Fragrance (novel) [1]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
The Divine Church is a desert of silence. If you enter alone, the grace-filled silence is what welcomes you. Because you enter into silence as into a ghostual peace, you enter into the space of prayer and holy rest. Interior. Which is the true rest. He who does not love the Church does not know what it is for us: it is the path of salvation every day. With a joke and a devilry, the insensitive ignorant erase it from his sight, completely minimizing it. But no one can belittle God’s Church, because He sustains it in existence! He through us, His faithful people.
There, in the family, the holy face of the Church is erased. Mothers and grandmothers no longer have time to catechize children and they grow like some herbs from a ghostual point of view. They grow at random, they do not have a christian, natural, normal, mannered way of life, and they belong to no one.
The Church is the silence of our prayers, but also the much joy of the feasts. When it is closed, the spiders work hard on their webs, the salt climbs into the wall painting and grinds it, and the painting is the most fragile theology before us, which we must defend as a vision. Because the visions are transposed iconographically. The visions of the Saints are our ecclesial gaze. They are our way of seeing simply, deeply, tenderly.
The statistics look at the Church through the prism of attendance at Services, according to the financial amount of salaries, which is a historical monument, what happened here significantly. But the life of the Church is a natural never-ending, it is how we live our lives and discover ourselves in the discussions between us.
I started the novel in 385[1], on the way home, experiencing it first. You don’t know when it starts, but you realize you’re writing it when you experience it. When you’re part of it. Last year he escaped drowning, and on the WhatsApp group we had just received the news that he was in a coma and had brain surgery. Minimal chances. When the Emperor had the fatal accident, hit by a car from behind and left unconscious, I visited him at home, in bed, and then I went to Octavian, who was newly married. And I was under the bad feelings transmitted by his parents. That their son is in bed, in a vegetative state, and we are alive…And then I was shocked by their resentment. I didn’t expect them to hate everyone around them. And now I hear about him…and I don’t know if the drinking mattered or some other internal thing.
The Emperor was obsessed with cleanliness, brushing his clothes, walking in a „distinguished” manner, inappropriate for his age, and brushing his teeth for a long time. Hence the nickname of imperiality. I stayed for a year at that woman in the host and that’s when I met him. At Mircicuță’s son’s coming of age, I borrowed a jacket from him, then returned it to him in the morning and stayed with him. And from these gallant gestures for a young man, most likely learned in the family, perhaps from his older sister, I have the image of him in bed…unconscious, being the prisoner of his parents. I don’t know if he died or where he’s buried, I don’t know anything about him anymore, because their gaze cut off any desire I had to see him again.
The same tasteless thing happened with Doru’s death. Why did my cousin die, and I don’t die again?! And if we had all died, would they have felt better?…I never understood the desire for the death of others and I am glad I did not understand it. Because I fully understood the joy of life and the need for good, blessed immortality.
My prayers are all-encompassing. I leave no one out. I include everyone in my arms, even though it’s tiring to manage the dialogues with everyone. The prayers do not dialogue, but assume the whole of humanity. You feel good praying, you feel at one place with everyone, together. And this together is not transitory, it is not momentary, but has the foundation of permanence.
Why did Octavian, my father, drink so much? He never answered me honestly. What was the reason behind his drunkenness, his violent drunkenness? Was I also part of his unfulfillment? Because until I became his Duhovnik, he struggled a lot internally with me, with my status as a believer. He thought my life as a believer was stupid. In three days I will be celebrating 35 years of ghostual life. Of life in faith. But then he realized that I was fulfilled and he began to enjoy the peace of God too. I saw him silent, I also saw my grandfather Marin, his father, silent, I know my silences, abysmal…But their silences came slowly, but surely, towards me. And I rejoice for their peace! Because not everyone in the Cemetery has peace. No, not all of them! But the peace belongs to those who have desired it, who have come to the Lord of peace.
I saw the silence of Moromete in them. A continuous cogitation, a way of living their own novels. Those who get lost in dreams have the amplitude of the novel, its breadth, but they also need its abyssality. Because the most annoying thing in today’s culture is the details without conscience, without abyssality. So, if I know what their rooms, clothes, faces, and petty thoughts looked like, do I also know their hearts?! I can’t breathe on Balzac, full of details, banal details, who gives us multiple details about the exterior of things, but I rest when I hear him talk about his spiritual understandings. Because these understandings are human experience, while the details are statistical. And the novel needs human life, because it must convey experience.
Green tea made me to be proper for writing. Green tea supports the novel, makes it to be on this day. Why did I drink a liter and a half? Because I left my sweat in the vestments of today’s Divine Liturgy. I had to rehydrate on the way and I did well. I liked the young man next to me, with a mustache and beard of someone just out of adolescence. After reading online, he played a little, then fell asleep. And I liked the neat way he slept. No open mouth, no noises…
You have to learn to walk in society. It’s like walking on your feet. Your mother holds your hands, encourages you, makes you believe you’re capable, and then you start your own steps. Unsure, hesitant, but they’re yours! And you need someone to introduce you to society, to walk on your own two feet and not be a sterile imitator of others. That the star is miles away, doesn’t know about you and doesn’t care, but you dress like a fool like him, do his dance moves, wear his braids. And you’re a cultural clone, because you haven’t discovered yourself. And Miruna from Mângâiere [Comfort][2] does exactly that: she helps her students walk on their own two feet. Let them not deceive themselves. Not to take the easy road, which seems to be theirs, but is a dead end. Because when you reach the wall, you have to turn around, you have to admit to yourself and everyone that you were wrong and that that was not your direction in life.
I was always annoyed by the silence, the lack of real dialogue between people. You start talking about the weather, about what’s good and bad in our society, a few facts about yourself, and it starts to seem like it’s too much. That he gave too much of the house. But it’s not these little things that are to blame, but the fact that they don’t have the experience of thinking. Of self-formulations. The hard work, the dedication of self, tires him. They would like to hear from you, but they have nothing to give you in exchange. And because they don’t have it, they leave from your face.
Throughout my life, I wanted to dialogue with many people, but they loved their muteness. The heroism of muteness is a satanism. Locked in themselves, they think they are invincible fortresses, when they are empty fortresses, with many inedible things. But they read your loves, your searches, your answers. They want to devour you in silence, sentence by sentence, but not to contribute to your good. Because your good eclipses them.
Only the faces remain for us to look at! But the faces are tombs without dialogue. They are grimaces, they are losing in the void. The faces are the throw into the ocean, but the ocean is the mystery we need. I didn’t reach the ocean, but I enjoyed the sea several times. A contemplative joy. The marshy water of the Delta left me lonely. Much more so than the sea, if I were to go on a cruise. The baptismal role of water is fundamental for each of us, but the endless expanse of water fills you with sadness. Because the expanse of water is like the jealous silence between us, it’s like the lack of communication that destroys novels.
[1] Started on august 3, 2025, day of warm sunday.
[2] Another novel of mine.