Toast for ancestors

Even being sedentary one cannot stop traveling I guess. Yes, I was on one spot, next to the sea. I would read books and practice poi and then have some future building activities – trying to buy a piece of land in order to set up a garden in the epicurean sense.

One can survive there before and after the season. I was before. Piles of plastic bottles, the unimaginable green around and quietness, interrupted only by at the sudden busy Georgians who seemed to grab histerically all their tools and try to repair that has not been repaired since ages. But that’s fine with me as long as the bars, playing “chornye glaza” – the music type I cannot bring over my heart, were not opened yet.

I did not move and people came here with their stories.

There was this Russian familiy around. While eating at the only opened inn I told them from the other table, that they were as smart as me to come before the season would start. Their child, Petia, had a summer cap that looked like a white boat, like from the old times. His face was incredibly Russian. Like from the old pictures in black and white. But here they were. In colour.

It took some time for us to strike the conversation. Both, me and them rather shy animals. Another, when we already would dine all at the same table, Ilja said: I am actually a Georgian. It sounded stupid. Trying to what? To complimet the culture this way, or what? No, my grandgrandfather was Jugashvili. They called him Stalin.

In Georgian tradition there is a toast that one drinks for the ancestors. One spils some of the drink to the ground.

Let us drink to our ancestors: your grandgrandfather, and my grandfather, who was forced to write a poem for your grandgrandfather.

We did not talk about politics, the future or the past. We drank toast for the houses, boats and the black sea.

On the last day, when they had to leave, I ran around trying to find them. I wanted to give them a small childish badge with moomintroll, we were talking so much about.

I found them finally. Ilja and Olia smiled. Like in one of those books of Tove Jansson they started digging in their bags, unpacking and causing a chaos just before having to leave.

They pulled out a small black bag. They said, you might need the bag more than a badge, don’t you?

There were moomintroll on it.

http://www.io.com/~fazia/Moomin.html

I waved them good bye like a grandma from the old animation film about the lion Bonifacius. I will miss you, I waved to them.