Day of Saint George

Day of Saint George, on this day snakes and lizzards come out of their holes... It was a cloudy day and our plan was to drive to Beograd at noon to make a gentle letter intervention in the place where the old National library used to be. Before leaving, together with Dragan and his parents, we hung white-painted apples bearing glagolic inscriptions up on an apple tree in the family orchard, nearby the pigstall of the three pig sisters. I wondered how the idea of introducing an alphabet to the vast and varied area inhabited by Slavic tribes was actually realized in the dark 9th century. The pagan atmosphere in the Stojcevski family garden was even stronger not only because of the absurdity of our act, but also because Draganís mother was next to us†bent over planting lettuce and his father was wearing strange overalls protecting him from the chemicals he was spraying onto wine plants... plus a desperate lonely old neighbour talking to the plants in the field just behind the fence.
At twelve oíclock we set out on the trip, stopping at a fish restaurant to fill our tanks with used oil. Later we found ourselves parking our cars under the linden trees close to the place of the former National library building at Kosancicev venac. We took out our camping furniture and cleared dust from our cars. After we decided what should be done for our planned two-hour programme, we started to address people passing by and offered them to take part in our event. There were not many passers-by on Sunday. One of the cyclists passing by slowed down, attracted by the unusual situation and later it turned out that he spoke Czech as his grandfather was Czech. He was a student of sociology, so he shortly explained the situation concerning the monument ruins of former library behind the fence. A cat was sleeping on the wall, while we were entertaining ourselves as well the Sunday walkers willing to join our game. Evocations and metaphors of the letter game worked perfectly, and not only for the intellectually-oriented participants. There was still suspicious and shy attitude to foreigners in Beograd, and some people did not understand what we mean by this project and why we were interested in cyrilic and glagolic alphabets. Some of them felt that both of these alphabets are already old-fashionable, and probably would disappear soon. Dictatorship of free market forces them to be "In" (meaning EU?) and melancholy and imagination are not appretiated any longer. Our return to dinner in our Jabuka "home" was enriched by a event in the night garden, initiated by Dragan for Katka who came today from Prague to join us.