OFF THE LIMOUSINE 19
... NJ/NYC ... STRIKE ...
ALL DAYS / STORIES & PHOTOS WERE MADE /
ARE PRESENTED CHRONO / LOGIC / ALLY
A journey, regardless of the method, transport, or distance, is a more or less advanced metamorphosis. Its initiation takes shape over time. It can be immediate, planned, or the result of a series of unforeseen circumstances, visions, thoughts, or incidents. Obviously that we usually discover its partial meaning along the way. Its complete meaning – with time, at the end, or not at all. It depends on blessing, course, some honesty and justice, also in accompanying issues, worldviews, or all other relevant derivatives. It is important to remain vigilant and…screening/absorptive or… absorptive/screening. Especially, as they sayin’ in Polish, as you don’t know the day or the hour… But what if you already know almost everything… Well, once you understand the potential, all that’s left is to prepare the rest, take care of things so as not to burden anyone else. Say goodbye to your old life, perhaps even prepare precious/ness/t for sale, because who knows… maybe won’t come back. It’s just a habit, developed over the years. It’s just… how to say… Just second nature.
Announced by a single photo of a Palestinian child on the internet in the fall of 2023, with a Y-shaped incision in his torso, and launched in early January 2024 by a second photo of beautiful girl, the whole year was ultimately a harbinger of a new life, a change for which, as usual, we had to fight. From the very beginning, this year was marked by this exactly change/promise/image of a new, fulfilled life; it was kinda line of maturation—and, in a way, a repetition of my entire previous life. It was as if I had finally reached the end of the old world, saw the new one, and, crossing the border, have eyes around the head, to see and experience it once again in an intense flash. And these signals came chronologically, of course. First, after Easter, I regained all the things from my entire life that I had lost in May 2024. Later, in a suburban mall where I usually did my shopping, I met a classmate from high school, Ewa Domańska, a very talented mathematician, sad in black, to whom I used one organizing key to quickly recount the last 32 years of my life: the key of tracking/communing/domination of Zionism. A month later, in the same place, I met a journalist and writer, Marta Sawicka, exceptionally and coincidentally from Warsaw, who, after meeting me in 2005, some time later offered me a job in television, a milestone experience. When I told her the story of this announcement that would change my life, she replied that it was like Leon Wiśniewski’s “Loneliness in the Net.” Of course, there were many more events, to name a few symbolic ones. Such is this mysterious, long-awaited adaptation. For this reason, once again.
During my many train journeys to Warsaw, I have talked to many different people. And, of course, it depends on the personality how much and what kind of information you want to share/exchange, etc. In this respect, this trip was unique. I was sitting opposite a woman with a child who, from the moment she sat down, wanted to play a board game. The mother had mistakenly bought checkers for the trip, because the child could not recognize/distinguish them from chess, and after I told what kind of game it was, she said with a smile that “she is excellent at chess.” I laughed because it was both wonderful and daring. The mother also smiled and was perhaps a little embarrassed by her daughter’s accurate courage 😉 The mother, Małgorzata Żuk (Margerita Beetle), turned out to be a wedding photographer, and her daughter Kalina (Viburnum) was a friendly, intelligent gamer, which we began to talk about freely. I told them a few stories about why I was going to this fallen city/country. Margerita said that her two sisters had married Muslims. And I said that I only knew one woman with such a flowerish name, Kalina – Zalewska, with her redaction / final inspection, around my 33rd birthday, I did my first tv independent work/series on Polish Television: a 4-minute “Invitation to TV Theater” and the first one for the play “Góra Góry” (Mountain of the Mountain) about Father Jan Góra (John Mountain), the initiator and leader of religious meetings in Polish Lednica. That situation was kinda weird, because I had limited crew time, and the priest was sitting in the “SteakHouse” on Jerusalem Avenues in Warsaw with a few nice girls at a lavishly set table, feasting continuously. I won’t say that the waiting for the proper context didn’t irritate me, because one spectacle fit the other like a fist to the nose. Whose?
Apart from electronic versions, I always take a few paper books with me because I like their smell and the celebration/ritual, the different influence of the form. This time, apart from essential book on games, Bronisław Maszlanka’s “The Four Faces of Militarism” something about the struggles of Poles throughout history in the US, I took “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt, whose thesis on the banality of evil I do not entirely agree with, but whose example of disagreement with the Jewish community in the US / elsewhere I consider, in a sense, exemplary. Margerita, considering the growing madness and some kind of hellish slippery slope, also, and perhaps above all, with the entry of so-called ALIENS into the US, advised me to consider the risk of losing these books and perhaps the risk of entry… Well, maybe she’s right. Huh. Anyway, why carry coals to Newcastle? And again, I was reminded of an analogy from a 2006, when I returned to Warsaw, the so-called N’City and rented an apartment above the Polonia Theater (“polonia” means Polish community abroad), not far from the ‘useless’ Cheap Book store on Koszykowa Street (‘kosz’ means trash can or basket). And when I started my internship at the TVP public station, that’s where I bought my first two books: Hannah Arendt’s “Thinking” and “Willing.”
When we got off in Warsaw, Małgorzata said goodbye to me with a hug, as if I were a friend; a little warmth before the concrete can never hurt. When I recently went to Białystok (eng WhiteStream) for a kebab and asked if it was mutton, beef, or chicken, I got this answer: “Sir, if anyone in this city tells you that it’s one of those meats, don’t believe them, it’s all a lie because it’s just pork. Nothing else is worth the price.” We talked for a while about the old days, when established practices should have been widely adopted long ago, but if this is true, it means that something prevents it. In Warsaw, I went to the city center for a great mixed kebab with mutton and beef. I took the subway to Ursynów and ordered a taxi. Driver Jacek said that he was recently in Canada and that both there and in the US, your pension stops working if you don’t have your own place to live. It’s like an accelerating, inevitable self-destruction.
On the plane to Romania, a woman cheesy asked for a window seat, for her daughter, so I sat on the so-called uncomfy extra seat next to a man who immediately started watching a new Polish film with subtitles on his phone with headphones. It was a prequel to a series of three old comedies, probably the best known, most repeated/appreciated in Poland, namely “Sami Swoi” (eng Only Our Folks). This series, and especially the first film, is kinda a phenomenon. It tells the story of post-war antagonism between two families living next to each other in the countryside, separated by a fence, which they approach at crucial moments and take turns arguing, especially about a small piece of land, insulting and reconciling each other, with a clear predominance of constant nightmares. Director Sylwester Chęciński reportedly did not intend to make a comedy at all, but a morality drama. And when he heard the united cinema audience roaring with laughter at the premiere, he allegedly burst into tears. That’s how samtimes it is in Polska (eng Poland), the opposite of what you’d expect. I watched for a while, but when I sense sugarcoating and unleavenedness, this intrusive predictability starts to bore me.
Changing between different airports, surprisingly located very close to each other. At the next airport, was an interesting photo exhibition Human Nature by Romanian authors and objects. Long flight, what to watch, isn’t much to choose from. I’ve seen most of it. A new version of Edward Street’s novel in a comedy about the rich divorce/engagement/wedding of already very wealthy Cuban emigrants, or the not-so-futuristic but dystopian, ruthless and bloody ‘Civil War’ in States, about war reporters, par excellence of shots – and the hunt for president’s the trophy / ‘scalp’ – was the hit. It was like watching Gaza in America. The woman sitting next to me, with suspiciously Scandinavian appearance, decided to watch the second part of ‘Beetlejuice’, but not about Adam and Barbara, but about the return of Beetlejuice’s fiancée/wife to claim what was hers. Later, the woman took out Emmanuel Carrère’s book “Limonov”. The unempathetic elderly Jewish man sitting in front of me was straining the seat terribly, so I moved to the plane’s back and chose the second part of Dune for the end of the flight.
Anka Cisak once was convincing me that Tim Burton, “Beetlejuice” director, and his wife Helena Bonham-Carter live in two separate houses next to each other, as proof of the coexistence of two personalities/characters which do not exactly fit together. And apparently, they cannot live without each other either. But I did not check this story veracity. Somehow, t’was no need to. Well, all in all, every desert film and self-experience reminds me of “Lawrence of Arabia’s” famous quote: “I like the desert. It’s clean.” Apart from the context of attaching this quote to any meaning/image/territory, it immediately evokes a kind of perversity/ambiguity, kinda mystery meaning. Just like the way the disunited/greedy (selectively on cause) Arab states – soaked in dirty oil – have latched onto the partition/bizplan of suffering Palestine. This whispering/tempting desert isn’t so clean after all. Just before landing, I saw dried up New York from above. Faded green colors, gray and concrete. No rain here for a long time, I guessed. Well, why should there be? After last year’s flood… When we landed, it turned out that the wait for a parking spot was getting longer and longer, causing impatience