Clint Getting Ready

The Hereafter, trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XvJwTYnKww

Adapter to Quotidia

Was far too busy to write, or do anything for that matter, for I was communicating with my network Cirago NUS1000 for six hours. Now all is just swell but thank God for tech forums.
Today, the poor census creature announced its arrival. One Catholic less this time. Can't wait to see just how lost the Republic of Croatia is within its forms.
Other than that, it's a sunny and windy day. I'm gonna do some cooking, not thinking.

Phonetics of Poetry

Well, started with a new exam. The introductory chapter, unsurprisingly, declares poetry is spatial - another way of saying it produces numerous effects simultaneously, in various directions, in contrast to everyday, linear, informative language.
Actually, accordingly, poetry this way comest closest to the nature of thought - after all, you need to explain what you are "thinking". (I'm not now sure whether I already wrote about this but I am also unsure whether the customary division into thoughts and feelings holds water.)
As for e.g. rhyme, it establishes another link in a net, pointing to a word you already processed. In this account, every poem, or every poet that is, by writing also writes theory of his/her formal engagement. (This is what I mean when I disparage rationality and opt for what is usually termed "intuition". As I once claimed, you can dissect a novel and boil down rules, but you cannot construct another good one following the same.)
Still, I believe this pursuit will prove profitable. Being a poet myself, I plan to dissect one of my own, claiming the prerogative of practical criticism. (This is when you're given a piece of unnamed text and you must wring the pleasure you can from it.)
If you are by this point wondering why for Heaven's sake all of this for, I cite numerous great texts that all begin with an apology of why write at all. I myself answered this with "aesthetic experience of generations".

Repent! The End is Near.

The idea first struck me in Zagreb long ago. Armed with a sense of history you receive when growing up in Dubrovnik, I one day realised Zagreb as well is a graveyard, albeit an Austro-Hungarian one, and more recent.
Watching my neighbours going nuts these days, fighting against kids' noise, blocking ancient roads and pathways, it would be true to say the world is always ending. It's just you might be fresh.
As for each gets his share, I still dunno.

Travelogue

Got an A in Cultures of Travelling. The life is slowly but surely turning into an economic disaster, but my GPA in graduate studies is as high as can be. It reminds me of a match of tennis I played with a fat friend, where, as I had to play against something, I set the goal to beat him in every game.
Tonite I'm in my good ol' Dubrovnik. Facing actual tourists, instead of those in my books, which also contain a joke. So, tourists visit a remote village and inquire whether the old lady they're talking to likes her settlement. She says: "Well, it's certainly not Paris or Amsterdam. I must say I liked Berlin."

Quote of the Month

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?
Charles M. Schulz (1922 - 2000)

And Another One

Well, I opened up another domain: kriticno.net (critical.net translated). Figure it can be interpreted both in terms of critical writing & critical situation.
It will be a challenge to template design and adjust something which will have comment capability for registered users and that will change daily. My other sites are quite small.
But the main idea is to hook up with some like-minded critical individuals who can more than grease the paper. I'd actually like to expand to other interests and towns: for the time being I have planned the subdomains of du., zg., HR. and kmd. (the theatre in Dubrovnik).
Contact at Davor [at] kriticno [dot] net

The Blank Stare

I initially got the feeling of being a perfect dumbwit during my senior high school year. I was concentrating in math and had trouble with probability theory so ended up taking private lessons. The man is talking, the man is trying - all I can do is politely nod and uneasily smile.
The gist is captured in the IT Crowd:
Economist Boss: I'm sure we can be friends. I'm sure I can understand what you are doing. What are you doing now, for instance?
IT expert: Well, I'm.. (the sound turns to static)
Boss: I see.

Oprah Freight Notes

As one of my friends once said of a musician: "Even a blind hen finds some grain".
Oprah, one of illustrations of the shallow taste of the age, lack of wit, obscene profit - and I could go on and on - once said of airplane travel:
"You know, I explain it to myself rationally. It's safer than car for instance. And then, as soon as we take off, a voice in my head pops up and says: 'Oprah, you really shouldn't be in an aluminum tube at 10,000 m.'" This is the perfect explanation of the freight of flying.
Then again, I guess the brief trip to Dbk, 45 minutes max, brings up everybody's pathology on an individual basis: another friend doesn't like being out of control and distrusts the pilot, wanting to steer the thing himself, while I would prefer being pampered by stewardesses every 5 minutes, them cheerfully exclaiming casual sentences like: "Oh, it's such a perfect day for flying", with the pilot routinely issuing info on flight in interims.
Further, there is the idea of just cosmic fate. Don't you think it fair you shouldn't crash on departure, if one must, but on the return flight?
Then again, as I said, talking helps. I used to have a strategy of shamelessly boring the person next to me, whoever it was, just because I felt better. A less nervous acquaintance complained he hated air companies "for they simply refuse to seat me next to somebody I would like to be sitting next to".
above: text. below: meta-text.
With any experience - i.e. the text describing it, just like with any lie - it's the details and bringing stuff to life that does it. The "stuff" can really and only then be said to exist at all.. The half-conscious and the unshared is wasted.

Doubt

Having some experience with the revolutionary notion of 'change management', and its sheer inefficacy, I sometimes propose that all administrative civil servants be fired. After all, it's not that something overly important would come to a halt for the two weeks the novices would organise (and actually reorganise) the operation of, say, notoriously inept tax administration.
Such draconic solutions were espoused by Gore Vidal. In terms of the plague of drugs, he advocated total liberation, writing off the 5% that would not heed beneficial propaganda or aid programmes. And it is perhaps more than 5% that die as a result of the current poor system.
The force of continuation is tremendously powerful in society. People in Croatia even opted for not changing their obviously lousy government because, as this shit daily said: "In times of crises, people don't want too much change, even if things are bad". The crabwalk is then our option. Must be for the reason one of my fellow students pointed to: "Just don't talk about fresh starts - this is when the villains emerge as has been proven".
I would not go that far to equate the dangers. After all, when you get used to some change, suddenly it's no big deal to go for it once again.

The Contest

Kitschy as it can lately be, a word for the Eurovision - the good old days of full orchestra and the mocks and revivals.
I simply must share two tunes; no talk necessary, except that you imagine how great it would be to do a topical night with a list of great all time songs. Sitting down in a giant hall with a table and a bottle of wine and, yes, dancing!!

"You Don't Wanna Go There"

One of more striking endings must be drowning in alcohol in the final lines of 1984, loving the Big Brother. Yes, you can break a man down.
One of my foreign Fulbright friends talked of this profound academic analysis of 'brain drain'; I championed the more insidious idea of 'brain waste' as relevant to Croatia (or, if you will, you may fill in the blank here).
I was initially a true, if naive, humanist. The idea was stringent justice, intellectual solutions and an idea of tight community. But as I joked the other day in the bar: now, with a more thorough, and pessimistic, view of human nature, especially of how man is more likely never to acknowledge he is wrong unless confronted (and broken down in turn) - "it would be terrible indeed with me in power.. concentration camps everywhere.. the horror.."

Obsessions

Got a bit carried away last night, so morning which began round noon was not my time of day. I felt still tipsy - that is, until I ventured into nature, up the local hill.
The trek took but two hours but was truly restorative. To think that my idiots (Croats, I take it you are foreign) further cluttered downtown Zagreb instead of making it pedestrian! What a relief it is to enjoy some peace and quiet.
Then I received a call from a friend who told me he got laid off. Which brings me to the juncture point: when I found myself unemployed, one of the first cares was not to have my mobile phones disconnected.
Well, lemme tell you: can't wait. I am shedding my (and my country's) stupid obsessions with the market rat race, but I still have some material dreams: a simple dwelling place with the following sign at the intersection, a further attraction I saw along the route.

Gig

Once, in a poem about a meeting of sages that ends up in a quarrel whether to tell people they know nothing, I argued rationality had its limits. Just about the only effect you can get, eventually, is the feeling of being smart.
So today I'm offering music relief. Must be an intermezzo before I start a new bout of reading for exams.

Fallout

Now, we all know politics is fairly informal. That is, there are limits to the autonomy of officials - the power they exercise is heavily influenced by monied interest.
Now, it also seems to me Croatian trust of brains is malfunctioning. I do not care what tales they spin, as long as they enable own citizens decent living - and this is something the verdict on will be harsh.
The argument they would end up in prison themselves is faulty - this would be small price. If this is what is standing in the way, emigrate once and for all and let us wriggle.
**
Just spent a night and a day in a provincial pub in Zagreb. Talk about Freud, the discontent of the civilisation and despair. Your average Croatian needs no conversation - all there is is alcohol, drugs and the leg ticking and jerking. If one saw a cat behaving so, one would mercifully put it to sleep.

Fools

It's All Fools' Day soon, so we gotta do something topical.
The fool, combined with greed, is downright disgusting. Just think Croatia.
The Ship of Fools - a metaphor for humanity. Think UN.
I have a piece of paper taped to my exit door which says the fool is the most dangerous type of person in existence. The fool will ruin everything even not for personal gain reasons.
Erasmus, in Praise of Folly, claimed the ruler would instantly go insane if confronted with responsibility resting on him. The fool is not that profound.
The fool, the be all and end all, I celebrate you!

A Suggestion

I once wrote of just how easy it must have been to wage the war in Bosnia from the safe distance of Zagreb or Belgrade. Indeed, the same could be said for Iraq or Libya.
Intellectuals may be frowned upon for having "bookish" knowledge and there's a line in Good Will Hunting to the effect Will is a genius but does not know how "it feels to spend thirty years with a woman who then dies of cancer".
The pathetic trips to the field, by say Hillary, are but another joke. Her I would advise to reform Connecticut or wherever she might be based. This is the only thing she does know, and judging from a year of personal experience, it truly merits some reform.
Man has one life only and he should use it well. Even introspection, limited as it is, is better than lunging stupidly into action. Even futile writing or simply joking with friends is better. Or as Emily Dickinson wrote - don't be a frog that cries all day to the bog: "Look at me."

Each Traveller's Fav

Dobriša Cesarić [1902-1980]

BY TRAIN

translated by Davor Juričić in 2005

Telegraph post, telegraph post,

And a frozen field

And a gaze blasé and lost

And a life not willed.

Scenery and cities change,

But sorrow,

Sorrow remains.

I carry it from border to border,

I carry it from station to station.

I feel like a carriage wheel,

That is always pushed forward,

And forward moves,

But always round its axis –

Turns and turns…

Poetry Day

Antun Branko Šimić [1898-1925]

THE BODY AND US

/translated by Davor Juričić in 2005/

Through my veins runs the poison I drank
in pleasures, inebriated nights.
And the poison harms. The body rots. I live in a corpse.
And I am disgusted by the body. Can one somehow
get rid of the body, be clean of it?
The body is ballast, a stranger, the rot.
I'd rather leave it somewhere
And escape from it, and fly forever away to freedom.
As it is, I live with it, in it. Inseparable.
Who put me into one with this stranger?
The body: the weight holds me to earth
As will drag me into it whole, with no exemption.
By my bed a young woman is laughing.
How would I reach her alone, without body?
I cannot leave. And I can't touch her.
My touch, as the touch of death, scatters mayhem everywhere.
In my dreams we part. I managed to get away, I float
And I want to fly, to flutter -
And I wake up: I'm lying in my corpse.

Sappho, the Midwife of Poetry

He is a god in my eyes -

the man who is allowed

to sit beside you - he

who listens intimately

to the sweet murmur of

your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own

heart beat fast. If I meet

you suddenly, I can't

speak - my tongue is broken;

a thin flame runs under

my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears

drumming, I drip with sweat;

trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than

dry grass. At such times

death isn't far from me