wiwiw

1. Start

This essay is a result, albeit indirect, of discussions I've had with many friends, male and female, over the years, on the subject of what I really want in a woman. For most of my life, of course, I haven't really known; I suspect most young people don't really know what they want in a partner. I've always thought that that's one of the most challenging and difficult questions a person can ever ask themselves – 'What, in all honesty, do I want?'

Perhaps this consideration marks my transition from 'innocence' or 'naïveté' to 'wisdom'. The fact that I can now make the following assertions may be a sign of having finally reached a certain level of maturity, after one divorce and various other relationships which have ended in greater or lesser degrees of failure – although the marriage ended in a better way than some of the other relationships which came both before and after it. And this realisation has come just in time; I don't have many years of potential attractiveness to women left, so if I'm going to avoid dying alone, I'd better start work. (Oh, and let me say right off that I am fully aware that I'm not George Clooney, or even Sean Connery. But you, for your part, are not Angelina Jolie or Gisele Bündchen, either. Trust me. :P )

I also know perfectly well that it's unreasonable to expect all, or even a majority, of the aspects listed below to be present in one individual. There are no ideals in this world, and human nature is such that even if we did find perfection on earth, we'd find some reason for dissatisfaction with it. But it's like the great philosopher Grace Jones once said; 'I'm not perfect, but I'm perfect for you'. That seems like the most realistic goal to strive for. Nevertheless, you have to have some higher goals to work towards; even if you don't reach them, the effort you make in trying to attain them can be an end in itself.

2. The mind 頭

I feel it's important to make a distinction between intelligence and intellect. I'd go so far as to say that the majority of people I know, irrespective of their education or class, are intelligent, in the sense of being able to process information from the world around them and take decisions on that basis. True 'stupidity', defined as a failure to do that – either because of stubbornness or mental/physical incapacity – is in my experience a rare thing. However, it must also be said that I've largely had the luck to meet intelligent people, and I haven't been cursed with many stupid bosses, family members, friends of friends, or other such people as tend to infest our daily lives.

One way in which intelligence can manifest itself is in pragmatism. This doesn't necessarily have to mean a hard-hearted, brutally cold dollars-and-cents attitude to living; indeed such a person would be very antipathetic for me. The kind of pragmatism I'm thinking of would, for example, after conceiving of a plan to travel to a far-off country for six months, start checking out living expenses and accommodation options, rather than simply setting off straight away without a second thought. There's nothing wrong with having a spontaneous thought or idea to do something; less admirable is a tendency to rush straight into actions without thinking them through (at least partially) and imagining what their consequences might be. Most people I know have that degree of intelligence, at least most of the time. (Although everyone goes crazy sometimes, of course; that's just the price we pay for being organic lifeforms. ;) )

But aside from this basic kind of intelligence, I need a person with a certain kind of intellectual life. I define this as a keen and curious interest in matters beyond the purely everyday and quotidian. This can manifest itself in a thousand ways – a keen interest in music (this especially; music is of central importance in my life), theatre, literature, politics, the visual arts, hairstyles, architecture, any or all of the above, and other things as well which I might not have thought of right now. The cultural, the aesthetic, the philosophical, the speculative, is a part of life which I simply can't do without. And also, no cultural experience is ever fully valid unless you can share it with someone else, even if their opinion of it is the total opposite of yours. Why do we go to the cinema with friends? So we can share our experiences and opinions of the film. It's a lot less fun on your own, and it's even more fun if the film provokes a lively discussion afterwards.

Something I couldn't really deal with in a partner is a very deep attachment to a formal religion. This might not seem like an intellectual matter, but it is; the wholesale acceptance of religious propositions and dogmas, as laid down in ancient texts (or in the interpretations of those texts by someone closer to your own cultural community) shows a certain readiness to accept things unquestioningly, an unwillingness to challenge received opinions, and a possible willingness to try and force those opinions upon others, regardless of their own spiritual inclinations or searches. An awareness that humanity is not the centre of the cosmos, that we are all interconnected with the biosystem of the Earth and by extension the rest of the universe, and that there are plenty of phenomena yet to be explained, is properly humble and justifiable. But a belief that a big sky man, who created all of infinity in exactly the form it has now, is going to torture you forever for not living according to a cultural skill-set developed centuries ago, is not.

Everyone writes 'sense of humour' on dating profiles, and that's certainly important too. I read somewhere that a person's intelligence can be correlated to their sense of humour, and that people who fail to find things funny are often lacking in conventional intelligence. (Although not always; witness the fact that autistics have great difficulty understanding humour, while being capable of other great mental feats.) What counts, though, is that a partner's sense of humour should be compatible with yours; if one of you finds something hilarious and the other reacts with a face similar to a month-old Presbyterian fish, then you won't have a good time together. More importantly, humour is one of the most important tools for overcoming adversity – whether with each other, or shared together in the face of external challenges. My humour is, among other things, very linguistically and culturally based; this is one reason why, despite my knowledge of other languages, I think my ideal partner would also have to know English to a reasonably high standard.

3. The heart 心

You can call this personality or temperament or character or whatever else comes to mind, but it has to take its place here, in the centre of this discussion. A woman who's a genius literary critic with the body of a supermodel is no kind of partner if she's an arsehole with a terminal sense of self-entitlement and a fondness for other people's money.

When I did one of those daft Facebook quizzes a few months ago on my most desired quality in a woman, I checked 'compassion'. This came as a surprise to many people who read it, who assumed I'd go for intelligence, or possibly a sense of humour. As mentioned above, both of these are very important to me; but in the end, compassion is the thing I seem to need most, and feel the keenest lack of in my daily life. I always think of the word's roots in Latin, which might roughly be translated as 'with-feeling' or 'together-feeling' (as reflected in German Mitgefühl and Polish współczucie). When I'm feeling something strongly, she should at least be able to understand that mood, if not share it completely. Obviously it's unreasonable to expect any other human being's moods and feelings to synchronise perfectly and exactly with one's own; nevertheless, there has to be some commonality of feeling between two people who want to live together. So, looking irritated when I'm happy or laughing, being unable to suppress giggles when I'm crying or depressed, staring at me blankly or acting bored when I'm trying to figure out something confusing or disturbing – these would be deal-breakers.

Another element of my ideal partner might best be described as 'conversation'. This can be interpreted in a literal sense, obviously; the flow of an intelligent, warm-hearted, good-humoured conversation, passing freely and easily from silly to serious, from high to low, from deep to shallow and back again, is one of the most pleasant experiences I know. And there is nothing worse than sitting around in silence with someone, struggling to think of things to say; it's even worse when you know from past experience that she does have subjects to talk about, but simply can't express herself. (The language issue is also relevant here.) It's a bit like having a good car which simply won't start, however many times you turn the ignition key. But conversation also refers to genuinely exchanging one's views and opinions; when two people just talk past each other, one saying 'I think A, B and C', and the other 'I think X, Y and Z', then they are not really communicating, and not really forming any kind of bond with each other. It would be like setting up two TV sets face to face, and ultimately just as pointless.

My ideal woman also needs to have a certain kind of courage. On one hand, the pragmatism and level-headedness of which I spoke earlier is important; on the other, however, that can't become fossilised into timidity, or even a fear of doing anything new or outside the borders of routine. That courage can be expressed in many ways; a willingness to confront a difficult truth (about herself, me, or other important people), talk about it, and deal with it openly; a readiness to 'roll the dice' and try new ways of life, if the old ones are obviously failing to bring about the desired results; and the bravery to accept a situation which can't be changed, rather than spend energy uselessly trying to change or avoid it, instead devoting that energy to devising a new approach to the problem. (Oh, and 'the wisdom to know the difference', while we're heading into teatowel/bumper-sticker territory. Just because something's a cliché, that doesn't mean it's not true. ;) )

4. The body 体

All together now, 'Yay!' This is the only bit anyone's really interested in – men because they like comparing another set of body fantasies with their own, women because they can criticise my shallowness while secretly comparing their own appearances and those of their colleagues/competitors with my criteria. I might have to disappoint you all, though. :P

The cliché is, of course, that the guy says, 'Oh no, physical beauty doesn't matter to me at all, I'm only interested in your inner beauty.' Naturally, such statements are profound bollocks of the first order. (If I was only interested in emotional and intellectual validation, I'd get myself a sympathetic tabby cat and train it to meow appreciatively at Douglas Adams and William Gibson references.) I very specifically want to live with a woman because of the physical and sexual element implied in that kind of relationship. I do not intend to live in celibacy for the rest of my life; I already tried that, it was called 'my marriage'. :D (And that wasn't so much her fault, anyway.)

Biology, of course, dictates certain basic truths. So obviously no-one who is over-fat or over-thin, over-old or over-young, is going to make the grade. Other than that, though, I don't seem to have any special triggers which invariably awaken irresistible lust in me. As far as pure sexual attraction, without any other considerations, goes – well, the tall, the small, the bony, the bosomy, the bouncy, the fair, the dark, the melanin-blessed, the melanin-deprived, the Mazovian, the Mexican, the Maharashtran, the fifteen-year-old (yes, I admit it; they can be fully woman-shaped at that age, and you all know it), the fifty-year-old, the freckled, the the flawless, the smooth, the scarred, the pierced, the smooth, the loud, the quiet, and all kinds in between have all floated my proverbial boat at one time or another.

But we can't deny the importance of what used to be called (before that damn silly TV show took the expression over) 'the X-factor', that incalculable and unpredictable extra element in a personality which makes the person come alive for you. Ya got it, or ya don't. And what works for me won't work for you, and vice versa. We all know people of our acquaintance who are perfectly pleasant-looking, who are symmetrical and proportional in every acceptable way, but who just don't do it for us – they don't have our corresponding X-factor. I have met a couple of pairs of female identical twins, seemingly indistinguishable in every way, and preferred one to the other because of this X-factor.

Attractiveness is an utterly unpredictable thing. I have met women who seem physically flawless, indeed several who have been professional models, and found them to be meh; I have met others with a crooked nose, one eye not quite straight, bamboo-tall, barrel-round, narrow of bosom, heavy of hip, bony of knee, wild of hair (not all of these things refer to the same girl, by the way :P), but who've driven me crazy with desire. No-one can ever know what will do it for another person. So ultimately there's no real point in thinking too deeply about such things. (If we are going to talk about any particular archetypes, though, I will admit to a lifelong love of tall, thin studenty girls with long, straight brunette hair and glasses. But small, blonde, womanly or mature persons with good eyesight should not feel discouraged at this point. As I still fail to resemble Brad Pitt [or even William Pitt], I am not in a position to lay down too many stringent conditions. Right? :D )

This is probably the time to admit that I need a certain degree of sexual experimentation. Of course, the standard, Church-approved missionary hump does have its place, especially early on. And one cannot eat haute cuisine or do the whole Japanese tea ceremony every night; sometimes one just wants a pizza and a beer. ;) But anyone who lives on only one kind of food will be unhealthy in the longer term. If a potential partner considers even the slightest variations on the basic theme to be unacceptable and perverted, she would ultimately be denying herself and me a whole potential world of pleasure, and most importantly, pair-bonding. That’s what sex is for, let’s remember. It's something which would need time, patience and a willingness to make mistakes; after a while, every couple finds their comfort range, the 'grammar' of love-making which they can use to express their feelings. But that has to be a whole language, and not just one word.

5. Other bits

A couple of other points on the map of my little fantasy-land; no smokers, I'm afraid. Together with the obvious reasons (smell, ashes, expense), my grandmother, to whom I was closest of all of my family members, died slowly, horribly and visibly over a period of months from lung cancer. And I simply wouldn't want that to happen to anyone I love or care for.

Secondly, no dog-lovers. (I'm a cat person, as regards pets.) The main reason for this is an easily explainable childhood trauma; on my grandparents' farm when I was about five, their large black dog decided I was a chew-toy, took my arm in its mouth, and tried to drag me off somewhere. It didn't even break the skin, but my mother and grandmother started yelling, the dog started barking, I started crying, and it was all generally noisy and unpleasant. Since that time, I have had a dislike of being near big dogs, especially in confined spaces; the 'friendly' ones like small ponies who put their paws on your shoulders are worst of all.

But I have an ideological objection to other dogs, too, especially the ones which fit in handbags or are owned by very old ladies, as well as the mutant-rat kinds and the ones with circus mirror-distorted faces and bodies. One of the things I find hardest to forgive humans for is what they've done to dogs – breeding them over decades to accentuate physical features which are deemed to be charming, or even simply amusing. This has left the poor unfortunate results of this genetic engineering with a multitude of health problems – breathing, vision, walking, all damaged by the human desire to create 'cute' animals. When God or the aliens finally come to judge humanity, the treatment of dogs might count against us as the real genocide; perhaps the willingness of the first domesticated canines to work with humans has a parallel with the American Indians who welcomed the first European settlers with food and assistance, only to be cruelly abused thereafter. So I'm afraid pretty much all dog-lovers are excluded.

A final note about children, a relevant subject for every woman, whether she wants them or not. I personally am not convinced I would be a good father, for reasons connected with my own past; I don't feel I would be able to create a new, reasonably functional human personality when my own is so flawed. You could call that an act of cowardice, but I'd disagree; I have no problem with taking risks with my own life, but I wouldn't want to risk someone else's, especially when they had no choice in the matter. Nevertheless, perhaps because I'm getting older, I tend to think that the right woman might change my mind; after all, raising a child isn't supposed to be a job for one person, and perhaps I can find someone who'll help compensate for my flaws (and for whose own flaws I can compensate). As for marriage, I've tried that; my main problem with it is how it changes the rest of the world's view of you. I don't rule it out forever. But I've learned that when people really want to be together, no piece of paper can stop their feelings; and when people really want to separate, no piece of paper can make them change their feelings.

6. End

Feelings. Ah yes, them. After about 3200 of these useless words, it all comes down to human feelings – those things I've always tried to avoid, which still attack me when I'm least expecting them, and which I can only handle with the help of someone else. What I want, in the end, is what I see in the streets around me; the young students holding each other tight at the bus stop; the married couple who know each other's jokes backwards, but treasure them like you treasure your favourite pair of warm old socks; the old couple who walk arm in arm to church on a Sunday morning, as they always did.

That's what I want. Is that unreasonable? ;)

(Any applications for the position of Official Girlfriend may be submitted to the usual addresses. :D )

Guinness = yuk

Someone else obviously agrees with me about the horrible stuff. :)

Sláinte!

It's St Patrick's Day, the commemoration of a proto-Welshman who spent most of his life arguing and fighting with everyone he knew, probably in reaction to having been abducted by pirates as a child. He got so mad at said pirates that he went back to their home island and Christianised the lot of them - as brutal a vengeance as I can think of, even today. ;)

I don't actually know any technically 100% Irish people at the moment, although I did meet two nice Irish people in Spain, of all places. One was a priest from somewhere in County Dublin, who for some reason was studying Spanish at the residency course in Jaca in 1989, a gentle and good-natured soul who had the kind of quietly wise air which one expects (and rarely finds) in the religious. The other was a bloke from Cork who I worked with in Sabadell in 1991-2, who had earned his scars teaching in an inner-London comprehensive school, and also worked as a hotel barman, having had the, er, unforgettable experience of delivering room-service to an unclad Alison Moyet.

I've never been surprised at the fact that many Poles have gone to Ireland and felt at home, often much more so than in Britain. As historical nations Poland and Ireland, after all, have plenty of things in common: a devoted attachment to Catholicism, especially some of its more pagan manifestations (blessing newly-purchased cars or newly-opened football pitches, churches full of Mary(=Gaia) with Jesus off to one side looking vaguely out of place, big on the saints, images and rituals); a joyous attitude to drink, food and a good time (none of your imperial self-restraint here); a history of being oppressed by very un-neighbourly neighbours, who frequently attempted to obliterate the indigenous cultures; a history of emigration in search of a better life, which led to extensive and culturally important diasporae all over the world; a very mixed reception in those host countries (witness 'Polack' jokes and Irish jokes); an ability to transform those host cultures into something unique (think of the great Irish writers in English, then consider writers & scholars like Joseph Conrad, Jerzy Kosiński, Lewis Namier and plenty more); now free and independent states making their way in the European Union and the 21st century.

So raise a glass of Żubrówka or Porter, Smithwick's or Harp (but not Guinness, which is fit only for exterminating vermin), and wish both great nations all the best!

3

Put your pebble on the pile,
Pass your baton in the race-
The finish isn't yours to see,
Be satisfied you took your place.

16 February 2005, 09:19

2

Since I've written at least four times since your last message, and that was more than a year ago, I thought it was best to remove you from my friend list.

How would you define friendship? For me, it's exchanging ideas, be they emotions or news or opinions. If there is no exchange, no awareness of the other, then there is no friendship.

And I'm not going to simply collect people like those collectable cards that kids have, just to have 500 'friends' of whom the vast majority I never hear or learn anything. Behind every square of pixels on the screen stands a human, and that goes for me too. And humans are not collectable cards.

I don't wish you ill, far from it; I wish you only success and happiness in what you do in life. But the lack of contact between us means it's time to move; you into my past, into your future.

1

Culture shows us what we are
and what we could become,
Rehearsing what we might yet do
And showing what we've done.
It gives shape to the shapeless clouds
Which we could never name,
And gives support to halting thoughts
Which used to hobble lame.

watching: Mika Motosugi
reading: 'Japan Edge'
listening: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mikrophonie I (also listen here)

Ten things are weird about me

1. I have never eaten a taco, burrito, or enchilada; in fact, I am not even sure what the latter two are composed of.

2. I have no need to set an alarm; irrespective of what time I have to get up, or even what time I go to bed the previous day, I somehow always contrive to wake up in time for whatever I have to do.

3. The last two songs I performed in front of an audience were 'Hallelujah' by Leonard Cohen and 'The one I love' by REM.

4. The last time I drove a car was in June 1991.

5. Despite being a firm adherent of logic and rationality, I firmly believe that the number 13 will bring me good luck in any situation I encounter it in. (This is probably connected to my birthday being on the 13th.)

6. On this same basis, I always walk under ladders whenever possible.

7. I started to learn Japanese in 1979, when a high-schooler in Otaru, Hokkaido, entirely unprovoked, sent me an airmail letter in Japanese. But even now I wouldn’t be able to sustain a simple conversation in Japanese.

8. I always sit by the aisle in planes, so that I can walk around and go to the bathroom a) as efficiently as possible, and b) inconveniencing as few other people as possible.

9. Sometimes I tune my radio to white noise (the ‘snow’ sound of an empty channel) to help me clear my thoughts and relax.

10. I always speak English to airport staff, even if I speak the local language well; I feel that they could use the practice. But I always conclude my transactions with them by saying ‘Thank you’ in the local language.

What are ten weird things about you?

America!

Have just returned from spending the inter-semester break in central Florida, staying with Gary (old chum from my early days in Lódz), who descends from there, and teaches high school there now. Nevertheless he is nostalgic for Poland, and recently bought some land near Sokolniki and had a wooden highlandsman-style house built there. His summer palace, he says. Anyway, it will be (slightly) more pleasant to spend summers there than in the brutal heat of Florida.

It was nice when I went there though; clear blue skies, temperatures in the late teens to mid-20s the whole time I was there. Mostly clear, although some rainy bits (and even a tornado warning, one day! but nothing came of it); certainly a world away from grey, wet old Poland. When I left Tampa airport on a Thursday morning it was 24°C; when I returned to the Fatherland (on Friday afternoon, time travel gets weirder coming from west to east), Warsaw welcomed me with -7°C. :D

Yes, it's a seductive lifestyle. It's all so cheap! Especially with the dollar now being worth less than what we wipe our bums with in European toilets. Gary told me, 'Bring two empty suitcases, you'll fill them up,' and he jested not. I bought cheap books (wonderful things; histories, anthropology, linguistics, travel, and 'economics for freaks') and cheap clothing; as Gary comes from a family of teachers, his parents know where to shop for discarded goods - factory rejects which to the untrained eye appear perfect, but are not deemed good enough for regular sales - and so I got suitcases full of Ralph Lauren & Calvin Klein shirts and trousers for two or three bucks each. I also went to the legendary WalMart and stocked up on cheap underwear and towels, while I could. I even treated myself to a mini-computer (not yet available in Europe) for several hundred dollars less than the price I wd have paid in a British shop.

And of course, it's all flat and clean and relatively well-organised. We travelled around four states (heading from central Florida northwards, nipping into Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi while heading along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico - the 'redneck riviera', they call it), and I don't think there was a hill or dale you could justify with the name of 'geography'. Very swampy in places though; supposedly the area is crawling with alligators, but I never saw one. Not the season, I suppose; also, I didn't have the number to their agents, and you know those people never do anything local. ;)

But it's all built on credit, of course. Wiser Americans are counting their pennies and making care they haven't invested in anything, making sure they have land, gold or other long-term assets carefully hidden under the bed. Which, of course, they protect with their guns. I shot a gun! It was a specific request of mine, to do that when I came over. Gary got a small handgun (basically a pistol) from his mother :D, bought some ammo at WalMart (yes, you can buy rifles and ammunition and all of that over the counter, just down from the tyre centre and across from the furniture section), and while we were in a wood in Mississippi, I mercilessly and brutally killed some plastic bottles. (adopts deep voice: I AM A MAN NOW. :D) I can see why they like shooting things, it's such fun!

But driving along the flat roads (heading north to the South, as they joke there), listening to the radio - with country music's endless messages reinforcing a sense of defensive, aggressive pride in being a 'plain-speakin' God-fearin' man who does like his daddy done and don't take no crap from nobody', and then the talk-show presenters whose nationalist simplicities echo the same concepts, and the religious broadcasters who take four words from a Biblical text and flog them to death like horses in a Roman amphitheatre - seeing the fat people shop at WalMart and eat 'all they can eat' at the roadhouse diners (but some of the food is genuinely yummy, such as a local fish called pollock which is like a delicate kind of cod), seeing the black people's ill-repaired wooden houses quite literally on 'the wrong side of the (railway) tracks' from the white sections of town, you know that there is still something at the heart of this country which isn't as it should be.

I talked to Gary's high-schoolers a couple of times; they were reassuring in their normality, not ignorant future-murderer Christalibans as we might think, but perfectly recognisable types; some quite intelligent for their age (17ish - a strange feeling for me, to now be talking to people born in the 1990s) and most friendly and curious about the outside world. Gary is bringing them over to Europe for a trip this summer, and I might run into them in Kraków. :) But most of them have never left the US, often because their families can't afford to - or if they did, it's because their fathers are military personnel. So Iraq and Afghanistan are very relevant topics; the 'support our troops' and 'proud parent of a soldier' stickers you see everywhere are not braggadocio, but genuine expressions of love and concern. And the concern is real for a couple of the boys whose SATs (Student Aptitude Test scores, the end-of-school exams they take to determine where they'll study) aren't so good, and have decided to join the Army and the Marines, following in family traditions.

I think that for the English, the dissonance, the culture shock we encounter when going over there is always much greater than it would be for a European. They don't expect it to be a culture similar to theirs, because they are conscious of speaking a foreign language when they go there, or have anything to do with it. But we English, perhaps, somewhere in our heart of hearts, think that Americans should be more like us because of the (more or less) shared language. (But it wasn't that shared when the owner of an Alabama diner was saying something benevolent to me as I left his fine establishment; I couldn't understand a blind word the man was saying for the best part of a minute.) The truth is, of course, that England is much more a part of the European cultural continuum. The USA has evolved along very different lines, and even though I'd like to visit again (and buy its cheap products and admire its overly-bosomed women - do they all get implants at birth, or what?), I am still sure that it would be far too different a psychic landscape for me to ever inhabit comfortably. I think. :)

Love what you do

Part of the modern-day angst which we are all alleged to suffer from these days lies in the apparent lack of division between the concepts of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’. It’s claimed that advances in technology such as the Blackberry and the net-enabled mobile phone make us virtual (in both senses) slaves of our employers (or of our employment, at least) wherever we go.

Now it’s true that my life does look like that, at least superficially. I am most often to be found in symbiosis with a laptop as I struggle with other people’s bad English and unclear thinking, in my capacities as teacher, proof-reader and translator. But in my case, I am simply doing what I am best at. Because of a combination of factors – principally a challenging father who didn’t allow lazy thought or speech to go uncriticised, plus a light sprinkling of what I’m sure is Asperger’s-syndrome fairydust – I have a natural inclination to and talent for spotting discrepancies of detail, inconsistencies of language, sometimes at great distances; a good proofer has to spot the same term which was used on page 2 and not again until page 220, and ensure it’s spelt & used in the same way. As an example, very bored people can check the spelling of the term ‘Kali Yuga’ on pages 145 (chapter 20) and 272 (chapter 45) of the first English edition of Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s pendulum’.

This is the type of thing which I both notice and feel as almost a kind of affront, as a fundamental wrongness which my instinct simply finds impossible to let pass, much as a gardener views an insect or a weed. Normal people let such things pass, as being at worst a minor irritant if a genuine confusion of meanings is caused, and usually just a matter of no real importance. Not me, though; my righteous indignation at coming across such mistakes and manglings is matched only by the satisfaction I feel at rectifying them. I read somewhere that the autistic’s desire for routine and repetition stems from a desire to control at least one small part of the endless onrush of data from the vast, mad world outside her head. So perhaps my talent for languages and language on both the specific & general levels is ultimately just a form of some similar kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. :)

Whatever, I can’t really deny that I get a particular satisfaction out of what I do, whether that be untangling the tortured syntax which Slavonic languages seem to specialise in (What’s wrong with relative clauses? Why do you hate them?), correcting an earnest but under-informed physics professor’s over-use of the present continuous tense, or later the same day seeing the light of recognition dawn in the eyes of a student to whom I’ve just explained the same grammatical point. In fact, I might say that over the years since graduation, I’ve been able (semi-consciously at the beginning, more deliberately in recent years as I’ve become more aware of my real nature and abilities) to narrow the gap between ‘that which I must do to earn & maintain income and social status’ and ‘that which I must do to satisfy my interests and desires (intellectual, even if not spiritual, cultural, physical, etc.)’. Now isn’t that just a long-winded way of saying that my work/leisure divide is close to being bridged?

So I sit by the window in a well-lit café, with the pleasant distractions of attractive waitresses, good European coffee or hot chocolate; losing myself in my work or not, as I choose; entering or leaving at 8am or 3pm as the whim & the sunlight take me, just so long as the work gets done by deadline. (I have the habit of setting deadlines for a day or two after I know I’m likely to finish the work; that gives me the advantage of being seen as a fast worker if I finish beforehand, and also allows me some leeway if something unexpected does happen.)

But there is a snake lurking in this little Eden. Despite all the advantages I’ve described in such loving detail above, a subtle but deep dissatisfaction remains, which keeps me in bed listening to BBC Radio 4 longer in the mornings than I should be, which occasionally makes me pretend to lose E-mails or their attachments, or spend too much time talking to faraway persons on messenger programs or Skype. Why should this be, if the work I do is so closely in tune with my own sensibilities, interests and obsessions? (At least if nothing else, this proves that I’m not really that autistic; if I was that far lost in the hermetic world of the ultra-male brain (as some have described the condition), then no food, news programme or sultry post-Communist siren could stop me from obsessively adding every missing hyphen in ‘long term’ from here till the next World Conference of International Mathematicians for Dullness & Tweed Jackets.) :)

No, the problem is this - it’s still work. No matter what intellectual satisfaction I get from it, I am still beholden to someone else, still following someone else’s orders as opposed to my own whims & caprices. And the psychic burden of knowing that this element of compulsion exists somehow takes away the pleasure of the work, even though the work itself should be intrinsically pleasant of itself for me. So what does that mean, when one has a deep-seated desire to avoid work and its responsibilities, even when that work is ideally suited to one’s skills, abilities and inclinations? Does it indicate that the concept of ‘work’ has such a negative effect on our attitudes that it can poison and degrade anything we do and call by that name? Is this the fundamental problem underlying our dissatisfaction with our lives? Would we enjoy what we do a lot more if we didn’t call it ‘work’ and think of it as work?

Or am I just a lazy git? :D

Leon Niemczyk

A word for this great actor, one of the best known in Poland, who died last week at the age of 83. Although he was born in Warsaw, he lived for many years here in Łódź and was considered a son of the city. (More about him here in Polish.) This is my picture of his 'star' on our very own Avenue of the Stars, which runs down the main drag in the town centre and is studded in the Broadway manner with stars commemorating famous people from the Polish film & TV world; you'll see that someone has left a commemorative candle by it, as is the habit in this country. Niemczyk was not fussy about the roles he took; he starred in high art films by Roman Polański and in the cheapie soap operas beloved by grannies everywhere in Poland.

Best name for a politician

I have no idea how successful this lady was in her campaign (for the local elections here in the Łódź area), but you have to admit she was born (or at least married into) the profession, with a surname like this. :D

The Book Meme

This idea comes from the English conservative political blogger Iain Dale; books being so important in my life, I thought I wd fill out these questions for myself, and I invite your answers to these same questions. You can answer privately or here in the public space, I don't mind. :)

1. Name one book that changed your life.
I can't say that a book ever has. Certainly my life would have been poorer without 'I, Claudius' by Robert Graves and 'Europe: a history' by Norman Davies, as much as any books I can think of.

2. One book you've read more than once.
So many of them... if I love a book, I read it again and again, and I can discover new things in it every time. One which I picked up again for the bazillionth time recently is 'Lords of the horizons: a history of the Ottoman Empire' by Jason Goodwin. Not written like a 'normal' history at all; more like a novel or a play, with a cast of bizarre characters and humorous, macabre anecdotes, not chained too tightly to chronology, but leaving you with a genuine feeling of having lived through a human experience.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island.
'The Isles', another Norman Davies history. I only understand Britain and England (two different things) when I am far away from it. And Davies' writing talent makes his books endlessly re-readable.

4. One book that made you laugh.
'Humorous' authors I like, such as P J O'Rourke or Hunter S Thompson, are just as often downright astonishing and occasionally deeply serious. For sheer fun, I like Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a small island'; this American lived in Britain for 30 years, and retains a sense of how lovably absurd us Brits can be.

5. One book that made you cry.
'Margrave of the marshes' by John Peel; this witty, unpretentious, sweet guy dominated British music for 40 years. Why do the best people always die before their time? Also 'Wild swans' by Jung Chang; how brutal life in China has been for most of the past 100 years.

6. One book you wish you'd written.
'Foucault's pendulum' by Umberto Eco; such a mix of ideas, humour, intellectual challenge, and (a nice change from this author) some characters I can identify with. If I could do something like this...

7. One book you wish had never been written.
Anything 'written' by a reality-show contestant or a model, for starters. :) Otherwise hard to think... even reading 'Venus in furs' by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch or 'Juliette' by the Marquis de Sade, though extremely morally challenging and at times repulsive, serve the function of making us go into the darkest and most dangerous hidden corners of our personality. If you want to read something you probably wouldn't normally want to read, try 'Chopper' by Mark Read; a former hitman from the Australian underworld details his crimes - but more importantly, subjects himself to rigorous self-examination as to why he (and others) behave in such a way.

8. One book you're currently reading.
'Collapse' by Jared Diamond; how human behaviour affects environmental change, and vice versa. And 'The golden age of myth and legend' by Thomas Bulfinch, a collection of the Greco-Roman myths (with others) from the Victorian period which greatly influenced that time's literature and thinking.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.
'Don Quijote' by Cervantes; lying around in both English and Spanish for years, I can't quite get started with it.... And 'American gods' by Neil Gaiman - all the evidence indicates he's one of our era's best storytellers. I must finally find out for myself.

10. Now tag five people.
Indres, Knur, George, brother, Tanya. I doubt whether they will answer, though. ;)

What we all want

Consider this, folks;

Men tend to dislike women who are perceived as whiny, clingy, possessive, dependent. It would seem that we want our other halves to be more independent, more determined, assertive (yet not too confrontational) and rational. Much as men perceive themselves to be.

Women, in my observation of the species, see men as aggressive, insensitive, unfeeling, closed-minded. It seems they want their men to be empathic, understanding, conciliatory, open-minded. Much as women perceive themselves to be.

So for all our talk of trying to understand the opposite sex, is it in fact the case that all we want is another version of ourselves? Is the whole human race basically narcissistic?

Former empire syndrome

I just returned from a week's holiday in the Baltic countries; I'd never been to Latvia, although the other two countries and their languages are relatively familiar to me. I do enjoy travelling! I suppose technically, as an Englishman, I've been 'travelling' ever since I started working abroad in 1990, but after having lived in Poland for so long, even going back to England feels like travelling abroad. Ever since I was a child I knew that my future lay abroad, and I have no plans to return to England - unless I was offered a job there, whose parameters would be so unreal that I don't even bother imagining it in any detail. (A senior professorship, for example. :) )

I have always had a sympathy for the smaller countries in Europe, the ones which don't suffer under the burden of some great imperial history which they have to remind themselves of time and again. The larger nations - the English, the French, the Poles, the Spanish - seem to have a certain element of their cultures which reflects a common psychological complex; I call this the 'former empire syndrome.' They place a very great deal of emphasis on their history, their languages, how lucky other foreigners are to be living in their countries, etc. I don't mind nations being proud of their past (although every nation has a dark stain or two somewhere in its history), but it bothers me when the xenophobic and nationalist elements start to emerge in popular culture, and in how ordinary people perceive the rest of the world.

Poland's entry into the European Union was soon followed by the election of a rightist, nationalist-Catholic government whose coalition parties strongly opposed joining the EU; so on one hand, the Poles are glad of the chance to travel and work freely, but on the other hand, a lot of political discourse in this country is rather anti-'Brussels', anti-supposed interference from foreign countries. The Poles' long history of foreign domination, culminating in a period of 123 years when there was no Polish state on the map of Europe, has predisposed them to a suspicion of foreign interference, and a consequent desire to protect their own identity and culture.

As for my own identity and culture, I have never seen being English as a source of automatic pride. It's just one of the things I was born with; like when you play poker, you are given a hand of cards at the beginning, and you have to play with it. Being English for me is like having blue-green eyes and having a tendency to be fat; they're simply something I use in everyday life. I use my eyes to see with, I use being fat to push into and out of crowded buses and trams, and I use being English to work as a teacher and translator. I know intelligent, reasonable and compassionate English people, just as I know such people from Poland, France, Mexico or wherever; just as I know stupid, stubborn and thoughtless English people, Poles, French etc. I have other problems with the English way of life (or at least, the southern-English middle-class way of life which I come from), though, but that's another story. :)

I have often wondered how many people, like me, would choose to live the majority of their life in another country, among foreigners, returning home only occasionally to see family and friends. It has not historically been a 'normal' way of living, to deliberately isolate oneself from one's own culture, language and background. But will it become more common in the future?

The rise of the right-wing government has caused many of my Polish friends abroad, who had originally planned to work there just for a short time, to consider staying abroad permanently. Poland has had many waves of exiles and emigrants in the past, reacting to the political difficulties in the home country; it is a strange and disturbing feeling, at the beginning of the 21st century, to think that it could be happening again.

Christmas in Poland

A couple of words about the typical Polish family Christmas, and the ways in which it differs from what we know here. Strange as it all may seem to the English, of course, it means a lot for Poles, as I suppose Christmas does for all people of Christian culture; childhood’s dreams are formed at this time of year, and they stay with us for our whole lives.

In common with other European cultures (there was a reference in the Times to the British Queen’s household doing the same, where it is described as a German custom), Poles ‘celebrate’ Christmas as we would understand it on the 24th. Traditionally the family assemble and begin their meal when the children of the house see the first star of night-time through the window, which depending on your latitude (it’s worth remembering that Poland is roughly one-third larger than the United Kingdom, while containing one-third fewer people) is some time between 3.30 and 4pm at that time of year.

The Polish Christmas table is laden with a variety of dishes, but two rules are strictly upheld; no meat is permitted, in the manner of a traditional Lenten fast, and there must be an odd number of dishes on the table. Also, a place is traditionally set on the table but left empty, in case a stranger should come by needing food and companionship, far from his own people, on this most important family holiday.

The absence of meat doesn’t deprive Poles of a wide range of dishes, but of all the most commonly encountered foods traditionally eaten at that time, pride of place is given to the carp. This will often have been bought at the local market or supermarket – still alive, sometimes, for the father of the household to decapitate in the bath – but in the countryside, it may well have come from a local pond or river. Other traditional Christmas dishes include broad beans, jellied fish, herring, mushrooms of various kinds, and a stewed-fruit compôte which has a distinctive smoky taste. Also various kinds of oatmeal and horseradish are found.

But before anyone tucks in, the oldest member of the household takes the communion wafers (distributed free at the local church for precisely this purpose) and says a prayer for the family’s health and happiness in the New Year. Then, each person present takes a piece of the communion wafer for themselves. Custom then requires each person to offer their wafer to their neighbour, who breaks a piece off for himself to eat, while exchanging good wishes. Everyone does this with all the other people present. When the wishes and communion wafers have been exchanged, then the feast commences.

The children’s favourite time, the opening of the presents, normally comes around when the meal has been completed, which would normally be between 6 and 7pm. It is important in Polish custom not to specify from whom each present came, as they are all deemed to have been brought by ‘Saint Nicholas’ (Mikołaj); this custom may have originated to spare the blushes of poorer family members being ‘outdone’ by richer ones.

In most families, if they have the stamina, the feasting and talking continues until everyone goes to the midnight mass (traditionally known as the ‘pasterka’, or shepherds’ meeting), where Polish carols are sung by candlelight. As in the English tradition, many of the carols preserve older, archaic forms of vocabulary and musical modes, which as it does for us, imparts some of the magic of former times to those present. Perhaps because Poland has suffered so many discontinuities and external threats in its history, the Polish church has no ‘modernising’ or ‘reforming’ movements in it, serving as it has done for centuries as a living link between today’s people and their ancestors. Poles return home from their midnight service at about 1am being very aware of having participated in this continuity of community.

The ‘First Day of Christmas’ (the 25th) sees more breakfast feasting (meat is permitted now, including the delicious ham and sausages which I would recommend to every visitor to Poland), and is traditionally the time for visiting and inviting other family members. The 26th is when people go to see their friends or more distant relatives; people may also go to cemeteries to say prayers by the graves of their deceased relatives on this day. The Polish nation is a society which extends in unbroken succession from the past until today, and the Christmas holiday is just one of the year’s occasions which reminds them of that.

Watch your language

When people discuss the future, they invariably think either of the immediate future, the next five, ten or twenty years, or they get lost in fantasies of the far future, when all notions of our civilisation have long since passed into history or mutated into the unrecognisable. This is OK, after all someone has to think about these things, and we need places (both physical and intellectual) to which we can escape. But the kind of future-gazing which has always interested me most is the medium term, the point just after I and everyone I know has died – a world which has recognisable continuities from what we know today, but is markedly different to ours. This, of course, is the basis of my piece Lechistan 2150, which is online here.

People frequently ask me which of the four or five thousand recognised world languages are worth learning, and I have recently been considering which of them are really going to matter in that mid-term future. These are not the languages that you yourselves need to learn, unless you are young, ambitious, or want to be in a position to teach your children or grandchildren these languages. When you find your retirement fund has been taken over by the Chinese, and that your software is all written by Indians, you’ll be glad you listened to me. :)

You might expect me to say it ;), but I still believe English will dominate this medium-term future. However, I suspect that a process of ‘Latinisation’, i.e. the break-up of the single language into different dialects, will begin. But it won’t end as Latin did, in mutual incomprehension. In the future people will speak two versions of English; a ‘standard’ version which almost anyone throughout the world can comprehend, and a ‘local’ version which will be so interlarded with local vocabulary and phonetic & grammar patterns derived from local languages that it will be barely recognisable as English. (This phenomenon is called ‘diglossia’ in linguistics.) The difference from the model of Latin after the collapse of the Roman Empire is that modern communications will ensure that this ‘standard’ version of English also survives, and will act as one of the world’s linguae franca.

The question I find most interesting, however, is whether this local English will replace or absorb the already resident languages. Here in Poland, a conversation between teenagers can include so many English words mixed into the language (for humorous or ‘cool’ purposes) that a casual listener, not knowing Polish, may wonder briefly whether they’ve happened across English speakers from somewhere unfamiliar. (By the way, Polish is actually a language I expect to still be spoken in 200 years’ time, albeit after some mutation, because its cultural tradition and the number of current native speakers will sustain it.) But languages like Dutch, German and Danish, which are physically and linguistically close to English, culturally influenced by it and increasingly by unrelated languages brought by immigration, may prove unrecognisable in the future to current speakers of those languages.

Chinese, of course, will be another great future language. Harnessing a capitalist economy to a dictatorship with reasonably effective control of around a quarter of humanity will make China (and the Chinese diaspora, when they lose their fear of investing in their homeland) an economic superpower of a kind we fear to imagine right now. But there is no single ‘Chinese language’, but a succession of mutually incomprehensible dialects, unified only by the Chinese script. And the languages of the southern seaboard, Cantonese most prominent among them, are numerous and proud. But Beijing’s insistence on disseminating Putonghua, the ‘Mandarin’ version of the language which unites the north of the country, appears to be paying off; even those outlier territories of East Asia such as Singapore, Indonesia and other places settled by Southern Chinese teach Putonghua to their local Chinese communities. And when ethnic-Chinese businessmen realise that the party really doesn’t mind you getting rich and glorious, then they will only reinforce the already formidable power of ‘Communist’ China. So the Mandarin tongue and the near-uniform written language should lead China into the next two centuries. Ganbei! :)

If anyone doubts why Arabic is going to count so much in the future, then they must have been hiding somewhere very pleasant and very isolated for at least the last five years, and probably longer than that. Islam is going to be inevitable in the 21st century and beyond; it is the Moslems who are having children in sufficient numbers to replace themselves, unlike the majority of Western populations. There is no point in complaining about it; a future Europe will be light-brown in colour and more likely to be having Fridays free, in between cursory visits to the mosque, rather than Sundays free, in between not going to church at all. :)

The question with Arabic is that, not unlike Chinese, it is not a single and unitary language spoken throughout the Arab world; the version spoken by the Africanised Arabs of Mauritania is incomprehensible to the Iraqi or the Upper Egyptian. Educated men are taught the Classical Arabic of the Koran, and a modified version of this same version (called Modern Standard Arabic) serves as a lingua franca on television and radio, so that Arab broadcasters can ensure their message is ignored and despised by all their brothers. But the man in the souk, while he may understand the basics of this language, does not regard it as his, as a ‘mother tongue’; it is a tool for the intellectuals and the citified folk. (A more detailed discussion on this by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about is here.) However, once again the question of increased access to modern communications arises; al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite TV service, has transcended its national base and become a regional, cultural and global force. In the future, as the price of receivers and transmitters decreases, and the common man gets access to high technology, I believe that the diglossia factor will kick in more fully, and that Arabs will handle MSA as easily as their own dialects; and having lost its cultivated, snobby perception, it will form a unifying force as strong as the English language is today. But the ideology it conveys will not be Hollywood, McDonalds or MTV.

Indonesian will probably be the biggest surprise to anyone reading this list, as (tsunami aside) it’s not a part of the world we’ve heard much of in recent years. But to my mind some important factors will make this a key language in the future. Firstly, it’s easy to learn; not many irregularities, word formation is regular, easy to pronounce. And it (together with its twin Malay) serves as a lingua franca not only for the 250 million inhabitants of the Indonesian archipelago, but also for Malaysia and Singapore, the former being an important manufacturing base, the latter a financial hub. And Indonesia itself, thanks to its internationally-run sweatshops (which local entrepreneurs will soon take their cut from), has considerable economic potential. Also, as the world’s most populous Islamic nation, it will have an increasing say in the world’s destiny; events in Bali should remind us of that.

Hindi might not seem necessary; we all know that India is playing an ever-growing role in the world economy, as anyone in Britain or the US who’s had to call directory enquiries or a computer helpline in recent years will know. The educated of the Indian middle-class number over 150 million, and they speak English, sometimes better than the English do. (Listen to Indian actress Aishwarya Rai (and look at her) to hear what I mean.) So why does Hindi count? Because it’s the link language for the rest of northern India, and the workers need managers who can interact with them; and again, it’s the language of a worldwide diaspora (follow the tide of the receded British Empire, from the Pacific Islands to Wembley). But won’t they all speak English? We mustn’t underestimate the power of nationalism, or its slightly more attractive cousin, ‘culturalism’; identifying with an indigenous, non-Western, non-European culture will be a powerful motivator in the future.

Spanish is probably an obvious choice, another ‘language of the conqueror’ which covers a multitude of races and cultures. Spanish apparently recently overtook English as the language with the second-greatest number of speakers. The key moment here will be when the economic power of South America, freed from decades of CIA-sponsored dictatorships, links up with the increasing cultural awareness of the US Hispanic population, who are continually predicted to outnumber the white European-descended population any moment now.

French isn’t a difficult guess to make either. Whereas the French and Belgians are, like other white Western Europeans, not replacing themselves at a sufficient rate to sustain their existence beyond the next two or there hundred years, their places are being taken by their colonial children, of Arab and African descent. I suspect that, as I said earlier about English, a kind of ‘post-French’ will evolve, full of influences from those peoples. What about the economic side of things? Well, sooner or later all that labour and creativity will be harnessed, and as technologies trickle down from the rich West that doesn’t want it, some of it will be exploited and put to uses no-one has imagined. The rich cultural heritage of France’s past will blend with the variegated non-white and non-Christian future in a way that Molière would never have imagined…

High school sucks - official! :)

Well, not official perhaps, but this post says some of the things I've been thinking for ages. Are you safe to be let out of skool and into university at age 16? Some of you are, I know from my own experience. Discuss. :)

Việt nam gra!

Last Saturday, there was a Vietnamese picnic on Pole Mokotowskie, a large park in central Warsaw. [English, with photos of the park, here.] It was part of a whole week of Vietnam-centred cultural activity here in the capital. One of my ex-pupils, herself of Vietnamese origin, invited me there; she was organising stuff and being a general girl-Friday. :) A great time was had by all; to be seen there were paintings, music (I was allowed to twang on this rather beautiful zither), food (although the queues were so long that it ran out before I got anywhere near it), a well-made film about the Vietnamese in Warsaw, and a water-puppet show. Not to mention large numbers of Vietnamese people, including charming young ladies in traditional tight-collared gowns which looked uncomfortable, as most female fashion seems to be. (One has to suffer for beauty, apparently. :) ) [All links in Polish. A not very good translation program is here.]

Aside from being fun for all the above-mentioned reasons, I found this event heartening as a demonstration of a new (or at least unfamiliar) kind of Poland, one more reminiscent of other European countries – a multi-cultural Poland. People who know me have been bored at length by my continual moaning about the homogeneity of this country; a survey stated that Poland currently consists of 98% ethnic Poles and 96% Catholics, which is in great contrast to the situation of the majority of Polish history pre-1939. I have always maintained that cultural diversity is what makes a people strong, tolerant and better-educated; although as an Englishman, I am of course aware of the debates taking place since 7/21 July regarding the depth and direction of the integration of those other cultures. But this isn’t the place for that discussion now.

What I do want to say is that history has made today’s Poland strong in its own identity; after 250 years’ assault by its immediate neighbours, and now facing the subtler seductions of the European Union and Anglo-American culture in general, Poland has been proved by fire and come out as a clearly defined nation and culture. But I think that from this position of strength, it can afford to accept other nationalities, languages, religions and ethnicities into the concept of ‘Polishness’ (polskość). Further to my earlier post, I think it would be wonderful if the next Miss Poland had an Oriental charm to her, and if people had to make the extra effort to pronounce her surname. :)

Việt nam gra! (2)

This is the water-puppet theatre; the puppeteer lies prone behind the bamboo screen, operating the puppets with long underwater canes. (Kids are encouraged to splash the laminated-wood puppets; they certainly have no compunction about splashing the kids. ;) )

Việt nam gra! (3)

Should I a) be glad they are here in Poland? Or b) go to Vietnam to find some more? ;)

La femme :)

A post from one of my favourite writers concerning two of my favourite subjects, beautiful women and our multi-cultural world. (I would recommend his blog in general, as it’s often interesting, provocative and funny.)

I have always thought that people born of a very disparate racial mix are much more attractive, as well as being more likely to have healthy genes. (If I were a dictator, I would give cash bonuses to people who married and had children with people of different races.) I suspect that this is why central & eastern European women are so attractive; having been, let’s say, conquered by soldiers of every nation in Europe over the centuries, a healthy and vibrant genetic mix has resulted. One sees Nordic blondes and dusky Levantines on the street here, as well as every possible intermediate combination. How can I ever leave here? ;)

Too content by half

Another interesting article about Polish politics from The Economist, an influential British magazine; the author states that Poland's problems - of complacency and introvertion - are those of a successful country, problems shared by the Western democracies. But they're still problems, aren't they?

I've been telling people for years that if they don't bother to go and vote, then they can't complain about the consequences if something unpleasant happens. (And that applies to other countries, not just Poland or England.) And I'm not the only one! :)

Germans better than Russians?

This writer, in his column today for respectable British newspaper The Independent claims that Varsovians feel more in common with the Germans than the Russians. Is that true? Comments, please.

Sighisoara

A view over the rooftops of the centre of Sighisoara, taken from the clock tower. This view fortunately avoids the sight of the masses of horrible Communist tower blocks where the great majority of the residents live.

Sighisoara

An image from my trip to Romania in July. This is a street in the old town of Sighisoara, birthplace of Vlad Tepes, known to history as Dracula.

The teacher taught

Let's establish some terminology first, because after 11 years in Poland I no longer speak English properly. Nor, of course, do I speak Polish with the facility of a native. So I guess this makes me not bi-lingual, but semi-lingual. Discuss. :)

By 'messenger program' I refer to those things like Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and so on which allow users to type to each live (and, increasingly, talk via microphones), send files and so on. By 'status line' I refer to those little messages which accompany one's user name on such programs, where one leaves comments about one's feelings, when one will be back on-line, and so on. For all I know, these are the accepted terms used by English-speakers all over the world; I am merely translating or calquing back from the Polish expressions, which I'm more familiar with. (The Polish expressions, of course, may themselves be calques of the English terms. In this way, I guess, a kind of universal computer language is evolving, much as there seem to be universal motorcycle languages and universal nuclear reactor languages and universal chemical textile languages evolved by specialists in each group which enable them to communicate beyond the bounds of their respective native languages.)

One of my sweet victims in the high school I used to work at had written the URL of her own webpage in the status line of the messenger program she uses, which is the most popular free one in Poland, and which I also use. I assumed, since she had placed this information in the public forum of her status line, where presumably anyone who knows her can see it, that she had no problems with it being seen. So I looked at her webpage, and I told her that it was quite interesting. However, she was startled that I had done so and said that she didn't really intend for anyone outside her closest circle of friends to look at this page. My response to this was that if she'd posted the URL of her page on her messenger's status line, then she could hardly expect the people who were on her messenger list to avoid seeing it. Nothing which is visible on the Internet, however private we may wish it to be and whatever restrictions we may put on it, is ultimately private; whether by chance or by dedicated hacking, someone unwanted may see what we write. You can never know who's looking. So we have to bear that in mind whenever we write on the Net. (I agreed, though, for the sake of her privacy and peace of mind, not to look at her page anymore. And I haven't. Well, only once. Sorry, flower. :) )

Some time later, I joined a bulletin board/discussion group for my school, which had been established by and was populated by the pupils of our school. Various discussions were under way, several of which concerned the teachers and teaching of our school. I felt myself to be in a position to comment on these opinions, and did so, agreeing with some posters and disagreeing with others. I also (I confess) shared some of my own opinions, especially concerning some of the other English teachers, which were less than complimentary. I did so thinking that this bulletin board, which seemed to be both by and for the students of the school, among whom my opinions were a) generally known and b) generally (though certainly not universally) agreed with, was not seen by anyone outside the pupils of our school.

Wrong. It transpired after some time that a number of our school's teachers had been 'lurking' (silently reading the comments without posting themselves) on this bulletin board; eventually the worsening atmosphere in the teachers' room found its expression in one of the teachers writing a long and involved post on the bulletin board making various allusions to my personal failings and general untrustworthiness in having gone behind my colleagues' backs with my opinions. (I readily admit that this itself was unacceptable behaviour, and that I should ideally have talked to them openly about my perceptions of their problems in order to find solutions. But I couldn't and didn't. My fault.) However, this action was the proverbial straw which broke the camel's back, and I felt unable to continue working with those other teachers in such an atmosphere; I resigned at the end of the school year, and now have other employment, more of which another time.

And so I have myself finally, at the cost of a job in a place I liked, learned the lesson which I so sententiously tried to teach my pupil with her URL address; nothing which is visible on the Internet, however private we may wish it to be and whatever restrictions we may put on it, is ultimately private. You can never know who's looking.

What does this mean for the concept of privacy, as we used to understand it? If every word we post and every keystroke we make is potentially visible to any number of unknowns, how do we react? Do we weigh every word we use with such paranoid care that we become unable to express ourselves freely, terrified that what we write may be misinterpreted (or worse, correctly interpreted)? Do we write whatever we think, in a 'publish and be damned' spirit, and deal with the consequences as they arise? Do we resort to a kind of cynical word-game, where what we write is without honesty, calculated merely to impress others and achieve the ends we desire (popularity, notoriety, fame) without having any core in the truth?

Or do we simply speak the truth to the best of our ability, but judging our tone and choice of language to avoid causing unnecessary offence - more or less as we do in our daily life, speaking physically in one-to-one conversations with the people we interact with?

We're not in the Matrix yet. :)

Holiday in Kujawy

This was the view from the lakeside by our hostel in Lidzbark Welski. For this view alone, it was worth going - how lucky I was that the company was pleasant as well.

Holiday in Kujawy

I just spent a week with my first-years (aged 16-17) in an attractive but rather backward part of upper-middle Poland - this is a mural on the side of the cold and distinctly spartan block we stayed in. I wonder - did the local Party boss's 6-year-old granddaughter do the design? ;)

Let's mention the war

The anniversary of the war’s end was marked in Poland by events before and during the visit of many political leaders – Poland’s president Aleksander Kwasniewski among them – to Moscow to participate in Russia’s commemoration of the event. Not a few leaders of central and eastern European states had declined to attend, citing their country’s ill-treatment, occupation or even absorption by the Soviet Union, an entity which was of course devised, driven and dominated by Russia.

The event, then, was bound to be controversial in this part of the world. The fact that Kwasniewski chose to attend, when other former Warsaw Pact states’ heads did not, was even more so. Certain sources stated that this was yet more proof that Kwasniewski – who had actually been a junior minister in the last Communist government which ceded power to the Solidarity organisation in 1989 – was still a ‘Muscovite’ at heart, unable to cut his ties with the power system that gave birth to his political career. Most public opinion has not held this against him, however; the people have other reproaches towards him, and it is probably fortunate that his second and constitutionally final term will soon expire.

Having arrived in Moscow for the ceremony, and dutifully laid flowers at the minuscule monument to the Polish war dead in Moscow, Kwasniewski then found himself seated several rows behind Russian president and master of ceremonies Vladimir Putin, far from the centre of attention. Polish newspapers printed prominent photos of an out-of-focus Kwasniewski looking owlishly towards the very in-focus Putin in the foreground. The perceived snub to the Polish president was reinforced, in leader writers’ eyes, by the fact that in his major set-piece speech, Putin made no reference to the Polish contribution to the war effort, while making at least passing mention of the roles of Britain, France and the United States. The headlines of several Polish papers were variations on the theme of ‘Nothing about Poland from Putin.’

The relations of a ‘free’ Poland with Russia were always going to be complex. The Soviet occupation and subsequent transformation of Poland into a remoulded client state, ethnically and territorially vastly different from its pre-war composition, was only the latest of a historical series of clashes between the two most populous and culturally important Slavic nations – clashes which the Poles almost always lost. The secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Stalin’s Soviet Russia and Hitler’s Third Reich, partitioning Poland between the two, had many precedents in Polish history, most notably when the end of the eighteenth century saw three concerted pushes by Prussia, Austria and Russia to dismember and annihilate the Polish state, leaving the map of Europe free of Poland’s name entirely for 123 years. (When Poland joined the European Union, some voices warned darkly of hordes of invading Germans buying back the land and property taken from them when their forefathers were expelled at the end of the war, forcing yet another de facto partition.)

With such a history behind them, then, the Second World War for the Poles is not merely an excuse for trotting out and dusting down assorted nostalgic national symbols, an irrelevance to anyone under fifty who has no living link with those times. The war, here, is a living, bleeding part of today’s social and political discourse. Last week’s newspapers contained a debate about whether equal honours (and pension rights) were due as much to former soldiers of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the defence force of the pre-war Republic, as to those of the Polish Army (Wojsko Polskie), which was created and led by Soviet-trained officers in the second half of the war, and thereafter was the only acknowledged military force in ‘People’s’ Poland – to the extent that Home Army officers, who fought just as valiantly for their country’s freedom, were imprisoned as ‘Nazi collaborators’ by the Soviet-installed puppet government.

I have encountered some of this discourse myself, as an Englishman living in this part of the world for well over a decade. Perhaps I have served as a lightning rod for certain opinions; knowing the Polish language to a certain extent, I have been able to understand and (to some degree) exchange dialogue with people whose lack of English would otherwise have prevented them from expressing themselves to someone from my country.

One such opinion I encountered frequently in the first few years, expressed with various degrees of articulacy and hostility, is that "Churchill sold us to Stalin at Yalta." The reference is of course to the conference held there in February 1945 when Churchill, an ill US president Roosevelt and Stalin met to determine the extent of their spheres of influence in post-war Europe. The Poles feel aggrieved to this day that they were allotted to Soviet control; the Czechs may have similar reason to complain, as US troops entered and occupied the western part of their territory, as far as Plzen (Pilsen), and were an hour’s drive from Prague when told to roll back and let Soviet forces come in.

But in my opinion, the injured parties fail to realise an important fact, schooled as the older generation were on tales of Soviet heroism while the West ‘looked on in calculating idleness’, and as the younger generation have been on recrudescent, long-suppressed nationalist tales of brave yet futile defiance against all comers. It is this.

Stalin was not a democrat; he was the unchallenged master and ruler of more people (at that time – pre-Mao China was disunited and weak, India was still an imperial possession) than anyone else on Earth. Churchill and Roosevelt were leaders of (reasonably) democratic states, whose populations and economies were exhausted by five years of war. Western public opinion had been moulded (by a process of ‘manufactured consensus’, as was done in the USA before the invasion of Iraq in 2003) to regard the Soviets as allies; my oldest relatives remember the images of an avuncular, pipe-smoking ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin from newsreels. With the end of the war in sight, with the Reich on the run, were they suddenly to be told that their eastern ally was a new enemy, to be fought and struggled against? No democratic government could have carried that off. Stalin had no such brakes on his ambition; he had thrown twenty million and more of his people into the meat-grinder of war to achieve what he wanted, and was quite prepared to lose a further twenty million if necessary, US atomic threat or not. Compromise, the most hateful and most necessary element of diplomacy, was the only solution; and compromises within compromises, such as Yugoslavia and Finland, stemmed from that. The only alternative would have been a third, final war; Cuba in 1962 gave the world a foretaste of what that might have been like.

These geopolitical considerations take time to explain, however. My foregoing analysis is amateurish and incomplete, and has even so taken up too much server space. A full explanation of cause and effect is beyond my time and powers, and would require the efforts of learned people over many years.

And such explanations would mean nothing to the small man in his fifties whose parents found themselves on the wrong side of the border at the end of the war, as much of Poland’s east was ‘awarded’ to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. His relatives – both immediate and in the wider, ethnic sense – would find themselves in a relatively democratic and prosperous Poland, whereas he found himself in alcoholic, unemployable poverty in a country frequently referred to as ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’. While visiting his daughter there in 1997, he subjected me to a tirade on Churchill having sold Poland at Yalta, and the perfidy of the West in leaving him in this state. His reasoning may have been false; his frustration and hopelessness were not.

Nor did such explanations hold much water with the bright, blonde, belligerent 20-year-old student of English who I encountered back in Poland, who asserted to me in a reasonable tone that Churchill had sold Poland at Yalta; Western policy had always been that of pusillanimous cowardice, letting Poland sink or swim as it would, and concerned with nothing but its own interest. Her association of cause and effect may have been faulty; her pride in her country and her feeling of resentment were genuine.

Nearly a decade later, the minds of the teenagers I work with seem to be less obsessed with this notion of self-centred Western treachery. Some of my students this year will have born in 1989, and thus will have no connection with even the tail end of the communist regime. Their generation, perhaps, or their children’s, may have the luxury of greater objectivity denied their predecessors. And then, perhaps, the Second World War might finally be over.

We want you!

One of the persistent myths I encounter in this country is that foreigners don't like or don't trust Poles. Well, check out this article written by Mary Kenny, a well-known right-wing writer and broadcaster in Britain, in which she says that hard-working Eastern European au pairs, gardeners, builders and so on are leaving an excellent impression on British and Irish people. See? It's not just me who likes the people here. :)

Hey, hey, the first of May

Today is the 1st of May, which together with the 3rd of May (Constitution Day, 1791) gives this country a good excuse for a long weekend. Protestant work ethic? Who needs it? :)

Underpass

Something very 1960s about this underpass sign. :)

Games

Could computer games be considered a replacement for other forms of art?

The musician and philosopher Brian Eno has an idea that 'art is a rehearsal for life', for our emotional responses to various situations; 'what would we do if we were in that position?' Can games replace that? Sims-style games could 'train' kids how to interact with others, raise families, take decisions at the work-place. In that case, of course, it would necessary to program those games very well, in order that they be able to replicate those situations accurately enough to teach useful lessons. Is that possible? Maybe the reverse effect would happen -- humans would become limited, being able only to deal w those situations that arise in games?

How to avoid becoming a race of otaku? TV was the first medium in history to permit that; cinema & theatre were involving, but required effort & cash to go out & go to see them, books were involving, but required literacy (both literal and cultural) & a certain degree of imagination. TV, however, can create an all-encompassing world, visual images are immediate and need/allow no interpretation or ambiguity. But you can change nothing, only receive what you're given. This frustrates some people, who still have a basic human need for some kind of interaction. Now, games are becoming much more involving than TV; they offer the narcotic visual fascination of TV combined with the possibility to interact - two basic human needs fulfilled. In the future, there will be two kinds of otaku; one sort who will be passive, just sitting and absorbing the input, and the other involved in active participation in their games -- but neither will be able to interact properly with real humans.

Emotional involvement with game characters; in the past we could fall in love with Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt on the cinema screen. We knew they really existed somewhere in the world, even if we were never likely to meet them. (Think about teens and their devotion to pop idols; grannies with soap-opera characters.) But what about virtual stars? Lara Croft was a beginning, though still visually too unrealistic for all but the most seriously depri/aved otaku. But new figures are ever more realistic in appearance, behaviour and virtual character; and, with the increase in female playership, these characteristics will be true of virtual males as well as virtual females. What will our emotional responses be when we 'fall in love' with such characters, who we know full well have no physical existence? As their programming becomes ever more complex, they will interact with us in ways pop & film stars never did. (Maybe E-mail/chat friends are an unconscious rehearsal for this?)

Can any medium take over an entire society, as intellectuals fear? TV has existed for 60 years, yet there are plenty of people (but probably no longer the majority) who watch TV only occasionally, choosing what they watch, or do not watch at all. But large numbers are undoubtedly addicts. Weak personalities with addictive natures have always existed; the medium of that addiction changes from age to age, but addiction itself remains. (Consider the kid who committed a murder on the basis of a Playstation game; others in the past did so on basis of books, plays, etc.)

Could any medium 'break through' and enslave an entire population? I personally think it unlikely; human populations are too diverse for them all to fall under one spell. Also, the diversity of economic levels around the world means that many will never get into games, being preoccupied with finding food, civil war, etc.

TV has long been the target of writers' speculation as a means for mass social control; could games go that way too? Is there any potential propaganda value in games? Unlikely; perhaps because of their non-passive, interactive nature, games will always function better as escapism, perhaps better even than TV ever could.

(based on conversations w friends in May & June 2004)

A nation of thieves

For those of you who believe your country is a unique breeding-ground of corrupt and dishonest people, check out this post from an Indonesian friend of mine living in London. I want to draw your attention to the fact that being sneaky, underhanded, double-dealing and untrustworthy is not the monopoly of any given nation - it's just good ol' human nature.

http://indres.blogdrive.com/archive/108.html

So I begin

This is going to be a 'proper' blog, which hopefully all can access. I have uploaded a couple of my posts from my MySpace blog, access to which was restricted to members. This provided insufficient self-gratification, as I wish to share my ego with the entire world, and not just a privileged élite. :)

May all who come here lead happy and prosperous lives, in which good things fall unexpectedly out of the sky into your lap. (Or laps.)

How long shall the land mourn?

I didn't see much point in watching the funeral. Everyone was watching it on television, or on projection screens in their local churches, but I would not have felt any more community with the people if I had been standing next to them. I let the air bring me the sounds. The combination of the church bells and the factory sirens at 10am brought forth a strange heterodyne sound, a note formed from the resonance of all the others, a mechanical song, an accidental processional hymn before the humans played their part. After that, I just waited; the occasional snatches of song from the nearby televisions, the birds, the wind. The spring morning; rain was forecast, but the sun poked through the light cloud covering, the usually obdurate Polish weather making an effort to put on a good face for this important day.

And this was an important day. No-one was going to let us forget it. The systematic, relentless TV coverage; the glutinously melancholic string quartets and slow-motion shots of the great man walking among the mountains or cheerfully leading a congregation in applause, the commentators and newsreaders, finding plenty of ground to mine in the broad territory between reverence and sentimentality, would have been considered risible in my own culture.
But there was - and is - no denying the reality of the emotion here. The day before, on Thursday, classes in my high school were interrupted by a kind of 'mini-mass', a short remembrance service partially prepared by the kids. All of them went; no-one took it as an excuse to sneak out for a cigarette or catch up on neglected homework. Down in the wooden gym, the barely-tuned piano lurking in the corner, a large portrait stood on stage with the traditional black band crossing the lower-right hand corner.

The kids sang songs, recited fragments of his works. The emotion with which they did so was palpable, and affected everyone. Normally cheeky girls and smug boys had moist eyes and snivels in the throat; the much-feared biology teacher had her face entirely buried in her handkerchief. The school's priest gave a blessing; a somewhat colourless individual most of the time, he acquired a quiet dignity which a more extrovert or pompous prelate would have turned into yet more drama and theatre, which no-one present really needed.

The proceedings were topped and tailed by a communal singing of 'Barka' (The river-boat), apparently the great man's favourite song, a usually cheerful and optimistic exploration of the Jesus-as-fisher-of-souls metaphor. This time, however, there was something almost defiant, challenging about the way it was sung; defying the black shadow of death, and perhaps another, greyer yet deeper shadow of unbelief, trying to show that we, at least, were going to keep the faith he had wanted to bring us all, in an unbelieving and very unfaithful world.

This defiance had expressed itself in other ways too, before the funeral. I, like many other people here, had received plenty of E-mails, instant-messages and text messages calling for actions of solidarity such as putting candles in our windows; marching from one place to another in white, attending the almost daily mass-masses, and so on. This was reasonable; electronics, far from isolating us in hermetic worlds of mindless entertainment, seem in fact to act as a kind of extended nervous system, putting us in near-telepathic contact with our friends and acquaintances at a speed unimaginable twenty years ago.

But what I found surprising and somewhat distasteful was the tendentious and sometimes even belligerent tone adopted by quite a few of these messages, such as 'Send this message on to as many _good_ people as possible' (Przekaz te wiadomosc dalej, do jak najwiekszej liczby dobrych osób), '_If you love him_, send this message on, add your name, and pray!' (Jesli Go kochasz przeslij dalej te wiadomosc, wpisz swoje imie i módl sie!) or even 'If you don't send it and you don't give a fuck, well, take a good hard look at yourself, guy...' (jak nie wyslesz i masz to w dupie to sie czlowieku nad soba zastanów...). Where did this aggression and insecurity come from? Why the need to manipulate people's emotions, as if they hadn't been stirred up enough?

In the way of these messages, they were spread around between many people. The media coverage, of course, was omnipresent. And at every public gathering, the emotions and the tears were there for all to see. But there are those who have been objecting to the tone of the proceedings.

I know people who dared to answer those mails with equally brusque replies; people who boycott the TV; people who stayed away from the mass-masses.

I know people who, while respecting the Pope's intellect and compassion (even though he felt unable to extend this compassion to homosexuals or believing women), felt uncomfortable with loud public declarations of undying love from people who were not regularly seen in churches.

And, quietly, individually, a few younger people have been admitting to me in privacy that they no longer believe in God, and haven't done for some while.

But all of those people have felt unable to express what they feel in public. My discussions in class on the whole 'post-Pope situation' revolved around considering his legacy (the acceptable parts of it); the idea of commentary, of analysis of the whole phenomenon, seemed out of bounds. And it strikes me that there is a quiet underground of feeling - if not of resentment then certainly of discontent - with the whole atmosphere. One wonders what will happen with this underground resistance; how it will be reconciled with the surface expressions of emotion. Those who stay underground have to learn patience; usually, their patience is rewarded in the fullness of time.

My view is this. The assertive, blackmailing sentimentality has its roots in the genuine sense of loss in the population, the loss of a man who represented this nation to the world in a way no other has done in history, who gave them a national and international identity. Now he has gone, Poland must take its place in the scramble and press of the other European nations; the Pole who led the world's and Poland's Catholics is gone; and nothing will ever be the same again. There will not be another Polish Pope; I personally doubt whether there will be many more European Popes, as the focus of Catholicism shifts from educated, sceptical, prosperous Europe to the teeming, irrational, needy Third World, be it South America, Africa or the Philippines. (Christianity is nomadic; it moved from the Middle East to Europe in the face of Islam, and now goes to the Third World in the face of materialism. Where can it go after that?)

The aggression, the obsequiousness, the negative sides of the emotion of his departure reflect a deep, almost unconscious unease in the Polish nation. They will not be so prominent in the world again; the love they bore him as a man and as a symbol was not paralleled by an adherence to his teachings (the thing he himself would have considered most important); and his teachings, and the Church founded thereon, will begin to die in the land that gave birth to him. A period of history has ended this week, and everyone knows it. Many react with sadness, love and grace; others react with defensiveness, anger and crudity. All know that something has gone which will never return. This unites them; their reactions divide them. As in all humans, they are one and many at the same time.

'How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein?' Jeremiah 12, v. 4

John Paul II

Earlier today, about 10am, I decided the saturation TV and radio coverage was enough. As on all such occasions, after a certain point the biographies and interviews start to repeat themselves; all the TV stations were showing either live broadcasts from the Vatican, interviews with the great and good, or documentaries, the radio was either playing the usual 'solemn music' (it struck me as odd when they played Bach, here in a Catholic country) or the same round of interviews and reportage. So I went out, into the bright morning sun. The sun, anyway, was not in mourning.

There's a church opposite my place here in Warsaw. (Not that one usually has to go far to find a church in this country.) The people were standing by the doors; others were sitting or standing, silent, in front of the grotto with the statue of the Virgin Mary. The church was full, of course. I didn't go in. I am neither Catholic or Polish, and it was not my place to interfere. I didn't have to go in to perceive what was going on, though.

I couldn't hear what the priest who was presiding said, even though there were loudspeakers; by the door, the noise from the traffic was loud enough to make most of what he said inaudible. Also, a baby in its mother's arms was obviously in discomfort; you could see the usual flickers of irritation on the faces of other people, who forget their own children, or that they were once children themselves. Some phrases emerged; 'in the memory of the Holy Father', 'an end to suffering', but the words weren't relevant. People were being together. A woman next to me seemed to be smiling; then she removed her glasses and dabbed at her eyes. She was crying, but quietly, trying to be strong, perhaps. Her husband and their four- or five-year-old moved towards her; their presence seemed to calm her. After a moment of eye contact, they looked together towards the altar inside, as everyone else was doing.

I have the fortune to live on a tram-line which leads straight to the heart of the Old Town; riding the big shiny new tram to the centre, dominated by the old plague column erected by King Sigismund. The trams here, like the buses, are liveried in yellow and red, the city's colours. From windows and buildings hung little groups of flags; the white-and-red horizontal stripes of Poland, the yellow-and-white vertical bands of the Vatican, and the yellow-and-red of the city. Often, the flags were accompanied by thin black strips, signs of mourning; the buses and trams had them, as did the police wagons in the city centre, as they escorted dignitaries and monitored the crowds.

On the tram, a woman next to me sneezed; in this country, the equivalent of 'Bless you' is to say 'Your health', which I did. She turned briefly to me and said, 'Thanks... but I don't know if it's much to do with health.' Her watery half-smile was surmounted by shining eyes; she blew her nose, and I could see it wasn't a catarrh caused by the warm, sunny weather. A man in the seat in front of me was staring straight ahead, his face set, fists clenched, big working man's hands, not wanting to release anything, to let anything go.

It's funny how people choose where to go in these situations. Warsaw's Old Town doesn't lack churches or basilicae to go to; large, pompously imposing in that combination of Habsburg-looking baroque and post-Communist grey dirt which afflicts the buildings which haven't had a lick of paint for some big civil occasion. However, everyone seemed to be heading for the church of St. Anne. It wasn't particularly because the Pope had been there; he had, of course, and there was the commemorative plaque on the wall to recall that. But there are other places in the city with such plaques. The people were heading for St. Anne's, though; the television crews were there too, reporters and cameramen milling around, men in grubby jeans moving cables and spotlights around. Beneath the plaque, a mass of flowers and candles. Someone was moving the barriers around them, to expand the space they could be fitted into. A woman saw that one of the postcards with the Pope's face had caught alight from a candle; with great delicacy, she stepped into the mass of flowers, rescued the card and placed in it the safety of a bouquet of tulips.

Some people had put on something black, as a sign of mourning; I saw one or two middle-aged women, unaccompanied, wearing black dresses of an oddly child-like cut, maybe the kind of dress they wore when they went to church as children years ago. A tall young student had a black tie dangling loosely and incongruously around his sweater. Every so often, you could see an elderly couple with an air of pre-war sophistication; the man in a dark fedora and well-cut overcoat, looking like it was made of mohair or something equally old-world elegant, his arm in the crook of his large-hatted wife's elbow, proceeding slowly down the street. No-one was hurrying; everyone knew where they had to go.

As the morning went on, it became apparent to me that more and more people were going in the direction of St. Anne, as I walked away from the centre, back towards the trams; at one point I was almost literally walking alone against the tide of people as they headed for the centre. There was nothing special about them; the vast majority were normally dressed; all ages and classes were there. This was society; this was the people. No-one had told them to come there; no-one had to.

As I walked around, I heard brief snatches of conversation; 'the next Pope might be black', 'and what if he hadn't been so ill?' Free copies of the daily newspapers were being distributed; one vendor was getting rattled because she couldn't give them out fast enough. The headlines read, 'John Paul II has departed', 'He has returned to God', 'He stands near the Throne', 'Ready for the journey.' A common theme of the tributes inside was that people considered themselves fortunate, blessed, to have lived in his times.

At midday, the traffic stopped and the police cars' sirens were all started simultaneously. An eerie sound, so many of them making a weird, hieratic harmony. A young man had his arm around his girlfriend, who had quietly hidden her head in his chest. She was carrying a bunch of tulips in her hand; they hung limp, like a flag without the wind to blow it.

Lechistan 2150 (a satire)

The year 2150. Varshuva, capital of Lechistan. The Pałac Kultury is the biggest mosque in central Europe, the call to prayer sounds from the top five times a day. All the statues have been knocked off as being un-Islamic, although a few other statues dot the landscape as testament to uneasy compromises between the Moslems and the ‘natives’. Polish people now only number about 500,000, they’re outnumbered twenty to one by Moslems. Most are of Arab origin, either expelled from a Germanistan where the Turks have the political ascendancy, or who have made it this far from the Middle East, escaping from the nuclear holocaust unleashed (possibly accidentally) by Israel, which has destroyed both itself and Palestine and rendered much of Iraq and the Peninsula uninhabitable. There are also Moslems from the ex-Soviet Union, and a few from Africa. The Moslems outnumber the white native Poles by dint of outbreeding them.

These Moslems are not fundamentalists, they have not burned or killed their way to power; the opening of borders in preceding decades has made it easier for populations to move, and the unwillingness of white populations throughout Europe to breed in sufficient numbers has led to this demographic unbalance. The most intelligent and able of the white Poles had emigrated, either to the rest of Europe, or to America or Canada, where they intermarried into cultural oblivion. Those who remained, less intelligent (the Arabs call their areas ‘Burakistan’), tried to organise political defiance. Although successful initially, they found themselves marginalised by a society glad of the arrival of the immigrants, who were ready to do the hard work which the whites had had to do previously, and who proved far less fearsome in person than their reputation had promised. As a form of guerrilla resistance, nevertheless, a few hundred ‘Sons of Poland’ exist, but they are reduced to graffiti campaigns and occasional blowings-up of country mosques.

Most of the remaining Poles live in small country communities. Many are still Christian, Catholic; but their faith has become increasingly eccentric, worshipping Wojtyla as the Third in the Trinity after God and Mary. (‘Mary is the Daughter of God, and JP2 is her Great-Grandson, via Jesus. The prophet Dan Brown said so.’) Little model Popemobiles (with working wheels) are often seen on altars in church next to crucifixes, symbolising Wojtyla’s physical infirmities; children receive them as toys on religious holidays. It is rumoured that now only homosexuals are allowed to become Catholic priests. Missionaries from Christian Africa turn up occasionally, on their way from proselytising in the West, and are seen as figures of fun, although not treated with hostility. Nevertheless, most villages contain both a church and a mosque. In the cities, most large Christian churches have become mosques, museums or concert halls.

But there has been little overt religious repression, as standard Islam is tolerant of the faiths of the other ‘peoples of the book’ (i.e. Christianity and Judaism) – however, being a Moslem is a prerequisite for advancement in any career, or to travel to the neighbouring countries, where similar Moslem-majority populations flourish. The religious police make sure Christian communities don’t get too many radical ideas, and occasionally chuck noisy priests into reservoirs.

All billboards, like other signs, are bilingual in Arabic and Polish. But the Polish is often printed in smaller letters. This Polish has almost no diacritics anymore – generations of computer use mean that everyone has got out of the habit of putting the bar through the soft Ls or the nasal hooks under the Es and As, with concomitant effect on the spoken language. A few philologists bemoan this, but all the white children are bilingual in Arabic anyway.

The Poles speak a Polish with fewer declensions (the vocative [wołacz] has gone, and the accusative [biernik]/locative [miejscownik]/genitive [dopełniacz] and instrumental [narzędnik]/dative [celownik] cases have syncretised, except for the pronouns), and which contains many Arabic words, just as the Arabs speak a version of standard Arabic containing Polish words. (‘maa qurwa uriid’ – ‘I don’t fuckin’ want to.’) English influence on both languages still persists as well, although America is feared as a dangerous place. (See below.)

All people are registered at birth with both Arabic- and Polish-style names, so they’re called things like Layla al-Quwaliya (Kowalski), Muhammad al-Adami (Adamski), Rafiq al-Jimini (Ziminski) and Farida al-Gabrieliya. Children are given names with roots in both Judeo-Christian and Moslem culture, where possible; Dawud (David), Yakub, Suleyman, Rafiq (the Poles pretend it means ‘Rafał’), Marya, Aisha (the Poles pretend it means ‘Asia’). White children will be unable to pronounce names like ‘Przybyszewski’ or ‘Chmielewski’, and so will Arabise their names to ‘Shibishi’ and ‘Khamilawi’.

As always, racial lines are blurring; intermarriage is not discouraged so long as both parties have accepted Islam. This means an increasing number of light-brown people on the streets, many very attractive. All women wear colourful and brightly-patterned headscarves (but not full veils) in both town and country; but this, together with the wearing of trousers, jeans or longer skirts, and blouses with full-length sleeves, is the only sign of ‘Islamic’ dress, no more extreme to today’s eyes than would be noticed on a bright, but chilly, winter or spring day. (But very chilly it isn’t, as global warming is kicking in. Snowmen are a memory of the older people – most winters are like in southern England today, rain, wind and mud, and temperatures very rarely below zero.)

Secure in their ascendance, there is no need for fundamentalist-style violence among the Moslems in Europe. Differences between Shia and Sunni are less apparent. The struggle now is for America – young men who want to be bearers of jihad are fighting in the endless war in the eastern United States. Waves of increasing immigration broke ever harder against the rock of increasing resistance from paranoid, ultra-Protestant American authorities. This led to rioting at Ellis Island and other immigration centres, bands of immigrants breaking out and forming resistance groups (supported by boatloads of jihadis from Cuba, whose government has been bringing them over from the ex-USSR), and a collapse of civil order along the Eastern seaboard states. Now armed struggles between Moslem insurgents (supported by radicalised poor American Blacks) and American armed forces of varying degrees of officialdom are constant, and territory changes hands continually. The United Nations, held in contempt by both parties, looks the other way; poor whites have their land regularly devastated. Moslem rebels, whose great-grandfathers learned the mountain paths of Pakistan and Afghanistan, quickly adapt to hiding in the Appalachians and the Alleghenies.

In Moslem Europe, problems arise between those of different ethnic origins; Arabs and Turks clash frequently, and all have problems with those of African Moslem descent, most numerous in France and Spain. All of them beat up on Caucasians, who are mostly petty criminals (and so are called ‘the one-handed ones’, because of Sharia law. ‘Yo, Chechen, still got both hands? Ha ha.’). Arabs have the highest status in the East and in France; the Turks rule Germany (Germanistan) and in Britain South Asians predominate (Pakistanis continually clash with Bangladeshis, while Hindus make all the money).

Everywhere white populations live in gated communities, distant suburbs or abandoned village communities, trying to ignore the fact that the non-white societies are mostly stable and prosperous. Progressive-minded young white people go out into the rest of the world and intermarry, usually adopting Islam at face-value only in order to succeed in business; conservative whites stay in their isolated communities, but their numbers dwindle and their genes weaken. There are many Internet sites offering ‘arranged marriages’ between white Christians in different countries, with the aid of which some conservative white parents send their children off to marry white strangers in other countries. Problems arise when questions of test-tube breeding and genetic modifications to ensure the breeding ‘true Poles’ are discussed; as good Catholics they should reject such practices as ungodly, but as loyal Poles they should keep the race clean and strong somehow. Meanwhile, the light-browns advance on all sides.

But Poland is a safe place. Agriculture has revived since the collapse of the European Union (more and more people simply ignored the rules), and the country feeds itself. Sharia law is largely restricted to amputations, although the death penalty exists for homosexuality (something the stricter Moslems and Catholics had no trouble agreeing on) and child murder. Murder between families (clans) is not punished if proof can be furnished of a legitimate grievance. Proposals to test girls for virginity upon marriage were agreed on by both Moslems and Catholics, but were scrapped when it was realised that some habits would never change, whoever was in charge. Contraception is illegal, although clandestine condoms (imported secretly from Britain, whose main export industry they are) are a symbol of being ‘cool’ among the young.

As for alcohol, the compromise is that it can only be consumed in the private home. (There is no longer any need to make exception for tourist hotels and bars, as the few Christian travellers have no choice but to give their livers a rest.) Public drunkenness is a flogging offence; this leads to a one-stop extreme-Alcoholics Anonymous-style cure programme, as frustrated wives lock their drunken husbands out in the street. The religious police then flog them, and they either die, turn sober or drink at home. However, this leads to wife-beating becoming a major problem. Friends organise parties in remote country houses where they drink like the English do on weekend nights – getting completely plastered in as short a time as possible – then they recover in the house for two days, and quietly sneak out when they have sobered up sufficiently.

Snapshots:
· small schooltrips of dull-eyed white Polish kids, speaking their language together in whispers, as they walk round the Pałac Kultury and Nowy Świat (now renamed al-’Alm al-Jadiid – New World in Arabic), having to be told what the Barbakan (now the residence of the Grand Mufti) is, and who Copernicus was – a German who wrote scientific treatises in Latin.
· In ‘Polish school’, they have difficulty understanding Mickiewicz or Słowacki, whose works have Arabic footnotes to explain unfamiliar words.
· Slang: an ignorant, unkempt ‘burak’ is called a ‘Berber’; someone who is snobbish and pseudo-intellectual is called an ‘Iranian’.
· Cultural evenings, where light-brown kids called Leila and Ahmed do the ‘krakowiak’ dance in Polish folk costume, while the white country kids – wearing FC Najmahun Karako (Stars of Kraków) T-shirts and cheap Indonesian jeans – yawn in the audience and play ‘Kill-A-Yankee’ video games on their mobile-phone/Net-browser equivalents, with the sound turned off.

The information revolution means that attempts to ban corrupting influences in the media are fairly pointless; those mobile phone-sized things have so much memory and power that it is as if you could carry all of today’s Internet in your pocket. But the availability of so much information, paradoxically, has led to many people paying much less attention to things electronic, and information from these sources is regarded rather as fast food, burgers etc. are treated today, i.e. insufficient, plastic, diversionary, dubious. The written word is the source of authority; calligraphy is once more a valued skill.

Newspapers are thus the most respected sources of information, and battles to become the editor of a newspaper are often bloody, reflecting the struggles of political factions. They contain almost no pictures, as they are un-Islamic. Images are for the Web, which is for Christians and other losers. ‘Big-letter posters’ are how people draw attention to matters of public interest. Elections are a distant memory; turnout dwindled to almost zero as people lost interest and Islamic authorities declared them irreligious. Nevertheless, public political meetings are commonplace; lots of people shout and fight until peace is restored, and then the authorities go ahead and do what they wanted to do anyway.