Elections in Serbia
Don’t remember what year it was that I started following the elections in Serbia. I do remember that it was a week in Gornji Vakuf. No one went anywhere. Not just us expats holed up in our wall. The city was open you just had to knock hard. Low levels of cooked wine eventually would send someone out. We started watching the protests in Serbia. To this day I believe if it wasn’t below well that old van wasn’t starting anyways. Lucky for us it wasn’t a full blown revolution. It was good to hear anything from that mysterious continent.
I went the first time to Serbia in 1997 contrary to every plan I had ever made; I really chopped my first firewood there. Sometimes the universe speaks to us. Sometimes we see what something is being said. Does it really matter what it means. Something not nothing we see. The stars spoke to my people of order that was impossible in their daily lives. The night sky not the internet blazed across their cyber reality.
For my people, the Celts; yes my Serbian people I am from their. My people lived their before there were your people in the area. We come from the Danube you see. That is our work that even Microsoft knows how to spell check. Our cemeteries are older. All pointed one direction down the sea. For us it was very simple. There must be two worlds. This one now and this one other. This chaos and this order.
People have a toughness that is constrained by how we perceive this one now. We saw no sense and the only answer another life. There was no other possibility. The universe we see could not have been created for this one now. My people charged in to battle under every flag and no flag. From chaos purpose. From fear certainty. How was this our simple revolution so lost.
You got to understand where I am coming from. I talking Serbian politics so I will not leave first unanswered the mantra you would have to call it…you don’t understand, you aren’t from here. In point of fact my people were in Belgrade long before there ever was one. They didn’t write anything down. That’s the funny thing about my people. We had this crazy idea that you should have people to powerful…wealth brought family problems. We were democratic basically. So many tribes working for many crazy power hungry men. My people got wiped of the Balkan and many other places. We can still be found here or there. Mainly now the Irish, Manx and Scot which I am all three.
Our oral tradition was not a weakness. The bards of my line spent 20 years learning their trade. Those spooky druids just about everything else. We had the first hospitals the victors distorted the truth and for the most part my people forgot their stories. Manx is hardly spoken, but when you throw one there you will find him standing. The cyber reality super highway of information only scraps and inklings remain of the power. The weakness was that it could be shared equally. My people were mostly volumes of books that took 5000 generations to write and they were mostly burned. There was many scraps lost in Alexandria. Our power was to the people and that clashed with what calls it self-western democratic tradition. Actually quite literally with Athens itself. We were Rome’s bogyman. You ask me we just made the wrong call not wiping them out in BC several occasions.
So my people are your countries native Serbians. Indian Serbians would be way to confusing. You have to face basic facts and so does my current country. There is really too many most of the time too many and good enough is good enough. Society needs priorities. Countries and people need to work for one motive. Mostly we never do. If there are 10 million Serbians or 8 million Serbians is a false comparison. If you build them they will not come. It can’t be the focus.
6-10 Lunar Eclipse
Sometimes the universe gives you signs and clear indications. Sometimes we stop and we realize and pay attention. Leaving Serbia, as parts of the world began to recognize Kosovo as some new part of Europe, there was this lunar eclipse I watched as I drove to the airport in Belgrade. Down the road from Nis. Leading due north I followed the eclipse of the moon. Arrive 5 am Belgrade? Just now the bit through the city up to the airport. The speed limit reduced. Out through new Belgrade I slept over one bridge. Five lives in my hand moments from my destination. This sign and conversation and indication to me of the road ahead was not an end. Awake in the parking lot keys in someone else’s pocket this was easy to believe.
I have been down many roads. All my life is borrowed time. Dangers come not everywhere and not every time. Perhaps the universe has less sense than I Believe. However, we flew out of Belgrade by 7am or so; they didn’t set the Embassy on fire till well in the afternoon. The Serbian government closed the schools that day and offered every one free train tickets to the capital city. They just live on borrowed time.
My interest in the Balkans is a longing in part of me to understand another geology. The watersheds of another’s existence; the actual pathways of our runoff. When I first saw the river Bosna I saw the waters flow to the same place. There where pieces of me alive in ways they had never been. The river Nisava now trickling its way down the road between east and west. It wasn’t special. It was something real.
My own people had trek these lands. Don’t know exactly which and certainly not all, but many a love on the Balkana I owe for my life. As I do most paths out of mother Africa. It is funny to me when Balkan political spinners tell me I couldn't understand because I am not from there. There are few places I am not from.
I meet strangers who find it hard to believe that I have come to comprehend anything of the Balkana; I ponder those watching the birds so closely as to see they have lost sink with their environment. Where and when they go is not the same. So many whispers of the reality of climate change. I ponder the bounty we and perhaps no other human may ever see.