Skopje Rhymes with Utopia (seriously)

I like to read books set in the locations of my travels as i move. It’s easier to walk the streets of a city as a foreigner by co-opting a bit of fictional nostalgia from the characters I follow. But Maori’s got me hooked on audio books and my phone is full of science fiction and old favorites. So it’s Speaker For The Dead I listen to (the second book in the Ender’s Game series). It’s fun to stomp around this new city with a narrative playing in my ears. It doesn’t hurt that the story follows space travelers exploring new planets. It may not be about Eastern Europe, but it is about travel. Reading has always set standards for me for how I perceive the world around me. I think we all turn our daily lives into little plots. An act here, a climax there. We’re usually the hero, but not always the victor. The better the books I read, the better the plays I can cast myself in, I think.

Walking around Skopje, it’s hard not to think of Chuck Palniuk’s “Rant”. It’s full of hillbillies and time travel, so what’s not to love? One bit I often think of is his painting of America as a land filled with genetic patterns. In small towns dotting the country side, a certain percentage of children are born beautiful. Those lucky few are set apart from the rest of us, and held in the highest esteem from the earliest age. They’re doted on, and more than, and before the rest of us. So much, and so soon that they’re the first to be seduced, and the first to find love. This love binds them to their small towns and weighs them down as it knocks them up. So while the rest of us run off to liberal arts colleges across the country, they’re left home raising their beautiful babies who will grow into beautiful children destined to repeat the pattern. It’s like Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”, but everyone’s hot too.

This story stays close to mind as I wander the city center. Not everyone here is beautiful. Not a majority. But those striking few who part the crowds do so holding the hands of their young children; an army of supermodels pushing strollers. There’s such a gap between these nymph-mothers and the rest of us… it feels like the beautiful future is steamrolling over me.

Tomorrow I leave for Veles where I’ll begin my Habitat project. I will be happy for the change in scenery and the added company. Skopje has been fun and kept me busy, but there’s only so much I can do here. Today I took a taxi to a hot spring spa set into the foothills. I thought it would be an open air spa, but all the mineral waters are piped into a western-style building and diverted into a few private baths. After my soak and massage, I hiked up into the hills and across a narrow bridge spanning the river. At the top was an open fountain bubbling up with fresh mineral water. I took just a sip, but couldn’t stomach the heavy water. A mix of carbonation and copper, it left an aftertaste of blood in my mouth.

I really wanted to swim outside, but it sounded like the one outdoor pool was closed. This is the time of year when it would be most in demand, but it seems like a lot of the public attractions are closed for repair or something. My first day here I tried to get to the Zoo, but found it’s actually a Natural History Museum. Or maybe they’re connected. The implications of that suggest a low survival rate for the Zoo’s collection, but a nice growth rate for the Museum’s… dark… When I arrived, the door was open, but the lights were off. I wandered through the lobby before being shooed away by a guard. He pointed to a cyrillic sign alerting me to its closure.

The same thing happened at a broken down amusement park where I was told I needed permission to take a photograph of the miniature train.

At the Museum of Modern Art I walked swiftly past some cleaning people sitting down to lunch and into one of the galleries. The lights were on, but I was the only patron, so I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be there. The main exhibit was a series of a hundred photographs taken around Macedonia and India. They were snapshots mostly. I wasn’t sure what to make of them, but there seems to be a connection with India here. There’s a lot of merchandise featuring Mother Teresa.

The rear of the museum opens up into a huge space with many tiers of walkways and vast walls of windows. It reminded me of Chicago’s new Modern Wing if it had been built thirty years ago and then left to rot. The works seem local with a strong arts and crafts influence. A long flat sculpture is made up of dozens of rows of dozens of number wheels from dozens of analog alarm clocks. The ones where the wheels spin 1/10th a rotation to change each digit of time ticking by. The wheels are all similar size but with different fonts. It’s a nice effect. Another is made up of newspapers folded into long and thin strips of paper and then coiled tight into wide spirals that fit together into a hypnotic panel. It’s all very clever and approachable. I could see these sold at popup shops across manhattan.

So today I had to settle for an indoor swim at “The Olympic Pool”. It’s 200 denars to enter (about $4), but you can stay all day. I’m given a ticket that I trade for a canvas hangared bag that I put my clothes in and trade for a bracelet charmed with a number. I walk through a shallow trough of bleachy water before I enter to pool arena. I haven’t seen an olympic sized pool in a long time and it’s kind of awesome. It’s three meters deep and takes my breath away to swim one lap (though with my bum arm, that’s not saying much). It’s me and about a hundred ten year olds, but the place still feels empty. They’re completely occupied by running from the edge of the pool and leaping in at funny angles with funny faces to the delight of their friends. I float for a while, then walk upstairs and outside to lay under the sun.

I haven’t done too much here, but I’ve done it at my own pace and without a set agenda. If I stayed any longer, I’d get back to work on some of my projects. It’d be cheaper and more productive working here than in New York, but I’d miss my friends and collaborators. Since leaving Los Angeles, I’ve been shrinking my footprint and pulling up my physical roots. It’s left me very agile. It’s people who will pull me back when I return, and I think that’s the way it should be