Ghostly Encounters (by Vesna Ilievska)

*


“No, I don’t do demons,” he said, and took a sip of his drink. “That’s a completely different thing.”

“Really?” I thought. “Is he for real?” I looked at Kevin and Sarah, in hope that they might be thinking the same thing. But, no, my classmates remained cool as ice and awkwardly professional, so I had to fight off the urge to laugh and looked at his name tag again. “B. Lenga--Manager,” it said.

Meet Bill Lenga
Bill was in charge of our on-campus pub and the food and supplies the whole campus was getting. He always wore glasses, a baby blue button up shirt, his name tag and a welcoming smile, like he had been in his line of work for ages. But Bill was a man of many talents, to say the least, which I why we chose him for our final documentary project, as part of our Non-fiction Production course. He was also a judge in his town, but after work each day he took on the job of a ghost hunter. And it was on our first meeting when he emphasized the difference between ghosts and demons. “Demons are evil spirits that don’t come from Earth nor have ever lived here, and in general they are much scarier and more powerful. Ghosts, on the other hand, are just lost souls who used to be humans at one point. They are rarely mean and can in no way harm you.”

“Ahhhhh…,” we nodded. “So, have you always been into ghosts?”

The answer was shocking. It turned out Bill used to be a man of facts and data, a top scientist back in his day, working for the army in Vietnam, where he had his 1st near-death experience. He came back and a couple of months later, after a terrible car accident, his life was hanging on a thread again. Ever since, he had developed some sort of sensibility towards what people call “paranormal” phenomena, and realized that he loved helping all sorts of beings out, both humans and ghosts. And the moment he said that, I knew we were going to have a lot of fun with this video.

Next, we asked him to talk about his personal life and how this “ghost correspondence” affected it.

“Well, everyone close to me knows that I am serious about this, and that I love doing it. I go on holidays with my wife where part of the trip is an organized ghost tour. We meet with other couples in haunted inns, for example, and see whether anything happens. In fact, I am so serious that the International Ghost Hunters Organization has even officially accredited me as a paranormal investigator.” He flashed this license and took another sip.

I must admit I was amazed. I couldn’t wait for the outcome of the project.

Two days later, we met up with him on “an expedition” in Phoenix, New York, and we were not disappointed at all. We were going to explore Sarah’s house, who thought that there might be something more in her basement other than what her and her family were seeing. At this point, however, I found Mr. Lenga as intriguing as the possibility of finding a ghost in the house, maybe even more.

Imagine this timid and welcoming guy, armed with military pants, a Ghostbusters t-shirt, a Wiccan crystal, a couple of weird looking gadgets which resembled Star Trek tricoders and to top it off, a small bottle of holy water. Pure j-o-y and excitement came over me! “This is definitely why I came to the States,” I thought.


The house was quite normal and cute. The basement, on the other hand, wasn’t! It had all the elements required to do some ghost-busting…low ceiling, not much lighting, things hanging from the top, and three pairs of cat eyes staring at us. Yes, Pandori, Duma, and Sheena simply loved the place. It almost looked as if they admired this 1800’s structure as much we did.

There was no lighting coming from outside, no cracks or windows, nothing that would disrupt the feeling that you might have entered a completely new dimension inside that basement. Being the camera person on the crew, I had to take some time and inspect the place. I freaked out when I saw the stuffed raccoon, which apparently came with the place, but besides that, the only thing that worried me was the lighting. The whole basement had only three light bulbs illuminating it, and no power sockets where we could hook up our reflectors.

Nevertheless, we were ready to proceed and Bill even notified any potential ghosts out there by saying something like: “Dear spirit, we mean you no harm, please welcome us into your humble abode and let us communicate with you.”

My eyebrows almost rocketed out of my face.

“You see,” Bill continued, “to be able to sense a ghost, you need to make sure it knows you are friendly and be open to the experience. If you don’t believe it’s possible, you won’t see it, you won’t feel it. It’s as simple as that.”

He got his tricoder gadget out and started searching for our invisible host. It gave out a random spike or two, but nothing … three minutes, five minutes, eight minutes of nothing. Hope was gone and so was the blood in my shoulder muscles.

Bill put his gadgets down and headed for the entrance of the basement. We were baffled and disappointed, especially Sarah. Luckily, though, the camera was still on because at one point, both Sarah and Bill got goose bumps and shared a very intense look. I knew something was up and the tricoder confirmed it.

It seemed that we had finally grabbed our ghost’s attention, so Bill got the crystal out and started asking it questions. Apparently, the ghost was supposed to answer them by redirecting Bill’s mind power to make the crystal move. Yes-and-no questions only. I held my breath and my camera as I tried to observe the whole process and tackled the insufficient lighting. The image was dark and grainy, it would flash every 10 seconds or so, while my shoulder ... well, it felt as if it was no longer a part of my body. But at that moment the bloody crystal started moving, so there was no time to rest or complain. In fact, the crystal was moving so much so that there was no way Bill could have been cheating.

“Wait. What the …??! Just breathe,” I thought. I was flabbergasted and so was Kevin, who was, by the way, holding the boom mike. We continued our séance with the ghost for about 35 minutes more and then Sarah took over. I remember her asking whether the visions she had as a child of her imaginary friend were actually the ghost we were chatting with right then. The crystal started swinging like crazy and I thought of my imaginary friend, who, I was pretty sure, at least in my case, was all inside my head.

From this point on, things continued quite normally: editing until early in the morning, previews for our professor and peers, follow up interviews with Bill, getting some background footage etc.

“I’m worried about the lighting: I didn’t do a good job,” I said to Mr. Scott right after the first screening of our draft.

“Why?” he inquired.

“No matter how much I adjusted the settings it would keep flashing … look!” I slowed the video down and showed him.

He crossed his hands and leaned back. He asked for our tape and disappeared, which actually meant that he took it to Master Control to have it analyzed. The guys there were in change of all the equipment and technology at the Park School of Communications, so if anyone knew what was wrong with the camera, it would be them.

Some 15 minutes later, Mr. Scott came back and informed us that we would have to go back to the location again, but this time with a different camera. Evidently, no one had an explanation about the flashes. The camera was new and the sensors were working smoothly so the professionals were just as confused as we were. Oh boy, like we didn’t have things to do.

So, we went back, filmed the sequence again. Bill had a family obligation, so he couldn’t make it, and it seemed that our ghost had arrangements to keep everything still, except the camera image, where the flashes continued showing up. Finally, we got back with the tape and then we had to beg the guys at Master Control to allow us to film the analysis of the second tape, which is a process where they put the tape in a special kind of recorder that analyzes the image and compares it to the camera settings. Surprisingly, the effects on the footage were exactly the same as before and once again they couldn’t explain it. According to them, something was up with the lights sensors, interrupting them, some weird electromagnetic energy. Hearing that, for a moment there, it felt as if I was caught in a Scooby Doo episode, and the Mystery Machine would appear out of nowhere to take us to our new adventure right after we solved this case and exposed the ghost. But, since this was not a feasible scenario for the analyst, he was very careful not to say anything ambiguous and tried to keep the explanation as scientific as possible. This was not what we were looking for as such statements weren’t helping our story, but we didn’t feel the need to ask him to stop as we took the joy out of seeing him confused and sweating the answers out.

At one point I put the camera down and gave out a sigh. This seemed to have got the tech guy’s attention, so he said in an apologetic voice:

“Oh come on, you don’t really believe demons caused these flashes.”

“No, definitely not demons,” we said and smiled at each other, and thought of the unusual knowledge we had gained during our spring semester at Ithaca College.



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Vesna Ilievska is a fourth year student at Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. She spent a year at Ithaca College in New York.

“Ghostly Encounters” is copyright 2010 by Vesna Ilievska and may not be republished or reposted without the author's permission.

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*

Loving Lethal (by Zorica Petkoska)

*
Author Zorica Petkoska reading her fiction at Café Magor, Skopje, Macedonia
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Let me speak tales of letters and words, small things, yet so great. Oh, but don’t let me speak of letters and words, because I will speak for days and torture you to the point you will wish you were illiterate. Yet, let me speak a little, let me lay down at your feet--how lasciviously I have longed for languages for so long. Let me tell you how “the tip of the tongue takes a trip to touch the teeth” or how words can woo a woman. Let me wallow in words and lust for letters and linger a bit more to listen or read.

Words have reigned my world since birth. I was the only two-year-old who could speak all the letters of the alphabet faultlessly, and thus I became the kid in my street who was being sent constantly to the supermarket, as I was the only one who could pronounce the “r” in “Partner,” the popular cigarette brand back then. And while all other children sang and danced in front of a video camera, I used to stand still, serious, and I would solemnly recite something or make a strangely odd speech for my age. And while all mothers told bedtime stories to their children, I went on and on for hours following my mother through the house, inventing fairy tales as I spoke and she was my half-interested audience. At night, my little sister was the rude audience who would fall sleep in the middle of the story, but I kept talking on and on, although I knew she was asleep. And who could blame her when my stories were endless and I talked until there was no strength left in my voice to continue? But, let me now continue from sound to sign.

When I was five, a teacher started giving us classes and, of course, as in every primer in the country, we started with the letters M and A, so that we could form the most essential word in our childhood: “MAMA.” I came home greatly disappointed stating that knowing just two letters won’t help me read. By 10:00 p.m. that same night I went to my mom and read her a passage from my primer. She grabbed it from my hands in disbelief. Then she gave me a newspaper and asked me to read out loud for her. I did. Without a mistake. I don’t remember much of this, but she says she marvels at it until this day. I can only guess that my animalistic hunger for letters and language manifested as an instinct of ferociousness and I as a small word-thirsty beast.

So, when I managed to devour this wonderful alphabet, for years I led a life of reading books under my desk while in class, reading half of the book on my way back from the library and randomly bumping into people, trees and lampposts, reading until my parents had to come in and forcefully tear the book from my hands, rhyming and coming up with a poem while tying my shoelaces and then forgetting to go to school, and rhyming in my thoughts and walking past the school, forgetting to go inside and then bashfully turning around and coming back to it. The only difference today is that I bump considerably less into lampposts.

You would be wrong to think that one language was enough to quench my insatiable language thirst. I read fairy tales in Serbian at only seven, holding books larger and heavier than me and hunting for the words I didn’t understand by bothering each of my parents. Then I started rambling through the English language at eight, without knowledge of the Latin alphabet, and managed to learn something after all. After learning the alphabet I managed to learn so much of the language that I was the most hated pupil in history: English teachers had nothing to teach me and they hated my guts.

Then came eight years of French. Oh, let me tell you about French. Of how I still enjoy forming French gerunds more than eating honey and how “en sachant” (1) holds more sweetness for me, than the ragged, ravaged and overused “je t’aime.” Because I love knowledge more than love itself, because I love the sound. And then how I translated texts in class ad hoc, and when asked how did I know the words I answered: “I don’t. I feel this should be translated like this” and looked calmly at the professor’s perplexed expression, because the translation was invariably strangely correct.

In high school, I started digging through the relics of Latin and there was my mysterious translation theory again, I didn’t look up words, I FELT them. So, my professor pushed me and pushed me until I agreed to go to a national competition in Latin and went on to become that year’s national winner. I remember every echo of every step I stepped on, slowly and bewildered, as if sleepwalking, to receive the award. And there were many steps indeed, for

I was sitting at the back of the amphitheatre, not hoping for anything at all. Every day I step into A3 at the “Blaže Koneski” Faculty of Philology; I remember the sound of those steps and the silence they pierced. I never knew it would be there that I would take the most important exams in my life for years to come, and that there my steps will echo again in the silence, while first year students scribble their answers, frightened. Eventually, a dead language wasn’t the death to my longing for languages.

At this point, it would be appropriate to bring up my one and unhappy love. German. Oh, let me tell you now, how hot, salty and bitter were my tears, how ashamed I was for being unable to hold them although I was supposed to be this grown up, independent student of English language beginning her life alone in Skopje, this big ugly capital. I shed these tears in front of the German language library after hunting for the professors for a month and eventually being told that I was not allowed to take up German as my minor due to a lack of basic knowledge of the language. “Darf ich (2),” I muttered, and “ich, du, er, sie, es, wir…” time after time, bent over the computer screen, trying to learn the language on my own. Every time they said “jetz gleich” on the German television, I would chime happily to my sister that that meant “coming now” and “see, I am beginning to understand,” but it was the hope of an infatuated fool, I have realized by now. However, compulsive eaters eat whatever they find in the fridge, so in the same fashion I took up Italian--previous knowledge: not required.

I studied two years of Italian, putting minimum effort in it and basically building on to the remnants of my Latin.

Language and love must not be separated. They share the same beginning letter.

And for me, Italian shared the same first letter with “indifference.” It is like trying to get over someone you love by randomly going out with the first boy you meet. It never works.

After easily completing two years of Italian with maximum grades and obtaining first level of proficiency, I naturally stopped there and focused on the first language I chose to love and cherish, the language I chose to study at the University and make it my companion for lifetime: English. Having read this far (and hopefully still awake, unlike my sister) you can assume how much I enjoy this language, its words, its sounds. I engaged myself in mastering to say “what” with a glottal stop, Cockney accent. Then repeated “love” numerous times to grasp that particular pronunciation with which the Liverpool waiters finished their questions (“Anything I can do for you, love?”). And much more. I think in English! And yet, for an insatiable beast like me, even the thousands pages of the Oxford English Dictionary are just a meal and too much is never enough.



Next thing I know I was frantically learning to write “kokeshi” (the Japanese word for “a doll”) and I went on to lament the almost nonexistent use of “ai shi teru (3),” picturing the phrase enslaved between the thick covers of a dictionary. This project failed, or shall I rather say it is postponed, since I never give up on a language I find a reason to love.

The reasons to love a language are many and varied. Sometimes it is just the language itself, the country and its language or you love a person and instantly fall in love with their tongue. My interest for Finnish became with the love for the country, but my love, my lust, my longing for it was crowned by the love for a person. The way his lips produced this sweetness is now a matter of blind worship to me. The hunt for Macedonian and Finnish words with the same roots is my obsession.

And I have vowed to my language thirst and my letter hunger that I will learn all of these for as long as I live. And I have vowed to my heart and my tongue that my very first language, my lovely lovely Macedonian, will never suffer because of that, because I can love beyond common sense and normal proportions. And I am still keeping those vows as I dig up words like “чемер (4)” and “скрб (5)” and nourish them and breathe them life. And I will carve the ancient alphabet glagolitza on my skin and carve all other languages in my brain. They are all now carved deep into my heart.

Oh, why have you let me tell tales of translations and texts? And speak of languages and letters, words and woe? As if years ago, people are dazed and blank, others have fallen asleep halfway and I go on, sleepless, exhausted, insane.

In fact, I should have just read you a poem:


WORSHIP

Flowing like honey,
Melting as chocolate.
Slowly and sweetly.
Sometimes chaotic,
sometimes folded neatly.
Hard and sharp,
rising like fjords.
Wild mountains,
mellow meadows,
Words.
In all colours and blackness.
Sounds.
I am a master
and a servant, both.
To you.
You sweetest, cruelest,
my drug and truth.
My fiction.
Music, wind, friction.
This heart and lips
can love beyond common sense,
beyond safe prescribed quantities.
I nibble you delightfully,
my foreign god,
My language.

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1. (French) translation: by knowing

2. (German) translation: May I?

3. (Japanese) translation: I love you.

4. (Macedonian) translation: woe, anguish

5. (Macedonian) translation: grief, sorrow

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Zorica Petkoska graduated in 2010 from Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia. She majored in English translation.

"Loving Lethal" is copyright 2010, by Zorica Petkoska, and may not be reposted or republished with the author's permission.

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Cemetery Pet (by Vera Sotirovska)

*


I remember my long walk to the village cemetery even though it happened ten years ago when I was twelve.

My entire skin was itching, starting from my elbows and spreading through my palms into every finger, for I had unknowingly touched poison ivy while making my flower bouquet.

There it was, the cemetery before me and I on the foothill of what then seemed a mountain, a barren hill where the graves spread like squares. The hill was catching the sunset and up upon that silent hill, there I was standing with my burning hand holding the bunch of flowers.

Up the hill was yellow and down was grey, but somehow they seemed akin.

The graves lacked proportion, I thought, thinking how scattered they must have looked once seen from above. Scattered squares of cement tombs all grey, all the same, not a single one different.

I’ve got up to the very first grave and I looked for a name, but the grave must have been too old for I was unable to make out its name. The grave was split in half, filled with small cracks intersecting its surface like a wrinkled face of an old woman. Then I thought nothing is forever, not even death. This piece of cement has sustained death.



First, you waste the flesh and then the bones crumble and crumble into a powdery mixture of bone dust, as the very last bit of yourself gets sucked into the beneath of the beneath…Then how many ‘beneaths’ are there in the total of six feet under, layer after layer of soil?

I remember watching them and picturing the underground, contemplating what was behind those sealed doors.

Death is as much part of life as life is part of death just creeping on the other side of the door.

Dare I say the name?

As I stood there at the wider end and they on the other, my shadow fell on the square, molding a human shape out of the cement block.



The shadow twitched, for my body trembled.

Then from one of the cracks of the square a little greenish head protruded. Dark skin enveloped the head of the creature, it appeared wrinkled and unexposed to light creeping from the dwellings of the un-living. The head was out but much of the body was still in, for the only thing I could see was the furrowed skin and the listless eyes that were looking at mine.

Soon the head shook in an attempt to rise to the surface, pushing its whole body upwards; it was escaping the barren black womb…Another coming, a newborn from the body of a dead mother.

Was it a living dead…?

No, it was just a small turtle making its way up, above ground.



Now as I look and remember pensively at this spot of friendship, I recall the lines of the song "Pet Sematary," by The Ramones:

I don’t wanna be buried in a pet sematary
I don’t wanna live my life again…

The turtle must have come from middle earth, for it has blurred the boundaries between being in a pet cemetery and living off the cemeteries like a cemetery pet.

It started to rain and I never reached my grandmother’s grave, it was there with all the others, so I ran…I ran back.

When I arrived at the house, I remembered that I had left the flowers on someone else’s grave.



Death had unnamed them.

My feet, still heavy, hands itching.

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Vera Sotirovska graduated (2010) from Ss Cyril and Methodius university in Skopje, Macedonia, where she majored in Pedagogy.

"Cemetery Pet" is copyright 2010 by Vera Sotirovska and may not be republished or reposted without permission of the author.

Lyrics of "Pet Sematary" are from The Ramones' album Brain Drain.
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Epiphany and Not Following Through (Yet?) (by Daniela Atanasova)

*

My first day in the United States. After a long trans-Atlantic flight, the only memories of which are my half-dried tears, a dreadful headache and the German girl who sat next to me and never spoke a word, I land in the Washington D.C. airport. Or was it Philadelphia? I no longer remember. I pass the dreaded Immigration and officially enter the US. “Rally-Durham,” cries the nice man who takes my suitcase at check-in.

Finally, I arrive. It’s sunny and I have a feeling that it is going to be a good year. The journey itself presaged it: four connecting flights and no problem whatsoever. I find Vlaho, my Croatian friend, who is nervously trying to find a taxi. We spend the night in a motel, eat crappy American food bought from a gas station near by, and in the morning head for the university.

The cab driver, an Indian with poor English and a big smile, has heard about Croatia and Macedonia and we talk about Yugoslavia. A pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, in the end he only gets a meager tip from Vlaho as we are still not well informed about the tip “policy” in the States.

We call home from the Study Abroad Office and then Amanda, our advisor, takes us to our new homes. Mine is an apartment on Alexander Street. I still don’t know who my roommate is, but I like the place. My family has always lived in no more than two rooms, and I shared two rooms with three roommates while at university in Skopje, so the thought of having a whole apartment, even if I do share a bedroom with a flat mate, is exciting. Next, I roam around campus with my new French friend, Agnès, who is also one of the Visiting Internationals. I soon meet the rest of them; they come from Germany, France and Taiwan. The following day Amanda takes us all shopping at Target. First encounter with those large supermarkets where you can buy virtually everything you could think of. Buying the things I need without worrying too much about money is fun. But in general, shopping in such huge places tires me, it takes me ages to make a choice and in the end I feel strangely downcast.



Orientation week passes like a dream: nice people, beautiful places, lots of food and information, and all the American things to do. During one of the social events, students grumble about the new ACES (the computer system of the university). I tell them that they should not complain; in my school such a system would be considered science fiction. They look at me in a weird way. What they didn’t know is that instead of an electronic record, in Macedonia we have little “index books’ in which all the courses we take and all the grades we get are entered. The grade needs to be entered by the professor after the exam results are published, and this, of course, involves a special trip to the professor’s office and sometimes waiting for hours on end. Then, at the beginning and end of each semester we have to report our courses to the Student Affairs Office, and again queue for hours in a stuffy room, hoping that the administrator behind the counter will not be in a bad mood. Not to mention filling a form for every exam taken, as well as endless other forms which clutter the Student Affairs Office, our lives and this essay…

Classes start and I get busy. There is a lot to read, but I am not discouraged. My professor of Cultural Anthropology says that after this class our whole understanding of the world is going to change. Adam Smith and Marx are on the reading list, and many other economic theorists. Most of the readings are about political philosophy and economy; the topics include the division of labour in society, the beginnings of capitalism, the working class…I begin to learn about the principles behind our present world order, which I always found far from ideal and essentially unjust. I am getting even more acutely aware of the inequalities in the world, while studying at a rich university that has all the amenities and conveniences you could ever wish for. I enjoy my almost limitless food points and share them with friends who have a smaller food plan. We sometimes jokingly bless George Soros for providing our dinner. I love the Gothic towers of West Campus and the super-modern library (though I prefer the highest tower with large windows for a studying place over the brand new futuristic basement floor), but most of all I love the walk home: the big trees, the beautiful lawns and gardens and the pretty houses all of which lodge some or other important office for the university.

Often it all seems unreal. Organized to the point of irritation. You go to the library to scan a document, and of course you have the scanning directions on the Desktop. There is a bus that takes you to classes, or brings you back home, for free, even though it would take you no more than 15 minutes to walk there. And the wonderful Safe Rides! If you are stuck in the library late at night after the buses have stopped running, you call them and they come with their shiny white vans and give you a ride home, again free of charge. I felt so grateful each time they came to pick me up. Of course, students pay for most of these services through their tuition. But I have a scholarship that covers all my expenses, so sometimes I wonder: what am I doing here? In a positive way, of course. When I tell my European friends what my monthly living expenses in Macedonia are, not more than 200 dollars, they laugh. And yet, I find myself thinking: people, this is not reality!

But what is reality? At that time reality for me was my way of life in Macedonia, with less money, but not a bad life really. And yet my reality in Macedonia is different from the reality of other Macedonians, because I come from a lower middle-class family, if such classifications can be made. There are people who live better and people who live worse, economically speaking, as everywhere in the world. Is the reality of starving people in Ethiopia more real than the reality of beggars in Atlanta, Georgia, or even more real than the reality of the children of millionaires studying at Duke? I don’t know. The problem is that people get so embedded in their own realities that they forget other realities exist. And that the realities are so drastically different from each other.

It was a bit of a blow to see so many poor people in wealthy America. The disparities in a country which is well-to-do in general are even more drastic and striking. When I went to the Martin Luther King museum in Atlanta, I was moved by the greatness of the man and his idea, and then saddened to see so many beggars right outside of the museum trying to sell you something worthless, or just asking for change. All of them belonging to the same race for whose advancement he fought his battle. And then, one of my closest friends at Duke was Tim, whose mother was homeless. He was at Duke on a scholarship, still bruised by the memories of the times when he and his mom lived on food stamps, or of the many foster homes he had lived in. In the second semester his mom had found a place to stay so he went to visit her, and to meet up with his younger brother, who had just been adopted by a very religious Protestant family. He never told us in detail how he moved from being homeless to enrolling a university and then transferring to Duke. It seemed pretty amazing to me, but he didn’t want to talk about his past very much.

Sometimes, I felt bad for the pizza deliverer and the janitor lady because they had to serve me. The system was no good.



The real crisis came when I saw Slumdog Millionaire, the movie that had won the Oscar that year. The grey Sunday afternoon started ordinarily enough. We decided to leave the library to go to the movies, even though the pile of unfinished homework lay heavily on our consciences, as always. We jumped into Sam’s car and found our way to a small cinema in downtown Durham. From the beginning the movie generated a strong reaction within me. Strangely enough, it infuriated me. I was angry at the director for turning the plight of the slum children in India into an unrealistically romantic success story. I was angry at the Western audiences who might be disturbed by the scenes of the life in the slums in the beginning, but would go home comforted with the happy ending, singing the tunes of the Bollywood-style closing dance theme. “None of those children is ever going to become a millionaire, nor get near to the famous TV show, and that’s the real problem!” I screamed silently.


From Slumdog Millionaire
We shared our thoughts after the movie was over. Tim thought it was primarily a love story. The others agreed with me over the importance of the social themes. And yet, I was unable to convey all the intensity of what I felt to them. Of course they realized the gravity of the issue. It was the unfortunate downside of capitalism, I believe Vlaho thought. I had had many debates about capitalism with him, as I went through the process of unveiling its foundations and its crimes in the anthropology course. He, as a historian who was reading about the atrocities of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, reacted differently to my rant about equality for all. It was simply not possible, he said. Capitalism might not be the best imaginable system, but it is the best possible one, he triumphantly concluded in one occasion. Sam understood my concern better. He had gone through enough of poverty in his childhood and adolescence to never wish to go back to that state of affairs. His transferring to Duke was due only to his own ingeniousness and hard work, although he had never gone to high school and received formal education. Once there, he was not going to let pass the opportunity. He was going to play by the rules of the system in order to earn lots of money, and then he would outsmart it and change it, always helping the ones in need. So, he had a plan in place, and hence was not as terribly disturbed by the movie as I was.

Sam contributed a new perspective to my unsettled thoughts about Slumdog Millionaire. Sure, the story was sugarcoated in order to become a blockbuster, but that had enabled its message to reach wide audiences all around the world. If the movie provoked such reactions as the one I had, it was doing a pretty good job making people aware of how poorly and unfairly organized our world was. Still, I remained restless. One question after another emerged in my mind. I thought about all the professors teaching at Duke and the brilliant ideas they dedicated their lives to. It was all wonderful, but how could they remain calm and doing what they did while knowing that there were people in the world who might never have enough food and safe drinking water, let alone get educated and learn even a bit of all the knowledge being produced? What’s the point of building a career and achieving personal success when millions lived in such poor conditions, not because they had deserved it, but because the system didn’t let them do better?

On a more personal level, how could I dream of going to graduate school and spending my life studying literature, or cultures, or whatever, knowing what I know and not doing anything to change the situation? Wasn’t pursuing one’s chosen profession and thus not being full-time dedicated to helping others selfish?

Yes, people were often closed in their selfish little worlds, full of “important priorities,” I thought. Perhaps many started out idealistic, but then submitted to the pressures and demands of earning a living and providing for their families, and left behind good intentions about changing the world order. When I was sixteen, I read in a book which was very influential for my development that when choosing what to do, people should follow their strongest impulse and choose the activity that they are uniquely capable of, that few people could do better. The problem always is about discovering what one is uniquely capable of, and what one’s strongest impulse is. At the time of the “Slumdog Millionaire crisis” I debated between my two impulses: my undefined love of literature and studying in general, and my wish to help the poor and make the world more “just.” I finally reached a decision that the second impulse was the more important one, if not necessarily the stronger. I reasoned that in an ideal world, it would be okay to indulge in research work and lofty ideas, but the situation being as it was, it was paramount to take action.

But the future was still blurry and elusive. How exactly should I go about taking action? I started lamenting the fact that I had chosen to study English instead of economy. Had I studied economy, I would have had the necessary theoretical background to come up with a ground-breaking theory that would improve the system, make a real large-scale contribution. My ambitions were obviously far from modest. I promised myself to do research over the summer and find a postgraduate program to attend or some organization that I could become involved in. But then, maybe I should change my focus and think more locally? Concrete help given directly to people, or supporting organizations who work in those areas, can also make a difference.

One night on the bus, while I was going home from the library, the boy sitting next to me was talking to the driver (all the bus drivers were really nice, funny people). From the conversation I concluded that he was one of “the rich kids,” but had a rather different view of his future after graduation. He told the driver that he was planning to do “Teach for America” for some time and then probably work for a non-profit. “Teach for America” is a state program which encourages young people to teach in public schools with small budgets and big problems. At the goodbye dinner that we, Visiting Internationals, had with our advisor, the Dean of the Study Abroad Office, she expressed consternation at the fact that apparently a high margin of the university’s graduates got a job with “Teach for America” after finishing college, instead of going into some more remunerative field. Her point of view was that since their parents had made such a huge investment in having them study at Duke, the least they could do is try to earn a lot of money. Of course, I didn’t think much of her point of view, and was happy that the university managed to make some of the students aware of the plight of the less fortunate. There were many such examples. Bryan, for example, was going to spend the summer helping in a hospital in Kenya. So there were probably ways and ways to be useful for others, and yet do what you like best.

I need not say that all those thoughts did not come to any final conclusion, nor did I make a specific plan. As spring arrived, the intensity of my dilemmas started to fade and I was enchanted by the beautiful Duke surroundings. In spite of all the reading I had to do, I found time to enjoy friends and even find new ones. The America I had been critical towards finally won me over. At least that part of America that was the bubble I was living in…not real, or how real…I don’t know.

One year since my return from “the land of opportunities and contradictions,” I am no closer to finding my personal way to deal with the problem of poverty nor do I have a much clearer picture of what I want to become in life. However, it seems more and more probable that I am not going to go the strictly altruistic way and fulfill my resolutions made at Duke. It was somehow easier to have a wider perspective and to be more aware of world issues while in the US…Macedonia is still too enclosed in its own “reality,” and I lack insight and determination to undertake a great reforming endeavour. But I guess helping others is not actually as complicated as I present it to be. Small acts count and whatever one’s primary occupation is, it is important to sustain a personal integrity and never get too carried away and forget about the parallel realities of people who are doing their best to survive.



We are all living in one world, and a world in which chance is a powerful force. The place and conditions you were born in, and all the opportunities you have had are not necessarily your personal merit. But the faults of the system and all the aspects that could be improved are your responsibility.

Don’t forsake it (note to myself).
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Daniela Atanasova is a fourth-year student of English language and literature at Ss Cyril and Methodius university in Skopje, Macedonia.

"Epiphany and Not Following Through (Yet?)" is copyright 2010 by Daniela Atanasova and may not be republished or reposted without permission of the author.
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The Right Career (by Zorica Petkoska)

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“Six years for a bloody bachelor’s degree! Two times in the hospital because of a ruptured eye capillary! All those damn all-nighters! And for what!!!” Bobbie was swearing at full speed in his dressing-room. Swearing violently, yet barely audibly.




“All that chemistry, all that physics…for what?”

“The universe is laughing behind your back.” That’s the saying he got with his coffee this morning. The café is offering “daily sarcasm” now instead of the good old perfectly boring fortune cookie.




“We’re going live in five minutes, Bobbie!” A voice reminded him.

“I’m coming!” He yelled out.

Lights. Camera. Action. He got used to this.

“Hello, my dear viewers. For today’s experiment you will need the following ingredients…”

He graduated in chemistry as his major and physics as his minor, yet he couldn’t find a job in this in this topsy-turvy society, where trained musicians moonlighted as taxi drivers and uneducated people owned large businesses. Instead he was on television, hating it all, while some kid somewhere gets drunk to death for not fulfilling his dream to work in the media. It’s a twisted little world and a twisted little story.

“…then, you add some sodium chloride, you decide the quantity according to your taste…”

He hated this circus. He should have accepted that job in the supermarket, it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as this one.

“…. One litre of H2O is poured in the mixture and you let it simmer for fifteen minutes…”

Yet, his knowledge of chemistry is a precious possession that no one can take away from him.

Just you wait, and you will all see.

The whole twisted world is wrong.

“…the state of aggregation should neither be solid, nor gas. You should get a liquid mixture through a process of hydrating some solid elements and letting some gasses expire in the liquidizing process…”

I am so sick of this.

“…you decorate with some parsley at the end and the special Easter stew is ready!”

He hated that an educated scientist like him should end up in a ridiculous cooking show. He must rely on his knowledge once again. He pulled out a syringe.

“And, at the end, ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the most beautiful chemicals – THALLIUM. Its magical properties are spreading throughout one’s body and….well, you’ll see,” he added casually.

The next moment he injected the main dish with it.




“This is an excellent poison,” he continued, “as it cannot be seen with a naked eye, and when tasted, one dies a slow, lingering death.”

The whole TV studio fell silent.

“And, of course, I am joking, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “You know how I like to add a bit of a chemistry in life, because where’s chemistry, there’s love.”

“This syringe contains hot salty water. It is an excellent trick in order to make the meat equally salty in the inside as on the outside,” he explained.

The crew could be heard breathing again. Anything was possible with Bobbie.

“Please, fetch today’s meal to the director of our station. I promised him a decent holiday meal,” said Bobbie to an assistant, a young man.

“Of course, sir.”

And Bobbie went home pleased, singing all the way: “Thallium, I love you, you are real, you are true.”

And the accompaniment to it were the sirens from the ambulance rushing towards Channel 6 Studios.

Bobbie knew they were rushing in vain. He knew for certain that the director would suffer a slow and agonizing death. Chemistry confirmed that.

And where’s chemistry, there’s magic.




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Zorica Petkoska (also known as Zoria) is a graduate student of English language, specialising in translation at the Department of English language and literature, Faculty of Philology at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. She is also teaching translation there as an assistant to a junior professor. She has been writing poetry since a very early age and published one poetry book in 1999 (The Dream’s Stars and Sparks). She has been writing poetry, prose and drama up to this day, and also engaged herself in amateur drama writing, staging, directing and acting. She writes both in English and in Macedonian.

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“The Right Career” is copyright 2010, by Zorica Petkoska. All rights are reserved. This story may not be reprinted or reposted without permission from the author.

The images and artwork are copyright 2010, by Jennifer Semple Siegel and may not be reprinted or reposted without permission.
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Taken from the Notes of a Prisoner (Dragan Georgievski)

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…As I started up in this world, I was a menace, a fiend of man and woman, and I became someone else. I was born, and I ceased to become that same fiend I always knew when I looked in the small pond in front of our house. The impeccable pond, in front of our house, grew each and every day for as long as I can remember. It was situated near a village, not far away from Athens where my parents, my two sisters and I resided for a long, long time.



In the beginning, I used to love looking at that wonderful reflection every day, when I started off at school. My Greek primer in hand and my dedication to the study of Homer and Horace, painted my face in that pond, the pond that kept growing as I grew.



And then, I realised, I had become someone else. One day a completely different face was looking back from that small pond and it kept smiling back at me! I could never smile like that! I was never able to do anything, except be serious about my studies and never leave home unless it was for school or the local library. I threw a stone inside that pond and it started to make so many circles, that my analytical brain started counting them one at a time, never assuming that I was counting how many times my eyes multiplied within those circles.



I had become a man, but not just any man, I dedicated myself to the study of thunder and rain and everything that caused trouble to that little pond. But, there was something else beside my dedication to this study. In fact, I had tasted something that I had never tasted before. And it wasn’t the taste that you get when you bite a beetle which has, by accident, fallen into your mouth. I felt my own blood, human blood. Then the person looking back at me in the pond was different. The smile of that person grew larger, and suddenly the pond grew larger as well. Its appetite grew in a way. But what grew in me was a calling to serve that pond. Once it even turned into a swan. He called to me, gave me instructions and disappeared. I was ready and I did what I had to do!



Now that I recall all this, so as to present you with the facts: I have become someone else. I am not allowed my freedom to visit that pond, because I am put behind a wire. I am looking at a mirror instead of a pond, watching television instead of reading Horace and listening to the news forecast instead of studying whether the weather will lighten up, so that my jail-mate will stop nagging me about my know-it-all brain!



But a very important thing hasn’t changed, though. I have remained in service to that pond. I have managed to get my cell just opposite my master’s house, and now I can finally show you my perspective! I have taken a couple of pictures to make it easier for you…Even though, it became very clear to me at first that I have become my master’s servant, the world managed to disturb that picture by saying that I was only throwing stones into a pond that made circles inside my head. But my master instructed me differently. I was able to change that picture into something else – my own image I have kept inside my head.



Dearest reader, I provide you with those same images now, and I leave your honourable mind to bring a suitable answer to the question you asked me before. We all serve different masters, enlightened one, but I chose to serve the first and the biggest one of them all! He sits on the top of everything, hides behind every corner, goes into the soul and the mind and governs....oh how, he governs...



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Dragan Georgievski (b. 1983 – Skopje, Macedonia) is currently a Senior Undergraduate student of English and Czech Language and Literature at the ‘Ss Cyril and Methodius’ University in Skopje. He has translated works from English and Czech into Macedonian and Aromanian and vice-versa. His latest work was the translation of three plays by George Bernard Shaw (Androcles and the Lion, Overruled and Pygmalion) into Macedonian and is currently working on translating Macedonian literature into English.

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“Taken from the Notes of a Prisoner” is copyright 2010, by Dragan Georgievski. All rights are reserved. This story may not be reprinted or reposted without permission from the author.

The images are copyright 2010, by Jennifer Semple Siegel.
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