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.

Mad mess bath-thoughts

I know it happens - I saw it happen last time, and I could feel it happening this time - but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with. After the first session of college classes, back in January, my life (actually neatly organized at that point, and humming along with frighteningly bright intensity of intentions) just fell apart. I went from having a routine involving regular exercise, daily cleaning and loads of financial responsibility, to staring at the walls, with my brain, spine and will turned to paste, wondering where it had all gone.

I entered this round of masters courses less prepared. But I exited it in the same way - as a ball of spineless paste. Now that I have returned to teaching, every day is a spectacle of haste, running to prepare for what will happen in the next half-hour. After a day of non-stop wolfing-food-while-you-plan-so you can copy- so you can go upstairs, say hello, and start the next class, I come home with a firm resolution that life cannot continue this way. I must put in some extra work, to pull ahead of the class, and reduce the frantic, last minute nature of it all.

But when I get home, I just collapse. I stare at the television, I surf the internet, I plumb the depths of my creativity to find the most utterly pointless and effortless activity I could engage in, and focus on it with a vengence. I am now getting up earlier and earlier to give myself time to prepare for classes that I could have taken care of yesterday afternoon, (or even last night, if I hadn't collapsed into bed so early, as a result of having risen so early that morning.) It is a vicious cycle that I doubt is making me healthy or wealthy, and seems to prevent me from cutting my fingernails.

It all goes back to the two-week intensive course in June - something about sitting as a student for 8 hours a day just sent my life into disequilibrium. Then, right as it was over, the very day it was over, we had to leave a bunch of people hanging out in our house, and get in a car with our boss and her brother, and drive for the border. We crossed into Slovakia, and sat there for an hour or so in the car, parked behind a gas station. I would have loved to sleep, but didn't really feel comfortable letting my boss see me drool in her car. We re-entered Poland at 12:30, no longer legal workers, but now as tourists. Who still work.

I think the midnite visa run is similar to the courses in that, ostensibly, it is not difficult - just sit down, take notes, and speak when spoken to. You are with kind and caring people the whole way, and really have nothing to complain about. But when you are tired enough, everything grinds a bit more, and you don't have the mental and emotional momentum to skate through the slushy patches of life.

And so much of my life really is just skating - I have so much to be thankful for. I am so fortunate in life, that it requires an incredible amount of gall on my part to bitch about anything. Yet when you are tired enough, it is difficult to see that. No matter that you are cared for by others, at great expense of their time and effort and sleep, all you can feel is a rising sense of weariness and claustrophobia. Every week becomes a mortal struggle to make it to the next day, make it to the weekend, (but, oh, there is a wedding you must travel to, so no relaxing this weekend, maybe next!) The horizon of relief is always just over the next hill.

I briefly mentioned this to a 16 year-old student (who is much closer to being a friend,) and he responded, "Yes, Mr. Matt. That is the life of the student. We are always tired, with people asking us to do so many things. So we just want to sit and do nothing because it is all too much."

"From the mouths of babes," thought I. Now, I do not doubt that a wise teacher would allow the re-found perspective on the life of a student to inform his teaching practices, and the work he assigns. But I think too much wisdom gleaned from a single experience might just tempt the gods by making one appear a wee too clever, so I won't. But I will think about it while I take my bath.