The Croatian paradise

Rovinj is the European equivalent to Zanzibar, the paradise on the Earth. Run-down windows, decaying walls, speechless windows and streets in which cars are unable to fit now & tomorrow. The town is bursting with joy and laughter and things simply feel good in this city. Cafes sprinkled around the Stari Grad (old town), homemade ice cream with a selection of pistachio and yoghurt and whatever your mind can think of. Italian tourists speaking their own language and the Croatian is tuned down from place to place as they have lost their position as an overwhelming majority in this part of the country. You take the hand of you loved one in secret, because someone could still you & scream something at you, yell, mock, attack, but you are too much in love with the serenity, with the silent words craved in the air for centuries and and most importantly you are too much in love with a person who is everything to your mind & heart & soul. Rovinj holds you tightly & 

everything is alright once again.

They want to be something

-- wandering, lingering.

Once you were not much to look at.

Today you are beautiful.

Take a coffee in this street

-- watch them wandering, lingering

while you sip your coffee & smoke a cigarette.

It goes on & on,

never ends.

And it all is so old, you think.

I think I fell in love with the windows

-- they have told me more than you could ever

said even if you read aloud the dictionary to me.

We all linger, wander.

But we live, too.

What is happening?

Take my hand &

you will be safe.

It has been impossible to write lately. Four years ago I wrote stories every second night, because there was nothing else to do. I had no other life than fictional, containing of words that never existed anywhere else than in my mind. I would bring the unreal world alive artificially, but no matter how hard I would try, it would be nothing more than imagination and painted images in a place, which is visited only by few. Since meeting S last year, I had had too much happening in my life. There is always something that takes my time, either it's me sobbing for not being with him or it's me being so happy for being with him. I ceased writing long time ago and I am afraid that I will never be able to write ever again, that stories, the fiction, the imagination slipped through my fingers. My only reason to write so I can live in a world that would be only mine, that would be my creation and that no one else would be able to touch, perhaps I was too afraid of living in this place where everyone else seems to live, too. When I was with my ex-boyfriend, I still found time to write my miseries and worries down, everything was under control. Things have changed since I met S in Strasbourg over a year ago. And I think I should be happy about the fact that I have no need to escape anymore. However, I miss it. There. I said it. I miss escaping.

I have lived in Croatia for six months now, a bit more than that. I moved here, because I was in love with a Croatian man who had finished his university-degree when I only started my high school. There has been a lot of tears and bashing heads against the wall - literally. Sometimes I wonder what happened, at what point I decided to take the control for real. Everything was fine previously. Studying with a full scholarship at a prestigious university in the United States. Getting drunk with people who enjoyed life more than they enjoyed misery. Flying in the clouds with friends who would call you at 5am after a long night of partying, wanting a friend next to them, worried for themselves and not knowing what to do. Studying hard in order to get an A in Arabic and making the dreams come true, the dreams you thought you still had at the moment. And still with a full confident I can say I have never been happier than in my current city. I am happier here than I was last fall in Paris with him. I am content, although worried very often. I get anxious from time to time and I pick up fights with him, because I am insecure. I am afraid and there are too many things that make me feel sick and keep awake in the nights. I wonder what life would be like if I had not come here. I think that maybe I lost my freedom too fast, too early, perhaps I committed before I should had. These thoughts do rush in my mind and then I doubt my happiness, my decisions but I have realized that there will be always things that are not as you wish them to be. There will be an endless number of things you want, it is a cycle and no one is able to escape from that, no matter how much you write, dream, sing, reminisce... Even after everything, I know I am happy. Even with every single doubt that I have in my mind.

I feel like writing now, because he's sleeping the next door, snoring and I am awake, because there are worries and nostalgia keeping me away from resting my eyes. My friend, who became my friend four year ago when we two were selected as the UWC-scholars to Swaziland, visited me here. She is the first friend of mine who ever saw him and I have been with him for one year, three months. Everything felt suddenly real and I became nostalgic, craving for the past, wanting life to be easy. I remember how simple things were when I lived in Swaziland, although at the time it seemed as if everything was collapsing and there was no way to cope with the problems. My time in Croatia is coming to end; I am moving next fall to the Netherlands to start my Bachelors-degree once again. He is trying to find a job there, but most of the time life gets in your way and you and everyone around you becomes sad. People ask me aren't you a bit too old to start university, aren't you afraid that you did the wrong decision last December by dropping out from the college? In a year I have seen the United States, Canada, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Austria and Hungary. In the next following two months I will see Spain, Bulgaria and maybe Slovenia and Turkey. I live with the man who is more than the man of my dreams. I am content and I can tell everything to someone who is there for me literally all the time. I have experienced more life, more feelings and emotions that I had ever witnessed before making the decision that brought me here. I am alive in the real world.

That's what is happening.

Rome stole everything from Pula except for her love

This is not Rome, you whispered.

I know, this is something more.

This is where we met.

I worship no else than you,
no else than you is my God.
Your heart is my altar.

You fantasized about red buildings in
the small alleys of a Croatian coastal city.

You said one day we would have an apartment here
& this would be the place where we would grow old.

Together, I added.

From the balcony we would watch tourists and locals
whispering gossiping chatting yelling discussing
and in the balcony we would be
kissing loving being
happy.

Trg means square in Croatian, you guided me.
Volim te means I love you, I said.

Volim te ovaj u trgu.
And everywhere else.

Rome stole everything that this city has,
its heart, its beauty, its life, its world and mind.

You were not right, though.
The city has still its love.

And no one will ever be able to steal it.

What do you say about yellow buildings instead of red buildings?
It doesn't matter as long as you are in the building with me.
What do you then say about yellow buildings in which I am
instead of red buildings in which I am?
You made me laugh.

Windows after windows, they keep telling stories in a strange language
that only two of us could talk -- that's how you & I felt and that's how
you & I will feel forever.

Walking through the gates, your palm reaching out to mine
& and I am not afraid anymore.

Do you see the seagull?
What seagull?
That one, just above the building.
Are you just making fun of me? You know seagulls are extinct,
they kept falling out of love cheating after cheating.
No, I am not! Really it is there!

See, just above the antenna!
.......
I told you so!
But that's impossible, that cannot be....
If you asked others, the love we have is impossible, too.
(I began to be speechless and you just held my hand
& everything made sense.)

(One night when I slept in the red apartment of ours, you left.
You came back and I didn't noticed you being gone.
In the morning you took me out for a walk
& there was a drawing of me in the building.

You told me once again,
you love me.)

(And I was unable to mutter anything back,

I was too lost in words, but you understood

everything & you knew, that

I loved you, too.)

One day we live in a blue house! We simply have to live in all of the prime colors.

As long as you are...

...yes yes, I know, as long as I am with you, you will live anywhere.

Yes.

Do you know your heart beats for me?

We fell in love with a city whose identity was robbed by Rome,

but whose love was untouchable for anyone & everyone.

(My heart beats only if I you are next to me.)

I love you

This Eastern, you and I, we were together someplace we never thought we would ever be. We never imagined that we could be together; you lived here and I lived there and you were something and I was something else. However, we made things work and we fell in love even more than we used to and everything is so much happier now. You held me and said I love you more than I loved you in Paris. I only look at you without any reply and you smile. No more words were needed.

Complexity

They say things will be easy when you grow up; the universe will expand and the marriage between the oceans will be legalized. However, the more you become older the more complex things seem to get. One moment you worry about the papers that you might have lost and the next second you have to cook as relatives that you probably have not seen since your cousin got married in Hong Kong a few years ago decided to drop by out of nowhere. We always think as children that oh only if I was fifteen and could do everything; at that age you realize that there are even more things that are denied and you keep wishing to be older; by the time you reach the age when everything is allowed, nothing seems to be tempting anymore. Life has taken over you and Hong Kong and Paris and Rio de Janeiro are dreams that you can only dream of and they are even more distant than they used to be. And suddenly you wish you were a child again.

I should be content at this moment; I am in love with a person who loves me. That used to be my dream, that used to be everything that I wanted and that was all. I thought if that ever happened, everything would be perfect and dreams were not needed anymore. However, dreams are still necessary and unfortunately we crave even more. I am in Croatia and there is nothing do as I barely can say my name in the language that was completely unfamiliar to my tongue. My loved one has his work, his life, his family, his friends, his thing in this city and I am beginning to get used of feeling being "all by myself". I spent daily nine hours doing almost nothing, wondering and littering the streets of Osijek and there is a little else I can do. My friend said I am like an American middle-class housewife only without children and certainly the feeling strikes to be fairly similar. I have no education nor can I become anything. My work is completely nothing and everything is handled by my husband; I have no authority and no knowledge and I seem to be a puppet with strings. I just follow and I have never followed before in my life. It makes me feel empty.

Last week I found out that University of Maastricht wants to interview me and I am rather terrified as it is the only university that has given me an invite for an interview. I know I am in a weak position. I am a kid that threw away Middlebury College in order to live with the person I love. I wish things were simple. However, now I believe they will never be simple anymore. They will only get more complex.

(Photo from New Delhi, Summer 2009.)