Random Memory, Throw Back Thursday

Since it's TBT (throw back thursday) I'll attempt to make your lip ends curl up in a smile... 

Bunch of years back (8 perhaps more)I have answered an ad on craigslist from a girl who needed a pretend friend that would allow her to have out of town alibi to her unsuspecting boyfriend whom she ended up cheating on while being out of town (our meeting and her ad was after the fact, after she already cheated, she met someone on her trip and for lack of better words she was trying to cover this up)..I was asked to basically pose as her friend while meeting her bf and her at a bar, so the bf has a name and a face to her companion on the trip.  I was thinking, I can support her while she makes a mistake, not that I agree with the way she's handled it or anything, plus she was a stranger, after all, I was (in my opinion) just providing a kindness, that she, at the time needed. After all I have made mistakes, and then no one stood by me.  I thought of it as helping someone cross the street, getting up from a fall, or just giving someone who is lost, directions.

Ok I know some eyebrows are raising at this point, but give it a chance :).

So I agreed to meet her about 30 mins before the boyfriend showed up to sync stories etc.  What transpired was a really sweet meeting of a girl that didn't have a lot of friends as she was new to NYC and while we pulled the "stunt" off, their relationship didn't last.  Rightfully so with secrets and all.  However, this isn't where the story ends. Later that year or following year it's hard to remember, I received an email asking for my address from this girl (we have spoken and talked about hanging out but it never quite worked out) and later a wedding invitation followed.

As she was indian, I knew the wedding would be grand (at this point this was only my second indian wedding - since then I have worked or been part of about 30) so I said why not, it'll make for excellent picture opportunities. The wedding was in St Louis (not a town I recommend visiting) and it was wonderful. I could have really felt the happiness between them.  I took photos and gave them to the happy couple as a present.  The trip was expensive but I think worth the experience, and it only solidified my interest in Indian culture.  Either way looking back at how something unfolds, is really a fantastic ride. 

Moral of the story? Perhaps there isn't one. Or perhaps it is that you should help one if you can by allowing them to make a mistake so that they can grow and be better at the next venture/relationship.  I won't pretend to know any of this.  I go with feeling, energy quality and I felt she was someone who was innocent in many ways as well as a wonderful human being, who made a mistake she was honestly sorry for and didn't want to lose a loved one over it.  

Yes, there were other ways of handling this situation, but I am not here nor was there to judge.  You may say that I was part of something immoral, I may agree with you, but I also know that desperation of wanting to correct a mistake made, I know it intimately well. Most likely, this recognition of self is what drove me to help her in the way that she asked someone to help.

Keep rolling with the punches.

  

Why Bosnia, why.

So like with most in my life, I pick up a stone, turn it over and there is a treasure, which keeps reappearing in my pocket thereafter, even if initially I don’t think what I found is a treasure. In short, I did not choose Bosnia, Bosnia chose me. It’s got its little fingers dug into me, and I can ignore it no longer.

To expand a little, though many of you are fully aware that films and food started majority of my journeys, interests and life alterations.   From film to soundtracks, from soundtracks to new artists, from a great Indian dish to researching the multitude of religions that region possesses, from Prague Spring photographs to a book about American gypsies and or picking up Bruce Lee’s philosophy book and then giving it over and over to people, and re-reading it without having seen a single film of his back in 2000 when the book, again chose me.  From “Kama Sutra: The Tale of Love” the film that inspired years of East Indian cultural interest, learning the art of henna, musical and film voyages, food and  weddings, dance and religion journeys.  It’s always a chance that any one thing can change my life forever at any given point in time, and that is one aspect of these spirals I simply marvel at, everything comes to my hands like a bird wanting to eat the day old bread I am holding up in the air. 

So was it with the Bosnian war.  It flew into my arms over and over.

When I went to see “In the land of blood and honey” by Angelina Jolie, she wasn’t the reason, it was the religious conflict that peeked my interest, I wrote a poem for the film (for the film "In the Land Of Blood And Honey"), realizing I know nothing about this war, nothing about this piece of history that I was alive for unlike other major wars for which I was not here.  And so the interest was peeked but it immediately converted itself into a sleeper cell, a terrorist in waiting. One day to open fire and have a super impact, pardon the use of violence as a comparison, it seemed fitting, to me.  Because my brain literally explodes with the desire to find out more about something, it’s like an unstoppable bomb. 

Months later “Bury Me Standing – the gypsy history in Europe” and it tied into my love for history as well as it brought me to the Balkans, again as the entire book was written about gypsies in that region.  A reportage and live-in study, written by Isabel Fonseca over period of many years in the 90’s, without going into much detail - what an incredible book.  It has opened my eyes to so many of my own (as a child I was told not to trust cigans and that they are thieves and so on growing up under communism I remember we took a school trip to eastern Slovakia where there were villages of them, no windows, no doors, everything broken up, and it solidified in my brain as a child, this notion these people do not appreciate things and I left it at that, then of course gypsy music found me and I needed to re-examine) misinterpretations about this culture, this people.  So again, we are in that region and I am doing more reading on American gypsies and so I spun off that and kept going.

Next time it rained I walked into Barnes and Nobles and picked up a book (Fools Rush In by Bill Carter) because it’s cover reminded me of another amazing book (The Kite Runner) and I looked at the back and it was biographical, I needed no more than two pages to realize this will not be the last time I will read this book.  So I was now in Bosnia, more respectively in Sarajevo, with an outsider, who became an insider, who lost everything in the US and found it in a war-torn country.  I mean his story is beyond inspirational, mainly because he chose to go to a country that was not his, to a place that was danger zone at the very least, not to mention he convinced U2 to play images of Sarajevo during their concerts during the war.  I still wonder why that did not speed up things. That film is called Miss Sarajevo, a documentary he was compelled to start making after he lived there for about 6 months, in conditions he describes in such detail you will feel as if you are there walking along side.

I decided to get a library card, because I imagined there were going to be many books I’d want to read and that could be an expensive habit, mind you I have not checked out a book out of the library (thank you Amazon.com) since HS.  So this too is in a way, a victory.  The next two books were “This was not our war” and “Sarajevo, exodus of a city”.   I can’t say enough about these two books.  I’ve learned so much about the city of Sarajevo and the role women play during war time and how much more they should be allowed into more space when it comes to war, as they glue communities together when men are at the front lines, it’s almost silly to think we still have front lines, war zones.  But that is our reality no matter how incredible it may seem.

After finishing “Fools Rush In”, a good friend of mine that I should meet her friend (who’s nationality I did not know and she did not know of my new-found interest) that we’d have lot in common.  Her friend was a Croat from Serbia. After this meet a few weeks ran by and due to the setback of hurricane Sandy I went to a speakeasy I been to once or twice before to celebrate my mom’s birthday and all the bartenders were Serbs and Bosnians.  So you see it just keeps coming, flooding my pools.  In my 21 years in the USA I believe I have only met one Yugoslavian girl and that was in High School (15 years prior).  So it’s clear, that the rolling stone keeps telling me this is my road, my path to embrace for now and for as long as my brain and I can walk it.  No one is telling me to write stories; no one is asking me to do this research.  Someone other than me has chosen it all. And I say thank you to that spin of the wind, I am grateful not only because I am learning about what I should have known decades ago and perhaps we all should have known but also because my passion for history is now expanded past WWII and I feel that is an amazing thing. 

It is my sincere hope that Bosnia, now 16 years after the end of the war is stronger, more beautiful and brazen than it ever has been. 

So this should quench your thirst about wanting why Bosnia, why.   

Good soul shakes, yours truly I remain.

Every day, I am thankful for...

1. Water and its nature
2. Friendships and their changes
3. Moon and its light
4. Patience and its grandness
5. Inspiration for its bottomlessness
6. My mom and her spirit
7. The human body and its ability to heal itself and heal others
8. Ideas and their forming
9. Dreams and their way of working into reality
10. History and its map to the present
11. Language and expression
12. Travels to close and far places and its effect on one's perception
13. Taste buds and their way of being a guide into new places of heavenly tastes
14. Train rides and the time one gets to read on them
15. Self evolution and understanding
16. Different cultures and their introspect into life
17. All forms of love and its boundlessness
18. Music and its world crossing and uniting effects
19. My hands for always being there for me
20. My feet for carrying me
21. Films that start endless journeys
22. Books that alter minds
23. Joy = of giving, of sharing, of being
24. Domino effect
25. My eyes that can still see
26. My ears that can still hear
27. My skin for holding it together
28. Photos that instantly replay and induce memory
29. Movement and its stillness within
30. Images that change the way we think, see and perceive
31. Pain for its lessons and knowledge we gain
32. Experience for its eventuality 
33. Animals and their bond with nature
34. Simplicity for its ground work in all that we call life
35. Change for its constant presence