Returned to Life!
I think I was accidentally glowing this morning as I sat down at the City Diner with a book, rather than my I-Pad. The waitress and the owner kept looking at me as if trying to figure out what had changed. I felt it, too!
Yesterday’s post must have knocked something loose inside me! I woke up a very different person this morning…
No way was I going to sour my day with the daily misery of my usual authors (who aren’t even really authors, now that I think about it! More aggregators of suspicion and morbidity).
I was in the mood for Momo Kapor, who I mentioned in last night’s post.
Who needs yet another book to read?! No matter how good!
So, to spare my dear readers, here is a snippet to enjoy…
I opened ‘The Magic of Belgrade’ at random…purchased IN Belgrade 6 yrs ago, but reluctantly set to the side for reasons described in last night’s post. I had actually forgotten!!
It was only a few months ago, that I discovered it…unopened since my return…with receipts and tiny travel notes and phone numbers of new friends.
In those precious scraps, I FOUND MY OLD LIFE! …and I picked up where I left off!
But there was also a story…very much at the heart of ‘The Gypsy Ashram’ that I was on the verge of publishing a year and a half ago when I let substack take over my life.
The taxi card was from the only person who would take me to the Gypsy encampment. He was understandably reluctant, but then he turned his meter off and we spent the day together going from place to place as he gave me an unforgettable and insightful education.
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I opened to ‘Dule The Bighead’.
I read Dule’s story three times! Laughing out loud at the unexpected parts! I like these writers who have been through so much (I’ll fill you in later) and yet have found the salvageable parts of heart and humor in the seeming ruins and tragedies of life.
This is not an innocent beauty… This is a beauty that is tender in ways we cannot yet fathom. It is spliced with something Else. Unsearchable, yet it peeks around the edges of how he handles the world…
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Dule The Bighead died just as he had lived…quite unexpectedly!
Let it also be noted that Dule The Bighead was the owner of the strangest tavern in Belgrade, maybe even in all of Europe: I can vouch for myself that I have never seen anything similar to it anywhere on Earth.
First of all, his tavern, located on a half-rotten and fully run-down wooden raft, displayed no sign and had no name. We called it simply ”At Dule The Bighead’s”.
Besides, it was not duly registered as an eatery and no taxes were paid for it. It would close by itself if tax inspectors happened to come near, and would open by itself when friends arrived.
Dule The Bighead hardly ever cooked anything on his raft. The guests themselves cooked when they were hungry. There was no set price for food and booze…everyone would place on the cupboard as much as one could afford. The strangest thing of all was that the guests usually prepared meals for Dule as well, as he considered himself to be above it.
He was the happiest and the freest man I have ever met and I envied him deeply for his ability to evade all traps set by life.
If he would fall asleep after lunch (and he slept without fail), his snoring would make small waves on the surface of the river and the raft would heave as if alive. Sitting in our boats, we would wait for him to wake up and tell us what he had dreamed of.
A writer from Split, Miljenko Smoje, was once a guest on his raft.
We were expecting excitedly to hear what he would say about the Sava (river), the love of our life. We even made some preparations beforehand. We painted crows white to make them resemble seagulls and a man waited upriver with a bag of salt to pour in, should Smoje decide to take a swim and be puzzled by the fact that the water was not salty.
“You really swim in this?” asked the flabbergasted man from Split, pointing at the turbid water.
The current was carrying away with melancholy the bloated corpse of a cow from Umka with birds standing on it.
We admitted that we did swim in it and that we were still doing fine. If we happen to spot a bicycle or a bacterium or an amoeba in the river, we simply swam around them.
Occasionally, some curious foreigners would visit the raft belonging to Dule The Bighead. Once I brought a New York TV crew to make a story about him. The Sava Troubadour, Old Caruso, joined us soon. Naturally we had too many drinks, forgot all about filming the story, and launched into singing………
Who actually was Dule The Bighead?
The Colas Breugnon of Ada Ciganlija, Gargantua or Pantagruel, a jester and a host, a friend of cast-outs and the lonely, but also of well-known people, the last king of the Sava, the man out of whose hand the fish ate, the guardian of the river's secrets, a sage, a mythical personage…
I don't know.
But neither do I know where to moor my boat now that he has turned into a legend.
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After breakfast, I headed to the ocean’s edge and then to the inlet…just to walk and sit and re-acquaint myself with the beauty that surrounds us. Though I live just a few miles from the beach, I have only been twice this year… Imagine. That’s how serious I’ve become.
Today I had no choice in the matter. It was as if I had found my footing again and Everything leapt to my aid and support. I was returned to Life…
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How Much is Enough?Debra Robinson·Sep 13Read full story
https://debra152.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-surprising-minds
As always… Thanks for reading.
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