19-XII-2010.
Sv. Nikola at my folks. More of a family celebration than any religious holiday, all those saints are slavic house gods anyway, redressed into christian personae, keeping their appropriate departments - this one is, for example, protector of travelers and seamen. This should be a fasting slava, which means fish only, but screw that job, mom roasted a goose and baked a cake so we can eat like humans. And we also brought something, I think quarter piglet. The only signs of any rite were the frankincense under the icon in granny's room, a candle (pink!) in the old holder and a flat brandy bottle decorated with some bearded guy, dunno whether it's the aforementioned saint, or someone from the Nemanjić or Mrnjavčević dynasties.
The snow from the other day still held, and new one fell on top of it, pristine white, just like it should. There's always a shortcut from us to them, but the middle third that path follows the railway track, which was a problem for bicycles, a blind track being diverted over it near the overpass, so lift the bike. Not so much of a problem to walk, though, there was always a nice path of tamped small gravel, almost sand, you could step on the pedals and just rush.
Except the path is no more, it's all overgrown with weeds and acacia bushes. There's no more industry, no workers taking trains to come to work, nobody to walk by the tracks, so nature took over. It was overgrown five years ago as well, but then it was a rainy summer... well so was this one as well... well, we forgot. Luckily, the trains are a few now too, so those 100m along the tracks can be walked on the tracks. The beams, however, are never at the right distance to walk - if twice you step on wood, third time you inevitably step between them, on the coarse ground stone.
Both Lena and I brought a Fujica, so there's a bunch of shots of this lunch. There was another guest, S.M., a house friend. Her husband was pals with dad, a big funny and all around good guy. He was literally a child of a fallen fighter, his father died in the late forties when they were chasing the banda* - now whether it was chetniks or balistas - so he was raised by his uncle(s), with some aid from the social workers. They had no children, don't know which disease in youth prevented that. He died around 1992 and she stayed in the apartment and contracted some kidney failure, so she did her own dialysis for the rest of her life.
I even made some video, which I edited in Virtual Dub. Watched it now, it's VGA resolution, best that Fujica could do, didn't put the headset on. Somehow it's unfitting to hear them again. Pictures, moving or not, are somehow okay with me, but voices... would be too strong to hear. Maybe once, later.
The tabletop hardware is a historic mix. The green glass plate with cakes is surely eighty years old or stronger than that; likewise the rosy wine glasses, that was granny's. The brown plates are newer, about eighties, knives even newer, but the spoons and forks are from their wedding, 1954. The wine in the glasses is either the last of dad's own, or from our common partner (won't name him here, he's mentioned too many times already).
Several kinds of salad - pickles, peppers, russian. (... 33 words...)
I stitched this now, from six shots that Lena made. The stitcher put S.P. twice around me, though, but the extra is in the corner - there's enough to see the whole trapese (trpeza - from the same greek word, check it out).
What I notice now: all the walls were repainted, someone did a job, but the doors are still the same old paint, what with layers of smoke in it. True, mom stopped smoking a couple of years ago. In 2005 she was not buying, she'd roll a few a day and that was enough for her.
Bread, normal, is gone. There's only this white shit, from the croissant/kifla dough, without soul. And we'll get used to more and worse things.
Afterwards Zina came by. She's grown nicely, will be a great chick and a half, soon.
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* i.e. bandits, the antcommunist units who w
Mentions: Fujica, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), slava, Zina, in serbian