Having been working on no less than ten selections from my writings the last few weeks, I am eager to see them take their final shape as soon as possible. Although I am doing my best not to rush things, I find myself writing prefaces to the most recent ones. The first draft of the preface for my book about yoga thus came out in the open only a couple of days ago (“The Preliminary Preface,” December 20, 2015). Unexpectedly, today I came up with the first draft of my preface for my book about Zagreb (“Zagreb Postcards,” December 10, 2015). It strikes me as just right at present, but I know that I am likely to add and subtract from it the next month or so. Still, I feel it is time for it to come out, as well. Here goes:

The title of this book comes from my erstwhile habit of pasting my pieces of writing onto postcards and sending them to friends around the world. I never counted, but I must have sent many thousands of them. Later on, the postcards reached their audience via electronic mail, and finally they ended up on a website entitled Residua (www.residua.org). By now it stretches over some forty years and it counts close to seventeen thousand pieces of writing with more than three-thousand addenda extending them. Amazingly, my magnum opus now counts more than three-million words. All these numbers were unimaginable at the outset.

Given that my Residua is a book about everything under the sun, years ago I started making selections from it on different subjects. The first three such selections are Belgrade Postcards (2002), Istrian Postcards (2003), and Motovun Postcards (2007), but there are many others by now. In brief, I was born in Zagreb, grew up in Belgrade, lived all over the world most of my life, and now I am living in Motovun. Well, I also spend ever more of my time in the city of my birth. All of my selections have the same structure: many short pieces of writing arranged in chronological order. All the pieces and all the addenda extending them are dated.

Quite a few of my observations and opinions about Zagreb will irk many of those who love the city and feel at home in it. I can only hope that some of my pieces will also make them pause on occasion, as well as laugh every now and then. But this selection from my writings is primarily meant for people like me, who cannot call Zagreb their home. I was only born in it, after all. And I was a toddler when my parents decided to move away and take me with them. At this stage of my life, I am a stranger in it, if not also a foreigner. Thus I hope that strangers and foreigners who happen to live in Zagreb at present will enjoy the book the most. And especially if English is their elective language, as is the case with me.

The book about the city of my birth is far less important to me than the book about yoga. In fact, the former is meant primarily to lighten the task of completion of the latter, which I think of as central to my life. Still, the selection of my pieces about Zagreb is hardly a joke for me. The more time I spend in the city, the more intent I am to better understand it, as well as not to feel ill at ease in its midst. Which happens to me often enough, I must confess. For those who love Zagreb and feel at home in it often make sure that strangers and foreigners among them understand their, well, inferior status. As well as the impossibility of ever changing it, the status, at least among the supposedly best and the brightest in the city. Enough, though. The book will be ready in about a month.