Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "summer"
Get your copy of Okrutno ljeto
If you want to purchase my latest novel Okrutno ljeto
in Croatian, you can do that directly at my publisher's web page here. Feel free to visit my web page to read sample chapters in Croatian and in English. Thanks!
in Croatian, you can do that directly at my publisher's web page here. Feel free to visit my web page to read sample chapters in Croatian and in English. Thanks!
Pagliacci: Collages from the Swedish Tale
When everything is gone, memories remain. Snapshots of the moments your soul feeds on. And craves for more. Even when it's over. Because all good things come to an end.
Not the craving, though. It's insatiable. It wants more. It wants to suck on your good memories, rip your heart to pieces. Devour it in a few bites of the crazed, starved beast, making you bleed on the inside as you go on with your life with a fake and pathetic smile on your face. Like a clown.
Pagliacci.
No one sees your tears. No one smells your longing. No one licks your wounds. No one hears you cry.
No one picks you up and holds you under your arm as you stumble to take another breath and blink away your blurry sight while you grope for a familiar memory in a very distant future, trying to make it alive. Trying to make it omnipresent. Trying to relive it – now.
Except for those who know you, except for those who have shared it with you. The moments, the images, the laughter, the smells, the walks, the ice creams, the sounds, the games, the thoughts, the experiences, the dreams, the feelings, the recollections, the foolishness. Knitting them into collages that will stay with you forever. Those are your people. Your friends.
That is the beauty of it. The beauty I will try to share and portray here for you. Because when the words fail, pictures continue to tell our story.
Thank you, Växjö, for everything. Really.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Original blog post - images from Sweden
Related posts:
Summer in Sweden
Sweden in My Mind
In Between Places
My other blogs
Not the craving, though. It's insatiable. It wants more. It wants to suck on your good memories, rip your heart to pieces. Devour it in a few bites of the crazed, starved beast, making you bleed on the inside as you go on with your life with a fake and pathetic smile on your face. Like a clown.
Pagliacci.
No one sees your tears. No one smells your longing. No one licks your wounds. No one hears you cry.
No one picks you up and holds you under your arm as you stumble to take another breath and blink away your blurry sight while you grope for a familiar memory in a very distant future, trying to make it alive. Trying to make it omnipresent. Trying to relive it – now.
Except for those who know you, except for those who have shared it with you. The moments, the images, the laughter, the smells, the walks, the ice creams, the sounds, the games, the thoughts, the experiences, the dreams, the feelings, the recollections, the foolishness. Knitting them into collages that will stay with you forever. Those are your people. Your friends.
That is the beauty of it. The beauty I will try to share and portray here for you. Because when the words fail, pictures continue to tell our story.
Thank you, Växjö, for everything. Really.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Original blog post - images from Sweden
Related posts:
Summer in Sweden
Sweden in My Mind
In Between Places
My other blogs
The Cottage Memories (For Sale)
Today I went with my dad and some potential buyers to our cottage. No working on my book, no formatting, nuking the Word document, no indents, headers, footers, page numeration and section breaks. Just a beautiful sunny day in the countryside.
After such a long time. Two years? I stopped counting.
It's been a while since I was last here. In my childhood oasis. Summers belonged here. With my grandparents, with my mom and dad during our holidays, with my cousin, my uncle and my aunt, my countryside friends.
I spent days, weeks, months here. Years! I spent scorching heats and windy summer storms in Tuhelj. I spent the snow, bitter cold and sledding down the hill. I remember the laughter, the tears, the happiness of a carefree child, the pain of my parents' fights and injustice I did to the ants, wasps and butterflies I was catching in the fields dotted with wildflowers because of their beauty.
Memories came rushing in a torrent, every single detail I saved and stored in the memory space of my subconscious, just to be visited and reopened in the future for the later use. When I am ready for reminiscence.
Now I am selling it. I am selling my past, my childhood and my history, and I am very determined about it. I sell what I loved, the place that affected me deeply and so many times scratched and blooded my arms, my legs, my knees. I am selling everything but my memories because it's time to move on.
The past remains in the grass full of the crickets and various bugs, the smell of flowers, hay and summer evening bonfires, roasted corn and potatoes, the song of the birds in the crown of the trees and the hum of the wind through the woods and the unmowed meadow.
I am closing the chapter about the childhood place in Zagorje countryside, less than an hour drive away from the Croatian capital Zagreb. No regrets because all I need remains with me. It is time for something new.
At the same time, it can be a nice new start, a new page for somebody else. The new beginning with new opportunities. If you think this might be the right place for you, shoot me a message!
In the meantime, enjoy the photos I took today during this brief trip down memory lane, on May 1, 2017, and posted here. I know my colleague Sara Sara will!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
After such a long time. Two years? I stopped counting.
It's been a while since I was last here. In my childhood oasis. Summers belonged here. With my grandparents, with my mom and dad during our holidays, with my cousin, my uncle and my aunt, my countryside friends.
I spent days, weeks, months here. Years! I spent scorching heats and windy summer storms in Tuhelj. I spent the snow, bitter cold and sledding down the hill. I remember the laughter, the tears, the happiness of a carefree child, the pain of my parents' fights and injustice I did to the ants, wasps and butterflies I was catching in the fields dotted with wildflowers because of their beauty.
Memories came rushing in a torrent, every single detail I saved and stored in the memory space of my subconscious, just to be visited and reopened in the future for the later use. When I am ready for reminiscence.
Now I am selling it. I am selling my past, my childhood and my history, and I am very determined about it. I sell what I loved, the place that affected me deeply and so many times scratched and blooded my arms, my legs, my knees. I am selling everything but my memories because it's time to move on.
The past remains in the grass full of the crickets and various bugs, the smell of flowers, hay and summer evening bonfires, roasted corn and potatoes, the song of the birds in the crown of the trees and the hum of the wind through the woods and the unmowed meadow.
I am closing the chapter about the childhood place in Zagorje countryside, less than an hour drive away from the Croatian capital Zagreb. No regrets because all I need remains with me. It is time for something new.
At the same time, it can be a nice new start, a new page for somebody else. The new beginning with new opportunities. If you think this might be the right place for you, shoot me a message!
In the meantime, enjoy the photos I took today during this brief trip down memory lane, on May 1, 2017, and posted here. I know my colleague Sara Sara will!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Things I didn't Tell You
I wasn't thrilled on the morning of my A World Without Color book launch. Even though I was up until 3.40 am waiting to see when it would be live and available for purchase I fell asleep before that happened. In the morning, I continued with my daily activities: vacuum cleaning, dusting, texting with my friends who were more excited than me that my book was live on Amazon, tweeting.
I felt calmness holding onto the vacuum cleaner. Focused on sucking in the dirt, I felt enormous relief that one part of this long journey was over. Yet I have to finish the paperback book and then collect as many good reviews as possible, but in the morning of my book launch I left myself to calmness.
Nobody knew how hard it was and how well I faked it. I can be a great Pagliacci. A perfect pretender. Screams and cries and tears and sobs I killed within me, because if I gave in to my emotions even for a second longer, I would be done. I would be catapulted back to the day when Marcel died... when we killed him.
It is such a thin line between grief and happiness, an invisible flight of a grain of dust from one part of the room to another.... Do you also know how hard it is to be happy when your heart wants to bleed into nothingness?
Two days later after the Saturday of July 1, 2017, I returned to my daily job full time. Four months during which I worked only part-time were over, not that I was too happy about it. But hard days at work are before us and I have to leave my baby, right after its birth, and tend to other things. I can only hope it won't suffer too much, that I will get it a decent life and exposure.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yeah, I know I can count the days of the week, but the point is that after those super-crazy-busy days at work came Friday. And my trip to Sweden. A comforting thought of my land of refugee that has lived in the back of my mind for a couple of months already came to life. I barely had time to think of it, let alone rejoice it, between my daily work and my self-publishing efforts.
Now it is here. Sweden and my book together. Even if I planned it that way....
Not even the best marketing plans and experts can predict the future. No one can guarantee things will happen that way, the way we want them. No online lectures and marketing gurus can prepare us for the twists and turns that will happen when life decides to shows us who directs the order in the universe and where our role is in a bigger plan. We can only try, do whatever we can and hope for the best.
Sweden is on my plate now. I will breathe it with every pore on my skin. Its smells, its beauty, its calmness and order. Two weeks I will live by the order of another universe and I am determined to be happy. My down-to-earth and supercool friends Claire and Tommy are with me and they will make sure I recover from the accumulated stress and remember again that there is life outside of constant work and that it can be beautiful.
Like Sweden, like my book, like you my friends. I will be on a summer vacay on the north of Europesummer vacay on the north of Europe, but I won't forget you. This is where tweets, texts and e-mails prove their worthiness. Maybe that is the greatest value of social networking.
Bernard Jan
For images from Sweden please click here.
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
I felt calmness holding onto the vacuum cleaner. Focused on sucking in the dirt, I felt enormous relief that one part of this long journey was over. Yet I have to finish the paperback book and then collect as many good reviews as possible, but in the morning of my book launch I left myself to calmness.
Nobody knew how hard it was and how well I faked it. I can be a great Pagliacci. A perfect pretender. Screams and cries and tears and sobs I killed within me, because if I gave in to my emotions even for a second longer, I would be done. I would be catapulted back to the day when Marcel died... when we killed him.
It is such a thin line between grief and happiness, an invisible flight of a grain of dust from one part of the room to another.... Do you also know how hard it is to be happy when your heart wants to bleed into nothingness?
Two days later after the Saturday of July 1, 2017, I returned to my daily job full time. Four months during which I worked only part-time were over, not that I was too happy about it. But hard days at work are before us and I have to leave my baby, right after its birth, and tend to other things. I can only hope it won't suffer too much, that I will get it a decent life and exposure.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yeah, I know I can count the days of the week, but the point is that after those super-crazy-busy days at work came Friday. And my trip to Sweden. A comforting thought of my land of refugee that has lived in the back of my mind for a couple of months already came to life. I barely had time to think of it, let alone rejoice it, between my daily work and my self-publishing efforts.
Now it is here. Sweden and my book together. Even if I planned it that way....
Not even the best marketing plans and experts can predict the future. No one can guarantee things will happen that way, the way we want them. No online lectures and marketing gurus can prepare us for the twists and turns that will happen when life decides to shows us who directs the order in the universe and where our role is in a bigger plan. We can only try, do whatever we can and hope for the best.
Sweden is on my plate now. I will breathe it with every pore on my skin. Its smells, its beauty, its calmness and order. Two weeks I will live by the order of another universe and I am determined to be happy. My down-to-earth and supercool friends Claire and Tommy are with me and they will make sure I recover from the accumulated stress and remember again that there is life outside of constant work and that it can be beautiful.
Like Sweden, like my book, like you my friends. I will be on a summer vacay on the north of Europesummer vacay on the north of Europe, but I won't forget you. This is where tweets, texts and e-mails prove their worthiness. Maybe that is the greatest value of social networking.
Bernard Jan
For images from Sweden please click here.
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
Call Me By Your Name Review
Call Me by Your Name by André AcimanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have read many good books this year and even more in years before. But a book like Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman comes every five to ten years into your hands, if you are lucky to find it.
This book ravished my heart. It left me emotionally unstable. It's all I need to say. And then...
silence.
Not because it is appropriate, the silence, or because I don't have words in my fingers or little things, impressions and details in my mind I like, love and want to share with others, hoping someone appreciates them and approves of them worthy of the book I've read. The echoes of the summer still linger in my tissues, my bones, resounding with the thunder of the sea that spits its waves on the shores of one infatuated love when a teenage boy craves for a young man who willingly obliges.
They know they love on borrowed time and that the salty taste of summer won't last longer than the dried sweat on their skin. They know erotic moments of their feet touching in secrecy under the table won't have to be masked much longer by feigned ignorance in the presence of others. All these misunderstood and misinterpreted touches, expressions, actions and echoes of other's words will remain sealed between the walls of a bedroom as the countdown of the remaining days ticks away.
Yet, they embrace each other. With the force and the passion and the pleasure of a sunny moment in time, sufficient to create a new heaven and a new earth. In the blink of two hearts they are created when they call each other by their name; in the heat of a Roman night it will flutter away from existence as they enjoy each other and share a bed for the last time.
Elio and Oliver.
Transformed by a short romance which conceives their first glances with feigned indifference only to mature into a life-changing experience which will define them as a new person, as one, as they redefine one another. It is a new life, a new era, and everything else is measured and remembered as before and after Elio and Oliver time.
True happiness rarely comes without great sacrifices. Elio and Oliver know that while they gamble their love on the Italian Riviera with the high stake of spending their remaining lives with other people instead of being together. Rehearsing pain of departure and life of separation so it will hurt less later! is only effective until it threatens to disperse their love into tomorrow twenty years later devoid of romantic or any other memories.
With Call Me By Your Name André Aciman gave humankind a beautiful book of love that ought to be studied in schools. Yet who is competent enough to analyze the love that impregnates your veins with the boiling blood if they didn't scald their own insides with such tormenting heat first? Who is to judge the poetry and lyricism of painfully carved sentences which provoke us to admit that there is a perfection after all?
This brutally realistic love story is more convincing than some real-life true stories we may read, for it carries the weight of something magical, deep and personal, something buried, excavated and buried again under the layers of exquisite storytelling.
We all live on borrowed time and it would be such a shame to walk to the end of our lives without stopping for a few hours, or days, and dedicate them to this story. Even worse would it be not to learn something from it and fail to find someone willing, ready and glad to call us by their name. At least for one summer if not for the lifetime.
Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
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