#opening

 

Museum item: Milan Milovanović, Blue door, 1917.

Digital item: Unopened Gift from 2016

Donor of Digital item: Ivan Stančić *

Note from Donor:

I didn’t even know we were together. All I knew was that whenever we’d meet up, it lasted. We talked while we walked, we didn’t know how to stop walking.

One day, apparently unplanned, her friend wanted to join us. We sat down, her on one side, me on the other, I, as if I was defending myself, she, as if playing the prosecution. She asked a series of highly informative questions, everything was philosophical, “what would you do if?” and “if you did, do you think that would be acceptable?”… I smiled and giggled 300 miles an hour. I guess we passed the test because in the end we got gifts from her: one each for our three-month anniversary. I didn’t even realize it had been that long. Shamed for being so unaware, we accepted the gifts. The gifts were scented; I assumed they were incense sticks.

I was supposed to move out of my room into an apartment that smelled like old stale timber, so I didn’t open it, I wanted to wait until I moved in, so ‘our’ place would smell nice.

Of course, after receiving those presents, we weren’t together. I guess we wanted to be modern, ‘New Age’… We slept together as if we were in a relationship, talked every night like we were in a relationship, went to the sea side like a couple. The guy she started seeing on the side asked how come we were not together. I guess it was clear to both of us that once we were actually committed we would split. New Age cowards. A few months after that, I moved into the new place. She didn’t move in with me because she fell in love with some guy. There were so many guys… I’d stopped sleeping long before from counting all of them. It was inevitable that one of them would take her away.

Some anniversary gifts last longer than the relationship they came from. It made no sense to open it, what am I to do alone in an apartment, that smelled like us? Given it was a gift, it didn’t make sense to throw it away either. Yet wherever I buried it, it’s smell permeated, reminding me of us. The gift ended up unopened, in one of those boxes that you place in a corner where the dust slowly piles overtime, unperturbed. Along with an old cupboard, it was moved to the basement.

___

For more stories from the Stančić family scan the following museum items: