As a Bulgarian living in the United States, I was often aware that people found me interesting. Friends of friends I was introduced to would stick around just a little longer to find out how someone like me ended up there, ask about the language, which stirred curiosity with its non-Latin alphabet, or inquire about my country’s Communist past.

In London Bulgaria is less of a mystery. Although I still inspire some interest as an immigrant from the highly corrupt poor cousin someone reluctantly invited to the EU party, more often than not I find myself on the inquisitive end of curiosity. Continue reading →

You call us apathetic
You say we’ve lost touch with the world
You say we don’t communicate
We haven’t much to say and are not eloquent

And yet we pour our souls out to a stranger
Because we are always in need
Of a soul who will listen

We don’t write poems of international acclaim
But we capture our hearts and minds in online epics
Seventy-three times a day
Creating oxytocin so our brains continue to churn ideas
In the incubator of the shower or in the hollow darkness of the mind
Before deep sleep

In the age of fifteen million novels published a month
And exabytes of data born online
We persevere, we are masters
Of the art of the mundane

We are weekend hippies with neatly trimmed facial hair
Pleasantly fragrant armpits and shaved legs
Who go to work on Monday morning
With a certain dignity
Quoting Whitman and Dylan Thomas
To the neighboring cubicles

We work at corporation-less businesses
So we can be big business’ biggest competition
We hate customer service
We hate the Internet company
We hate the network provider
We make tea in a thermos in the morning
And walk by Starbucks smirking

We study anthropology
We double-major in English and Spanish literature
With a minor in women’s studies
And go into consulting
The best minds of our generation
Are thinking about how to make people click ads

We have no savings
We work till the a.m.
At McKinsey and Deloitte to pay off student loans
And save enough to go to Argentina, Cuba, Vietnam
We work at an investment bank until we go insane and take two years off
To build schools outside Bogota

Or we don’t work at all
Because we want to find the occupation that will get us out of bed
We seek meaning in our work, and money too, but meaning first, did you?

We take public transportation
We protest any cause
We save the polar bears
Mull over water prices in Bolivia
Mourn Santa’s helpers in Sichuan

You say we have no depth
And when we take a stand you fault us for our lack of understanding
You say we have no morals
Yet you tell us our friends are not allowed to marry
Or have to leave the country
Or have to leave their country

And we laugh through our tears, and our friends’ tears
Because we know you won’t be here forever
And one day we will have our way, and our children,
Rebels too, perhaps will have it even better

You say we have no generational identity
But if identity is forged through music
We have our festivals and camp-outs
Where we sway like angel haired hipsters in sublime êxtase
And if identity is formed through reading, writing
And if it is through coming together in protest
And if it is through suffering loudly
We are all right

And for that we are self-righteous
And arrogant and have a strong sense of our greatness
You say we are the generation “me”
We are the generation “me”

If you ask us, who are the voices of your generation?
We’ll tell you, you’re hearing them now.

 

Recently I’ve been asking my friends, all of whom are wonderfully international and interesting people, the same question: “So, are you thinking about staying in London for a while?” The reason is, I am.

Continue reading →

 

In 2010 I spent significant periods of time, significant in both number of days and the importance of the events that transpired in those places, in seven different cities across three continents. I recently discovered a written account from the time and was struck by how little has changed in my sentiment of traveling and my thoughts on the meaning of home.

In 2013, I spend time in ten countries. 2014 is only halfway over and I am already on my ninth trip across the globe. Wasteful, perhaps. Going entails returning so if I just stayed put I wouldn’t have to always be in an active state of getting there or going back.

But here I am now, once again having lunch with my carry-on and waiting for a flight back. Back? These days I refer to most of my flights as flights back. I can’t decide if this instinctive denomination is a product of the round-trip phenomenon, or of my own adaptability and skill to turn every place I inhabit into some version of home.

Continue reading →

Submitted to the New York Times “Modern Love” essay competition.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she says and turns to the sink full of dishes. I stand behind her, munching on a piece of cold cheese, and try to see things from her perspective.

When she was twenty-three, my age, my mom was married, simultaneously going through law school and learning on the go how to be a wife and a mother. A year earlier, before she said I do to the man she had been in love with for three years, she had never experienced physical intimacy or even talked about it much. My father was the first man she ever kissed. Continue reading →

Appeared in an archived Pomona College online publication on 2.14.2011

In Argentina they call it el piropo. It is when a man of any age, shape, and form calls out after a woman on the street and tells her she is pretty, beautiful, sexy, skinny, curvy, delicious, divine, a goddess, a princess, a “mammy,” a star, or a bonbon. Sometimes the description is accompanied by a more detailed account of the pain or pleasure caused by the woman’s looks, presence, or indifference, and, sometimes, with a short but vivid description of the things the man would like to do to her in a different time and place…

It came over the ocean with the hot Italian blood that flows through the first tango verses, some of the dirties and most sexually evocative pieces of writing I have ever read; but it also comes from the rich earth of this land, its vegetation, and its sweat, which collects in puddles and trickles down bodies leaving traces of desire. It is generously given and it is far from a beauty trophy: the only thing it shows is that one looks like a woman. Continue reading →