I met a tall woman in her late fifties in the middle of Borgo. “We are looking for Ranko Bon,” she said. A hunched woman with a cane and a huge straw hat was picking her way down the street some way behind her. It turned out to be a teacher of mine from highschool in Belgrade. I could not remember her or her name, nut she claimed to remember me well. She read my two books published in Belgrade, as well. “She is ninety-four,” said her daughter under her voice as we slowly walked to the hotel terrace, where I was going when we met. The old lady was fascinating, too. “I must apologize for my ceaseless jabbering,” she kept repeating from time to time. Her eyes were bubbling with infectious joy. She talked about everything around her with enthusiasm bordering on ecstasy. “Look at the color of the sky between the leaves,” she sighed fervently at some point as she craned her crooked neck upwards. When they left after an hour or so, I realized that the mother had reached without even trying that special state of mind mentioned longingly by so many poets: she was living as though there was no tomorrow.