a hopeful look at one's despair

"If only my mother hadn't hoped so much. But to say this is to posit the impossible. Throughout her life, my mother had been incapable of doing anything else but hope, hope in extremis, and against all odds if need be. I do not mean to imply that she was a cheerful person. Quite the contrary, she was almost always dueling with depression. This was clearest immediately after she woke up, when, in an effort to shake off her despondency, she would talk, about anything and at breakneck speed, as if to overwhelm her mood with meteor showers of verbiage. And yet, paradoxical as it may seem, even the ways in which she parsed her own despair could themselves appear like a subspecies of hope. I only realized this fully when I saw on the first page of one of her journals, written in the immediate aftermath of her breast cancer surgery, the sentence 'Despair shall set you free.' At first, I assumed she was making a morbid joke, but, reading on, I discovered that she had been entirely in earnest. 'I can't write,' she noted, 'because I don't (won't) give myself permission to voice the despair I feel. Always the will. My refusal of despair is blocking my energies.'
"Described in this way, my mother's exhortation to herself to 'give in' to despair becomes a new project of self-transformation, even of self-improvement, almost in the same way that her self-assigned reading lists and itineraries were such projects. But how could it have been otherwise? My mother's refusal of despair in its conventional, paralyzing sense, and, more than that, her sense that whatever she could will in her life she could probably accomplish as well (except in love: there she thought herself bereft of any gift and did not believe the will of any use at all), had served her so well for so long that, empirically, it would have been madness on her part not to have made it her organizing principle, her true north."


[David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir, source: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/excerpts.php?id=17834]

starry curry night

last weekend, postitive energy exploded beyond the frames and spilt through the whole space-time. I basically shot up into the sky.

not to see Mon. for nearly a year, and then to meet her, after so much has happened in my life and when her things are totally different now – and yet to feel that we are just the same for each other.

to start a conversation with a random guy in a club and to shout to him through the loud music all the words my throat is able to produce, and then to raise our mugs of beer as if we have just signed a non-aggression pact with the whole world. to run in the middle of the night, with the cold rain falling on the heads, together with a bunch of people I didn't even know the day before.

to fry apples (antonovkas, of course) with marjoram and to cook rice with curry and almonds for my dear O. – 'case although I am a totally hopeless cook, when I put my heart into this, I become a master.

and on Sunday evening, to keep my fingers crossed for the week to come so hard, to believe so strong that I will get a job and everything will start to brighten up, that I can almost see it happening.

so, keep your fingers crossed – whoever you are – if you are somewhere up there.

silence is scarry.

so good that there's still a bit of road to go, a bit of night to sleep through, before...
I didn't care that so much would change, but now I feel a sudden urge to keep a few old familiar elements to myself. 'cause it seems like everybody else has giant plans before them, great and beautiful ones, while I still can't find job and have no foundation of warmth and sweetness. how am I going to make it throught the fall?
sometimes, when I get stressed out, I start feeling sick.
it will be my first weekend here in the W. city since I can't remember when; a twinge of anxiety.
someone took the summer away, turned off the light, dashed my hope. the room is empty, I'm counting the popcorn balls on the floor and the steps echoing in the distance.

Antonovka sounds like a girl's name

I open my eyes and feel like I've been here since forever. In this small room, in this state of mind. Tension. I'm waiting for something.
I don't hold any grudge against anybody, cause it seems I've forgotten everything. I often go to my parents' place. Illness and job loss have changed everything up there. We barricade ourselves against the world, we bake apples and worry about each other like we have never done before. Each of us tries to cease being a burden to the rest of the family, though nobody would ever admit it.
September afternoons are full of harsh sunlight, chilly wind and long shadows. In the orchard apples are rotting, the low scent brings weird pleasure. Every week I go with my Mom for a walk through those golden spaces, full of heavy trees and overripe fields, and during this one hour or so, all those stupid matters that bring damage to our lives disappear. There is no money shortage and there is no illness.
And greenery is still strong where the soil is full of groundwater. Hard nettle stems and grass thick as fur.
A cat puts its paw over its eyes and falls asleep, lying on the cobbles.
I don't know any more what was before and I have no clue what is coming. But from among all those things that have fallen upon us, it is the late September hours that seem worth being called reality. Worth attention. Worth our sensitivity, about which I am so worried these days.

forgive me.

today life created for me an opportunity which got lost in the probability calculus each time I had even started dreaming of it.
and it was perfect. exactly how I'd wanted it to be.
and I missed it. I pretended not to see it. I walked on, starring at the pavement.
not because I got scared.
not because I recognized it too late.
but because deep in my heart, in my consciousness and in the lack of common sense I don't believe I deserve all the things that could have happened if I had actually taken the chance; don't believe I'm good enough; don't believe my quality suits what I'd like to reach for.
I don't know whether there is a person who judges me so critically, who is so merciless towards me, like me myself.
now I'm begging life for one more chance, so that this time I can protect me from myself.

she can have her ticket

It comes easily to me to consider moving to another city or country as, after all, it won't change much to me. I keep my microworld in myself and it is me and coincidence who decide what moods and tensions are born inside of me. The environment is important, but what is most important, that is people who are close, just does not happen to me. My base is my parent's house in the countryside – the beginning of the thread, the center of gravity. When I'm away from there, nothing grows around me for good. I'll never start any solid foundations, great gardens, strong bonds. Furniture or walls are something I find after the previous occupants, just like someone else will get them when I leave. In the consciousness of people I meet, I get an accidental and rather peripheral place. This is how I want it to be. The only way I can do it.
So I can change the city – I'm a stranger where I live right now anyway. No place and no milieu has ever been truly mine, because I don't know how to make myself accustomed. And I can change the country, after all I never actually agreed to live in the real Poland. I feel sentimental about the writers, journalists, musicians; about the countryside in summertime and evenings in fall; about the tricky language and a few tastes, scents... But all these are just my delusions, which will turn into nostalgia once I'm abroad. I can change my social circles, because – though everyone is different, important and valuable – in the end my role boils down to silent watching, admiring from a distance. Getting closer won't do me any good. It never has. If it happened at all.
So I may find myself wherever life wants me to be. I belong only to myself. (And my delusions.)

newsflash

looks like there is yet one more Homeric epithet.
"the unemployed Marta".
I guess the audience is already well familiar with it. damn.

may it be a blessing

Today it occurred to me that the way people react to my family name change actually tells a lot about themselves.

My Mom: /sigh/ ...but what for?
My Dad: /laughing nervously/ ... well... um... you are important for us, not your name!
My Sister: ...you're quite a something...
B.: mazel tov!
flatmate: oh... but what did your parents say to this?!
Al.: /quiet admiration/
Bart.: why? when? what for? I feel like I wanna know more but I also feel I'm not going to get it...

to be read as:
- reluctance to diverge from social norms when it is not necessary,
- largely suppressed sensitivity,
- resignation as a lifestyle,
- awesomeness :)
- uptight adherence to social patterns,
- favorable support approach,
- interpersonal communication disorder

respectively.

this really is fun.

Dear National Health Fund,

I'm sorry for being sick at weekends and on holidays as well as on weekdays between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m.
I'm sorry that my clinic is closed on a Catholic holiday and that my surgeon is having his summer leave.
I'm sorry that I can't stand it all and I'm crying.
I'm sorry for the referral I'm holding in my hand.
I'm sorry I've come, I'm sorry I'm sitting in this, sorry, shabby corridor in the hospital basement, right when the nurse is having her brunch.
I'm sorry for the hole in my leg and the one in my back, I'm sorry that the wounds fester and hurt.
I'm sorry I don't have an arm cut off and that blood is not flowing in torrents, therefore, I don't have to be treated at the emergency department.
I'm sorry for the complications developed in my organism and I'm sorry I don't have the hospital ticket with the number.
I'm sorry for my blood and that the dressing has come off.
I'm sorry for my body.
I'm sorry I can't go away cause I can't afford a private appointment.
I'm sorry for being alive.
I won't do it again.

simple present

today I went for a walk with Mom. it was the first evening that felt chilly, nearly like fall. the smell of apples, dampness and grass. the sun still warming our sholders, still dazzling at sunset.
August makes me think of Olg. and of times when what I have now was an exciting, scary future.

Seclusion Near a Forest

last night I went to see a Czech movie (Na samotě u lesa)
then I drank a cup of green tea and ate some raspberries while I chatted with O.
and when I fell asleep, I dreamt of rainbow killer whales
(and of Her).

it was probably the most beautiful dream I've ever had.

in the morning I sent my CV to a company with its premises in the Czech Republic.
at 3 p.m. they already called me back.

Schulz was right.
the parallel worlds always find their way to our lives.

congratulations on your...

"to look life in the face...
always to look life in the face,
and to know it for what it is.
at last, to know it,
to love it for what it is,
and then...

to put it away."

the heavy golden hour

yesterday I met a girl with blond curly hair and we talked for so long that I had a sore throat when I got back home.

I'm learning how to drive. beware.

someone in the neighborhood is listening to the Amélie soundtrack with the windows open wide. it's a warm sunny afternoon.

it is hard to capture the moment when I'm slipping from the serene delight at the simplicity of things – into the stinging sorrow and the sense of lack.

outbox

last night I had a dream about you
this time last year
the golden evening
red wine your tears
it was when it started all over
with redoubled strength

two weeks later I said it was funny though it was already clear we were on the skids

I still think it funny
such a shame
what a pity
nothing left

I'd known
"how she would always always
how she would never never
I'd watched and listened
but I still [...]"

HUSH

I hate this bad energy inside me.
the one that makes me call my family and enlist the litany of complaints about all sorts of things.
about louts, idiots and people whose thoughtlessness proves harmful.

I hate the blockade which won't let me release the joy at summertime, yoga and my parents' return.
I hate the impulse that makes me cry when in the evening I'm alone with my thoughts.
I hate the senseless fears and neurotic reflexes that tear my thoughts and make me desire, regret and refuse to accept the reality the way it is.
I hate the inhibition which won't let me go emotionally and intuitively to the side where at the intellectual level I already know I want to be: the side of inner peace, joy and minimalistic satisfaction with those few things which, if watched carefully, should be appreciated and recognized as good enough.

in yoga, it is advised not to get frustrated when body cannot do what the mind has already figured out.
one should keep imagining themselves already able to do so; be patient and let the body take its time.
treat the body with love.

Thích Nhất Hạnh says one should regard one's anger as if it was a child that needs consolation.

so I try.

but the fact that tomorrow I'll find myself at the surgery room and in the next three weeks I can forget about yoga, just drives me crazy.

so does the awareness that from among nearly thirty companies to which I sent my CV, the only one that called me back is precisely the only one for which I do not want to work – but I'll have to if they want me (MONEY).

and seeing her every few days, yet being utterly unable to do anything.
when imagining that things are different doesn't change a thing.

gorzko

to nie zawsze zawołanie do
pocałunku do
szczęścia jak stąd do
wieczności.

czasem to całkiem do-
słownie.

greenhouse effect

After 37 degree heat waves, sweat trickles while doing yoga and the mornings like overexposed photos when black birds were screaming over my street, summer has suddenly cooled down and faded. Apparently, all the energy got used up within those few hot days. And I got deflated just as well.

This summer is an emptiness season. A season of nothing. Of void. A waiting room, but not one where you can simmer down, breathe again and collect your thoughts; rather a long corridor with no end to be seen; you want to enter the room, but no one calls your name and you don't really know whose voice to expect either.

I feign rhythm and duties: yoga, which I can't afford and for which I don't think I'm really suitable. Private lessons in English, though I admit I'm quite a poor teacher. Working for the club of translators and interpreters – volunteer job that doesn't really make sense and with which I'm left all alone as the rest of the board doesn't feel like doing anything for free.

I collect things I've been cramming into my drawers for months and years. I devote whole days to journeys to various offices – it appears that to change your surname doesn't have to be mission impossible in Poland, though I should perhaps wait a little and state it once I've actually succeeded. I also enrolled on a driving course – after six years of questions and moaning of my family. And in ten days from now I'm seeing the surgeon who will remove my birthmark which I was supposed to get rid of a long time ago.

As a result, I am a very busy person. Stuck under a heap of tiny little things, everyday rubbish that no one feels like touching. I listen to Zemfira and Nochniye Snaiperi all the time. The songs keep on playing in my mind and when I wake up in the morning, I have my jaws clenched and I hear Diana Arbenina.

I try to escape madness.

What helps are movies:



Articles:
http://www.colta.ru/docs/1631
http://www.colta.ru/docs/529
http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/column.asp
http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/journalism_01/journalism_01_item.asp?journalism_01ID=285
http://wyborcza.pl/1,75475,12143769,Mam_gdzie_mysli_rozbujac.html?as=1&startsz=x

Books:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/04/nine-lives-william-dalrymple-review

Radio programs:
http://www.polskieradio.pl/8/2222/Artykul/647175,Jak-skutecznie-zniszczyc-sobie-zycie
http://www.polskieradio.pl/8/1594/Artykul/643874,Trzech-fenomenalnych-anarchistow-

And nothing more.

Feels like cramped, closed greenhouse.

I find myself deeper and deeper in my yearnings, visions, images.

Today, when I was reading Monika Sznajderman describing the great space she sees from her window, it occurred to me that I might leave this city quite soon.

If only someone calls my name.

Yurev den

yoga Buddhism piano on the radio Stoicism
these are all attempts to tangle up the fate
in vain
for I will always choose intuitively
a fine metaphor
a beautiful woman
and sad self-sown mysticism
instead.

group portrait with cornflowers

May, June. two most beautiful seconds of year.
the evening is golden and strong but cold, so I borrow a cardigan from my mother. the scent of her perfume makes me feel melancholy.
today, we saw a sea of cornflowers.

właśnie tak się dzisiaj czuję

I get blurred like watercolor
I think in sentences uncompleted
my head droops before daytime has elapsed.

I waste huge sheets of fabric which events could be potentially made of
I leave without a word
I don't wait for my change.

and all of it
half asleep.

something was probably meant to be in between
but at the very last moment the chemical reaction did not take place – the drop did not fall
the current did not flow
a coincidence un-happened

spontaneous labor
was
cancelled.

I wanted to save the mouse, but they stopped me.

in a perfect world cats are vegetarians.

little things of great importance

they say tomorrow morning there will be heavy rain.
there is a musician or a band called Gotye and everybody but me knows some huge hit they released some time ago. I've made a conscious decision not to find out whether it's any good. I also intentionally disregard Euro 2012 and anything that might cause an offence against religious feelings.
I wish summer finally got warm. I don't know what for or what it should change, but I just want to get myself warm at last.

May #6 || secret stories

I think Odessa is very mistrustful. Unwittingly, I kept on comparing it with our Caucasian trip for connoisseurs and despite of the breeze, despite of the broad streets, of the port, lilacs and suntan, I still couldn't get enough of the stories. Armenia gave us a lawyer who poured us more and more wine and told his tales. Georgia – a driver, who never ate and never drank, only drove and talked. And a professor of medicine, who sat on a chair next to the radiator, smoked her cigarettes and lead her long Russian narration. In a museum, on a bus stop and then when you get in – stories everywhere, strangers with pockets filled with them, poor and a little sad people, but open and warm. We only had to stop for a while, eye contact or a smile weren't even necessary, no encouragement. Just tell them that you understand Russian.
The Ukrainians don't feel like telling stories. And I know they do have dozens of them. Stories have to be born on those ships, in old tenements and the golden Ukrainian light. But they only asked for our money, they wanted us to take what they offered and get out, always watching us, afraid we might steal or break something, or just disturb a bit too much. So maybe this was not the most fortunate encounter, because I myself don't have money, but I love listening to stories. And I do understand Russian.

May #5 || Jaser and the kiss

And we go to the city once again, the memento of past Russian riches, today only dust and echo of that splendor. My company leaves me to head for some idiotic exhibition of poisonous snakes, while I'm wandering along corridors of a building where that slimy traveling gallery rents its premises. On the second floor, I go past another attraction – a collection of wax figures from Kiev. I didn't go in, but Jaser Arafat on the poster still looked more like wax mass than Jaser himself. I turn left. Long, bright corridor. Very high, like in old tenements in Warsaw. Square streaks of thick sunlight get in through tiny windows; they light up the lying dust – a symbol of Ukrainian abandonment, of the slow, noncommittal existence; the politics of non-action sealed. Our grandparents built it, therefore it is our holy right to do with it whatever we want to. And we choose not to do anything at all.

Round the corner, a dark room with a view on the staircase. Next to the windows so dirty that they start resembling matte glass, there stood a row of cinema chairs. Ragged, stained, like back in the old art cinema Hel, I guess they closed it down before I graduated from high school. Better not get closer and unfold it, you never know what the previous audience had left. But this tenement was not and could not have been a cinema. Where those chairs came from, I don't know, but they were the only furniture there. My walk ends in the restroom, with the toilet holding on together only thanks to the rope with which it is bound. At the sink, or rather its remains, a cheerful woman rinses a plastic bowl and it looks like it’s fun to her to spill all the water on the floor. On her way out, she warned me politely that it's wet all over the place. I guess I paid around two or three hryvni for the restroom.

But before we arrived to that place and before guys went to see the snakes, there had been the eagle trainers. The birds were heavy and held on tight to my arms. The trainers wanted two hundred hryvni, but at that point I already very much disliked the town's policy of looking for a likely dupe with a wallet, so they didn't get anything from me. Instead, the female trainer kissed me on my cheek and this was probably the best transaction I've made in my life, because it was an exceptionally pretty eagle trainer.

May #4 || the immense light

Daylight comes and we do the most senseless thing tourists ever do, that is, we go to the beach. If you want to get there, you have to pass rows of port cranes shining with grease, huge concrete platforms and walls of goods packed in cartons. Then there's the stall with the recycled jewellery and a pile of shrimps melting in the sun, and right there in front of your eyes there opens a gallery of Ukrainian and Russian bodies. I pass the information board; it says that air temperature equals 12,5 degrees and water temperature is 30 degrees. I think to myself that the lifeguard must have gotten sloshed the night before. But so did I so I get the message right and go into the twelve degree hot Black Sea. Ant. goes with me – she's so brave that she gets in at a run. In the water, she meets her new friend, Anya, aged eight. Anya asks her, 'A vy otkuda?' Ant. says, 'My iz Polshy.' Anya: 'Uh ty!' Ant. is thrilled.
On the pricking sand tattooed men walk with armfuls of fish corpses and fat women wander with cookies. Ukrainian women sunbathe topless and they roll their pants in thin strings. One of them has her pet snake around her neck. The sun falls on us as if it was a burst of cloud full of UV radiation. Later on, in the evening, I will discover my shoulders all burnt and M. will experience a sunstroke. My lips are salty after the swim in the sea. Ant. helps me to change my swimming costume for dry underwear while Ukrainian boys in stretch pants and shining sunglasses watch my struggle to keep the balance.

May #3 || the night

Evening. Suddenly, we've found ourselves in the middle of summer. This peculiar feeling I remember from all the Julys I spent in Warsaw when the heavy afternoon air has heated up and thickened and you can almost touch it like you can touch a wall or skin. We're walking down broad streets someone once outlined sparing no space for life, motion and Russian conversations. At the crosswalk, I take a photo of two women, both wearing long white linen dresses, with their hair black and hip long. Somebody will say later on, when watching the photos, that it was a Ukrainian bride fair, with the girls ready-to-marry. There is a gentle breeze coming from the sea which makes the swollen heat bearable. When we reach Potemkin Stairs, the salty wind grows stronger and plays with the linen sheets with the portraits of the actors from the 1920s painted on them. They look surrealistically and when we get back on the following day, the exhibition of the ghosts with dark lines around their eyes is all gone. Far away in the darkness the huge port is looming. The Port of Odessa. Just a few steps away, at the crossroads, a row of women blocks the street and a car can't pass. The driver is beeping. Wedge-heels won't move. Colorful artificial nails make the Russian argumentation more expressive. I take a few shots with the flash. The prostitutes send the international 'fuck you' sign to me. The car passes through, the driver doesn't take any of the girls with him.
Heavy evening lilacs. Ukrainian beer. Long sleep.

May # 2 || Marazli, Zhanna and Sheridan.

The airport looked like an old bus station, the marshrutka seemed hot and exhausted when we tried to talk to the driver, who didn't think it was worth the trouble to turn his face to us, so his back informed us where we can go with the number 17 – or maybe it was 117. It cost two hryvni and fifty kopiyok. In the seat in front of me there was a woman in a leopard-print blouse, next to me the wind played with a curtain slightly burnt with a cigarette, over my head there was a hornet flying circles; U. was running away from the insect. I was taking photos of it all.
Among the Ukrainians a discussion broke out about where we're supposed to get off. Ma... raz... lyev... ska... ya street. A flaxen-haired girl, way too mild for a Ukrainian, asks me in despair whether I know where that street is. It's nice to be mistaken for a Ukrainian on the first day already, but I think to myself that it's time to change clothes. We get off, on the streetcar station a monstrous woman with a mustache directs us to the streetcar number 28. A. has GPS in his mobile. It becomes our substitute of order and orientation. Then an elderly man takes us over. Students travelling alone is still a rare thing to see, so we evoke protective instincts wherever we go.
Here we are. Marazli's monument. The owner of the flat we rented is nowhere in sight. We can't get through to her either. Ant. and A. go to the address given in the emails we received. The place is being redecorated. No one living there. In the door, they find a letter of reminder from the power plant. A young man living in the neighboring flat gets interested in our case and he calls our landlady with his mobile. Our Ukrainian lawyer. Ms. Zhanna from the Internet got it all wrong. The landlady will come again to see us, but no sooner than in three hours. This is Odessa sending to us its first sign that we should not stick to the plan, to the promises or the principles of savoir-vivre. Because the people here just don't give a shit.
In the flat we find only four beds instead of the five agreed, the air conditioning mentioned in the emails does exist, but is long out of order. Also, we shouldn't leave any valuable stuff in the flat, because the Russian guys who rented it before us left without having returned the key, so if they're still in town, they might get back to the place and make themselves comfortable. Hasn't she changed the lock? No, she hasn't. My friends suggest I should take my frame rucksack with me each time we go out. The landlady leaves, we open our Sheridan we bought in the duty-free at the airport.
The question about who Sheridan was is asked for the first time.

May #1 || broke means free

M. said that should there have been any turbulences when the plane took off or landed, he wouldn't go travelling with me anymore. Over Odessa our Embraer was tossed about like a car on the Ukrainian rural roads, but it was still nothing compared with the blizzard in the middle of the Caucasian night when we landed in Tbilisi. So when I said I was still thinking about joining Ant. and him in their travel to Croatia, he seemed enthusiastic. But it looks like my first attempt to have a planned sensible life which will probably be in September, will not include another jaunt for which I have positively no money. It seems that's how one should travel, though. No money, no plans, no sense of belonging. No anchors. An open mind. Anything can happen.
In Odessa, we were free. Or at least that's what we thought. But then, what's the difference. – That's how Stasiuk wrote about his life in Grochów.

Cat MacKenzie's dead!

I watch the lift in the building across the street going up and down.
no romanticism or reverie here.
this really is the height of my mental abilities these days.

I'm wondering whether watching "Lip Service" is an effect or the very reason of this state of mind.

shortcuts

some lazy, tired or discouraged part of me would just like to hit Ctrl+F or use the Google search engine to find at last
the way
the method
the formula
for dissolving what makes me so uneasy, so dejected.
only to set myself free. finally.

warmth protection

it made me think of how I actually enjoy life
its general idea really appeals to me
its structure suits me well, so does the precision of coincidence, its basic law

but it's been a bit too cold and too dark
and scary

quietly and slowly

I read Świetlicki and I cry

"...he's ashamed of the way
he's waiting, of not knowing how to wait, of waiting like a child

for Christmas, of waiting for a woman
who will come, she'll come for sure, everything will take place
like it always does, only with some minor
surprises, as these too always

occur..."

Montserrat Figueras

there's a single seat in the fourth row and it's MINE.

my brain just refuses to figure out how come if there's a fine play at one of the city's best theaters and it's for PLN 15 [Lord, it's USD 4,70! only 4 EUR! nations of the world's currencies, do you get it?!], there is no one, not even one person among my well-educated sharp fellow students who feels like going.
but every weekend, there is a massive rush towards pubs and clubs and it is enough for me to show the slightest readiness to cooperate in the process of swilling down hectoliters of beer to be immediately flooded with detailed plans for Saturday night.
and PLN 15 isn't even enough to cover the entry to the club.

we all get it.

tonight proved so very disappointing.
when my efforts end with disappointment, it feels like the world has tricked on me.

at least Shortbus turned out to be a fine movie.

silence

I notice your absence in a way I do not have a right to, I know. I think about you with kindness that I'm ashamed of; with admiration I disguise as neutrality. I am proud of you like a madwoman cherishing a child that's not hers.
I'm scared.
I send you good energy and then I step back; don't think it means anything, don't think that I
don't you worry.
I won't tell anybody.

Świetlicki: "the end of the world is a moveable feast"

there is always something final about it; something irrevocable and definitive.
some weight which, as it seems, nothing can possibly exceed.
a seal, a lock in the door, and so it has come.

but the streetcars keep on running. the moustached man begins yet another day with a cigarette.
you have to go to see the doctor, to the post office and the project schedule needs to be planned.
life draws itself up in three-dimensional sketches without anybody asking you for permission.

then, in the dead of winter, there's vodka, firework display and the last number in the date rolls over with a bump.

the end of the world fades away, gets outdated and obsolete.

finally, you take it to the garbage can, along with old newspapers and shoes that aren't worth fixing any more.

bitterness goes flat.
again
you're nothing but foolish
anticipation.

blurred

the solitude I endure
is not humane
emptiness does not have the shape of another body
impressed in bedlinen
my moves are not observed
described
named

I can put so much content into this space
like in the black hole
all will be lost

opposite me
no one
that is
opposite me
precipice
this is the destination of my existence
for myself

today I saw a person who was beautiful
and bald
don't know whether it was a man or a woman
the impression came back to me in a wave
like an insult for
the solitude I endure

she said, irgendwann kommt die Sonne wieder, das ist meine Medizin.

snow yet again
a skein of birds approaching from the west
I'd rather you didn't speak to me at all
turn to me at all
than keep up those bitter empty pretense of bonds

I miss the sincere hearts
that I so hoped for

they told me I was brave. there were no candies though.

the first series was easy. but ten stimuli one after another – less so.
a man, the neurologist, held my head.
I was thinking about how much it is easier to carry on when there's someone to hold you.

dear drawer,

I've been wondering:

would the fact that someone's pieces of art become the recipient's masturbation stimulus rather be a compliment or an insult from the artist's point of view?

because I feel like letting her know but I wouldn't like to be offensive.

this must be the place

So I guess it's about changing the way I spend my time with people. I have to undertake fresh activities with them, stop going to the same places, sitting at the same tables and just talking. Human mind is a lazy beast. In a familiar context, without new stimuli, it will only repeat what's already known.
So yesterday I went with O. to see "This Must Be The Place", and then I fed her with mozzarella, tomatoes and zucchini at my place. What I like about this relationship is that it totally changes its form every few months or years. It was only this month that I learnt about her something that might be a key to understand a lot of her decisions and attitudes. This shows that being bored with the other person can only be unfair to them. And to the relation itself.
Today early in the morning I was thinking that if some of my relations evoke the sense of discomfort, it wouldn't be the ones which ended with a bump, pain and disappointment, but those which died a natural death as the people changed and so did I. The communication got broken and when we meet, between us there is only emptiness and a few desperate references to what we used to be. To watch things fading away can be really depressing.
But O. is not fading away. She unfolds slowly.
I give away without regret the hour stolen from last night due to the switch to the summer time. Now Sunday coffee and weekend newspaper edition. The elderly guy from across the street smokes his usual morning cigarette.
The world is not fading away. The world unfolds slowly.

the land of liquor

yesterday I was listening for three bottles of beer* why the way I live, think and what I strive after is a sequence of reasoning errors, logical mistakes and mere idealistic fantasies.
my friends never cease to amaze me.

and although it has positively nothing to do with the above, I'll share the impressive content of the shopping cart of an old man queuing in front of me today early in the morning:
yeast, butter, fat milk and a bottle of vodka.
I was just wondering how he was going to put it all together.

*don't tell my dietitian.

the land of wannabes

I can't seem to understand why in Poland there persists the legitimized attitude which consists in proving to the individual that they're just not what they claim to be; what they think they are; what they wish to be. Just look at how both in formal and informal contexts people enjoy not calling each other the way the other person wishes to be named, but with the forms of address they simply want to utter or the ones found in the addressee's ID. And then you have the American official documents in which people can write the name they use next to the name given at birth – so this freedom of choice might actually be ex officio. But not here.
In Poland the problem exists in all sorts of realms in which individuals create their identities. They'll always have to face the wall built by the people around them, who are all too eager to point out what the individual lacks and why they'll never be good enough to achieve what they aspire to. Like the Anna Grodzka case. She's become a human shield for this Polack self-appointed jury – and thus a true heroine for she puts up with it pretty well. People consider the idiotic remarks of Law and Justice politicians just a joke, but in fact it's those dumb-asses' boorishness that prevents them from acknowledging a woman in her when she clearly feels a woman herself and functions as such according to the law. And it's not that it's just an issue of the province, from where many of the L&J politicians stem from, but it's in the big cities just as well. I've been living in Warsaw for five years now and I watch numerous circles of most interesting people with refreshing worldviews – circles which are most hermetic. Your own will and sympathizing with their ideas is just not enough to allow you to be let in. You need to have achieved something. You need to prove something.
Maybe it's just a matter of strength one needs to have to get themselves through it all.
Maybe bearing a grudge to the whole world for not being who one would like to be is just another form of the Polack carping attitude.
But I don't think I've just made up this lack of respect to the social face, which prevails in our interactions.
Live & let people live.
And as Winterson says: be kind.
Come on, it'll be fun.

делай со мной что хочешь :)

just one of the treats I give myself when times are hard. or dull.

needless fear and sorrow

So the spring has come. But inside me there is this prevailing sense of irritating repetitiveness. Every week consists in fulfilling the same responsibilities. Friends of mine put content I already know into familiar words – which evokes my most predictable reactions. The same stimuli bring me down and I resort to the same measures to raise my spirits. And although I remember Szymborska's "Nothing Twice" lesson, I still can't resist the impression I know pretty well where I'm going to be tomorrow at a given time. Almost no margin for error.
Serenity is precious.
But boredom proves exhausting.

drama curbed

last weekend's bicycle ride, sun and wind so warm, Bartók and Martinů in the evening and delicious home made food was more than I could wish for my sleepless and sorrowful head.
up here the swoosh of trees and wind is so loud that you just can't claim there are things greater than this.
the stories told here are simple.
symbiosis is natural.
I need to remember this state. I need to meditate on it to stretch it in time, in consciousness.

go, girls

Warsaw is full of sunlight on the day of Manifa – the demonstration I've always supported, but never actually attended. Today one of the main reasons is my cough which makes my stomach muscles ache. I'm going to have a Barbie figure this spring, I can tell you.
My last thought when I was falling asleep last night was that I just can't live this way any more. My shitty resistance to illness is a clear sign I got into a system that is harmful not only to my psyche, but also to my body.
I'd like to leave.
But not to the frosty Caucasus where good but sad and hurt people live.
Somewhere, where the culture of piece is preserved. Culture of simplicity and health – but not because it is already in a disastrous condition, rather as preventive measures.
Sounds like the Far East, doesn't it?
So I'm going to look for ways to bring this Far East right here. In the middle of Warsaw. On these twenty square meters, with bars in the window and a cloud of smog over the roof.
Before it's really too late.

cheesy content

something blocks me. I'm a flightless bird. I'm the embodiment of dreaming, I'm the non-realization, a plot on a grand scale unconnected with life. I'm what's unsaid, undone, underreacted.
I'm written out in weekday timetable to keep the remnants of common sense.
I'm glued together for the time being, for the rationality's sake.
an unexploded bomb.
a retired miracle.

the doctor told me I'm depressed. in the past, she said, people made art out of it, but now they bury it in pills.

also, my metabolic age is sixteen.
I guess my weltschmerz is just as old.

spring starts to chirp. kurwa.

A London Address

"The sea wasn't safe, thought Conrad.
And that was a good reason to be on it.
At sea, whatever you are, whatever you really are, will soon begin to show."


http://aroomforlondon.co.uk/a-london-address/feb-2012-jeanette-winterson

three three is nice

last night in my dreams I was author of a brilliant translation of some wonderful book. a piece of literature that will last.
and the night before, I dreamt of a female vampire, who kept on hunting me.
today I woke up around eight, blissfully rested after my evening hydroxyzine pill. march, sun. my tiny room for 750 PLN/month can hardly bear all the sunlight.
the recording from Karolina Gruszka's house comes to my mind again and again:

there comes the thought that inside me there is no longing which, if satisfied, would let me live any happier;
there comes the thought that if I were to get back, I would make exactly the same decisions, because although I wouldn't like to return to some places I've been in the past, I know the traces they left are most precious;
the thin string of excitement when I think about the future;
no strong euphoria;
no great plans;
no confidence even.
there are still so many books I haven't read yet.

in.somnia

my head is like an empty disco.
with broken glasses on the floor
stench of beer, perfume and sweat
and last echoes of most shitty playlist.

only there was no dancing part.

.

she's hot
I was frozen

I'm sad

not because of unfulfillment
but because of something that Sheldon Cooper would call missing the warmth of human companionship.
[I'd skip the nasty laughter part, though.]

whatizit

I can't sleep at dawn and I feel sick.
it's like my body and subconsciousness knew about something of which I am not aware yet.

she again

new instructor salutation

I'm slowly recovering after the Caucasus. I'm waiting for my young and flexible selective memory to deal with a few traumas I experienced up there; to suppress it and to leave only the public banya, the moonscape near Yerevan and professor Tatyana, whose kolkhoz soul was just like our Olga's. After Georgian hardest winter ever I yearn for sunlight, I literally have a craving for summer. Meanwhile, here in Warsaw it looks like winter is going to rain itself to death.

I'm dreadfully sleepy, as if I'd drunk or fooled around all night. My missish excitement caused by yoga classes with an unearthly instructor made me unable to fall asleep and woke me up before 7. Her face, her body. Nature can do that. And yoga will crown the work. Too bad she's not a public figure – I would post her photo below.

I don't know how to help people around and myself with the late winter collapse. The Shrove Thursday and other harmful pleasures don't seem to have gotten us right. In my case M83's concert was supposed to do that, but then there was their accident and the show was cancelled. I expected yoga to help as well, but you already know how I ended up. So it looks like I'm left with only one thing. Alas! No stable partner, no sex. So I'll stick to my desperados instead.

stay & watch

living in herds is something I truly believe in
but somehow cannot put into practice.

isolation brings stories about oneself
which get verified in the clear and simple mirror of another human being
without any inquiry about permission or state of mind.
isolation favors abstraction, daydreaming and wishful thinking.
communication requires literal reality and common language of immediate associations.
living in herds is a bitter medicine I need in order not to go crazy with my raging neurosis.

transformations

leaving the agency was weird. I'd been sure they didn't want me to stay there just as much as I didn't want to work for them. but when the flowers and hugs came, I got confused. I gave a speech.
and then at 4 pm I left.
I'm officially unemployed now.

HELL YEAH! :)

off to Georgia. wish me luck.

how to turn shitty into pretty

I don't really hold my liquor well these days, but I've found out that when I drink quite a lot before going to bed and leave the heating on, I have the most beautiful dreams about the tropics.
last night, I won the canoeing contest!

apnoea

this movie is incredible.

but somehow I was wide awake.

when falling asleep, I cuddle up to memories. they are warm and human. they are my proof that life can happen for real.

it was about midnight and I really wanted to fall asleep

what's typical of solitude is the endless silence.

it separates me from the world like a still buffer and it amplifies distant sounds that imprint marks in my head even when I don't want to listen.

hairband & marriage

Today, after the exam [I passed!!!], Il. said she had to wait an hour for her Spanish classes and asked me whether I felt like going with her to H&M. And so I went. On our way she told me that she'd been living with G. for three years now and recently, in the "Favorite" file on his laptop she had found some jeweler's websites with engagement rings. And she began to wonder, well, at our university there's more and more married girls, and by the way, have you heard how A. named her daughter? Liliana, would you believe that?! So she, Il., doesn't feel like getting married at all, because now, when she fights with G., she can just ignore him, she won't serve him his dinner, will she – and after they're married – you know... [do I..?] And a baby? Oh, please. She, Il., is still a kid herself. And by the way, Gab. gave her a most horrible hairband recently, but then it's Gab., she has her style, doesn't she...
This hour lasted FOREVER.
I wondered - would she have said if I were a man?
Did she say it all because I'm a woman and she thinks stuff like that are supposed to be said when talking to a woman?
Or maybe this speech mode was because she expects herself to be using it being a woman herself?
All I know is that the total amount of energy I needed to interpret a German text about samurais was just about nothing when compared with the power I need to go shopping with Il.
PS I tried on a blouse with the Beatles imprint. But I guess I have to find a homonormative shop as my lesbian abdomen doesn't fit in the H&M clothing at all.

online archiving

I'm currently reading "The Argentine adventures of Gombrowicz". The documentary style of the book makes me think in its rhythm, the rhythm of short, quick pieces of information.

So.

Sunday, the second half of January. Not much snow, more rain. One mug of coffee, two cups of tee. Broccoli soup.
A message from Dee and one from Sz.
Yesterday, a whole lot of fantastic moments with my parents. I didn't know there was a dance called "let's kiss". I watched an Internet tutorial with my mom: http://youtu.be/4wRS2y4UB4c
The ticket to Warsaw: PLN 9.11.
Plans for the next few hours: prepare myself for tomorrow's exam (interpreting German-Polish, at 5 pm); look for a hostel in Yerevan for the six of us; try to avoid Sunday sorrow; iron a blouse for the Monday at work.
Remember about I.'s birthday on Tuesday.
Answer N.'s email.
Go to bed early.
Remember not to miss her, not to try to understand.
Not to lose my hope.
And to take my zinc.

holy thursday!

Oh, it is so nice to get up at 6.40 am and go to the doctor's.
It didn't begin all too bad. I managed to get the second ticket. I was supposed to be seen at 7.45.
So I go upstairs.
At the office I see a girl, totally terrified by me, by the world and by herself. She has the 7.30 ticket. Here comes the doctor. We give her a warm welcome with singing and flags to make sure she has noticed her patients waiting. Dr. Marlena, smiling as if she were high, hides in her burrow. Not to be seen anymore. Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Nothing. A new patient has arrived. We talk to each other in a VERY LOUD MANNER, to make the first patient hear us, that perhaps it wouldn't do any harm to knock and ask whether she could come in. But the lady seems to be not only terrified, but also slightly unperceptive, so, at 7.50, I say to her: Couldn't you ask Her Majesty? The Terrified One gets up and approaches the door, which takes her an awful lot of time. She practices the gesture of knocking to make sure it will go smoothly and finally knocks on the door, so quietly I'm kinda sure even the door wouldn't notice. She opens the door slightly (about 5 millimeters), says she's sorry to be alive and asks if she may enter. Yes. She may. She probably could at 7.30 just as well, but the poor doctor "didn't know there was someone waiting". Lordy.
The Terrified One gets out, I get it. Your name? So I tell her. Oh, well, I can't see your file. Would you please go downstairs and get it?
Finding no words to describe this ever so curious absurdity I take my bag and run from the third floor to the ground floor to get my file. Here I catch the nurse who's just about to leave for her gossip & coffee break: GIMMIE MY FILE. She: DON'T HAVE IT.
Huh?
Here it comes. The whole department starts to look for my documents. Telephones, catalogues, whatever you wish. The nurse calls my doctor to say the file is not here, only to find it the very next second. She tapes the envelope up with due diligence (which means another five minutes of waiting). I go back upstairs, but guess what, the next patient is already in the doctor's room. Some idiot says it's my fault so I'll get punished and will wait another fifteen minutes for my turn. I explain to myself his underestimation of my deadly powers is a sign of his mental illness and decide not to kill him.
Then I finally get to the doctor's office.
I sit down.
My doctor loves the whole world and makes sure every part of it feels well looked after. After one sentence uttered to me, there comes a sentence to a nurse, one to a doctor, one to miss technician – as all those people keep walking in and out to discuss some matters of life and death: nail polish, croissants and stuff. GODDAMNIT. The circle closes, back to me. The doctor turns out not to be able to tell one medicine from the other and apparently uses "zinc”", "calcium' and "magnesium" as synonyms.
I feel I really want to go home.
And forget to ask her one important question. In fact, when I realize this, I still have the time to go back and ask it. But I feel it would take too much of time and suffering.
At 9.30 I feel like a zombie and try to mentally prepare myself for the day.
In the afternoon I go where people spend their time talking books, language and translation, that is: workshops with Professor M. He's smoking and I'm asking him hundreds of questions. Each time he laughs and says: you may ask, but I may not answer at all.
But he always does.

And in the evening I meet Ol. in a café owned by a famous writer to choose a book for my mother. When I'm choosing between a story of a portraitist from a concentration camp and a book by a German woman of Turkish descent, I hear a deep male voice. It's him – the author of the most beautiful stories about Czech Republic. I copied fragments of his books and took them with me to Prague to have a walk around the city according to his hints. He goes crazy – he recommends dozens of books, tells me about them and their authors, and he says it all like a friendly host who shows to his guests everything that's best at his larder. Finally, I choose "Life. A practical guide". I write to my mom: something wonderful has just happened to me, but I won't tell you about it before your birthday. She writes back, but you'll forget it by then!
I won't.

So after all I'm quite happy to have gotten up this Thursday morning. Even at the dark 6.40.

reality can take so much more than fiction.

my mom has become matchmaker between me and some country boy.

spinster sunday

I've just washed pieces of chocolate out of my pillowcases.
washing out the smell of sex was more fun.

I didn't know I was dreaming big.

I get down to writing as if it would hurt. I needn't try to capture whole weeks in these few sentences; all the facts, their meanings and my conclusions, too. it makes me not write at all. I just tear off my thoughts one after another like calendar pages, OK, keep going, don't look, it might hurt, move forwards, just forwards.

today's evening was absolutely special. Dee's lips are very sweet. her warmth is humane and soothing. I don't have to change into someone else. there was a moment when I was starting a sentence about something that's difficult for me to talk about and seeing her face lighting up I already knew she would understand. it was probably the most comforting experience of last few weeks.

I can't figure out why the accidental and unthinkable relationships I began when I was fifteen, are a hundred times more valuable, real and deep than the ones I developed as an adult – a woman aware of her sexual and personal identity, better up on the society, more confident of herself and her arguments. it's as if those early intuitive attempts, so trustful and full of childlike curiosity, were to pay off to a much larger extent than those adult games we play now in this general feeling of being lost between the need of creating our own families and social networks - and stepping back into ourselves, that primeval home. have I changed that much or has the world changed?

last night the snow fell at last. about 2 am I was coming home in a night bus; it was slippery and white, alcohol went to my head and I stuck to the moment and the fluidity of motions and the peaceful views I observed through the window, one after another. I could feel, like I frequently do these days, that this is what I am left with: this momentary anesthetization, short compensation in this state of empty hands. I have failed to build in this big and buzzing city anything I could fall back on. when the emptiness comes and I fall down, I keep on getting back to the center of the system: to my mother and father, to my Dee of a long standing who's still the same and still beautiful; to R. and his sentiments, even to A. with whom I'm still unable to communicate. everything that came later, all those people I met here, stay only on the surface, no ties, nothing promised and nothing matters if I should disappear. funny, back then I thought those few miraculous encounters, meeting people like Dee, were just the beginning, some kind of introduction to some fabulous things awaiting me in the future. but the promised city turned out to be nothing but space where I can walk away my pain, solitude and fear. and the offices of psychologists who spread their arms helplessly. and colorful people who are so difficult to reach because they feel safer if you keep the distance. more and more bills left in places I can't really afford, but then I deserve some pleasure, don't I.

it all makes me get back to my old dreams and read them like some original and only truth that can tell me more about my humanity than here and now, the real time, this day, this bread, this January snow, cause now it's all mistaken, distorted and twisted in a sad expression.

Dee and the memory of her warm hand will let me fall asleep without hydroxyzine tonight.

stay

got back to the W city, to my tiny room with bars in the window. until the end of January I have eleven days at work to go and it feels like a whole lot of time.
I'm not sure whether the music I'm listening to is actually helping me or bringing me low.

I sit and wait patiently for the thoughts of this particular person to become irrelevant and just stop coming to my mind. this is the only way. let them die out. there is no substance that could veil them. nothing bigger than this in me. nor out in tonight's world.

loving from a distance

lacuna

"eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is definitely one of the most overrated movies I've ever seen, but tonight there ain't nothing I'd love more than to become one of the characters & undergo surgery like the one they had in the story.