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Teen Art Out nr 4 ISSN 2284 – 6549 ISSN–L = 2284 – 6549

Our editorial teamEditor in chief:

Cosmina Simona MihalcaEditors:

Ana-Maria DorofteMihai Carneciu

Bianca CaministeanuAna Nuţa

Alexa Bunea

Photo credits: Irina Iliescu, Bianca Caministeanu

Cover design: Ruxandra MarinCover graphics:

Irina IliescuLayout design: Catalin Oltei

We reserve the right to select the submissions received before publishing.

Contact:www.artout.ro

redactie@artout.ro

Team Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

Editorial 4

I have a rightWe all have a right 6

Turning sadness into kindness 8

Social Watch Smoking and how to “read” it 11

Cool Story BroKilling my memories to poison my future... 12

Love.Death. 13

Dark Angels... 14

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Editorial

I have a right“Give me the right to be heard, to be seen, to be loved, to be free to be

Everything I need, to be me, to be safe, to believe, in something I have a right to be heard, to be seen, to be loved, to be free to be Everything I need, to be me, to be safe, to believe, in something “

(Sonata Arctica – I have a right )

As Sonata Arctica’s song says, everyone has rights. And we’re not talking about law and constitution here. It is just how everyone is a human being who deserves to be taken into consideration, who matters to the world, who can think and should exist, who has to find everything he wants, who has to be himself.

Truth be told, this doesn’t seem as important a problem as it is when you actually feel it. We address this issue to all those who feel invisible, who are to silent, who don’t stand up for themselves, who can’t believe in themselves. Everyone deserves a chance as we are all important and good in our own way. No complex, no society standards should let us feel otherwise.

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Editorial

“Father there’s a little flower, beautiful and different, all alone,

all alone”

We are all different and it is exactly that difference that makes us beautiful and special. People tend to be afraid of what they can’t understand, they rely solely on their biased perceptions and fail to stop for one second to think about the oth-ers.

I won’t be here to say how we are all equals and everything should be bright and happy. I just want to raise awareness of how someone can be so introverted and alone, just because no one lets him speak, no one sees him.

To cut this short, I will let you enjoy our articles, as I hope that I have given you some food for thought.

Cosmina Simona MihalcaEditor-in-chief

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We all have a right

I didn’t know where to turn to… You see, you’re going, I’m coming… And we’ll never meet again. Isn’t it true that it’s going to hurt

what it heals too? Then, why complain about all these wounds that appear? No. Not today. I won’t dream anymore and I know that I will be just fine. I’m going to be just a shivering human, bereft of any sensitivity to other. And I won’t care anymore because no one does it. Over thinking just killed my happiness and it stole my “carpe diem”. In-securities killed my self-esteem and have thrown me to the ground, because I’m not good enough. Maybe you think you are fat, or you’re not pretty enough, no one will love you and you’ll end up alone. But none of these can even compare to not being good enough.

There are words we can’t take back, cuts that can never be sewn together, and hearts never to be un-broken. We all succumb to this dystopia, a world where people lie or can’t tell what they feel. With our calloused hands we try to touch magic, we try to light up our souls, but… there’s no spark. We have no right to stand up and shout that we are different! We have no right to empha-size the fact that we don’t melt into that mold, we don’t belong to the same stereotypes, and we don’t follow the same rules. You could stand by the side and watch your entire life pass you by… You could keep the veil that covers the sight of so many people, but you would live in safety – un-happy. No more vitriolic lies that killed your trust, they don’t mean anything in the big big world. I don’t mean to obfuscate you; I’m far from that… But, you have got to stand for your right, shout it out and not let anyone mock you about it.

Different faces, different pains. They accuse you. You can’t live that perfect fairytale story, where Cinderella meets her Prince-Charming and succeed in getting away and living happily forever

after. It’s kind of cruel to figure it out that reality does not resemble a bit a good-night story. En-shroud your pride and live in the moment. You’re young and you’re wasting your time. Isn’t that a pity? Find you sound and listen to the colors sur-rounding you and you’ll be able to pull that canvas off. Tell them loud and clear that you do not care what they think. Just because… you have a right.

I have a right

Mihai Carneciu

Let there be words!

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I have a right

There comes a point when you start wonder-ing, if all that you’ve done in the past is truly for yourself or for others. Of course, you live in a ‘‘free world’’, where you have every right to act as you want to, but are there any boundaries ?

How do we know that what we do is 100% us and when did we stop being ourselves, just to please others?

Many of us feel the need to change, in order to be part of a group. Sometimes, we even start playing a role, wearing a mask and acting in a dif-ferent way than usual. For a while, it works be-cause everybody else sees only what you allow them to see. It’s like a safety device, that you turn ‘‘on and off ’’ whenever you want to and you sim-ply know that it protects you, from the fear of being rejected or placed in the wrong category.

However, after some time you realize that, you have forgotten what made you unique in the first place. If you allow someone from your group of friends to control you, to make decisions in your name, then you lose the right to be free, along with your individuality. Also, if your group starts judging you, for every little thing that you do and wants you to change, instead of accepting you for who you are, then something is definitely wrong.

Maybe it’s all part of the process of growing up and learning how to face these kinds of situ-ations, but people who choose to act differently in front of others are just lying to themselves because life means much more than fitting in a crowd. Life is finding yourself and being happy with what you are.

The right to be you!

Bianca Caministeanu

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Turning sadness into kindness

Bunea Alexa

Turning sadness into kindness,Your uniqueness into strengthIt’s okay to get lost when you begin,So start to walk,once again.

Do you like to answer someone’s expectationsAnd be praised for it,after,Even if you sacrifice what you really want to do?Will your beautiful smile be true?

I wake up after dreamingJust at the beginning,But I will grasp what happensAfter that with my arms.

The most important thingsAre always without shape.Even if you lose it,you don’t notice.The most important thingsAre the ones with no form.Even if you have them,you don’t know.

I have a right

Unfair adults are alwaysGiving lectures everytime we meet.Being unable to show their true selves,They become grouchy as they get hurt.

Getting the new windOn your side.It’s okay now to searchFor the legendary blue bird.

It’s natural like the rainbowThat,somehow,Is piercing the clouds and appearsAfter a long rain of tears.

Turning sadness into kindness,Your uniqueness into strength.Believing that you should beAble to do itOnce again,once again.Are you ready?

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I have a right

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Social Watch

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Smoking in public areas has been a hot is-sue that was debated all around Europe.The results?Some countries banned smok-

ing in public areas such as restaurants alltogether, whereas the countries that didn’t are raking in the profits from increases in tourism. But that’s not the object of interest for this article.Nor does it concern my right to choose whether I want to inhale smoke passively or not.Unlike these 2 top-ics, there’s a particularly interesting one that is sel-domly discussed and that would be the behaviour of a smoker and what that can tell us about per-sons.

While I was reading „the books of tells, how to tell peoples thoughts from their gestures”, a nifty little publication I had initially rejected because of the somewhat nerdy (to be read:desperate) na-ture of the title, it suddenly dawned on me that a smoker offers a whole lot of information on their feelings, maybe more than our non-smoking inter-locutors.

Smoking’s a social activity.At least for ya’ll teens who don’t really need a whole dozen of it every-day, but smoke it nevertheless, due to the mul-titasks that poor little cigarette performs: the reduction of social anxiety, that incredibly cool halo of smoke that surrounds you, as well as a chance to freeze or hiperventilate (in accordance to the seasons) with your friends in the school-yard.No matter which of these reasons motivate your smoking urges, this is for sure: one can tell a lot about a person from the way they hold their cigarette.

People who shield their cigar with their hand tell something about their job.They tend to work without being shielded by a roof, like construction workers.Interesting fact: a student who knows he shouldn’t be smoking will also use this gesture in order to protect themselves.

There are courting reasons for which a man holds his cigar in a different way between his mid-dle finger and pointer than a woman.The female of the species will hold her stick to the outer side of her fingers, which will also be in a stretched position, in order to emphasize her wrist and her feminine elegance.Males, on the other hand, will prefer their scepter closer to the place where his fingers (which will be slightly bended) unite. The reason behind this is that they’d rather showcase their masculinity through the strength of their ar-ticulations.

Asking for a smoke is a good way of establishing contact with a handsome stranger. The woman has the opportunity to lean in closely while the man gets a better look of her. She may even touch his hand, as not to lose her balance. She may even smile, say thank you and start a flirting session. A cigar is also an advantage in a conversation in which a lot of thinking is required. As William Thackeray remarked, men who have a cigarette in their hand can make lengthy pauses in conversa-tion, which are never disagreeable.

Humprey Bogart kept his cigarette hanging from his lips, perpetrating a bad boy reputation. Mar-lene Dietrich epitomized the look of the smoking femme fatale in the 30’s.For them, it was a fashion accessory, tool of seduction, a statement of status. They communicated all that to the world without as much as saying a word. Because your cigarette speaks in your stead, whether you want it or not.

Smoking and how to “read” itSocial Watch

Ana-Maria Dorofte

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Run. Run and don’t look back. Intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time; you are running, running because of me, running because of this terrible life, or running because of that ephem-eral monster that you have become and condemns you to non-existence? We all know that, in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness, we all know that you were an escapist, you al-ways preferred imaginary worlds to the real one… But you changed, you tried to escape from yourself and you didn’t won that fight; it’s just how it is sometimes, things hurt, and they hurt for a long time…Now, you’re just the living proof of that, human beings have become able to survive, waking up sud-denly from beautiful dreams, and recapturing nothing lately; you are also the dead, immaterial proof of humans precarity. You look in the mirror. What do you see? You see from distance an obscure macabre creature, demonic in that dark look. You’re an insurgent figure that is still trying to make up a world, a different and unconscious world. There have been times when your very eyes were able to create thousands of metaphysical universes; when your deep look was able to create lightning flashes bleeding emotions. Now, your only sufferance is your immaterial presence along with your mercurial inner being and the only words you can say from now on are being swallowed in a blinding darkness that creates phobic sparks in contrast with your immutable voice.

It seems to me that, after you left, people themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; you were the same… It was impossible for me to know all that places inside you, impossible even to imagine them, but you tried to find my evil ways, for you it wasn’t impossible. After you left I felt like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, a machine that screams at you to repair it, to repair its broken engine, but… I always wanted to know why you didn’t tell me the reason for your leaving, for your life departure. I thought for a moment that I didn’t have the right to know, but I did. I remember what you said last summer: “Each human being is a little universe within the universe…” You were right, as usual; but you also said: “Everyone told me that conventional advice <Live each day as if it’s your last.> but it’s just unpractical. So, my life is guided by the phrase <The less is eloquence, the more is love…>” I was shocked, because all my life I wanted your love, but you never gave it to me. Again, I thought to myself maybe I don’t have the right to be loved by you, but again, I had that right and I still have it, somehow…

After a long time, I found out I could almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of its own. I started to attend to its strange and beautiful texture… That was all I had left, but you didn’t care. Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, but I never forgot you, it was impossible, you were like my ancient star that has burned out, you were no longer in my orbit. I saw in you that, there will be no ending in imperfection, or doing things the wrong way. Time passed and I realized that I changed a lot… Like you did. I get crossed, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out. I was trying to keep this dream real, to keep you real, like you were once, but a few moments ago I remembered your words: “I have the energy to change myself back to who I was, but you don’t have the right to ask me to do that.” You were lost in the solitude of your immense power, and you began to lose direction, and finally, I was able to forget you too, like I was once forgotten. And you know why? Because I have the right to do that, I have also the right to hate you, but in the same time I have the right to remember me loving you and the right to start laughing about it…

cool story bro

Killing my memories to poison my future...

Ana Nuţa

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cool story bro

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Love, perhaps, is the biggest lie of them all. This unpractical emotion penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your soul has collapsed under the weight of your griefs. We have the excitement of seeing this emotion coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our blindness.

Look at your feet; you are standing in the sky. You’ll forget all of it anyway, so, it’s my moral obligation to remind you, that you are above all else, tired, wanting more than anything to forget. Feeling stunned and stunted, far everything, you were once in love… I know, the past is not a peace-ful landscape lying there behind you, behind me, but is the only way to recognize your mistakes, to be you in front of yourself; as we were moving forward, the past was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that could be seen was colourless, distorted, frozen…

One day he could see plainly that she was not herself. He couldn’t see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self. She was beauti-ful, but deep into the darkness she started wondering, fearing, doubting, and dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream be-fore. She never loved again… Her life was having the tendency to fall apart when she was awake, when the dreams were not as powerful as real life was. He tried to bring her back to life, he tried to prove to her that she is still in love, but she wasn’t. She was broken, living in sufferance, breathing mortality, exhaling life… It wasn’t a fairy-tale, it wasn’t just an immaterial dream, it was her, believing that poison was the cure, believing that love was the life and the end of the love was considered by her the endless after life.

cool story bro

Ana Nuţa

Love.Death.

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cool story bro

Ana Nuţa

All my life I told myself I was the light, that blinding unforgettable light, and I could outrun sadness; but I couldn’t, and maybe the reason is that I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t permanent. My life was a fiction I had created. Over and over again I tried to lie to myself, to lie to you and to the entire world about me, about my guilt. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality, failed by our very complication. We all do things we desperately wish we could forget; to spend time to do that it’s like chasing clouds… Finally let the stars keep track of us and let us run our own orbits and trust that somehow they will meet.

Right now my voice is blind, my hearing is mute and my sight is deaf. I am so far away that I’m inside myself. I barely notice colours, unless I taste them… Not the yellows or the reds. I taste the deeper blacks. I taste the darker whites. I understood the word angel, but the world had lost all sense of reality like this word did. Colours were unnatural, details were crude, happiness discovered nostalgia, and love discovered hate. I thought I was an angel, white and bright, lovely and silent… I thought I was good… In that morning, I was sure of something: it’s a lot easier to be lost than found; and somehow I got lost. Lost in nowhere, and there was no space for me, just hopeless situations and scary unknowns.

All my life I told myself I was the light, that blinding unforgettable light, and I could outrun sadness; but I couldn’t, and maybe the reason is that I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t permanent. My life was a fiction I had created. Over and over again I tried to lie to myself, to lie to you and to the entire world about me, about my guilt. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality, failed by our very complication. We all do things we desperately wish we could forget; to spend time to do that it’s like chasing clouds… Finally let the stars keep track of us and let us run our own orbits and trust that somehow they will meet.

Right now my voice is blind, my hearing is mute and my sight is deaf. I am so far away that I’m inside myself. I barely notice colours, unless I taste them… Not the yellows or the reds. I taste the deeper blacks. I taste the darker whites. I understood the word angel, but the world had lost all sense of reality like this word did. Colours were unnatural, details were crude, happiness discovered nostalgia, and love discovered hate. I thought I was an angel, white and bright, lovely and silent… I thought I was good… In that morning, I was sure of something: it’s a lot easier to be lost than found; and somehow I got lost. Lost in nowhere, and there was no space for me, just hopeless situations and scary unknowns.

Dark angels...

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