disfigurement.

there's a point when the edges of a long nurtured body suddenly get blown away and all the pieces of the whole fall apart. things explode and implode. the world glitters its new scales. then a knife cuts through to the heart of the body. the pain blunts the reason. but the scars soon heal, and new scales, stronger and shinier, grow back. until the next cycle. and the next. and the next. the scars are plentiful, but callous and beautiful. the disfigurement reflects the forces of love and life.

the wire and the pyramid.

the new story has been out for a couple of weeks now. my attitude toward it is just like the one i had toward my previous book when it came out. i am indifferent. it's something i got out of my system and no criticism (good or bad) can overly touch me. i fought with my past demons in it, and i have a feeling i am purged of them. until the new ones come along.

my cathedral.

this is the first time i am publicly mentioning a book i published six years ago. i am not sure why i have been so reticent. there is a lot in it that wanted out in the open, and then when the book came out, i mostly kept quiet about it. there were even times when i wondered whether i should have published it at all. not because i am ashamed of writing a dilettante piece of mock non-fiction, or because i disclosed many personal feelings in it, revealing perhaps even the things that i did not know i was revealing, but perhaps because i have changed in the meantime, changed to the extent that some of the things written there are in no way applicable to me any longer. of course, there's still too much of me in it.

the book is a description of one month, march 2001, that i spent in turku, a town in finland. in the story i tried to follow several strands - my inexplicable closeness to scandinavia, some haunting childhood memories, relationships with family members and partners, hospital experiences, introspection, etc. i think i have have fairly accurately and minutely touched upon many burning issues in my life. however, years have passed since then, and i have moved along.

the point of me unearthing this topic now is that i am publishing another title by the end of this year. it is a very different text, a fictionalized story about the demons of filip andrich. the book will be very short, probably under 100 pages, and the title will be 'the wire and the pyramid'. it took me six years to start promoting my stuff. isn't it progress?

toxic disinhibition.

when i was a student in the early nineties i was rather inhibited in classes and not too free to express my own opinions. however, i would have loved to have had some space where i could share the entirety of my ideas. two decades later this kind of space is available to every single student - the internet. i plan to introduce blogs and forums and other online communication platforms in my teaching, in order to offer the students a channel for less inhibited expression.

disinhibition is a wonderful thing. all the ideas we were anxious to share can now get out in the open, not only to be shared, but also tested and contested, which is a prerequisite for further development.

but do all of us take more freedom in the same way? no sir! some of us get disinhibited in a benign way, saying the good things we were too vulnerable to share face to face, while some of us use this increment of freedom to fire away our frustrations and hates. that is called toxic disinhibition, practiced by 'haters'.

this train of thought led me back in time to the early nineties, when former yugoslavia started disintegrating. the communism, which had not been nearly as severe as that in the countries behind the iron curtain, finally fell, and prospects for prosperity and catching up with the modern world opened up. ideological social restrictions loosened, and people were free to express what was on their minds. i remember my great enthusiasm when western chocolates started flowing into our stores, when bands like the sugarcubes had concerts in the country, when europe was at hand. but instead of using the benefits of the new position, we used our freedom to irresponsibly unwrap unprecedented lunacy and stupidity and hatred from our hearts. the toxicity was overwhelming. it is, i'm afraid, still here, and probably to stay.

tengo marcado en el pecho...

i have always drawn personal maps of the world and compiled private atlases. some lands of this earth are in my very heart. iceland, finland, croatia. england, germany. the united states. india. they shine and stand out, and it is easy to love them, like one's own children. some other countries are there, too, still noticeable, still lovely, while some are hidden in the fog. although i love them all, like all the children of this world, some simply feel foreign. the whole of latin america, russia, china. most of africa. arabia. spanish is a foreign language to me, as is japanese, or turkish.

my private maps are flawed, and i learn it over and over again. last year i went to prague, not expecting any particular connection. the czech republic was one of the places that i thought will feel foreign. however, from the moment i landed, to the moment i drove across frozen fields towards the airport, i enjoyed every single thing of my trip, and now when i hear czech spoken, i react with a smile. it has nestled in my private world.

in every foreignness, there is a grain of commonness. foreignness is a subjective and superficial feeling. if we give it a chance, any culture or land can become our own. i started thinking about this today, upon accidentally hearing a song. hoy, by gloria estefan. and although i already said that latin culture does not play a huge role in my life, this song touched me, it 'left a mark on my chest'. it made me remember. and it reminded me of how important it actually is to me, and how spanish can be the language of my heart.

then i wanted to explore some more, and look for other latin songs with equal emotional significance for me. and then they just started flooding me over. i decided to point out just two more. 'un amor' shook me deeply. i remembered the late eighties, my late teens, the times filled with love and expectations. it felt like the essence of that part of my life is huddled in this song.

i couldn't skip 'la dolce vita' by anneli saaristo, a latin song sung in 'my' language, finnish. most people probably cannot bear past the first few lines, but i get goosebumps when i hear: 'ja sen mukana laulaa voi onnellinen: lapsi kesän ja auringon'.

this might be a lesson of how futile and limiting it is to draw private atlases. i will probably go on experiencing some cultures as more intimate than others, but will try to be more open to the beautiful variety of the world.

huxley at gatwick.

upon my recent visit to london i waited for an unusually long time at the passport control. when, after almost two hours, i finally stepped up to the border officer, he asked the usual questions - my reason for coming to london, how long i was planning to stay, what i did for a living, etc. upon hearing that i teach english literature, he wanted to know which period and which authors. since aldous huxley is my most immediate field of expertise, i mentioned him first. that was enough to trigger his enthusiasm, so we started chatting about huxley for some good ten minutes. the officer mentioned 'brave new world revisited', a not very famous piece of prose written in the 1950s, and said he was fascinated by the ideas in it. to be perfectly honest, i wasn't completely sure which ideas huxley expounded in that essay (because he covered similar topics in various discursive writings from that period), but then the officer became more concrete. he also mentioned julian huxley, and i mentioned t. h. huxley, the famous grandfather, or 'darwin's bulldog', as he was called, but the officer had not heard about him. i even told him to go to the natural hisotry museum and see t. h.'s statue in the cafeteria. what to say in conclusion? that in the uk one can chat with a border policeman about the topics one had written a doctoral dissertation on, and that one can even learn a few things from that very policeman. if only there were more countries like the uk.

passions recycled.

iceland is a cool passion. i have shared it for over twenty-five years now. i fell in love with the country back in 1986, when i saw esja and the streets of reykjavik on tv for the first time in my life. ever since, my passion has been uninterrupted, with occasional outbursts. a week or so ago i listened to a bbc radio show called 'excess baggage', recorded in iceland, and listening to it on my i-pod, on my walk through the local trebjesa wood, my passion burst out again. the emotions this distant and exotic land incites in me are profound, supra-rational, and warm. as soon as i got back home i took a book off the shelf which had been waiting to be read for a year or two - the historical novel 'the virgin of skalholt' by gudmundur kamban. a year or two ago, on a similar icelandic spree, i ordered this novel through abebooks, but when it arrived i was overwhelmed with other things and my passion for iceland had been lulled for a while. when it got out in the open again, i reached for the book, and am now immersed in romanticized pages of icelandic history. and i love it so, so much. however, one fact about this book additionally touches me. the copy that i have is a 1935 edition, translated into english from the danish, and it belonged to a certain caroline cherton sherrill from brookline, massachusetts. the book dealer that sent me the book was in portland, oregon. so, this exact copy of the novel has made a journey through languages, decades, and geographical spaces, recycling a passion for iceland all the while. i will probably not be willing to part from this book for yet a while, but i know that one day i would like to pass it on to someone who would be eager to keep the icelandic flame alive.