Guerrilla Art

Revisited the Sarajevan Historz Museum and noticed this little feature which I hadn't before:

 ...and a closer look:

The placard also seems to be made out of a band aid box, which, I suppose, might add to the bleak humor of the piece.  Not that I would ehem know for certain about any of it.  I was merely a visitor to the museum and have nothing to do with any of the displays...

~*~

"You're just riffing now, aren't you?"

The line of black angels
long tired of dancing
fall softer than a pin drop

into love after midnight
in the garden between
the good and evil
which dwells in the shadows
of every heart turned to stone.

30 June 2010
Noon
~Sarajevo~

~*~

Humor in Tragedy / Art after Srebrenica

Like Sarajevans and Mostaris, I've long held the disquieting trait of laughing at tragedy and disaster.  Watching planes play into iconic buildings nine years ago brought this into a public forum where I was repeatedly accused of being uncaring, un-American, inhuman.  To theose folks, I merely laughed harder.  They didn't understand the complexities of emotion, preferring to, perhaps, be spoon-fed what they should feel via CNN, Fox, or Steven Speilberg-types.

After visiting Srebrenica last week, this trait was tested.  I barely had words to speak about it (still, I do not have words to express much at all about that place, that history), let alone the ability to laugh.

Yet...

I mentioned this to someone the other evening and immediately a joke sprang to mind.

Q: How many Srebenicans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: They don't need a lightbulb.  Srebrenicans are protected by UN Dutchbats against the Dark.

And thus there is humor, as well as art, even after Srebrenica.



~*~

Becoming Sarajevan

In Sarajevo, everyone knows everyone else.  I have been here long enough that I walk past a coppersmith's shop and the coppersmith recognizes me, invites me in for coffee with him and his wife (neither of whom speak English), then run into the scarf-maker whose husband talks theology with me for an hour, then, this evening, I am walking down the main street in the čaršija and hear someone call my name.  It's Pedja (I hope I've spelled that corretly), a friend of Danis's. I sit and have coffee with him and his girlfriend for a while.  We discuss this photographer whose work I discovered by name today.  And, while talking about Tarik Samarah, who should walk up to our table at the cafe...?

As I thought when I first arrived here... I have come home again for the very first time.




~•~

Being that I saw no Archdukes this morning, I had coffee instead...

Gavrilo Princip

Assassin of Empires

~•~

Further Metafiction Blending in the Shades of Morning Gray

So here in Sarajevo, I've been mistaken a few times for a local musician (long-haired and--for Bosnia--curiously-bearded ((as opposed to just bearded))) who's stage name is Puško.  This morning, as I go over my hand-written manuscript for a short-story I wrote during the week between Višegrad and Sarajevo, I discover what this name--Puško--means.

In Bosnian, it's the male denominative for rifle.

Those with a knowledge of rifle manufacturers and my own surname might notice the synchronistic irony.  My own ironic poisoning is due to the fact that I discover as someone writes out the name Puško on a notebook page of my short story ... which involves a sniper in the hills above Sarajevo.

Given my surname matches such a weapon and I was searching for the correct nickname for the character (I'd been told the actual one, that is, the character in this reality who is the basis for the character on the reality of the page--did you follow that?--but since I did not know the correct spelling, I wrote it phonetically...and since she is a she and not a he, the name is Puška), these moments of coincidence could easily be seen as just that: mere coincidence.  I see it all as pieces of a puzzle being given me to assemble.

A grail, if you will, from my time here in the field around the palace...

In the past of this reality, Puška wrote poetry between trigger pulls.

In the reality of the page, I am using the poetry of two people I know (slightly altered to fit the shading of the story).  They have not been asked for their permission yet, but I feel confident in my stealing their words for such a purpose.

They will be, as they have long been, my first readers.




~•~