I can dig. See? I got a shovel.

Sarajevo War Poster c. 1993

Getting close...

I've got a few meetings scheduled in Serbia, Sarajevo, and Croatia.  Hoping to have a few more lined up by the time i depart for the mythic realm that was Yugoslavia.

This long weekend break from school, I'll make a trial of packing things for the trip to see where I'm at as far as space and weight goes, continuing reading, set up my profile and mission statement on Couch Surfing, and sketch a geographic itinerary.  I've made some orders for books and a couple of items I still need for the Travelogue, but  other than that, I need only to stay focused on the remaining weeks of school and the three papers and two exams left this semester.  Then three weeks of nothing but work and antici ... pation.  :)

50 days from now I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic en route to Heathrow before the immediate hop from there to Budapest.

Life may be sweeter for this, I don't know...


· • ·

Contact. 3... 2... 1...

So I finally got off my electronic missives to a couple of notable persons in the Balkans.  Directors Danis Tanović and Emir Kusturica.  Incidentally, both are Sarajevans, with one having returned to Sarajevo after the wars and the other relocating in (apparently) more than merely geography from where he was before the wars.

I would feel honored and privalaged if I can even have a correspondence with them, let alone getting to meet and speak with them first-hand.

52 days until I hop on that big ol' jet airliner that will carry me to Far Away.

Excitement is starting to simmer at a mid-boil.  :)


· • ·

In Memoriam.

One of my war heroes died Sunday morning.

Margaret Moth did all of her combat shooting with a camera.  She survived being shot in the face in Sarajevo in 1992, but she fell prey to the cancer snipering down the alley of her intestines.

Gravity feels a little heavier, the air a little thicker, today.


· • ·

Writing a roped puma

Imagine two people holding a captured puma on a rope.
If they want to approach each other,
the puma will attack, because the rope will slacken;
only if they both pull simultaneously on the rope
is the puma equidistant from the two of them.
That is why it is so hard for they who read
and they who write
to reach each other:
between them lies a mutual thought captured on ropes
that they pull in opposite directions.

―Milorad Pavić


· • ·

Admira & Boško, 1968-1993

Lipe cvatu
Sve je isto ko i lani, hej
Samo srce moje i srce tvoje
U ljubavi više ne stoje...


Lime trees blossom
everything is the same as last year, hey
only in your heart and my heart
the love no longer stands...


· • ·

Sarajevan Humor: The Curfew

This guy is going home and is stopped by two guards.

"Where are you going?" one of the guards asks, "It's late."

"I know, I'm trying to make it home before curfew," the guy says.

So the guard shoots him dead.

"Why'd you do that?" the second guard asks, "It's still 20 minutes before curfew."

"Yes," the first guard says, "But I know where that guy lived, and he couldn't have made it home in time."


· • ·