America was supposed to be the land of melodramatic cowboys, red pick up trucks and rock and roll - at least for us who visited her through the film media, where she was so superbly advertised as exactly that: land of the free, home of the brave. And in Europe, particularly former Eastern Europe, American movies and American music were completely absorbed by the younger generations culture. Real America, the land of lawyers, corporate litigations and the endless suburbia where there are so many people crammed together without actually knowing each other masterfully eluded us. The widening gap between the concept (which is promoted) and the reality (which is lived) stunned me when I came here.

Now I live in Spanish Harlem in New York city where some buildings are in worse condition than those in Sarajevo after more than two years of Serbian bombardment. However, I quickly found comfort in realizing that Americans did understand that even America failed to perform for my generation. It didn't fail by the degree of the Eastern Europe or Yugoslavia in particular, but the gap between dreams and the art of possible broadened quite. And there are (for me in the beginning) surprising number of Americans of my age that went to live abroad. As everybody believes that elsewhere there are more oportunities, a lot of them went to Eastern Europe, particularly to Prague.

" California is like a beautiful girl on heroin, she thinks she’s on the top of the world, but when you see the marks on her arms, you know she’s dying."

Also, a winter before she went to Croatia we took a driveaway car and drove across America, re-conquering the West (although we broke up before that, which means we had a living hell in car for four days). We took I-70 from New York and switched to highway 50 (the loneliest highway in the States) in Utah, which took us to Reno where we climbed on I-80 and descended to San Francisco, smuggling six East Coast rotten apples through the fruit-customs of sovereign independent State of California. We drove through an awful blizzard across the Donner's Pass.

Johanna told me a great story: her ancestors - Reeds - traveled to California together with Donners, and arrived to Sierras just before Christmas, as we did. However, they did not have a reliable Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, but rather a horse carriage. Reeds decided to search for the southern pass, and Donners decided to go through there. Donners got stuck, and the legend goes that they had to eat their dead in order to survive. So, the pass got their name honoring the tragedy they endured. Reeds passed Sierras without any overly exciting incident, so nothing got named after them. Humans have that peculiar habit of errecting monuments to their suffering, while they usually let good times pass unnoticed. (later I watched the story on PBS, and saw that grand-grandpa Reed tried to save as many Donners as possible through the winter, and that some Donners survived)

We stayed with her family for Christmas. There I met her father in a brief moment when he lifted his head from the sheet full of strange calculations. He, as I learned, discovered one of those eight quarks: charm. And charm apparently got its name from the Johanna's childhood nickname. Ah, well, then I understood why Johanna is so self-righteous: if my nickname is build in each piece of matter in known universe, my ego would probably explode of grandeur. Johanna is even pretty modest for such an important role she plays in the time-space continuum. Johanna has a younger sister Liza, who is as smart as Johanna, but likes to play dumb if she sees benefit out of it. Johanna has a brother Peter who lives in Sillicon Valley and consistently does computers. Peter is a story that probably describe the rise and fall of California. He of course is not unsuccesful. But he is also not content. Because in California you do not dare to seek less than ultimate. You work too much. Because you always need more money too afford all the cool things. And there will always be more cool things if you like both sports and gadgets (computers and vehicles). So you never have time to really enjoy them. You constantly postpone life. Because life never seems perfect enough to start to enjoy it. Peter is also a great friend, and loves his little sisters.

From San Francisco later I undertook travels (using driveaway cars and Amtrak which is really cheap on the West Coast) to Portland, Seattle and San Diego visiting my friends. I have a friend in Portland who works as a bartender in Lotus, the place where My Own Private Idaho was shot, lives on Glisan street and owns a remarkably cool but incredibly impractical choice of transportation. So I stayed with him, hanged around. I found out that it is very difficult to buy a CD in Portland. Once I was walking home from Lotus at around 2 am, and a stranger approached me on the street wishing to know why I am so murky, like if I am in terrible mood. Coming from New York, I found that prety unusual. I almost said: "Sorry, I have no change".

I drove to Portland, which means I've seen the dreamland of northern California where younger people stay near highways with posts saying "need job. will do anything." Much like they do in upstate New York. Only in New York we don't see for California ubiquitous Huxley's Deltas working the fields in their green and blue jumpsuits. The same basic thing happens: big urban centers drain jobs from smaller towns in their surroundings. This happened to every city nearby Zagreb in Croatia, too. Than people in smaller towns have the option of leaving for metropolis and dying there as a newbie or staying home and die slowly with their home. Mario is a photographer and an artist and, of course, a bartender. He is not really starving, but he still needs his break. He calmed down in Portland. Less coke, more weed, it's good for you. He drives 1950's Chevy van, that rarely runs, but looks vintage (read: cool), rents a house for six hundred, the size of what would go for six thousand if it was build on the island, and has a girlfriend who has a gun. In NortWest people drive ancient cars, listen to vinyl, dress flannel and carry guns, and they were, I believe always like that. Krist is, of course, a musician, a bass guitarist as the world learned since 1991. He had his big break, already.

In February Johanna left to join Balkan Peace Team (a German based international non-violent conflict resolution group) in Croatia, becoming another YAA, and I went to visit my high school friend who works at Scripps institute in San Diego (he actually graduated medical school that we enrolled together and now works in immunology research, AIDS of course, part of the Third World brain-drain cheap research force in the U.S.). I stayed with him and his wife in La Jolla, got myself a used surfboard and tried myself in ocean. To complete an unforgetable experience of spending long hours in water under 60 degrees Fahrenheit only to be grinded by six to eight feet waves every fifteen minutes on average, I discovered that the surfboard was designed by a Serbian guy, Prodanovic, which proves that Galileo was right: the earth is round. I am still quite kooky. It looks way easier than it really is. But it is a lot of fun. Unfortunately when I finally started to have fun I had to abandon the envied career of a surf-bum since I run out of money, so I had to return to New York, where I had my lifeguarding tenure waiting for me at the Normandie Court. There I learned that in the meantime problems arised at Columbia.

Those among the faithful, who had to have everything, moved over large distances through unfriendly lands and punishing seas to the place that most closely resembled the one which they perceived as Eden.

They ate all the God's apples, and when they finished with that, they planted their own. A greedy little pest from a far foreign sea came with them, came as a part of them, and decimated their harvest. They filed their plates and their bowls with plastic fruit, then. It was plentiful and it looked real; and it was there not to be eaten, but to remind them of the Eden that they inhabit in the brief interludes between the first job, the second job and the commute between the two. Hence most of them ended up spending more time earning than enjoying the fruit.

Slaves to their pride as the noble Titans of the savage mythology, they endured torments of Tantalus having all pleasures at reach, but not being able to reach any of them. Forever displeased. Ashamed of that. Of themselves. Pretending, therefore, that everything is perfectly all right. That pretense developed itself in a myth, a mystery that reveals itself as a promise of happiness to de-privileged and dispossessed around the globe. Titans knew the difference between the myths and the reality. Mortals don't. They know nothing about the heavy stone that hovers above Tantalus's head rocking like a pendulum, threatening to kill Tantalus, but never actually doing it. They know nothing about that the half of the "promised land" is a thin layer of sand, as unstable as the rock above Tantalus, waiting to sink in the ocean.

In the land of Gods, Titans, Dragons and Cyclops, mortals are fair game. The gap between that which they reasonably, taught to believe in dreams and mysterious revelations , expect to happen, and that which realistically may happen is incomprehensibly wide, and it gets wider every year, every month, every painful week, every tiresome day, every lost and lonely hour, as the fruit and water run away from Tantalus ever further when he reaches for them. But, unlikely Tantalus, who is immortal, and has an infinite time to keep trying, they are mortal, and they grow old and become weak and broken and tired and sick. Then they die. Miserably, as they have lived. The land of the Titans does not need sickies and wimps. No mercy for them. No remorse for having no mercy. No afterthought for having no remorse. Noble values that Nietzsche glorified so vociferously in the ancient Roman Republic. So Republican.

That is changing now. There is a new breed around. They live in communes. Some call them Communitarians. They say they are Romans, but secretly in their hearts they hate everything Roman. They are soft-spoken, humble and they obey the law. They superficially go along with the Romans, since they shiver in fear, but they just wait the time to throw all -- as they call -- pagan deities out of the temple. They made the law their religion, suffering their joy. Every day they prey to their God begging him to make them deny themselves even more. They wouldn't be fooled like other mortals. They know the myths are pagan lies. They know their place, and they are happy with it. They are responsible. They know that they will never reach what they are seeking, but, not only that they are content with that: they will still keep trying. Until they die. And they will die joyfully, pretending that they die joyfully because there is an after-death life full of gratitude expecting them. Actually, they'll die joyfully, happy because their miserable lives, that they made even more miserable by denying themselves the right to feel miserable, will be over. Nevertheless, they will seal the fate of Rome.

I found Jesus a long time ago. Then I lost him. He just wandered away and never came back. And he was a cute little guy. They never did him truth on all those crucifixes. I think he died by now. I didn't hear from him for a very long time. He was a reformed alcocholic, too. But he was weak, and couldn't avoid sipping wine at the last supper, although AA strictly prohibited it to him. That's why he got crucified. And that's why God didn't want to lift him up immediately after he died but left him to wander with us sinners for a while.

The chainsaw story happened in Willapa hills in south-west Washington state just few miles off the bridge over Columbia estuary to Astoria. I visited my bass-guitarist friend in Seattle. Well, the hell, every third person in Seattle is a guitar player, so you have more chance to know some guitarist in Seattle than somebody else in Seattle. His band was selling quite good at the time, so he bought some land in the remote Willapa hills area, and there his younger brother lived as a mountain freak chopping wood, hoping around in his red pick up truck, doing construction and carpentry and smoking pot. He cut and neatly stacked enough firewood for a New Yorkean winter. He'd however had to restack it because the waterwitch discovered a well under the stack (which later proved a hoax).

So, we went to the farm. We took one Christmas tree from Seattle and planted it on the farm. Their father (who came from Croatia in 50s) was a logger in Aberdeene, but the whole industry failed and he became drunk and abusive to his wife (also from Croatia) and children, so wife divorced him and opened a haircutting place (which proves that women has higher adaptivity to new situations), and kids became alcoholics, potheads and guitar players. Fortunately, my friend, Krist, made it out as a good guitar player. Brother Robert is a real logger. He even cut a half of his ringfinger on his left hand once. And he can remove one of his from teeth when he doesn't need it (well that has to do with an abusive parent, not with logging). Robert built a loftbed in less than two hours and he can chop the whole big trunk in an hour. I am an excersise freak, so I had no objections joining them in their fun logging expeditions.

Robert taught me how to use an axe for beginning, since I am typical city kid (I saw a cow first time in my life when I was six and I lived in a building with the street car running right in front of the entrance doors) not familiar with any tools beyond screwdriver. After I acquired the axe related skills, I got to learn how to use a chainsaw. However, Krist and Robert did not allow me to use the big one. I didn't find it as difficult: you just have to be carefull and focused on the feedback you are getting from the wood you cut, concentrate and don't rush. The actual cutting of a whole tree I haven't attempted. Redwoods are funny that way. Robert once cut a big old trunk with no limbs and it just stayed in place for a while deliberating which side it would chose to fall to. And we were watching and taking bets.

"After hours", when the fog lingers waist high as you enter the dark forest, like in Disney movies, we took guns and went to the "shooting range" shooting at the old abandoned cars at the farm. It is funny how the automatic function on AK 47 is disabled for customers in the U.S. It is anyway very easy to re-enable it, since AK was meant for fighting wars not hunting game. Nights were visited by coyottes howls and belows. I got the idea why "the grunge" originated there.

Anyway, I felt in love with the Northwest. The nature suites me there. I like this.