23-IV-2013.
The anniversary of Sneca's death. Veca didn't invite anyone, but dad remembered and called her in advance. She rode her bike to the city market (not the little one near ruža, to buy a little vacuum sucker, this time a bit stronger and not running on battery. The one we bought last year simply didn't have the capacity, couldn't run more than 15 minutes at a time and then took 24h to recharge, and there's a lot of Colorado potato beetle to suck in and flush. This one runs on 220V, and I got a total of 80 m of cable at hand. Specially with an extra row of potatoes she planted this saturday (which is actually three 25m long rows between the old first row and the extra path we dug this time).
As soon as I was finished with building and test running the most recent build of Feds, we took off to pick him up and drove to the cemetery. Just a few people were there - Veca and her daughter, Sneca's son and husband, a local painter who was their house friend, three people from her work, one of whom seems to be her last employer. One of them sort of expected me to recognize her - she said she worked in Bangro, where Avai was renting space. Yeah, right, we were flying in and out all the time, and there were a hundred of them. In those four years I think I saw Sneca no more than three times in the building.
Then we drove to Veca's place, and I had a minor accident along the way. On the yellow bridge I was sixth in the line before the light, with a big truck as the first, and I needed to get into the left lane. I spotted a chance when there was only one small car on the other side, and squeezed my way through - and my right mirror touched the mirror of the guy who was in front of me. I didn't stop, these mirrors are plastic and spring loaded so they just swivel and you just put them back by hand.
But the guy found me some twenty minutes later and was rather angry. He showed me that I actually scratched his rear left corner... well, yeah, there was a thin 20cm line there, simple waxing would render it invisible. I didn't want to argue, rather openly confessed I miscalculated the distances, tried to make the damage look minimal (at least to him, to counter his attempts to make it a big deal)... „but why didn't you pull over? it's customary“ - „why should I? It was plastic on plastic, no damage, and then I'm in the left lane, you're in straight, I'd have to drive a kilometer to get to you or vice versa, and even so, next 300m in either direction there's no place one could park, not to mention two“ and then "look, I got about 3000 dinars on me, would that cover this?". The guy's anger rapidly evaporated, and he ended the deal "you know I work in the police, you can imagine what I could have done to you, but seeing you are a good honest person...". Later I heard that even having an official note stating the extent of the damage (which was probably about 1000 dinars altogether) doesn't work, as there are well trained teams of, practically, ambulance chasers who'd just forge the paper to have a few zeros more, make it all very official and get you into a he said she said situation, where they'd have a friendly doctor confirming serious injuries etc and you can lose your pants. So what the others during the lunch said I overpaid - well, that's the cost of not having to know this guy.
In the evening went to DC-99, I took the bike and my rear mudshield lost its upper holder (which is a flimsy piece of thin sheet metal). Tried driving like that, but it rubbed against the rear tire. Then I got the idea to prop it up using the old bungee cord I still had on the rear rack. Worked.
At the club, one of the guys was showing his stuff. Excellent memory, he remembered each photo's year, camera, film, lens. Seems to be he's learned a lot from Helmut Newton, at least about the inscenation, which he translated into local landscape and his own aesthetics. True, Joška is still the strongest erotic shooter in the club, but he didn't comment much.
Then went on to have a beer with the exibitor guy and Miško outside at theatre club (actually zelenozvono). Along the walk there we chatted about photography in general and his exibits in particular, and my stance was „I means wat, there's those guys who bring a chick, park her any random way and keep snapping, so full of themselves for making art photo. Mnyah, big deal, we see the cunt, so what, fuckya we saw thousands of them, let's rather see what else, apart from the cunt, you wanted to show, what did you do there, does it bear some sense, intention, is at least the surrounding... “. „Now as you said about cunts, we've seen thousands... these girlies were passing by and they heard you and looked at you and kept looking back as we went“.
Though, what he showed there, on at least first ten photos I wasn't sure whether the butt was female or male, the person didn't gravitate too strongly either way, and those thongs were a bit weird. See the detail on the pic above.
Then I walked half way home because I forgot to bring the front light for the bike (the detachable 5-LED job running on batteries). Then I drove on sidewalks and when I got past the precinct I remembered that my old, dinamo powered light still works. Turned it on and got home.
Mentions: Avai, Bangro, DC-99, Feds, Joška Apro, Miško Lenđel, ruža, Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), Vera Stojanović (Veca), zelenoZvono, in serbian