Iva’s WTF site – Squirrelism.net

In one of my most recent blog entries, I talked about how my mad father decided to cross inner German border illegally in the late 70s, for fun, idiocy or whatever was on his mind. I guess I forgot to mention than my mom’s aunt Milena/Emilia and her husband Max were living in western Berlin and that mom and dad would be ending up at the checkpoint Charlie quite frequently. Also, our dear friend Lynne was living in Berlin with her Greek husband before she moved to Athens and then divorced and ended up in Beograd. Her stories were really interesting as well.

I’m becoming obsessed with stories from the period of cold war. Perhaps because I’m a tragic-romantic and sad and depressing/pessimistic stories are somehow attracting me. I would so love to watch Wie feuer und Flamme/Nevermind The Wall movie, I’ve been trying to find it ever since it was out in 2001. At the same time, I swallowed Wir Kinder von Bahnhoff Zoo when I was only 15 years old and let’s say that the book had ENORMOUS implact on some of my views on people and decisions made later in life…in 2004, mom even made me watch the movie and “think about what kind of people should be impressing me instead”.

What a human being can go through has always been impressive to me. When I was very little, I saw the Wall break on television, I saw people smile, I was crying and thinking of how it would be like to crash all the borders of the world and live in an utopia with no repression, no fear and no pain. On the only day of my life when I actually smiled broadly, I also cried because a person totally irrelevant to me suddenly screamed out NO BOUNDARIES and praised the eastern Europeans for their efforts.

How do I see freedom? For me, freedom is not based on forgetting one’s own heritage, nation, language and what one’s country has been through. Freedom is being YOU in a world that has no problems with you being you. I don’t get people who change their names to make them sound more foreign and then use stupid excuses, such as “my American friend cannot pronounce this”. If someone asks me what I am, I will of course say that I’m a Serb, who adores the whole Balkans and the most of southern Europe and, well, prefers south Europeanand south American mentality to all other known stereotype mentalities; but basically, I have nothing against any place in the world. Nothing against any nation. A lot against some humans in particular; but I am doing my best not to generalise things and say something such as “all Scandinavian women are pornstars” or “all southern Italians are mobsters”.

One day, my mom promised to take me to Berlin. I was not paying much attention to it until I became obsessed with its history which is now my second favourite after, obviously, Beograd history. However, knowing how such things affect me. it would be a good idea for my Berlin-curse to last even longer. Basically, Berlin is a city that never wanted me. Whenever I wanted to go there, while Milena was still alive, she didn’t want me to see her suffer as she was tied to bed with Parkinsom disease; and when she died, Germany rejected my visa application, because of which I was not applying for an longer-time- EU-country visa for more than seven years, out of pure anger and fear. In 2006, mom wanted us to go there together, but in the end, we opted for a totally different plan to spend the rest of the year. So, it will happen sometime. We’ll basically go to see Milena and Max’s grave and arrange to have that transfered to Serbia and place them close to my grandmother and my grandmother’s second husband; but there will be much, much more to it and I’m aware of it. I’ll need to mentally prepare myself for that.

Either way, reading of the tragedies that occured to people who were crossing the wall, I stumbled upon the story of the first person who actually crossed the wall, 19-year-old Conrad Schumann. He was an Eastern German soldier, working on construction and, at that moment, the wall was only a strap of barbwire. Some people from the other side saw Conrad and yelled: “Komm rüber! Komm rüber!” And well, he jumped over the barbwire; and it was captured forever by a photographer called Peter Leibing.

The most people would say: “Oh, that was so brave.” I wouldn’t. While I think it was one of the best anarchism moments of the human civilisation, I wondered about consequences. Did that boy have a family waiting for him in some apartment, with high ceilings and flower tapestries on the wall? Was his mother preparing his favourite meal? Did he have friends? A girlfriend? Anyone? Sudden decisions made on fly are something I do not really understand and I do not believe in overnight changes. From a couple of examples, including my own, I know that some hearts never mend, that some things literally chase people until their very last breath.

Reading some other sources, I realised that poor Conrad, who was only a little younger than my parents, actually hung himself in 1998. He was suffering from depression and even though he was now able to go wherever he wanted to and back to his home in Saxony, something was clearly eating him on the inside. And, well, it eventually finished him off, chewed him to little pieces and swallowed him.

So, I sat down and wrote a poem about Conrad. And about hating sudden decisions.

Conrad, Jump!
Everyone wants to jump
The way Conrad has done,
I think they have not seen him hung.
Once upon a time,
Conrad was captured in a frame, during a flight,
Today there’s only his grave.
Yes, changes are so beautiful,
Yes, that’s the way it goes in movies,
Yes, that’s how it happens in useful books.

Conrad was more than that,
He did not touch the wire, but it continued stabbing his heart,
Though it was invisible to a mere mortal.

First of all, if you have no idea what this is about or if you’re one of those dumb people who LOL at everything, please, stay away. Last night there was enough morons for one whole year in my life, so STFU. Oh yes, any weird, generalising, nationalist or separatist comments to this will be deleted, too. I don’t care if you’re a random troll from whatever place, you’re not going to spam my blog.

Then, salutes to wonderful people such as Sigge, Vera and Fran. And, no, I don’t think any of you is a part of the ignorant world. Ignorant world is everywhere, including here. I guess that’s what I forgot to state in my previous post. It’s those people who get things wrong and never react against anything bad:(

Things were like hell last night. The whole centre of the city was demolished by hooligans and I have no idea how does that relate to Kosovo in any way. Basically, for those of you who don’t know, 500 000 people gathered on what was supposed to be, and mostly was, a peaceful protest in front of the national parliament and later on, inside and around the biggest Orthodox church on the Balkans; against the illegal (from the point of law) independence of the province of Kosovo, which our [Serbian] government did not accept, as well as many other countries, including Spain, Slovakia and Romania. However, among those 500 000 people, there were about 1000 hooligans, likely football fans, bikers, school dropouts, notorious teenage drunks and similar waste, butthole of the country. Those hooligans separated from the main group, broke the security and robbed two clothing stores close to the parliament.

After that, they went to the USA embassy and set it on fire somehow. The staff was evacuated and the firemen managed to put the fire out, but one of the hooligans was apparently so drunk, that he ended up being caught in fire and he burned alive, they still didn’t manage to indentify him and notify his family. Then they set the Croatian flag in front of the Croatian embassy on fire and threw a couple of rocks, but police finally reacted and saved the building, so the hooligans then set a private house next door on fire and, as firemen couldn’t arrive, people in the house, among them an elderly couple, had to put out the fire on their own and they lost two rooms in fire. They also tried to attack Canadian, Bosnian, Belgian, Turkish, Italian, German and British embassy – doubt it was because of any of those countries in particular, but because those were on their way back to the innner centre of the city. Since all attempts resulted only in broken windows, they ended up setting random people’s cars and trash bins on fire.

My friend Dragana at some pont ended up in front of the Turkish embassy, trying to calm people down. The police did arrive, but only when her workmate called them. They were slow, dumb and useless and nothing was really solved until the special forces were brought out.

Then they went to one of the main squares and totally destroyed the first McDonald’s restaurant in the city that has been around for 20 years, in a house that belonged to a famous writer, which had old furniture on the upper floor and was protected by law, and back in the days, many of my schoolmates’ birthdays were celebrated there and somehow it’s a place where I like to go alone. It was also set on fire, but the firemen managed to put that fire down as well. Idiots. Too much hypocricy, huh? They have a problem with McDonald’s, yet they use foreign slang and, right now, steal foreign branded clothes? Come on, those people aren’t even extreme nationalists, just extreme morons and drunken youth on crack or something, in case they can’t afford that crack.

They came accross another, bigger one, where my friends and I usually hang out and threw a self-made bomb inside, but that one is not as damaged. On their stampedo through the centre, they robbed almost all the stores in the city, from groceries to shops with expensive watches (Lush shop somehow wasn’t robbed, maybe because we have enormous window blinds that are hard to break).

One guy filmed two random bitches among those hooligans, stealing stuff.

Later on, as this footage ended up on TV all accross the world, these girls phoned the main TV stations and claimed that “they were not stealing, just taking” because “they have nothing”. Yes, right, how about the butt tattoo and expensive hairdo? YEAH RIGHT, they have nothing and are poor, starving people who are going to eat the shoes and clothes they stole. Seeeriously They’re, of course, going to be arrested, together with 192 people who were already arrested and more of them who are being searched for at the moment. Stupid miserable sluts, using other people’s sadness to

Clearly, these people were protesting against Kosovo indepedence by destroying, well, capital of our own country…yeah, right…:(:(:(

Luckily, foreign politicians, apart from the Germans who seem to be very errr…German about this, have stated and realised that these people were hooligans and that they won’t hold a grudge against Serbia. But the centre of Beograd now looks like a sight of war and who knows how long it will take for everything to be back to normal.

For god knows which time in my life, I woke up in a different country and I didn’t even move one single centimetre away from where I’d been before. I woke up in the same bed, surrounded by same posters of kittens and Kitten and same stuffed animals, there was the same pile of handwritten poems on the night table and the same old pen I love to write with. But all those things, together with me amongst them were now a part of something that got torn apart…again.

It’s alright, it’s alright
If the news says half the truth
Hearing what we want is the secret of eternal youth
It’s alright, it’s alright,
If the planet splits in three…

Sometimes it was the name that was changing, sometimes it was the territory, sometimes both. If this was Michael Ende’s Neverending Story, this’d probably be the part when a huge NOTHING is trying to eat everything, before Bastian comes. But this time there won’t be Bastian, for sure, there won’t be Moonchild. It’s more like Momo, where mysterious men in grey, with weird-looking cigarettes are walking around, taking the last bits of imagination from people’s minds and turning them into something they never wanted to become.

Given the fact how uneducated many people around the world, especially in rich countries are nowadays, I can’t explain them that I was born in a 22 million people country and that I live in a 6 million people country now (I think it’s 6?!); without them thinking I’m on some synthetic drug. They don’t need to worry about it anyway, when life is all about spending money on things one doesn’t even need, looking up to celebrities and trying to have some sort of an image. Or, it’s all about spending money on celebrities. Or…whatever.

It’s alright, it’s alright
Cause the system never fails
The good guys are in power
And the bad guys are in jail

If this was The Simpsons Movie, there’d be Tom Hanks describing how a new canyon is going to be formed in the middle of Europe. And this is the kind of morbid thinking that was in my mind in March 1999 as well, right before the big guys fucked the shit out of us (pardon my language). I was reading 100 Years Of Solitude and the end of the book got me so scared that my first-ever air emergency sirens two days later literally made me think we’re all going to die within a minute. My dad then told me that “every generation has to go through at least one war”. I asked him if that’s the case with people in e.g. Greenland as well. I don’t even want to ask him if his opinion has changed in the past nine years. Perhaps it hasn’t.

I guess many things fell apart in the last 10 months. And in all of them, one side totally profited, while the other remained screwed for the time being, although, by all possible means, that side was meant to be the one that’s better, stronger, smarter. It’s weird how I draw parallels among all those things. It’s weird that bad sides of the story always begin with the same letter.

I could’ve put Amazon affiliate links in all these book and movie titles, but that’d be too me, too sarcastic and thought-provoking [in reference to the third paragraph] and I’m not in the mood for sarcasm now, I’m 100% serious this time.

If we forget about them don’t worry
If they forget about us then hurry
How about the people who don’t matter anymore?

Meow, it’s February, the month where cats need to buy packs of Grand Tom, the cats’ condoms, with scent of Jerry and taste of Mickey. In other words: there will be hardcore soft catpornography everywhere.

First of all, I guess you saw this coming, but HA-HA! What goes around, comes around. But it’s weird that it happened less than two days after I’ve written my über-angry entry. In ya face, Yahoo! Or am I stealing their author rights because I used an exlamation mark?

It’s the time to look back at January 2008. Oh my, what a month! What a, what a great, amazing month, what a good start to what’s hopefully going to be an OK, trouble-free year (the last of which is pretty much needed, as every year from 2004 on was too turbulent and too stressful). Let’s just say that it was my best month from April 2004 on, with the honourable exception of December 2006, the brightest star that’s ever existed on my sky map.

The only things I didn’t like this month are related to three of my friends: B, L. and partly *. Lack of correspondence with them has been annoying and I love all three of them.

Oh yes, I also don’t like noticing that all the fat went to the space under my waist and above my hips and realising that I’ll have to do some exercise to get rid of that as it looks funny, given that the rest of me is in OK shape. But then again, Jennifer Love-Hewitt is a proof that one can look OK with a wee bit of extra-weight on one single body part.

If I don’t talk about those two things and politics, where I hope things will be fine, everything else about January was like sailing on a peaceful sea after getting used to a living in a storm. From the New Year’s Eve and how we got into the year by symbolically watching the event that defined 2007 on TV, until my slava yesterday, I don’t have to complain about anything. But mostly, it’s about babies.

Two of my online friends had babies in January 2008. Inge gave birth to Axl and Trish gave birth to Ian. Two of my real-life friends, people I basically grew up with, a girl who was like my older sister at some point and the girlfriend of her brother who was also like my older brother are expecting babies in May and June. The girl’s baby will be a baby boy and the gender of the other one is unknown as of yet, but I hope it’s a girl. Imagine how amazing it would be, especially considering that both of the new families together with grandparents are living in one big, big house next door. My cousin’s wife will give birth to their third child in July, as well and I hope it will be a baby boy because she already has twin girls.

The highlight of the month would, however, be my weekend with Sombor, spent with my amazing friend Maja and her wonderful mother and cute little brother; hanging out with and seeing the concert of our friend Robert’s band, Wicked Coffee Shoppers. We had such a good time. I hope it repeats, many times. Then there are of course the evenings spent at Milica’s place in Železnik, with her cat, Njušković purring next to us, and early afternoons with Mira, living part in early 90s and part in now; which lead to re-discovering my responsibility and neatness of the past through someone who was like that all their life long. It’s simple: I figured out that, by putting myself together and (trying to) being neat and organised, I could be less stressed, more helpful and have more time for things that really matter. But I won’t be overdoing it. ^_^

For February 2008, I have a lot of hopes. I want to push some work-related projects forward, start studying because this uni won’t finish itself someday (although I’d love it), attend a work excursion and…there’s probably more, but hey, it’s been a good start to 2008. I also want to solve things with *, L and B, though something tells me that * and L are not angry or wanting to forget me, just in lurve. Speaking of that, perhaps I should send them Valentine’s Day cards?

I want to spend as much time as possible with my girls, and that includes my fourth close friend, Sofija (known for weird schedule) as well. So, guess I’ll be trying to wake up earlier in future. I’d also love to hang out with my friend Goran a bit more, as long as his new GF isn’t jealous of his friends.

I will post an extended version of this story onto my LiveJournal, if I get a chance.