February 22, 2010
Chronic Dissatisfaction And The Strigoi Of Europe
“Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright”
Among Europe’s most popular legends are the Strigoi, known as the tortured souls that rise from the dead with the ability to transform themselves into animals, drain energy from their victims and make themselves invisible. Some scholars argue that they can be living beings with supernatural instincts instilled with the power to move objects, control the passage of time and possess special insight to foretell the future.
There are many stories about what lurks in the forests of Europe where the Strigoi dwell as human sized predatory creatures with unusual speed. A ripe subject for literature, cinema and television. They tell the common tale of chronic dissatisfaction with life, cursed while trapped within a fear of change. The only other way to attain immortality is by seeing though the illusion of life’s addiction and ascend, aware only of movement since direction is subjective. But even to do that, one still has to suffer as does the tortured souls most feared in myths in an ironic twist of fate.
Although he never refers to the undead, Woody Allen has included some witty dialogue about chronic dissatisfaction in his 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, “Life is short, life is dull and full of pain and this is a chance for something special.” Some of the directors words also seem to explain why love stories between humans and the Strigoi are so compelling, “Only unfulfilled love can be romantic,” as images of Edward and Bella, Angel and Buffy are evoked.
Most of the claims about the Strigoi have been dismissed as hallucinations, fables usually attributed to a curse using breadcrumbs to lure an audience as a common ploy of witches who live in candy houses somewhere in the woods of the Carpathian mountains where beasts prey upon lost souls who only know what they don’t want, effectively becoming yet another victim of chronic dissatisfaction.
Sixty years earlier the film Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) took a comical
look at the undead. A respected horror film that is considered by the American Film Institute (AFI) among the top 100 films of American cinema. The plot is set in Florida and surrounds four different kind of Strigoi as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster are smuggled out of eastern Europe as wax dummies pursued by the man who turns into the werewolf while the invisible man makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film. Even though he cannot be seen a voice is heard, “allow me to introduce myself, I’m the invisible man.”
Although none of them appear in a Woody Allen film, all of them were effected by chronic dissatisfaction and madness.
































Usually, the laws of the universe are defined by some sort of relationship between chaos and order in an identifiable pattern, noticed over a period of time, predictable when and if the ability to co-measure allows for seeing events relative to the actual state of conditions contrary to collective delusion.
If things that occur exist on both a microscopic and macroscopic level, then it is possible to infer the likelihood of events that appear unseen somewhere out there - a nebulous thought - cosmically inspired by the notion that what is too vast or minute to observe is simply an extension of what is.

Blue eyes, female and a full head of hair here, brown eyes, male, and bald, over there. Even Enantiomers, known in science as mirror image compounds, have very different chemical properties although they contain the same elements in mirror image positions.
Wrestling with mortality is never easy, part of exploring personal destiny, an empirical approach, shedding identity of what has been learned while retaining memory and self-awareness. It also provides an opportunity to weigh preconceived notions enabling a co-measured response to whatever is encountered. On the other hand, a nihilistic approach is a way to dismiss the whole process by rationalizing that everything simply stops, so why waste time speculating?
Choices that are based on experience or the lack of it have patterns if only by being interrelated. When something is learned, the cycle spirals rather than move in circles, but that depends on the ability to remember and take the memories wherever the path leads, using familiarity as an advantage, fostering objectivity and balancing emotions or else lessons are forgotten, then one is destined to make the same mistake more than twice.





