Today I brought the fresh issue of "Student" and the incredibly funny (yet intelligent and requiring some erudition to understand) text by Vujica Rešin Tucić, a young poet at the time (and I did hear his name mentioned a few times later, not a mayfly), titled "Panta rhei". Contains such pearls as
"Young virgin broad, are you hurt?"
"I aint, thanks to dick."
I won't explain the meaning, just that it's full of incongruent language - the sentence, overly polite by form, is composed from words from the street. There's also a hook with arsepatch (a plant here, which sticks to your clothes), spring-loaded police baton, balls on the button, a crowbar with cute little blue loops of currare. It's mostly about the false intellectuals who banned some of the previous issues of the paper. There were even footnotes, 1) Aeschilus, "Persians", line 354 (which may be even correct, but who'd bother to check, specially as the referenced line contained a cunt), 2) Pausanias, an ancient Greek of whom nothing is known, 3) kurate kick - kick in the balls (kurac is serbian for dick), 4) kurtončić - a tiny rubber hose for a smallish dick (see previous, which somehow rhymed with Couton, the inventor of the preservative, and ended up being called kurton).
I gave it, in turn, to Zova, Bajče, Sredljak, Višnja (her sister read it to her - hey, she's got a sister)
"In the first circle" by Solženjicin, in theatre. Great russian writer, watered and deadened down text on the scene. Perhaps too heavy for these occasions when the school buys off the evening and then sells tickets in the classes.
I was sitting in a cubicle, 2nd floor as usual, snug between Slavka (behind her back, one leg behind her, one to her right) and Dragana (tigh to tigh, oooh). There was a scene, overdramatized, when a harsh voice orders "kissing is forbidden", and then Slavka says "kiss me, Dragana". Then the lights went out, so Dragana didn't see that Slavka turned away to talk with someone in next cubicle, so she kissed me, near my eye. "Whom did I kiss now?" "Not me..." "Aim better next time, you didn't gauge my eye". But then during the intermission I spotted D.M. and Višnja in the center lodge and moved straight there. I didn't specifically hit on her, this evening I decided I liked them both.
A week later it was becoming dangerous to ask me about doček.
Once I stood with Višnja, D.M. and Zova and had trouble getting rid of him. The day before he got the hint and vanished, but not this time. Then Mogi (the other PE teacher) appeared on the horizon, and Zova teleported away, presto. The reason for this is that he's got the key to the small practice hall, where he usually plays ping pong with Bajče, and he'd like to return the key, if possible, after the winter break, so they can sneak in and play at will. Though they are both in the same village... why here? They liked the story, now that I was alone with them... I complained about the 27 creatures I see every day, and the other fourteen who parade in front of us ("Hey", said D. to the other one, "listen to this way of expression"), "it's such a relief to have this kind of break, have a chat in better company, life becomes bearable", but they weren't really listening. Still, they wished me luck on geography. And I needed it... because the old hag went on with new stuff (sent her a kiss) then started summoning (pulled it back)... Kristina is not here, Gradivoj... no, Sredljak to the blackboard... to which I got up, saying along the way "just when you finally started distinguishing us, you are getting confused again". "Aah right, I know, you're the one with -ić, yes." "Good, you got it right this time." "Very well, tell me now what you know about Bulgaria."
The class was all ears, they knew something's afoot.
"See, they all wait to hear what you will say now, they expect a spectacle, is it true?"
"Well it's understood that I'm not talking solely to you, but to the whole class. It's in everyone's blood."
"Alright, do begin."
"Bulgaria is a balkan country, lucky to have exit to the Black sea, but also lucky to be on Danube, and have a an exit into the west Europe that way"
"Sorry to interrupt, but when you mentioned the -ić, I remembered that, when us yugos cross their borders, if the surname ends with -ov there's nothing to pay, if it's -ić then you have to exchange some ten thousand at the border".
"I also think it's ten thousand."
"So he would pass and you would have to pay."
"He told me once his uncle served on the border, and had -ić appended to his surname, who knows why, probably political reasons, so now he has a brother-by-uncle with -ić to surname".
"Really? There's all kinds of things. Continue."
"Ah, speaking of border crossing, just remembered how they want to develop tourism - Varna, Burgas, Zlatni Pjasci, but when we cross their border they treat us as a western coutnry. Probably political reasons, for it can't be denied that Bulgaria is a member of Varšavski pact, hence being under influence of soviet bloc. So they put us among capitalists!"
"Discriminate against us."
"Well yes. If they really want tourism, they should open their borders like we do, not like this... Bulgarians, as a people, are considered slavic, but they..." (and there I inserted what Spužva told us about them being Tatars from Volga, hence the name). "Cities... apart from Sofia as capital, there's Dimitrovgrad, actually two cities of that name, and I think we once found a third one but couldn't find it again. (bluffing, we didn't) And then there's Ruščuk, as they call it but, wait, wait, I'll remember how... ah yes, we call it Ruse. Or Romanians do."
"Alright alright, let's see what you know about Switzerland."
Whew. Felt better right away. I had no clue about Bulgaria, this was all bluff from general knowledge. Didn't even know any rivers (still don't), and economy would fit into two sentences (vegetables and rose oil, some metal and coal, what else... zero). Now Switzerland...
"Switzerland is an alpic country, languages... borders with ... and Lichtenstein on the french side. The destiny has given them to be a mountainous land, but the witty Swiss managed to turn that into an advantage. There's very little field, but cattle is phantastically developed."
"Don't say it that way, that's no in the spirit..."
"Alright then, astonishingly developed."
"Not that either, please..."
"But wouldn't you be astonished seeing cattlegrowing so developed? Specially the dairy production, where the milk is used to make two things nobody else has: cheese and chocolate."
"Did you ever eat swiss chocolate?"
"Encountered a couple of times."
"There's none here."
"Didn't say we bought it... but in the camp, visiting foreign friends in the afternoon, one finds..."
"Ah, so."
"Actually the Swiss say the production by itself is not profitable. Take one of theirs and ours, say, Kraš's chocolate - the difference is perhaps in two shades of taste. But the recipe is jealously guarded, because those two shades of taste, that's worth millions! And that's what the Swiss mean to live on in the future!"
"Really? Didn't know that."
"The other specialty is precise mechanics. Swiss clocks are something! (showing my wrist) Here, a swiss one, works like a clock" (she finally notices, murmur in the class).
"But an old one."
"What, just three years, not much. And as a filmmaker I can say that the swiss Bolex cameras are the best - one costs as much as a Renault 6, and that's the cheapest model. Yet another swiss specialty is banks. Thanks to the country's neutrality, all the surrounding forces were piling the loot into swiss banks. Whichever way it turns, Swiss reap the benefits. ... (two minutes bullshit about banks) ... The Swiiss make money on anything. Imagine all those mountains, heaps of snow, lots of trouble - yet they make money on that too, by developing winter tourism. And not the simple tourism, it's the most famous places, like Sen Moritz for the most rich, the Aga Kan, Richard Burton and others. Who hasn't been to Sen Moritz, can be considered a failure - in life!" (whole class laugs)
"Right so. Sen Moritz is a measure of success."
"And then the lakes - Zurich, Boden, Geneva"
"And Davos"
"Ah, yes, Davos. They even had olympic games... was it in Davos?"
"Don't know, I haven't heard"
She interrupted me in the middle of list of other cities and summoned Staša. I heard I got a solid five. She's nuts. Later I was congratulated for
1. screwing her up like nobody because
2. I didn't even mention resources or industry in Bulgaria
3. for mocking her left and right with her noticing nothing
4. getting a five for bullshit.
Went to the club to check on the tape. The said 16mm Bolex camera, which we borrowed this spring to do that long movie on the city, was now a debt to be called. They were preparing a traffic light at my side of the bridge, so I was supposed to help the mandatory technical study by providing a few minutes of tape showing the congestion. So I had climbed up to some high window in the police HQ and taken a shot of the bridge as a positioning/intro, then shot the congestion as it was progressing, inserting brief shots of my watch just to show when it happened. The inverter was a bit stale, so there was a periodic shade waving on the left edge, but otherwise this went fine. Pop was there and brought V.'s brother and another pal of his (whom I saw maybe once more afterwards).
24-V-2021 - 30-VI-2024