“Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are.”  Felix Baumgarten

The Moro reflex is considered to be the only unlearned fear in human newborns. The gravity is considered to be one of the four powerful forces that mediates human experiences while the quantum gravity is still a bit of a theory problem.

I remember perfectly my micro free fall and indescribable feeling of going ‘up’, similar to the feeling of a plane taking off. The basket of oranges fortunately break my fall and not my spine. Mum left it there at ‘landing point’ the previous evening. She said she wanted to move it but something ‘told her’ to leave it there. The moment I begun to free fall my fear vanished. I became aware that I’m now dying at the age of 7 and posted my last thoughts to someone:

1. Oh fuck, already at 7
2. How will my class buddies do without me?
3. I’m off to happy hunting ground (saw it as written on a blackboard)
4. See, I knew there’s no point in screaming (those movies’ scenes of falling really irritated me)

Kids have not yet developed a strong ego as adults have. I guess that’s why is simpler for most of them to accept the notion of dying. One of my friends who is a psychiatrist tried to convince me that kids at young age cannot be aware of or ‘know’ what death is. With all do respect I say most psychiatrists do not know much about conscious, brain and mysteries in general. I know that my mind and body were perfectly aware of its end. Period. The shock came after my body performed a back-lift and landed perfectly into oranges. For a half a minute I could not inhale properly and that was a bit scary, not the fall.

Since than I started to perform jumps to reach the feeling of that free fall. During summer I would jump off from high cliffs in sport shoes cause hitting the sea surface with bare feet is quite a burning sensation. In winter I would jump from first or even second floors/balconies to land into a sand. It these cases it was very important knowing how to land and how to use your knees as shock absorber. Otherwise, don’t try.

Somebody asked me once if I’m an adrenalin junkie. It was not about adrenalin but about that feeling of utter relaxation and the feeling of going up. It’s difficult to explain. Still today when I ‘free fall’ into sea I like to close my eyes to feel gravity pulling my physical body down while something else is pulling ‘me’ up at once. Quantum physics at its best. To express it poetically, the silent fall of a falling leaf.

As a person who had several near death experiences I tell you death is not to be feared. If anyone of you ‘get lucky’ to die via free fall, try to relax, get a sense of an adventure and enjoy it cause there’s actually nothing else you can do. I’m not being sarcastic, ironic or perverse. If you look at it a bit closer, life as we know it is hell for most parts of it. Death only comes as a salvation.

nice little article about 6 lessons from creative minds.

i’ll get back later to this post, but before coming back i must write down:  art is freedom and responsibility at the same time.

…

“If we established something as art, we’ve also automatically determined the existence of something that is not art. I’m interested in where is the boundary.”   Ivan Ladislav Galeta

i woke up and found out that Ivan Ladislav Galeta died yesterday, the same date as Nikola Tesla. Ivan was professor at Academy of fine arts in Zagreb armed with zen wisdom, humor and wit that transcended all notions of time and space. he always made me laugh just by his mere presence but that laugh was not the one you hear on comedy shows. it was a type of laugh you get after reading a ‘funny’ zen story. i knew that professor Ivan ‘knows stuff’. simple, wise, warm person who talked to students and children as his peers, lacking any form of artistic-macho/gay superiority. he was an artist, ‘normal’ person, freed from destructive, chauvinistic, phony, pretentious life.

i’m not in a mood to write further about creative minds. i wrote a statement previously and i don’t feel a need to elaborate it. everyone who reads this blog has a brain that can be put in use.

Ivan Ladislav Galeta and Nikola Tesla now share the same death date. both are creative minds. what they did to preserve their creativity is not important. it is important that they managed to save their inner child and live their passion the best they could. RIP dear Ivan.

you cannot choose how you’ll die but you can choose how to live. that often requires a lot of courage and enough of healthy craziness.

it was a beautiful boring sunny day. no wind, no breeze, no humidity. kind of boring cause most days in makarska are like that, especially in spring. my street was silently peaceful. it was a weekend and everybody enjoyed their home-made launch, desert, wine and a nap.

our family ‘blake carrington’ house was leaned against pine trees woods. the fragrance of pines and resin always shouted loudly at me to join them. my friends and I managed to build a camp right on top of several pine trees, some 5-6 m high up that even guys from Avatar would be jealous of. we had several camps but this one was ‘the classy one’. it was build for the purpose of our meetings or running away from bad ugly guys living in the eastern part of our street.

the pine trees woods was also a home of hen-houses. in croatian it’s called kokošinjac (what a funny lovely word, shame one doesn’t hear it any more so often.) yup, still in 80s, lots of grannies loved having their own ‘kokošinjac’ – those eggs are far more better than ones bought in a supermarket. not to mention free run chickens. it’s funny, today one pays extra for such luxury while then, a luxury was to buy a chicken in a supermarket.

anyway, i liked observing chickens and while doing that, i’ve noticed that those wannabe birds almost never use their wings. well, they do use them in a dispute or in a fight but no use for flying whatsoever. the chicken’s main preoccupation was to poke about all day long or sit on eggs. for me that kind of life was so sad. such a waste of wings potential. and that’s how i got the idea to teach one little chick to fly. i had some previous experience in flying using big umbrella or plastic sheet to resemble parachute. it didn’t quite work out well but i knew it was just a matter of time when a flying suite will be developed. more than 20 years later, this suit is now called a wing suite.

anyhow, i’ve decided to teach a little chick how to fly so it can join other beautiful birds in the sky. living a dull yet ok life in a hen-house, poking around all day long until someone comes and picks your unborn kids (eggs) or you for a launch was, as written previously, a very sad life. that’s what i thought.

on that beautiful boring sunny day, i went to woods to fulfill my mission. i knew already which hen-house holds my pupil. when i entered chickens were nervous, coming on to me, cackling and waving their so called wings like crazy. but my mission was way too serious to be bothered with assaults and intimidation. i picked one chick out of several. it was beautiful. it wasn’t afraid that much, had lovely eyes and its wings looked a bit bigger than in all others. i saw that proportion of its wings vs. its body is quite ok. if he/she now starts with its training, those yellow wings will become stronger and grow in time and as they grow bigger the chick will be able to fly to higher heights and get to see how wonderful world actually is. and he/she’ll find new friends – true birds – that will teach him/her about things plain chickens could not…

so, i started with the flying training. i throw yellow little chick gently into air and he/she instinctively started to flap its wings, flaying around for a few seconds, then falling down. i was amazed cause my theory was proving correct > the chicks can fly if they are thought from young age. i continued throwing him/her in the air and little chick would cackle flapping its wings, trying to fly at its best. in blind eagerness and passion to make little chick fly, i lost a touch of a reality. after many, more or less successful flights, my little yellow chick stopped flapping, stopped cackling, stopped moving, stopped breathing. i took my yellow pupil in my hands and like a thunder, revelation of my ‘mission’ hit me in the middle of my skull and spread all through my body: i have killed my yellow fellow chick.

i fell on my knees. the shock was immense.

among the fragrance of pines, surrounded by trunks and branches, no one could see me so i started to cry like a newborn. the pure raw pain of hurting and killing an innocent, beautiful creature was unbearable. during cathartic crying, the weight of raw pain was lifted a bit and i saw what i did:

– first:  in ignorance, I’ve killed an innocent living creature

– second: i was forcing my will against experienced nature’s laws

–  third: i was stupid and proud

after the crying catharsis, i pulled myself together and kindly asked my fellow chick to forgive me. then, i needed to make a funeral and bury my fellow. i’ve found a place close to little chick’s hen-house, dug a hole, placed her/him gently in it and covered it with earth. i’ve also made a small cross and pounded it into the ground above its grave. i said some prayer my granny thought me, about angels and stuff and remain sitting by that tiny grave. when it got dark, i said goodbye and told her/him we’ll meet sooner or later and then we’ll fly together.

at night i was reminiscing how that yellow chick actually manage to fly. then i understood something important: little fellow was brave and it actually thought me, not vice versa.

the little yellow fellow made perfectly clear that it’s ok to be a chick:

– there is a reason why some birds do fly and some birds do not fly

– the ‘wanna-be birds’, those that don’t fly, are quite happy poking around all day long and sitting on their eggs

– one should never interfere with someone else’s life (unless directly asked for help)

–  projecting and forcing own wishes on others is a crime that usually ends up in death, either physical or emotional

– nature’s laws are nature’s laws and I, as a human, am also a part of it (not the law)

when this story and its revelation occurred, i was 6 years old.

ps. žutanjak / zutanjak is yolk in croatian. i choose that name for this blog to honor my yellow fellow chick

pps. just kidin’ > zutanjak stands for my stray dog Žućo