Resin

Sometimes life changes in a second. These sudden changes are rarely for the better. You couldn't really say that two Thursdays, in the middle of January, were fateful, but some scars remained.

On Thursday, January 10, Masha was returning to London. Unsettled by the storm, we headed for the airport. After the Sozina tunnel, it was as if we arrived in another country, somewhere in the north, white snow all around. Fortunately, the road was cleared. We reached Golubovac without any problems. It said that the plane from London arrives on time, at 12,25 and that it flies to London, also on time, at 12,50. There was no reason to stay longer at the airport, partings are still difficult for us.

On the way back, just when the two of us were commenting that there was nothing to worry about, a blizzard started near Virpazar, and within an hour there was a crowd and a standstill. Then Maša informed us that "her" plane did not even land in Podgorica, but was diverted to Zadar, and from Bar they "made us happy" that the electricity had gone out. The snow was falling harder and harder, the road was less and less visible, the line of vehicles was getting longer, there was no information at the airport, which is why the plane near Podgorica was diverted to Zadar, there was no electricity in Bar...

Then the road cleared, my nephew Miloš, a meteorologist, informed us from Belgrade that the plane from Zadar had taken off for Podgorica and would soon be leaving for London, so it has not been easy for us for a long time that there is no electricity in Bar, according to the system suffers from worse evil". And we thought that electricity would come soon...

But, the electricity did not come for more than 27 hours, supposedly some hurricane wind broke the poles.

Meanwhile, the electricity bills for December have arrived. I don't know anyone whose bill was under 100 euros, and Elektroprivreda Crne Gore announced that the average bill in Bar is 40,09 euros. Someone seems to be stealing our electricity. Because, if it were not so, there would be money to restore and modernize the so-called. electrical infrastructure, so that every small storm does not surprise and traumatize us.

True, my trauma due to the power outage was alleviated by that phantom plane from Zadar, coffee in the warm "Adađ" and reading Zweig's fantastic "Chess Novel" from the laptop.

And speaking of trauma: it remains to be seen whether Elektroprivreda will reduce the January bill for Barani and Ulcinj, at least by five percent. It would be fine.

* * *

However, the following Thursday, January 17, was significantly more traumatic.

I was awakened by phone calls and messages: "They're cutting down cypress trees!"

When I got to the cypress trees, which are about fifty meters away from my building, a young man told me that he had been ordered not to let anyone into the fenced area and asked me to obey him because he would lose his job. He added: "If I had known what was going to happen to me this morning, I wouldn't have come here!"

And then with the screaming, disgusting sound of the saw, the cypresses began to fall, brutally trampled. They moaned, writhed, simply begged to be left alone - nothing helped. It was as if I heard Miljković from somewhere: "And the tree said: don't, my white morning..." I felt humiliated and powerless... I experienced a debacle as a citizen of Bar, but also as a journalist. Many people called me and reminded me that I had just written on the "Vijesti" website that nothing would come of building a kindergarten in the courtyard of the high school, because I believe that no one is so ignorant and imprudent as to destroy a green oasis in the middle of the city center that many famous and bigger cities... It's too late to apologize now, but it's my journalistic duty that some people in this city are remembered for cutting down cypress trees.

For days, the entire city center smells of resin, of cypress blood.

How many wonderful Aries were gathered by the cypresses! Unblemished biographies. In fact, a specific breed of people who look the interlocutor in the eye, who are ready to help their neighbor even to their own detriment. And who doesn't hide behind big topics and events that he can't influence and with which he absolves his passivity, inertness, and even fear of the ever-vigilant and ready for misdeeds of various kinds of "evet effendi".

The tears of that girl on the fence who mourns the killing of a cypress went around all social networks and forever marked Bar on the map of cities that don't give up on themselves.

It is an unusual explanation that there is no progress without tearing down the old. Regardless of the fact that I graduated from Bar High School, I have no particular sentimentality towards cypresses. But, they stood there, proudly, for almost a whole century and live an average of 500 years. By their sails, bright stumps, they saw that they were alive, more alive than ever. It was supposed to be pretty tight and hit them.

Fifteen years ago, an olive grove was destroyed in the same street due to the construction of three (ugly) three-story buildings. Even then there were protests, but much smaller ones, even though olive is an incomparably more important tree than cypress. But then it made some sense for the buildings to be built along the boulevard, the construction of a kindergarten in the courtyard of the gymnasium makes no sense, because, let me repeat: it is illegal, inhumane to children and unfair to nature.

* * *

In the first half of January, I read two books: "Death and its vagaries", by the Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago (1922 - 2010) and "Ours", by the Russian writer Sergey Dovlatov (1941 - 1990). I read the first one hard, in two weeks, the second easily, in two and a half hours. Saramag's story about death suffocated me, Dovlatov also left me breathless, but because of the desire to read his masterpiece as soon as possible.

January is the best month for reading books.

* * *

A person gets the most and best quality rest when the weather is bad outside, when he doesn't leave the house, like during the past New Year's and Christmas holidays.

Everything passes... but, fortunately, a lot of beautiful things repeat themselves...