A few pages from a diary kept during a self-imposed digital abstinence — a Barbie flip-phone instead of a smartphone. The best of it.
Like every true zombie, I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere without staring at a map. I have no idea where I’m going or where I turn; the map leads me like a blind person and I follow its every command without objection — which of course means I have no clue where anything is without it.
Now the zombie has set off to the dermatologist without a map, and forgotten whether it’s on Gospodar Jovanova or Gospodar Jevremova street. There’s no way I’ll remember. I love Dorćol, but every cross street off Francuska looks the same to me, and I call them all Gospodar Jovanova. First obstacle of life without a phone: find the street. I circle like a lost soul and find it. I feel no shame — I feel pride. Maybe I should be ashamed that a thing like this fills me with pride, but it is what it is.
In the waiting room it’s uncomfortable, but I have the feeling everyone admires me — look how patiently she waits without her phone. In reality, not a single living soul cares about me. So I start a conversation with the woman across from me, because I’m now that person who talks to strangers, discovering the beauty of small talk. The woman tells me she has cancer while I wait for my own results, and suddenly the beauty of life, and the small talk, and the digital abstinence all catch in my throat. My results are good, everything’s fine. I know the way home. Victory after victory. I truly hope she recovers quickly.
The sea
The sea is the place where you think of nothing but swimming and the heat. It’s where you play cards, sing along to Magazin, eat peaches on the beach, and — with a kilo of salt in your hair and an ice-cream stain on your shirt — stroll the promenade in the evening. The sea is freedom, infinite and zero possibilities at once. The most carefree place in the world. I hope life lets me live by the sea for a while, in some small village. That is real digital abstinence. I want to rest my eyes from advertisements and my soul from the rush. I want the sea.
On language
One of my favourite quotes is Beckett’s — “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” I have to write it in English, because that’s how I first read it, and that’s how it lives in my head. I don’t like reading in English otherwise; I can’t experience it the same way as in Serbian. Serbian is beautiful, explosive and vivid, and it is, after all, the language in which I feel. I’ve never heard “I love you” and have no idea what that feels like. “Volim te,” on the other hand, I know intimately. I read for the same reason I do everything else: to feel.
We are all a little Karađorđe
The best article ever written, the article of all articles, reads as follows: “Karađorđe dyed his hair and often cried.” Very simple, direct, poetic and inspiring. Until that moment I had no idea how much I have in common with Karađorđe. It’s true that I too dye my hair and often cry. And it’s true that it gives me strength in moments of weakness — I remember that we are all, a little, Karađorđe.