A fine, fine day...
is a day when at dark 6 a.m. my mother wakes me up with a touch as gentle as if she were afraid of me. Then we go to the hospital, the two of us against the cold September, the mess in the registration, the whole world. And after the examination (both nurses more than kind to me) we do the shopping in the mall and on a wooden branch we drink yoghurts, which I find extremely amusing.
It's a day when the doctor, too handsome for me to be capable of holding bag in my hand, tells me my kidney is more than all right.
And then in my room the home-made lemon balm tea.
My translation of an interview on a pro-Tibetan website; I'm of use for someone, something.
And so on.
And yesterday – more than gorgeous "Mamma Mia!". Is it possible that I ever disliked Maryl Streep? Got to change my last name.
2008/09/25
2008/09/22
lost lost lost
I must confess I'm getting sick of the diversity of this world, of the forms in which it manifests itself. I don't like changes and the world spins around, neither to the right, nor to the left, and when you fish something out blindfold, it'll have totally different shape to what you've known, to what you've got used to and felt safe with – like the bouquet of the spices your mother used or the temperatures and the air humidity recorded by your body when you were a child. Now you open your eyes in the morning and – how shitty – everything's brand new, fresh, not yet completed, still aching a bit, but it is not about one new life, but a thousand of them, new formal brats to be tamed, brought under control – otherwise their mere number will crush you. The billion of dialects within just one language, a thousand of patterns and countless norms, each of which being for someone up there the only one acceptable. I'm sick – yes – because within one short day the light changes incessantly and after every change of set one has to adjust themselves, subtly change their position in relation to the lenses and hundreds of other elements of the constellation, but beware, you mustn't lose yourself, after each half-turn you've got to know how to bring out your personal profile to the light, either the daylight or the electric one. Flexible, but within your form.
And in the same time you know you don't mean much here and actually it's as if you weren't here at all.
That's why I enjoy sleeping so much. It's when the sensual truth agrees with the objective one – I don't exist both here and there, the right side equals the left, the equation's true. There's no you, there's no form. And look, even the world happens more peacefully then. Decently.
And in the same time you know you don't mean much here and actually it's as if you weren't here at all.
That's why I enjoy sleeping so much. It's when the sensual truth agrees with the objective one – I don't exist both here and there, the right side equals the left, the equation's true. There's no you, there's no form. And look, even the world happens more peacefully then. Decently.
2008/09/19
2008/09/18
cold, Lauren Graham, obsession.
My thoughts are lined with the cold season. I see foggy streets on a winter morning, the concrete slightly glistening of frost, the vapor following a mug of coffee. Every tiniest piece of warmth covered in gloves, bright rooms with closed door and windows, and within the bodies, shrunk and hurried. And the dark green of the conifers.
I'm slowly getting sick of excess of the Gilmore Girls, but I keep watching. And now I know: Lauren Graham. It's all because of her.
I'm slowly getting sick of excess of the Gilmore Girls, but I keep watching. And now I know: Lauren Graham. It's all because of her.
2008/09/17
hometown
Taking advantage of my favorite time of year, I went for a short walk through the street of Radom today. The temperature was low enough for me to hide under my jacket and shawl, but it still resembled the conditions of vegetation. The dusks are more and more grey now, but the trees still green; the black birds before the evening make circles over the town; the gloves bought in a small shop, dug out from among summer hats. The town seems apologetic, old buildings with the bales of fabrics or children's footwear now somehow smaller, so that one involuntarily bows one's head when getting inside. Some traces of former greatness: emerald door with elliptical window panes leads to empty, abandoned yard that died while still living. From behind a window so low that one could kneel down on the sill, appears a faded display of old purses and belts – here a peltmonger used to work. Tiny single stories packed in contorted houses, their side walls stuck with the neighbor's.
These pictures overlap together with my childhood memories, clear as photographs, seen from the point of view of a small girl, whom it all doesn't concern yet, nonetheless she feels some kind of fear of these streets. Tall mother in red pumps, father's grey coat – my micro world.
The frames skip and here I am, without a flat in Radom, one step before my second year in Warsaw; Miss Marta with a purse and a calendar full of worries.
And so on.
These pictures overlap together with my childhood memories, clear as photographs, seen from the point of view of a small girl, whom it all doesn't concern yet, nonetheless she feels some kind of fear of these streets. Tall mother in red pumps, father's grey coat – my micro world.
The frames skip and here I am, without a flat in Radom, one step before my second year in Warsaw; Miss Marta with a purse and a calendar full of worries.
And so on.
2008/09/14
Scream
Here's the follow-up of the Internet inspirations.
In today's update of the PostSecret I came across Munch's "Scream" with the sentence "I'm afraid there's nothing worth making art about anymore" written on it.
At first I was surprised by he mere fact that anybody should consider a conclusion like this one as their secret – that they should put their emotions on issue like that, feelings strong enough to choose it to be their representative, which would fight hundreds of other secrets on their way to Frank Warren, just like, say, the sperm cells squeezing themselves to get to the ovum. To me it proves that the PostSecret project is one of the greatest artistic ventures, which concentrates the motives from within the humanities.
But what surprised me even more was the wording of the secret; the person doesn't fear that all artistic forms are already worn-out, all words – already written down, important pieces of music – composed, the most beautiful frames – captured. Neither they anticipate the art or culture themselves are getting worn-out and soon won't find any place for them in this world, the fragmentary world feeding on icons and some few minutes films. For the first time in my life I came across such a sinister prophecy saying that this world isn't an inspiration any more. That it doesn't provide us with food for thought and doesn't stimulate the emotional realm nor does it preserve any elements decent enough to give the starting point for the artists, which was probably the main point of the secret's author.
It's a fact that for hundreds of years (always meaning the 20. century) the world has been said to be tumbling down on an inclined plain. The big mama named Civilization allegedly makes the moral values go bad and the short-lived technological crap has changed our every day into cheap duplicated creation devoid even of good entertainment. All that hes already been said millions of times before. This and the thing about the World War II, the complete decay of human, and then of the great Idea in the communism's incarnation. Plus the climate is going mad and Russia and China fill my head with fatalistic nightmares.
But I would never think that among it all there are no glimmers worth being thought over, ones that could find their continuation in art.
Which has noting to do with optimism.
Some time ago in his Different Point of View program Grzegorz Miecugow would every so often ask his guests, mainly artists, to try and compare the conditions of artistic work within the Polish People's Republic and today, in the so-called free Poland. He asked the question why the Polish culture, the high one, the mass one, was so poor when compared with what was created under fire of the ideology, censorship and intent eye of the USSR. The conclusion Miceugow with his guest came to would usually indicate the inspiring power of working Against. It was the wall in the face of which and against which one would create art, that turned out to be the impulsive power as important as the artist's natural gifts and imagination. The process of working against the conditions today seems to have been much more productive than the blissful freedom among the shits of the capitalistic Poland.
Which has nothing to do with praising the communism or the planned economy.
I suppose doing art in the world of socialist realism consisted in some certainty in using bright values (perfectly camouflaged, of course), the values that were contrary to the dark political system. I guess it had something of heroism, but also some lightness following the clear division between the good and bad characters.
Today it's undoubtedly much more difficult to point the villains, but there are surely phenomena, ideas and concepts, against which one should come out. Also, the human does have weapon - life has become poor in so many realms, that even the vague idea of any alternative already makes fine arms.
Even when a phenomenon which would be contrary to the real conditions doesn't exist at all.
One of the reasons why I like books and journalism by Jeanette Winterson is her, say, positive old-fashioned-ness; her passion for life consisting of precious, sophisticated elements; the single ones, being an effect of meticulous, arduous work – against the repeated pieces of plastic of the present time, the slapdash-ness and consumerism, all grown so great that they seem to fill the space once occupied by the single pearls.
Are the wrong proportions, on which the world is based on, supposed to be irrevocable and definitive only because they are a fact? Every Buddhist knows there is no significant difference between the existence and non-existence.
Besides. "the most tangible / description of bread /is a description of hunger / in it is / the damp porous core / the warm interior / the breasts belly thighs of Cybele / a spring-clear / transparent description / of water / is a description of thirst / ashes / desert / it produces a mirage / clouds and trees move into / the mirror" – wrote Tadeusz Różewicz in his "Draft of a Modern Love Poem". "Lack hunger / absence / of flesh / is a description of love / is a modern love poem".
In the greatest darkness there is no lack of light, no lack of precious growth medium for the art.
[The poem translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire]
In today's update of the PostSecret I came across Munch's "Scream" with the sentence "I'm afraid there's nothing worth making art about anymore" written on it.
At first I was surprised by he mere fact that anybody should consider a conclusion like this one as their secret – that they should put their emotions on issue like that, feelings strong enough to choose it to be their representative, which would fight hundreds of other secrets on their way to Frank Warren, just like, say, the sperm cells squeezing themselves to get to the ovum. To me it proves that the PostSecret project is one of the greatest artistic ventures, which concentrates the motives from within the humanities.
But what surprised me even more was the wording of the secret; the person doesn't fear that all artistic forms are already worn-out, all words – already written down, important pieces of music – composed, the most beautiful frames – captured. Neither they anticipate the art or culture themselves are getting worn-out and soon won't find any place for them in this world, the fragmentary world feeding on icons and some few minutes films. For the first time in my life I came across such a sinister prophecy saying that this world isn't an inspiration any more. That it doesn't provide us with food for thought and doesn't stimulate the emotional realm nor does it preserve any elements decent enough to give the starting point for the artists, which was probably the main point of the secret's author.
It's a fact that for hundreds of years (always meaning the 20. century) the world has been said to be tumbling down on an inclined plain. The big mama named Civilization allegedly makes the moral values go bad and the short-lived technological crap has changed our every day into cheap duplicated creation devoid even of good entertainment. All that hes already been said millions of times before. This and the thing about the World War II, the complete decay of human, and then of the great Idea in the communism's incarnation. Plus the climate is going mad and Russia and China fill my head with fatalistic nightmares.
But I would never think that among it all there are no glimmers worth being thought over, ones that could find their continuation in art.
Which has noting to do with optimism.
Some time ago in his Different Point of View program Grzegorz Miecugow would every so often ask his guests, mainly artists, to try and compare the conditions of artistic work within the Polish People's Republic and today, in the so-called free Poland. He asked the question why the Polish culture, the high one, the mass one, was so poor when compared with what was created under fire of the ideology, censorship and intent eye of the USSR. The conclusion Miceugow with his guest came to would usually indicate the inspiring power of working Against. It was the wall in the face of which and against which one would create art, that turned out to be the impulsive power as important as the artist's natural gifts and imagination. The process of working against the conditions today seems to have been much more productive than the blissful freedom among the shits of the capitalistic Poland.
Which has nothing to do with praising the communism or the planned economy.
I suppose doing art in the world of socialist realism consisted in some certainty in using bright values (perfectly camouflaged, of course), the values that were contrary to the dark political system. I guess it had something of heroism, but also some lightness following the clear division between the good and bad characters.
Today it's undoubtedly much more difficult to point the villains, but there are surely phenomena, ideas and concepts, against which one should come out. Also, the human does have weapon - life has become poor in so many realms, that even the vague idea of any alternative already makes fine arms.
Even when a phenomenon which would be contrary to the real conditions doesn't exist at all.
One of the reasons why I like books and journalism by Jeanette Winterson is her, say, positive old-fashioned-ness; her passion for life consisting of precious, sophisticated elements; the single ones, being an effect of meticulous, arduous work – against the repeated pieces of plastic of the present time, the slapdash-ness and consumerism, all grown so great that they seem to fill the space once occupied by the single pearls.
Are the wrong proportions, on which the world is based on, supposed to be irrevocable and definitive only because they are a fact? Every Buddhist knows there is no significant difference between the existence and non-existence.
Besides. "the most tangible / description of bread /is a description of hunger / in it is / the damp porous core / the warm interior / the breasts belly thighs of Cybele / a spring-clear / transparent description / of water / is a description of thirst / ashes / desert / it produces a mirage / clouds and trees move into / the mirror" – wrote Tadeusz Różewicz in his "Draft of a Modern Love Poem". "Lack hunger / absence / of flesh / is a description of love / is a modern love poem".
In the greatest darkness there is no lack of light, no lack of precious growth medium for the art.
[The poem translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire]
2008/09/13
the colors, the women
Yesterday was a cold day. At Casablanca K. sat opposite me. Between us the mulled wine with orange and the wooden table top, behind K. a window and bright daylight.
At the beginning of July she met M. in the photography society. They go together to see exhibitions and to the city park where once he took a beautiful summer photo of her – K. sent me the shot in the evening. She enjoys talking and writing about him – with a clear pleasure of dosing the precious details, exuding them slowly - more for herself than for me.
The clearer and clearer anticipation she has, though she won't admit it.
I love being some distant part of it.
Now goes the rest of it all: my skin got sun burnt while we were by the sea and the white shapes of bikini on my body are so distinct that I could easily go parading naked, using the suntan as a natural camouflage. The thing is there's no opportunities to get naked whatsoever as my sweet Masovia gave me the warm welcome of 11 °C and the two women who proposed to me this year turned out to have been kidding. Life always boils down to a mug of tea and a big blanket.
Plussss my good old fears are here to stay (probably thanks to my move to Warsaw coming soon) – and the nightmares, after which I could find new grey hair on my head with no surprise. Last night for example I spent in the middle of the World War II. And I was Polish. My ordeal was that I had to collect 16,000 somestrangecurrency in order to purchase some quite safe (un-Jewish I suppose) I.D. My head did its best: I had 6,000 and no hope to get any more. Strangely, in my dream I had friends and I loved someone who saved my life everyday (from which I make out some return of affection). Boundless is the absurdity of my imagination at night.
I make use of the rest of freedom I have in September: I watch, I read. (I even meet some old acquaintances – which might be the blind alley my mind went down making me dream of people.) The other day the Czech "Šeptej" didn't disappoint me – I was laughing my ass off throughout the park scene – and yesterday evening the pure esthetic cream of movie: "Three Colours: Red". "Blue" remains my favorite because of the ligibility of the liberté motif (the realization of the red fraternité seems rather cloudy to me) but I also suspect myself of preferring the blue color to the red – and Juliette Binoche to Irene Jacob, but who knows. Anyway, the tone – sophisticated, tranquil, gentle – remains the same through both of the colors.
But to prove that I'm not sophisticated lap-dog I'll admit I watch "Gilmore Girls" every day and it sneaks in my intestines as easily as the J. Winterson's "enclosed worlds" only can. Apart from the absolutely brilliant script, again it's about the esthetic side (in the autumn episodes on the streets of Stars Something there are big pumpkins around every lamp – I'm dying) and about a woman, though I'm not sure yet whether it's about Lauren Graham or Liza Weil with two big pizzas in front of her.
I guess I'm hungry.
[Eeee. When I said "two big pizzas" I meant PIZZAS and nothig else.]
At the beginning of July she met M. in the photography society. They go together to see exhibitions and to the city park where once he took a beautiful summer photo of her – K. sent me the shot in the evening. She enjoys talking and writing about him – with a clear pleasure of dosing the precious details, exuding them slowly - more for herself than for me.
The clearer and clearer anticipation she has, though she won't admit it.
I love being some distant part of it.
Now goes the rest of it all: my skin got sun burnt while we were by the sea and the white shapes of bikini on my body are so distinct that I could easily go parading naked, using the suntan as a natural camouflage. The thing is there's no opportunities to get naked whatsoever as my sweet Masovia gave me the warm welcome of 11 °C and the two women who proposed to me this year turned out to have been kidding. Life always boils down to a mug of tea and a big blanket.
Plussss my good old fears are here to stay (probably thanks to my move to Warsaw coming soon) – and the nightmares, after which I could find new grey hair on my head with no surprise. Last night for example I spent in the middle of the World War II. And I was Polish. My ordeal was that I had to collect 16,000 somestrangecurrency in order to purchase some quite safe (un-Jewish I suppose) I.D. My head did its best: I had 6,000 and no hope to get any more. Strangely, in my dream I had friends and I loved someone who saved my life everyday (from which I make out some return of affection). Boundless is the absurdity of my imagination at night.
I make use of the rest of freedom I have in September: I watch, I read. (I even meet some old acquaintances – which might be the blind alley my mind went down making me dream of people.) The other day the Czech "Šeptej" didn't disappoint me – I was laughing my ass off throughout the park scene – and yesterday evening the pure esthetic cream of movie: "Three Colours: Red". "Blue" remains my favorite because of the ligibility of the liberté motif (the realization of the red fraternité seems rather cloudy to me) but I also suspect myself of preferring the blue color to the red – and Juliette Binoche to Irene Jacob, but who knows. Anyway, the tone – sophisticated, tranquil, gentle – remains the same through both of the colors.
But to prove that I'm not sophisticated lap-dog I'll admit I watch "Gilmore Girls" every day and it sneaks in my intestines as easily as the J. Winterson's "enclosed worlds" only can. Apart from the absolutely brilliant script, again it's about the esthetic side (in the autumn episodes on the streets of Stars Something there are big pumpkins around every lamp – I'm dying) and about a woman, though I'm not sure yet whether it's about Lauren Graham or Liza Weil with two big pizzas in front of her.
I guess I'm hungry.
[Eeee. When I said "two big pizzas" I meant PIZZAS and nothig else.]
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