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.