Saturday Afternoon in Beverly Hills

At last!  A real informational entry!

The neighborhood where I'm staying is euphemistically and somewhat derogatorily referred to by locals as Beverly Hills.  More precisely, New Beverly Hills (since there has been a previous neighborhood snarked about that had the name first).  It's actually called Senjak, and hosts the houses of most of the foreign ambassadors.

One of the coolest surprises I've had here-and I've had more than a few wonderful turns-is the genuine hospitality and generosity of the average person.  Cabbies are friendly and approachable (even when they don't speak English), and the common person on the street will stop if you ask them a question and (perhaps overly-so) give you the directions you ask.

But topping that for me is the fact that when I've called on people (whom my local agent and public relations officer, Yvonne Kuss-Slough, has tirelessly tracked down for me-usually through a woman named Olji or Tanya), they hear me tell them I'm on a university grant to research the area and such-and-such.  To that they react with a little surprise of their own and also with a bit of curiosity as well.  But that hasn't been what landed me coffee-talks with Matija Bećković and refugee interviews with Bread of Life (Hleb Zivota).  It is my telling them I am an author and researching a novel that wins the invitation.  Artists, poets, writers, these are people who are culturally respected here far more than the Western countries; far more than the United States.

Don't misunderstand, I love my country (even while despising the immensely stupid government and president), but when dumbshits like that actress who mouthed off recently about having photographs take her picture as akin to being raped, I wonder why she is continually paid to contribute nothing expect more carbon dioxide to this planet.  But in the States (as elsewhere) people like that glorified, and in the States/Great Britian, they draw the most attention, the highest wages.  And, to the general masses, are the people to culturally emulate.

In this part of the world, artists are given far more professional and personal respect.  As a researching student, I've had a couple of people chat with me about the politics and history and maybe a surface-level story along with it.  But as a writer, I've had people open up about things that, as one person said, he hadn't spoken of to anyone since it happened in 1993.  "Go and tell the world, if you can," one man told me, "Of what you see here-what you smell, taste, touch.  These are the things that matter.  Not what someone says on the television news."

And, given the treatment this region has had in the history of Western media throughout the past century, I understand that.  I've read, literally, more than two hundred articles and books about this place, and I have to wonder now if more than one or two authors/writers/journalists have really set out to learn and share something about the Balkans, or if those who actually came here and walked around merely looked for individuals who would confirm what they wanted to print about it.

Nothing ... let me say that again ... NOTHING that you hear/see/read in media about the Balkans should believed.  Including this.  Come here, walk around with open eyes and ears and heart.  Taste the food, listen to the music.  Even in Belgrade (crammed with troubles that are most recently due to bombing/sanctions/eschewed at the hands of the US in order to allow a province "independence" where they had no history of being independent ever before.  And this independence is still paid for by various international organizations.  Personally, I think it was the guilt of having left Sarajevo to be destroyed that spurred the US to action.  That and believing the well-told lies of several people who drew significant funds from the very same government they asked to protect them.  Sarajevo had been a tru international city, multi-cultural and multi-religious, but now is being altered to suit people whose future intentions are not to bring it back to that status.

It's a beautiful, frustrating mess.  And I hope I can take what I have learned, am still learning, will learn, from here and write what I have experienced in a story that tells more than the truth.  I hope to use my words to build a bridge to some kind of understanding.

This is my hope.  This is my prayer.

As I heard from another recently.  "Despise if you must, but don't ever hate."

I do despise.  A lot.  Vast and varied.

But hate...?

"Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait..."

...

I'll be leaving for Kosova Monday night.


~*~

A story that has given back far more than it took to write.

Here's the inscription I received from Andjelija & her grandfather, Matija Bećković.

Here's one of my hosts in Belgrade... Seppel.

That's pronounced as if he were a German airship.

[Scatha agreed to allow another kitty on her blog...]

And here's this fellow-

unsavory as he may appear,

he's been an excellent ambassador in the preparations for bridge-building,

and been praised and appreciated everywhere he's been so far in Serbia.

Attached to this photograph is the following, which has appeared in the International School of Belgrade's newsletter to faculty and parents:

Kirk Barrett, an author and university student spoke to our grade 11 class this past Wednesday during ISB time.  He is traveling this summer in the former Yugoslav Republics on a research grant from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.  He has published articles and short fiction concerning the Siege and the Yugoslav Wars.  His current research involves critical theory and the effects the wars had on art, literature, and individuals.  He clarified that he is not interested in the political/military history and blame for events but rather his focus is the place literature has in telling the stories of history so that the military/political version is not the only one to be remembered.

His grant came as the result, in part, of a story that he published and received a number of awards for.  If you are interested in reading “Sarajevo Roses” (which Kirk read to our students) or learning more about him and his work, please visit his blog at:

http://kirkesque.blogspot.com/p/sarajevo-roses.html

Or, visit the high school library and check out the copy of Press 53 Open Awards Anthology 2009, which Kirk has generously donated.

Also, please note that as a scholar and generally a curious soul, Kirk would love to hear from anyone in our community that too has a story to tell about the history of this region.

Please feel free to contact him at:

kirkesque@gmail.com

With many thanks to Kirk, for sharing his story with my students and showing them that literature is found off the page…

we look and listen first, only then can we tell. 

Ms. Slough

~*~

Ubek biti tu ćuprija

"The bridge is most most valuable human creation."

"The bridge does not ask who crosses it."


The two most memorable quotes from my conversation with Bećković.

Monday morning I'm meeting with some refugees via the NGO group Bread of Life, so I guess I'll be leaving Tuesday from Belgrade.  I'll catch the night train to Skopje.

Quite a stay considering I originally planned to catch that night train to Skopje last Sunday.

What an amazing, blessed week!  Thank you to everyone who has shared their time with me.  You are all cobblestones in the bridge I will build with poetry between us.


(;



~*~

The talk/reading to the students at ISB was amazing!  Absolutely incredible.

Thank you.


~*~

The Muse didn't want to wait until Sarajvo:

The Palace is not a place you find by searching for it.  Maps are completely inadequate to translate such territory.  Entering the Palace, the traveller brings with them their own ecstatic wonders, their own dread-filled tears.  The Palace is akin to the Grail Castle, to Chapel Perilous, the Silhouette Rogue.  Those who negotiate the Palace come out afterward either batshit-paranoid with belief or a stone-sober skeptic.  In most travellers, there is only that duality.  But for those who have walked the narrow alleys of a distant obscure bazāār, drank the elixirs in sensuous cafés of flesh, and inhaled certain honey-sulfur'd pollen of flowers from the sunless lands may encounter a lone bodhisattva, a pychopomp among the the slumming angels, who navigates paths to and from the Palace which are not counted in that duality and upon which ground few feet have ever tread.  Yet however one finds their way to the Palace, when they do so, they must enter alone.  Of this, there is no other.

Saraj-ovasi, in Turkish, means the field around the palace.  In 1461, this described the garden, mosque, and souk surrounding the governor’s mansion in the Bosnian province of the Ottoman Empire.

Midway along this journey of life I came upon this landscape where my much-studied oft-touted maps became utterly useless in guiding me through the soft geography where I found myself.  And there I lingered for a while, in that field around the palace…  Sarajevo.

*

Once upon a time, in a mythic land called Jugoslavia . . .

~•~•~•~•~•~

New friends, old loves, and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.

My new friend Milan, in Bela Crkva, is one of the most beautiful people I've met.  Caring, giving, curious, knowledgeable, compassionate.

Chris & Yvonne in Beograd are no less the same.  I've known Chris for (wow!) 15 years now; Yvonne I just met the other day and, even as Chris leaves to fly half a world away (back to our shared homeland of Colorado), Yvonne plays hostess to me for the coming week. In doing so has set up meetings for me with a fellow academic, Sasha (from Sarajevo) whom I'm meeting Tuesday; a reading/lecturing gig at the International School of Belgrade on Wednesday; a lady from Mostar tomorrow and Thursday; and quite possibly one of Serbia's greatest poetic voices, Matija Bećković.

Also, although I'm still going to Kosova following my time in Belgrade, I do beleive now that I'm dropping a couple of routes in favor of a longer time in Sarajevo.  Everyone I have spoken to says things that have led me to want, if not need, more than two weeks in Sarajevo.

What happened in Sarajevo's horrid past is something to be despised, but, however wretched things are, there is no time for hate.



~*~