My original recollections of September have been written in my language and post on my FB, after a years-long gap in this kind of writing. Later, I translated it. Not an easy task since I, like many others who operate in two or more languages, have some sort of “multiple personality”, depending which language I use. I’m a linguist, and this aspect of being bi-lingual is terribly intriguing. Although I don’t know much about it theoretically, I live it every day and it’s never ceased to fascinate me. Or us, because there are two linguistical mes, as I said. 😉

I’ll turn my attention to this phenomenon sooner or later, and try to explain to myself and others why I can’t write fiction in my language and some other forms in English.

Last week, however, was all about me in my native tongue and, dare I say, my native state of mind. I had a great privilege to see my piece published in my former magazine, Vreme, still the most respectable weekly publication in Serbia, in its famous column Vreme uzivanja (“Time of Leisure”).

It’s hard to express what it means to me. It’s a sort of validation–over time, this prestige column has hosted some very big names. Vreme was the last magazine I worked at before I came to Canada. It’s tied to my refugee and war years, the worst and the best time of my life. If I’m proud of any achievements in my career, then it’s my four years there as an editor. These were tough and very dangerous times, when you couldn’t make compromises with your conscience, not in sightless.

I couldn’t open the full article–I’m not a subscriber to the magazine simply because I can’t and don’t want to keep up with the Serbian political scene–but that didn’t matter. September was there, my name under the title, with an error at the end, apparently.

Thanks to my old FB joke/ruse, I was announced as a current resident of Texas.

And that’s fine; this innocent mistake (that I’m responsible for) happens to connect some dots of my past and my present. I’ve loved Texas since I was a child devouring a popular Italian western comics series, Tex Willer. Just to mention, Tex was–logically– a Texas ranger and his physical appearance was modeled after Gary Cooper. I was in Texas a couple of years ago, and that visit only solidified my sentiments toward it.

Somehow, this Texas-slip made my comeback even more special.