I'm ashamed to admit that "Dziekuje" is the only Polish I picked up after a week in this lovely country. It means "Thank You," and I am indeed grateful for the opportunity to visit this country. In defense of my linguistic failings, the quantity of z's, ck's, y's, & j's in written Polish make the language formidable to the average English speaker, and it feels almost foolhardy to even try mouthing the words, since the actual pronunciation seems to bear little resemblance to the way things are spelled. So let that be a disclaimer for my ignorance....
I shared a final glorious meal with my friends before we all catch flights tomorrow to our separate corners of the world. Nicola Novellone insisted on taking the entire group out to an exquisite meal at his favorite Italian restaurant in Warsaw, a Michelin-ranked establishment called San Lorenzo. What a fantastic final culinary conclusion to a lovely week in Europe... Thank you, Nicola, for being a consummate host in your adopted home...
Managed to squeeze in a quick shopping trip before dinner tonight. Snuck away to a mall with the American delegation in search of gifts, random clothes, and whatever other delectable goodies might happen to cross our paths... I didn't find much...but that's not to say there aren't some really nice, fashionable clothes to be bought out here. Here are a couple links (some of them dated, but fashion is cyclical) to Polish fashion forums online... These beautiful folks have a look and style all their own...
International solidarity is “not an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives.” - Samora Machel
So we were scheduled to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum but had to work instead to stay on schedule. That pisses me off, because if we'd started on time earlier this week, and people weren't so hungover and inclined to party till the odd hours of the morning, we'd have had plenty of time to go check out what most claim is the city's best museum. Yes, I'm a history nerd, but c'mon! Who wouldn't like to see a museum about a 1944 insurrection against the Nazis? Instead we sat through another 3 hours looking at...ads...sheeeesh...
True Love
True love.
Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?
Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.
Look at the happy couple.
Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!
It's hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who'd want to stay within bounds?
True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.
Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.
Watched Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" film on the way to London... I do some ghost writing myself, so I figured I'd have a look. It's an interesting movie, with a great cast, and Polanski does his usual masterful job directing a compelling political thriller. It got me thinking about Polish cinema, which I really know nothing about. Sadly, as this week is unfolding I'm repeatedly confronting my own sweeping ignorance of this place and its very rich culture. It's somewhat disconcerting to confront your own profound lack of knowledge, but then, there's a lot to see in this world, and you can't be an expert on all of it. It's a privilege to have an opportunity to learn more...
Here's a poem from Wislawa Symborska, who picked up the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Fellow Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz (who I'll be writing about a lot in the next few days) penned this lovely essay regarding her work, quoted briefly below:
"In Szymborska's poetry the "we" denotes all of us living on this planet now, joined by a common consciousness, a "post-consciousness," post-Copernican, post-Newtonian, post-Darwinian, post-two-World-Wars, post-crimes-and-inventions-of-the-twentieth-century. It is a serious and bold enterprise to venture a diagnosis, that is, to try to say who we are, what we believe in, and what we think."
The End and the Beginning
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
