Jože Suhadolnik: Trbovlje

EX TO THE POWER OF EX, THIRDLY

 

Trbovlje formerly did not exist, emerging not until long afterwards, forests having thinned, meadows dried up, soil having been washed away into streams, Trbovlje hatching from underground, doused in dragon blood.

 

And this is when the second formerly something started. Spanning not more than an inch at first, then a patch, the town ultimately spread its tendrils, covering, overgrowing the entire space between the Sava river and the foot of the Mrzlica hill. Sooty and muddy as described by Ivan Cankar through the eyes of pale skinned lasses, rotten and proud as Peter Mlakar recognised it in his passionate speeches on Kipe and on top of the Kum hill, the Trbovlje of Ana Dimnik in Vladimir Levstik’s tale and in Roman Kukovič’s texts, the Trbovlje of Vlado Klemenčič, repeated a thousand times and centupled in the media and films of Benjamin Kreže. The Trbovlje of ten generations and ten immigrant inflows. Trbovlje through the images of painters Milan Rijavec, all three Knez artists, Maks Kavčič and Leopold Hočevar. Trbovlje, merged with decrees of immigrated teachers, judges, engineers, doctors. The city of Avgust Šuligoj Slavček and the Workers Brass Band. Trbovlje, which you have to move far away from in order to like going back; the strippers of Jerca Černe, models of Anka Kužnik and Sabina Remar; the Trbovlje of Uroš Zupan, golden and carefree, the Trbovlje of the Svoboda theatre, of the steps and vertical spins of dancer Iztok Kovač, the sharp tongue of actor Tanja Ribič, the sun and revolution of sculptor Stojan Batič, sculptor Zdenko Kalin’s miners, sculptor Zoran Poznič’s Prometheus, the enthusiasm of architects Marko Zupančič and Oton Gaspari, and painter Marij Pregelj… Where the first 1^st May celebrations took place, as well as the first two strikes and the ceremony to mark the results of the independence referendum with Laibach on 26^th December 1990. This second formerly something is lapsing into now, its reflections only to be glimpsed in dirty windows of abandoned factories, little shops, empty flats; making effort like the last dandelion of the season to break through the cracks in the asphalt, sprouting like a birch tree through the roof of Villa Štih and the acacia in Fajdig’s room, immigrant plants, pioneering settlers of the descendants. In conversations with people, who remember, in homes stretching between Loka, Hrastnik, Trbovlje, Izlake, Prebold… People, Morlocks and Dementors, seven Perkmandeljc mine dwarfs. And even more Snow Whites. Trbovlje left a mark on Jože Suhadolnik, too. And people even more so: Tomaž, Zupi, Jože, Jaro, Sašo, Martin, Redžo, Refik, Tone, Stane, Remzek, Franc… and so on and so on in the dark of the underground, in Trbovlje. Jože showed us the radiance of the dark and its beauty. The past becoming past perfect, the present a photograph of what has passed. New images await Jože and all Jožes. Rocks returning into pits, soil onto tailings. The third formerly something is piercing through into the light, growing. On these rocks, on this soil, under the Bukova gora hill, in Lakonca, above the industrial road, along Drajer and in Gabrsko, in Vode and Trekitaža, in Knezdol and Retje, with Jure, with Maša, with Uroš, Sašo, Alberto, Barbora, Grant, Carsten, new teachers, scientists, artists, the new wave of immigrants, with new strength. And then, on Plesko, a fourth something will grow: the New Trbovlje and the New Hrastnik, a city in the sun, a city just beneath the sky. This is how it goes, and Jože knew it immediately. And both his eyes and that third one wait for new faces, a new landscape, a new time.

 

P.S.:

Trbovlje is not merely hills and a valley, not just the Kum’s blind beetle and little ducks in the mouth of the Srebotnica, not crows on Monte Kukuli and a scops owl on Klečka, not acacias and trees of heaven, not the beeches of Kum and bear garlic in Lontovž; Trbovlje is a place we use the third-person respectful with. It is the people who make Trbovlje: the ones who are here, the ones who have yet to come here, and the ones who are long gone. It is the people.

 

Aleš Leko Gulič from Trbovlje