Pedestal (intro)

At this age I have had so many downfalls and have made so many mistakes that it is becoming almost impossible for me to blame it on circumstances. It is me and my own doing that has brought me down each time. My closest ones would say I live in a denial if I tried to reason my actions that have led me where I am now, and maybe it is true. Contrary to everyone else I think I see the world with different eyes and have explanations for my behavior or some of it.
A mistake by definition is an error. Errors or mistakes are made when an individual has the required knowledge to perform a task and achieve the desired goal but fails at it.
I have not failed because i have made a mistake, have forgotten something or didnt have the required knowledge but because my motivation and goals were different to the general idea of what goals i should be having.
There are people that go with the grain and whose who go against it.
I let You be the judge of wether I have made a mistake or not and which type of person I am. Grain or against grain.

I had a wonderful childhood, my parents have given me everything i could possibly wish for. Now it is time for me to give back to them what they have given me. To do that, i need to resolve my own existential questions.
I was sitting at a table with my mother and my former primary school teacher, whom i am lucky to have as a family friend as well. She is 75 years of age and has been a friend of my grand mother, so I am third generation she sits with and enjoys a cup of coffee.
With a lengthy monologue she was telling me how hard life here is and with having nothing despite all my efforts on the contrary i will end up in a worst situation. All I could do is give her a silent gesture, signifying my full conviction that indeed it must be so.
It is an awkward state to live in. I was born and brought up here, am assimilated with the common views of life and live by them as my instinct unfailingly indicates as correct.
My parents have given me a set of moral values on a way. I regard them above everything and they go hand in hand with the propriety of external forms required by public opinion in a civilized culture.
Having spend time in Croatia and now in Bosnia I have had a few encounters with people who brought up topics which recalled former political disputes,as if i was to blame for it.
These are post war countries with ongoing political conflicts and this is something i would have to learn to live with, if i am to stay here. So i am oblivious to the comments and look at it as an inconvenience. I think it is better to keep my opinion on it for myself and not fuel the conversations of such nature. There is so much more to life then politics, war and ethnic differences. But really it is bothering me a lot. Not because I take it as a personal offense but because it is an attempt to deny me a sense of belonging.
I love this place for what it was, what it could be but not for what it is.
To write this I will start with the present, reach into the past and remain optimistic, because the present is not the end.



I am sitting in the house of my birth while I am writing this. The house was build by my father in the exact year I was born 76. It had four bedrooms while both me and my sister were living with them. After us moving out my bedroom was turned into a living like room. It has two couches, a coffee table, one cabinet with my cloths in it and one with miscellanies utilities on which a TV sits. On both sides of the TV cabinet are two stands with glass doors that are filled with ceramic table ware, coffee cups and a computer table. I spend most of my time in this room. The laptop I am writing this on is mainly obtained in order to stay in touch with my sister, who lives in Sydney.
A lot has changed since the house was build, even the name of the street. When he build the house, the street was called after a Montenegrin member of the Yugoslav Communist Party, who was essential in organizing the documents for a programme of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which laid principles of „titoism“ and now it is called after
Man who lived during the 19th century, was a Bosniak general and fought for Bosnian autonomy in the Ottoman empire.
My father, being a engineer for forest matters worked in a large company that produced final and semi final products of wood. It was huge in a true sense of the word and employed over ten thousand workers. They had branches all over the world. In 85 he was given a mandate to manage one of the branches in Frankfurt a.M. So we all spent four years there.
On one of my recent journeys to Munich, I meet a man that seemed strangely familiar. I stared at him, certain that I know him but couldnt fit him in any of my memories, for a while. Till the bus made a stop and we all got out on a 15 minute break. I then vaguely started remembering him as a man working at the same branch as my old man and approached him.
I apologetically asked him wether he is from Sarajevo. He confirmed. Then I enquired wether he, by any chance worked during 85 and 89 in Frankfurt.
I think at this stage he was going through the same phase as I was when I first saw him on the bus. A nebaouls memory. Even tho our families were celebrating many occasions there i was only a child and i think he would have not remembered me if I didnt give him a handshake and told him whose son I was. He was buffeld, could not believe the play of coincidence.
On the bus we were telling each other what had happened during the last 16 years. Him and my old man were close and of course he had a lot of questions as to how the old man was doing. One that stood out was wether he was living under the same address. Given the drastic demographic change in Bosnia during the war that question was natural but caused a inner smile. No, i replied. He lives in the same town, same street and same house. He didnt move but doesnt live under the same address any longer.


I left this house at the age of sixteen and have spend another 15 in various countries before coming back in 07. Previously to my return i lived 10 years in Australia, out of which the last 5 i was in relationship that from the very beginning was unfulfilling and dysfunctional.
Towards the end it became unbearable.
Worries about my aging parents, nostalgy and the relationship were burdening me to the extend that I plunged into despair. Each of the issues intensifying one another. The relationship I had been in was turning into a pharse, not that it was much of a relationship to start with, and the end of it was inevitable. I could not deal with all the emotions or issues one by one, as any reasonable man would do but decided to make a clean cut, pack my things, return and take it from there. Unlike the separation, the decision to return to Bosnia was unanticipated by everyone. It was not something I had planed over a longer period of time.
My, then 5 year long partner saw the end coming and agreed with me on it, we wished each other luck and went on our separate ways.
Four days later I was home. It was overwhelming to be back. To see my parents finally, the old house and the town. An utopic illusion, the initial impression that time here had changed nothing and everything seemed just like 15 years ago. Buried, deep memories were coming back, feelings of belonging and great joy were flooding me.
My plans were to stay there for a while. Catch up with my parents, who I, as a mature person barely knew. By doing that I was also hoping to find some answers and deal with some of the emotional issues I had been suppressing. The past relationship, i thought, was an clear indication that I was doing something wrong. I wasnt able to answer questions as to why I entered into it and more importantly, why I stayed in it for so long. Why didnt I end it sooner after realizing it was a mistake but instead tried to artificially keep it alive. I dont blame my unhappiness on the relationship alone there where other underlying issues.
I stayed in Bosnia for 6 months and had a lot of time to ponder about where i went wrong. I had a lot of self criticism and doubts. understanding the psychodynamic view, which holds that adult relationships are more or less reflections of childhood relationships, replays of old conflicts, i was also afraid that one day i might enter into a relationship which then would end exactly as the last. I had other issues and a whole pile of questions that no one could answer but myself. The setting was perfect for soul searching.
A friend of mine had once given me a word of advice, the mind is like a bad neighbourhood and You should never go there on your own. I failed to follow his advice, looked at the current state of my affairs and thought this is who I am. My life in Australia was what I had created and that showed how I was. I was moving in cycles, dooming myself to nothing more then having the same future.

I abandoned any desire for a relationship long or short term and was focusing on other things. Life is beautiful. I was telling myself there were so many types of people and relationships and the fault be it mine as well as hers is no longer of importance. It was a result of how I was thinking, therefor I sought no longer commitment or short term romance.
It wasnt until much later i ended up in Vienna, at my cousins place where I met this amazing friend of hers. A woman with whom i barely spoke a word the first time I met her. Partially because the two of them where engaged in a intensive conversation and partially because she was fascinating. It was an ordinary occasion, an every day thing yet she looked so effortlessly attractive. What fascinated and robed me of the ability to start an indepth conversation with her was mainly the way she was interacting with my cousin, who was in a troubled state of mind and whom i considered to be of a rather difficult nature. It was astonishing the way Marija was handling the situation. Previously to it I had been trying to get through to my cousin as the roots of all her problems were obvious but very often i detected insult in her comments and grew sufficiently annoyed to tell her she was stepping out of line. She was giving me a treatment as if was the source of her problems. Those conversations were mainly started by her.
The conclusion i was drawing from the way Marija was talking to her and the course she was giving the conversation was that they were very good friends and have known each other for ages, as my cousin Gordana was responding to her in a totaly different manner then to me or anyone else i heard her talk with.
As I was later to learn the length or depth of their friendship was not the reason for it. It was solely the amazing nature and approach to others of Marija.
Marija was very different from anyone else I had met. In the brief period I witnessed the conversation she was articulating her self well and was displaying so many characteristics that can easily be considered as virtues at once. Empathy and integrity as a friend being dominant. When she left i felt regrets that we didnt have a chance to start a conversation. I knew in that instance someone spatial had crossed my path.