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Sirenje srca, Expansion of the Heart, Expansion del corazón
THE FIRST STORY
My mother used to bake bread. White bread. It smelled like home. My mother is an excellent housewife, but I couldn't learn much from her. The first time I baked bread was on New Year's, 1995 on the island of Sholta. It was so cold that we couldn't leave the house, so I tried to re-create an "instant home". Since then I haven't baked bread. But Masha, my friend and bread-making teacher has done so. She was doing it and I believe still bakes beautiful breads. On Sholta, she put violet rosemary flowers into the bread mass. Masha baked dark, integral breads from all kinds of flours and they smelled like ancient homes. So, I didn't bake bread since 1995, until we came to Mexico, five years later. I started to make bread in the winter of 1999/2000. I started to bake it because:
A/ I needed the smell of home with Eric and Luka
B/ we didn't have money
C/ I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it
D/ It helped me "immigrate"
The first breads weren't very successful. I used Royal. After some time, I succeeded in finding yeast, and my bread got better and better. The bread I baked in Chiconcuac for Easter was the best until then, because of the difference in altitude. They named it Pan Croata. Then aunt Rosalina wanted to learn how to make my bread. I told her everything, how much and how, but it didn't work (proportions, always proportions ...). But, soon after, when we went to her house, Rosalina and I made bread together. Two wonderful loaves of bread. She learned. I'm happy because of bread, its smell, and because of my family. Bread has warmth when I wrap it in a piece of cloth. It feels alive. I feel happy for Eric and Luka when they eat it. Every time I bake it, I remember my mother and Masha. When I'm putting it into the oven, I often think of Eric's mother Mimi who I never met. This oven was hers. Rosalina perhaps remembers me ... .
THE SECOND STORY (also true)
I come from a country in constant transition, an interzone, shaken Balkan territory, a socialist past, Mediterranean temperament, static slavic culture. I have been importing myself for a long time. Immigrating. And I still do. I came in pieces. Some parts came later. I reconstructed myself like a cyborg. And I changed, composed in different ways. Priorities have changed: mother, woman, housewife, storyteller ... . It was always clear to me that art is immediate experience, I never divided it from life, now less than ever. I distrust artists whose work takes priority over their lifes or their children. So, I'm very proud of this term, "the art of a housewife", because my favourite work origins are in my washing the dishes or ironing. Bread-making helped me. Because of its smell. It's part of the horizontal female history that I inherited here in Mexico. Because of the measuring of time. Besides, by baking bread I prove that I'm not incapable in the kitchen, which was a successfully projected image from my father, mother and my ex-husband, that I had accepted at the end. I'm still asking myself: did I have to go so far away from my mother to learn to bake bread?
And so, bread became a very strong connection to her. To knead bread is a very intimate act. There is a very intimate space between the bread and the being who kneads it. It's a relationship in which a lot of the being can be transferred into bread.
Bread takes different forms and cuts. I put scars, stigmata on its body to bake it better. There is something very alive in that mass, very corporeal. Sometimes I cut it and cry, from my own pain, for sure. I used to cry often, perhaps because I miss the sea. And I learned that it is easier to forgive when kneading a bread, forgiveness makes the mass grow better. The growing and baking of the mass change its shape. It expands, deforms. And I noticed that the shape of the heart changes more than other simple bread shapes. This is very close to me, because my heart has been deformed pretty much and has grown. It is deformed by loss and abandonment, but it's growing.
Neli Ruzic
Mexico City, May 2002
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