20-XI-2021.: Walnut, gone
On fourteenth, on bicycles to the old house. We picked up the bills, I swept the leaves. The platan is huge now and produces a whole hill of leaves, and the pine isn't small either, some of its needles now end on the yard side of the roof. The girls enjoyed jumping into the leaf heaps. They also learned now how to wind up the bell spring on those old waker clocks (Linda's one fell apart, the bell part unscrewed)(I find the word „alarm“ too alarming, „al arme“ is military).
They found the big picture we printed after the last big lunch in 2016 and started recognizing the faces, except Raja and Violet were still quite little then. We somehow started from the right, then from left, never reaching the middle, where their dad was. There's more days.
The car parked at the gate is probably Zina's. The neigbor across used to park there before, to which I agreed, because he kept getting the resin from his pine on the car.
On fifteenth Borko called to say it's a no go for tomorrow, his dentist is stalling, left his teeth sharpened shark style, in preparation for the bridge, and the bridge is coming real soon now, some day this week. Ah yeah, we know the guy, Go was a customer (I thought it was Lena), who then chopped the work into bits like Lala cut the cat's tail, a centimeter a day to hurt less. What he could do in two sittings he dragged into six, charging 1000 dinars each... because he may have thought charging 6000 for just two would seem too much. None of us went to him anymore, but there he does. And he's got another dentist just below, at ground floor, same entrance, but no, he goes across the street, to the entrance where once Veca and Sneca used to live...
On seventeenth with the girls downtown (boththree! - Raja stayed at home with his mom), she was buying zippers and other small stuff in a shop behind main street. The blue hour, I shot a lot of pics. Even this entrance into stour's erc where I once worked.
This is Gimnazijska street; the building on the right is the gimnazija itself. I shot a better one later, from the other direction, in the dusk by the end of the blue hour, when the sky is still not dark but the lights already help. But I like this one nicelier*.
Went to Springfield today, but blank [shot] - someone has a birthday. The girls didn't complain, we just moved on to the little park behind the community [center]. She went with Linda to the butcher's to get some ground [meat] for sarma (and spaghetti, to which Raja is getting addicted, now we'll have them once a week until this passes; he's started growing again and gaining a torso, any moment now). When she came, I strolled to the kiosk to pay into her mobile phone (her number didn't quite expire, was just inaccessible) and buy local newspaper, because someone on burundi wanted to see the article about the strike in Linglong (it's not on front page but on fifth, it's not that reporter but some other guy, it's not whole page but less than half). There, I shot the article and posted it, let them read. The course of events was that this week it came up that of those 750 workers on the construction, some 500 are not Chinese but Vietnamese, cheated into coming, the intermediary company whom they paid to get here is gone, they were paid for one month only since may, their passports were taken, they have no heating, there are only two toilets, they sleep in some hangars (I didn't recognize any of the buildings on the videos). The big blame shift is taking its course, along the „and you didn't mind when...“ style, with a few unconvincing denials like „they're just fine in there“, „none of that is true“ etc. Had the video of them skinning a cat to roast it two weeks ago gone viral and danced around the internet in a day, perhaps none of this would have been known.
And then, well, when we already have the paper edition, let's look at the obituary. Fuckit. A year ago the strongest programmer in town has died (last seen 07-IX-2013., have a photo) and last week his son too. Wife and the other son remained. Then, the brother of Vlasta, whom I used to see regularly at the meetings of the org committee for maturski. And a year ago Brata died, whom I haven't seen since the eighties. And now never will.
Two or three disputes gained momentum then, in the bermuda triangle oldwave - rasejani - suština (newsroom mailing list). Fuckallmine if I remember what it was, it's all there, but it was mostly launched by Škrba's decision to quit the 400 club (3 guys, 400kg) or should we pull straws on who writes his eulogy soon. Then it was about chrono diets and keto diets and... and Kleks was gathering new hardware, and a new collection of Deep Purple came out and then it went into who's listening to what and how, which flowed into more about chrono diet, meanderking as the highest degree of logorrhea... all in all one regular wave, when we keep mum for months and then mount a tsunami of text. It's just that it happened in all three lists at the same time. At least this got me to steal text from here (i.e. Byo) and lay it out as a road trip - photo walk series of texts for suština, about that trip to Sokobanja two months ago. Omitted the leather jacket and the perfumes as irrelevant for the story.
The neighbor who was supposed to come cut down the walnut didn't come, three weeks now, so we found one, in small ads, and he came, took a look, said he'd drop by after the weekend, but here he was on thursday, 25th, with his wife. What a combination of a man - a Bosnian from Sarajevo, his mom is from Vrdnik (now whether she's a Bosnian or Sremica, remains unknown), and his day job is to... make burek for „Klasje“. He wanted to take the little blind one, the last surviving one from Siva's latest litter, but it got scared. Never mind, come back springtime.
He tricked the walnut in less than two hours, with minimal damage (one pierced pumpkin, mostly still usable), did everything exactly as we said, excellent.
After lunch the weather was still nice, so we took the small orchard saw and at least moved the branches off the path. We meant to continue the next day, but some crazy wind blew with real november rain, and we understood we wouldn't have room in the basement for all that. Only when we begin stoking. But at least we should pick the thinner ones, as soon as the weather allows.
In the evening, finally at Borko's, the 60th frendz parti. My cough returned, and while I was fine during the walk there, and climbed to 4th floor (5th...), I started getting tickles one by one. First I gave up on peanuts and almonds, the peel being an irritant. Then I skipped the vešalica [thin piece of better meat, litrally „hanger“, as in coat], too salty, excess salt makes me cough even when quite healthy. The one thing left was to mind how I smoked, and I already smoked half of the usual, lightly, maintaining the proper technique - enough oxygen, allow smoke in lungs only when I feel relaxed there and with enough volume... but no. At some point he asked me something about that cough, exactly at the moment when I was lighting [one up], don't even remember whether I finished that, and then I started coughing something short, with almost empty lungs, in a loop. I don't remember whether I managed to cough 4 or 5 times, when I had a surreal episode, which ended with a proper kiss but no, it was she, blowing air into my mouth... well okay, nice trick, I'll blow into yours as well... And then, when I came to, they explained that I fainted, my head fell into [my] plate, luckily empty (for the english version: „the plate, not the head“, for the lack of morphology and cases). Well, that passed too. This time it was me who, mercilessly and tactlessly, played musc on my nokla, unrelated and without context, as a demo exercise. No comment :).
The best part was when I recounted how I drove through Čurug, retelling the first paragraph of 03-VII-2015., and finish with „and then on the horizon I saw žabaljska šećerana, and it was not a bus, well felt warmer right away“. Dragana: „wait wait, what bus?“ „Line one, Žabaljska - šećerana... c'mon, it's passing by your corner every hour“. „Well you really are... don't tell me that you told the whole story only in order to insert this?“ „Well no... I actually forgot about that, but remembered near the end that I invented that joke long ago, „žabaljska šećerana existed in Zrenjanin for decades before it was built in Žabalj“. So no but yes, not in that order. Actually I took Borko's phone and glasses and found the article on suština, where st Peter asks someone for directions to Čurug... and that's how this began.
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* the old joke, invented by Živa: „how do you like it“ - „I like it nicely“, just elaborated a bit
Mentions: 07-IX-2013., 03-VII-2015., Brata Maljković, burek, burundi, Byo (Byo), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), erc, frendz parti, gimnazija, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, nokla, oldwave, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), sarma, Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), Springfield, stour, suština, šećerana, Vera Stojanović (Veca), Violet, Vlasta Čkuljić, Zina, Živa Ravajlović, in serbian