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...