The Jehovah Project

Liam, age six, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. On a possibly related note, some words of Dusko Radovic freshly translated for me, and now for you, by Zarko Radakovic.

1.
Something is not right.
The new school is being created by those who finished the old one with the highest marks.
Maybe it would be more logical to entrust the reforms of the schooling system to bad students, who are the only real witnesses that the old school was no good.

2.
Some people ask of us not to be their friends but to be friends of their delusions. Because of that many friendships are not realized or are spoiled.

3.
The most popular are those writers who have more friends and acquaintances than readers.

4.
One advice to those who are afraid:
Don’t turn around, if you think THAT is still there.

5.
Here and there in Belgrade there are still pickets, and alongside pickets grow weeds of strong, pungent smell…
A dove coos on a branch of a wild pear tree and a stray field mouse runs from fear or hunger.
All that still exists somewhere, in some street without a name and a house without number….
Like a thistle, it sticks to the pant leg of the metropolis and travels through times and places to which it does not belong.

6.
You woke up again this morning on the only planet, in the greater cosmic area, on which it is possible to live.
In silence and darkness of infinite space and time glimmer only your eyes and words, there is nothing anywhere besides you and your lives.
Happy are you for being alive and for being so smart that that can be proven to you.

7.
Good people have time.
That is the first characteristic of goodness.

8.
It only makes sense to educate the smart ones. The educated, without smarts, are a great error and danger.

9.
Belgraders are going on vacation.
Practitioners to the seaside,
the theoreticians to spas.

10.
How will you go to the seaside with that stomach so big?
Where will you keep it while you’re swimming?
It will bore you with its demands, won’t let you move without it.
You will be unable to be alone with anyone, for it will always be there.

11.
There are some males so tame and dear, who know how to speak so sweetly, seductively and lengthily that you simply forget that they are male. Afterward you don’t mind even if it turns out that they in fact are.

12.
It’s too much, and not healthy – both to be young and to have money.
Whoever is spending money while young won’t have time to spend youth.

13.
In life it is enough to be smart twice – when choosing your occupation and when choosing your partner in marriage.
Who misses both of these times, has to be smart his whole life.

14.
Why do some parents have a lot of children?
Because they don’t think about it.
And how do they manage to feed and clothe so many children?
Again because they don’t think about it.
And can they raise them all?
They can, because they don’t think about it.
Everything is doable when it’s not much thought about.

15.
There are wives who aren’t afraid of husbands, but are afraid of various bugs.
One husband ate such a bug for his wife to see, but it didn’t help.
She’s still afraid only of bugs.

16.
Domestic rock musicians have gobbled up music.
What we hear is only burping.

17.
Brave drunks drink alone and for no reason.
Only the cowards need reasons, and company, and music to get drunk.

18.
Plants burned with the green flame of life until they cooked up their fruits.
Now that fire is dying out.
Fruits remain as proof that life wasn’t in vain.

19.
After we are born, we first learn to talk, and only then to think.
We fall behind at the start, and never catch up.