Covid Feuilleton #6

As published at SubStack, 1/6/22:

[Belgrade, 7/23/20]

 

I came to Serbia on 7/22/20 because it had no Covid-related entry requirements. Along with Mexico, Maldives, North Macedonia, Albania, Turkey and Tanzania, it didn’t even require a negative Covid test, though there was some confusion about this at Seoul’s Airport, so that I had to sign a waiver.

Because of suddenly changing rules, or rules not quite understood by different parties along the way, not to mention abruptly canceled flights, traveling during Covid is very stressful. After Covid “vaccines” were introduced, generally in mid 2021, many countries would require a proof of “vaccination” from visitors, which led to fake documents being used. I have a friend who has entered half a dozen countries this way. Again, bad laws create criminals, and everyone is guilty under a totalitarian system.

Pre-Covid, one would book a flight and room early to get the best prices, but my ticket to Belgrade was only purchased a week beforehand. Europe, here I come, but maybe not. Probably not.

It was with great relief, then, to be strapped to a seat awaiting my departure, but my ultimate happiness, of course, was to clear immigration and customs in Belgrade, so that I could see, on a gunmetal wall, “WELCOME TO SEBIA!” above reproduced portraits by three unfamiliar painters, Jovanovic, Jaksic and Ivanovic. At that point, I didn’t care if they were the most horrific photos from a Marina Abramovic performance. You know, the one where guests mimicked cannibalism.

I was out, and in! I’d been let in! From then on, I’d be securely in, to pace myself, wiggle about, slyly slither or jump up and down as I pleased! Well, until my visa ran out, that is, but I was unequivocally, unimpeachably in! Thank you, Mother Serbia!

[Belgrade, 9/22/20]

Before Serbia, I had visited nearly 20 European countries, including ex Communist ones, so I was well familiar with all the ugly concrete housing blocks and hideous concrete monuments from those Socialist decades. I had also mourned all the magnificent buildings that predated Communism, now seriously decayed, though some had been restored. They represent culture and heritage deliberately wrecked by Jewish thinking.

In Asia, too, I had seen evidences of this process. In Vietnam, much has been destroyed to eradicate the past. It’s a key feature of Jewish thinking, but only as applied to goyische culture, naturally. To make room for progress, churches and temples must be desecrated, if not pulverized. Visiting Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi, a stupendous Chinese clan house in Penang, Malaysia, I was told by its chief custodian that mainland scholars would come to study its art and architecture, for many of its sublime features could no longer be found in China itself.

As another violent divorce from all that you’ve known, the Great Reset is just the latest manifestation of wrathful Jewish thinking disguised as benevolent solidarity, with benefits for all. Again, society is divided between the correctly obedient and everybody else, with the latter branded an enemy, to be ruthlessly punished.

Coming from garishly cheerful South Korea, the gray concrete of Belgrade, as seen from inside my taxi, was a bit depressing, I must admit. Within days, though, I’d discover there was plenty of beauty left, and much culture, besides, in this legendary city at the confluence of the Danube and Sava. A short walk from my room, there was a park with statues of Pushkin and the great philologist Vuk Karadzic. Also nearby was the most magnificent cemetery I have ever seen, with hundreds of unique graves beautifully designed, many with elegant sculptures. Considered as a neighborhood, it’s Belgrade’s most significant architecturally. Serbian dead live in style.

A perusal of bookstore windows showed serious books, though, of course, also garbage, such as Michelle Obama’s Moja Priča [My Story]. How many brainstorming sessions did it take before the publisher decided on this winner? Like everywhere else, American poison, propaganda or bullshit seeped into brains. Serbs were also reading Henry Kissinger’s Diplomatija. Since Bill Clinton had bombed Belgrade, massacring kids even, his My Life wasn’t for sale, nor was Hillary’s It Takes A Village. Astounded, I noticed children’s editions of Goethe, Faulkner, Bulgakov, Camus, Woolf, Saroyan and Dahl!

More banally, I reached a minor heaven at Burrito Madre, where I could stuff myself with a designer baby for just $6. Just mentioning it now evokes tremendous anguish. On the same block, there’s a mural of Orwell, with “FREEDOM IS THE RIGHT TO TELL PEOPLE WHAT THEY DO NOT WANT TO HEAR” in Serbian. Across the street was the 112-year-old Hotel Moskova, where Nobel laureate Ivo Andric had had his own table. At Burrito Madre, I tended to sit near the trash can, with devoted pigeons at my feet, to catch any stray bits of lettuce, cheese, beans or beef.

Two weeks before my arrival, there were anti lockdown riots in Belgrade, the first of their kind in the world, so the government had to back off. During my two-month stay in Serbia, then, life was pretty much normal, with all restaurants, cafes and shops open, just like in South Korea. Venturing from Belgrade, I visited Zemun, Subotica, Novi Sad, Novi Pazar, Nis and Pozarevac. Maskless, like nearly everyone else, I sat on packed buses.

What triggered the riots was the obvious hypocrisy of the government, for it had allowed large crowds to stage election campaigns, just like in the US, Covid magically disappeared during the media-stoked, often violent Black Lives Matter protests that spread to dozens of cities over a month. As a state weapon, Covid diktats can be withdrawn or deployed at will.

[Novi Sad, 8/9/20]

Returning to Europe, I didn’t think I would stay nine months, with a three-month detour to the Middle East, then on to Africa. Though Covid has stopped most people from traveling, it has forced me to drift nonstop, but then my name in English, with its order reversed, sounds like adrift in Vietnamese, lênh đênh.

In 2017, I met a young poet in Toluca, Mexico. Wearing a houndstooth fedora, 23-year-old Oscar Cortes declared, with a winsome innocence, that he could die for poetry, and a perfect life for him would be to move from place to place constantly. Oscar had yet to leave Mexico.

Stuck in Philadelphia, I would sometimes dream of flying over a map that was partially imaginary. Instead of seeing my journey from inside a plane, I would observe it from a much higher, Godlike perspective. Along with this satisfaction of finally going somewhere, there was always an anxiety that it was only a dream.

In Belgrade, I had forgotten about chasing Corona-chan. It wasn’t yet time for her to mount me. Quite discretely, however, Corona-chan was (golden) showering me with plenty of love by allowing me to live up to my unfortunate name.

[to be continued, of course and unfortunately]

[Belgrade, 9/19/20]

From 7/22/20, but never posted. I'm posting it now because it will be in the next "Covid Feuilleton."

My "Architecture of Cruelty"

has been translated into Serbian, and published here, "Лин Дин: Архитектура окрутности."

 

 

Two of my articles on Serbia have been translated into Serbian

by Svetozar Postic and published here: 

 "Лин Дин: Непрестано клани, дављени и отписивани – Срби су се поново рађали" 

 "Лин Дин: Још увек спокојни Београд" 

 

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Serb Hillbillies, Sandra Afrika and Alexander the Great

As published at Smirking Chimp, OpEd News, Unz Review, TruthSeeker and LewRockwell, 10/7/20:

 

 

 

Wandering around Belgrade, I ran into the Hells Angels of Serbia’s clubhouse. I tried its door to find it locked. Weeks later, I discovered the Hillbillies MC’s pub, so I went in, had a couple beers and looked around. Their logo featured a bearded, smiling skull in front of red wings. 

Most of the “doom crew” were middle-aged, hirsute and tattooed. The owner wore his salt-and-pepper hair in a pony tail. Over the bar was a painting of a near naked chick draped over a bike. From a wall, Motorhead’s Lemmy stared everyone down, looking badassed in his black cowboy hat. Most tellingly, just about every sign, message, slogan or joke was in English. “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON DRINKING.” “LEGENDS NEVER DIE.” “ROUTE U.S. 66.” “ROUTE 69 / SEX KING OF THE ROAD.” 

Now nearly anyone anywhere can sort of become anything, so why not be an American redneck, black rapper or Warholian metrosexual, etc.? It wasn’t that long ago when only a few could even choose a different colored shirt.

There’s a Serbian singer named Sandra Afrika. Though augmented with decently bulbous ghetto ass, her twerking isn’t quite, well, sista quality. Reinvention has its limits.

A nation can also undergo an extreme makeover, such as after an invasion, revolution or liberation. In the weird case of North Macedonia, its capital got a lurid facelift under the direction of prime minister Nikola Gruevski. With Skopje 2014, dozens of pseudo Greek buildings and hundreds of Hellenic statues were plopped onto the nation’s capital, as if by a drunken Zeus.

In this country of two million, at least two thirds are Slavs, with most of the rest Albanians, Turks and Gypsies. There are few Greeks. Still, downtown Skopje is now jammed with fluted columns, voluted capitals, acanthuses, pediments and friezes, with everything huge and towering, if only made of concrete and not marble. It’s everything Greek super-sized, but done on a budget.

As for statues, they grace promenades, lawns, cornices, bridges, columns, between columns, niches and grand pedestals. The most colossal is of Alexander the Great, sword raised, riding a rearing Bucephalas. Lording over a vast square, it’s on a round platform atop a fat, banded and relief-laden column, rising from a circular fountain. Streams of dancing water noisily arc in. At the column’s base are eight sword or lance-wielding warriors, with the latter evoking the fearsome Macedonian phalanxes. Eight lions, twice life-sized, stand or sit, with four squirting water from their roaring mouths.

Half a kilometer away is a giant statue of Philip II, and he, too, is atop a column in the middle of a fountain, with warriors and lions. At its base, Philip reappears with Olympias and a boy Alexander.

Nearby, there’s a fountain dedicated just to Olympias, but with four women shown, it’s not clear how. Three are pampering children. One is pregnant. To blunt Greek charges of cultural appropriation, it was briefly renamed Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia.

Now, there’s a backtracking, appeasing plaque, “In honor of Olympias, a historic figure belonging to the ancient Hellenic history and civilization and to the world cultural and historic heritage.” Far from exuding pride, it sounds like lawyerspeak. Similar plaques front other statues, with “Hellenic” sometimes scratched out by pissed locals.

Why celebrate Olympias at all? Perhaps unfairly, she’s best known for sleeping with snakes. Plutarch, “Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip’s passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation.” You’d be abated too, buddy. Worse, she may have been complicit in Philip’s assassination.

Although Skopje statues do honor Macedonian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Serb and Byzantinian heroes, the main spotlights shine on Alexander. Skopje’s airport was also named Alexander the Great. It’s odd that 21st century North Macedonians should identify with Alexander at all. Their language is basically Bulgarian. If a drunk shepherd from eastern North Macedonia strays into Bulgaria, he’s completely understood, but not if he staggers into Greece.

Also, Alexander during his time was mostly feared and despised by Greeks, for he massacred so many of them. When the Branchidae in Persia welcomed conquering Alexander as a fellow Greek, he promptly slaughtered them. Many Greeks fought against Alexander, even as mercenaries for the Persians.

Drunk, vain, touchy and paranoid, Alexander didn’t hesitate to kill his generals, soldiers, body guards, pages or court historian. Alexander murdered Cleitus, who had saved him in battle. When his lover, Hephaestion, died, Alexander blamed it on the deceased man’s physician, so Glaucias was impaled, a Persian practice that disgusted Macedonians and Greeks alike.

When Alexander died, Greeks rejoiced, but now he’s one of their greatest heroes, and a towering presence to most Westerners, for he pushed back the Persians. Without Alexander, our entire world would be less Greek (thus less Roman), and more Persian, but is that bad? Imagine history without Jesus, at least not on the cross, but perhaps impaled? When Alexander torched Persepolis in 330BC, centuries of knowledge went up in smoke.

It was retribution for the Persians’ burning of Athens in 480BC. Plus, Alexander had encountered this when he entered the magnificent Persian city, “At this point in his advance the king was confronted by a strange and dreadful sight, one to provoke indignation against the perpetrators and sympathetic pity for the unfortunate victims. He was met by Greeks bearing branches of supplication. They had been carried away from their homes by previous kings of Persia and were about eight hundred in number, most of them elderly. All had been mutilated, some lacking hands, some feet, and some ears and noses. They were persons who had acquired skills or crafts and had made good progress in their instruction; then their other extremities had been amputated and they were left only those which were vital to their profession. All the soldiers, seeing their venerable years and the losses which their bodies had suffered, pitied the lot of the wretches. Alexander most of all was affected by them and unable to restrain his tears.” (Diodorus Siculus)

Few lives change nearly every other. Plus, overwhelming power awes, mesmerizes and seduces, as long as you’re not threatened, that is. Alexander will forever fascinate, as will Quin Shih Huang, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne or Napoleon, etc. AAA males are so rare, how can us tick-like wusses, fearful of our own shadows even, not buckle our knees?

Another reason for North Macedonians’ identification with Alexander is our basic need to feel intrinsic to a place, because it’s jarring to admit we’re just squatters, more or less, anywhere.

In Belgrade, a woman told me Serbs sprung from the Vinča Culture, which dates to 5700BC, so her ancestors didn’t only arrive in the Balkans in the 8th century, after all. They’ve always been there. She also claimed there were Serbs among Alexander the Great’s troops, with many of their descendants now living in Pakistan.

In Laos, there are hundreds of huge, ancient stone jars half buried in the ground that can’t be linked to current Laotians, but still, they’re proud. Vietnamese identify with 2,600-years-old bronze drums they can’t explain.

Skopje has been inhabited for at least 6,000 years, but there have been so many wars, not to mention earthquakes, few old structures remain. There are beautiful mosques, with their mixed stone and brick walls, and stately stone minarets, so unlike the newer concrete ones. Less constrained by cost and gravity, they’ve become thinner and taller. Haughtily, they starkly rise. There’s a large 15th century Turkish bath, with its gorgeous booblike domes. Spanning the Vardar (or Axios as mentioned by Homer), there’s a 702-foot-long, 13-arched stone bridge, built by the Ottomans no later than 1469. A plaque on it commemorates the 1689 impalement of Petar Karposh, a local Slav rebel. There’s also an equestrian statue of him, next to the bridge.

Crossing it often, I’ve come to recognize its beggars. One man has bulging, nublike feet, which he sticks out. There is a Gypsy boy, undersized but no older than six, who always wears a FC Barcelona jersey. An older boy has piercing and alert eyes, darkly rimmed.

The Old Town boasts new storefronts, so doesn’t look too ancient, but if you study the more seasoned flagstones on its lanes, you can see the cracks, cavities and slightest indentations left by so many feet down the centuries. Nobodies, we too leave our marks.

Never bombed, Prague’s historical center is magnificent, a bitter reminder of what much of Europe has once been. Haplessly resurrecting this hard-earned splendor, Skopje has become a joke, but what’s done is done. Leave it, and let the world come and witness, before the cheaply built monuments peel, flake, crumble and collapse.

A nude Prometheus had his penis spat on by disgusted old ladies, so now must wear a sculptural loin cloth. Ancient Greeks dug naked males. Again, North Macedonians are mostly Slavs.

 

 

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"together at last... "

my friend Novak wrote when he emailed me below photo, taken on Knez Mihailova Street in Belgrade:

[Tito had Drazha Mikhailovich framed and shot]



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Bus to Skopje. So this is the last photo of Belgrade and Serbia. Thank you for everything. I love you!



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[bar/cafe near bus station, patronized mostly by Middle-Easterners]



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Thirty cents to weigh yourself. I've seen this in Vietnam also, though not recently.



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Online, there are all these bus departures to Skopje, including one at 11:20AM, but at the station, the lady told me there's only one bus a day, at 8:30PM, so I had nine extra hours to kill. Sitting on a bench at Republic Square, I read another excellent Ivo Andric story, then I had some pretty good yet cheap pasta with crema di funghi, served in a Chinese takeout box. Now, I'm at Caffe Okno, drinking a Staropramen.

Fifteen minutes ago, guess who walked by but Savka, the homeless DJ I wrote about! She has only been asked to DJ at Cafe Kandinsky one more time, she told me.

Talking, Savka never stepped inside Okno, so I said to her, "Hey, would you like a beer? Come in and join me!"

"No, no, I don't drink."

"How about a cup of coffee?"

"Not now."

Then I noticed the waiter was discreetly trying to chase her away. He left only after Savka had said something in Serbian.

Still smiling as usual, Savka explained to me, "I must go. The owner doesn't like to see, ah, beggars... Have a nice trip!"



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A book on Drazha Mikhailovich, Lazar Trkje's War Diary, Kierkegaard's Works of Love, Zoran Ćirić's Black Vinyl, White Silence and a translation of Romain Gary's La promesse de l'aube. Again, some serious reading here.

Tito had Mikhailovic framed and shot. The Saker wrote a passionate tribute to the man.

On a bus through Inđija, I saw a mural of Mikhailovich.



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[AIK Bank in London neighborhood]



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[AIK Bank in London neigborhood]



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[AIK Bank in London neighborhood]



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