grumble grumble and the last part of a story …

this starts here

1 november, 2010

i don’t really want to talk about why that saturday class was a disaster. it just … ugh, i knew the whole time, too. what i didn’t know is that the students would complain to reception. they said they couldn’t understand me half of the time, which is not a surprise since i was hungover, maybe still a little drunk, babbling.

the director of studies asked me on monday what i thought of the class and i was honest with her, which worked in my favor. i guess i’m still used to my last school and their level of caring for the students, because i was surprised by how seriously she took the complaints, even going so far as to say she might have to take the group away. i didn’t tell her that i myself was surprised that the students were considered upper-intermediate, since most seemed at a lower level. once again, i fucked myself by paying too much attention to a perceived level, before getting to know the actual students and what they are capable of. it’s a rookie move, and i hope this time i learned my lesson.

still, many of them were not upper-intermediate.

the DOS emailed the students and told them she was aware there had been some problems and i was going to work on them and would they please give me another chance. one of the students wrote back to everyone that it was unfair to judge a teacher by the first class and he thought the lesson was good. my hero.

this past saturday i had them again. i apologized but also told them to please tell me if they don’t understand. “we work together,” i said, my heart yearning. they agreed and it went well.

i think.

except for when i spelled “cemetery” wrong on the board and then fixed it correctly but thought it was still wrong and ugh.

still, they thanked me when they left. i feel like i built up a rapport with them. unfortunately two students were missing, one of whom i think had complained.

eh, it’s all a learning experience, right? and i have two more classes starting this week, so it’s good i have those lessons.

the one thing that i didn’t like was how the DOS made certain assumptions about my teaching, saying maybe they needed a more dynamic teacher. “move around more.” i DO move around. she suggested i take their ideas for class rules, which i had done, too, on the very first day.

whatever.

i told her the fact that i had missed the teacher training because i was locked in my house really threw me off. they planned a new training, though, as there were new teachers coming in. so this past friday i went to my Polish lesson and then sat for three hours and learned about teaching methods and who to contact for what, and how to teach. a lot of it i knew, but it felt good to have the information. i don’t like missing things like that. it throws me off. it threw me off.

it is telling, though, how often the students are referred to as customers, or clients. it’s true, and it’s good to keep that in mind, that this is a business.

still.

in other news, i started lessons with a private student through the school i was working for before. kasia seemed adamant that i take these lessons, and i’m so glad i did. the girl is a teenager in clunky boots who loves science and horror movies and animal facts. we talked about scary movies for an hour, when we weren’t talking about penguins and porcupines. the was overjoyed by the fact that i kept saying everything was “so cool!” “penguins have a part of their body that takes the salt out of salt water so they can drink it. that’s so cool!”

she told me she had read half the twilight books in english, just to try. “they are so stupid, but easy to read.” i’m really going to like having classes with her.

but, right, back to cory. that was last saturday. i had my miserable class, and i knew he was going to see a movie in the afternoon, so i returned home and took a much-needed nap. he texted me after the movie to see if i wanted to get dinner, but i had spent the last little bit of my money on some much-needed supplies and only had 2 zł to my name. sucked. totally sucked. friend in town and i’m so completely broke, and hungry, that i had to heat up some leftovers at home while he went out for inadequate pizza.

we met up later at a restaurant not far from the theater where tim’s movie was playing. i got to meet tim, finally, and two girls from copenhagen who had been traumatized by sightseeing, particularly by the walk up the church tower. the restaurant was strange; the waitress laughed at tim’s choice after telling one of the girls that what she had chosen was not very good and she should really try this other thing instead. i was seated at the end of the table, which meant that cory had to pull my chair in so people could get by to go to the bathroom. tall tables, tall chairs, everything designed to make you feel like a baby in a highchair.

i had had one of those solitary afternoons which puts me in a solitary mood and takes me some time to break out of. i felt like i was speaking through molasses, especially when one of the girls asked me why, oh why, was i in poland?

i think i need to print up cards explaining the answer to this question, since i get it at least once a day and it’s tiresome to attempt to explain. to so many of my students the goal is to leave Poland, so why the hell would someone choose to come here? just this past saturday i heard this again. the question was “why learn english?” they were discussing in pairs, and i overheard one of the young girls simply and sadly state, “i want to learn english so i can leave Poland.” then her head drooped with a heavy sad look.

but i got the explanation out, somehow, and warmed up a little, so conversation became easier. especially after the moment when all talking seemed to cease in the entire establishment, just in time for a solitary english-speaking voice two tables away to audibly exclaim something about an appreciation for sex with animals. stunned silence followed by hysterical laughter.

then tim had to go to the theater, and the rest of us attempted to get the waitress’ attention. then on to the theater ourselves.

the movie was really good. it was hard not to love it after tim’s introduction, which explained deadpan that this movie will change our lives forever. the translator who was assigned to let Polish people in the audience know what the hell tim was saying seemed to take the jokes in stride. he was the spitting image of sara’s boss in dessau, so when he opened his mouth and didn’t speak english or german with an australian accent, i was really confused every time.

he returned for the question and answer period at the end, which was a little awkward. my favorite part was when a girl asked what the ending meant. did it mean this? or that? or what? tim’s reply was, “yes,” which the translator aptly turned into, “your question is the meaning.” i like that. your question is the meaning.

after all questions were thoroughly exhausted, we headed outside, where i ran into oszka. she had really enjoyed the movie but she had been there all day, going to screenings, so she didn’t stick around to talk. we waited for tim, and we found out later that he was being cornered by a psychic, who wanted to thank him for such an honest portrayal of his craft. awesome. but we didn’t know that until later, at the hotel bar.

ah, the hotel bar …

1:50pm

p.s. 31-12-2010: at the time i never finished telling this story. we went to the hotel bar. it was nuts. we stayed up until almost dawn, talking about the movie and the san francisco music scene and our crazy friends back home and how david lynch doesn’t translate for those who didn’t grow up with suburbia as part of their culture. it was awesome and tim and cory bought me drinks so i could stay. then cory left the next evening. boo.

the only other story to tell is how i was going to show off my Polish knowledge when we went to pay for cory’s rental car, which had been parked in a parking lot for three days. unfortunately the charge came to 90-something, though, and anything loosely affiliated with the number 9 is a bit of a blank spot for me. i get it confused, still, with the word for 10, so then things tend not to make sense. also i did that thing i do where i think that if i keep talking people won’t leave. babble babble babble. still, eventually i had to stop talking about potatoes and let cory get in his car and go.

see you soon, buddy!

wonderwall and the third part of a story …

this starts here

1 november, 2010

fucking wonderwall just came on the stereo at the cafe. ever since mike and phil sang this damn song at a karaoke going-away party for their housemate, i think it has lived in the back of my head, waiting for me to let my guard down long enough for it to pop out and attack, after which it will hunker down for weeks. it was this very thing that prompted me to say “fuck it” and go buy a CD player two days ago. still without computer, my room is ridiculously silent, except for when my neighbors are having a dance party, singing along to “single ladies” in endearingly off-key voices.

i also decided that this whole week is my birthday, not just this saturday. so, that being true, i decided to buy myself a little present. but wonderwall was the final nail. as i was pondering the silence in my room, i was thumbing through one of the coursebooks i have to teach from. some have extra song activities in the back, that usually seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the material just covered, or anything else, actually. one of the songs in this book was … yup, fucking “wonderwall.” that was it, full-force into my head. i can’t sit in my room doing work or writing or anything, with nothing but that song on constant repeat in my head.

and now, like a stalker, here it is again, on the cafe stereo.

the thing that was holding me back from getting a CD player is that i only have a few CDs here. most are still in storage at sara’s in germany, the rest are in storage in san francisco. still, Polish radio is better than fucking “wonderwall.”

i had to go to the fucking mall, and even then they were slightly more expensive than i was hoping, but that song rolling over and over in my head kept pushing me forward. actually i had to go to three malls, but i’d rather not remember that.

the other upshot is that i actually get to listen to the audio CD that came with my Polish coursebook, to get caught up on back lessons. that’s actually made me really happy. basically i have simply enabled a deeper level of nerd.

but i was writing about cory’s visit. yes, linear time. right.

we went out for beers in the oddly-shaped bar and talked and enjoyed the outdoor tables, as the weather was so nice. it was really good to have time to just talk. i was one beer ahead, though, since i had had one with dinner, so when he ordered another round all common sense went out the window.

i had been waiting to hear when my saturday class was starting, though i was pretty sure it didn’t start until next week. i found out different as i was on my way to originally meet cory at the hotel; starting the next morning, heh heh ha. still, even not being prepared and needing to wake up way too early didn’t keep me from suggesting that we go by the show at the squat, so cory could see the space and because he wanted one more beer and because, what the hell, it’s only 12:30.

as we walked he told me that wrocław looks very much like german cities its size, which makes sense as it was built by the germans and had been a german city for hundreds of years. he kept comparing it to dresden, where i have never been, so the thought of it only conjures images of WWII fire storms. i could picture everything around us in rubble way too easily, but i didn’t mention it and tried not to think about it.

a band was playing inside as we entered the compound, though we didn’t head for the show space. i knew that cory could get another beer in the cafe, but the door was closed and i was confused, thinking it must not be open for business. so we stood nearby while i babbled incoherently, until someone came up and just opened the door. oops, right. i don’t know the name of the girl who was serving, which is stupid. but she asked if i got the helper’s price, since i had helped out the week before. i was confused, but oszka was sitting at the bar and explained it to me. oh, no, not helping this week. i started talking to oszka and rudely left cory alone with his beer for far too long, as it didn’t occur to me that we would be talking for more than a minute. but we were talking about all my stuff that was stolen, so there was much to say. finally i came to my senses and introduced them. her anger and remorse about the theft quickly changed to interest and enthusiasm when cory’s introduction to the conversation switched the focus to the film festival. she was going to a lot of screenings, and was also really interested in tim’s movie and told us she would be at the screening the next day.

eventually we moved outside as the show was letting out, and we watched the courtyard fill with drunken mohawked teenagers who slammed into each other and dropped bottles and fell down. i was at the level of drunk where i leaned forward to roll a cigarette and, putting myself out of balance, my feet decided on their own to automatically walk a few steps to keep me from falling, stopping just short of slamming into a group of revelers. cory said it looked like i really wanted to mosh! i tried to explain that i lost my balance, but i’m pretty sure i failed at that. we talked about the squat while i looked about for anyone else to introduce him to, now that i was getting the hang of doing so. no familiar faces in the ever-growing crowd. the show space was like a clown car – more and more people coming out of it, neverending. i was looking for kuba or hubert in particular, but never saw their faces in the crowd. eventually cory finished his beer and we decided to call it a night before a drunken teen put one of our eyes out, or my feet decided to wander off on their own again.

we walked back to the hotel via the rynek, and cory marveled that the town was still hopping – groups of rowdies milling about. i forgot to tell him about the week before, when i had been walking back from the squat. the weather had been so nice and the square so full of people that i sat for a while under the cover of midnight and watched people, especially a man who was sauntering around with a remote control, keeping a model plane aloft above the heads of the crowd. swooping low, then up again, every time i thought it would crash into a group of tourists or another. but every time he pulled it up just in time, and it soared to the tops of the buildings.

just another late saturday night, which felt so much like saturday afternoon.

that night with cory was friday and a little later in the night, but there were still almost as many people out. they seemed drunker, more lively, less like it was really the afternoon and they were just enjoying the sunshine. more focused on party, perhaps.

i dropped cory off at the hotel and shuffled my way home, getting to bed at about 2:30 or so. then my mind woke me up at 5 am and i stayed awake until i went to teach my class, which was an unmitigated disaster.

i miss you, mr. hazard

1 november, 2010 11:14am

I’m sitting on the rynek, at cafe literatka, enjoying the almost spring-like weather and a surprise day off.

today is all soul’s day, when Poles celebrate the lives of their heroes, and their dead in general. cafe literatka is celebrating by being open and playing “wake me up before you go-go” loud enough to be heard outside, on the quiet yet not overly-somber rynek.

ok, it’s not that loud.

i, and all the other teachers in the international bank where i teach four days a week, was told that classes would go forward as usual today. then i was told we should check with our students, since many of them are taking a day off. i didn’t get that second message until friday, at which point i duly ignored it until sunday. my students hadn’t said anything either way, so i assumed it was business as usual, until i sent them an email about something else and got a slew of auto-replies stating they would not be back in the office until the 2^nd. fuck.  way to go, professional. i then had to send them a message asking them to let me know as soon as they got it if they would be in the office today or not. more auto-replies. argh.

no one told me either way, so i decided to just go by and check the building, where i found the front door locked down like a fortress … or like a closed bank. there’s a back entrance, but i couldn’t be bothered. so, taking advantage of the somewhat temperate weather and the few tables left on the rynek, and the fact that i’m not completely poor for once, i’m splurging. coffee out somewhere is a downright luxury.

i plan sometime today to pay tribute to my own dead, though i’m not sure how to do that. light a candle? spend some time thinking of them. somehow. the most recent – dave. i haven’t written about dave.

dave is the friend who died the day i was in transit to wrocław from paris. i’ve been avoiding writing about him in any way, and after spending a month with absolutely no privacy whatsoever, i find i didn’t even have time to fully mourn him. it feels unreal, this does. i’m on the other side of the world. it feels like he must sure be bringing smiles to peoples’ faces still, back there where i came from. as if not being there makes it untrue. how self-centered. sheesh.

when i think about dave, i think about the fact that he had to grow a beard so people would stop calling him “ashton,” his resemblance to ashton kutcher was overwhelming without the facial hair. we met shortly after he moved to SF from boston and our friendship was cemented in mutual shit-talking about our home state. he had the added interest of sports, which further fueled his love-hate frustration with poor massachusetts, but when that topic was broached i would just smile and say that i had to take his word for it.

oh my god, he was funny, the sort of dry sense of humor that often led you to believe he was being completely serious … but only for a moment. he could take you down a much-needed peg or two with a quick phrase, delivered quick and oh so deadpan.

when i think of him i also remember one night in particular, at jack’s.  the bar had recently been fined for having illegal shows, and the DJ who organized those shows decided to continue with the spinning despite the lack of live music to bookend his sets. it was a bit of a somber night – those shows at jacks’ were some of the best i had ever been to. there was a real feeling of community at most of them, of neighborliness and pride. i was there the night the police arrived, at the behest of an upstairs neighbor, a rich asshole on a crotch rocket who didn’t even remove his helmet or get off the bike to talk to the cops. within minutes the crowd had raised enough money to pay the exorbitant fine, and then some. that’s what it felt like until that night, that there was a commuinity of people who would take care of each other.

this night, with dave, was shortly after that one.

mike and i had decided to meet up with dave and his girlfriend natalie to show support for the bar and the DJ’s endeavor. we were mostly alone in that, which meant we got to talk a lot.  i spoke with dave about books and he complained about don delillo’s “underworld.” “i pick it up, read it for a while, excited at first, but then slowly i start to think, ‘why am i doing this? life’s too short.’”

oh, honey.

we ended up at his and natalie’s place, having a guided by voices sing-along, alien lanes on the stereo, all of us drunkenly enraptured by the onslaught of brilliant words. in between songs we would talk about how brilliant the songs were.

dave bemoaned the fact that he wanted to do something more with himself, he wanted to grow things. i told him about alemany farm, not too far from our neighborhood. it was fresh on my mind because i had been recently talking with one of the organizers about how they needed more volunteers. then i completely forgot that i had told him, until the next time i saw him, a few weeks later. his eyes were shining with excitement as he thanked me from the bottom of his heart for telling him about it. it was just what he needed. and me, the asshole that i am, had to search through my memory to recall that part of our conversation.

he was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after i left SF. he didn’t advertise the fact, so i didn’t know. other people didn’t know. people in SF didn’t know. they had set up a web page where people could get information about his current health status. it was like a blog, though the entries were few and far between. the first entries were written by natalie … i read them all, after i heard, and it was like he was sitting next to me, telling me about the last year, as it was happening. one entry, while he was in remission, found him blithely discussing his upcoming 30^th birthday, and how that freaked him out a little. the next entry he had had a setback in his prognosis, which prompted him to write that turning 30 suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

he didn’t have the chance to turn 30.

his SF memorial was held at alemany farm, the place he loved so much. a tree was planted in his honor. someday i will go place flowers at the foot of that tree, bitch about the patriots and sing a few songs for lost friends.

i have to stop writing about dave now. but i won’t stop thinking about him. not today. not ever.

tell your friends you love them when you can.  celebrate your friends and your heroes every day, while they are around, and especially when they are one and the same.

an interlude

27 october, 2010

remember: getting stuck in the revolving door and teaching buffy the vampire slayer to a teenaged girl who had never heard of it before.

the second part of a story …

this starts here

25 october, 2010 14:26

so, tickets secured, we decided to see if tim was in the screening of his movie that we couldn’t get into. cory asked if he could check inside, and the ticket-takers allowed it, but no tim. we stood around for a while, talking, staring, realizing how warm it was in there. then cory realized that tim was probably so sick of his own movie that he most likely wouldn’t show up until it was over, when he was obliged to answer questions, but we decided to keep waiting anyway. then one of the door guys approached and told us the director wouldn’t be appearing until the end, and did we want to see the movie? we weren’t sure if he was offering free movie, or if he assumed we had tickets or what, but we told him we were fine and decided to come back in an hour and a half to see if we could catch tim then.

back to the hotel to look for messages while i tried to figure out where we could eat. i feel like i haven’t been here long enough to know a lot of good places, aside from the milk bars and the restaurant where the wrocław expat mixer was. the former all close before nightfall, though i was sad that i couldn’t show cory this glimpse of a Polish cultural institution. the latter is all full of nasty incense, which i detest and which cory is allergic to. i was fearing getting to that level of hungry where i couldn’t function, let alone make decisions. so we went by the only place in the rynek where i had been before – my first day in town, after my interview. no Polish kitchen, but at least some vegetarian options. cory had a giant puffy thing full of vegetables and spinach that looked so good and sooo crazy. i made the mistake of ordering beer with my pasta – i was so full i had to leave a few bites. i physically couldn’t eat more. sucked to leave food.

unfortunately dinner took so long that we were late returning to the theater and missed the q & a. ugh. back to the hotel, to see if there was any news.

nope.

so, out for drinks. we went to the weird building bar, which i don’t know the name of, if it has a name. i have been wanting to go there since first setting eyes on the place. the beer is cheaper than on the rynek a few blocks away, never mind that cliff told me that the punks used to drink there until they stopped drinking out. but, really, it’s all about how weird the building is. it’s really weird.

14:48

the first part of a story …

25 october, 2010 8:45 am

last night was the first night in a while where i slept more than 4 hours. sucks. i can’t tell if it’s all of the unresolved issues: money, laptop, when the hell the rest of my classes actually start, or something else waking me up in the early morning and poking at my brain, unwilling to let it sleep again.

that’s the weird thing – i’m not being kept up at night, but i am being woken up in the wee hours and them kept up by a mind that won’t shut off.

i feel like when i get my first paycheck from empik i will have crossed a line and things will start to settle down.

two more weeks to go, then.

it’s way too early on a monday morning, but fatigue from lack of sleep, and the weekend, sent me to bed at 10:30 pm last night.

cory has been visiting from berlin the past few days – a friend of his from LA had a film in the strangely-existing wrocław american film festival – a conglomeration of movies old and new, mainstream and not, playing at the one theater in town that i’ve been to before. he got in friday night, after being stuck in the infamous traffic outside of town for way too long. his friend had told the organizers that cory was one of the producers, so he got a pass to the festival and his own bed in the hotel room, not to mention a tote bag full of crap, including the telephone-book-sized festival guide and other odds and ends. i pulled out the free “wrocław in your pocket” guidebook and pointed out crk in the nightlife section; they got their own sidebar.

the hotel was crazy, hallways reminiscent of the lodge in the shining, giant metal bunker-type doors, extraneous glass in the optical-illusion bathroom, giant sauna-tub with colored lights that i turned on and then couldn’t figure out how to turn off. it really looked like some rich person’s sick fantasy of a modern-rustic get-away.

it was sooo good to see cory, especially in weather that wasn’t mind-numbingly hot. last time we hung out a few months ago it was too hot to function. the chill of the last week had softened a little, so it was rather nice out as we made our way to the theater via the old town, mini-tour on the way to try to find tim, who cory had yet to see. he hadn’t been in the hotel room, nor had he left a note or email or any other type of electronic hello. there was also supposed to be an assistant to tell cory where tim was when he arrived, but she was nowhere to be found either. we speculated that they were hiding somewhere together. so, the theater was our shot. on the way i pointed out architectural marvels, such as the blocky-grey communist-era bank that almost became the standard for the rynek when someone got the bright idea to tear down all the extravagant mansions and replace them with grey concrete.  luckily that idea never manifested and it’s the only such building on the square, sticking out like a sore thumb of a bad idea.

tim’s movie was playing at 7 something, and we knew it was sold out but we didn’t know if that meant that cory could still get a ticket or not, him being a rockstar with his special backstage pass and all. the theater was graced with a giant red-white-and-blue star design, the logo of the festival. weird.

can i mention again how strange it was that this american film festival exists at all? in a country where the people are not allowed visas to visit america? yet in a town where there is still a roundabout named after ronald reagan? weird.

sold-out did in fact mean no ticket, even for rock stars or fake producers, which we discovered only after flailing about in various lines and languages. the girl at the information desk assured cory that german was fine, but when he asked his question she stared at him blankly and shook her head. finally a ticket was secured for the screening the next day. i decided to get a ticket as well, but i had to go to the non-rock-star line. it all occurred without incident, especially once i decided to conduct the transaction in english. i really have to stop doing that. i’m sure that in Polish i could have done it with no problem. ah, well.

9:21am

food not being a jerk

17 october, 2010

“what are you doing here?” hubert asked. i knew he probably had no idea how insulting that question can be in english with the wrong intonation, and that he was probably duly concerned about why i was spending so much time in the guest room, but still. there was a pause while i worked through those thoughts, and then he asked, “did you have to move back?”

no, i assured him, i’m just taking as much advantage of your guest computer and free internet as humanly possible, and then i’m hanging around your kitchen for hours trying to get warm. of course i’ve been there a lot the last week, so it did seem as if i had moved back in. and it couldn’t have aided his confusion that he encountered me on the stairs, as i was running back down to the first floor kitchen to deliver another handful of pointy knives.

i gestured downstairs with the knives and said, “and right now i’m just helping them.” ah, ok, all is clear.

downstairs there was a room full of people surrounded by a wide variety of produce spilled every which way. we had had to wait to do any cooking, since the vegetables hadn’t arrived on time. they finally arrived and then we were rushing.

all in preparation for a benefit show for the wrocław anti-gentrification movement, or action, or group or something. no one actually told me the name of the group it was a benefit for. i did hear “the anti-gentrification … thing” and “the group … well … against gentrifying this area all around here.” perhaps that’s the direct translation of their name.

i had been on the computer, typing up posts but mostly looking up laptops i can’t yet afford, and i kept hearing from various quarters about all the help needed to make the food for the night. feeling like i was sick of staring at a screen, and thinking of computers, and being antisocial, i decided to help. and i would get into the show for free that way.

cutting up cauliflower, peeling potatoes and carrots, we all went into a bit of a zen coma as we worked and didn’t really talk to each other anyway. but it had been a while since i helped make a lot of food. food not bombs had started cooking in the squat the weekend after i moved out, and i kept intending to help, but since Polish classes started my sundays have consisted of trying to get caught up on everything i didn’t have time for all week. so, i haven’t made it over to help out. yet.

lots of peeling and chopping and hand cramps. a guy whose name i don’t actually know [i do now – konrad] told me in broken english about a really amazing plant that nobody wants to eat because of the “legend.” he meant “history” really, not legend, but i was intrigued nonetheless. seems this plant grows all over Poland, and was historically used to feed livestock. when the nazis invaded this was the case, anyway. it was everywhere, and grew so easily, tending to take over all the land it can grab all the time. (“he travels” i was told, meaning the plant propagates itself, but all of this story was told with the plant being referred to as “he.” downright charming.) so, the nazis thought it was the perfect solution to the problem of what to feed all those prisoners in all the camps they were building.

so now it has a bad reputation, but “he is very good. he grows in my village.” we were trying to figure out the name of this plant in english, but my crappy dictionary was no help and nobody coming in and out of the workspace seemed to know.

they gave me beer, and then somehow i ended up back on the computer, writing to cosmo, all maudlin. kuba came in and told me i was missing a really good movie about a local milk bar, which made me a little sad, or maybe i was just feeling a little sad anyway. talking to paweł, one of the organizers, about winter and joy division and health care while we waited for the time to bring the food down didn’t help matters any. so when it was time to dance to the electronica-punk all-girl band i couldn’t bring myself to dance like a crazy monkey like most everyone else. i wanted to, i did. i was just … on the other side of a wall from everyone else there.

it happens.

and somehow my help with chopping vegetables became my help with keeping the food stocked in the show space, which was fine when it didn’t seem like people were eating much. but trying to find someone with a key to let me back into the house whenever the food ran low was a little annoying. tokar showed me how to prop the door open, which i knew about, “but,” he said, “we have to be careful.” duh, i’m the one whose stuff was stolen. but he was out of town when that happened, so i let it pass.

like the guy who showed up in town the afternoon after i found all my stuff had been taken – he was sitting at a decidedly computer-centric kitchen table, 3 or 4 people on their laptops, he one of them. new guy looked up as i sat down and jokingly admonished me, “where is your laptop!?!? you can’t sit here unless you have a laptop!” i don’t think i’ve ever had such perfect comedic timing before. … beat … beat … deadpan, “it was stolen.” everyone laughed and the new guy blushed. he told me he’s always asking people with recently deceased parents how their parents are and everything. he seemed to feel really bad, but i’m still laughing.

anyway, back inside to tell them they needed plates down there and paweł, full-on drunk by this time and should not have been working over an open flame, slurred, “that’s ok, we sent that other chick with plates.”

“that other chick”!?!? not one to complain about people forgetting my name, or drunkenly saying stupid things, i was still annoyed enough to resign my commission and enjoy the rest of the band.

but eventually i was just too exhausted and too inside of myself to stay – the DJ was the same girl from the band, and repetitive electronic beats sound awesome behind guitar and scream-singy vocals, but not on their own.  not to me. i didn’t even say my goodbyes, too tired to try to find everyone – i barely made it home, my legs wanting to give way beneath me.

at home i found the apartment empty, the boys away for out for the night, so i crashed around a bit and crawled into bed to sleep as long as i could possibly sleep …

PS remember “mam talent!” and the private lesson and jesus fuck, it’s cold.

bread and wine and dogshit

17 october, 2010

reading “down & out in paris & london” makes me feel slightly better about my current economic situation, but only slightly. but at least when orwell finally got a job he was paid every day. and his priorities were bread and wine, whenever he had a small amount of money.

i’m sitting on a bench not too far from my house, trying to soak up as much sun as possible between chilly bouts of wind. i have 4.50 zł in my pocket and i’m trying to figure out where i can get potatoes on a sunday. or, failing that, bread and wine.

it’s funny, i knew that if i walked across the grass to get to this bench i would probably step in dog shit, and i did it anyway. some things are a given here, and there you go.

i haven’t written all week – that makes me feel crazy. i’ve been trying to catch up on the Polish material covered before i joined the class, and between that and preparing for my own classes there never seems to be enough time. and the grey chilly weather has made me want to just curl up with a book until i fall asleep, which is usually five minutes later, and that doesn’t help either.

so, ok, wrocław expat mixer. that’s where i left off my tale.

i joined the wrocław expat group on facebook because i was hoping to get a flat through that. instead i got help flat-hunting once, and ended up finding my current house on my own. still, the help was helpful, and there were a few close calls, where i almost got more help through the group. and there was one possibly creepy guy who was renting a room “for a friend” and keep making plans with me, then claiming he couldn’t get the keys and then cancelling. i wasn’t sure how much i really want to mix with many of the expats here, as so many of them are business people here to exploit the developing economy. but it turns out there’s a nice mix of people in the group, and they organize get-togethers every so often. so, when they planned a drinking night at a local restaurant, i decided to give it a try.

the restaurant is in an old tower that is part of the only remaining piece of original fortification that used to ring the old town. the place is run by an ex-californian, and there is supposed to be good mexican food there, but my budget wouldn’t allow for food so i ate before i went. to get to the restaurant, though, you have to walk through the passage under a block of communist-era flats, and through the parking lot of all the other communist-era flats around it. there also doesn’t appear to be a direct path to the door, so you have to walk through mud and cars and dog shit.

a sign on the door said you should ring the bell, but i just pushed it open and found myself facing a window into the kitchen, to the side of stairs going up. noxious incense instead of the usual cigarette smoke, but i found myself less disgusted by the thought of the latter. upstairs, a bar and some tables in a narrow, rectangular space, some people sitting and mostly ignoring each other. lots of silence. i asked if this was the mixer and was told that it was upstairs, that they were the stragglers. upstairs? behind the bar, more rickety steps to an upstairs dining area. the stragglers decided that maybe they should join the whole group and we made our way upstairs, but they sure didn’t look happy about it.

in fact, nobody looked happy to see anybody. all new arrivals were looked at as if they were confusingly incongruous specimens, some experiment gone the way it wasn’t supposed to.

the big table i ended up at was not designed for any sort of communication – three tables, actually, pushed together in an L shape, so it was necessary to almost yell at the people sitting on the far end. i made the acquaintance of julia and allen this way, both american, but fulbright scholars of some sort. smarty-pantses. allen moved closer to me so i wouldn’t have to yell, once he found out that i had come from san francisco. “oh, if i had a choice i’d be in the castro like that,” snapping his fingers fabulously to demonstrate the speed with which he would manifest in the castro, if he had his druthers. hailing from alabama, he had come from a university in oklahoma, and was now teaching at the university here, for some reason. julia was also working at the university, in the english department, though she wasn’t teaching classes yet and was doing “whatever they need me to do.” that seemed fine with her. i ordered a beer to get through the small talk. so much small talk.

the usual, why are you here, do you speak Polish, but now i found myself answering as well as asking these questions. most of it forgotten now. small talk is like that.

more people showed up, more people who were hard to speak to because of the table situation. allen and i stuck close together, going outside to smoke, talking about books and places and such. every time we went outside he would comment on the cute boys hanging around the bar on the first floor. all of them seemingly british, none of them my type.

and so things went on, more people arriving, some leaving, but things never getting to the party level. though there was a raucous discussion about transatlantic flight debacles, which calmed down once we learned that the german girl in our midst used to work for lufthansa.

one of the girls there was Polish and she told us about the big construction site not far from my house, how it was being built by one of the richest men in Poland – a local boy. it was going to be the tallest skyscraper in wrocław, which isn’t saying much, but he wasn’t your average developer. he wasn’t building just for greed’s sake; he really wanted to give something back to the community.

after a while the Polish girl said she was going to another bar. it was her friend’s birthday, and plus this thing was boring. she gathered julia, klara the german girl, and an australian au pair whose name i never did catch. i used them as an excuse to leave, though i had no intention of going bar-hopping with them. they had to pick up the au pair’s car, which was locked in the parking garage at the mall nearby. she hadn’t paid attention to the times when she left it there, and now the huge gate was down, inaccessible. what to do? the Polish girl went in to the connecting hotel and worked some conversational magic, managing to extract a promise to open the gate. they were all gathering to get the car, and i took the opportunity to say my goodbyes and leave, before they tried to talk me into going out with them one more time.

emptying out

9 october, 2010

the outdoor tables are starting to disappear from the rynek and its environs. not in a rush, as i feared, but slowly, one by one. soon the space will seem so unbearably huge, ready to be filled with snow.

it’s been cold, too. so cold. i’ve put on my thermals. i forgot how to be cold, throughout this summer of climate-change boiling temperatures. sure, there was wet, there was a chill in paris, even a few days here. but it’s been 50 degrees and that feels treacherous now. that’s ridiculous.

granted it’s been 50 degrees with knife-like winds. ah, wind-chill, my old friend.

i’m sitting in literatka, my book-lined cafe, trying to warm up with beer. not the best idea. really i just needed a stopping point between the squat, where i was trying in vain to catch up on typing, and my house. 35-40 minute walk, like i used to have from work to home in tarnów, with cafe hybryda tempting me with warmth and beer and wifi somewhere in the middle.

yesterday i had Polish class again, which i showed up for. on time, even! hooray for me! i had had breakfast but no coffee, so i was barely functioning until the coffee our teacher made started to work.

amazing how little i seem to care about making a fool of myself. the wisdom of some sort of age? being inured by years of clumsy inability to function? or the fact that i pretty much do it for a living now? the third student in our group showed up and she proved to be an incredibly bubbly spaniard who speaks a lot and can’t do much for the fact that her accent really gets in the way of her pronunciation of both Polish and english.

my true ignorance about the use of cases in the Polish language was revealed and the plan for the day was thrown out the window as she tried to review. she made a teaching mistake i’ve made before, which is to start to explain something rather advanced that hasn’t even been covered yet, and then to wave it off with, “just forget about that. that’s for later. that’s why it’s later. it’s really really complicated. don’t even think about it now.” she had more grace than i’ve had in the past.

my favorite quote of the class: “in the vocative case there are no special question words. because you’re just yelling.”

after class i was going to go to the squat to use the computer, but it was way too early in the morning for that. so i went to the library instead. typing in bright sunlight coming through the windows, hardly able to see the screen, headache. but i was glad the shades were open when, after i had been there about a half hour, i heard chanting and looked out to see a large crowd moving across the rynek, each person under a colored umbrella; white, yellow, red, in groups, each also clutching a balloon. they moved across the space beneath us, towards a small stage on the other side of the square, which i had noticed being built as i headed from Polish class to the library. plaintive folk songs sung in a solitary off-key voice. what the hell is going on?

it looked like a rally from the prisoner.

i went to retrieve my library card (you leave it at the desk to use the internet) and the girl who is always there laughed as she handed it to me and said, “the water is so nice, nobody wants to be in the library!” what? oh, right. there is no “th” sound in the Polish language, something my students struggle with constantly, so Poles speaking english will usually pronounce it as “t.” so “weather” becomes something similar to “water.” right, weather, got it.

i didn’t think the weather was that nice, though, as the wind cut right through me as i made my way towards the stage, where i found little children singing about mountains. signs for a senior organization and the chanting seemed to be over, so no chance to attempt to translate whatever they had been repeating. an organizer insisted i take a lollipop. dziękuję.

i headed home, where the early morning hours and the lack of sleep the night before collided into a surprise attack nap. i woke up after a dream i can’t recall now, in time to take a call from my boss. one of my students thinks she’s been placed above her level, and what do i think? ugh, sleep in my head, i tried to eloquently tell her i thought she could do the work, but i really had little to go on. argh, pissed at myself that i had misinterpreted her silence during the last class, as she had said she wasn’t happy about the topic of conversation we were discussing: globalization. annoyed with myself that she felt uncomfortable in my class and i didn’t notice.

then, slow waking up, coffee and food, and getting ready for the wrocław expats “mixer.”