A coffee with the Pastor

It is the beginning of the year and if I were to be honest and tell you the predicament my material little ass is sitting in since just before Christmass, you would be stressed and not want to continue to read.

But what has happened to Sunci, I realize as I write, is that I no longer have all my eggs in the one basket that is visible—I actually rely on the invisible basket, and the invisible hand of God to get me somewhere good, still invisible to me now. 

I know it will happen; I will arrive where I should be, and I will be happy for it. It has already started to unravel, the evidence of this protective hand in action, answering the prayer or affirmations or faith I had repeated quietly all day,  when almost numb with fear at the situation I had suddenly found myself in and which completely affected my children's and my life and safety,  is already softer, less frightening in ways I could not have expected, and unexpected new life opportunities have opened to me during the holidays. 

 As I meditate in moments of silence, all I hear in my head these days is "WRITE THE BOOK."

Well, dear reader, the book you are reading is in question, for I am trusting, and applying myself to the voice in my head. As subtle as it is, I keep hearing "Book," so while I find myself without proper orientation to action, I hold on to this little voice and am dusting off the many short stories I have written since launching the blog, "A Coffee in the Balkans," in 2009, upon a whim while living on my favorite island Hvar, in the ancient library and shady summer sanctuary,  I thought it might be useful to write a travel blog—seeing I was a tourist guide at the time—just to let people know about amazing places and adventures to be had, which soon turned into a blog about my life, the life of an artist who, when unable to paint, loves to write.

Yesterday when Pastor Sean asked me "How are you", I replied in a language that to a Bible-versed man was short and to the point.

"I feel like right now I am riding the storm. But I trust God knows where I am heading, has plans for me, and I am okay. I’m good. Maybe even excited."

As he looked at me, I replied, "But I have no idea where I am heading or what God wants of me this time round. All I feel is the need to use this precise time to write a book about  my adventures in the life of an artist, which eventually get us to this point where I know there is a God. The thing is, I have explored all kinds of religions along the way, many spiritual paths."

I'm too honest and thrilled about this unpredictable storm to even consider whether this might be distasteful for a Christian pastor to hear. I keep going.

"You know I was born, in a communist, atheist country, and then when I was somewhere around the age of 10, due to the war, the breakdown of Yugoslavia and communism, the new Croatian nationalism suddenly meant all the kids were shipped off to church and religion classes by parents who were not religious. It was the new country's identity. We were all Catholic overnight.

 My mother was not religious at that point. She soon became a fanatic Catholic, but then we moved to England, and there it was not even cool to admit believing in God. I discovered friends were mostly atheists—it was embarrassing to mention God at all. But at the same time, I had a few "Path finder " friends and went to the Protestant church in the village.  I grew up with Christianity: Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Atheism, - there were years I was just not convinced at all. 

But I explored other paths, and at this point, I see there was a long journey of searching for connection, for a visible the reply from the invisible. I was looking to find where the invisible would reply. Now I believe in God. The proof summed up. 

"For years , I was very allergic to all things Christian, in particular the name Jesus."

"I know. I remembered you when we met; you said something about if we would get you interested in the bible we would be the first, -it would be amzing."

"And you did."

"You were the first Christian priest whose sermons I felt interested by. My previous memories of church was this presentation of suffering as good, of poverty as good and of trying to get me to vote for specific politicians. 

But what stuck to me as a child from the kids bible were the parables of the talents and gifts we multiply—using our talents  in the world as gifts.  I had spent years reading books on growth and self-improvement, and what you spoke about was growth and serving the world and God with our gifts, of being happy when people around us succeed, and you used the Bible to say this. I was happy to find I can align with that. I could not align with the prospect of suffering this whole life and waiting for the next. That's just so far from who I am and what is natural to me.

Its interesting how differently the same words, the same book can be interpreted by different people.

"I believe that God is an abundant God, there is plenty of evidence for it in the bible" Said the pastor. " We should celebrate our success and each others"

There I found myself in dialogue with the first Christian pastor, the one who had with his sermons managed to break my thick armor of self defense from Christianity, and it is in the International church of Split- I accepted the gift of my own pink leather bound Bible, because I was curious to read more- having not  read the dozens my mother had bombed me with throughout the years. 

Having developed into a mean little anti-Christ over the previous decade—in terms of my humor, full of cynical comments against Christianity, fighting in this way the crusade mother perpetuates to get me to comply to whatever she says or wants me to do "in the name of God" , sending me numerous accusations that I am Satan, together with whole written exorcisms, to rid my body of satan- in a what-sap messages. And having having spent more than a decade married to a cynical atheist who mocked all people religious —it has been difficult for my ego to accept- that I believe in a "God" and using this title.  

And that I am begging to communicate with God , with the metaphysical pictures form the Bible.

There, I’ve said it. Out loud. 

 I have for years thought religion a private affair, the inside of a human, that doesn’t affect friendships or relationships and shouldn't separate people or be talked about loudly.

 I now think it does affect  intimate romantic relationships. For what we believe affects how we live, our values, and if you live with someone- it clearly affects you. With friends is easier to be of different values and be inspired.

From my observations, I feel like—the difference between an atheist and a person who believes in a divine is the amount control and fear present in ones life. People who trust there is a divine , and trust it to watch out for them can chill and let life happen more, maybe feel less stress and pressure—they know they can ask this force for help, while atheists, in my experience, have so much fear, they feel they need to control so many elements around them and are overburdened, are more scared, and tend to accumulate more material things, be it cars or music records, as if the owning of those things will show their own strength, keep them safe, or a little less mortal, further from the petrifying all end.

I have traveled and have read bits of many religious texts, and have called to the Goddess of the moon, and have invoked the four elements on the mountain, and have danced to the mantra Harri Krishna, and have felt relief in the wisdom of the Torah, have meditated, and have tried learning Arabic with the Quran, and have called for the sun and the rain as a child in gray England by dancing to it inspired by native Americans.

Everything has worked. 

In every language I called to the invisible divine, the invisible made me aware in some way that  it has replied. 

But it is I who has changed throughout. In each of my changes, I had different needs and the divine always answered.

I had recently given my birth information to ChatGPT and asked it to tell me based on the Vedic Hindu system—who I might have been in my past life. And ChatGPT calculated and said—I was very much a lover of arts and culture—I was an aristocrat and lived in comfort—but I was very dogmatic—and this life for me—must be one in which I explore different cultures and belief systems.

 This made a lot of sense to me, regardless of the source it came form. 

 The way I immigrated form Croatia as a 11 year old child in the war, knowing only of the Catholic, trinity Father ,Son and the Holy spirt and the mother of god- and all the many saints,- believing that the truth,  and the way I have questioned it and lived among so many different religions and cultures since, in this marvelous wonderous world- I as small child i had no idea exsisted. I thougt the world was the same everywhere, people of differ religions where the enemy in war- or just- wrong. 

The truth is I believe in the soul of the world -God, and it talks and will talk to you however you choose, form my experience. You can seek to speak to God, the divine, through a culturally established tongue, a religion, which others can show you and teach you, or find your own idiosyncratic language with the Divne .

Some people need to remove themselves from the religion of the people they were born into for many reasons, some find themselfs in mixed marriages, and want a third religion to be neutral. Sometimes as, in my case—my allergy to this culturally native religion was tied to the very aggression, of my mother who told me she is with God, and—her God wants me to submit to her more. Her god was called Jesus- so there was no way it could be mine- not with all the aggression she committed against me in his name. There was no way I could accept that she dominates my insides too, my beliefs, as she endeavored to dominate my life.

I took to nature. Godess responded by the river, in the forest, off the balcony under the full moon. In the sea. No books. No interpretation other than my own. Signs I understand established.

And yet I find myself having arrived , cricketed back to the Bible. In many ways its easier to have some guidelines, text ,words that are clear, imagery, available, rather than interpreting and establishing one's own entire language system to talk to God. There are also rules there, life suggestions in the book- that, actually sound like teaching of boundaries -put in place to keep you safe- trough I read about boundaries first. 

It was Neissa my firend who inspired me to check out the International church she and her husband started, I wanted to support her as a firend at first- to soon feel the support from the church.  towards me and my children. Sean her husband and pastor in his sermons surprised me with how relevant the message for the bible was to me. Than I discovered Florence Scovell Shin, an artist who translated and taught the magic of the bible a century ago, and the incredible faith in life and god and wellbeing she read promised to man in the bible. Joel Osteen pastor on you-tube recently joined my car listening podcasts and has roused enthusiasm or confidence in me in this god, revealing promises made to man- using the words in the Bible. 

So here we are. After a long roundabout journey- I call on Christ again, and I have had some important my prayers answered, swiftly, and feel I safe on what seemed unsurpassable tempest. I don't even know the bigger plans of the divine and where it wants and is taking me, but I have heard that they exist and am trusting it at this point.

We all have our own theories about this mystical invisible divine, validated by our life experiences, and our ideas might not align. I think that the Divine, the God , Universe, I and my beautiful culturally diverse friends reach out to, is the same soul of the world. 

We each choose the language to communicate to it, and a culture that aligns with who we are in any moment ourself ,and the experiences we seek to have. My fat Cat answers to a different name she has been given in every apartment she visits on the 16 floors of the building we live in, and the people  who know her, love and feed her, some of them say she is yellow and some describe her as brown, and some say she's  red, and yet she's the same fat lovely Cat. 

The pastor and I had coffee. And I feel this too , unexpected invitation offered to the whole church, was a part of the bigger plan for me. The discussions on life and god where important and thought provoquing. Making me think about what i have lived and where do I go form here. 

Writing this book, reading my own past- Its clear that I had experienced what could have been some dangerous situations- but I was always protected . Always looked after. Still here. 

"The storms will not stop now, you realise God is there,  they will keep coming, but knowing you are supported, make them easier to get trough"

 Most of the time though at majority of my important events, I jumped in with all the strength and energy I had, with my body, stamina, funds and knowledge, which is limited. Now that I have become open enough to hear in the words and promises made to man, written  down during the ages in the bible- what will happen if I try, instead of going at it all on my own capacity- if I invite the metaphysical, great source energy that infuses the universe , into my life, and plans. In fact instead of pushing for the things I want to achieve and breaking over them- being open to guidance to show me where I should apply myself, and my talents, which I enjoy using-  to serve the world and God next. 

I think I am there. 

When grandparents bless you form beyond the grave.

At this point in life, I am beyond being surprised at such events. I am always pleased when the worlds merge, and I receive a clear message from the invisible—that no longer has to prove its validity to me. It's not synchronicity or randomness—it's a message.

There are things hidden in the invisible, alive and magical, and incomprehensible. I suppose I was a materialist in retrospect when I needed to see with my eyes everything I believed.

I am no longer a materialist.

As free as I was when I was a child and believed in the possibilities of all kinds of magical things, through empirical evidence collected over the years, once again I know for certain there exist things magical. Witches do exist. You can sing to draw the rain, and we hear of prayers that part the seas, and the invisible contains plenty.

Dino, the dog, and I were walking by the sea. There's one of my favorite bits of coast where the walk is squished into a thin path between a steep hill full of agave, and the sea which, to my delight, most of the time is thrashing into the wall holding the path and splashing over me as I walk there. I walk there on purpose, getting this bit of sea baptism and thrill.

At the very point the sea hits the shore and sprays me with water, today I remembered the summer and again repeated my amazement to Dino. "I feel somehow that my grandmother is looking after me all this time. I wore her gold bracelet on my wrist for years, carrying her with me, and with it somehow she was looking after me. I lost that bracelet this summer right here in the sea, and then five minutes later my brother on the phone told me he is going to move out and leave Grandma's apartment to me. I now live in her apartment. He didn't know I had lost Grandma's bracelet right then. Isn't that strange?"

I asked Dino, looking for his confirmation, when an older woman who was walking near spoke.

"You are right," she said to me, "She is looking after you. And my grandfather is looking after me." The lady removes a necklace out of her jumper and shows me the silver antique pendant. "My grandfather is always with me. He looks after me when I wear this. This was a silver button on grandfather's suit. When I don't wear it, I feel naked, unprotected. I always take my grandfather with me, and he looks after me."

And she walks on.

"Did you notice that?" I asked Dino. "I always considered my grandmother is looking after me—perhaps that was my grandfather trying to tell me he is looking after me too," I joked.

There was no need to explain to him about the timing of this woman, who happened to find herself in earshot of my conversation about the lost bracelet precisely where I found I had lost it, and where the conversation with my brother happened, and where right there she too, spoke of her grandfather looking after her through a piece of inherited jewelry. It was no accident .

United in funeral

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Having grown up in England, I became accustomed to the somber, more subtle expressions of grief. The customs of my native land , South Croatia I sometimes find bizarre, and the best way I can understand them is by contextualizing them, processing them through the cultural narrative I do understand—that allows me to observe removed from emotional engagement.

The Croatian, Mediterranean culture I can better understand through the introduction of Western films about the Greeks and Italians. These were a part of my life as a teenager, a part of the lives of people I was growing up among, things I could discuss with my friends. Paradoxically, somehow I am a part of the mystical, melodramatic, God-fearing, God-cursing, post-communist atheist Balkan cocktail, and fruit of tradition, an old family, older than the olive trees, from a little town nestled both in the sea and the mountain.

The first funerals I went to were shocking to me—grandfather, then grandmother, then stepfather. Then Krivi, my friend fisherman, then someone's grandma, then eventually the funeral of someone far too young to die—a self-proclaimed guardian and the Godfather of my town—and my gangster friend Mario. Mario's was the most interesting, a funeral where so many people came: the police, the army, the secret police, the politicians, the celebrities, the neighbors, women and men and children, football supporters, and sailors. He was shot in the head in the town he guarded. Despite always being a controversial figure, he was loved.

I did not know if I would go to this funeral. My uncle had died, but my uncle had not been an uncle to me for the last 20 years, just as my aunt had not been my aunt or a sister to my mother, and the cousins were also not around for my wedding or the births of my children, nor do our children play together or actually know each other. When my grandmother died, my aunt and mother were no longer held together by their mother, and so naturally just stopped being sisters. 

All their consequent encounters were violent, unpleasant, within a legal framework and connected to the bountiful inheritance of property they were left by their parents in this little idyllic town and have continued to fight over for the last two decades. Neither of them had done anything constructive with their inherited lands. They are still not in agreement and the land is still in dispute.

The death of my uncle stirred up anger in me, and confusion. But my mother went for the first time in years to the house of her sister, which made me and my brother skeptical because our aunt did not go to her husband's funeral or support my brother through his father's death. And these kinds of things you remember. It's not like a vendetta—but at the time of a funeral, when you are at the edge of life and death in a family, somehow you just remember the faces of people who came to support you—and are aware of those who decided not to. You just remember.

There I was in the car, driving to the funeral. I have always had my own language with the universe or the divine, there are certain signs which I understand, visual signs that appear—and I heed them as guidance, confirmation of doing something right, and as I drove out of the city, the signs were everywhere. A huge intensity of signs and all carrying the meaning—you are doing the right thing.

I have been reading Florence Scovel Shinn recently to get through my own hardships with faith. And Jose Silva. And Louise Hay. And a little Bible. Forgiveness is a big theme with all these teachers. Driving from Split, to Solin, Solin to Kaštela, I started to speak out loud, and clean up my relation to this family. It is a family I had loved and who were my family as a child, but in between them and me now stood disappointment, hurt, sadness, pain, anger, criticism, jealousy, superficiality, and lack of depth, warmth, care, or honesty. 

"I cast all this to the divine, to let myself go free." I spent the whole journey shouting this stuff out, all the negative emontions and connotations I had with each member of this family. By the time I arrived at the cemetery, I arrived lighter, my own load of resentment discarded, to the divine to get rid of, and I was cleansed to react as I am, as who I am, free of negatives.

I stopped writing this chapter to take my children and the dog for a walk at the sea—and as I stopped, the title 'United in Funeral,' already established in the little box at the top of the screen—my mother called. I am always reluctant to take her calls because they always agitate me in a variety of ways—but I took this call. Vlado has died, she said, Blanka's Vlado. My godmother's, her first cousin's, my grandmother's niece's husband. Another funeral within a week. From my experience of the previous waves of deaths—it is always a season of funerals in a family, never a solitary goodbye.

To attend a funeral as a Dalmatian woman, the dress code consists of wearing all black, black sunglasses, strong perfume, high heels, a fur coat, and handkerchiefs. Makeup is also present, confusing due to the smearing risk, but the truth is that Dalmatian women at funerals, as at weddings, know they will be seen, studied, and can't afford to show up careless of what will be read out of their outfits.

So as I turned up in my white fake fur coat, high heels, perfume, and a black dress, I knew all I wore would be noted. I have no dark coat. I have a pink coat. But as white and absolutely inappropriate as this is—at least it’s elegant. My aunt and cousins wore black lace veils across their heads. Something so quaint, and unexpected, something I had not seen in Kastelan women before, but had seen in mafia films and Sicilian gangster funerals.

In the mortuary, there is a hierarchical line of people around the casket. My aunt, the widow, stood first, and all the others—daughters, grandsons. To me unexpectedly and also somewhat embarrassingly, I discovered my mother, in the line despite her not having much to do with the deceased at all or her sister for decades. The sisters of the deceased and their families.

Coming to give one's condolences requires shaking the hand of each bereaved individual and depending on how close you are to them, kissing them on the cheeks. I had no idea if my arrival would be accepted or publicly rejected. 

But my aunt accepted my condolences and called me "my beauty", after which my cousins accepted my condolences. This may seem like an unnoticeable action, a formality, but actually this was a significant shift in the relations to date.

"Funerals are opportunities to solve the family business," said my friend the next day when at the horse ranch.

Although due to such prolonged removal from contact, I had no deep grief connected to this, the funeral brought up my childhood memories when I was close to these cousins and aunt and uncle and spent a lot of time at their house, and as a teenager, summers away from my own mother staying at this house with the cousins and grandparents was the peak of my year.

I watched the grief and was stirred when the casket was placed into the tomb of my family, alongside all the dead related to us. I observed how beautiful my aunt is, and remembered how powerful she is and can be, despite the recent years which have distanced us and lessened her impact in the community.

My mother was holding on to the aunt, like a shadow, a black shadow stuck to her body the whole time. I suppose she saw herself as considerate and a martyr holding her sister from falling, but I found her sudden, intense intervention, lack of boundaries in every way disturbing.

She would go back with her sister and the cousins to their house afterwards. I was not invited. And I was not going to throw myself uninvited anywhere because, unlike my mother whose life role is Victim, I am just not. I do not need acceptance at any price. 

But, the truth is something happened in all this, a spiritual alchemy, and I felt happy I had come, and I felt sort of glad of the closeness, and I felt a desire to go to this house that I loved to go to in my childhood when I felt I had a large family. I told my mother I will come if I am invited with my daughter, and left the funeral for Split, awaited my child from the school bus, and we ate the prawn risotto I had made for her earlier. The cousin invited me and the children. So I got a bag of sweets and headed for an official visit post-funeral to the aunt's house. There was a lot of energetic buildup and adrenaline in this act, the unpredictable in the air.

What greeted me in the aunt's kitchen I knew so well, like a place in my subconscious, was warmth. She was keen to get to know my Daughter for her grandchildren were all boys and she had got used to girls having had two. My mother, flying in this new role of support for her sister, I found washing the dishes as if she had always been there, and there was aunt, cousin, nephew, there was a lot of laughter that came out, unexpected, unpredicted, a kind of sharing—perhaps a glitch in the wars of the sisters, perhaps a lasting new era of acceptance and peace. 

I am unsure. They are probably suspicious of me, of my mother, of us two appearing together in the first place—they have always been suspicious of the subliminal meaning of my every word—and yet—I don’t lie. I just say what I think a lot of the time, even if it shocks everyone. It disarms people too, my friends tell me, and helps others open up themselves. I told the aunt she is beautiful because she really is,  and that I still remember her being powerful. I wanted to lift her spirits up. And also I remembered our history that day. She and I got talking about new projects , artschool and travels—and her spirits lifted. I don’t know if she was serious, but I always speak serious business with a smile on the face, and do all the things I say I will—even when I am laughing.

Death. So unpleasant. So terrible to deal with. And yet tomorrow I must go visit the cousin, godmother whose husband has died. In death, an opportunity to reconnect, recontextualize—life is short—is it best to be right or best to cry together at funerals, laugh together, and have the great big family as fucked up as we all actually are, or to be by oneself, doing it all alone, fighting the annoying interventions of family with a turned back.

I have been doing it all alone. I have felt disappointed by a great many of my family. I have felt unsupported often and the support I have got often cost me more than if I had been solving things alone. Not everyone is always healthy in their head. There is a mix of mental health issues, and lives we don't know anything about, or states we don't understand that splat all over us in encounters.And we all deal with our own pressures in different ways. It's definitely easier not to be involved. Less hassle. But I used to love to come back from England on holiday, and go visit an enormous amount of aunts and cousins, and know they are there. Laugh with them. The big Greek wedding. The entire Kaštel Kambelovac town of cousins. And it seems to me like this funeral season, of loss, is also an invitation to a new era of support and reconnection. Forgiveness and valuing those who are still here , valuing the family we can chose to have if we want to. I may be wrong, of course. It may all go splat.

Milano, Venice, Zagreb, Split, Trogir, Budapest with a stop at my aunts.

It was a night train that left Stazione St. Lucia with me within its belly; it swallowed me up like some sea monster, and over the sea it went, into the night. The train that delivers one to the heart of Venice actually drives over the Adriatic to enter the town made up of many tiny islands. A second train removed Antonio and relieved him of our romantic, comical life glitch, and returned him to his own world of books, studying art history, and the familiar back in Milan.

Needless to say, I have never seen him again. Though still exceptionally kind— it was he who, again a gentleman as he is—helped me unravel the mystery of who owns Florian's bar in Venice when, on a cosmic impulse, I felt I must do a performance there during the biennale opening in 2019.

In the darkness and on the train, divine had mercy upon me in the form of the train captain, who realizing I, like him, am Croatian, and was young and unsheltered, and had not paid extra for the sleeping car tickets— saying he won’t be using his due to driving the train all night—I was offered to have his own sleeping cabin in the train.

This was a huge relief. There is something about the night that is able to frighten me still, when I am alone. Being alone on a train cross-country at night, and exhausted beyond the ability to describe it, despite my brave-it-all courage, did not appear entirely appetizing. Grateful to the captain, I fell sound asleep, protected and locked in the cabin.

Somewhere in the night, the Slovene army or border police entered the train. I have only ever experienced such hassle on the Slovenian border—but the Slovenes, out of some nostalgic sadistic post-socialist ’we're keeping the wall between west and east Europe,’ always take their job far more seriously than anyone else in the world—they seem to take the train apart every time it crosses the border into Slovenia, to a great amount of uncomfortable metal noises I can’t understand, looking into every bed and shelf and wheel, it’s exhausting. I have a feeling trains have a shorter lifespan because of how many times the Slovenian border control takes it apart.

Despite not being in touch generally, and with my until this year ever safe and ever welcoming base in Croatia—my grandmother, as of this spring being dead, I somehow managed to contact my aunt, jumped out of the train in Zagreb, and appeared in her house after I had a coffee in the enormous ancient train station—to wait for the dawn—as I did not want to arrive at someone's doorstep in the night.

In this particular reincarnation of my Aunt, a very large and dominating personality, at times petrifyingly frightening, at times wonderfully warm, and on the outside, a very beautiful woman, my aunt was living in Zagreb with her youngest daughter, my cousin. My cousin was studying, and my aunt was at home fretting about how her daughter has had a 37.5 fever for over a year. To me, with the general overwhelm of life content, I don’t think I had noticed my bodily temperature, but here was the aunt, not doing anything, sort of petrified into this apartment with her daughter obsessively, chokingly focused on this 0.5 raise of bodily temperature paranoia, taking her to all kinds of medical check-ups. It was unclear where her husband was at this time, but they greeted me kindly, made me go sleep—which I so gratefully accepted—for that is all I needed, and the next day being Easter, we went to pick my uncle up.

We piled into the large black Mercedes, a remnant from the era a decade ago when my aunt was one of the power women in Croatia, during the war, and in her courage and wit changing the destinies of the Croatian people, without anyone being aware of it now. For it was Dubravka who, as a mother of two little girls, and accepting she may not leave the meeting alive—negotiated with the Serb army leaders that they pull out their aggressive forces from Kaštela and vicinity, where I was living, and where the Serb attacked from the sea, and air, and land until she made a deal. Dubravka at the time was in politics and the director of the Kaštelan Riviera hotels, host to the entire populace of united army forces poured into this part of Croatia—for they all slept at her hotels.

Aunt at the wheel, and my cousin and I in the back, we drove out of Zagreb, heading south to see her older daughter and my cousin, who was married and living in Split. On the way, we made a stop at a prison and picked up my uncle and her husband, who I suddenly understood was imprisoned and released on good behavior for Easter holidays to spend it with his family. Of course, I was not told anything about why or how, but I came to understand that this piece of the puzzle was connected to the way my aunt, with the help of her husband, had run the furniture factory in Osijek after the war, which bankrupted in their hands. I may be wrong, though. But suddenly I understood how my aunt was staying in a humble rented apartment in Zagreb, while I was accustomed to see her always nested in tasteful and luxurious surroundings.

My cousin drew on the hard-boiled eggs with a pencil. - “Well, that is a way to decorate them too,” I concluded. And we ate the Easter breakfast as a family, almost as if it had all been coordinated, while in fact, as all the events of that year, there was no plan in my case, I just rode what came.

A month or so before, my grandmother had died, the mother of my mother and aunt. Having come from Rome for her funeral, after many years of estrangement, I bumped into my Father. I was sure that it was my grandmother’s ghost that had somehow made that happen, as I had suffered endlessly the vanishing of my father, who I had believed still lived in America somewhere, as he had the year war started, and when he stopped all communication with me, his 7-year-old child.

As bizarre and natural seem to go beautifully hand in hand, this Easter afternoon, I met up with my father, his girlfriend, and her little 7-year-old daughter, who really wanted me to be her sister. We roamed the closed-up and windy town of Trogir that day. They took me to a restaurant, which for the Roman living Sunci was a normal everyday event, but for them in this moment was a great feat and a treat and I was offered the best they had.

The same evening we piled into the great Mercedes and as on the way there my uncle drove, whilst my aunt and he argued something terrifying majority of the drive, and we all returned to our own realities, the uncle to prison, the aunt and cousin to their hypochondriac symbiosis over 0.5 fever, and I got onto the train to Budapest.

On the journey from Milan- to Budapest, I drew  the portraits of people I encountered into a Japanese Moleskine sketchbook, with black ink, which in the following month was exhibited in New York, at the Moleskine Detour exhibition alongside some very esteemed artists and designers. And trough I did not go to this group exhibition, because I had a solo exhibition in Mexico at the same time, Raffela, who curated that show, told me that the N.Y. critics had proclaimed me  “ The next Warhol” . I meanwhile was having my own Mexican adventure at the time but it would have been nice if i had gone . All that came after may have been different. It was a choice and a crossroad, and as ever - i chose to go where it was more interesting over-where it might have been more useful.