Last ten days, the weather being typical end of november (and until then it was untypical, calm and mild, almost no rain), we didn't get out much. We settled into something resembling a winter daily rhythm - Nina would sleep until lunch, she until six or eight, girls until about ten, Raja and Violet would gradually switch from accidental synchronization with the daylight to their separate cycles (presently they'd stay all night, and go to sleep at some point, with Violet occasionally staying up until morning). I'd have my wild swings - sometimes I'd sleep from two or three until noon, sometimes I'd wake up at 5:30 (bladder pressure is the best alarm clock, its timing is random but it's implacable), then go back to bed or not, depending whether I'd feel like it or as woken up. In the latter case I'd take a nap on the couch sometimes before lunch, most definitely after it, or in some cases stubbornly ramble trough the day without any.
She usually takes the girls out for a walk once a day - either in that stereo pram, which is somehow miraculously still in one piece, either on foot. For days I intended to go activate my new debit card, from the other bank, which I wanted to do from their serekeš, where they charge nothing and I can change the PIN so it's the same on both cards. Intended but didn't, because I'd either be napping, or it was windy - finally yesterday I got on my bike during the last hour of sunshine (which goes behind the buildings as early as 16:00 so close to winter solstice). Froze off my fingers and toes, the chinese gloves aren't for skiing ("tlista dinala" - "thlee hundled dinals") and my Kompako shoes are too loose, the wind gets in. Definitely the time for winter shoes.
Saw noone, did nothing, entered no building, just got my cash for the month and pedaled home. But it was great, the chill did me well.
Being so much inside, I'm spending a lot of time at the keyboard. Which means doing Byo, mostly going through my old diary. Photographing one notebook takes about one cigarette break, it's fast, though with the weight of eos70 of 1,3kg, the hand begins to shake every 30 pages, so some shots are smudged a bit. What's unreadable, didn't happen. These weeks I was going over 1970 and came to middle of 1971, which means I got through the end of elementary and first grade of high school, and all the emotional turmoil of the time. And I kind of got myself into the feeling, not quite reliving it all, but reading my own life more closely. Self.memory.refresh(), as we'd say.
So I was amazed, actually, how it all went - the approaches, the attempts, the episodes, the ambient... what with Miljka, Duca, V., and now Melanija. Well, what I remembered of myself at the time is sometimes just as bad, sometimes much worse than how I really was - not by what I wrote about myself, but about what I did and wrote about the deed. And where, when, with whom, all those dances, parties, evenings on štrafta, moviegoing. And despite all the failures of then, it was still only the first grade and I kept learning the magnificent art of human relationships. Perhaps not as fast as I would have wanted, but then, as Bajlo once said about the whole four years, "you were the only guy in the class who had a girlfriend". So, the other dozen guys failed much worse, but I didn't know it then.
So curiosity got the better of me, and last night I looked Melanija up. Thought to search on name, city, year of birth (should be 1958 or 1959), because the girls get married and with these generations the maiden name happened far before the internet, so there would be no trace... but then why not, both name and surname are rare enough, can't be too many duplicates. So I gave it a try, last night, on cimet, while listening to some music after watching "Could atlas" by Wachovskies (in good russian dub, from "aunt from Kaliningrad", which is a thinly veiled codeword for rutracker.ru website, where we get the torrent files). And bingo, there she was, with a PhD to her name. Not quite the specialty of her father, also a scientist, something unrelated but from a different angle. And she's working at MIT and few other glorious places. Wow.
And then I found out the family gallery, where she's present as a toddler, looking pretty much like one of ours. But first a few smallish but sufficient portraits of her as she's now (or ten years ago, as academia wouldn't exactly reshoot everyone's faces every now and then) and she's looking just the same. Perhaps a bit wider in the body, but the face is just the same as I remember it. That look, that bit of a smile. I'm almost tempted to email her. For a few minutes, I entertained thoughts about a different timeline, with her, and wondered what would it look like, and whether she'd have such a big career if she were with me - or, for that matter, what may my career look like. Well yeah, that's what comes from too much SF.
The next day it occurred to me to try for some videos, and there she was, from about three years ago, yes a bit wider but still elegant, with no facial affectations one would expect at that age, same as she ever was. Didn't dare turn on the sound, that would be too much, don't want to get that sentimental. Memorized her email address (which is truly simple), but don't dare disturb the waters. Let her be.
Adds one more to the mystery of blondes in my life. While I was never a womanizer, I always found myself more in the female than male company. And of those among them, statistically, only about 10% are natural blondes. The statistical anomaly is that of all the girls with whom I was in various levels involved with - from this "just talked, never held hands" to a lifelong commitment - about two thirds were natural blondes. Who was attracted to whom there?