We met after two years

We avoided each other for over two years. Actually, she was running after me and I was squirming at her. She was panting on my neck so much that several times I wanted to stop and say to her: "Here I am, Satan, to see what you can do to me!" It's better that I didn't. Because, when she made me suffer this much after three vaccines and this one of hers, they say, is a milder strain, then the more severe form, in the time without the vaccine, I believe, would have sent me to the obituary.

* * *

True, if it weren't for the two days of high temperature, stuffy nose, nervousness due to difficulty breathing and the occasional fear of what it could turn into, corona was an (undeserved) rest - distance from everything, rest and reading favorite literature.

When I have poor concentration, I somehow like autobiographical reading and short stories the most. "Diary of Solitude" by Vidosav Stevanović, I started it, then left it because of the pile of obligations. Now that book of 632 pages was like therapy for me, I read it little and often. On many pages, I debated with the 1986-year-old from Kragujevac, winner of the Nino Prize for the novel "Testament" in XNUMX, but also enjoyed his clean, captivating sentences, occasional cynicism and a kind of self-indulgence, drawn, paradoxically as it may sound, through questioning and self-criticism. .

And that nothing changes in these areas, including the power of literature, these sentences of Stevanović's say:

"In the years of my youth, there were only three ways to succeed: politics, sports or crime. I had no patience for politics and I hated it, for sports I lacked brute strength and primitive will, and my sensitivity to violence and aversion to cruelty distanced me from the thought of crime... But I felt free from everything: I was not a slave nothing, I no longer believed in anything, except in literature... After every accidental or intentional shipwreck, my lifeline would save my head: literature."

* * *

Really, what would this life be like without literature? With whom we live so many other lives...

* * *

"We know much more about the body than about the soul," says Ljudmila Ulicka at the beginning of her brilliant book "About the body of the soul". All her stories from this book were invigorating until the very end. And then the main character's soul goes somewhere, robbing me of even more air that I was missing anyway. But I masochistically moved on. And I came to the end, just when the thickening of the mucous membrane in the nose decreased and I was "breathing" again.

* * *

They go to someone else's past (specifically, to the past of my slightly older friend with whom I exchange books) and Ćato and Bitori and their children Shabier and Nerea, and Hoshijan and Miren and their children Joše Mari, Aranća and Gorka, two blood feuding Basque families , from the brilliant novel "Fatherland" by Fernando Aramburu. I read slowly, delaying as much as possible the inevitable - the end of enjoying every line of this masterpiece.

* * *

The elections in Bar and other Montenegrin cities have (I guess) been postponed and instead of mid-June, they will, it seems, be held until the end of October. In this country, it can be this way and that, but only everything is successfully spilled and diluted...

* * *

Next to the "Top Spin" tennis court, Muj Dapčević, for many years the best tennis player in Bar and Montenegrin, is proud of two paulownia trees. Mujo planted them eight years ago. Those paulownia trees, in the spring, when they bloom, are one of the sights of Bar.

Paulownia, they say, is the fastest growing tree and the most honey-bearing plant in the world. Its honey is medicinal, thicker than that of acacia. It produces 1,7 kilograms of oxygen per hour, absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide. That is why its planting is recommended near kindergartens, schools, as well as in overpopulated cities.

It has long been widely used in Asia and Australia. Since then, its cultivation has also started in Montenegro.

Paulovnia was named after Princess Anna Pavlovna, daughter of Emperor Pavel I Petrovich, and that is why it is often called "Princess Tree".

These two bar trees joined each other and soared into the sky in the immediate vicinity of the hotel that calls it - "Princess"!

* * *

Dušan Lekić died at the age of 88. He was our teacher in the fourth grade. In the fall of 1968, as nine-year-olds, we felt the intoxicating breath of democracy for the first time, without even knowing it. The old teacher, who led us for three years, retired and was replaced by teacher Duško. At the department handover, we all cried. We thought we couldn't have a better teacher than the old one.

Even now I remember our debauchery on vacations, laughter and relaxation in classes, unimaginable until then. The old teacher knew how to hit us so that it hurt us, the new one raised his hand only for the order, when we just overplayed our cards in the game. He only got angry when we sweat because he was afraid we would catch a cold.

All my life I felt respect for that short man, with a piercing voice, warm eyes and a gentle nature.