More poetry and babies is needed

I am reading my friend's poetry for the first time. It is older that our friendship and it was hidden for almost 15 years. He is not planing to publish it or anything similar, simply he felt that it is right moment to share it with me, after all this years. It was appropriate gift for my upcoming birthday! Trust packed into the  verses. 

Poetry does not belong to anyone, neither to author; poetry has it's own life. I love to compare making art/creative process with giving a birth to a baby; I went through both.

Once when get's out of you art becomes everyone's asylum. You are delivery person, participating in divine process of creation. The purpose is giving.

If you are using certain art form to make a living or simply to survive, than keep in mind that once when creative process is finished, your art does not belong to you anymore. Once when gets exposed to a human eye, ear or mind every person will see it differently; your art will become a mirror for someone's cognition of world, life or feeling. Be aware that you are doing it because you feel strong urge, stronger than sexual one, to shape your demons together with everything you once learned or experienced, imagined or dreamed of into the piece. 

Once everything gets out, you are baptized. 

Being a mother is the most important role for me and my biggest happiness, even though I understand completely that  in my life, except my hard work, nothing else is in my control. Life is erratic. 

If you give a thought to a fact that you are a parent and that you are guardian of someone's life as long as you live, you will understand that they are living in your time, but that you are not living in theirs. Their time is just about to become, and most likely it will happen in the meantime, while you are getting to tired and/or to old. Besides of being your children, they are also humans with their own will, their future dreams, fears and hopes; with their lives which exclusively belongs to them, not to their parents or their future children. 

They are beautiful artworks you witness existing; you can put your trust in them, your love and your prayers. You can guide them and be grateful and honored to play this role in screenplay called life. You should do your best to be a parent, a shelter, a listener, a friend, an angel guardian, but you should never ask for their gratitude at the end.  

You chose to be their parent, they did not had a chance to chose to be your children. 

That does not mean they are not thankful, it only means you need to let them be, and you need to be proud of them for whom they are. Nevertheless, allow to your children and to poetry to remind you what it is crucial in life; allow yourself to trust in unconditional love again.  

I admire to children and I adore poetry. I admire and adore the pureness of heart. So, I beg you do not try to be a role model to your children or to use them as extension of your youth in order for you to accomplish your failed ambitions. 

 I beg you not to interpret the poetry based on  author's biography, even if you personally know the author, or if the author is yourself. 

Starbucks tumbler, lentil soup and smashed Berlin

I dropped my Starbucks tumbler on the kitchen floor the first Monday morning after the New Year weekend. It was a plastic one that I'd bought in Berlin almost a year ago. 

My relation with material objects is very simple: I do not get attached to items- with exceptions of two books, my personal cure for melancholy. They have medical purpose, you will agree. 

I learned to share from the beginning, thanks to the fact that I grew up during the war. Whether it was food, clothes or toys, I had to share it and not only with my older sister, but with all the children in the shelter. 

So, when I grew up I continued to share everything with people. Except my boyfriends and my dogs. Maybe I was too possessive, who knows?

After marrying, building a home and then getting a divorce (when eventually life turned out to be heavier than we had thought), I left him and everything behind: my time, my passion, my dreams and also my nerves. But I gained it back again, by believing that new beginnings are inevitable, and that your most important possessions are within you. In the meantime I rebuild it all over again, but this time only and exclusively for my daughter and I. 

It is strange how much strength you discover yourself to have in the moment when you pass invisible border  between bad and worst. Overnight, from a divorced and single mother, I became a single mother of a child with autism spectrum disorder. 

It was devastating to understand that I am completely powerless to change this fact. After two days of crying, I decided: I will fight back! So I packed a bag and I went to Vienna and afterwards to Berlin to seek an ally in my personal war. 

It was my first time in Berlin and it was a love at  first sight. 

After walking alone down the beautiful streets and after visiting the Jewish museum I went to have a soup with an old friend. We sit there in some girly restaurant, full of handcrafts and flowers, ordering a chicken soup. After a while there a soup is delivered, but it is not the chicken one; it is lentil soup. 

So I stare at the fucking soup and my friend is staring at me, not understanding what is the problem. Do I want him to say to the waitress that she made a mistake with my order?

No, I say it is fine, I will eat lentil soup, because as much as we try to hide at least for a moment, we cannot escape from ourselves. There are constant reminders of who you are and what you are made of. 

So, I eat lentil soup for the first time after more than 20 years. I am eating it and it eats me. I eat what was uneatable during the war, when the only thing I could not stand even to look at was lentil.  

And here I am in beautiful Berlin, reminded of the only thing I have already spent years trying to forget, and understanding that no matter where you are, you will always have your personal baggage, and most likely it will be the one which shaped your character during your most fragile years. 

Within few days I went back to Sarajevo. I brought back some postcards and bad taste in my mouth. My daughter and I continue to fight back against the circumstances which threaten to shape her character. Luckily for her, she has a mother who is considered by many to be a lunatic, and who will raise awareness, change her lifestyle, change the world if possible, but who will not allow society, war or autism to make her daughter a hostage of her own life. 

We are far away from Berlin and without an ally. Yes, I smashed Berlin on my kitchen floor. I already have too much baggage anyway.