To sleep, perchance to dream

Last night an agent of divine retribution was dispatched from hell to my bedside. What I had done to attract the attentions of hell's minion I neither know, nor care to discuss.

It began with a dream - somehow I was making a video of a family, which was intended to be of a funny, youtube-esqe nature. During the filming of the family and their activities it becomes apparent that the mother and daughter (who are the only people I remember from the dream, although there were many more) typically spoke at cross-purposes, and were alienated from each other. The mother was around 50, a well-dresssed, well-coiffed suburbanite, who was meticulous about her house, lawn, and the pool. The daughter could be early to late twenties, or even early to mid thirties. It is hard to say, as something, be it hard living or a disease, or just a tendency toward chronic bitterness, had prematurely aged her. She had viciously short hair that may have been salt-and-pepper, but I couldn't really say, as she wore a kerchief over her head that reminded you of a cancer victim. That, combined with the drawn, bony face, and the downcast eyes, and the same dirty blue flannel shawl she wore every day combined to create an impression of illness, or at least some sort of deep discomfort.

Despite the appearance of physical weakness, or perhaps just mental exhaustion, the daughter would frequently, almost habitually, engage in activities which seemed miserably calculated in advance to demonstrate her as spontaneous, young, free and desperately fun-loving. Or to demonstrate that her mother's values were not her own. Whatever the driving force behind them, the impression I retain from them was one of awkwardness and slight embarrassment every time I bore witness to one of these scenes, in which the young skeleton in her kerchief and shawl, resembling for all the world one of the extras from Schindler's list, would by one of these displays grimly attempt to convince us all of something fundamental about herself.

The one scene that stays with me happened during a party out by the pool. It was night, and I recall thinking that the pool lights, working their way up through the water, made for a great diffuse lighting that shifted and slid over the subjects. I suppose this is my idea of what a cameraman-cum-director thinks about, though I really would have no idea. I was laying low, on my stomach, the camera practically on the ground, tilted up to catch the action, which in this case was the mother speaking of the mundane details of her impeccable existence. I don't doubt that such impeccability in household matters does indeed occupy a great deal of a person's mind and mental energies. In particular, she spoke of the pool filter, and how frequently it had to be cleaned. The words, typical of dreams, are no longer with me, but she gave the distinct impression of the tribulations she faced in keeping the pool filter free of clogging matter, all of which resulted from people's inattention to what they wore in the pool. Pieces of fuzz, lint, etc, that made one more bead in the cleaning rosary she worked daily.

It was at this moment that the daughter entered the frame, coming through the glass doors from the patio, and walked intentionally across the frame of my shot, and, removing her black leather clogs, sat herself down on the edge of the pool, right in the prominent left foreground of my camera-frame, and despite wearing heavy black cotton leggings, dunked her legs into the pool.

The sheer dream-like improbability of it, that the mother would have been speaking of clothing in the pool, and she should come from out of earshot, and immediately do exactly the thing her mother had been speaking of, seemed to lend something preternaturally sinister to the tension that existed between them. As I continued filming, she made every effort to appear that this was a thoughtless act of carefree pleasure in life, but the tension and rigidity in her back and around her neck seemed to belie this. Her mother came over to her and leaning over, addressed her as "honey," and asked her if she would be getting in the pool.

The simple presence of her mother beside her seemed to nearly push her into the pool by force of repulsion alone. As her mother bent over her and spoke, she reflexively gathered her strength, and pushing down with her arms, prepared to slide into the brightly-lit chlorine water, kerchief, brown-and-maroon plaid skirt, and shawl still in place. My last image of them was the daughter's neck and shoulders tensing to push off the edge, while the mother, still speaking, makes small frantic finger-plucks at the shawl around her daughter's shoulders, hoping to remove it, yet trying not to strangle her with it should she actually go, all the while trying to speak in a soothing voice that is only a thin veneer to the colliding forces moving inside and all around her.

But that was only a dream. I was pulled from the dream by the whining, small, high, screaming more loudly with every second with insistence possible only in machines of destruction boring down upon their targets or a mosquito bored at night. I waved him away with great vigor, wildly threshing the air around him, no doubt tumbling him (her) frantically about, sending her spinning, hopefully, out of range of being attracted back to me. Then I tried to go back to a restless and unhappy sleep.

I don't know if I succeeded or not - I may have, but it seemed not long when the intense, approaching sound of a dentist-drill came closer and closer to my ear. This time I could only muster a single wave at it - I knew it to be hopeless no matter what I did. You can't crush a mosquito in the dark - it takes two hands, anyway, and I could only muster energy to wave one. To vigorously churn the air like last time not only wakes one up unduly, but is completely ineffective. To wave one hand past one's ear may be equally useless, but it does have the advantage of less frustration at having expended lest windmilling energy into the ether.

She was back soon. I don't know how soon. It would be impossible to say. It would be impossible to say how many times I made a cup out of my hand, hoping to "scoop" her in a direction from which she might not return. I realized at one point that she had bitten my left pinky finger, and the persistent itch wound its way through my incoherent thoughts. My periodic dozing moments, if they were more than just simple tired dizziness moments, spun around options of putting my head under the blankets and sweating for a few hours, getting up and doing some work, and turning on the lights, hunting it down and killing it.

I got up after one of these waving incidents, turned on the hallway light, and got a drink of water. My plan was that the light would attract the mosquito out into the entryway, and then I could close the door, and sleep soundly. While in the kitchen I looked at the clock. It was 4:30. In a few hours I would probably get up anyway - why not now? But I didn't - I went back to bed. The next time it woke me (not many minutes later,) I grabbed my pillow, and one of the blankets, and went out to the living room.

I cleared the books off the couch, unfolded it, and tried to crawl under the blanket. It was not folded very well, and so I was cold, and my feet were not covered, and the space where the couch folded let cold air up from below, along my back. I sat up and arranged the covers more meticulously - under and over and stretching down to where it should, and closed my eyes, and began to dream again. I suppose I slept, for there was a period of blankness that I recall with a feeling of gratitude, that probably lasted a half hour before my alarm, which some days ago I had set to 5:30, went off.

I had no intention of getting up at 5:30 today, and how this alarm had suddenly got turned back on is a mystery to me. But experience does seem to show that when the universe has decided to array its forces against you, mysteriously turning on your alarm falls well within the reach of its powers. Getting up or not, I had to get up and go back into the bedroom to turn it off. I couldn't see the face of my wife through the gloomy half-dark, which was just as well. I went back out, and lay down again in the now warm blankets on the couch.

When the mosquito returned I was beyond amazed and demoralized. I had left it in the bedroom long before. Mosquitoes are not, to my knowledge, capable of cognition. How had it managed to find me in another room, past doors that were almost shut? What kind of hideous radar for misery did this creature have that made this feat possible? Did I bring it with me when I shut off the alarm? Had it set the alarm, as bait, so I would have to come back, and it could then follow me to my new resting place? Anything seemed possible at this stage, and I gave up entirely on sleep. I knew then, with the certainty of despair that the condemned has when he actually feels the vibrations of the descending guillotine blade, that divine agents were working against me, sending mosquitoes of supernatural abilities, arming my alarm, and cursing me with tension fraught dreams.

I arose and made the coffee, and washed my face, turned on the computer, and sat down with a flyswatter across my knees. Staring blearily at the screen, I would occasionally hallucinate a movement in my peripheral vision, that was most likely just the smear of sleep sliding across my yellowed vision. As it turned out, I didn't use the flyswatter. She literally rammed into my head, her whining going off in my ears suddenly like a klaxon, and I reached out both hands and clapped frentically once, twice, three times and saw a black ball and the end of a red smear across my hand, and felt a surge of joy that I had at last triumphed over one small gnat.

The summer never really arrived here, but suddenly, now that we are back at work, we get an Indian summer. So today, (Sunday,) we packed some sandwiches and books, and went out for a long walk, across the river, to another side of town, and around, to a hill on the outskirts of town, on which sit the ruins of the old town "castle." I don't know how big it was to begin with, but not very would be my guess. It was blown up as the Nazis were leaving, though no one is really sure why or by whom.

So we had a picnic there, and ate our sandwiches while looking over the river, and then went and sat on the ruins and read our books in the sun. After we had read for a while, we went to a beer garden in the town square, and sat outside, drank some beer, and kept reading and intermittently talking.

When we finished, and the sun was slowly sinking, we went for a walk around the town square, looking in all the shop windows. One of my students has a factory that makes women's bags, and apparently one of the stores on the square carry his products. So we went looking for them, and though we never found them, we had a good walk, and looked at lots of interesting designs in the windows.

Now we are home, and Cynthia is making a potato soup for dinner. It has been a good day.

Adventurous I ain't.

I have been on vacation recently, (more or less, meaning I work one day out of every two or three,) which has resulted in my sitting around far too much. Which has led me to question "what the fuck am I doing here? Why am I sitting around locked in my house when I could be out having "adventures"?

Which, of course, was the exact same question I used to ask myself at Gouno. Then I would embark upon an expedition, to . . . hmmm . . . hmmm . . . hmmmmmmm. The river! Along the way I would accidentally collect about 47 small boys who would attach themselves to me like burrs to velcro, and would proceed to spend the next 4 hours attempting to climb, swim, wade, fall-down and otherwise stumble painfully about, till I tired of the utter green magnificence, and realized that, while interesting, unless there was something more of interest to be found here, it really was Milo time. It never turned out to be much of an adventure.

So, in a similar fashion, I have recently repeatedly set out from the house, bearing with me a few items, and bravely went to . . . hmmm. A pizzeria!! A cafe!! A bar!! Well, in all honesty, I wander about first, looking for . . . something, until eventually it occurs to me that a beer might be in order. So, although I have made it out of the house, it really hasn't added up to much adventure. Until recently.

My wife and her friends, (OK, they are mine too, I suppose) decided to go to Szczawnica, (yeah, go ahead, try and pronounce it.) I agreed because it was "lovely, and so beautiful." When we got there, it finally came out, (what had been rather indirectly hinted at previously) that there really was nothing there unless we were to take bicycles, and pedal toward the old Red Cloister in the hills, on the Slovakian side of the border. Not willing to be a poor sport, (but knowing that bicycles often sense my unease with them and attack,) I agreed to rent this two-wheeled contraption, and we set off down the trail. It was fun for a while, but eventually the sheer rock cliffs around the river, the rushing brown torrent, the green forest and gently rolling hills began to merge together into a somewhat red-faced, slightly out of breath and lightly bespeckled with mud experience dominated by overtones of extreme hunger. Shortly after this fact had blossomed into full prominence in my mind was the exact moment when people began enquiring cheerfully about my welfare, and making generally pleased noises toward the surrounding plant life.

"Isn't it beautiful?" they would breathlessly enquire, looking off into the distance at something I apparently had not seen. "Look at the trees!" they would say, leading me to wonder if they were referring to something in particular, or just the fact that there were, in fact, a very large number of trees all around us. "Oooh, isn't the river nice?" Which comment led me to wonder exactly what the difference between a nice and not-nice river might be, and if I really wanted to find out.

It wasn't too long after this that a sort of semi-detached hallucinatory rationality set in, and I began to analyse what this scene required to really bring out the beauty, and make it a really pleasant, top-notch experience. And it occurred to me that if we could just knock down some of the trees, and build a really nice art-museum which could have a nice coffee shop/bar with large, plate-glass windows maintained spotlessly clean, through which one might stare at the nice trees,and the rushing river, while drinking a good espresso, and pondering the delicacies that the delicate young thing in the apron was carrying to other patrons every time you glanced up from your book or conversation, then we could REALLY have something here.

Now, it rather deserves mentioning at this point that sometime prior we had crossed the border into Slovakia, and sometime prior to that my bicycle had begun revealing its true nature. Whenever it was necessary to pedal hard, the chain would attempt to slip gears, resulting in your feet flying off the pedals, and your teeth flying toward the handle-bars. But, of course, as long as you changed gears, (which it could kind of, sort of, do) you could avoid this problem, unless you were going up anything much resembling an incline, in which case you were shit out of luck, and might as well get off and push.

As we progressed further and further away from the cluster of houses behind us which I mentally referred to rather wistfully as "civilization," my annoyance at the monotony of nature's majesty increased proportionally with my hunger, till it was difficult to refrain, when asked "How ya' doin, Matt?" from answering "What part of mud-spattered, out of breath, hungry and sore-assed would you care me to comment on?"

Then quite suddenly my self-pitying reverie was interrupted as my bicycle began doing a fair imitation of a drunk man on stilts. I slammed on the brakes, (to much cursing behind me,) and began fiddling with the front wheel, which was flopping back and forth freely, loose enough to be able to rub the brakepads on either side. I immediately could see that this was an emergency of the first order, and would require helicopter evacuation. To calm my sense of rising panic, I immediately ate my share of the lunch, which helped significantly. As my belly slowly filled with sausage and focaccio bread, I nourished myself mentally with thoughts of myself walking, pushing this damned infernal machine, suffering every step of the way, encountering pitying looks from passing hikers as I struggled up, and then down, one gentle incline after another, making my way back to civilization, where there would be beer and over-priced kielbasa.

My loving wife, eventually sensing that something gloomy was missing from her life, came back to find me. Despite all attempts to reason with her, she insisted that giving up was not the logical answer to most of the difficulties life presents one with, and suggested rather that we cast about for some tools with which to fix the problem. I half-heartedly tried the nuts with my fingers, and was delighted to find that they were rock-solid-tight. There would be no fixing it. Eventually the other members of our party returned, and after some debate, in which I felt I was doing well, and moving them steadily toward the idea that I must, for the good of all, begin walking back, Peter suddenly grabbed the bike, turned it back over (I had been enjoying the sight of the damn thing with its wheels in the air, like some sort of helpless beetle on its back) and pronounced he would ride it.

I cannot describe the humiliation of my defeat. After such a fortuitious turn of events, to be robbed of your martyrdom at the last second by someone who casually shrugs and takes your burden of suffering upon themselves and cheerfully soldiers forward was almost more than I could take. I fought back bitter tears of resentment as I watched him ride off, wheel wobbling like a wobbly wheel, while I was left with the better, still functioning bike. I was left with no choice but to follow.

As it turned out, the cloister was only another 10 minutes of muddy riding away, and as they had beer and over-priced kielbasa available there, they did a pretty good imitation of rudimentary civilization. After beer and kielbasa, I could no longer stomach the guilt of allowing someone else, (regardless of how brave,) to continue carrying what by all rights should be MY ticket to feeling sorry for myself, and so insisted that I would ride it back, despite the fact that he claimed to enjoy it, as it made the ride more interesting.

Which, it turns out, it did. The rubbing against the brakepads, the extra-hard peddling to overcome the extra resistance, the constant rythmic screech, and the side-to-side wobble were just the things for taking one's mind off the over-abundance of all things natural currently encroaching aggressively on one's person, among which had to be counted a fine layer of sweat.

The trip back seemed to take much less time than the trip out, which seems always to be the case. When we got back I forgot to dismount a little ways out and push it mournfully in, which meant we had to stand about longer, and stubbornly refuse to pay for some minutes before Rachel, for the benefit and better comprehension of the stubbornly insisting owner, did a fantastic impression of pushing the bike uphill and downhill, and sweating egregiously on the long walk, to the cloister and back. Which finally did the trick, and saved me 3 dollars.

On the busride home, before falling asleep, I pondered the whole concept of adventure, and finally came to the idea that adventure only occurs once one steps out of the zone within one's control, and allows chance and Mr. Murphy to play an unusually large role in determining one's happiness and comfort quotient. My final conclusion (which I suspect most people just grasp intuitively,) was unless one has a specific worthy goal in mind, (ie, we are going to hike through the woods to see an old temple in Cambodia) which will recompense one for the time, discomfort and expense, one really might be better off watching someone else's adventure on the discovery channel. Unless you just get off on mud and trees.

Or, alternatively, you can factor out the time and expense, add in extra pay for the discomfort, and set a price on the experience. At 30 zloty an hour, plus 5 zloty extra for discomfort pay, I have 35 zloty per hour over the course of 6 hours, (that includes time spent waiting for the bus) which is 210 zloty, plus 6.70 times 2 for the bus ride, plus 20 zloty for lunch, brings us to 233.40 zloty. Then, all I have to do is figure out how much satisfaction, monetarily speaking, I derive from telling the story. Roughly, I would say about 7 zloty worth. Maybe 8. Then it is just a matter of telling the story enough times to repay myself in satisfaction for the time and expense the story cost me in getting. Which means I only need to tell it another 28.175 times to break even.

Women are the answer!!

Intersections of any sort are fascinating. Intersections are frequently where it is at, (whatever it may be.) Intersections are the reason the blood begins to smear and the contemplation comes to a crushed conclusion. Take the intersections out of a story, and you will have one long, self-involved noun. Physics equations show the balance between intersecting forces. Crashes occur at the intersections. Boxing is nothing but dancing while looking for a good intersection between Fist A and Jaw B. If I were either the assassin or the detective, I would still be looking for the intersections.

The reason for this is that it is when two forces meet that eddies and swirls and counter-currents and whirlpools are born. Currents under momentum suddenly meet, are deflected, transfer forces to other parts, cross again, re-establish direction, and shoot out under greater momentum than before, moving with greater force as the new single, larger, mass establishes a new direction that synergizes the incoming force of both.

A week or so ago I wrote my brother an email in which I laid out, in not precisely exact order, the issues I would most like to see prioritized by our next president. They were:

Climate change
The health of our environment
The population boom crisis
World poverty
Education
Human rights
Women's rights
Civil rights/Political freedom
Employment
The international economy
Various domestic economies.

The order of importance, (rough and subject to change as it is) is based on my perception of the number of people who would be affected over the period of time the problem affects us. Thus, you can imply, I perceive the problems posed by climate change and/or pollution to affect a wider number of people for a longer amount of time than the overpopulation of the earth. Or, conversely, I view the beneficial by-products of one as being greater than the other - so it could be said that I view fostering education in an area as producing further long-term benefits for a greater number of people than fostering civil rights, or the local economy. However, Education is placed higher on the list than civil rights or employment because it will result in not only a better educated person, who calls upon a wider set of resources to formulate solutions to his problems, but results in a more employable person, who will in time promote his local economy. Thus some issues may be more important because they exert a "trickle-down" influence on others in the list. To go further, the newly educated person, who now enjoys greater employment opportunities, who is operating in an expanding economy, will most likely then begin to seek greater civil protections from his state, thus increasing his civil rights. So we see that some issues on the list could also exert a "trickle-up" effect.

Once one begins to consider these "intersections" it becomes apparent that the most critical issues may not be the most important, since some, ostensibly of less import, could effect greater results among a wider number of areas, at possibly less expense to resources invested. It is these intersections producing synergistic relations among elements which should most grab our attention, and to which we should direct a greater proportion of our resources.

Unravelling the ball of string from the perspective of intersections necessitates asking slightly different questions. Rather than asking which issues are most pressing, or affect the greatest number of people, perhaps we should be asking which particular issues affect the largest number of other issues. In other words, which issue enjoys the greatest number of intersections?

We have already belabored the quite evident symbiotic relationships between employment, economy, poverty, civil rights and human rights. It does not take much thought to establish a similar relationship between population growth, pollution, and contributing to climate change. The more people eating, drinking, pissing and making plastic, (barring the emergence of new technologies) the greater our collective carbon emissions. The less people producing babies who require plastic diapers and toys, the less people who will someday leave on lights, drive cars, and replace remote-controls for their numerous TV sets.

To my mind, then, the way to most effectively reduce poverty, grow economies, promote civil rights, reduce pollution and thus avoid worsening the effects of climate change are to A. promote employment, and B. discourage reproduction. The obvious solution proposed by the intersection of these two concerns is mandating a 17 hour working day for all males, with selective forced sterilizations where any remaining over-abundance of amorous energy might necessitate intervention. The main problem with this scenario, unfortunately, is the reduced energy levels brought about by the lengthened working day, so critical for reducing population levels, may cripple the ability of the individual to agitate for greater rights, thus short-circuiting the synergy of our cycle.

(The other problem being that governments employing forced sterilizations have a record of being taken out of power at the first opportunity. Apparently people resent them.)

Education has already been named as a factor which has an immediate and obvious bearing on not only personal efficacy, but employability, and economic growth. Could education also be used to lower the birthrates? Some agencies have tried the direct approach, educating the population regarding birth control, such as condoms and contraceptives. The main problem encountered is that men intuitively recoil from stuffing their most acutely concentrated collection of nerve-endings into a tight rubber bag with a constrictive rubber-band at the end, before engaging in something commonly thought to be "fun," simply because the woman is concerned about avoiding another pregnancy. Men are rather comparatively short-sighted at the best of times, and famously so as the moment of truth approaches. The pressing physiological concerns hardwired into their being to take precedence over rationality tend to override most other concerns for a thankfully brief period, which has been known to result in shortsightedness during, chagrin shortly thereafter, and offspring some time later.

Fortunately for all concerned, the reproductive process typically entails the presence of another individual, for whom the "oops" factor presents a slightly greater measure of inconvenience, and who thus tends to favor a more reasoned approach to reproduction, if at all possible. Unfortunately for all concerned, among the majority of societies, this cooler-headed half of our species is traditionally expected to bow before the wishes of her husband at home, is often credited with less native intelligence, and is endowed with less political power in the society at large. This results in lessened earning potential, as men are more favored for jobs, as a result of having been favored for more education. Thus the woman, who could naturally act as a brake on the reproductive rate, is, due to her lower social position, economic dependence and lower level of education, placed at a significant disadvantage when attempting to reason with her more physically, socially, politically and economically powerful partner.

The solution, then, to this particular confluence of unfortunate facts is general education for women. Reproductive education alone is clearly insufficient to act as a counterweight to generally held perceptions regarding reproductive roles and rights. What is needed is education for women which results in greater economic independence, higher social standing, and improved sense of their own legal rights. Thus a woman who does not wish to risk pregnancy could negotiate with her partner on firmer, more equal ground, to the long-term benefit of all.

Research upholds, and further reinforces this conclusion. Not only is women's education the single greatest correlating factor with falling birthrates, but an increase in women's education also leads to a greater improvement in the health of the society at large than an equal increase in education among men. This is because of the money which a woman earns, a greater portion is saved, and invested back into the family. A greater proportion is spent on household and collective needs, as well as on children's needs, such as clothing and healthcare. Contributing to the cycle is the fact that the lower number of births per family results in freeing up more resources to be invested into the education and advancement of of the already existing children, thus ensuring the continuation of the benefits onto the next generation.

So just as education has an impact on employment, the economy, and on one's perception of one's natural rights, so education of the world's largest marginalized group could have a direct impact on population growth and pollution, in addition to applying more hands to our economies, and more minds to our remaining problems. Education of women, and the furtherance of women's rights, is a key component to every issue listed above, from reducing worldwide poverty to promoting the health of our environment. And who knows, it could well be a woman scientist who eventually encounters the key to reversing climate change.

The America Second Party

I don't suppose there are many of my stateside brethren who are currently unaware that the US is going through yet another Presidential cycle. It seems every time you turn on the telly you are confronted with some aging patrician with politician's hair and smile and an indistinct air of oiliness about the way his shirt sleeves are rolled up. Sometimes you even get more than one of them on the screen at the same time, and I begin to weep and dry-heave for America.

In the midst of writing my brother a wandering email-almost-epistle yesterday, I had occasion to ask myself the question, "What are the issues that are most important to me?" And, oddly enough, "Domestic Security" didn't even come up. I didn't realize it till just this instant, but it's true - the main issue that is currently cornerstoning every Republican's platform never even entered my mind. Well, I suppose that just shows why I will never be president.

In fact, my whole list is replete with examples of why I will never be president. Frankly, almost everything on the list is horridly America-Second. I am an America-Seconder! Does such a designation exist? I must go check . . .

OK, not so surprisingly, the America First Party has been reborn, and surprisingly, I half agree with one-quarter of what they say. However the America-Second designation doesn't exist at all. The closest thing is America's Second Harvest, a nationwide foodbank. So now that I have finally found my true political designation, what are the philosophical underpinnings to this one-man movement?

Basically, the belief that the already best-fed can go to the back of the line for the buffet, and wait till others are served. Primarily, it is my belief that the already richest and most powerful nation should not place economic growth as the primary consideration for making larger decisions. It is not necessary that we, the rich, continue to grow richer at the expense of taking action on other issues.

Secondly, that power, true power, is only partially derived from having the biggest guns. When we see a large, overly-muscled policeman humbly doing his job, and assisting small children with finding their mommies, we feel a natural surge of goodwill toward those who protect the weak, care for the insignificant and small, and seek the good of others; how much more so when it is a person who could by right of force be overbearing and insufferable without fear of consequence? Yet when the same fellow swaggers, and appears to glory in his strength, his untouchability, and shows even the slightest disregard for the well-being others, we naturally detest him, and wish to resist him, for we see two of the most dangerous traits of humanity combined in one entity: selfishness, and a desire for power.

To those who say that they wish to restore American greatness, and American primacy, I say this - you can spend all the time you want trying to herd cats with a stick, and they still won't listen. But strap a sausage to your ass and start walking toward the milk dish, and every single one of them will follow you. When the rest of the world, (and there are some who are just too culturally blinded to see it even when it is true) sees that America is leading toward a better future for all, most will listen, and most will follow, more whole-heartedly and with less effort on our part, because they perceive that we seek a greater good.

I fully recognize that this sea change will not be immediately evident, that not all nations will be able to perceive this, or believe it, and that the great majority will continue to seek their own good as a primary goal. Be that as it may - the difference between a tycoon and a leader is the tycoon seeks his own good by whatever means are available, and the leader seeks the good of those who are led, often at personal cost to himself, by operating according to deeply held values. I leave it to you which word you would rather see applied to our country.

For the truth is this - as travel, exchange of information and transaction of commerce occur between ever further removed points around our world, we will find the common good ever more important. What issue affected only a region, a nation, or even a continent before, now comes to affect all of us, as everything from trade goods to market volitility to infestations and infectious diseases spread more quickly and widely than ever before. Whole labor forces move across borders en masse these days, bring with them the power of their sweat and the problems of their own country. Interdependence is the inescapable future, and the nation that recognises this and leads the way toward a more healthy interdependence will be the global leader, and will, on some level, earn the respect and admiration of those it assisted and led.

And that will constitute a greater power.

Max

I have been more than fortunate in my life. I am, in fact, one of the most fortunate of men on our entire planet. I am exceedingly wealthy in friends.

Which is not to say I have that many. The contrary statement could well be true. I have only a few. Yet those I have are friends exhibiting qualities by which the word itself ought to be defined. Among this small number I count Max, and his wife Maria.

This post is about Max. It has a specific purpose, intent and aim. It is, (and I am not bothered to say it) intended to prompt Max to continue writing. The aim, intent and purpose of this posting is to inspire not guilt, but inspiration. By addressing here the role Max has played in my life, I hope to prompt, persuade, prod, propel and provoke Max into writing again.

You see, Max has achieved what few others could ever lay claim to - Max has created a community, in his own name. Without intention of ever doing so, Max has brought together people on different sides of our world, by sheer interest in his words - in the words he has written.

Max writes (normally) everyday. Nonsense shit, often. Pointless but interesting shit, frequently. And not so occasionally, true gems. Things that make the whole internet sit up, stop fondling its own balls, and pay attention. Suddenly, because of something Max said, people's inboxes fill up with mail from unknown and nevertheless welcome quarters, because we are discussing something that Max said. And underlying the whole conversation, often between strangers, is the idea that "you must be a half-way decent person, if Max is your friend, (despite the fact that you sound like an idiot..)" And oddly enough, the theory seems to hold true.

Max has thus created around himself, by investing nothing more than 10 minutes a day, an online community. A group of people who, if they met each other for the first time, would know a lot about the other already, simply by virtue of having discussed the ideas that Max leaves us with. Thus, technology combined with brilliance and persistence has made, or re-made in a new form, that most basic of human necessities - a community.

I met Max my first year of college - an impressionable year by any standard. Max was an unmoving beacon of stability even then; he was a rock, upon which events and turmoil (of which there would be plenty,) smashed and spent their energies.

We spent much of the first semester of our acquaintance discussing literature, and by the end of the first month of our acquaintance, had established a deep and lasting respect for each other. One of the first things I noticed about Max was the quality of his friends. I can assume he noticed the same about me, as my friends and roommates of that period were, and are, people of the highest caliber. Max and I spent afternoons sitting in fields discussing literature, liquor and love, (to steal a phrase from him, "the quivering relations between man and woman.") Which was appropriate as Max was getting married that summer.

I came to recognise a quality of thoughtfulness, a premeditated air to all that he did. Max was no fly-by-nighter. Max spent time deciding what he wanted, where his effort would be spent, and then moved with conscious steps in that direction. His solidity of character was to serve as an anchor to my own life later.

The second year of our acquaintance, Max made his home in a truck-stop. He came to have his own table in the greasy-spoon cum-drunkard hangout which masqueraded intermittently as a business enterprise under the name Stateline Cafe. He would stay at his table, drinking coffee (50 cents, at that point, bought you all you could drink for as long as you could stay,) for 24 hours at a time. He achieved a grudging respect from the toothless waitstaff, and the hapless owner, who would even tolerate his books and such remaining on the table when he had to leave for class, from whence he would return immediately thereafter. I do not recall if Max ever received flying jelly-packets to the head, with the salutation "Hey, college-boy!" (as I did,) at 2:00 in the morning, but if he did, no doubt he handled it with dignity and aplomb.

Because that was what characterised Max. Max was steady, steadfast, sure, with temerity, poise, firmness and a presence of person that could put many global leaders to shame. If I had to, I would compare Max with Chirac. Always talking, always sincere, and always sounding suspiciously as though he knows you know he is right, if you would have just taken the time to listen earlier.

This precise quality is what has allowed Max to beget "the intangible extasy of Maxness," a concept that has yet to take the world by storm, but will probably end up becoming the intellectual forebear of a great philosophical movement someday, on par with the "Chicken soup for (insert your demographic name here)" series of books.

The intangible extasy of Maxness is less complicated than many of the worlds leading paradigm-arrangement systems. It has as its underlying belief something we can all comprehend and admit into the realm of possiblity - that inside Max there is a small man, called the Ego-man. He is probably round in shape, and broadcasts a general air of vague sketchiness about his character, the kind of fellow you wouldn't want to turn your back on, for suspicion he would be found either smearing your wife's chest with chocolate and bad intent, or cleaning the last scrap of meat off your chihuahua's bones by the time you turned back round again. (Were it not for the total absorption he showed in his current task, which precludes all else.) He is clad in nothing more than a loincloth, red body paint, and abundant chesthair. Said fellow has all the self-conciousness restraint of a mongoose in a chicken coop, and spends his whole day beating out interesting rythms on his drum.

And while he beats his drum, and admires his own chesthair clumped with paint, he dances a little dance, and chants a big chant. And he chants :
Max is Great.
Fuckin Great.
Yah, yup, yum and yahoo.
Great fuckin Max.
Max eats a cheesburger
cuz its fuckin great
Max read his book
cuz its fuckin great.
Great, great, great,
Max is great.

And then he goes on to sing the cigarette song, followed by the coffee song, the Maria song, the family song, the work song, and then he sings an antihistab song, and then he starts again, with minor variations on the theme.

And the fact is, if you sit around Max for too long, you begin to hear the song, too. And you start to sing along. But you don't realise it until he gets up to go to the loo, at which point you have that odd feeling that you are singing a song that has left the room. And then you understand.

I ain't overjoyed

In retrospect, this realization, like many, has been a long time in coming. It is always that way, at least for me. Once I realize something, I also suddenly realize that I have in fact known this for some time now, the only difference being that it has finally become so damn painfully apparent that a retarded monkey under heavy sedation in a sensory-deprivation chamber would have taken notice by now.

This flash of insight came, just like its predecessors, in a moment when my emotions were on the more extreme end of my emotional spectrum. I was walking along, pushing a bicycle whose mere sight I have come to loathe, and trying to make up lame anti-bicycle jokes.

Q: "Why did God give bicyclists hands?"
A: "It'd be pretty difficult to push your bicycle home without 'em!"

This was the 2nd time this bicycle had been out of the house in about 2 months. During the majority of those 2 months, it was languishing with a flat tire which I used as an excuse to avoid having to use the damn thing. When I finally got it fixed, and back out the door, now it had another flat, leaving me stranded about an hour and a half's walk from home.

So as I walked my stupid walk, and joked my stupid jokes, I had plenty of time to notice the crappy architecture of the buildings I walked past, and the shabbiness of many of the stores, whose bald and paint-skin chipped mannequins clustered in faux conversation outside dusty-windowed stores. I noticed that what few buildings didn't look as though the designer nursed a grudge against humanity had their plaster falling off in large chunks, revealing the brickwork underneath. And everywhere, all the buildings are coated in a coal-smoke residue that could pass for the color of dirty dark concrete, were it not for the streaks under the windows on either side, where the water washed off the sills, and left cleaner streaks to stand out.

The sidewalks are all made of individual concrete paving stones, frequently broken, pushing up out of the ground at odd angles, grass growing up between the blocks. My useless pointless fucking bike bounces and rocks over the jutting, angled blocks, and I curse boredly to myself.

All the while the cars go by, the sun shines down like something I haven't seen since a past life (which is not so far off, in case you were wondering,) the birds and bugs squawk and screech, and life is generally pleasant, considering. Then suddenly it occurs to me. This general pleasantness in outdoor life, this hideous lack of consideration for they eyes of passer-bys on the part of any architects, this small, humming, inbred small-town self-satisfaction - WHERE HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE? And the answer comes to me - Hesston, Kansas.

Now, if your life has seen anything signficant happen during the last 9 years, this may be an indication that you are unfamiliar with this particular metropolis, so allow me to help you. The wikipedia entry for Hesston, Kansas, which has no pictures whatsoever, (due to the fact that there is nothing there worth taking pictures of except 2 girls who have been raised on nothing but corn and milk, and there are other websites for that sort of thing,) states that the population in 2000 was 3,509. And since credible research has demonstrated that the median IQ is indeed rising, we can assume that the population of Hesston has probably declined since 2000, since no person with the braincells necessary to steal candy from a person in a semi-vegetative state would remain in Hesston. I know this because I had a friend who lived his life in a highly functional semi-vegetative state, and even he left Hesston.

Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston. How can this be? How can a town of more than 100,000 remind me so much of a town of 3,500? Well, I suppose it is due largely to the magical, reality-bending forcefield which seems to be present in most small towns, which make them all resemble one another. But that aside, let's try to reason it out.

Is it the physical town itself? Well, yes and no. I mean, the buildings are in a dreadful state of disrepair - no doubt about it. Whereas Hesston was, on the whole, very well kempt. But Nowy Sacz is improving everyday, and slowly becoming a cleaner, nicer, less gray place to live, which is encouraging to see. When I first arrived here, I puzzled long and hard over the buildings that were painted on one or two or three sides, with the other side(s) left concrete gray. I pondered - had they run out of paint? Was paint truly that expensive, that the building had to be painted in stages? (This was not such an unreasonable assumption, as you could see many houses that had obviously been built in stages with the material available at that time.) It was only over the summer that I saw workmen erect scaffolding, and apply six-inch blocks of styrofoam all around the building, and then cover it in a light layer of mud, and paint it that I realized . . . they were insulating and painting at the same time. And the combined cost was indeed too much, so they were doing the buildings in stages, improving the heat retention and the appearance, one side at a time. Nowy Sacz, after the long, dark night of communism, is indeed on the mend. But it still has a long way to go.

Is it the variety of things to do, the limited offerings of entertainment in this small town? Well, that certainly may have something to do with it. I would hesitate to leap upon it as the definitive answer, since there is an occasional movie we can see here in English or Spanish, and there are a sprinkling of restaurants, of the Chinese, Polish, Pizza and Kebab variety, from which we can choose. But that gastrological cornucopia aside, (please note ironic tone) the fact remains that the streets are quite still by 9:30, and the nightlife here consists mainly of sitting in chairs around a candle in the center of the table, and listening to your friend tell a story quite similar, but different in some details, than the one he told you last week.

Is it the people? Well, yes and no. I mean, the people in Hesston were dreadfully closed off. If you hadn't grown up there, and molested the same cattle as them, well, you just weren't family. We could communicate in the same language, but there was still a barrier between us.
People in Nowy Sacz are far more open to outsiders than Hesstonites. At least the one's I deal with are far more intelligent in general, and open to outside influences, than their counterparts in Hesston. But, at the end of the day, there is still a barrier between the great majority of them, and yourself. In large part they were bred, born, and will live and die in this town. With some exceptions, their conception of life outside of Poland is no greater than my conception of a life limited to a 400 mile radius.

Which is not to say that they aren't splendid people. The ones I've hung out with have been generous, kind, and largely polite to a fault. You certainly couldn't say the same for most Spaniards. But despite their politeness, generosity and kindness, there remains a barrier between you - that you will never truly understand them, nor they you.

So . . . Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston, Kansas. And the fact is, every single instant that I spent in Kansas I now regard as having been a waste of my precious, God-granted life, and thus, an offense against the Almighty himself. I wish I had not been so stubbornly tough in my youth, and insisted that "when the going gets tough, the tough get rough," and had rather stuck by the maxim, "when the going gets tough, the smart move and let the dumbasses carry on in their stead." Yet, what am I to do? Having finally realized (what has been a long time coming,) that I am definitely not overjoyed to be living here, am I going to move?

The fact is, no. The job-hunting season is largely past, and I made a commitment to this school. But if you think that is enough to keep me here, you don't know your Matt very well. The real fact is that I am here for a reason; I am on a mission, and I won't quit till I get what I want. I am getting an advanced degree, which will be one more stepping-stone on the way to my ultimate goal of getting a PhD. I always said I could do time in prison, if need be. And this is a far cry from prison, but I still feel like I am doing time. I may not be locked up, but I still ain't overjoyed.

Where have all the Ninjas gone?

I recall, upon returning to the U.S. in the year of our Lord, 1985, ninjas. Not any specific ninjas, mind, but ninjas galore peeking out from a million places. The world, (or central California, at least) was absolutely infested with ninjas. Turn on the telly, walk down the toy aisle, or enter the video store, and ninjas came flying feet first at you from around every corner. There were white ninjas, black ninjas, grey ninjas and red ninjas. Rambo faced off against ninjas in his cartoon, (if you were so fortunate as to catch that particular artistic marvel,) as did G.I. Joe. Cobra was about half staffed with ninjas, if memory serves. There were teenage ninjas, little kid ninjas (sometimes in groups of 3,) caucasian ninjas, black ninjas, and of course Asian ninjas. Well, Japanese ones, anyway. The burning question of whether a Chinese person could ever become a ninja never seemed to get addressed - I have to assume that the ninja schools turned away all the Chinese aspirants, telling them to "Go kung-fu yourself," or something like that. Ninjas were so ubiquitous in the mid 80's that we couldn't even confine them to one species, (witness Splinter the rat, and the Turtles,) let alone a single ethnic group or neighborhood. There were ninjas-a-plenty in Beverly Hills, if you recall. Enough so that they formed a club, and went about ninja-ing things. (I can't be more specific because I don't really know what ninjas did when not hanging from ceilings, moving incredibly stealthily, or throwing small, very sharp objects that result in instant, fantastically silent mortality. I just did a web search, though, and actually found an answer to the question -
Q: "What do ninjas do when they are not cutting off heads?"
A: "Most of their freetime is spent flying, but sometimes they stab."
I am glad we got that sorted out.

My point, however, is that something very dramatic has happened among the ninja populations over the past 20 years. Today we have far less ninjas than we used to. I attribute this to one of two things (or maybe a confluence of both factors.) First, global climate change, and secondly, the return of Pirates. I will explain in greater detail later.

The Long Walk

I went on a walk yesterday, which turned out to be a long walk, which, though completely beside the point, is the title of a Stephen King book (which he wrote under a pseudonym) in which people compete for a prize by walking as long as possible, non-stop. If your pace sinks under x number of miles per hour, you are warned twice, then shot. And toward the end of my long walk yesterday, I was wishing someone would shoot me.

I began by walking to John's house. (On the way to John's house I saw the most fabulous VW - but anyway.) John is in this course with Cynthia, and is from Southern Arkansas. Cynthia had told me there was a fellow from AR in her course, and the instant I laid eyes on him I knew he was the Arkansan. He is painfully sincere, and a bit serious, and all in all a wonderful person. The night before we had watched a movie together with 4 other people, and John alone voted to watch "Hotel Rwanda," while everyone else opted for the "Tenacious D" movie. I think he was a little disappointed that we would choose to fill our minds with fluff and nonsense instead of watching a modern-day genocide, but frankly, I don't need a reminder to remain aware that humanity is still just as shitty as it has always been. That, and I had already seen it. Anyhoo, after the movie John asked if anyone would be interested in going to see where the Jewish ghetto of Krakow had been. I had just been reading about it earlier in the day, and so I jumped at the chance. So at 8:00 I set out from Cynthia's apartment and walked the half-hour to John's apartment.

From there we walked toward the town square, and I took pictures along the way of all the architectural oddities I saw as I went. Although it was warming up, it was still just a hair chilly, so I was glad I had brought my jacket. Past the main square we finally found a bakery that was open, and bought a couple of donuts. About 30 minutes later we had crossed the Vistula river, and made our way into the neighborhood where the ghetto used to be. We were talking rapidly, continuously about this and that, and so after about 10 minutes walking in one direction, we would note that we had somehow walked past where we wanted to be, and yet hadn't seen anything. This only happened about 3 or 4 times before we started to pay more attention.

We were looking for the remnants of the wall that the Nazis had erected around the ghetto. I had read somewhere that the wall was built in the form of Jewish gravestones. I found this fantastic on one hand (I mean, why bother?) and thoroughly believable on the other, (there are numerous instances that illustrate how the Nazis really went out of their way to lend a personalised touch to the suffering they dispensed; so if true, it would really be just one more example of their great attention to detail which probably assures they will be the interior decorators of Hell.) John, on the other hand, had heard that it was built FROM Jewish gravestones, which seemed similarly fantastic, with a nice touch of profaning-the-sacred / macabre. I couldn't wait to find out.

We were taking our fifth pass through the area when John finally noted the map said the wall was located "behind the school." Oh. No wonder we didn't see it. Sure enough, there was a school, and after some discussion of how we were going to get over the fence, we noticed the gate was left open, so we went through.

Behind the school was the children's playground, hedged in by a cliff-face on one end, into which ran a large grey wall, in the shape of headstones. Sho-nuff. That was it. Visually unimpressive on its own, it was nevertheless a daunting sight when you stop to consider it was erected in order to contain people who, like cattle, would later be led to slaughter. The old man's-inhumanity-to-man bit is certainly getting old, and should by now be considered just one more of the characteristic oddities inherent to the human species. But all that aside, it was interesting to ponder.

Especially given the juxtaposition with the children's playground, I couldn't help but try and imagine what different view on history they would have, growing up playing quite literally in the shadow of the holocaust. Would this make history more real, more alive, more a part of your reality, or less, and somehow diminished by its day-to-day hum-drum presence in your life? Someone once spoke of the banality of evil, and I can think of no greater example - an erection of clay, stone, mortar, designed to facilitate the murder of thousands, which now stands innocently sheltering children in the playground, with no real mark left by its former use.

From there we walked to the factory rented and run by Oskar Schindler, of Schindler's list fame. The sign still hangs over the gate, and for a small price you can go inside. John wasn't interested, as he wanted to get on to doing other things, but once again it was interesting to see a spot in history which had now become a spot in film history as well. Incidentally, though the movie seems to portray Schindler as becoming less of a womaniser, and growing a conscience, to the point of practically becoming a full on bhodisatva by the end of the movie, he seems to have kept his flaws intact to the end. A bit of reading reveals that despite having no money, he continued to spend profligately, living off donations from the Jews he had saved, staying in nice hotels, gambling and maintaining expensive girlfriends, frequently running out of money before asking those he saved for some more. But that said, the fact remains that he spent all he made during the war on saving people's lives, in the face of great personal danger, and as such deserves to be remembered as righteous.

After this we went to a coffee shop that John had heard of, which supposedly roasted and ground their own coffee. I suppose this makes them the equivalent of a micro-brewery, but with coffee instead of beer. I had a cappuccino and John had something called "spinach cake" which turned out to be a lovely, flaky, spinach-containing pastry, which they had liberally doused in ketchup. John was duly horrified, having never seen imagined such barbarism could exist. I had to laugh, as I had seen this sort of tragedy occur with pizza, but hadn't imagined the practice could also be applied to pastries.

Following our coffee, we went in search of the mound under which the original "King Krak" was buried - for whom Krakow is named. After some walking in a generally upwards direction, we saw an old brick fortification, and an old, tiny chapel. John wandered off to try and locate this mound, while I wandered off to see the tiny chapel. It was locked, but after wandering behind the chapel, it appeared that there was a way through the fence around the old fortification. So in I went.

It turned out that I was not inside the fence now, but rather running between two fences, and shuffling along a path that was overhung by trees, overgrown with weeds, and over-littered with bottles. Walking further along I came to a large hole in the fence, which led into some brambles and trees next to the fortification.

I called John on his mobile phone, and it turned out he was right behind me. He didn't want to go in, so I went in alone. I little ways in I started hearing voices, and it turned out there were three people in there, doing some sort of caretaking, which today consisted of using a small hatchet to chop down a tree growing too close to the fortifications. I worked my way back out to John, and we wandered around the edge of the fence, and at a certain point were able to clearly see what they were doing inside, and laughed that they had nothing more than a hatchet to attack this tree with.

After much ducking and shuffling we emerged on the top of a huge cliff, and looked down to see a children's playground. The whole scene looked vaguely familiar, and we suddenly realised that we were now on top of the cliff which had the fragment of the ghetto wall at the bottom. Without realising it, we had made a full circle, and come back to where we started, albeit 30 metres higher.

After a bit more bush-whacking, (we ran through some stinging nettles) we saw the mound off in the distance. It was difficult to see how to get their via the roads, as there was a large, fenced highway between us and it, but a path through the trees and nettles and underbrush led off in that direction, so we took it.

Within about 5 minutes the path dropped us down in front of a bridge which led over the highway, and toward the mound. After a bit more hiking up a large hill, we finally came to the base of the mound, and went up, up, up the steep side. The view from the top was amazing, as I had never realised that Krakow had so many outlying areas. We were, by all rights, on the outside of Krakow proper, but the suburbs and high-rise communist blocks of flats continued for a long ways further out. We could see the church in the main square, where we had started out, and the distance between various famous buildings.


Then we headed back. It was a long walk back, and once we got back to the main square, it was 1:30, and after watching a break-dancing exhibition, John went home to begin his coursework for tomorrow. I stayed, and meandered in and out of shops, perusing guidebooks of Krakow, and noting the angle from which they photographed various landmarks, making mental notes to try the same myself. Cynthia called and asked me to find a cassette tape for her - I had not bought a cassette tape in the last 15 years, I think, so it was a novel experience. Then I went back into the main square, and tried again to capture what has always eluded me - the beauty of the cathedral in the main square.

The two towers of the cathedral are of differing heights, but that is not exceptional in Poland. I have never seen it anywhere else, but here there are plenty of churches whose two front towers are different heights, and done in differing styles. But the one in Krakow has a story behind it. The two towers were built by two brothers, both architects. The younger wanted to go faster, and further, and so outstripped his brother, but due to lack of planning, had to build narrower and narrower as the height increased. At some point the towers became a towering point of contention between the two (sorry, couldn't resist,) and one brother stabbed the other one to death. Oddly enough, though, no one agrees on which brother killed which. Some say the brother who built the taller tower killed the other to keep him from surpassing his. Others say the brother who built the shorter tower killed the other out of jealousy. Some stories report the murdering brother then comitted suicide, while others report he was executed. Either way, they have a knife hanging on the wall in the cloth hall, which is undoubtedly the very implement used by whichever brother for whatever reason before ending up however he did.

The cloth hall itself is a beautiful covered passageway, with shops down each side, and with a line of back-to-back stalls down part of the middle. In here they sell wood carvings, chess sets, amber jewelery, beads, toys, reproduction swords, polish-folk dresses, and any object that can be inscribed with the Polish flag. All along the upper portion of the curved walls run windows that let in daylight, and between them are painted the coats of arms of various cities. In two side-by-side rows down the center run hanging lights. The overall effect is quite pleasing, and makes a tired tourist stop and think - "Now this is exactly the kind of place that would be the perfect to get my wallet stolen in."

They say upstairs is a great gallery, but it has been closed for renovation for the past year, so maybe someday I will get to see it. In the meantime, I content myself with trying to take photos of it that are of guidebook quality, and enjoy the jostling and bumping and waiting for someone to pick my pocket.

Slouching toward the Kleenex box, in order to blow.

What did I do in a past life to merit the misery of walking the earth with a constantly dripping nose, rubbed-red-raw from constant futile wiping and blowing, hands full of soggy tissues (which I feel obligated to re-use unless I wish to be solely responsible for the deforestation of a large portion of the world's forests,) snuffling, snorting, hacking, hocking, wiping, and blowing, and grossing out people in my vicinity?

I spent the majority of last night doing nasal-excretion-management. About 30 seconds after having blown my nose, I would begin trying to find a dry spot on one of the 4 kleenexes I was rotating through, and begin to dab, dab, dab, the accumulated moisture from the bottom of my one hyperactively productive nostril. After sufficient time had passed to allow my body to produce a sufficient amount of phlegmy fun to entirely pack and seal one nostril to the point that the accumulated weight was beginning to tip my head to the right, I would once again gracefully dab, and then rise and slouch my way to the door, to blow, to breathe, to enter once again the cycle of mucus.

Now I know, that really, my tribulations are not that great when compared with the sufferings of others. When placed next to the soul-torturing phase of personal growth that Britney Spears is currently undergoing, it makes my troubles resemble nothing more than a moist nostril. But that's the point, isn't it? Just as gas expands to fill the space of it's container, so one's trials expand to fill the mental and emotional space you currently have available to host them. So while not being ethnically cleansed, my nose is indeed significant in its ability to engender suffering. And while not yet reduced to doing commercials for the Psychic Friends Network, Britney's divorce and inability to have a single genuinely original creative concept will torture her mind no less than the destruction of a village in Darfur would weigh on the minds of its former residents. Pain is relative, you see.

So what I am proposing, while revolutionary, is quite necessary. Based on the fact that my particular private pains can have no equal, exact, corollary in your life, I propose a graduated scale of emotional torment be developed. A Moh's scale of Agony, a Richter of Recrudescence, something that would translate "my cat has a raging case of dander" into solid decibels of life-disrupting distress, which you can easily equate to your personal podalgia of "my wife leaves things on the floor and I stumble over them in the dark of night."

The result would be dramatic, and instantaneous. Until now, pain has been a private affair, something that cannot be communicated objectively, a solitary struggle that each person undertakes, knowing that no one can comprehend his personal pangs of woe. Now, though, one has only to say the number - "I am running a 9.2 on the Matt's Distress Distribution" to elicit instant moans of sympathy (true, heart-felt sympathy, as your listener, for the first time in history, can adequately comprehend the scale of your pain) from your listeners.

The results would be far-reaching. For the first time in history, two aggrieved parties could sit down on opposite sides of the negotiating table, and hope to truly understand the hurt the other suffers. "When you launch rockets at our settlements, it gives me a 7.772," the Israelis would say. The Palestinians would respond with "When you deny us the ability to cross a checkpoint to get to our jobs, it gives my whole family a 5.99 increasing by .42 with each passing day." Obviously everyone would need to bring a calculator to the table, and it might take a while to factor in all the components, but in the end whoever came out to have a greater pain index would be the long-suffering winner, hands down, and could dictate terms to the opposing party. Unless, of course, this would cause too much pain to the opposing side, in which case we would just have to re-figure. Obviously.

Krakow

Tonight I will sleep in Krakow. This is a first for me - everyone else I know regularly stays the night in Krakow, but tonight will be my first night spent there. (Well, that isn't quite true - if you count wandering the streets till a late hour, killing time till boarding the bus to Ukraine.)

The funny thing is - I have been to and through Krakow plenty. I have stayed quite late in Krakow a couple of times, and I have arrived quite early in the morning a quite a few times. Yet somehow the thought of spending the night, (and not just one night, but three,) makes me feel all giddy with anticipation. Maybe it is the life I have right now - living in a podunk backwater that makes it so exciting. Maybe it is Krakow itself. While I have walked the town practically from end to end, it has only recently begun to give up its secrets, the charming nooks and crannies shops and legends corner stores and slimy-good restaurants that all beautiful old towns have. (On a completely irrelevant side-note, in Barcelona I drank absinthe in Hemingway's favorite bar, which probably hadn't been cleaned since he was last there, and ate Indian food in restaurants where you wouldn't want to touch the walls, got the come-hithers from the hookers and lost money injudiciously to street-scams, and never even came close to feeling that Barcelona was a charming, or even very interesting, city.)

Krakow, on the other hand, has less wicked, crackling energy than Barcelona, and more of an air of staid reserve, under which pulses a strong current of life, with all the diverse manifestations which that implies. In Krakow you are not assaulted from every side with hawkers and the nimble-fingered. Although quite crowded in places, the feeling of being hemmed in and moved with a sea of humming humanity is not so great.

When entering Krakow by bus, you first approach the river Vistula, across which you can see the old royal castle Wawel (Vahvehl,) built not so much for fortifications, (though it certainly looks imposing) but rather as a seat of royal power. The Wawel is built in a crook of the Vistula, on a hill over a cave where the dragon used to live. Obviously the dragon doesn't live there any more, since a sly shepherd-boy came up with the idea of stuffing a sheepskin with sulfur and leaving it for the dragon to eat, thus winning the hand of the princess. (How she felt about marrying a shepherd-boy based simply on his sheep-stuffing skills probably doesn't bear dwelling on.)

After travelling around the Wawel on two sides, you cross the Vistula, and drive past a number of large monolithic buildings decorated with oversized muscular workers doing very muscular-worker things, like making steel with their shirts off and hats on. (You also drive past a small, tucked-away gym and bath-house named "Spartacus," in which I receive the distinct impression that there are also a lot of muscular men with their shirts off, doing muscular men things, albeit probably not with steel, though maybe with hats, but then I wouldn't know, ahem.)

This is an area with lots of University buildings, and consequently a lot of museums. Most are art museums, and the Wawel itself has the royal armoury, which boasts all sorts of lances, swords, daggers, armor and helmets-with-spikes-on and cutlasses-with-gun-barrels-installed, for the pirate who has everything, and likes it all to fit in a single, easy-to-carry package. (I may poke fun at this particular contraption, but don't let it fool you. I desperately want one.)

As you ride through this area, you are on the street Mickiewicz, which is the name of the Polish national poet, who has a street, a school and a statue bearing his name in every town in Poland big enough to fit a street, a school and a statue, and sometimes two statues in towns not big enough to host all three simultaneously. If your town cannot afford a statue or three of Adam Mickiewicz, you needn't panic, as there are at least four different Vodkas named for his characters, so there are less expensive ways of keeping reminders of his cultural greatness around, at all hours of the day. (I keep planning on buying his most famous work, a rather large tome entitled Pan Tadeusz, and reading through it while I am here. I have always found that reading the great literary works of a country gives one a feel for the cultural sensibility that might not be accessible anywhere else.)

So wish me luck, I'm off to the big city, to spend some days and evenings looking for fun and fascinating facts and historical crannies and old coins at reasonable prices.

Breakfast Part II

Some time ago I wrote an entry about my breakfast of buttery cookies. I ate this breakfast every morning as a purposeful act of excessive decadence, in defiance of all the health-and-diet obsessed weirdness that our society wastes so much time, money and spittle on. Well, that, and the fact that it is just a yummy way to start the day.

However, all this has changed in the months since. Summer has come, fresh fruit is in season, and I am busy as a fat man at 50 ft. buffet. So every morning I get up, and dump about half a liter of orange juice in a big container. Then I add yogurt, one or two eggs, and whatever fresh fruit I can find. We always have bananas on hand, and more recently Cynthia has been bringing home literally pounds of strawberries or blueberries. Not only are they yummy to eat, but they are brilliantly beautiful to look at. Through my sleep-addled haze, I marvel every morning at the candy-jewels that nature offers up, the brilliantly colored sweet sugars she has painstakingly assembled, all in hopes of attracting birds, and other animals to eat and carry her seeds.

Of course, as with anything, it is inevitable that sooner or later we have to try and go one better. During our years in Spain, getting our hands on maple syrup (without which pancakes are just not pancakes, in my opinion) could only be achieved by asking our kind friends to put a jug or two in their luggage. So when Cynthia encountered maple syrup in an exotic/imported food store in Krakow, we couldn't resist.

And when we got home and saw the blueberries sitting in the fridge, Cynthia couldn't resist the idea of blueberry pancakes. So Sunday morning we fried pancakes, and relished eating the gooey, candied mess. It was good. But somehow I don't think it was quite as good as the berries eaten by themselves.

Practice thyself

Every 6 months to a year, I sit down, open my journal, and make a list of 1. Who I want to be, and 2. What I want from life, and 3. The practices and steps that would bring me closer to either #1 or #2. Then I try to see what complementary intersections there are (in other words, where the least amount of time and effort invested would advance multiple goals toward completion,) and develop an action plan from that. Then I close my journal and effectively do nothing. (Or something like it.)

Two items that have become constants on the list are: Become a better photographer, and Become a better writer. It seems to me that everyone except the most dull should have within them the ability to produce something of artistic worth, ie something of an esthetic value (I left the "a" off intentionally, in case you were wondering,) something that can please their fellow man, and if not actually elevate him in some way, to a limited degree remove his thoughts from himself, and focus them on something else for a moment. I would argue that the more the product is in concordance with the principles of esthetics, the more arresting, (ie, absorbing, or "self-removing") it will be. The more one is moved to ponder on those things which do not directly affect the growlings of one's stomach and greasiness of one's navel, the more one, by contemplation and thus conciousness, at least, is connected to the greater world we inhabit.

There is something about both of these fields, writing and photography, which draw me strongly. I do not partake of them because I think I have much skill in them. I partake of them because I believe what small skill I have is centered in these areas, and because I am so attracted to them that the mere idea of them fascinates me, and I feel good as I do it, completely independent of the feelings regarding the quality of the product produced.

My wife has left me and gone to Krakow. She will be away for a month, staying in a beautiful old flat in Krakow, while doing a course. Which leaves me sitting here, alone in the flat with the computer, wondering how in the hell I am going to cope, to keep my life from further degenerating into mad mess.

So I am taking photos. It may not be much, but I hope it will help me to focus my time and energy a wee bit and keep me busy. I recently saw some photos that a lad took while visiting this town, and was amazed at his talent, and infuriated that I can't produce something of similar quality. (Though if I may point out, his camera is so far superior to mine, that it does provides me with a small excuse, which is small comfort.)

I also have also renewed my determination to contribute to this blog in a more regular manner. I hope my friends use it to follow a bit of what goes on in our lives and heads, but in the end, that is not really the point. The point is to give me somewhere to write, in the vain hope that practice will improve. And, hopefully, it will give me something constructive to do until she gets back.

If practice can improve one's skill, (a premise we all-too-readily accept, if you ask me,) I would think a month would be sufficient time after which one could reasonably expect to see improvements. The question is, though, how much would one need to practice during a month, in order to see results? 20 fotos a day? 40? One hour of writing? 30 minutes? We shall see.