„Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder“ sounds a bit romantic nowdays eventhough it is an evergreen sentence created by Plato himself.
When I think about it I can not resist to question it, as we are living in a difficult times and a real beauty is unknown to many, how can than beauty be in the eyes of the beholder?Zagreb was affected by an earthquake two years ago, how can I see a beauty in it? How could Plato be so wrong? Questions rushed trough my mind.
The eartquake has been an intense experience, how did the people of the past react to such events?
Than an idea came to my mind, people of the past were telling it as a story.
That is why fairytales, fables and myths exists although without tv and internet stories were much more imoprtant and alive. Intense feelings were making them persuasive. So I tried to imagine how would one Zagreb´s White Crow describe an earthquake. Lets do it together!
„Snow was faling day before an eartquake and Ana usually had a strong urge to go out on such weather, it was iresistably inviting and she went out.
Walking towards The Main Bus Station as if she will travel outside Zagreb, though actualy she wanted to look at Sljeme from that location.
Many times she heared her Mom saying that it is the easiest way to see The Sleeping Bear.For them The Sleeping Bear was alive creature.
It was laying there in a white dress made from snow, Zagreb´s Mountain called The Bear´s Mountain, not too high to be a fearful mountain but not to small to be called a hill. Ana and her Mom called her a Sleeping Bear as she was sleeping her hundred years long dream.
Even when she was a small girl Ana´s Mom started telling her things about The Sleeping one. When she was awake the Sleeping Bear was crossing miles to see her relatives in Gorski Kotar, Velebit and once, one autumn, together with Rhino, she even a swam inside the Adriatic sea when they were spending a winter at island Cres, in a deep oak wood called Tramuntana. She lived her life as a free and a happy bear.
Ana is a vet working at Zagreb Zoo with a special bond to a Bear´s family out there, she knew them all by their character and a name, remembering even bears rescued at a Croatian Bears shelter called Kuterevo near Plitvice lakes.
Our people of the past usualla gave a following names to the bears: Brudo and Mendo but lately people started giving them a regular Croatian names such as:
Matija, Pavo and Ljubo.
Our Sleeping Bear´s name is actualy: Tonka.
Tonka was living her regular life as all bears do until her young cub called Chick didn´fell into an old well playfully investigating surroundings. He managed to grab the rope and sit into a bucket but he ended up at the bottom of a 20 meters deep well.
Tonka with her sharpened hearing heard the cry of her small cub.
She was spending hours and days at the well throwing him blueberries and honey balls, and then in one moment doctor Dzivo was passing buy.
She knew him and was very excited to see him while he was calling help from The Hunter´s society.
Tonka could not move her heavier legs as she stood there for many days.
To move her away from the well the hunters were shooting her with sedative powder, but nothing could move her away from that well.
Desperate hunters shot her with such a strong dose of sleeping powder so she colapsed as a rock at once.
Since than she is sleeping in her dream.
Ana was vigilantly watching her sleep and that day enjoying the georgeous view seemed ordinary and as usual.
Next day in the early morning Tonka was moving convulsive in her dream about the Chick.
Zagreb´s people were hit by eartquake early that morning, throwing them out on the streets, looking towards the Bears Mountain with an anguish in their hearts, but Ana was calming the Sleeping Bear with a lullaby:
Heep, Heep HaYa
beneath the mountain I sleep
The Chick is in my arms
The cub is in my arms.
p.s. White Crow ia a term used for an unusual Zagreb´s kids who have a very special mindset named as a White Crows by a Croatian author for children „Mladen Kušec“.
