People pushing

Salasu de Sus, Carpathian Mountains, Romania

Hitchhiked with one couchsurfing host to another, to a village in the southern Carpathian mountains.
My company, at the time, had rarely parted from home; his projection of fears and desires pestered patience, nature's tepid calling (back). I almost abandoned my thoughts to myself: "let's get outta here" being the running reasoning alongside a winding hill road ---yes, a singular one, which weaved together growing curbside towns and ages-old villages.

A Romani gypsy family shuttles back and forth beside town in the rain,
reined (reigned) by a horseshoe'd breed; a four-wheeled vehicle flashes by,
splashing water on the sidewalk. Hitchhiking: Thumbs out - Thunder / Rumble
(in rainshower speeds)

On the way to deliver construction materials, he picks us up.
So does a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-stranger
[who'd once picked up 2 Polish teenagers hitchin' to India (their second travels,
after 2 years hitchhikin' South America at 16 yrs old) and has picked up hikers ever since],
a fireman from yesterday's firefighter's street exhibition,
a chain-smokin' pair of father-and-son who kn(e)w no English,
and a family from Bucharest, the capital, who detoured from their destination
to drop us off at the little village of 

Salasu de Sus, Carpathian Mountains, Romania
where we were welcomed by a wooden sign that read, "Couchsurfing --->"
pointed to a large log cabin by a stream and green hill meadows&mountains,
to the central headquarters of a legendary Couchsurfing host,
an absurd (ultra)rationalist from a rural highland village of Romania.

-------I have been hesitant to write character studies of folks so steadfast in their character, for my own trace in the typographical word only staggers back behind stranger's eyes and sight, between sign and signification coming to communicate the (be)ing before you. I falter before I fall; does this make sense? You are, as if I could ever write you into existence. But I must persist. This is important, you are, reader (writer).

A person's portrait in two photographs and (more than) two paragraphs

His name is Mihai. 

To be honest, between his house hostel and his mental dimeanor, mountain-to-mountain legends could be told, unfolding truth and testimony like ancient scrolls (being read by trolls, [lol]) --- I'll skip the mythic-making moment and go straight to the face-facts: 

1) Log cabin constructed double-tiered; ladder bunk-beds top-floor flat surface; wool blankets winter comforters; backyard treehouse and fruits green-fallin' (like Eden, envy); internet-surfing sofas parallel wooden tea-table (webbing the neighbor's wif-fi); shower on the river, shit right in the outhouse, winged with bookshelves offering consumption for the contemplative toilet-seat consciousness (see second photo): all in all, a fully functional, pleasurable dome called home open to all who pass through its (pearly) gates, a limit test for the daring-who-do [locals call the shots]. 

2)  A knowledgeable, well-self-educated, workin'-little/livin'-large fellow never falters in his ways if he forks falsehoods with every written word (on Facebook). Brilliance shines, in a be-e-ing. Fluent in more than five languages, each year, he spends some months in a Western European Nation-state as an immigrant worker, making meaning / milking profits from various versions of value-marked labor (grape picking for French wineries, restaurants in Norway, etc...). His home in the Romanian mountains, open to all travelers, is his radio tower where he channels radical conversations through web-based social networking (Facebook and Couchsurfing). Needless to say, he is quite popular for his self-presentation, in the material flesh and mouth. 

[To be honest, when I recollect this encounter, I remember most my own neurosis. Leaving France meant leaving the comforts of common language and diving into cold, late-summer waters of Eastern European creeks, back to basic sensitivities from shock-jock expressions. Miscommunication is a mumble-jumble mirror, outlined by the other's shadow, observed]

[In some way, I felt he could read my neurosis. Maybe because he was so upfront about being able to sense one another's sensitivities. I cried within a few hours of speaking to him. He asks the tough questions, I suppose; "Do you really love your family? Does [X] really love you? What are you doing here?"]

In sum, 

+Demeanor: Wise, bitter. Condesending, charming. 

+Desire: Readerly, writerly e-actions to connect consciousness

+Dialogue: Spoke in whiskey-swollen tongue, turns-of-phrases, aphorisms

+Drama/Philosophy: Discussed his dislike for 'Eastern' mystical spirituality and Defended the Logic of a Lolita Whore

We didn't have enough time to continue conversation on the land, he invited me to one of Romania's biggest philosophy and arts festival, Old Dilemma...