The World Beside

By Teo A Dinu

We all wish we could read people’s minds and have access to their innermost doubts and feelings. Just like in real life, through the third person limited point of view The World Beside conveys the protagonists’ story revealing how different perspectives or representations of reality create confusion and conflict that leads them to strive for cohesion and endeavor to understand themselves and the others... Kai flees the busy city life and arrives in a small Scandinavian town where he hopes to live an uneventful life. But “the world beside” is never about peace, it is about individual choices and encounters with people whose choices create ripples that rock the boat. Kai takes a doped drink from a high-school graduate girl on Russefeiring and wakes up naked on the shore the next day without being able to remember what had happened. One single gap in his existence haunts him for another ten years till he is finally able to find out the truth. In the meantime, his relationship with Edda and the meeting with Gia, complicate his existence even more. The World Beside dwells on the theme of the protagonists’ path to self-awareness and moral individualism showing the brave undertaking of their minds to make sense of the world they live in and to give meaning to their existence. A philologist with a Master’s degree in Intercultural Cooperation, an experienced educator with a deep insight in psychology and pedagogy, and a life coach, Teo A. Dinu authored theses (on the mystical work of Gustave Flaubert or on the dystopian literature) and articles in educational sciences, linguistics, multiculturalism, English and French literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewGenerationPublishing
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803691992

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The World Beside

Teo A. Dinu

Published by New Generation Publishing in 2021

Copyright © Teo A. Dinu 2021

First Edition

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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To my family and friends

Part One

Reflection

1

‘One night that could change it all’ - was the phrase that drummed into Kai’s head like he was caught in a drilling exercise of his mind. The idea of so many possibilities emerging from that night of which he could not remember much was haunting him like a curse. He had only imagined a secluded uneventful life when he decided to take the data analyst job he had found in Norway. He had heard stereotypes of how boring life was in Norway and this was when it occurred to him what a perfect opportunity it would be for him to slow down a bit. His life felt like a windmill powered now and then by the current of people coming in and out of his life, over which he had no control whatsoever. This feeling of powerlessness and purposelessness was overwhelming to the point of seeing no point in his existence. He was sick and tired of overcrowding and trivial conversations that prevented him from hearing his own thoughts. He felt like his mind was jammed by the continuous small talk and expendable relations.

How could anyone see any point in drifting afloat? He had to admit to himself that if he could not give a meaning to it all, his mind might go ape and then he would lose any chance of control. So when he chose to leave Brussels ten years before, just after finishing his studies, Kai felt himself a bit reassured of his freedom to choose and take things into his own hands. A boost of self-confidence and the flicker of the tiniest hope were all the fuel he needed to start over, readjust to a new way of living, a new culture and a different mindset.

He was used to moving, to being unanchored and unattached to one place or one person. It did not feel like betrayal or running away. It just meant freedom and adventure to him. It was freedom to roam around the world and know more. Adventure meant excitement for the new experiences and the new people he was supposed to encounter. Every new move with his parents and then alone in the university to Kai was an opportunity to challenge himself more and get to know himself better. However, lately he felt lonelier and more disconnected than he had ever expected, maybe also because of that night. In addition, what he discovered about himself was inconclusive. Was it good that he was not dependent on anyone and could be self-sufficient or was it bad? He hankered after human connections, yet he chose a rainy northern town to move to. He was wary of people, yet he automatically followed an unknown girl and drank whatever she gave him to drink three months after he moved in a completely new town, in a foreign country. This did not sound much as a promise or a chance of connecting more or of being less lonely. On the contrary, it led him deeper on this path of lonesomeness and the image of the wasteland unfolding in front of his eyes was not very propitious.

In truth, soon this image came to materialize itself. It became manifest in every aspect of his life and plunged him deeper in the already engulfing solitariness. He was not socially alone, though. The same old story of him being around people and still feeling alone did not leave him. He changed countries and friends, but he could not change what was inside of him. Clearly, it was not an exterior problem, but an inner struggle and dissatisfaction.

Moreover, just months after that night he met Edda, whom he had been dating for the last nine years. They had even made plans to move in together. Kai felt he should be happy but somewhere inside of him he felt his worst enemy was lurking, tormenting him with those conflicting thoughts and feelings, and leaving him forlorn and woebegone.

Nonetheless, he had to admit to one good thing that fascinated him there and that even gave him the most soothing feeling ever: nature with its breathtaking beauty. The scenery around looked like an exquisite painting. The landscape seemed motionless, the houses, the trees, the mountains and the sea, only the steady rain or a mighty storm disrupting from time to time its inertia.

As for the continuous rain, he felt it paralyzed his senses leaving him disconnected from the surrounding reality. He even started to doubt there was any reality at all. If he closed his eyes things around were going to disappear anyway. Plato himself was the first to doubt the reality of material world. Kai worked with figures and data that had a clear purpose and conclusion. To gather the data of the whole human existence and make any sense of it was the hardest challenge ever though. Rudolf Steiner was right when he described people’s four modes of knowledge to rely on senses, images, ideas and the ego. This would explain why the materialists or empiricists came to idolize money, material possessions and objectify people as they would only rely on their senses to perceive the world. This was how Kai could also understand the people categorized as crazy: they formed images of things other people could not see so which did not exist in the real palpable world. Their fantasy world was hallucinated.

Kai, on the other hand, worked with concepts, ideas derived or commanded by his will or ego. However, he did not feel he reached that intuitive stage Steiner was talking about where he could grasp everything to the core. He felt he was limited but at least he could quell his frustration with the idea he still had free will.

Steiner was also the one to write about karmic relationships, but the possibility of people meeting based on unfinished business from previous lives simply seemed too farfetched to Kai. The phrases everything happens for a reason or people meet for a reason or they were meant to be together contradicted the idea of free will. Or it just involved that even when something was predetermined or predestined to happen, people could still have the freedom to determine what to make of it and to choose how to act upon it. Everything was so confusing. Reality was just too hard to decode, hence all the trepidation and vexation.

As his anxiety grew, Kai felt he could not breathe in the house so he grabbed his raincoat, put on his boots and went outside. He felt indecisive about which way he should turn. He turned right. The way was going down winding till it passed under some sort of bridge. Suddenly a vibrating noise he could also feel under his feet, not only in his ears, sidetracked his thoughts in a second. ‘Oh, it’s the train passing right above me while I walk under the bridge.’ He felt some sort of wall was built around his mind and he needed to bring it down so he could get to the surface, breathe and feel alive.

The long dark winters in the North made him feel grateful for any second of sunshine in May. May was supposed to be the only sunny month of the year. Kai thought of May as the summer month actually. It was in May when he met that girl. It was in May when people finally started to get out of their houses, sunbathing in the 23 degrees Celsius at the beach or simply on any patch of grass, shore streak or ridge. This was the time when he could get rid a bit of the numbness that he usually felt during the six months of murkiness.

However, this May was not sunny, it was moody, unpredictable. The gloomy drizzle now did not help him get much clarity but that soothing feeling of belonging and peace that nature only could offer, was a substantial palliative. Then suddenly the sky got brighter as if a higher power had heard his thoughts and became eager to give him a helping hand by moving the clouds away for a bit to let a rare long-craved sun ray pierce through. Kai wished he could have a magical wand to change the weather himself. Right now that ray of sunshine felt like a fire-heated stone kept to his cold feet on a cold winter night. Wandering about in that painting-like landscape made him feel dumbfound at the way the adult life pragmatism lured him away from the feeling of freedom that the peace of nature conferred.

‘Nature, here, in the North, seems as wild as everywhere, but safer,’ Kai murmured, taking a look around to make sure nobody could hear him. It was reminiscent of the past adventure treks in his childhood though with a touch of awe for the wilderness of nature since in the Carpathian Mountains, where he used to trek with his father, there was always the threat of running into a bear’s path or falling into a precipice. Here, in the North, everyone could just ramble along in safety and peace to enjoy healthy exercise and the scenery around. His girlfriend, Edda, was used to this landscape and she never knew the feeling of fear for the unpredictability of chance meetings with wild animals. The wolves had been hunted down so the sheep could be left to graze freely wherever there were farms. It was funny how, though he had met Edda nine years before he knew nothing much about her, except that her parents died, and soon after, her relationship with her sister deteriorated and they stopped talking to one another, as odd and scary it might have seemed for a relationship between sisters.

When he met Edda, it was a kind of uncanny polarity of character and mentality that lured him. The deep, almost surreal somberness of life in the North must have clearly made an impression on Edda, as it must unawares impress upon himself now. Most of the Nordic people, rather conceal their profoundness and their mental quirks, as a Norwegian author, Karl Ove Knausgaard revealed in one of his books, that Kai had read before moving there. The main character of his book became a recluse, by withdrawing on an island and unfortunately developing an obsessive-compulsive self-harming behavior.

Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People also reassured him that standing alone and having the courage to express one’s point of view, despite the ostracism, is the right way to being true to yourself and to the world. The Norwegians themselves were that way, they remained the only Nordic country that was not afraid to stand alone, refusing to enter the union of European countries. Probably, after such a long time in their history of being in turn united to Denmark and Sweden, they just needed time to express their identity which they so proudly do on their National Day, with flags hanging on every house or balcony and wearing their ‘bunad’ or folk costumes.

The Norwegians proper appeared to Kai indeed very down to earth and indulging, out of a counterpoint mental striving for balance, in an oversimplified life routine disrupted from time to time by hedonistic sensualistic carpe diem flare-ups, much like their barbarian Viking ancestors did on Yuletide or when going berserk. But then again, when Kai thought how bored he felt during winter and thinking these people had been living there their entire life, he could understand them or even empathize with them.

2

Kai’s mind flashbacked to the strange night ten years ago when everything started as a banal outing with his new friend Lars. They had a few drinks in a bar, Lars left and Kai remained just a few minutes more to wait for the taxi outside. He was alone, boozed up and just starting to soak in the unfailing rain. A group of high school students celebrating the Russ or Russefeiring on their graduation dressed in red and blue overalls were brawling near him, effervescent and mercurial clearly after a binging dare. Just when his taxi arrived, an inebriated boy was pushed in by a girl who quickly called out the address to the taxi driver. Then she came directly to him, grabbed his hindquarters and put a drink in his hand. He instinctively drank it all the way, in shock of the daring approach and of his taxi just gone. The girl locked up his hand and her grip did not get any looser while she yanked him away. If she decided to get done with one of her dares with him, he did not like it.

He knew there were other dares just as funny, like spending a night in a tree or making out with ten people in one night. The previous year he saw a boy with his pants down bonking a girl on a roundabout and then read in the newspaper an article about the police issuing a polite warning and request to the teenagers to stop doing that because of the many accidents caused by drivers whose attention was distracted by them.

What business did the girl have with him? But that was the last more or less limpid thought that he had, as soon after he just remembered entering some sort of obscure swindling tunnel that blurred his vision and made him estranged of his senses. He could barely recall anything more from her appearance other than her hefty body and voluminous breasts pressing against him when she cleft at him, long blond hair, blue eyes and an immaculate luminous face.

He had woken up half frozen in his trunks on the beach with his clothes lying dry and neatly packed on the sand next to him. During the night the temperatures in May did not get lower than 18 degrees Celsius but the water was freezing at barely 10 degrees. Kai judged he could not have gone swimming given the cold water and his acute fear of the depth of water, called thalassophobia. He was afraid of swimming even in a three-meter pool not to mention in the ocean. He could, however, swim very close to the shore where he could still feel the seabed with the tip of his feet. Maybe they just made love on the shore or they swam a bit in that small bay. How odd and frustrated he felt at not knowing exactly what had happened. How could his body have reacted automatically to his then in command unconscious brain? Many people when drunk said the same thing: that they could not remember what they did or say when they were drunk. He was equally drunk and drugged.

People’s hedonism was far from being acceptable to him. However, as his psychotherapist had told him every time he vehemently rejected something he had to try to look at him as in a mirror. He rejected it so much maybe precisely because he liked it but would not do it because he was conditioned not to by social norms and education. Falling prey to it, eventually, was proof of him being drawn to this so vehemently spurned hedonism.

He followed that girl when he was still fully conscious of what he was doing. He chose to instantly trust her. Was he attracted to her? Not quite. Was he bored and curious? Maybe. Was he eager to enjoy life with what it had to offer? Most certainly. He disagreed with Edda’s libertarian outings with her co-workers and blamed his choice not to consider a serious long-term relationship with her on her tendency to live life to the full. Or maybe he simply envied her for having the guts to do it. This was why when given the opportunity he just seized it.

He could not trust Edda to be reliable in her accounts as they all seemed to strictly obey a code of silence after similar berserk outings with her colleagues. He himself obeyed it and could understand that maybe she did not remember much herself. Plus a code of silence became necessary once one became ashamed of their lack of inhibition, in case they did remember anything. Kai’s mind drifted to the numerous stories he had heard from Lars, how he scored on each of these occasions, with his gin-soaked colleagues, old, young, married or not. He admired Lars’ lack of prejudice in magnanimously and indiscriminately offering his charming young assets to the women around, while he, on the other hand, could not even do it in the wildest times of his youth.

The thought that Edda was faithful to the local practices while she was out with her handsomely young, husky fellow workers was a definite put-down for him. He often felt like Edda avoided every discussion with him, as if she was afraid of or maybe even fed up with his over-thinking, complicated mind. She could not know where his curiosity stemmed from. He simply needed to find out more of this human need to live life to the full, to probe the depths of human experiences and juice out all the joy or suffering they had to offer.

Kai realized his only outings in the past ten years had been to Spain. He had consciously avoided drinking too much