Hemon on migration

I am not sure if you are familiar with the work of writer Aleksandar Hemon. His most famous work is The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Hemon was born in Sarajevo and came to the States in 1992 for what he meant to be a short visit. However, bombs started falling over Sarajevo and he was not able to leave. He's lived in Chicago ever since.

I've been meaning to pick up Hemon's books for a while because I knew that his writing is very much inspired by his childhood and young adult life in Bosnia but also shaped by his experience as an immigrant. For one reason or another I never did. Today, however, I came across a video interview of Hemon in which he talks about the importance of Sarajevo for his work and life. He says that everything he learned about the world, about living in a city, about living with people, he learned in Sarajevo. So, when he came to Chicago at the age of 28, he started looking for things that were important to him that were in tune with his sensibility. He looked for people to play soccer with, looked for a barber, a butcher, a coffeeshop, a bar. What he was looking for in Chicago, Hemon says, was what he loved about Sarajevo. According to Hemon, you acquire a sensibility in the city where you grew up and you transfer that over to wherever you happen to live next.

I am not sure if that's how things have worked out for me personally. Maybe that is the case because I left my parents home when I was only barely 18 and at that point had not yet developed any particular attachments. In all honesty, I feel like my sensibilities were informed more by my desire to experience something bigger, brighter, more exciting than the town that I grew up in.

But then I thought about it some more and realized that even though I might not realize it, that tiny little town is in me in more ways than I have cared to admit. I like cities, but I love the smaller ones where you say hi to people on the street and you know your neighbors and your corner store guy and you get your coffee from this one particular place you really love and over time develop a relationship with a kid across the street who is yet too shy to talk to you but always smiles back at you when you say hello.

Life lessons from 2007

I saw this at my new online friend Nicodile’s blog and loved the idea so much that decided to do it myself.

January: It's hard to live on two continents.
Ask my husband. For a couple of months there he had the longest commute ever. Sofia-Philly 7726 km.

February: People are very curious about sex.
And are not embarrassed to talk about it. On this very blog, we discussed the advantages of mint-flavored condoms and giving blow-jobs after having crunched an altoid.

March: Love knows no boundaries.
Again, proven by my husband. Who jumped on a plane and moved to mother-fuckin’ Bulgaria. Just to be with me. What can I say, I’m lucky.

April: It takes a village.
Like Hillary says, it takes a village to raise a child. In other words, to achieve great success, you need to learn to ask for help and rely on those around you. Said lesson was put into to practice as soon as we started applying for Kyle’s Bulgarian residence permit. I blogged about it and as a result have made a great number of friends who, to quote my favorite Tyra Banks, are still in the running towards becoming Bulgarian residents.

May: If you believe in what you do, other people will believe in what you do. And vice versa.
In May, a couple of lovely people from Orbitel contacted us with a job. It was about something that neither myself nor the professor had done before. But we thought, heck, if they think we can do it, we can probably do it. Which we did. And we have been working together ever since. Sometimes all you need is a person to believe in you. In our case, we had an entire department.

June: When moving, don’t move to a better apartment. Move to a good apartment.
Which we learned the hard way, naturally. There were things about our previous apartment that we hated. So we decided to look for a new one. We found one and thought, Oh, wow! It’s so much better than the old one! and we signed the lease without thinking twice. Needless to say, as soon as we moved in, we realized it was definitely a better apartment than the old one. But also noticed that it was not a good apartment by any stretch of the imagination.

July: You don’t need a wedding planner to plan a wedding.
You need a bride. A groom. And wordpress.

August: Your wedding is probably not the best day of your life.
But sure as hell, it is tuns of fun.

September: Life is what happens when your plans fall through.
We had very ambitious honeymoon plans. We planned to pull a Johnny Cash and by the end of it be able to say, I’ve been everywhere, man! Instead, we ended up being stuck in Philly and having a blast.

October: Just do it.
My friend Bogdana felt like she couldn’t find a good women’s magazine to read. So she started her own.

November: Take control of your finances.
Which is a lesson I have taken to heart and have made significant progress on. The first step was to decide I want to do it. The second: to start tracking my expenses. My next step: put together a budget. I’ll keep you posted how things go…but so far…it’s been illuminating.

December: When in Rome…(do as the Romans do)
On December 6, my husband celebrated his first Bulgarian name-day ever. He did not eat fish, as he is vegetarian, but he made sure enough rakia was consumed.