vaistinu se rodi

if (officially, registeredly) living at their address had not pulled us into the family already, being invited to spend Christmas over at Tijana's sewed up any remaining doubts concerning affiliation.

everyone was there—Tijana, Ivana, mama, and tata—plus an assortment of others: Dora (the "little neighbor," who has piped through several combined hours of my lessons), Dora's mother, Tijana's professor and her sick son, and a few friends.

you would not believe what a remarkable asset i have in the person of Best Favourite. even in contexts where he speaks not much more than "hvala [thanks]" and "izvini [excuse me]," he manages to enthrall everyone in tales and discussions. it frees me up to, well, not speak (my favourite activity), all the while being regarded in a highly more favourable light than i would have, otherwise—simply by virtue of having dragged along (with negligible arm force) behind me this enthusiastic one.

in the course of flying words and bursts of laughter, i realise, once again, the great difference between individual understanding—and communicability. the implications are great and, as such, (justifiably) command an entire life of investigation. here, though, i speak only of the most basic, literal, aspect of the dilemma: as i listen to the conversation around me, i can make out a fair percentage of it. however, i am not able to relate this, either in complete sentences or RealTime, to another (in this case, Best Favourite). what sounds an awful lot like a flimsy excuse is, nonetheless, true; while the current example is an extreme case (in that there is "actual" (ie. cross-national-linguistic) translation involved), even within a given codified language, the same practico-ideological problems emerge. to hear is to know in a different (or, at least, possibly different) way than is found in the activities: paraphrasing and telling another. that we communicate at all is a foundational question—and a profound marvel.

as a result of being seized with love for Dragana (Tijana's mother) and (oddly enough) her forceful-mothering ways, i managed to consume more meat (in scraps) during this one evening than i have in, perhaps, the entire previous seven years. also ren (horseradish), bread baked with bits of wood inside it (granting health, longevity, and other compensatory benefits for the one who has just discovered a branch in his/her mouth, along with tooth shards), salads of cabbage and spicy peppers, homemade rakija (ubiquitous local brandy), sweet chocolaty things, and coffee that even Best Favourite tasted (along with special lemon/honey/wooden spoon tea (both of which warm beverages Dragana makes unrivaledly and which, at key moments over the course of the past few months, have healed by body/lungs and soul)).

though we stayed longer than anyone else who, ahem, didn't live there, it looked like we should leave the warm room and return to my apartment for the last few hours before Best Favourite's 6.15 am flight. it was decidedly not "on the way home," but we agreed to be good not-citizens and de-register with the police—on the (extremely) off-chance that any of these contortions mattered (in particular, for Tijana's family). at the station, we got the standard Christmas greeting ("Hristos se rodi [Christ is born]," "vaistinu se rodi [indeed he is]") and a perfunctory glance at only the registration scrap o' document (and not the "paper-clipped for your ease of perusal, customs official sir" passport, itself). with a resounding (in the timbre unique to displays of meaningless bureacraticity) rubber stamp, we were sent on our way.