Wild horses

My Facebook friend posted this Stones song and it made me very happy, but it also reminded me of an important event from my youth.

Many said that "the army will make me wiser". She didn't psych me out even though I was wearing my SMB uniform when my psyching happened.

I entered the army with the appropriate enthusiasm of a young artist. I didn't find isolation, physical drill and other shenanigans difficult. Only two things bothered me - the impossibility of showering every day and the stupidity of my superiors. But a person gets used to everything, especially when he has a high opinion of himself.

The training has passed, most of them have gone to the command post, the barracks are almost empty. I made friends with the guys who worked in the bathroom, shower whenever you want. I started writing, what a miracle. When…

(The "when" and "but" always come, just when it's the most beautiful.)

I am called by the deputy commander of the barracks, who generously gave me his typewriter, and coldly says: "You have to do something for me!"

"Of course, comrade lieutenant colonel", I am happy to be able to repay him for all the favors he has done to me (He gave me an office and the keys to the garrison library, a permanent permit to go out into the city, and that only because of a few shows and a picture with which I decorated the wall in the military club hall).

He says: "Look, they're asking me for 20 soldiers who are members of the party and which I don't have. You're not a member of the party, but you're a smart and normal person, it's some kind of confidential task in Bjelašnica. If someone asks you about the party, you can handle it. No one will check you because I'm sending you."

"When does it move?", I ask excitedly, although the mention of one of the harshest mountains above Sarajevo - I climbed it twice and came down twice. You don't know what's worse. In fact, it's worse when you go down - my right knee still bears witness to this day.

In Bjelašnica everything is bustling with the army - engineering and we with them, digging trenches for some cable between the TV transmitter and the military connection facility. A trench one meter deep, half a meter wide and thirty meters long per man. Soil composition category V: 15% earth, the rest stone. You beat with a pickaxe all day, you come across a rock, miners come, mine the rock and bury everything you dug up, and start over. From 6 to 6, "confidential task". I worked for three days and decided to sunbathe a little. A major came by, yelling: "I'll put you in jail!" I said: "Comrade major, coal is loaded in the prison from 8 to 2. Then you take a bath and lie in prison like a man. You would put me in a lot of debt if you arrested me." He stormed off in a rage, and the day's order awaited me in the camp: fire from 2 to 6, the worst shift - while the others are sleeping soundly, you are awake.

Sunrise on a wild, untamed mountain is a unique event. Strands of fog are drawn between the ruins, life somehow takes place in a shambles. Beautiful, beautiful, and then…

...first I heard a thud, I thought it was a hallucination, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Below me, on a pass, a horse's head appeared out of the mist, then another, another, and then many more. A herd of wild horses galloped across Bjelasnica. I don't know how long it lasted. It was as if the earth stopped and my heart with it. When they ran away, it was as if someone said to me in a quiet calm voice: "You will never be able to create this kind of beauty, emotion, energy. You will not be able to describe well what you experienced."

As dirty, unshaven and tortured, tears began to fall like rain. I knew for sure: I had met God's face and gained forever the true measure of myself.

I think I started to age from that moment on.