Iva’s personal site - Squirrelism.net

The only answer I could come up after nearly 20 hours of self-hate caused sleep is to be wrong.

I cannot remember one single time something was going right for a longer time.
I cannot remember one single time I did not think that someone else, anyone else, has a life better than mine.
I cannot remember one single time I made a mistake that didn’t result in even more self-deprecating actions.
I cannot remember one single time I managed to catch a raindrop on my hand and make sure it does not dry out.
I cannot remember one single good person I did not turn into a monster because of how I underappreciated them or how I thought they were underappreciating me.

And that is why, though I’m only at 1/3 of it or so, I’m pretty sure I wasted my life away. I never considered anything to be fun, I always wanted to follow rules to the point where it was getting sick, I never wanted to understand anyone (because I was not allowed to have pet peeves, I was not allowed to talk back and I was not allowed to be allowed anything), I never wanted to say that I don’t like something…because the only time I dared to do say something like that out loud, I literally got an angry mob on my back. And then I started being even more obsessive about rules, about punishing myself for every single thing I do wrong and it took two years to realise the truth: I became an egoist. The worst, miserable, sickening form of a self-pittying egoist.

If I could afford that, given what my web presence means to my existence, I would get away from the internet this very moment and come back in 2009. And try to make up the bad thing I’d done this week.

Nothing, nothing in this world could make up for loss of a friendship

…and I lost four of them in 2008. This last one was not meant to be lost. All of the sudden, I do not regret any of the other three, that I used to cry over for a couple of months and beg people in question to come back, not knowing that it was them who was wrong and not me. And now, being on the other side, on the side of the one who’s wrong and decided to walk away instead of doing more damage, I finally know how things work. I’m ashamed to even show my face around here, or anywhere else, for that matter.

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.

Part one, in case you missed it. This was translated from my paper diary from ten years ago, once again.

17th April 1998, God Friday
I was working for the written test in English pretty seriously. Then Kocka [dad's friend whose head is shaped like a cube] came around and then Danijela [neighbour] with Mihailo [her son, five and half at that time]. It was simply not possible to study anymore, so I spent the rest of the time before school watching Cartoon Network with Mihailo. I was translating three toons for him: Scooby Doo, Two Stupid Dogs and Secret Squirrel. Then he got bored and started exploring my room. He came accross a Green Day poster, pointed to Tré Cool and said: This guy’s hair is ugly! and I smiled at his childish innocence. Then he pointed to Billie Joe Armstrong and said: And this guy is ugly!. Then he noticed the other Green Day poster and recognised Billie again, and commented: This guy is boring, he’s everywhere, I also saw him on TV the other day! And he has a huge ugly fat stomach! I was about to ask Mihailo how the hell he knew that Billie really is a bit overweight right now, but I didn’t have a chance to, as he said was: I have to run home to have fish soup for breakfast! and the next thing I knew, I was rolling over the coach laughing. Not to mention that he also saw Daniella Daze’s video for the song 100% Jesus and said that it’s wrong to listen to that song on God Friday and that the guy in the video should be embarrassed of himself for being shirtless, because many people are going to see that video. I love that child, he’s so funny.

Milanka ran away from school again today because of the English test and Dejana finally finished reading Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo and Ivana B. then gave it to me, with a catch: I had only six hours to read it, because of the spring break starting after today and she had to give the book back to her friend. So, I did not waste one single second and I spend the whole day reading it and pretending to follow classes. The book is very sad. Christiane F. was living in a poor neighbourhod in western Berlin, her mothe wasn’t controlling her much. At the tender age of 12, she was taking drugs and at 13, she was already a heroin addict. In the end, she went to rehab and I do hope that she pulled herself together, because so many of her friends died in hospitals feeling the worst possible pain, or they injected themselves a deadly does of heroin, leaving goodbye messages to the world, warning other young people not to follow their footsteps. Her boyfriend ended up in jail and he said that his dream would be to lead a normal, average life with Christianne. And Dejana seems to be having a thing for that guy, even though, he’s like, 20 years younger than us and so thin. And he slept with old men, too. Then again, I understand her. She used to liken that M. guy from third grade who’s also a heroin addict now. She said that she saw him in a club, rolling on the floor and shaking, having a crisis. I am really sad for all those poor people who can’t seem to find their own way and all of them who died young. After so many stories like Christiane’s, I wonder if she’s really the only person who escaped this? And I wonder if she’s on drugs again? Uroš has the internet and he said that he read some story about her, so maybe Milanka’s brother will allow us to use the internet and find that story to print it out.

Speaking of Milanka, I guess she’ll be glad to know that the English test was delayed, as so many people left school earlier to go somewhere for the spring break. I met her on our way to church (mom always makes me go to church for God Friday…) and I told her to stop cheating, because it’ll be so more useful for her to learn English and I could help her with that. Of course, I’m not judging her, I only have good intentions.

Ten years ago, it was April 1998. I was barely fifteen years young. A 15-year-old version of me is looking back at me from the photos, wondering if we’re the same person. I can assure her that we are and that she’s heading the right direction. She read that this is the most succesful year for her star sign in this decade and that it’s all about giving foundation to principles that are to be obeyed later. So, she set her principles. And I’d like to share some excerpts from her diary, as told by her 25-year-old self.

04th April 1998, Saturday.
I had a good result at the school competition and at the local competition, I went to the city grammar competition with two friends: one who was a complete over-ambitious best-in-everything type of a person and one who went to the competition and passed two previous levels, for god knows what kind of personal satisfaction. It was a nice, sunny day, the spring was coming after a winter that wasn’t really a winter.

We didn’t do very good, but we didn’t do bad either…the problem were the girls and guys from the highschool that was specifically concentrated on language studies…their results were so good that nobody could beat them. We were aware that our results of e.g. 14 or 15 points were OK, but that, with ten of them snatching all 20 points, it’s not even enough for the third place. So, as we were waiting for the preliminary standings, we were singing Bajaga & instruktori’s Godine prolaze and drinking mineral water in the schoolyard. Then our professor came around and told us that we do not qualify for the republic competiton, just like we thought.

We took it easy and, on the way back home; Jana, the friend who was living closer to me, and I sat down in a nearby park, as the swings were not occupied by little children. And, as it was a nice day, our imagination was at a high level, so I asked her: “Jana, imagine what would happen if we were swinging so intense and madly that we’d actually jump from the swing onto the top of that tree?”

She looked at the tree and tried to remember what’s it famous for. Its Latin name is Morus Alba, its English name is White Mulberry, its Serbian name is Beli dud. And that particular white mulberry happens to be the oldest three in this city, more than 200 years old and located in a not-so-special park at a not-so-special place. But it’s easy to get that the park exists solely because of the tree.

When I was little, I had a vivid imagination, I was making up stories where trees and construction cranes were living alone in the city and that particular tree was the leading police officer and catching bad guys. I said all that to Jana and she was like: “Hmmm, if the tree is that old, then it knows the things we don’t know.” I said that it’s probably right, given that the tree witnessed, amongst other things, two world wars.

And then she told me to imagine a squirrel and that, if we swing and jump, the squirrel will help us land on the top of the tree. I followed the story and said that, when we’re up there, we’ll be able to see a warp in the sky, where the air is like gelatine. When one jumps through that gelatine-like air, one lands in a different dimension and a slightly different place: Beograd number 18 in the 38th century…at that time, there are so many people in the world that they had to split the cities into many, many smaller bits.

And Jana agreed that we should take the squirrel with us and found or own company for distribution of nuts from the 20th century to 38th century, called Nut King Insane. And we’d make big money, yet not spend almost any of time on it, because one day in Beograd 18 is like one month in Beograd.

And we said that we’ll always be praising the glorious April 1998, for having found our little secret to success and having changed the world. Do I praise it, after ten long years? Yes I do, for two reasons, one of them being my personal share of changes. And all the changes came from somewhat insignificant little stories such as this one. I never learned how, but as of now, I stopped question myself about it.

I just completed the Seven Deadly Sins test on Tickle, as it was free this week. It says that I’m less sinful than most people, but I appear to have a strong gluttony, pride and the rest is either average or below average.

I would highly recommend this test, unlike the e.g. weight test which claims that the BMI of 23 is “too much” while everywhere else it would be classified as normal. So, I sent out four invitations to close friends, but I am encouraging everyone I know to take it. Click here!

And now about my results…

My pride is 8 out of 10, the average being 4.5 out of 10.
I’m not surprised that it’s my worst sin. There are so many things I would never do because I simply consider them wrong (and my low lust helps there, a lot), I would never do anything that could damage someone else’s interests, I would not speak to people who harmed me or for whom I think they harmed me; I would never lie or be an opportunist, I would never change myself to get what I want…and that is probably why I have it harder than the most of people. But i don’t think it’s a sin at all! I love it.

My gluttony is 6 out of 10, the average being 3 out of 10.
In fact, how come this one is not 9 out of 10? I have the kinds of craving only pregnant women have sometimes and I always have temporary obsessions about certain type of food; plus there’s my ongoing Big Mac obsession (they taste even better when they’re cold, have I ever told you that?) and this weird thing with Pepsi Max. Right now, I also have a thing for ćevapčići with kajmak, vanilla ice cream with Plazma keks and…god, I shouldn’t go on.

My greed is 4 out of 10, the average being 3 out of 10.
Frankly, I think the average cannot be 3 out of 10 and that people are pretending to be humble, so I am probably less greedy than the most of population. Also, this test was made for an American average Joe/Jane type of a person and the life standards are bigger in USA nd western Europe. If I want more, I just want some normal things, such as actually having two holidays a year and having enough to pay the most of my parents’ bills. I don’t see that as greed.

My wrath is 3 out of 10, the average being 3 out of 10.
I guess I have improved, I used to be horrible.

My envy is 3 out fo 10, the average being 2.5 out of 10.
And that’s probably because of the same thing as greed.

My sloth is 2 out of 10, the average being 4 out of 10.

My lust is at 0.5, the average being 4 out of 10.
I’m not surprised. I’m too picky and I don’t understand sex as a pleasure, only as the ultimate way of expressing love. So, no lust for me, I’m not lusting and I’m not even pretending when I say that, I was born this way.

So…let’s just say that I’m proud of my pride.