zzz’s creative mess

I moved my blog!!!

2007-05-09T18:19:00.000+02:00

As I posted in my previous post I have some huge problems to login on my own (but also on some other´s blogs on blogger).
Now I´m using PC in the Institute Cervantes thinking what to do and I think it would be ridiculous to wait to things get solved. I saw so many people with the same problem who are screaming on Blogger Help Group but no one is giving them any advice or solution so I decided to move my blog on some other place...

Anyway this is my new nest: My New Blog!

Possibly moving... and my daemon ...

2007-05-06T20:26:00.000+02:00

OK last few weeks I was unable to login on my blog to publish new posts. I thought it was some internal error but it seems I was wrong. Anyhow I was constantly getting some error code and I’ve sent it on Blogger Help group only to found out I’m not the only one with the same problem. Sadly, no one from Blogger support team hasn’t post solution or at least some advice.
During the waiting I went on so many events I’d like to post here and due to the login problem I lost my enthusiasm to write them and save for some future moment :(
Also I was quite angry because of the ignorance of the Big Blogger!
So I created new blog on Wordpress but it’s still under construction. Actually I'm kind of hesitating to start posting there because I like it here (I guess I’m so spoiled with easiness that blogger offers) but more because of all my previous posts here. It’s like I’m abandoning them (silly I know).
However tonight I accidentally logged in without any problem and therefore I’m posting this. I don’t know is this means that problem is solved or is temporary solution.
So if I disappear again that will mean I can’t login again and I’m definitively moving there (any advice with Wordpress or WP vs Blogger?)

My daemon

In the meanwhile I’ll post about my daemon.
Yep anyone who is fan of Philip Pulman’s The Golden Compass (I’m not but I like this idea) will know what I’m talking about. And who knows, since I like this idea maybe I’ll read Pulman’s trilogy :)
OK when I’ve done my ‘testing’ I was raccoon but I see now I’m wolf. That’s because some of my friends replied on some questions about who I am and apparently changed a little bit my image. Of course you can change my daemon’s shape as well by clicking HERE (My Daemon) or on the image above :-)

WARNING! I am potentially offensive!!!

2007-04-14T15:39:00.000+02:00

I just saw that my blog is flagged as "potentially offensive", the same day I found out that I’ve been nominated for Thinking Blogger Award! Not bad for one day, not bad at all…

OK personally I don’t know the reason but something is telling me it’s not because I wrote about vagina. Therefore I might guess it’s because of my post from Free Zone Festival and especially the last one about Iraq in Fragments because majority of visitors are from US.

I’m guessing that many of you know or have or have lost someone in Iraq but facts about reasons and effect of that war are evident and unquestionable in spite of the emotions (my sincere condolences to all who have lost someone in Iraq). And I am trying to be objective as much as possible (in spite the fact that I've spent 77 days under US bombs as well and I know better than you can even imagine what that means)

Yes 3300 American soldiers lost their lives in Iraq but also 655000 civilians have died and almost 2 millions live in refugees’ camps in neighboring countries. Iraq has lost its most valuable treasure – people. There is no educated elite there anymore... There are devastating consequences in whole region; the balance is destroyed; radicalism is awake

Do you remember that picture of a man who is hitting Saddam’s monument with the hammer? Picture that symbolizes Fall of Baghdad? Picture that is like the one of raising flag on Iwo Jima (in symbolical sense of course)? Well that man, Mr Khadim al-Jubouri now on fourth anniversary of his act say this:

- We got rid of a tyrant and tyranny. But we were surprised that after one thief had left, another 40 replaced him. Now, we regret that Saddam Hussein is gone, no matter how much we hated him.

Those are the words of man whose only wish for years was to smash Saddam’s monument. Describing his life now, four years after entrance of US troupes in Iraq he says:

- Now every Friday is better than Saturday and every Saturday is better than Sunday

Well think about that before you flag someone's opinion as offensive.
On the other hand thinking and using your own brain has always been potentially dangerous.

PS
If you're interested do read whole article written by The Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan:
4 Years After Hussein's Fall, Regret in Iraq

Thinking Blogger Award

2007-04-14T13:40:00.000+02:00

Gosh! I’ve been tagged for Thinking Blogger Award by my dear friend WestofMars! This is first time I’ve been tagged and what situation makes even stranger is that she tagged me for my Thursday Thirteen posts BUT after regular 10 weeks of TTs I’ve made pause in my posting because I’m swimming in my Faculty obligations. And I really don’t like TTs like "For this Thursday I prepared 13 randomly chosen numbers!" Well otherwise I’d might be tagged for complete opposite Award LOL

OK, now according to rules I have to pick 5 other bloggers /posts which I found very thoughtful and this will be quite hard (only 5!);OK I’m helping myself and I’ll exclude all non-English blogs (Поздрав свима! Saludos a todos!)

First I'd like to nominate my friend Shanna (I’ve mentioned her in one of my TTs). I don’t know where to start really; She is one of few blogging friends on the (far) East and every morning when I check my e-mail I have small hope that I’ll find in my inbox message with subject: "New Blog Post from Shanna" and she often fulfill my wish :-) Then I run in the kitchen to prepare my first morning cup of coffee and savouring it slowly with Shanna’s adventures in Nepal! Yep, Miss Shanti is in Nepal teaching English and making music (I guess that is Nashville’s inheritance) but also makes magnificent observations (and photographs) about Nepalese culture, tradition, cuisine, mentality and again thru all that analysis of American society and it’s influence.
I'm so grateful cause I have such a friend!

Then comes someone who is guilty as charged for I'm having my own blog: my dear friend morsie! I was reading her fabulous blog with all those reviews and thinking how vividly I remember some of my favourites reads or some events or, whatever and realized that I don’t at all! I do remember the feeling, the emotion but what caused that feeling ... nope. So I decided to start writing my emotions so that I could preserve them. And I never expected I’ll be hooked this much! Thanks K!

Now someone whose blog I have to stop reading! LOL Whenever I visit (and that is very often!) lotus’s blog my book wish list becomes bigger and bigger and bigger or I’m starting manically to search if there is any title available and OF COURSE there aren’t because (and I don’t know how???) lotus is amazingly up to date with stuff she reads! Sometime I think authors are sending one copy to her before the book appears in bookstores and I could totally understand this and if you read her reviews you’ll know why? Since she is (in her own words) ”daughter of the tropics now living in the Great White North” personally I like the most her posts about her spicy homeland's culture ...

And look what my friend Zmrzlina would do if she had a million dollars! Zmrzlina is someone who introduced me with the internet community where I have found my best virtual friends (also nominated here); she doesn’t post on her blog often (probably because she is sending postcards like a lunatic and doesn’t have enough time for blogging LOL) but it always thrills me when I see new post on her ice-creamy blog :-)
Oh I so wish she has a million dollars!

And of course I’d like to nominate WestofMars (I’m not breaking the rule with this right?). Just look at her Thursday Thirteens (and not only TTs). How often you meet a writer (real one) who is sharing process of writing with you? And moreover includes you (in every personal way) in that process; you’re giving comments although beware! If you’re bad she might put you in the book!!!
Every Thursday you’re getting new episode of your heroes … it reminds me (WoM don’t become conceited!) of great Russian novelists who were writing their masterpieces (like “War and Piece”) in numerous small parts which were published in newspapers. On the other hand it reminds me of "Misery" (the movie) so WoM pay attention what you’re doing with your characters, some crazy fan might find you …

Here are the rules, for you newly tagged

How participation works:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

Iraq in Fragments

2007-03-24T23:53:00.000+01:00

Iraq In Fragments
by James Longley

I watched at Free Zone Film Festval another amazing film:
Iraq In Fragments by James Longley

This is breathtaking portrait of lives of ordinary people in Iraq after aggression and one of the most noticeable consequence that can be seen is that indeed Iraq is fragmented.

In first part (fragment) we see painfully lonely 11 year old fatherless boy who works in garage whose owner ‘owns’ the boy as well. This man at first shows some kind of “love” in his own rough way and a boy is giving him a tribute how he is actually kind to him in one very moving way while we are looking how the owner is shouting at the boy and use him and hitting him with … something. We are listen conversations between adults how they think whole this war is because of the oil; how Americans ended Saddam’s regime and now they live under “100 Saddam”

In the second fragment, south with Shias majority we are seeing their pre election campaign and how they (Shias) are vigorously prosecute new Islamic revolution with horrifying arrests because of selling alcohol. One of the arrested said (screamingly in despair with bounded hands and with covered eyes) “My eyes were covered and hands bounded during Saddam and now, now again!!! Why!?!? Why?!?” It’s a rising of new “Saddamism” or more likely something much worse.

In third fragment, we see pious Kurdish man whose hope is that Kurds will finally get their country and independence. He knows he’s close to death (and decided to dedicate those days in praying in the mosque) but he is hoping that his children will breathe air in their country, Kurdistan. He knows that Kurds, Sunnis and Shias will never live in peace in the same land.

After the projection guests were Veljko Đurović (cameraman for Sky News, Reuters etc) and lady (I can’t remember her name at the moment, sorry) who came back in Belgrade recently after two years in Iraq working with some international organizations. Interesting thing is that both of them are saying how Iraqis are one of the most hospitable people in the world; Reporter said that he has worked on so many battle fields in last decade in every corner of the world but he never met people so kind in spite the fact the bombs are falling constantly. Lady (guest) has told us how women from her class have risked their lives to go and buy cake in other part of the town for her Christmass.

Also in the film you can barely see woman. It should be stressed that Iraq was one of the most liberated countries in Middle East. Few years ago women were free to go in University in mini skirt and actually life style was not so different comparing with Europe or USA. Now the situation is completely different. You cannot see that image anymore.
Of course people are in despair and they have enemy (Saddam is dead). And that despair have united them and (and this is probably worst consequence) has changed them.

People with millenniums old tradition, with customs with dignity, have been invaded by forces that have shown no interest in their customs, in their tradition, which have shown no respect in whom they are and where they came. They have been invaded by endless ignorance. And lack of respect is often worse than so many other things. To honorable people word is stronger weapon than a bullet.
Invaders often ask themselves “Why they hate us?” and the answer is “Because you don’t respect them”.

So of course they have changed under these circumstances, they become less hospitable and become sadder, more disappointed, angrier, more radical. Yes disappointment, sadness, anger is making fertile soil to fanaticism. And that is real threat. Country has been fractured irreparably. Boy from the beginning of the film said:
"Once it was so beautiful… now it’s not beautiful anymore …
I was dreaming when I grow up I will work; I’ll learn how to work and be independent. Then I started to work and keep dreaming how I’ll work when I grow up for my family and have one good life. I’m working, but I’m not dreaming anymore"
Those are words of 11 year old kid! How can you kill ability of dreaming to a kid? How can you do that and not be responsible? And be so ignorant?

That old Kurdish man said one story:
"Two men are wrestling and one spectator asks another:
- What do you think, who’ll win? On whose side is God?
And the other one replies:
- God is always on the winner’s side"

That is not God I believe in.
(today is 8th anniversary of NATO aggression on my country)

Red Hot Chili Peppers

2007-03-16T11:10:00.000+01:00

Yeah! I’m one of those lucky people who own ticket for RHCP’s concert 26th June at Greenfest in Inđija, Serbia!

This is one enormous THANK YOU! to Jelena and Marina who waited yesterday in the line from 11am ‘till 6pm to buy the tickets. They were so sweet and didn’t want to call me so that we could wait in shifts while I didn’t have a clue what are they doing. I just received phone call when everything was over.
Thank you girls!

If on a winter's night a traveller

2007-03-13T23:00:00.000+01:00

If on a winter’s night a traveller
Italo Calvino

This is my February book for 2007 TBR Challenge.

WOW what a strange book!
I mean, have you ever thought about how huge your reading passion is? To be honest I didn’t. Of course I love to read and on question "Without what you can imagine your life?" my answer always includes books but what would you do (not in literally of course) to find your missing book and to heal your reading fever? I’m not sure I ever felt that agonizing reading fever… until now. I know sounds silly but let me explain:

Of course when you enjoy enormously in book you’re reading you’ll finish it in one swallow and maybe (probably) reread some of its parts or entire book; maybe you’ll copy some quote in your special notebook and memorize them etc. and that is I guess normal destiny after meeting right book with right reader. But imagine this situation: You’re reading one of the best books you've ever read and you’re aware of that fact so you’re eating, drinking, breathing pages, one after another; film is rolling in your mind, you thinking about surprise on the next page and you’re running to see what is behind the corner and then … nothing… blank wall, no streets, no cars, no people, no nothing … blank page…. OK maybe this is printing error, maybe after that blank page the story will continue … imagine that state of mind: no rereading, no quotes, no following of your new friends destiny. You’re feeling cheated. Isn’t that horrible? Oh it is, it is...
And this book is about that sudden emptiness you’re feeling and that desperate search to find next page. And yes, the main character is “You” (dear reader), and yes precisely you are feeling tachycardia and yes your blood pressure is rising in that dark, surreal chase ... for a book (imagine this!)

This postmodern novel is some sort of reader’s nightmare, always in search for your book or women (or both), or feeling writer’s agony. This book is from time to time dark, totally surrealistic, and breathtakingly inventive. Did I mention that “You” are the main protagonist?

With its 260 pages some might think it’s easy, light read but no, not easy read at all; sometimes you just need to rest a little bit to digest all what you eat so far (and it’s a quite menu), this book is for savoring, for letting each sentence to melt slowly on your tongue. Or that is case with me who doesn’t read several novels in the same time. However for some of you who practice that, reading this book will be, most likely, different experience.

Here I’d like to include one quote I like very much:

”Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead…
… Or that is not present because it does not yet exist, something desired, feared, possible or impossible. Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be …”

9/10

Thursday Thirteen #10 [Retirement Edition]

2007-02-22T02:35:00.000+01:00

13 things about Vagina!

1. OK, this Thursday will be dedicated to vagina! Now, I’m very interested about your first reaction. Is there any initial uncomfortable feeling? Or one big simple WHAT? Seriously; since I’m medical worker when I talk with my colleagues (of course if it’s in context) we are using without any problem words like: vagina, penis, erection, clitoris, penetration, sperm, vulva, uterus, …etc. and don’t even notice that ‘something might be unusual’ until we have someone who is not from our professional world. Their reaction is indeed, different which is OK I guess. It seems that genital organs are not preferable topic in general. 2. I hope it’s OK for me to talk about vagina in spite that I don’t have it - between my legs that is and I always had to try hard and sometimes be what I’m not to get one (very wrong way to conquer vagina or is a good way to conquer wrong vagina which is worse!) And now why I choose to write about Vagina?

3. Well last week I saw movie V-DAY: UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS about the effect of Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler.
4. Touching and witty, one of the favourites of the Sundance festival, the film V-DAY: UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS documents how Eve Ensler's Broadway hit monodrama developed into V-DAY, the international movement to end violence against women. The film by the director Abby Epstein shows emotionally charged interviews and readings by both ordinary and famous women from diverse local communities, namely, those in New York, the Philippines and Kenya (including Rosie Perez, Selma Hayek, Rosario Dawson, Jane Fonda and Lisa Gay Hamilton). These women bravely reveal their intimate experiences and join forces to break the silence surrounding abuse.
5. The Vagina Monologues has been widely recognized as "a celebration of women's sexuality and a condemnation of its violation" (The New York Times) and praised as "frank, humorous and moving" (Chicago Tribune). Over eight hundred cities around the world have participated in V-Day by staging benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues.
6. It is there I saw that actually saying “vagina”, “cunt”, “coño”, pička“, ...etc. can be so ’liberating’ for many women. Yes it is funny when you see on the stage some actress (or local woman) who is screaming „Vagina!!!“ on the stage and then the whole audience is joining her, but then you have to ask yourself and then it;s not funny anymore.
7. This film was is to raise awereness that women are abused in so many, so incredibly many ways...
8. Violence against women is deeply embodied in society we live in. It shows in different ways – through underestimating almost all that women do, insult and humiliation, making fun rituals, economic exploitation and exhausting women resources, fear and disgust over female physiological needs, viewing female body and female sexuality as something dirty and dangerous, through suppressing female body and sexuality into the silence.

9. The most horrifying story in the movie is the story of Mrs Agnes from the Valley of Rift River who (with support of V-day Project) erected sort of asylum for girls who escape (or were banned from their families because they refuse to do) female circumcision or Female genital mutilation (FGM).
Genital cutting, or excision, is a coming-of-age ritual that signifies a girl's entry into womanhood. It is accompanied by public celebrations and is often a source of pride for the girl. For some it also carries religious significance. Usually performed on girls between the ages of 4 and 12, but also on teenagers, it involves the partial or total excision of the external female genitalia.
10. It is performed by a female elder using a razor, knife, or piece of glass, usually without anesthetic, while several women hold the girl down. Agonizingly painful, it robs her of sexual pleasure and frequently causes medical problems, including hemorrhaging, infection, urinary incontinence, infertility, and complications in childbirth. There are several methods:
• Type I - excision of the prepuce, with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris;
• Type II - excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora;
• Type III - excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation);
• Type IV - pricking, piercing or incising of the clitoris and/or labia; stretching of the clitoris and/or labia; cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissue;
Vaginas that were stitched stays with stitches until the wedding day when the husband tear them off. Or the best man takes a horn of the goat to make a passage for the husband.

11. And the reasons are:
- psychosexual reasons: reduction or elimination of the sensitive tissue of the outer genitalia, particularly the clitoris, in order to attenuate sexual desire in the female, maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and fidelity during marriage, and increase male sexual pleasure;
- sociological reasons: identification with the cultural heritage, initiation of girls into womanhood, social integration and the maintenance of social cohesion;
- hygiene and aesthetic reasons: the external female genitalia are considered dirty and unsightly and are to be removed to promote hygiene and provide aesthetic appeal;
- myths: enhancement of fertility and promotion of child survival;
- religious reasons: Some Muslim communities, however, practice FGM in the belief that it is demanded by the Islamic faith. The practice, however, predates Islam.

12. Of course there are loads of other types of violation toward women but this one is really even hard to imagine from this point of view. Sorry for this kind of TT but the feeling from the movie was just too strong so I had to share it with you.
13. Awareness is the first step!

A Small Death Trilogy

2007-02-19T12:50:00.000+01:00

A Small Death Trilogy
by Elfride Jelinek

Few weeks ago I was listening one contact radio show where the question for the audience was What were your biggest disillusions in the past 2006? and one girl said:”One of my biggest disillusions was that I thought its easy (possible) to understand “A Small Death Trilogy”!”
That was hilarious answer and I was laughing so hard. She was so sweet indeed!
... uhm ... and I’m afraid so right!

Horribly strange and tough play ... well after all we ARE speaking about Mrs. Jelinek and whoever has read anything written by her knows what that means.

"A Small Death Trilogy" is a drama about death of art, theatre and culture. It is a phantasmagoric-poetic picture of civilization where there is no more place for humanistic determinations. In it, contradictory ideas about individual, pretty and ugly, good and evil, love and hatred, libido and aggression, victim and crime are divided and then reunited in the final picture of death.

Elfride Jelinek derived titles of this trilogy from Schubert songs "Queen of Fairies", "Death and the Girl" and "Traveler".

First part is addressing of one famous actress (dead actress of course) of famous Burg Theatre; she speaks about her artistic career, focusing on problems of glory and power. She is self-loving woman who depends on her image in public and in the end we can see the essence of glory that puts masks that will be unavoidable destroyed by death. ”No one shall be forgotten”
In the second part (“Death and the Girl”) we can see a hunter, Snow White and the seven Dwarfs, and one of the main themes is relation between beauty and truth, matter and spirit, surface and essence, ephemerality and eternity, death and life. Hunter (death?) is extremely cold and with explicit distance he’s making very convincing feeling of existential frisson toward idea of the end of physical life. It’s a story of narcissism, claustrophobia, about emptiness of the idea “to have” upon the abyss of the idea “to be”.
Third part is a speech of Traveler with accent on the problems of nonafiliation, transitoriness and loneliness, where the idea of ‘road’ has been crystallized as the main, basic metaphor of life (” When they erasing man, first they taking his road” - I like that very much!)

After the play on one festival recently audience was quite confused and the leading actress shared her own experience about this play, about that “theatrical something”. When she started to work on this play she was equally confused; the cast was ‘into’ the text two months before going on the stage. She even said to director “I’m not sure am I interested to work in such a play that will be understandable only to the few intellectuals or the ones who’ll pretend that they’ve understood it” but after many weeks of work she was ‘infected’. On the question “What we just saw?” she said “This is philosophic discussion about life, death, power, and not only on intellectual field but emotional as well. This is not text for drama, it’s not realistic play. One my friend, very famous film director said to me that he’s not sure if he understands the play but he loves it!”

I don’t know, maybe it’s the same case with me. I really liked the play but describe what is all about is a million dollar question!

8/10

Thursday Thirteen #9

2007-02-14T19:41:00.000+01:00

13 things about 14th Feb - St Trifun’s Day!

You probably think that whole Christian world is celebrating 14th Feb as Valentine’s Day. Indeed we are celebrating 14th February but celebrating the Day of St Trifun.

1. St Trifun (just like St Valentine) has lived in third century and was killed (just as St Valentine) because he refused to give up Christianity.
2. He was a poor man who kept gooses but also he had ability to cure many human and animal diseases and to liberate people from the demons. 3. That was time of Roman Imperator Gordian whose daughter Gordiana was mentally ill and the best doctors were unable to heal her. 4. One day (according to the legend) from inside her demon has spoken that no one could make him to leave Gordiana but Trifun. 5. Demon hasn’t told which particular Trifun so the emperor Gordian ordered to all Trifuns in the Empire to come in the Rome until the order reached poor goose keeper in the village Kampsada in Frigia on the Small Asia. 6. When (our) Trifun has successfully healed Gordiana he earned enormous award of course but Trifun on his way home has gave all those precious presents to the poor. 7. In his village St Trifun continued to live modest life in great piety keeping gooses and healing people.
8. New Roman Emperor Decius Traianus knew about the grace that was on Trifun and being huge enemy of Christianity he throw Trifun in the dungeon and tortured him. But Trifun was strong in his faith and didn’t gave up Christ. 9. On 1st February (Julian calendar) or 14th February (Gregorian calendar) year 250 St Trifun was killed.
10. St Trifun is patron of the city of Kotor which is part of UNESCO World Heritage. You can see photo of the St Trifun’s church in Kotor erected in the year 809 .
11. There is special religious act dedicated to St Trifun on the vineyards and fields after some damage: oil from the St Trifun’s icon lamp and sanctified water have been used and sprinkle on the fields and vineyards. In Serbia St Tifun is patron of vineyards and on 14th Feb people are going to prune vine and pour over with wine to give it new strength after long winter.
12. People say “Trisha (Trifun in affection) has stabbed live coal in the soil so the snow and ice are melting”. There is belief that if St Trifun’s Day is rainy coming year will be rainy and bumper year and if the day is clear the year will be arid.
13.Now when I look through the window I see semi sunny day with loads of clouds (yesterday and whole last night was incredibly rainy!) so I say spring and autumn will be rainy and summer quite sunny and winter will be ... cold I guess. How good I am!? LOL

In Vino Veritas!
PS
Sorry if I don’t reply right now but I have to go in bed (just look the clock on the left)

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(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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Gagarin Way

2007-02-13T12:14:00.000+01:00

Gagarin Way
by Gregory Burke

Two nights ago I watched fabulous Gagarin Way by Gregory Burke, directed by Maja Milatović-Ovadia in BITEF Theatre.

An edgy, cynical socio-political microcosm set in post-Thatcher Scotland, Gagarin Way takes an incisive, fiercely intelligent look at the remnants of 20th-century ideology and charts its dispersal in our era of emptiness. Economic, political and personal violence collide ferociously in this caustic comedy, shining an unforgiving light on our infuriating inability to acknowledge, identify or resist the forces that dehumanize us.

This black comedy provokes laughter and has its own social misfits but never lets its audience forget that to murder someone, whatever the motive, is to end a warm, throbbing life. The plot is settled in a small Scottish mining town taken over by multinational corporations. Two local men, thirsty for social justice and full of revolutionary, anti globalistic spirit, kidnap an executive and plan to kill him as a political statement. With strong mask of tough revolutionars, guerilla fighters, with great ideas and their weak base, with selective „knowledge“ about revolutionary movements (with stories from the war which he heard from his granddad, the same granddad he never met); with gun in hand and total confusion in head ... those two young man are ready to make history! Thinking that killing that evil Japanese exploiter, who is not quite Japanese but maybe Dutch or even better American ... who in the end turns out to be a native son as bitter over his selling out to the invaders as his abductors are over their dead-end lives. The ideas, beliefs and hopes of these men grate, clash, combine and oppose as their own stories emerge through the play.

This is a ton of theatrical dynamite cunningly disguised as a mere Molotov cocktail. It slips down easily and then explodes. It ransacks 20th-century political philosophies and ideologies with assurance and poses big questions: can the individual act have greater political symbolism? Is political violence ever justified? What is the difference between revolution and murder and how can you rise above apathy in a world where there is nothing left to believe in? For all its shocking violence, this is an acutely moral play.

Maybe we have a new genre: Comedy of terrorism. This is Waiting Godot to Come – with a rifle.

8/10

Thursday Thirteen #8

2007-02-08T10:55:00.000+01:00

13 things about International Polar Year (IPY)!

1. I was buying post stamps and saw that the latest issue is dedicated to The 2007, International Polar Year. On the stamp is portrait of great Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovic. 2. So what is actually IPY? It’s international project to promote scientific researches on one of the most unknown regions on the planet; because North and South Pole have the crucial significance for life on Earth. So scientists from around the world will initiate a new era in polar research by participating in International Polar Year 2007-2008. Working across many disciplines, the scientists will conduct field observations, research and analysis to build upon current knowledge and increase our understanding of the roles that both polar regions play in global processes.
3. Carl Weyprecht (1838-1881), scientist and co-commander of an Austro-Hungarian expedition to the North Pole during the 1870s, is credited with inspiring the first International Polar Year. Weyprecht defined the basic principles of Arctic exploration, calling for nations to establish a network of Arctic research posts and to collaborate in data collection and scientific observation. But Weyprecht died before first IPY occurred in 1882-1883. 4. Fifty years later (1932-1933) a second IPY occurred with approximately 40 countries who participated. They established numerous permanent research stations in the Arctic and prompted advances in meteorology, atmospheric sciences, geomagnetism and the 'mapping' of ionospheric phenomena that advanced radio-science and technology. 5. In 1957-1958, 67 nations were involved in the International Geophysical Year, which continued the legacy of international scientific cooperation while commemorating the 75th and 25th anniversaries of the first two International
Polar Years. 6. 2007 is fourth IPY but first one which will have climatic changes as priority theme which is not strange since we are confronting with Global Warming phenomenon which has its effect on the poles.
7. That very sensitive balance of sun, water and ice has enormous influence on life on Earth which is raising concerns and fears since global warming will upset that fine balance. 8. There are proves of huge ice melting on both poles thanks to raising temperature of 2 degrees Celsius on planetary level since 1900. 9. That maybe doesn’t sound that dangerous but raising temperature is causing huge weather and climatic changes; with this tempo of warming ‘till the end of the century see level will be few meters higher.
10. Poles are magnificent, beautiful places where Sun is moving only by horizon; nights are few months long and the landscape is shaped by icy winds. 11. North Pole is one icy plate that floats on Arctic Ocean; constantly changeable region with fantastic creatures above and under the ice. 12. Colder, South Pole lies on the top of massive, frozen Antarctic. Average ice thickness there is more that 2200 meters. That ice is representing 90% of all ice on the Planet and 70% of drinking water. Under that icy mass (believe it or not) is world full of life! There are fishes with natural ‘antifreeze’ in their bloodstream; giant medusas with arms 15meters long.
13. On the bottom of Antarctic’s lakes there is some sort of “gelatin” of microbiologic world and the scientists think that those communities might be very similar with life communities that have had existed on Mars few billion years ago. Therefore those icy, polar worlds could reveal us many secrets about our Planet but also about some distant worlds. That is one reason more to raise our ecological culture and conscious.

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Cuba, el valor de una utopía

2007-02-07T00:50:00.000+01:00

Cuba, the Value of Utopia
Yanara Guayasamin

After the premiere on The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), world's biggest documentary film festival “Cuba, the Value of Utopia” by Yanara Guayasamin from Ecuador the Belgrade audience was the first to see it at Free Zone festival of ‘involved’ movie.

This socially-committed documentary is an exciting story of the Cuban revolutionaries who in 1959 fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Fidel Castro, won a victory and power in Cuba. It shows the everyday life today and memories of old revolutionaries including Castro himself. They remember the time when they risked their lives to make the dream come true. In the oral tradition, various Cubans report on oppression, violence, arrests, kidnappings, shootouts, escapes, the guerrilla fight from the mountains and the subsequent triumphant entry into Havana.

It’s a breath taking story about one idea and its enormous value. It shows stories from the Batista’s regime and what initiated its fall. Narrators are common people, participants in revolutionary movement and as I wrote, Fidel himself. While they are telling they experience to the camera we can see their everyday activities (except Castro’s of course), where they live, how they live, what their dreams are and how they see revolution now after 47 years.

Every one of them is very proud of what they have done and very proud of their lieder. Indeed, Castro was enormously charismatic and brave young man. His story, the way how he defended himself on the court (“History will set me free”), how he organized his return on Cuba after being banned from the island, how he fought and organized guerilla …etc. it really force you to think is it really true or he is some character from some cheep pulp fiction production? One of those who always win and the bullets are magically avoid him. Really incredible person. And to be honest I didn’t expect that kind of movie.
Title indicates disappointment but it hardly can be seen on the faces of those protagonists.
Indeed, houses where they are living are very poor, bricks in the walls can seen, kitchen accessories are kind of medieval, tables, chairs, paintings, beds, dishes, …etc. is at least 50 years old. BUT those people are happy.

Friend asked me after projection have I saw similarity between Cubans and us 10 years ago (she saw). I haven’t because we were in despair, we had one ‘perfect’ land which was falling apart. We were deeply unhappy nation because some horrible things has been made in our name (against our will), of course horrible things has been committed on each side but somehow we were the ones who paid the biggest price (and we still are paying it). My friend told me that our ex president maybe wanted to be like Fidel (we were also under the sanctions, probably the worst sanctions in history) and that was one of the similarity she saw. Well, we didn’t love our president; on the contrary, huge majority of the population wanted end of his regime. With Cuba is different situation: huge majority supports Fidel and are very proud for what he have done. And now when I had some closer look on the Cuban history I’d be proud on that man too.
Of course I don’t speak about his regime after revolution but on some level I could understand how it must be difficult have America so close and be hated by American government for such a long time. It has devastating effect on life of common people (if ship sail into Cuban port it has prohibition to sail into any US port for 6 months). One young man who’s girlfriend is in Spain said “People are leaving Cuba not because of political issues but economical”. How beautifully naïve…

At the beginning of the movie one man is telling us how he was in shock when he heard that Earth is rotating. “How is that possible? How I don’t fall from the planet?” The teacher said “so it said in encyclopedia”.
-“Encyclopedia” ever since that day the man was dreaming to have encyclopedia.
Imagine that dream? That need for knowledge and such a limited possibilities?
Eventually he bought encyclopedia some 15 years after that day when he received his first salary.
Somewhere he said “The greatest treasure for young people are dreams. Person without dreams can’t be happy, and I don’t think about few pair of jeans or to have different shampoo … that can give you satisfaction maybe but will not make you happy. There is huge difference between happiness and satisfaction. The worst enemy of happiness is banality…”

The price for freedom has turned out to be a high one; they admit that they do not live lives of ease, but they would not want to swap their dignified life for the banal consumerism that the United States forces on the world. Looking back on the revolution has its charm, but the upcoming battle will be more important.

Black Swan Green

2007-02-03T22:00:00.000+01:00

Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell

What a beautiful, beautiful novel… It’s one of the best (if not the best) coming-of-age story I’ve read.

Story follows one year in life of Jason Taylor, 13 year old boy from Black Swan Green in Worcestershire, England. Truth, Jason who is also the narrator is hardly common 13 year old boy in the way he expresses himself; his thoughts are so beautifully composed, so full of that sophisticated humour, often with few drops of irony (which is not typical in his age) but in the same time he is sometime so naïve and experience-less; in his explanation and in the way he perceive things we can se one beautiful spotless mind. There are many sad moments which are becoming even sadder when you realize the way he seeing them in his pureness but also there are numerous hilarious moments which are even more hilarious when you look at them through his eyes (for example scene with one nice lady whom he saw accidentally (after their conversation) standing with her skirt up in a front of pissoir (I think) and her legs were hairier than his dad’s or seeing his dad naked …etc).

By his appearance Jason is a common boy who wouldn’t raise your attention, except if he try to talk and then get stuck with his stammering on some evil N or S (depends of the day). Luckily his inner talk is so poetic and fluent even in the way he’s describing all that Hangman’s torture with Ns and Ss.
Reading about his suffer I could feel the pain of boyhood again … identifying with Jason is so easy … it seems that problems of teenage boys are universal. (No I didn’t have problems with stammering)

Also characters who are surrounding Jason and the way he sees them is breathtaking. Oh you’ll love his friends and truly hate his enemies; and you’ll love his sister (one brilliant mind) even though sometimes he wouldn’t agree with you. There are so many beautiful portraits that is really hard to pick one.
However I have personal reason to pick one of those; one “crazy” old lady, one of mine favourite episodes. I’ll post part of their conversation here:

- […]”I mean, who are your masters? Chekhov?”
- “Er … no.”
- “But you’ve read Madame Bovary?”
- (I’d never heard of her books) “No”
Each name climbed up the octave. “Herman Hesse?”
- “No” Unwisely, I tried to dampen Madame Crommelnyk’s disgust. “We don’t really do Europeans at school”
- “ ‘Europeans’? England is now drifted to the Caribbean? Are you African? Antarctican? You are European, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogl! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This is your culture, your inheritance , your skeleton! You are ignorant even of Kafka?”
I flinched. “I’ve heard of him.”
[…]
- Translations are incourteous between Europeans! […]Ackkk, for your schoolmasters, for your minister of education, execution is too good! Is not even arrogance! […] You English, you deserve that the government of Monster Thatcher! I curse you with twenty years of Thatchers! Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is prison![…]
*******
When I’ve read that I raised my head from the book feeling so poor. Feeling was really kind of shitty and THEN, suddenly I realized that the book I’m reading is not written in my mother tongue. This probably sounds silly I know; I didn’t learn English (then I remembered Spanish too) yesterday but in that very moment I felt such an enormous joy and happiness cause I’m able, ACTUALLY ABLE to read in foreign language. All my grammar mistakes and limited vocabulary were irrelevant; I felt so ... liberated :) :) :)

9/10

Thursday Thirteen #7

2007-02-01T15:18:00.000+01:00

13 things about paprika!

1. Pepper (paprika) is probably the most important vegetable in Serbia and is tightly connected with our folklore. Moreover in old Yugoslavia Serbia (and Macedonia) were almost synonyms for best paprika. I wouldn’t exaggerate if I say that we have some sort of cult of paprika.
2. The largest peppers-fields are on the north of the country but production is too commercialized with all that new technology and doesn’t represents tradition (or cult). More traditional way of growing pepper is on the south of Serbia. Moreover people from the south have nickname paprikari because of that. If you happen to be on the Serbian south at the end of the summer you’ll probably be invited by hosts to refresh yourself (I wrote about our aggressive hospitality) but also to hear eulogy about their paprika. 3. You’ll probably be totally confused by wreaths of paprika that are covering whole front/back yard; house and other objects around the house. 4. Don’t be confused, you’ve just met one very old custom in Serbia. Hand made wreaths of paprika will go in next processing into red pepper powder or chopped pepper etc. however some of those wreaths will be decoration of the house or kitchen (I have one in my ethno corner). It represents sort of mascot of this region. 5. During the winter when there is extra need for vitamin C those wreaths are perfect reservoirs. Naturally dried paprika can be bought in “intact” shape and used in preparing some dishes. Therefore it’s not strange that people from the south are using term red gold for their paprika. 6. What is typical for this region is also Paprikijada (sort of manifestation dedicated to paprika and the etymology of the term lies in the word ‘Olympics’ = in Serbian “Olimpijada”) and it’s also one lovely custom: moba. Moba is custom where all neighbors (and other villagers) are helping one another in doing some big work. And harvest of paprika is one of those. 7. Production is actually quite huge: one wreath is approximately 10-15 kilos and after drying and powdering it’s 1 kilo. After the season one household can produce 1000 kilos of powdered paprika!
8. I’ve mention that paprika has extremely significant place in Serbian folklore, so here are some recipes:

Dried Peppers Stuffed with Rice or with Beans
(this is very common dish during the Lents)
Wash paprika (10 pieces) and leave them in water for a while (30 min). drain off them, pull out seeds and stem pedicels. Half boil rice (250g); onion (3 bulbs) chop on thin pieces and fry on vegetable oil. Drain rice and mix with onion, add salt pepper, chopped leaves of parsley and celery, chopped olives (5 pieces) and red pepper powder. Mix all ingredients and stuff peppers with the mass and put it in greased dish. Bake 30 min.
(if you stuff peppers with beans; beans should be boiled previously, drain and instead of olives put walnuts and mint leaves)

9. Of course when I speak about pepper I cannot skip ajvar! In the early winter we have ajvar fewer: on the streets you can smell the dusky, smoky fragrance of roasting peppers mingled with the scent of fallen leaves. Stalls at neighborhood markets overflow with mounds of peppers, while village vendors lug giant sacks of the red beauties to street corners to tempt passers-by. What an image!
10. In Serbia, ajvar stars as a starter or as a colorful complement to grilled meats and kabobs. Ajvar also does well alongside sturdy grilled fish like salmon or swordfish. You could toss it with spaghetti, adding olives and parmesan for a quick meal. 11. Preparation of ajvar is somewhat difficult (I’m stealing this from wikipedia), as it involves plenty of manual labor, especially for peeling. Traditionally, it is prepared in early autumn, when the bell peppers are most abundant, conserved in glass jars, and consumed throughout the year (although in most households stocks don't last up until spring, when fresh salads start to emerge anyway, so it's usually enjoyed as winter food).
The peppers and eggplants are baked whole on a plate on open fire, plate of a wood stove, or in the oven. Baked peppers must briefly rest in a closed dish, so that they get cooler and the flesh sets apart from the skin. Then, the skin is carefully peeled off and seeds removed. So obtained pepper is ground in a mill or chopped in tiny pieces (this variant is often referred to as pinđur). Finally, the mush is stewed for a couple of hours in large pots, with added sunflower oil and garlic, in order to condense and reduce the water, as well as to enhance later conservation. Salt and optional vinegar are added at the end and the hot mush is poured directly into glass jars which are immediately sealed. 12. The name ajvar comes from Turkish havyar, which means salted roe.
13. And that's it for this week. I hope it was interesting enough. And just for the record:
While I was typing this TT I realized that my mouse pad has lovely photograph of red peppers! LOL

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Kandže

2007-02-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

Kandže (The Claws)
Marko Vidojković

This is my January entry for 2007 TBR Challenge

Marko Vidojković is one of the most popular Serbian writers of young generation. And this novel is his most praised work so far. It has won “Golden Bestseller” award for 2005.

The Claws is novel about student protest 1996/97 against Slobodan Milosevic and his vote fraud. From time to time I almost wasn’t sure is this work of fiction or nonfiction. I participated in those events and all of them are very vividly described; night when I “tasted” tear gas for the first time in my life is here in the novel; described precisely in the way I remembered; I even imagined where he (Vidojković I guess) was standing and calculated he was some 20 meters away from me. Strange feeling indeed.

The main character is law student at Belgrade’s University who participates in the protest fanatically; hungry; betrayed by the rest of the world; he goes on demonstrations every day and haeadlong running into the most dangerous situations, comes to term with pointless of life. But everything changes when he meets very unusual girl with cut-off eyelashes…

The Claws speaks in new manner about student protest uncovering it till the final detail, and promoting almost impudently principle of revolutionary justice and rule that in politics and in love everything is permitted. This novel is offering that grotesque reality show of gray and carnival-whirlpooling everyday life in Belgrade in nineties with characters of flesh and blood even when they go astray on the other side of reality.

Here we can see anger in the leading role; anger as completely natural manifestation and only defending mechanism that person can afford during those years. Each character as much as s/he’s angry on his parents or girlfriend or his friends or … whatever; everything is leading to that anger because you cannot oppose to that monster called life or world or …. Especially in such idiotic and abnormal country that Serbia used to be then.
(”[…] AIDS is not the worst thing you can catch here in Serbia; the worst thing that might happened to you in Serbia is to live in Serbia.”)

Indeed those years were really tough and only to think about that period is scary enough! That’s why reading this novel was so déjà vu although this novel is extremely political, with very explicit political attitude (including real politicians (still active on our political scene); including late Serbian prime minister; including hint of his assassination; including hints about events which will lead to the final fall of Milosevic’s regime); written in very urban style with extremely obscene language …
What I like is that here there is no idealizations. Even perfect girl is not perfect (her nose and teeth aren’t quite perfect and she has no eyelashes); Ideal landscape is concrete architecture of New Belgrade; and in the end love which exists and don’t exists is actually sex (in enormous amounts) with amazing women who exists but on the other hand does she exists?

This is modern fairytale: sex, politics, anger, beating, police torture, sex, marihuana, loyalty, revolution, alcohol, magical realism or narcotic hallucinations (?) = strange and interesting combination.

Now I’m really not sure how will anyone who is not from this story understand this novel? Book is full of local stuff: streets, jokes, language, (existing) people, spirit and energy... It’d be very hard (if possible) to explain to someone who is not familiar with this. Poor translator ... I could imagine only with glossary twice thicker than the novel itself!

7/10

Thursday Thirteen #6

2007-01-25T02:51:00.000+01:00

13 things About Serbs from the first hand:
Serbian mentality through Serbian cuisine !

(Few days ago I received an e-mail from a fellow blogger and TT-er asking me to drop a few lines to a 11 year old girl who is in the hospital in Florida and that way help her to kill the boredom and speed up those slowly hours in hospital bed. Of course I was delighted and if you’d like to do the same here is the link where you’ll find Casey’s address: Casey in the hospital
After finishing my e-mail I realized how huge it was (I hope it wasn’t too heavy for Casey). It was about who we (Serbs) are and what do we think about ourselves and what is our brand … etc.)
I thought it might be interesting to share it with you ... so here it is:

1.Well once, Belgrade (capital of Serbia) was world widely known as “City with open heart” and that was perfect description. It is in our nature to doing our best so that guest may enjoy as much as possible. Hospitality is one of our greatest characteristic. We look at guest as a present from God. Of course in that time when Belgrade was “City with open heart” our wallets were full and our life was perfect, without any interruptions. We could buy everything we needed; travel everywhere, after all Yugoslavia was the richest country in communistic block but also richer then some western European countries such as Spain, Portugal or Ireland. 2. And then shit started to happens and we became little more different nation. We were mad because injustice, blind to see our role in that mess, we were convinced by TV how that same world who was enjoying few years ago in City with open heart is hating us now (on the other hand that same world wasn’t try with anything to show us how that is not true) and after some terrible years eventually we became xenophobic, closed, indignant, hurt…nation. 3. But fortunately we can’t fight against ourselves too long and since that wasn’t our natural state we started transformation in our real shape. It is slow process but constant. So, how would typical Serbian family host guest from abroad?

4. “This cannot be found anywhere else!” is the most frequent comment Serbs level at their foreign guest at the dining table as they pore over piles of food. If you happen to be in our hospitable home, do not be surprised by our culinary aggressiveness; Serbs sincerely believe there is no place where so sumptuous food is to be had but at their homes and that you, being lean have just escaped hunger in your own country. This is why we will do our utmost to serve you food and demonstrate the originality of the Serbian cuisine, which in point in fact does not exist in the shape we would like to (or believe to).

5. The grill, for instance comes from the Arab countries, while “ćevapčići” (a cylinder shaped piece of grilled meat) Turkey and further back from Persia. The Njeguska smoked ham is a close relative of the one from Parma, but is not eaten here with the melon (we are terrified by the mere prospect) as is done in Italy. As regards lamb meat, it is roasted on a spit and is as good as or perhaps even better than in Greece. Spaniards and Italians believe very young pork meat barbecued in this way to be their own specialty. The beans have come to us from America and the famed Dragačevo trumpet players (Guča-the favorite place for all strangers as well as for us) may be said to be a younger offshoot of Mexico’s mariachi. What then is it that makes the Serbian cuisine so special?

6. Surely the fact that in just two-three hours drive you may depart from the Levantine and Oriental cuisine domain and enter a region known for its Central European gastronomy-Vojvodina (part of Serbia where I live). After a mere twenty or so minute drive across the Sava River, in Zemun and Pančevo you may be offered dumplings, shufnudle, shtrukle, mlinci, ćušpajz, melšpajz, goulash and Hungarian perkelt, as well as strudel with poppy seeds, ground walnuts or raisins-a cuisine we inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 7. Instead of Serbian proper spritzer (wine and soda water), here we drink gemischt (wine and mineral water) and in Montenegro-bevanda (wine and tap water). 8. Going southward, in just a few hours we would make it to the Mediterranean culinary waters with fish, seashells, olive oil, intensely-flavored and scented goat cheeses, in short all the characteristics the culinary civilizations of the neighboring Mediterranean countries rest on.

9. But what is then the Serbian brand? Slivovitz? Hardly so, it is made also (albeit not as good as it is here) by Hungarians, Bulgarians and some other nations, while Germans still hold the old license to export throughout Europe our “prepečenica” (high-grade plum brandy known also as Slivovitz).

10. There are just two things left that no one else in the world has: “kajmak” and another item but about them later. Just as no one was able to find, not in New York, not in Paris, not in Rome-seashells called “prstaci”, found stuck to underwater rocks, the same applies for “kajmak”, which is skimmed from just obtained and boiled milk and which bears no resemblance to young cheeses such as mozzarella or sour cream. I cannot think why, but even cattle breeders from the most remote areas of Georgia, on the Caucasus or Tibet have not thought of kajmak. Why Serbs were the ones to invent it still remains a secret; a secret of the same order is harbored by our people living around the world, people who can afford to buy anything they want except kajmak. Their longing for this dairy product is such that friends and relatives bring kajmak to them, even if they live in the most distant cities of the world. My friend has, like some drug smuggler carried through strict customs control at the Kennedy Airport in New York this precious foodstuff. As it is strictly forbidden to bring in any type of foodstuffs to the United States, he packed kajmak in big round boxes of “Nivea” cosmetic cream, so that US customs officers looked at my friend rather contemptuously as being a member of the gay-community. But, what joy when my friend’s relatives spread kajmak from Čačak (city in Serbia) on slices of New York bread!

11. And finally, another thing we could certainly get rich on if we exported it Inat.
I don’t think the Anglo-Saxons have an adequate term for inat. Well, I looked at the Great Dictionary where it states: ”Deliberate, provocative behavior against someone’s will; defiance, quarrel, wrangling.” Actually it is something which you will do even if you clearly realize that it will be on you own damage (maybe precisely because of that fact you will do that!). What is most interesting is that it was the Turks, whose term this is that first observed this trait among the Serbs. Later, the rest of the world, owing to our inat, either hated or loved and admired us to excess. 12. In brief, this word is at the very essence of our being; it was responsible for our rebellions and uprisings, why we went to war more often than other nations (including all wars since 13th century ‘till today); inat was the reason why we quarreled with others, but mostly with ourselves. So it seems that inat is the main internationally recognizable Serbian brand name!

13. Oh, well I hope now you have little more clearer picture about us. Maybe now you think that we are much crazier than you thought at first. We care our inat (the characteristic which would probably be abandon from any normal country) like a flag and worship it like something holly, we take a risk to smuggle little box of food, dairy product even if we know how we could easily get stuck into a jail or earn permanent embargo to entrance to some foreign country, for us joy of our friends while kajmak is melting in their mouths is much important then some sanction. …and so on…

PS
Sorry if I don’t reply right now but here is 4-5 am so I have to go in bed (look the clock on the left)

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Thursday Thirteen #5

2007-01-18T02:37:00.000+01:00

13 things about prejudices and discrimination:
(actually 12 + 1 dedicated specially to my friend Shanna)

1. Few days ago I was listening one radio “show” and guests were organizers of one conference about right of “sexual minorities” and about importance of law which will bring protection to those groups. That made me think about society in which I live? I know ‘sexual minorities’ are very unwelcome here and I wasn’t surprised when I heard about discrimination upon them. 2. Actually that has historical roots here. Namely we were under Ottoman yoke almost five century and one of the practices typical for Ottomans were taking young boys for their sexual adventures. That’s why homophobia and homo-antagonism is very strong here. It’s almost genetically!
3. But somehow I supposed that huge majority doesn’t express publicly their sexual orientation. I don’t know anyone who is homosexual here (and I know lots of people). Few years ago first (and the last) Gay Pride has been transformed into massacre: bunch of opponent soccer fans were united (for the first time) to “destroy sickness” as they said. It was horrible indeed but I wasn’t surprised at all. It was stupid decision to organize Gay Pride here, I mean they must’ve known where they live!
4. But in spite that I believed this is tolerant society and that discrimination is only some isolated excess. But while I was listening that radio show I couldn’t believe what problems people have. One guy after admitting he’s gay was tortured in his own family, he had to move in different town but couldn’t finish high school because no one wanted him (he didn’t want to hide his sexual orientation). Problem was solved after intervention of one NGO.
5. Another case was with women who wanted to donate blood; she was filling one questionnaire and said YES on the question ”Have you ever had sexual intercourse with the person of your own gender?”. They didn’t want to take blood from her. Again, after intervention of one NGO that question has been dropped out that questionnaire.
6. I remembered reaction of my army mates when they found out that I’m reading book where the main character is homosexual: they couldn’t believe it. Now when I think even use words “gay” and “homosexual” instead of “faggot” is gay!
7. Also what made me speechless was other questionnaire where high percent of people was replying that s/he would refuse blood for physically handicapped person. I couldn’t believe that!
8. Of course there is discrimination against people suffering from AIDS and HIV positive (although that are “only” 560 registered at the moment)
9. Perfect “model” according to the guests of that radio show is for example: 45 years, male, married, two-three children, heterosexual, Serbian, Orthodox Christian. If you are all that except married (without children) something must be wrong with you (you are heterosexual!). Worse situation is if you are a woman. Even being atheist might be cause for discrimination!
10. To be honest I do thing there is exaggeration here. Maybe that’s even good marketing move since if you put few drops of exaggeration in your story you’ll provoke stronger emotional reaction. 11. Of course there is the fact that I’m not moving in those illiberal, intolerant circles so I don’t see things from right perspective. But I’m sure something dangerous and evil like this wouldn’t slip by me just like that. I’d noticed them for sure.
12. Interesting and very positive thing is that participants on that conference were includes members of several parliament parties! For the first time some of those has expressed their opinion about this issue (until now they were running away from “sexual” question like the devil from the cross). Of course in Sunday we have parliament elections so this has everything with it! But anyhow I think it is quite positive move.

13. And last thing I wanna say has nothing with previous 12 but I had to include it. My dear friend Shanna is going today in Nepal for four months to do some good and noble work in a middle school. Wishing her safe voyage and lovely time! Hugs Shanna!!!

PS
Sorry if I don’t reply right now but here is 4-5 am so I have to go in bed (look the clock on the left)

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

::::: Di ::::: Morgen ::::: Susan Helene Gottfried ::::: Janet ::::: Andrea ::::: JohnH985 ::::: Titanium ::::: Zeus ::::: Silver ::::: Incog & Nito ::::: ChupieandJ'smama ::::: Busy91 ::::: karen ::::: Kukka-Maria ::::: scooper ::::: pj ::::: Kimo & Sabi ::::: Jenn I Am ::::: Janie Hickok Siess, Esq. ::::: spyscribbler ::::: Taconcubano ::::: Lotus :::::

2007 TBR Challenge

2007-01-12T17:18:00.000+01:00

OK I decided to jump in this train after I saw post about tbr-traveling on lotus's blog!
Pick 12 books - one for each month of 2007 - that you've been wanting to read but haven't gotten around to and that's the only rule. Thanks Miz Books for idea! Here is the link for Challenge if you'd like to join

And to be honest I had quite problems to pick 12 titles from my Himalayan TBR.
Since I NEVER know which one will be my next read (it’s always totally accidental) I’m pretty sure I’ll not follow the order from the list:

Since I have Himalayan TBR I’ll have to start from Himalayas with 1-The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. This was SO wanted book and my expectations are quite high!

Let’s stay in India for a while with 2-Manil Suri and The Death of Vishnu. This novel is on my TBR for ages! Truly I don’t know why/how I was skipping it all this time. I really love debuts…

Now we’ll go little on the north, in Afghanistan. Nonfiction 3-My Forbidden Face (Growing up under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story) by Latifa. Author was 21 when the book has been published and is using pseudonym for security reason. It says this is like a contemporary Anne Frank this book is an extraordinarily powerful account of a teenager’s life under terrible circumstances and a celebration of the resilience of human spirit. I’m only hoping this is not something like this-is-why-bombing-Afghanistan-was-good-decision type of book.

We’re staying in Asia but now we’re moving in Myanmar with 4-The Piano Turner by Daniel Mason. “Intoxicating, full of sights to see, histories to learn, stories to entertain” so how could I skip it :)

Now we’re going on the very edge of the world, in Tasmania where we’ll stay with 5-Gould’s Book of Fish – novel in twelve fishes by Richard Flanagan. I really cannot wait to read this one because it sounds so original and interesting and just as type of books I like.

You thought that Asia is behind us? Oh no, no ... let’s see how it looks 6-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi. I’m sure that’ll be very interesting

Ok now we’re moving in South Africa to see all 7-Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda. Can you imagine professional mourner? Well it seems somewhere there are loads of strange professions.

Now we’re going home (my home) in Europe... first in England with 8-Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. I love Barnes and it seems that this one will be fabulous experience too.

Denmark and who else than magnificent Peter Hoeg and his 9-Tales of the Night?

And then little on the east in Poland where we’ll jump in the train which will take as in all corners of 10-Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski my favourite Polish writer/journalist. I adore his books. This one is about Great USSR and its collapse. This book has been proclaimed as the best one on The Book Fair in Frankfurt 1995.

Now we are in Italy to se what will happen 11-If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino. Truth I’ve read this one very long time ago but I’m sure it’s time to reread it.

And finally we are in Serbia with 12-Kandže (Claws) by Marko Vidojković. He is one of the most popular young Serbian authors and this will be his first novel I’ll read. It won Gold Bestseller Award in Serbia so let’s see why?

Ok that would be main road (now after I see this little story I’d like to follow this order but I’m afraid that’ll not happen) but I we might go on some excursions to earn extra points or to search back up if any of those from above are giving us headache. Here are:

“Milan’s Turk” as my friends are calling him, Orhan Pamuk and his Snow (or maybe Istanbul if I found it)
Then let’s see Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf
Also it would be nice to enjoy in Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex
And not nice but certainly breathtaking to visit Rwanda in We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch
Or to see Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Thursday Thirteen #4

2007-01-11T03:36:00.000+01:00

13 things about my beautiful Orthodox Christmas:

OK I just came back from my Christmas “vacation” (I’ve spent Christmas with my family) and thought to write about how we celebrate Christmas here.

1. First to explain why Orthodox Christians are celebrating Christmas 7th January? It’s simple: four Orthodox Churches (Russian Church, monasteries on Holly Mount Athos, Jerusalem Patriarchy and Serbian Church) are following Julian calendar (which is 13 days behind Gregorian calendar (which is official one) so actually we are celebrating Christmas on 25th December as well :)
The Gregorian reformation of the calendar came into force in 1582. It made corrections to the Julian calendar. Like everybody else, we fully accepted the new calendar, but all of our holidays are still celebrated according to the Julian calendar.

2. It’s stupid to say that Christmas is very religious holiday. But here, Christmas is probably the most religious holiday of all. It's not about shopping but about feelings and tradition. It’s very spiritual and not material holiday. There is no shopping fever at all (except for Christmas traditional dinner)

3. Something that is typical and very important in Orthodox Christianity is Lent.
There are few important Lents during the year (also each Wednesday and Friday with few exceptions are Lent days) but Christmas (and Easter) Lents are the biggest ones.
Christmas Lent lasts 40 days and during that period people should purify their bodies as well as souls. In practice that means:
You should eat ONLY vegetables and fruits (and their products), fish and honey. Meat, milk (and dairy products), eggs, lard and other animal products are forbidden.
And unfortunately that is where is frontier for majority.
Equally (and probably more) important part of Lent is that spiritual. Lent is period of forgiveness and positive thoughts (and works) etc.
(of course, having sex is part of meaty and milky menu)

4. Very important thing during the Lents is confession.
If someone is preparing for confession s/he has to obey more strictly Lent: Food prepared ONLY on water without any vegetable that contains oil (olive, sunflower, walnut, fish too etc). The most common (or at least that’s what I’m doing) people are having strict Lent one week (usually first one) and at the end of that week they make confessions. After it they eat either usual food (meat) except Wednesday and Fridays and last Lent’s week, or eat food for normal Lent (not strict).

5. Day before Christmas (6th Jan) is Badnje Veče (Christmas Eve) and it’s very important and full of specific customs (even more than Christmas). The name for our Christmas Eve actually got its name from the badnjak tree (Yule log). Badnjak is branch of an oak.

Oak is holly tree for Serbs and roots of that custom is probably from the pagan times. Later that belief has been Christianized. Each village in Serbia has on its periphery one (or one on each four sides) huge oak as a protector.
It is a custom that the father and the oldest son of a household go out on the morning of January 6 in search of the right badnjak. (oak branches with leaves). When the right one is found, it is necessary to cut it and bring it to the door of the home and to leave it there.
In the villages, where one still can find homes with old-fashioned hearths, the custom is that the father and the oldest sun go out to pick up the badnjak and to nock on the door of their home. Mother opens the door. Entering, they should say to the mother: "Welcome to you Badnje Veče! ("Christmas Eve")" and take the badnjak to the fireplace and place it on the fire to augur good fortune.

The burning of the badnjak is a ritual which is as I wrote most certainly of pagan origin and it is considered a sacrifice to God so that the coming year may bring plenty of food, happiness, love, luck and riches.

Today, as most Serbs live in cities, badnjak could be bought at a marketplace like Christmas tree, or is sometimes received in church after church service. Often just a little oak branch, badnjak is lit at home symbolically.

6. The custom is also to put straw around the fireplace (or somewhere in the living room), to simulate the connection with the earth. Usually, we put coins, walnuts, almonds, dry figs on the straw, all the gifts for the children. That’s very fun since the children suppose to chirp like chicken while they searching gifts in a straw.

This is my niece in the straw last Christmas (don’t have photos from this year)

7. Christmas Eve supper is very interesting. It is very rich even if it is always meatless meal. Symbolically the food is always related to the world of death – baked beans, fish, dried figs, dried plums and apples.

For example the most common dish is “Pijani Šaran” (Drunken Carp):
Carp (2kg weight) should be prepared for baking; put salt on/into the carp; make several cuts from head to the tail and in those cuts put sliced garlic. Carp in covered dish put in heated oven. Bake 40 min and every 5-10 min pour it over with “sauce” prepared from white wine, tiny sliced garlic, sliced leaves of parsley and celery and 7-8 spoons of vegetable oil. Serve with lemon and potato salad.

8. At the end of supper, all the rests of the food should be left on the table and covered with a tablecloth, until Christmas morning. The belief is that during the night the spirits of the dead come to eat the food left for them.

9. Also day before Christmas is the day for prepare so called ”pečenica which is piglet roasted over the fire of oak tree logs
Of course it will be eaten tomorrow on Christmas.

10. In the morning of January 7th, Christmas, the first person that enters the home is called "položajnik". This person should stoke the fire in the fireplace and say the following:

"How many sparks, that much sheep. How many sparks, that much money. How many sparks, that much health!"

The Položajnik is then offered the "zito" (boiled wheat Christmas speciality) and red (black)wine. The guest makes the sign of the cross and eats a bit of the "zito" and drinks some wine.

11. For breakfast the habit is to prepare "cicvara" (a dish made of flour, eggs, butter and cheese). On the table are served also small dry cakes, dry figs and the famous plum brandy called "Sljivovica". Usually the "Sljivovica" served is home made and at least ten years old! Another custom is to prepare a bowl in which young wheat is planted to grow during the forth coming year. The meaning is should be fertile and that the family will have luck.

All persons gather around the table, family and guests, while the father lights the candle. That moment marks the start of "mirbozenje" (peace and reconciliation). Participants than kiss one another at Christmas time while saying: "Mir Bozji" (peace of God). If there were any disagreement, all are forgotten.

During the entire Christmas day a custom is to replace a classic: "Hello" or: "Good day" with: "Hristos se rodi" (Christ is born!) and as greeting in reply: "Vaistinu se rodi" (“Really born!” or “He has been born indeed!”). Nowadays it’s a habit to call relatives or friends by phone and instead of saying a classic "good morning", we say: "Hristos se rodi!"
It might sound silly to you but we are actually doing this.

12. On Christmas day, lunch gets underway earlier than usual and lasts longer. The menu is very rich. In contrast to Christmas Eve that relates to All Souls’ Day, Christmas relates to the cult of agriculture.
Nowadays, in the cities, before lunch the family throws the straw under the table (man’s relation to the earth).

Traditionally essential part of the Christmas dinner is a type of flat, round Christmas bread called "česnica".

It is prepared using stalk of the last wheat harvest filling them with kernels of different grains. However in part where I live it’s more like some kind of pie with dry fig, raisins, honey and walnuts.
Anyhow a solid silver coin along with wood and a bean for health and good luck is placed into česnica. family members break the česnica and the one who finds the coin in it is considered to be most fortunate that year; however, the head of the family has to buy the coin so it stays in the house. Sometimes, there are other things put in česnica, like piece of badnjak (that’s what I found) ,– good luck , hazelnut – health, plum – traveling, etc

Families in the cities almost always order their Christmas pork roast from bakers who exclusively use oak for the roasting fire.

Symbolicly the Christmas day meal marks the end of the period of abstinence as well as a ritual in which the food and the pork is considered a sacrifice made to god. All the members of the family must taste the roast pork and cesnica.

13. In Serbia Christmas is celebrating three days and during those days we are saying traditional Christmas greeting "Hristos se rodi"; "Vaistinu se rodi".
It’s also great custom which gathers whole family because tradition says that you should spend Christmas Holidays in your home with your family.

I hope this TT was interesting to you (in spite its length)

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)
::::: di ::::: mike ::::: gem ::::: sanni ::::: Raggedy ::::: JohnH985 ::::: Lexa Roséan ::::: lotus ::::: karen! ::::: dawn ::::: Kuanyin ::::: Susan Helene Gottfried :::::

Thursday Thirteen #3

2007-01-03T11:13:00.000+01:00

13 dots about me:

OK since I’m not at home and my internet access is very limited until after Christmas (7th Jan) when I’ll be back I have to use for this week T13 something I wrote long time ago for my BC profile *blush*.
So this week more-less will be copy/paste action. Sorry.

So here is piece of who I am in 13 dots:

1. There are three rivers in my life. I was born and spend my childhood on one and now I live on the other two. Each of them has died few times and was born again. Now I'm waiting their latest resurrection.

2. I love movement; rivers and rain, storms and wind.

3. One of my favorite writers said:" The inner side of the wind is the one which stays dry while the wind is blowing throughout the rain". I'm always trying to feel it.

4. I don't like symmetry especially in space around me but I do like balance in everything. That's why I started to learn language in which the weight of the book is moving from my left hand to the right one during the reading.

5. I like left side more than right.

6. Thursday is my day.

7. I love plums and lilies.

8. I can't stand superficiality; my huge preoccupation is to avoid this global transformation into supermarket zombies capable only to buy.

9. I say what I mean and expect the same from others.

10. Wine is my drink and bitter is my flavor.

11. I can't make music or paintings but I do know to enjoy in them with all my soul. I love Van Gogh but also Jackson Pollock; I love Rachmaninoff but also little younger artists such as REM, ex Talking Heads, PJ Harvey, RHCP...etc.

12. The most perfect piece of something ever made by one man is Michelangelo's Pieta (1499; Marble, St.Peter's, Vatican); it is on the very final frontier of perfection, one step behind that frontier could be only God himself.

13. I love people. My greatest achievement is that, in spite life I've succeed to not learn to hate.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Angela/SciFiChick ::::: lotus ::::: Celfyddydau ::::: JohnH985 ::::: Just Expressing Myself ::::: Susan Helene Gottfried ::::: bookish lore ::::: Raggedy

Inklings [part 1]

2007-01-02T15:47:00.000+01:00

(One of the) first thing I’ve done in 2007 was opening my Inkling parcels which were watching me from the mid of December tempting me so badly (truth mid of Dec is OK, I’m usually much bigger tormentor for other Inkling members).

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about here is short explanation:
Inklings are group of 12 book addicts and each of us have his/her own month (mine is January) when the rest 11 Inklings are sending one (or more) book(s) from wish list or not but something which fits in our literary preferences. It’s great but also very tempting when you have to look all those unopened parcels waiting first day of your month.
So far I have three parcels and here they are:

Parcel #1
Is from Pyan and it’s absolutely great pick.I’ve never heard about this book but I’m so glad that she picked this for me!

Parcel #2
Is from krin. This book is on my wish list for so long! Great pick!

Parcel #3
Is from MissBP and it contains two books:
This book is great! I’ve read it few years ago and I remember it as very good. This is great opportunity to read it again.

And
Historian is one of my favourite reads in last 2006. I enjoyed enormously and was reading it ONLY during the night – the effect was astonishing! Actually something I’ll never forget. Namely I live alone and once around 3.00-4.00 am I started slowly to move my head to see who is standing behind me. Somewhere on the half way I realized what I’m doing and couldn’t believe it. It was quite scary (and I’m not person who is easy to be scared). Great book indeed!

Thursday Thirteen #2

2006-12-28T01:28:00.000+01:00

13 delusions about life in the army (I've spent 2006 there):

1. I thought that going in army is OK; that it’ll be one good experience worth of all trouble. WRONG army is such a waist of time (here is mandatory) and now when I’m thinking about my pre-army thoughts I see how pathetic and desperate they are.

2. I thought that some of Murphy’s Laws will detour me. Oh no, that surely is not possible, not to me :)

3. I thought I’ll find some book worm like I am so that we could compare our thoughts about certain writers or books, etc. Oh NO – I was the only freak with book!

4. Oh well, not all people are reading, that’s fine. I’ll find someone who is following news and politics or with (at least) basic knowledge. Oh gosh, how wrong! Guy asked me once looking in newspaper:
Where is that Buns… Buens .. Buseanais … Buenos Aires? (he finally won the battle with those evil, horrible words)
I thought ”My God!” and said: ”Well that would be Argentina’s capital city” and then he continued:
Are you sure? Argentina’s? If so, where is then Cairo?”
Good grief! Of all cities in the world he picked Cairo! I mean (it would be painful but still) if he said Bogotá or Sao Paulo or at least Albuquerque I would even try to understand … but Cairo!!! So what could I possibly say to this poor guy than:
”You see mate, Argentina was English colony and Argentineans were fighting for centuries against British yoke and few years ago they won! Argentina became independent country and they changed name of the capital: they threw away English “Cairo” and give Argentinean “Buenos Aires”. So no worries mate, it’s the same town.
And he was very satisfied: Yeah I thought something like that too”

5. I always thought that not being homophobic doesn’t mean that you are homosexual. Well not here and can you imagine worse place to find out that than the army???
I was reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (great novel, you can see my impressions on my blog down) where the main character is gay. They couldn’t believe it!
- You are reading book where is a faggot!?!?
- Well I usually say “gay” or “homosexual” but yes I read.
- How can you? What do you think about faggots?
- I really don’t have problem with that issue. I’m totally indifferent
Next day guy said me how I’m very pretty and very attractive
- and very heterosexual, mate!

6. I was convinced I’ll never watch Big Brother but one night about 3.00-4.00 am I caught myself staring 15 minutes in TV watching how they SLEEP!!! When I realized that I turned off TV in fear. Tomorrow I share that horrible fact with one of my army-mates and he asked me did I turn up the volume? I was confused and reply NO. And then he said:
- Oh but you’ve missed the best part! You can hear when they are farting!!!
- I’m sure that’s simply enchanting experience! So bloody divine that you could actually feel the smell!

7. I thought you have to know at least something about the word or term you’re using it, especially when you are speaking about serious stuff. One guy was telling us how his older brother has a lung cancer but now is fine after few weeks of therapy and doesn’t have to go to regular checks anymore (I asked him about checks). It was very suspicious so I asked him few times “Lung cancer?” and he replied “Yes” then I asked him:
- Do you have the slightest idea WHAT is lung cancer?
- Yeah he was coughing but really bad
Then I translated him word “cancer” (we use that Latin term too but also have Serbian word) and then he said “ Oh no, no that wasn’t cancer”
I couldn’t believe it. He said cancer ONLY because that sounds ... I don’t know, exotic I guess or appropriately serious or ... who knows why!

8. I thought that people know their own mother tongue. Sadly I was wrong again. When I worked on phone central in the hospital people would call and then they couldn’t explain what they want because they couldn’t find the words to express themselves? The same was more/less with my army mates so I don’t know what was in their head when they saw me reading book in English (and later Spanish). I had to read them because of BookRing. One was wondering do I really understand what I’m reading? Other was sweet enough to admit I don’t read book in Serbian!

9. I honestly believed that human stupidity has SOME limits. Oh how endlessly wrong I was! I was in phone central in hospital and it was Monday morning. Our chef came and asked me do I know anything about missing phone from the department for emergency squad? I didn’t know. Then we saw new phone in central where I was working…
Guy who worked in Friday is second shift thought that phone we have is ugly and its colour is out of harmony with other phones so he decided to find a new one with more appropriate colour….
Emergency squad was out of reach whole weekend thanks to that idiot!
Stupidity is eternal.

10. I thought I’ll start smoking again (I quit smoking 6 years ago) but luckily I was wrong there too :-* Moreover I was that bastard who insisted on prohibition of smoking in work rooms, but I wasn’t faking, it really had horrible effect on me (I don’t think I’d able to start smoking even if I’d like to).

11. I thought you’re free to express your political opinion freely. Well you’re not! Army is highly political institution and it would be best to shut and blink.

12. I thought my pre-army life was interesting only for me. I would never thought that someone unknown knows my moves. Once we had a visit “from the top” and that lieutenant has interviewed one of us (not me). Among questions were the ones referring on the rest of guys... he knew where I’ve been, my unofficial education (not on University) especially related on foreign languages (English, Spanish and Farsi); he knew that I was abroad and for how long etc. Spooky isn’t it?

13. I never thought I’d speak stories from the army LOL

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

1. Mike
2. Gabrielle
3. Susan Helene Gottfried
4. zmrzlina
5. sobeit
6. Di
7. Angela/SciFiChick
8. sarala
9. laura
10. luna
11. morgen
12. amy
13. allie
14. tink

Some of my favourite reads 2006 #3

2006-12-27T19:56:00.000+01:00

Of course one of the best books I’ve read this year is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

After this novel East is not what it was before. Unrepeatable travel through the history of Islamic culture which I wasn't familiar with. Orhan Pamuk this time resurrects magical world of Orient with its colours, its art, esthetic, its secret spirit.
My Name is Red is story about art, love, happiness, life, death, sometimes discussion about essence of Islamic art and understanding world told through destinies of painters, miniaturists, illuminators and calligraphists from 16th century Constantinople (Istanbul).

Richness of language, abundance of images, associations, deep penetration into the essence of Islamic civilization and its touches with renaissance spirit, unique composition and structure confirm that Orhan Pamuk is one of the greatest writers 21st century.

Connection between past and present time are implicit in the colour. Red is colour of revenge and death but most of all, colour of passion, inspiration and art. Maybe, according to Pamuk, the name of universe is – RED.

I don’t know if that world of East and West, new and old, was so concise but in the same time so comprehensively described before this masterpiece:

...On the West they paint what they see and we [on the East], what we are looking at...

EXIT Festival 06

2006-12-24T16:09:00.000+01:00

One of the best musical events in this year for sure was EXIT 06.

The Exit Festival (also known as State of EXIT),held every year since 2000 in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, brings together the old and the new in as dramatic a setting as you can imagine. The festival began life as an artistic antidote to the grim reality of the Milosevic regime and has grown into one of Europe's biggest and most vibrant musical celebrations. It takes place in the stunning surroundings of the ancient Petrovaradin Citadel and in the space of four days attracts not just 250,000 revellers from all over the globe, but some of the best-known names from the world of music. There are films, theatre and workshops too, but the temptation to strut their stuff in one of the Serbia's most evocative arenas is too much for most people to resist.

It’s great how one escapist idea has grown in such a huge brand with performers like: Iggy Pop, Massive Attack, Garbage, Moloko, Stereo MC's, Kosheen, Suzanne Vega, etc

EXIT 06 took place July 6 - July 9, 2006.
The headliners on the main stage were Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, Billy Idol, Pet Shop Boys, The Cardigans, The Cult, Dizzee Rascal, HIM and Scissor Sisters.

Meeting Nobel Laureate

2006-12-21T01:30:00.000+01:00

OK I just had to write about this ... since I'm thinking about events which have marked 2006 certainly the biggest literary mark was meeting with Orhan Pamuk 17th May in Belgrade.

Pamuk is one of my favourite writers and when I heard he’s coming in Serbia I was totally thrilled. In spite the fact that I was in the army in May I've figured out some excuse *grin*

Here are my thoughts from then (I’ll copy/paste):

I don’t know would I be able to describe this huge emotion and excitement I felt when I heard that Orhan Pamuk is coming in Belgrade. Only the thought that I’ll meet him was breathtaking, I couldn’t sleep and was constantly thinking about the meeting. The news about his arrival came like a bolt out of the blue; I was drinking coffee with my friend (that is the most common custom here) and he told me “Oh you know that Turk of yours is in Belgrade?” and pointed his finger in my books. I couldn’t believe it! …
Meeting was short but still very pleasant. There where many people (naturally) so it would be too rude to start some kind of interview but when I told him that I’ve traveled to Belgrade only to meet him and that I have so many questions for him, he said “I’m all yours now; I’ll be more than happy to give the answers”.

Later, while I was sitting with my friend drinking beer she (my friend) told me (and with this I’ll finish my post):
I’m so happy for you, you’re literally shining. I look at you and feel some sort of jealousy because I cannot remember when I was so excited because of someone’s presence...

After few month one morning I found my inbox full of e-mails from all over the world with “Congratulations!!! That Turkish writer of yours has won Nobel!!!”

I was delighted as one of my friends told me Kind of like you won something too!
Indeed...

ETA (Edit To Add):

I decided to add Mr. Pamuk’s Speech from Stockholm on the ceremony when he received the prize 7th December:

My Father's Suitcase

Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died.

'Just take a look,' he said, looking slightly embarrassed. 'See if there's anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I'm gone you can make a selection and publish it.'

We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place to set down the suitcase, wandering back and forth like a man who wished to rid himself of a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly in an unobtrusive corner. It was a shaming moment that neither of us ever forgot, but once it had passed and we had gone back into our usual roles, taking life lightly, our joking, mocking personas took over and we relaxed. We talked as we always did, about the trivial things of everyday life, and Turkey's neverending political troubles, and my father's mostly failed business ventures, without feeling too much sorrow.

I remember that after my father left, I spent several days walking back and forth past the suitcase without once touching it. I was already familiar with this small, black, leather suitcase, and its lock, and its rounded corners. My father would take it with him on short trips and sometimes use it to carry documents to work. I remembered that when I was a child, and my father came home from a trip, I would open this little suitcase and rummage through his things, savouring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. This suitcase was a familiar friend, a powerful reminder of my childhood, my past, but now I couldn't even touch it. Why? No doubt it was because of the mysterious weight of its contents.

I am now going to speak of this weight's meaning. It is what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts – that is, the meaning of literature.

When I did touch my father's suitcase, I still could not bring myself to open it, but I did know what was inside some of those notebooks. I had seen my father writing things in a few of them. This was not the first time I had heard of the heavy load inside the suitcase. My father had a large library; in his youth, in the late 1940s, he had wanted to be an Istanbul poet, and had translated Valéry into Turkish, but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that came with writing poetry in a poor country with few readers. My father's father – my grandfather – had been a wealthy business man; my father had led a comfortable life as a child and a young man, and he had no wish to endure hardship for the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties – this I understood.

The first thing that kept me distant from the contents of my father's suitcase was, of course, the fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father knew this, he had taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take its contents seriously. After working as a writer for 25 years, it pained me to see this. But I did not even want to be angry at my father for failing to take literature seriously enough ... My real fear, the crucial thing that I did not wish to know or discover, was the possibility that my father might be a good writer. I couldn't open my father's suitcase because I feared this. Even worse, I couldn't even admit this myself openly. If true and great literature emerged from my father's suitcase, I would have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed an entirely different man. This was a frightening possibility. Because even at my advanced age I wanted my father to be only my father – not a writer.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising each stroke, that they could recreate that beautiful horse even with their eyes closed, I knew I was talking about the writing profession, and my own life. If a writer is to tell his own story – tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people – if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

I was afraid of opening my father's suitcase and reading his notebooks because I knew that he would not tolerate the difficulties I had endured, that it was not solitude he loved but mixing with friends, crowds, salons, jokes, company. But later my thoughts took a different turn. These thoughts, these dreams of renunciation and patience, were prejudices I had derived from my own life and my own experience as a writer. There were plenty of brilliant writers who wrote surrounded by crowds and family life, in the glow of company and happy chatter. In addition, my father had, when we were young, tired of the monotony of family life, and left us to go to Paris, where – like so many writers – he'd sat in his hotel room filling notebooks. I knew, too, that some of those very notebooks were in this suitcase, because during the years before he brought it to me, my father had finally begun to talk to me about that period in his life. He spoke about those years even when I was a child, but he would not mention his vulnerabilities, his dreams of becoming a writer, or the questions of identity that had plagued him in his hotel room. He would tell me instead about all the times he'd seen Sartre on the pavements of Paris, about the books he'd read and the films he'd seen, all with the elated sincerity of someone imparting very important news. When I became a writer, I never forgot that it was partly thanks to the fact that I had a father who would talk of world writers so much more than he spoke of pashas or great religious leaders. So perhaps I had to read my father's notebooks with this in mind, and remembering how indebted I was to his large library. I had to bear in mind that when he was living with us, my father, like me, enjoyed being alone with his books and his thoughts – and not pay too much attention to the literary quality of his writing.

But as I gazed so anxiously at the suitcase my father had bequeathed me, I also felt that this was the very thing I would not be able to do. My father would sometimes stretch out on the divan in front of his books, abandon the book in his hand, or the magazine and drift off into a dream, lose himself for the longest time in his thoughts. When I saw on his face an expression so very different from the one he wore amid the joking, teasing, and bickering of family life – when I saw the first signs of an inward gaze – I would, especially during my childhood and my early youth, understand, with trepidation, that he was discontent. Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action. The precursor of this sort of independent writer – who reads his books to his heart's content, and who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes with other's words, who, by entering into conversation with his books develops his own thoughts, and his own world – was most certainly Montaigne, in the earliest days of modern literature. Montaigne was a writer to whom my father returned often, a writer he recommended to me. I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who – wherever they are in the world, in the East or in the West – cut themselves off from society, and shut themselves up with their books in their room. The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books.

But once we shut ourselves away, we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other people's stories, other people's books, other people's words, the thing we call tradition. I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other people's stories and books.

My father had a good library – 1 500 volumes in all – more than enough for a writer. By the age of 22, I had perhaps not read them all, but I was familiar with each book – I knew which were important, which were light but easy to read, which were classics, which an essential part of any education, which were forgettable but amusing accounts of local history, and which French authors my father rated very highly. Sometimes I would look at this library from a distance and imagine that one day, in a different house, I would build my own library, an even better library – build myself a world. When I looked at my father's library from afar, it seemed to me to be a small picture of the real world. But this was a world seen from our own corner, from Istanbul. The library was evidence of this. My father had built his library from his trips abroad, mostly with books from Paris and America, but also with books bought from the shops that sold books in foreign languages in the 40s and 50s and Istanbul's old and new booksellers, whom I also knew. My world is a mixture of the local – the national – and the West. In the 70s, I, too, began, somewhat ambitiously, to build my own library. I had not quite decided to become a writer – as I related in Istanbul, I had come to feel that I would not, after all, become a painter, but I was not sure what path my life would take. There was inside me a relentless curiosity, a hope-driven desire to read and learn, but at the same time I felt that my life was in some way lacking, that I would not be able to live like others. Part of this feeling was connected to what I felt when I gazed at my father's library – to be living far from the centre of things, as all of us who lived in Istanbul in those days were made to feel, that feeling of living in the provinces. There was another reason for feeling anxious and somehow lacking, for I knew only too well that I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists – be they painters or writers – and that gave them no hope. In the 70s, when I would take the money my father gave me and greedily buy faded, dusty, dog-eared books from Istanbul's old booksellers, I would be as affected by the pitiable state of these second-hand bookstores – and by the despairing dishevelment of the poor, bedraggled booksellers who laid out their wares on roadsides, in mosque courtyards, and in the niches of crumbling walls – as I was by their books.

As for my place in the world – in life, as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was 'not in the centre'. In the centre of the world, there was a life richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it. Today I think that I share this feeling with most people in the world. In the same way, there was a world literature, and its centre, too, was very far away from me. Actually what I had in mind was Western, not world, literature, and we Turks were outside it. My father's library was evidence of this. At one end, there were Istanbul's books – our literature, our local world, in all its beloved detail – and at the other end were the books from this other, Western, world, to which our own bore no resemblance, to which our lack of resemblance gave us both pain and hope. To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world's otherness, the strange and the wondrous. I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee to the West – just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture, which we found so lacking. It wasn't just by reading that we left our Istanbul lives to travel West – it was by writing, too. To fill those notebooks of his, my father had gone to Paris, shut himself up in his room, and then brought his writings back to Turkey. As I gazed at my father's suitcase, it seemed to me that this was what was causing me disquiet. After working in a room for 25 years to survive as a writer in Turkey, it galled me to see my father hide his deep thoughts inside this suitcase, to act as if writing was work that had to be done in secret, far from the eyes of society, the state, the people. Perhaps this was the main reason why I felt angry at my father for not taking literature as seriously as I did.

Actually I was angry at my father because he had not led a life like mine, because he had never quarrelled with his life, and had spent his life happily laughing with his friends and his loved ones. But part of me knew that I could also say that I was not so much 'angry' as 'jealous', that the second word was more accurate, and this, too, made me uneasy. That would be when I would ask myself in my usual scornful, angry voice: 'What is happiness?' Was happiness thinking that I lived a deep life in that lonely room? Or was happiness leading a comfortable life in society, believing in the same things as everyone else, or acting as if you did? Was it happiness, or unhappiness, to go through life writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony with all around one? But these were overly ill-tempered questions. Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true? After all, my father had run away from his family so many times – how well did I know him, and how well could I say I understood his disquiet?

So this was what was driving me when I first opened my father's suitcase. Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life about which I knew nothing, something he could only endure by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel, recognised several notebooks, and noted that my father had shown them to me years earlier, but without dwelling on them very long. Most of the notebooks I now took into my hands he had filled when he had left us and gone to Paris as a young man. Whereas I, like so many writers I admired – writers whose biographies I had read – wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought, when he was the age I was now. It did not take me long to realise that I would find nothing like that here. What caused me most disquiet was when, here and there in my father's notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my father's voice, I told myself; it wasn't authentic, or at least it did not belong to the man I'd known as my father. Underneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he wrote, was a deeper fear: the fear that deep inside I was not authentic, that I would find nothing good in my father's writing, this increased my fear of finding my father to have been overly influenced by other writers and plunged me into a despair that had afflicted me so badly when I was young, casting my life, my very being, my desire to write, and my work into question. During my first ten years as a writer, I felt these anxieties more deeply, and even as I fought them off, I would sometimes fear that one day, I would have to admit to defeat – just as I had done with painting – and succumbing to disquiet, give up novel writing, too.

I have already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father's suitcase and put it away: the sense of being marooned in the provinces, and the fear that I lacked authenticity. This was certainly not the first time they had made themselves felt. For years I had, in my reading and my writing, been studying, discovering, deepening these emotions, in all their variety and unintended consequences, their nerve endings, their triggers, and their many colours. Certainly my spirits had been jarred by the confusions, the sensitivities and the fleeting pains that life and books had sprung on me, most often as a young man. But it was only by writing books that I came to a fuller understanding of the problems of authenticity (as in My Name is Red and The Black Book) and the problems of life on the periphery (as in Snow and Istanbul). For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing.

A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.

But as can be seen from my father's suitcase and the pale colours of our lives in Istanbul, the world did have a centre, and it was far away from us. In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger ... But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do. What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.

This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But this, as I know from my own and my father's writing, is a troubled optimism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled with this great writer through his love-hate relationship with the West, to behold the other world he has built on the other side.

All writers who have devoted their lives to this task know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing, will, in the end, move to other very different places. It will take us far away from the table at which we have worked with sadness or anger, take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world. Could my father have not reached such a world himself? Like the land that slowly begins to take shape, slowly rising from the mist in all its colours like an island after a long sea journey, this other world enchants us. We are as beguiled as the western travellers who voyaged from the south to behold Istanbul rising from the mist. At the end of a journey begun in hope and curiosity, there lies before them a city of mosques and minarets, a medley of houses, streets, hills, bridges, and slopes, an entire world. Seeing it, we wish to enter into this world and lose ourselves inside it, just as we might a book. After sitting down at a table because we felt provincial, excluded, on the margins, angry, or deeply melancholic, we have found an entire world beyond these sentiments.

What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man: for me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived. That was when all these people and streets, objects and buildings would seem to begin to talk amongst themselves, and begin to interact in ways I had not anticipated, as if they lived not just in my imagination or my books, but for themselves. This world that I had created like a man digging a well with a needle would then seem truer than all else.

My father might also have discovered this kind of happiness during the years he spent writing, I thought as I gazed at my father's suitcase: I should not prejudge him. I was so grateful to him, after all: he'd never been a commanding, forbidding, overpowering, punishing, ordinary father, but a father who always left me free, always showed me the utmost respect. I had often thought that if I had, from time to time, been able to draw from my imagination, be it in freedom or childishness, it was because, unlike so many of my friends from childhood and youth, I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one, too. I had to read him with tolerance – seek to understand what he had written in those hotel rooms.

It was with these hopeful thoughts that I walked over to the suitcase, which was still sitting where my father had left it; using all my willpower, I read through a few manuscripts and notebooks. What had my father written about? I recall a few views from the windows of Parisian hotels, a few poems, paradoxes, analyses ... As I write I feel like someone who has just been in a traffic accident and is struggling to remember how it happened, while at the same time dreading the prospect of remembering too much. When I was a child, and my father and mother were on the brink of a quarrel – when they fell into one of those deadly silences – my father would at once turn on the radio, to change the mood, and the music would help us forget it all faster.

Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

A week after he came to my office and left me his suitcase, my father came to pay me another visit; as always, he brought me a bar of chocolate (he had forgotten I was 48 years old). As always, we chatted and laughed about life, politics and family gossip. A moment arrived when my father's eyes went to the corner where he had left his suitcase and saw that I had moved it. We looked each other in the eye. There followed a pressing silence. I did not tell him that I had opened the suitcase and tried to read its contents; instead I looked away. But he understood. Just as I understood that he had understood. Just as he understood that I had understood that he had understood. But all this understanding only went so far as it can go in a few seconds. Because my father was a happy, easygoing man who had faith in himself: he smiled at me the way he always did. And as he left the house, he repeated all the lovely and encouraging things that he always said to me, like a father.

As always, I watched him leave, envying his happiness, his carefree and unflappable temperament. But I remember that on that day there was also a flash of joy inside me that made me ashamed. It was prompted by the thought that maybe I wasn't as comfortable in life as he was, maybe I had not led as happy or footloose a life as he had, but that I had devoted it to writing – you've understood ... I was ashamed to be thinking such things at my father's expense. Of all people, my father, who had never been the source of my pain – who had left me free. All this should remind us that writing and literature are intimately linked to a lack at the centre of our lives, and to our feelings of happiness and guilt.

But my story has a symmetry that immediately reminded me of something else that day, and that brought me an even deeper sense of guilt. Twenty-three years before my father left me his suitcase, and four years after I had decided, aged 22, to become a novelist, and, abandoning all else, shut myself up in a room, I finished my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons; with trembling hands I had given my father a typescript of the still unpublished novel, so that he could read it and tell me what he thought. This was not simply because I had confidence in his taste and his intellect: his opinion was very important to me because he, unlike my mother, had not opposed my wish to become a writer. At that point, my father was not with us, but far away. I waited impatiently for his return. When he arrived two weeks later, I ran to open the door. My father said nothing, but he at once threw his arms around me in a way that told me he had liked it very much. For a while, we were plunged into the sort of awkward silence that so often accompanies moments of great emotion. Then, when we had calmed down and begun to talk, my father resorted to highly charged and exaggerated language to express his confidence in me or my first novel: he told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to receive with such great happiness.

He said this not because he was trying to convince me of his good opinion, or to set this prize as a goal; he said it like a Turkish father, giving support to his son, encouraging him by saying, 'One day you'll become a pasha!' For years, whenever he saw me, he would encourage me with the same words.

My father died in December 2002.

Today, as I stand before the Swedish Academy and the distinguished members who have awarded me this great prize – this great honour – and their distinguished guests, I dearly wish he could be amongst us.

Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely

Thursday Thirteen #1

2006-12-21T00:24:00.000+01:00

Thirteen Things about zzz

Dear Thirteeners (and others) I saw this strange weekly recapitulation of whatever and I found it quite interesting so here we go… (again)

1. Last week I created my own blog. I’m much more verbal person and never had diary but after reading blogs of my friends I decided to try … wish me luck :-)

2. Thursday is absolutely my favourite day and when I saw this TT stuff I jumped in this bandwagon!

3. Now I’m doubting I’ll have 13 things to write every week. It seems easy at first sight but I’m not sure if student will have such a turbulent life during exam period? Furthermore fact that English is not my mother tongue will make things even harder …

4. OK this thing should be first but … I LOVE to read! I’m not fast reader (on the contrary: 30-40 books per year) but I’m constant reader, I always have book with me. Recently I started to buy paperback books I already have in hardcover edition because it’s easier to bring them with me. Crazy I know!

5. I hate TV! And since I started to live alone (10 years ago) I decided that TV will not enter in my nest! And I’m so happy with that decision. I know there are lots of good stuff to be seen on TV but there are much more trash. Option IS to change the channel or switch off TV but I’d rather put my PC on that place :-) (or plant)

6. I’m Vet student but I’m afraid I’m not so crazy about animals. OK don’t get me wrong, I love animals but they aren’t before humans on my list of priorities. That is causing me certain problems among my colleagues.

7. I started recapitulation of year 2006: important events, best books, best theater plays, movies etc and to write that on my blog. As I said English is not my mother tongue but I have to write in English if I’m aiming to have anyone who’ll read that. Which means I’ll probably write in my future TT posts things from that list.

8.This week I saw two quite interesting films about Women and Islam at Free Zone Film Festival (I have post here about it). After posting my impressions I received many e-mails how it’s OK but senders rather would not post their opinions on that topic… I don’t think I wrote anything offending (sorry if I don’t see it). I’m not sure I understand that.

9. Ups I just realized it’s Thursday already (just past midnight … I hope I’m not breaking any rule with this?)\

10.... (think … think…think) Oh I like Simpsons! I wonder why they fell on my mind??? LOL I know I said I hate TV (and that I don’t have it but I am familiar with what’s on)

11. Oh now when I’m writing abut TV shows I’d like to stress my repulsiveness upon Big Brother! We have first season in Serbia and I cannot believe how enormous lack of ANY knowledge can bee seen on one place. I thought that Homer Simpson is fictional character but hey, Big Brother’s house is full of HSs (with big difference: Homer is funny). It’s such a huge mental contamination watching it! Don’t understand…

12. This evening on my way back home from Spanish classes I found in my house’s entrance a kitten and it starts ingratiating (is that the correct word?) immediately. I never saw something like that … of course I brought it in my flat (outside is cold and it snowing). I’m much (MUCH) more dog lover but this kitten is really so sweet. OK It’s not hungry anymore and tomorrow will think what to do with it … it’s name is “Cat” or “Hello Cat” (“Breakfast at Tiffany” fell on my mind when I saw it).

13. I love this number and while everyone were considering it as bad luck (I guess because of Friday 13th) I never thought in that way. I am Christian (although not radical or something) but for me 13 was on the contrary, very lucky number: there were 12 apostles and we all know who was 13th.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)
1. West of Mars
2. maggie
3. amy
4. Di
5. MelnHead
6. karen!
7. amy
8. mar
9. Angela/SciFiChick
10. mike
11. chris
12. rach

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Free Zone

2006-12-18T13:43:00.000+01:00

Free Zone Film Festival in Belgrade is festival of “involved movie” often quite controversial. This time was not exception. Yesterday there were two Dutch movies with the theme “Women and Islam”. And the guests on the debate after projections were director of the second movie Ms Merel Beernink and Belgrade’s Imam Mr. Mohamed Jusufspahic.

First movie was worldwide known Submission by Theo Van Gogh

The movie deals with the topic of violence against women in Islamic societies; telling the stories of four abused Muslim women. The title itself, "Submission", is the translation of the word "Islam" in English.
The film is controversial. It was perceived as insulting by many Muslims, and several people loyal to Hirsi Ali's (scrip writer) cause against abuse and oppression of women expressed doubts about the effectiveness of this film, fearing that it would only polarize positions.

After the movie was released in 2004, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. A letter pinned to the body with a dagger linked the murder to Van Gogh's film and his views regarding Islam. It called for jihad against kafir (kafir is an Arabic word for someone who does not believe in God), America, Europe, the Netherlands and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

After the murder of Theo van Gogh, Submission gained international fame. It was withdrawn from a film festival in Rotterdam, but was shown on television in a number of European countries.

The movie was no doubt quite shocking but for different reasons for Muslims and those who aren’t Muslims. Namely it’s story about abused women, promised to their husbands at the age of 16 and their hell-marriage. Their faces were covered but not the rest of the bodies which are covered with bruises and livid marks but also covered with tattoos with verses from The Holly Koran. Their acceptance of that kind of life in His name and obeying His word about marriage, their complete submission was terrifying.

On the other hand what was terrifying (and insulting) for Muslims was the fact that she has her body covered with verses from the Holly Book. And debate was in that directions. As a Christian I cannot comment feeling of Muslims but if someone would tattooed Our Lord on the body I would accepted that dumb rather than insulting.
What was strange that the accent on that discussion was precisely on verses on the body while bruises were completely ignored.

So the question is Is religion (fate) for maltreated women in traditional Muslim communities in the same time their consolation but also their cage?

Second movie was That Paradise Will Be Mine by Merel Beernink

A frank portrayal of what it means to be a Dutch Muslim, this eye-opening film follows the lives of three women dealing with the consequences of their choice to convert to Islam. Rather than pressing the women for the reasons behind their choice, director Merel Beernink takes a close look at their day-to-day lives, letting them speak candidly about how they feel in their new cultural and religious context.
Issues of marriage and relationship loom large for all three women. Astrid, who had a brief but unhappy arranged marriage, is now living with her parents and looking for a husband. Inge is considering a move to Cairo to marry her Egyptian fiancé. Rabia is married to a Muslim man and struggling with matters such as polygamy and homosexuality. Their perspectives are complemented by revealing and often touching interviews with their parents. Capturing these women's struggle to reconcile the expectations of their families and friends with the demands of their new conviction, Beernink's intimate portraits offer fascinating insight into to why it is so difficult for those brought up in Western culture to choose a different kind of life.

On the debate director, Ms Beernink said that she wanted to explore why these young women have decide to “give up her freedom” and with that she expressed her view on their decision. The Netherlands is country probably with the highest level of social freedom and it was interesting to see reaction of the family members of these young women but also their adaptation on the new (restricted) liberties. One of the theory is that tendency is a result precisely of that unlimited freedom; that they were seeking one frame of social behavior in which they will feel secure. And they have found it in Islam.

Director said that in the process of making this film she followed 200 women but decided to make movie about only these who decided that because their sincere beliefs and fate. (many of them have converted themselves because of Muslim boyfriend etc)
What was quite interesting is that one of them who has Muslim boyfriend (but after she took Islam) was “better” Muslim that he who is Moroccan and Muslim by his birth. And as director said, that is very often the case with all converted Muslims.
On the other hand we could see that total acceptance is still might be a problem, they are putting make up (which is forbidden in Islam) or watching TV (also forbidden) etc.

Interesting this is what the one of the girls said “If I found a husband I’ll tell him I am a Muslim but my family is Dutch and not Muslim and that HAS TO BE RESPECTED!” so I wondering if the need for that ultimatum are showing intolerance justified by religion?

Miroslav’s Gospel (1180 AD)

2006-12-16T18:52:00.000+01:00

National Museum in Belgrade has brought to the public light Miroslav's Gospel, the oldest Serbian medieval Manuscript (written in Cyrillic letter) and one of the most important parts of Serbian cultural heritage.

It was copied for Stefan Nemanja's brother Miroslav (1171-1197) by Gligory the Pupil who copied the Gospel. This text is unique because it unites the Eastern style of writing with the Western way of ornamenting where the artist used red, green, yellow, brown and golden colors.

Miroslav’s Gospel is part of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register

Some of my favourite reads 2006 #2

2006-12-15T03:51:00.000+01:00

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Reading this book has been actually very hard because it was just as she described my country's recent past. I was there in every single sentence when she described situation on University; government's repression; political murders; corruption on every level of society; killing free press; endless waiting in a front of embassies; disregard of international community; "For them, I'm nothing more than black gorilla who knows to read" (said University professor in the book) I understand perfectly although we here have different color of the skin but acceptance and attitude of the western world was absolutely the same; struggle against the regime; protests of students and their professors (we have protested 3 months on winter '97) ... etc. Everything was the same.
It seems that misery of small and ignorance of big ones are universal no matter about which part of the world we are talking.

yes, maybe I'm selfish when I'm putting in first place surrounding of main characters in spite of strong portraits of Kambili's family members. It was magnificent achievement indeed.

Now I saw in one journal entry something I have to comment. Namely someone said But when the possibility of emigration to America is raised, neither Amaka nor Kambili can countenance it - Nigeria is their home and the place they love.
Well this is quite ... (how should I put) romantic and touchy point of view BUT both of them, Amaka and Kambili are children and as a children they cannot see the entire picture about the mess their motherland is into (especially Kambili); they cannot see the consequences of staying in Nigeria; they are too young to think about their future and have others to do that. So of course they wanted to stay in place they love and think (but only think) they know.
I have childhood friends in whole Europe, North America and Australia and they are suffering horribly of homesickness. Their letters are ... well very sad in spite good financial life they have in those countries and safe future for their children. But every single one of them knows that staying here was not possible for them.

You cannot stay in your home when the roof is falling (maybe that is romantic and touchy but that is not real life). You have to go further and find consolation in memories and photos while your sitting somewhere under different, solid roof in that new, 'better' world.

Some of my favourite reads 2006 #1

2006-12-15T02:58:00.000+01:00

New Year is coming soon so it’s perfect time to remind myself of best books I’ve read this year ... first one is

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

What a magnificent novel; I'm absolutely delighted. I could say that this is one of the best novels I've read recently and once again Booker Prize Winner has justified its fame.

On the other hand this novel is one of the strangest novels I've read recently. Friend asked me could I recommend him this book and what is all about and I couldn't reply. First I don't have a clue who'll accept it in the way I did and the answer on the second question is confusing (for myself too) because what is all about indeed? For the first time (as I remember) the theme, the story was irrelevant. And I do realize how that could sound odd when this refers to one book.
I mean when you write the book you are writing about something concrete, no? Well, here I'm not sure in that. Here, the way of telling story was so bewitching, so beautiful that it made the story itself almost irrelevant. Sentences were so ... I don't know ... liquid; I had the feeling that I don't read but drink this book. Lovely! Those metaphors, irony, humor, deliciousness, elegance, etc. everything is justifying the title. The Line of Beauty indeed!

This is second Hollinghurst's novel I've read; first one was The Swimming-Pool Library and I liked this one much more. I don't know maybe I'm little puritan although I never thought about myself in that way :)
Here I'll write little anecdote about those two books. Namely when The Line of Beauty won Booker Prize in magazine "Vreme" (Serbian "Time") on the cultural pages was title "Gay novel won Booker" and I thought "oh that could be something new and interesting" (since I'm absolutely hooked on Booker). At the end of that article was web address from where they took this article. I forgot address but it was site for gay and lesbians and I went to check what they say about this novel. It was a huge surprise; namely almost everyone were saying how The Line of Beauty is incredibly boring novel but The Swimming-Pool Library is exceptional.
Now when I've read both novels I could understand why: in this novel there is no "action" while "Library" is so full of "action" that the pages are becoming sticky. So I'm wondering is this novel "gay novel" at all and what does this mean? Yes, Nick - the main character is gay but hey, I almost didn't notice that!

Of course the novel tells about SOMETHING (after all my copy has 500 pages) and that something is probably above all, crush of that Jane Austin's England (ridiculous in its survival 'till present time), traditional, noble, prim and stuffy and some very untraditional (or unconventional) things such are homosexuality, drugs and AIDS which actually can be found everywhere if you scratch that posh surface.

I'm fascinated with that "Elephant in glazier's shop"--syndrome where everyone are noticing the elephant but no one react, simply because that's not noble. Equally here, you may be debauchee and completely immoral but everything will be perfectly fine as long as you don't take wrong fork at the dinner party. Gosh, that would be such a catastrophe! Preserve surface intact is absolute priority!

Also the portraits are magnificent, all of them. They are all members of English aristocracy or those who painted themselves in the colours of English aristocratism (although they usually have too much paint on their faces) and their surrounding (Nick). All of them are pictured so detailed that you could literally see their thoughts and feelings. Therefore I found Nick so close to me. I completely share his affection to art and beauty; his addiction to the people that loves, his hedonism, his humor, his sharp eye and sharp mind. Oh I could easily identify myself with his character (although I'm not gay but hey, love and passion are blind, aren't they?).

Pure Beauty!

Here we go …

2006-12-14T21:26:00.000+01:00

Dear everyone,
I guess I finally forced myself to create my own blog and (ok this will sound stupid) this is quite revolution for me. Namely I don’t have custom to write a diary (I never had) and especially to share it with the unknown world (I’m not shy, I’m more verbal person) so this IS very new.
But most of all I decided to start this in order to preserve some nice memories and emotions. Of course recently I started to read blogs of some of my friends and thought “I could do that too!” This will mainly be bookish blog but knowing me probably there’ll be lots of other stuff (I do have messy mind) …
Anyway, since I’m just starting any suggestion or advice is more than welcome :-)

So ... WELCOME TO MY CREATIVE MESS!!!