Remembering Warsaw

Pusia met me at the station, frantic because she had been searching the underground passageways beneath the station instead of coming upstairs to the internet cafe where I was peacefully talking to the family on skype. I got on a bus. Pusia met me in the centre of town, after more stress in underground labyrinths with her pink bicycle clanking up and down crowded stairways.

Warsaw has a feel of revival about it. The signs of war and devastation remain - old brick buildings with broken windows and sagging frames sit alongside sparkling new office towers and malls, while the great shadow of Stalin's monolithic "Palace of Culture" falls like a gravestone over the central city. The signs are evident too in the scores of "broken" people in the streets; beggars, sick and weary ones who wander the new Warsaw as if it were still a war zone.

But most people exude excitement and confidence in what has become and what will become of their wounded city.

Think about it. Even the teenagers in this year 2007 can remember a time when most of the buildings in Warsaw were falling down or displaying the prominent scars of war. Most can remember the opening of the first MacDonalds, when it was an experience reserved for those with money amongst a still poverty-ridden community. Poland has endured the occupation and oppression of two despotic regimes over the last 70 years. No wonder the people are glad it's over.

I really can't place the events in Warsaw with chronological certainty. Time truly lost its meaning as drunken nights turned into bleary-eyed mornings and hung-over afternoons. I don't want to focus on the boozing, but it is an unavoidable constant in Polish night (and morning) entertainment.

My second night in Warsaw progressed from a karaoke-filled apartment party at Iza's place, to a park at 5am with a few bottles of tequila to toast the imminent rising of the sun. Pusia's friend David was there, a well-built, shaved-headed, hoodied guy who I'll admit would've prompted me to cross the street if I'd seen him coming towards me at night! At one point, he came looming over me and bellowing "Jew!" A fearsome approach, to be sure. Brandishing a bottle of tequila, he slurred. "You! Are either an Arab, or a Jew". I paused. "I am a Jew" I replied, looking straight up into his eyes. He immediately threw up his arms, spilling tequila, and yelled "He passed the test!". We toasted to Jews in Poland and there followed an impromptu bout of "Shalom Aleichem" raucous singing. I failed David's next test when I replied no to the question "Do you hate Palestinians?", and again to the question "Are you a Zionist?". But he seemed to be okay with me after that...

I was thinking about this girl Hana, who I had met that night, as Pusia, Tessa and I sat huddled together against the cold of the dawn at the bus-stop, waiting to go home. We were eating a delicious Polish sausage and I felt amazing.

I ended up kissing Hana on the couch at Paulina's apartment. It was the same night that i took my best photo ever, of Pusia looking innocent and childlike directly at the camera, and Hana posed ghostline, hat cocked and hair falling over her face in a picture of female poise and seduction in the background.

We went back to her house in the suburbs as the sun was rising with a cold blue light. Her house was an enormous, rambling old place of unexpected narrow staircases and small, strange-ceilinged rooms. The window of her room had a jagged hole in it, through which Hana smoked a cigarette the next morning clad only in a long, white wool cardigan. I wanted to take a photo because of the way her chocolate skin appeared behind the fabric, but I didn't. I got up and joined her at the window sill to smoke.

***

Tomec was leaving for Israel to meet his girlfriend Claudia the same day that Tessa and I were finally leaving Warsaw. We went out that last night, and as the alcohol kicked in, the English began to disappear from the group until I found myself at 5am lying wedged between Hana, Tomec, Hanya and another guy in a car, drinking cheap champagne and listening to the radio and the others' drunken conversation in Polish.

I was tired. Excessive indulgence in the Polish drinking culture and a lack of sleep had depleted my brain power and weighed down on my muscles like a lead suit. I trudged along Nowy Swiat in the rain, joined only by early-rising business people going to work. I felt like I knew the city well, and at the same time that it was time to leave. My last image of Warsaw was of Pusia coming to the balcony in her underwear to drop me the keys to the apartment. The scene was disapprovingly observed by an old woman walking her dog, who no doubt believed she was witnessing a testament to the moral decrepitude of modern Polish youth.

Pudong

Old wood is like wine.  In the grain, you can read the story of a hundred men - men who drive dirty steel cars and have heavy brown hands, and men who spend their lives in factories and dust to produce beautiful things for others.  The smell of old wood brings back memories you never had.

When time is on your side, you start to take notice of the things around you.  I've been noticing the floor.  It is wood, dark, rough-cut and scratched like a tired old face.

I try to imagine how far away I am from the closest person who can understand what I say.  It doesn't scare me, thinking this way.  But it makes me sad, all these millions of people.  I will never make friends with any of them, and we will never know each other.  Alone in a city of millions.  How different is it from walking alone through a forest?  Apart from the smoke and cigarette butts...

Outside the sun shines like a gold coin glinting in the light of a giant white halogen lamp.  The streets are an unreal grey, lit up like a film set.  This place is so new, it seems.  New metal and concrete stretched tightly over everything, taut and groaning.  Waiting at the edge of a road full of cars, I start to notice things.  Like the way my feet, white even through the dust and grime, look like aliens amongst the shiny leather and American sneakers.  My feet don't fit in.  Some people - like me - find it easier to be alone if they're hidden in a crowd.

I walk for miles, taking photos of cracks in the pavement when I find them, a postman in a blue delivery van, a child peering out of a third floor window, a small cat with three legs.  I turn it on myself once, watching my reflection in the lens blip out of existence and back again.

On a hill in the middle of everything but hidden by trees and broken stone walls, there is suddenly no-one, just me and three kids, maybe 18 or 19 years old.  They are smoking pot.  I wander over, my heart jittery, and ask them in my language for a puff.  It's silly, I know.  They can't understand a thing, and when one replies, handing me the joint cradled against the breeze, it's like singing, sounds without meaning.  I take it carefully.  They are rich kids, I can tell that.  Their clothes display a finely tuned disorder.  I sit down and inhale deeply, a few times, and then hand it back.  'Pateicos', I say, to no-one in particular.

By the time I get back I am breathing differently.  I wave to the girl in front of my building, who is standing there, straight backed in uniform, belt tight around her waist high up, shoes gleaming.  She sees me and smiles.  In my room, I take a mobile phone from my suitcase, hit '1', and lie back on my bed with only underpants on.  The fan cools the sweat covering my body.  I launch into conversation the moment the phone is picked up on the other end, and can't stop.

Later on, sitting outside on the steps with wet hair and a can of Coke, eating noodles and reading about Chinese martial arts and architecture, I feel that I am truly happy.  It is humid and the air is thick, like warmed-up pillows, and fragrant too.

Reflected

Humble Deaths

I've taken these cells and muscles

tensing and releasing in great shifting strides

over windblown scapes and pitted roads.

Me,

a creature of bone and shadows

crushing glass and small things as I go.

Grasping tight

smiling stupidly at the bite of cold air on my skin

and the tears whipping from my eyelashes.

I feel like I'm running out of time.

No matter how fast the wheels are spinning.

I know how things slowly disassemble on the pavement.

--especially when it rains,

and the roadside fills with all the exhibits of our fortunes.

I know the stubborn divide and multiply,

and the quiet retreat.

And while we carry on,

a million humble deaths are happening in private,

left behind and washed away.