When I sit in my livingroom and stare at my paintings on the wall facing west, where twenty-five paintings are resting on five battens, two of them attract most of my attention. The first shows the sacred word, “Aum” (“The Sacred Word,” May 18, 2012). It was painted on the other side of one of my jokes on abstraction (“The Last of My Jokes on Abstraction,” May 23, 2011). The other is my rendering of an insect that looks rather like a cockroach but sports a sting, as well (“The Motovun Bug,” June 24, 2011). By and by, it has become my totem (“My Totem,” November 15, 2012). The two paintings appear on the same batten, the second from the ground, but they are three paintings apart from each other after the last rearrangement of my paintings. I just checked on my Residua when the two were painted, and I discovered that they were both from 2011. In fact, they were painted a month apart from each other. The sacred word and my totem are very much a pair. The discovery gave me quite a jolt. A jolt of joy, to be precise.

Addendum (August 11, 2014)

This story has a bit broader context, to be sure. The two paintings came one after another while I was impatiently waiting to hear from the regional court in Pula about my appeal to the ruling of the municipal court in Pazin regarding the fabricated insult case against me by the former mayor of Motovun. As I learned soon after the second painting was completed, my appeal went down in flames (“Crooked Golf,” June 29, 2011). This was to be expected, for courts and politics are inseparable in Istria, but the disappointment was still painful. Before I could appeal in Strasbourg, my last and only hope, I had to appeal to the highest court in Zagreb (“Strasbourg, Here We Come,” July 28, 2011). More than three years later, I am still waiting to hear from the Croatian capital, which could well be why the two paintings in question pop up in front of my eyes as often and as tenaciously as they actually do. But it is anyone’s guess how much longer I will be waiting for justice in this godforsaken country, where quite a number of court cases stretch into decades. This is especially true since the country’s independence a bit more than two decades ago. Come to think of it, will I live long enough to shake the Motovun bug out of my mind once and for all and dedicate myself to yoga without any further thought? A good question, this.