Centralities

out of the cold bed and into the cold world, i took the train from Ivanić Grad into Zagreb—a 35 minute trip from farmland to West-of-Central Europe. by which i mean: upon creaking into Glavni Kolodvor (main train station), i blinked, forcefully, and still wasn't entirely convinced that i had not reached, say, Brno.

everything that will be is, at once, contained in that which exists. Zagreb is a city whose capacity to tip in either direction of the dividing line—whose exact coordinates matter very little (ah, faithless Central European would-be scholar. a defense, your honour: what would be the value of a "Center" that was a point (all of which, as well we know, do not exist—at least not in a way that means anything)? work is done by leverage: the pulling closer and further—the distance (concept and reality) itself))), except that they have implicative power, via the particular signs in/by which they are drawn—is evident. having been so long on the Eastern side of this invisible, but life-forced, line, i notice, most of all, the ways in which Zagreb contains the germ of the West, the immediacy with which the city's molten surface threatens to bring forth such in actuality.

it was all that yellow, really, the tiered verticality with white uplifted accents. the church spires instead of domes—reaching up up up, instead of settling like a puzzle. the roundness of icon eyes, inside cathedrals and on street-facing corners of houses. and the schleeemy (because they've got to, eventually, make a presentable arrival in places like Berlin and Paris) IC/EC trains. the tramvaj in whose probable femininity i would place a great deal of trust. the acceptability of the instrumental case in signage—and, thereby, in language.

from the Trg Kralja Tomislava (King Tomislav square. look at that name! look at this post further degenerating into manic exclamations about the sliding scale of Central Europe!) on up into Donji Grad (Down—but not like that—Town: Zagreb is two cities, on different topographical levels). though, at one point, close-proximity sparring plagued the communities dwelling Up and Down, they got it together enough not only to unite in the face of the marauders—but also managed, perhaps by dint of the grudging union, not to fall to the Turks. now the two parts are connected, variously and at west-east intervals, by: winding narrow residential streets, a handrailed and walled path, and a funicular railway.

the vertical surfaces of Zagreb are, unapologetically, scrawled with various two-dimensional hearkenings of Gotovina. based on strident words and pasted potraits of his encamouflaged self, we could almost believe that he still walks the streets.

Trgovi Maršala Tita and Franklina Rooseveltova (their respective squares) lie adjacently, with the (superlatively yellow) National Theatre lodged in between. after marking them, i found a dark and dusty coffee place around the corner, in what seemed to be a journalist quarter of sorts (in any case, there were a couple of newspaper offices around, and many on the tables in the cafe). sat there for a long while, reading James Joyce and working on the alphabet-soup reports necessary for my documented departure.

it isn't just the having to do paperwork (instead of wandering without stopping—a luxury, indeed, but one for which i will sacrifice others, including something firstborn), but the sort of stuff in whose service-of-agonising i find myself: honing down (or in on—whichever preposition hones best) the essence of the disgrace, suiting it with words that leave nothing to the dense or blinded imagination. this: so that i am absolved (from the false smear of wrongdoing), that those who did so unjustifiably know beyond doubt that they have committed these acts, so that, through (if harsh, if redundant—so be it!) overspecification, others will not be, thus, condemned and confined for only their own ability to read and logic consistently. and, finally, so that the viability of improvement (organisationally and individually) is restored; i am not too angry to hope (did i not not storm off at the first, second, or sixth instance and, in the meantime, press on with reconciliative (or, at least, tenacious) thoughts?)). i have a distinct responsibility, perhaps self-imposed, to say these things, and to do so completely. in most ways, this is not difficult: the case is, itself, abundantly clear. as stunned with fury as i have been, as bowled-down with sadness—the core of righteous passion is (for me) verbal, methodical, and precise.

what distresses me, now (beyond the fact that doing so diverts into circularity the time available for any "creating" activity), as i draw up notes, is the fact that, despite everything and even as i go on at length about the events truncating anysuch—i am doing so in Zagreb. that sounds like (even to my boiled-blood definition), somewhere along the way, travel has been involved. although, of course, that's exactly where the rubber and the road and the gift/dead horses are brought to bear—and why, after at least the sixth instance, i am both leaving the region/assignment and, more than partially, citing the Travel Ban™ as primary grounds therefor. if i didn't know it from the beginning, i started to see as soon as the original "nowhere" was, in fact, changed to The Region in Which Reside MCC Volunteers, that is: SCG, BiH, and HR. (this most likely a result of my needling-questioned explication about the absolute meaninglessness of delineation. as in: apartment? Beograd? Srbija? and does that involve Kosovo? and what if, say, Timisoara or Budapest is closer than southern Srbija? etcetera.)

so, in short (i can hear the detractors already), what is the problem? i can travel—have done so, even since, by going to Bar and Novi Sad and Sarajevo, and now, being in Zagreb. the point is, unfortunately (but not surprisingly), a principled one: that these arbitrary (like the best of them, but more so) boundaries were drawn up, reactionarily and decidedly after the fact. that, moreover, despite both errors glaring at every turn in regards this (as a systematic, institutional practise) and the inherent arbitrarity nonetheless being passed off as absolute (oh, this superheats the blood), the matter has been, thus, rendered non-negotiable.

it is, foremost, a question of freedom. i mean so with more than a few Kantian (mostly first formulation) overtones and (i hope) in the great, expansive and circumscribed, Nietzschean "freedom from versus freedom for" sense that is above (Beyond!) petulant whines. that the first step from any door is wholly determined by the conditions of its being taken goes without saying.

(this is why
by the by
just to tie up threads:
the germy aspects of Central Europe
are of matchless value.
and awful rhythmic structure.)

thus, to be told "here and no further" or "here and not [an equivalent, according to a mere different classification] there" changes all of the (possible and impossible) elements in the "here" category. an "actual" sense of place matters only slightly—and, far more: the processes whereby allowance is accorded, by whom, and the ensuing systematic definitions of sense (consistency), meaning (understandability, conveyability) and, above all, responsibility (built upon the former two). i am free insofar as my actions are more than themselves, are realised and intentioned by something that ends neither when the railroad track does nor in an ability to shoulder my belongings in a worn hiking backpack. i am free only insofar as, even while choosing to stay home, i would be nomadic.

the Roman sculpture ruins in the yard outside the Archeological Museum are ringed only by a rusty gate. i poke at and around them undeterred.