the whirlpool

every time i try to get back here the same thing happens. i read the last post. and i realize that it's not what i've been doing, and that i should try it (again). and i just keep going in circles, getting caught up, getting worked up, realizing that's not it, going back to the beginning. it almost seems like life has become boring. or maybe its just me. being boring.
even special things have become routine. i know how to ride 100 kilometers without working out, i know i can work 12-hour (net) days if i have to, i know i can go bare-chested when the sidewalks starts to freeze. watching jelena eat a danish before we start working.
do i know where Change lies.

the recipe

But I guess the question is what did I learn along the way. Definitely that I’m not cut out to survive the existing workaholic gene. It’s a genetic predisposition that tends to drive you to your demise, or at least me – but I know the cure. It’s just a matter of being a good patient and taking my therapy. The doctor’s orders? A healthy dose of sports, a balanced diet of work, hobbies and people, and regularly changing my surroundings. Mental hygiene.

where i am

It took a series of a week in Holland, a week of chilling in Belgrade, a 170 km weekend of biking to Arandjelovac, a week at the coast, 4-day 400 kilometer solo bike ride, a 5-day escape to a volunteer photo camp and friend, climbing the highest mountain in Serbia – by bike, and getting on a bus to the coast – only to sigh a sigh of relief. That is how bad I allowed myself to get. I haven’t even been to this blog page in a long time. At least I got back to the road, to photography. To doing things with people.

as the rain falls...

... on a day before (an) easter, i once again pause to think about how much i miss people, meaningful conversation, how much work and solitude have become my life (at least for the moment), how much i miss people i haven't spoken to in months, others i haven't really seen since last summer... and i ask myself - is it all really worth it? no. it isn't.
here's to you, dear friend. i'm looking forward so seeing you sooner, rather than later...

going and going...

sometimes you sit still... you sit still and imagine places. the places i imagine i've seen from above... i've flow over them and found the gaps in civilization... i have found the green patches where few have been and fewer venture... i long for them.

i've been sitting in my armchair all day, eating oranges with the television on. stories of other people's lives going by... interpretations, excerpts, spins, cultures, intimacy... all those are memories that i recall as being once part of daily life, presently replaced by keyboards, screens, dictionaries and a lot, a lot of internet. even now, as i sit in the semi-darkness, i am still only looking out of Windows into the world.

and longing today even for a ride down the street, round the corner, beneath the railroad tracks, up the river and away... into the green.

looking in the window...

looking out onto the road. longing for the asphalt, the wind and the miles. breathing slowly, heart still pounding... just longing... longing so much... for this road.

blankness...

it's not that i have no substance, but i have not essence. life has become a two-month marathon work project that has me simply dismissing the existence of anything other than translation. i've started to quite actively although effectively hating my computer, just wishing to spend time away from it (but that doesn't get me any closer to the goal of freedom)... i'm developing the physical syndromes of overworking myself - impaired focus ability and the damn tennis elbow... and the race is not even close to being over...

i've always been cautious in my profession...
and then i overdid it. and i kept overdoing it. and now i'm overdone.

and there's no getting out. the only way it getting down.
so i try to get up, try to keep to the side.
try to look ahead, not look behind and trust the person i distrust the most

- myself.

no photo.

i don't want to have an image of today. a total diffusion of energy, leading to chaos. i go to sleep tonight wishing to see a tomorrow that is like yesterday... to forget events but remember all the systems that should have been developed over the past seven years...

chaos. lack of principles, lack of thought, reverting back to barbarism, resolving issues with sticks and stones... and talking about civilization!

there is a pain... and there is a confusion. but i cannot decipher which of the two is greater.

i went to settle taxes this morning. i turns out i might be owing a huge amount - half of someone's annual salary. i'm numb. i don't feel that. i know i will survive it...

...now i should just go back to work, work hard, and when i'm finished it will all be alright.

detachment

sometimes i feel like i'm just the controller of my body, that i exist within it, but that i am not it. at moments of complete tranquility i feel myself observe the corps, but the mind is disconnected from it. like being a little green guy at the controls of a rather large vessel. and when i thing about my appearance i'm even more disconnected from it - it is the outcome but not the goal. so as i'm tripping in a train that has stopped at the station in maribor, i realize that at this very moment i'm disconnected from most all aspects of my being. i haven't lived daily life for weeks, the plans for the future are quite straight forward and simple (although difficult) and i'll see about everything. the only thing i have at the moment is goggo bordel in my ears and another 11 hours to my destination - home.

the train that haunts me still

i remember the first time i took the train from lausanne to zurich. it was 1992 and i was returning home... i still get the chills when i take it alone at night. it's the beginning of a trip east, and it’s into darkness... i survived it (this time/again). the light at the end of the train tunnel was the idea of seeing a dear friend in austria, and he lives exactly half-way to home. but it was dark that night. the train climbs up the hill above the lake, slowly making its way through the vineyards that parallel the lake. and its so dark outside. i’m fifteen again, and not the positive fifteen that i had been recollecting earlier on this trip. this was a voyage that took my mind back to when there was a bus waiting for me by the zurich hauptbahnhof, a bus that would do its easy gaestarbeiter route through austria and part of germany, down through hungary and into the federal republic of yugoslavia. the war had already started, the students had their first protest. it was the beginning of a bad period that we in belgrade tend to forget when in belgrade, and one that should be written down so that we wouldn’t carry it around with us. it’s a heavy load. i was just awakening from the first wave of puberty, and the world around me was collapsing. i have fond memories of days of leisure in high school, but the fact is that it was a far cry from what i’d ever want my children to experience. i don’t know whether it made me stronger. for years i dreaded going abroad alone because on so many occasions during that time i traveled in fear that the situation might deteriorate overnight to such a low that i wouldn’t be able to come back. too many summer holiday bags included my school transcripts and elementary documents. this is something i could never criticize my parents for, but the fact remains that it did leave a big scar on me, one that i healed only many years later. if i wanted to blame it on someone i should probably blame it on the guy buried beneath the linden tree. but then he’s already been blamed for so many things – who cares about a couple of healed scars. but fifteen years on i still feel a shiver as the train moves through the night and the dark lake lays beneath...

tribute to J.B.

i got to see what a tribute night is like in the swiss nation. children hailing the work of the godfather of soul – the Great J.B. on the stage a smooth-talking radio host uses the mic like it is an instrument, with words blearing, emotions soaring and the crowd going slightly mad. reminds me of a guy i once saw doing the same with a political student rally. it seems like a world ago, like back in the day, when everything was simpler and prices were lower and politicians were honest (except for the bad guy, of course).
so he brings on stage a mélange of three: a whitey wannabe rapper kid from the (neighbor)hood, a petite girl with a boyish look and long green scarf around her neck, and the tall beyoncenesque blond that everyone has the hots for. and i look at them all.
the guy has his rhymes and the girls have their thang, but it’s a good imitation. only an imitation. you see that they haven’t got the background for the soul (or whatever they are singing, which isn’t exactly what J.B. was doing). but you see the involvement, you see the rehearsals, the talent and the time, the whole production. they’ve been on stage a million times and they’re only 25ish. they are singing about things they’ve never experienced, perhaps the love pain is something they know, but what do you know when you’re 25 and living in one of the safest and most stable societies around. this is switzerland. this is where the taxes are high and poverty is low, this is where everything is settled. this is where existence (to make the distinction from life) is not exciting and where art is a way living – not the outcome of society’s turmoil.
the beer flow and the mass sways. the night is a success. i am thankful and grateful for both the experience and the entertainment. stories were told over the noise and others were created. tomorrow will be another day for sobering up and getting ready for the week ahead. everything is in order, for this is C.H.

a piece of sunshine

I watch him sleep in the sunshine. My little brother. He's not so little any more - off into the world years ago and back grown man. Or growing, at least. I caught him lying in the warm winter sun outside a train station this morning. We had met in a middle world, somewhere between mine and his. It was a beautiful sunshine, but it shone on his weary dutch bones with grater intensity...

special appreciation...

There are some people that have indebted me so much, by giving me the right thing at the right time (as i would later realize) that i will crave to find the proper way to repay them forever. When i look at this list (and with all due respect to the many friend&family whom i love dearly this particular list is not very long) one of the most apparent common features is selflessness. I know that what i received was not given as an investment that would require a dividend or repayment - but just the simple "pay it forward" approach. Over the years i have tried to share my realizations with others (as i am doing now) and on few occasions i have had the pleasure of being taken seriously (i never really understood why that was the case and i always had the feeling that the only way to improve the perception of me was to abandon the essence of me - which of course is unacceptable). From those occasions and people i have learned and grown much, and this has given meaning to my contemplations. But there will forever be those to whom i will never cease craving to convey my gratitude...

from the bunk(er)

it only took one page of the art of pilgrimage to get me going... this page was of course in the sleeping car out of zagreb, after a considerable journey from belgrade, but even now it was enough. medieval pilgrims were in awe when encountering the new scenes and people. this feeling is cathartic - i have realized what i consider the greatest difference between my perception/experience of traveling and those of most people i know! i have been able to travel the world and keep a rather innocent eye! i can see amazing things the moment i stray from my daily surroundings, even though i've see some of the world's great wonders! i return home with my boon of images (mental, philosophical as well as photographic), but most of them amaze me too much to speak, the experience being internally oriented from my senses. but fostering this tenderness has come at a cost - the only genuine travel experience i have ever had entailed solitude, and a lot of it. even this 24 hour trip across the continent will probably not detoxicate my system from the surrounding influences, paving the path to nirvana - a moment of tranquility and bliss in a place of few visitors where the energy of the ages reaches a peak. these are the things that become further between both because of the less frequent visit to such sites, as well as the mentally toxic life that i lead.

and as i lay in my little bunker, tightly packed between two bunks on the croatian-slovenian border, the ideas that came to me so many years ago now find higher levels of clarity and a clearer description, at the cost of realization of how truly precious they have become.

the forgotten

as i looked out the window of the train, watching the leafless trees pass by before a sunny sky once again, i realized what i had forgotten - my notebook. thinking about a million different things i had forgotten my most trusted companion on these trips. now, having crossed the first of many borders, "too late" was miles and hours behind me... i guess i'll have to use my telephone...

So i venture into the next adventure, distancing myself yet another step from the form of things, i allow myself to abandon calligraphy entirely (at least for the moment) and embrace the digital age... How ever will romanticism survive digitalization...

a box is a box, unless it's not.

there was once a time when this sight would excite me. i've been sitting right next to it for the past hour with absolutely no need to open the box...
it's just part of the job. the job robbed me of the boyhood pleasure of "playing on the computer", my mother used to call it. there was something about the process of making something work, watching it tick, getting it to do more... i remember the first time i got a new computer and my first idea was not to get the latest game running. that was 6-7 years ago and even back then my primary problem was how to get an entirely new computer running without having to reinstall the system - in other words how get something new but have it working (at least) like the old one. the last time i got a computer it took me a month to finally move out of my old one.
so now i'm wondering what this new guy is like... i know that he's just the bigger younger brother of this one - and with hipper tattoos... but the agony training him, getting everything set up the way i like it - the way that maximizes my speed and facilitates my communication - that's something i'm not at all looking forward to... but i need the security of a new computer, the knowledge that it will not give me the problems that have started to become a common thing on the old one.
i've grown up in some ways... not in others.

... but so has the world... or changed at least. the box had been opened by the us department of homeland security, as was the fudge brownie mix. makes me feel and think that we'reso much more secure.

the lingeries of life

one of the few stories circulating online for years and which really touched me is the one with the lingerie.(*)

i spent last night talking to my sister (again), in a concrete encased new club... we have quite different takes on life, probably because our lives have been so fundamentally different in the past ten years. but we are from the same roots and there is a special kind of sibling understanding that nothing can match. (things you might consider to be implied in another person thinking are very often your own illusion, because we tend to take the common/similar background to run deeper than it does in fact) this closeness has its downside of course, most often reflected in a feeling of expectation on one side and the desire not to disappoint on the other...
but things become more fluent when confronted with a mental trauma, we rise to the occasion. at least WE do.

well i managed to get lost in thought in this "early" morning and the thought of what all this day will demand of me... (note to my future self: Father Romilo)
anyway, what i wanted to say, the point i started with was the idea of carpe diem, just like the big piece of cardboard still sitting on my brother's room in our parent's house, years after he had move away. i'm recollecting ideas of what would happen to my incomplete, unarticulated ideas and desires, my lingerie... so with this in mind i took the time to make a rough version of this image, my comment about the glory and adventure that can exist in life monotonous and gloomy, about the lingeries in life... and i'm thinking of a recently departed friend and his similar projects.
i dedicate it especially to the small people with small ideas, but those that are a courageous step into the brush along the road.
search and ye shall find.



(*)
the man is describing taking his wife's special lingerie out of the drawer, where he had bought it and how happy she had been, and that she had been saving it for a special occasion. the story ends with the realization that him taking the lingerie was part of the preparations for her funeral, that she had died without ever having have worn it.

starting anew.

before i started digitizing my thoughts i used to write in a notebook. that notebook has probably traveled 100,000 miles. it has survived my first european trip by train, and all other ones that followed and it ten years old.
but that was its main drawback. it was my travel notebook, my mental notes from places and situations that i would recognize years later without them being specifically named. it doesn't have any stains, but i have spilled many cups of coffee between its lines, and spent sunny afternoons in vienna and cold november days in paris with it on the coffee table in front of me.
now when i look back it is my first treasure chest. it carries my deepest thoughts from the period when i was discovering the world, out on the road by myself.
that time has passed. i now take down notes in a different way. words have been known to be a problem for me, so i tell stories through pictures. i'm still practicing getting the spelling and grammar right, but i'm learning. instead of my green notebook i use a computer and the net. now i can share my thought with the world (although i'm quite aware of the fact that seldom, if ever, are these lines read). this of course has its own point of compromise, where i have to curb my thoughts and restrain my ideas, for not everything is meant to be made public. but at least something is happening.
and just like i had written so many times in my notebook - so we begin again. it is time to start the next adventure, and hopefully i will be witting more and soon.