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...