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I remember a dream. I must have been about 25 when dreaming one night (as if I were about 10 year old girl in that dream) about living in a very lovely little town leading sort of suburban life with its tidy houses and quiet streets, located somewhere around my mom’s house, but could be anywhere in the world, a totally idyllic place where I was kind of a small red-riding-hood-like girl at that moment.
That day, a very nice early summer day it was, when I arrived at the central part of the town with my bike to do some shopping, I understood that something big and exciting was about to happen there. People from all around the place were gathering on the central square and I realized that someone very important was expected to show up there soon. I was so interested to see who, like everyone else, and at the beginning it was exciting and the crowd was happy as if waiting for the big parade. It was like waiting for Santa but soon I realized that the crowd was getting nervous as the time was elapsing too fast. The expectations of the crowd weren’t met, He was obviously late and the doubt and tension visibly grew over the crowd, replacing the initial enthusiasm and inspiration.
In one moment, moving around together with the crowd and getting more and more involved in observing it and what people did, I suddenly realized that the One we were waiting for was neither Santa nor any mysterious unknown God-like stranger but my dear Grandpa in person! The insight so clearly broke in my mind that I didn’t need to explain it to anyone nor ask what to do – I simply knew!
So, I slid quickly out of all that raising chaos, jumped on my bike and unmistakably headed away from the brewing town to the countryside. The weather was fantastic! Spring or early summer day was shining with its fresh green, blue skies and small white clouds. I enjoyed my ride although I was speeding, feeling urged to see his friendly face and tell him everything finding all answers and escape from uneasiness in his warm embrace.
Soon, I was there, behind the forest and across the river, following the road where there was no one about, and no one to meet either, I reached the green hills of his estate. I opened the gate, left my bike there and walked over his beautifully cut lawn feeling so good at that place! And there he was, sitting in his big garden armchair by the nicely shaded well. A small tea table was set nearby with few white chairs and he was half asleep when I called him silently, not to disturb him in his rest. The air was ever so fresh and a bird singing, I was waiting for Grandpa to open his eyes and he beamed seeing me, then he offered me some fresh water when he noticed I was tired and sweating but I just wanted to talk and embrace him. He let me sit in his lap, like when I was three, and would rushing to tell him something but he would be calm and change the subject like he had already solved that issue. He was telling me some very comforting words and soon I forgot what I was feeling so perplexed about. I was again just a happy and loved child who had absolutely nothing to worry about.
His white head, white beard, beautiful baby-like pink skin and smiling eyes – my beloved Grandpa made me feel completely at ease and soon my two cousins showed up there and he asked someone to bring our favorite raspberry juice dissolved in a glass of cold fresh water taken from the well. Oh what a wonderful day! Few minutes or few hours of it passed just like that, we were laughing and chatting so joyfully and then it happened – in one moment I turned my eyes to my left foot under the table. I was barefoot (as I always used to ‘loose’ my shoes when sitting at the table, and so this time I played with my bare feet) and suddenly, instead of the green grass carpet beneath my bare left foot I saw the skin of big snake, moving slowly so it seemed that I could step on it if I extended my foot just a little bit….
Hypnotized by what I saw, I was at the same time so much drawn to it that all around me suddenly disappeared, except the side I was focused on - down and below my foot.
And at the moment the Cosmos opened and I was left gazing down to the emptiness of its space and that enormous giant snakelike creature flowing like swimming through its darkness with its glittering skin still beneath my bare feet. Next, I felt I was falling or flying from the indescribable distance, all darkness and silence around me seeing just the faraway stars around and my bare feet below. I was falling from already diminished blue skies and green fields of Grandpa’s garden right down onto her back, observing her skin not yet touched by my bare feet, just gliding toward it foot-wise. It was like falling or flying to it on a parachute attracted by some power, some strange gravity; proceeding so fast yet so slow.
As I was approaching closer and closer the body of the silent Cosmic snake grew so I could notice in its scale-like segments of skin small movements, and next I was amazed approaching further when I realized that there were lives of so many people, their faces, situations, myriads of life scenes were actually making its skin so vivid. An intricate dynamic network of life was moving on, and all those life scenes with their characters were growing. I could hear them even giving up their noise and murmur of human voices as I was approaching closer and closer, so when I finally touched it and stepped on it on the ground, I was in the small town I saw first in my dream --all alone.
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Zorica Vukovic
Zo belongs to a generation of average middle-aged intellectuals who grew up in a unique environment of the country known as the former Yugoslavia, which shrank in the last decade of the 20th century, divided into a few new states through civil war and finally dissolved into a union of states known as Serbia and Montenegro. She writes from her early youth, neither living of it, nor even living for it, just observing and meditating upon various issues of life and humanity. Her totemistic values are: love, creativity, ethics and the daily improvement of communications and actions on a global level.
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