense: I am not entirely sure who I am. This is not to say I am some unfathomable enigma, but rather that the concept of “self” is a slippery, amorphous thing. The moment you think you’ve nailed it down, it squirms out of your grasp, leaving behind nothing but fragments—memories, contradictions, and unexamined assumptions. And yet, there is something undeniably there, a sense of continuity, however tenuous. So, let us explore this “I,” this consciousness-in-motion, and see if it reveals anything worth examining.

First, there is the matter of what I have been told I am: a name, a nationality, a set of social roles. These labels are convenient, even necessary, but they are no more “me” than the clothes I wear or the books I read. They are the scaffolding, not the structure. To say I am an American, or a writer, or a Marxist-Leninist, or even an atheist, is to describe facets of the jewel, not the jewel itself. And like any person, I am far more interested in what lies behind the glittering surface.

To truly ask “Who am I?” is to wade into murky philosophical waters, where the sharks of existentialism and the sirens of psychology wait to tug you under. Am I the sum total of my experiences? If so, then I am a mosaic of people, places, and events that I have encountered over the years, some of which I remember vividly, others that lurk in the fog of forgetfulness. Am I my thoughts? Then I must acknowledge how fleeting and unreliable they are, flitting from insight to nonsense with all the consistency of a drunken butterfly. Or am I something more permanent—a soul, if you will—though I recoil at the word’s mystical implications?

Of course, one cannot define oneself without considering what one stands against. And here, I feel most at home. Who I am is, in no small part, defined by what I reject: authoritarianism, dogma, intellectual laziness, and cruelty in all its forms. It is perhaps easier to say who I am not than who I am. I am not a believer in the comforting lies of religion or the coercive lies of demagogic power. I am not someone who shrinks from an argument or avoids the unpleasant truths of life. If that makes me a contrarian, so be it—though I prefer the term “critical thinker”

But who I am is not merely oppositional. I am a lover of ideas, of language, of the grand, sprawling conversation that humanity has been having with itself since the dawn of time. I find joy in the beauty of art and literature, in the thrill of discovery, in the act of asking questions even when the answers are elusive. To be alive is to be curious, and to be curious is to be constantly reshaping the boundaries of who you are.

And then there is the question of connection. Who I am cannot be disentangled from the people I love, the friendships I treasure, and the causes I champion. It is in these relationships that I find the most honest reflection of myself, for they reveal the ways in which I matter to others and, therefore, to the world. To live only for oneself is to live a stunted life, a life devoid of the richness that comes from shared experiences and mutual understanding.

If there is one thing I know for certain about who I am, it is that I am not finished. I am a work in progress, a manuscript with missing pages, a question mark rather than an exclamation point. To be human is to be incomplete, to be perpetually striving for clarity, for coherence, for meaning. And perhaps that is the best answer to the question “Who am I?”—I am someone who is still becoming.