Travel North

January, from September is the first month since moving to Kosovo where reality came to slap my face. Ana, having escaped France and her situation for a time came to her flat in Belgrade and there are problems – the pain, the flight, the fight, the resounding effects of being a foreigner returning, of never expecting to return, two children, one an infant, a failed marriage, abuse. What problems, she exclaims, can this be, I’m only three hundred kilometers away from you. Trapped in circumstances that are all too clear, I cannot save her and she has done a good thing by coming but I may not be able to come. Afraid, she lashes out at not connecting, at differences in speech and language. And of course the silent fear of being left alone, left without love. So she presents a difficult situation at a difficult time. I understand so I cry for her. I cry for myself at not having a better answer. And then there is my reality which is shaped in the space and pace of just existing and living to observe. Two nights prior I hand Shawn, my boss, the phone after Ana had called to free me from a night of obligatory drinking in which I was caught – alcohol an increasing problem for everyone around because without opportunity people drink and with opportunity people drink. It’s not a Bukowski pastime here though, here it is empty space, unproductive space. Ana makes a stand and it is received poorly. Let my man go for the night because I need to speak with him. In their minds she is now a crazy Serb, a wild woman making demands with even less to offer. Whatever was said it was not the thing to say to 2 forty something bachelors drunk and chasing girls in the impossible Prishtina space. Kolja, in Belgrade, saved me twice now. Both times from the depths of depression by a diagnosis that sadness is a part of life, disappointment a part of life, and that people will usually, on most occasions, look out for number one. A truth I’ve heard time and again and time and again I’ve been surprised at my own lack of submission to the truth preferring instead belief in the impossible. That is the way it will go with me. The road north to Serbia becomes even more entangled…