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Where’s the duty roster?

Ahoy Milo–

A day in the kitchen. I made risotto with broccoli yesterday, and today I am eating a small delicious kind of green lettuce thing from Italy. I don’t know what it is. With parmesan, and pierogi. My hair is tied in a braid with the little rectangular wire stripe of metal-in-plastic that they use to seal bread in Poland, which is superior to our twist ties and our weird green and yellow plastic discs.

A day of writing. There are always more documents to be written–I wrote another one today. You know you’re stalling on getting someone an important document when you decide to watch a DS9 episode and the very first thing that happens is Sisko says to Kira, "Where’s the duty roster?" and she says "I’ll have it for you first thing tomorrow" and Sisko says "You said that yesterday." Oops.

I’m in the midst of a couple days of catch-up phone calls; my parents, my brother, my partner in crime, R., from my MFA. I have been so out of touch with people for so long. It’s good to be back.

When you live in your home country, you don’t feel that every single day has to be an adventure of cultural tourism. You feel justified in spending a day indoors writing, or catching up with friends. It’s hard not to feel guilty doing the same thing in Poland. Being here, how can you not be out there? *All the time?* Excavating, photographing, experiencing?

But writing is what I do; it’s what I’m doing here, too; and I write better at home than at important cultural sites, libraries, even coffeehouses. I’ve learned this. So I think one of the things I will have to learn, in balancing my time here, is to have space for both. Going out and experiencing things, and then writing. Back and forth.

Another moment of guilt; catching up on nonessential books in English, like Annie Proulx’s house-building memoir "Bird Cloud." These few days off have been so necessary. I need another rubber stamp that says "I really needed this."

The FB orientation begins next week. We received the official schedule today. It’s really happening. It really is.

-D

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Poland

More everyday Warsaw

Milo,

It began to rain in Warsaw yesterday evening–not the overwhelming summer storm I expected in Wroclaw every afternoon between 4 and 5 PM, but the constant petty drizzle of fall. It hasn’t stopped since. Although it is not exactly raining, it’s not exactly not raining, either. The weather has turned.

The skies are–gray is the expected word, but a flat, pale white is more like it. The sky outside my room is the same color as the white walls inside my room when the lights are turned off. A white-gray. People have brought out their lightweight raincoats, though the Varsoviennes are still wearing ballet flats under them. I’m glad that this happened. I was about to buy more clothes–what I brought with me is not enough to look professional while observing rehearsals 6 days a week–and now I will buy different clothes. This has reminded me that the tendency of the weather, for most of my FB year, will be towards cold.

I love it. It reminds me of Chicago. I need a rubber stamp that says “It reminds me of Chicago.” I’m glad to have explored the Old Town and the outdoor parks while it was still sunny, but colder weather means fewer tourists, and the city for its residents.

A few more non-pictographic snapshots of Warsaw:

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Poland, theater

before I forget

M–

This evening, coming home, it was raining lightly in the plaza outside the Centrum metro station. A rock band with amplification–teenage girl singer, teenage girl rhythm guitarist, and older male rhythm section–was playing a song with some Polish words and some English words mixed together. The chorus was just a repeated “Hallelujah.” They had lighting and a tent, and some kind of creepy manager figure who kept walking in front of the band and mouthing the words of the song.

About 10 yards away, there was another musical act–one guy with a bunch of plastic tubs. He had been playing them a few hours earlier, when I’d come out of the station. He seemed resigned that he wasn’t going to be able to compete, but he didn’t pack up, either. He didn’t have a tent. A woman came up and spoke to him as if they knew each other. He had a big suitcase, like Harold Hill’s, for people to drop coins into. The tricked-up band had no suitcase. But they had a tent.

An enormous head of Rowan Atkinson on a movie poster, brightly lit and a thousand times larger than life, was above the bands. In the bad light and with my bad eyes, I thought it was George Clooney for awhile.

The singer sang better with her eyes closed.

(Watch this now! An image is going to turn into a STATEMENT!) The circumstances in which we perform are different. I’m sure the plastic tubs guy would have liked a tent, and the girl with the tent would have liked more confidence in her voice, or for her head to be as large as Atkinson’s, and Atkinson would probably like to be Clooney. But no one can make you get out of the plaza if you don’t want to. Just because someone else seems to have more of something doesn’t mean that you don’t still have something.

–D

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Poland, theater

No pictures

Long-suffering Milo, (can I call you “long-suffering”? I just did…)

You don’t know this, but I’ve never been very good at pictures. I take them and don’t put them up; I draw them, but don’t show them to anyone; I prefer, under almost every circumstance you can imagine, to use words instead. I should know better than to promise to share images. Sometimes I dutifully tote a camera around Warsaw, thinking of how happy it will make everyone to see some IMAGES instead of all this TEXT, but I always put off dealing with them as long as I can. So I won’t make any more promises I can’t keep, and I don’t feel like uploading the files right now–sorry–but I can tell you about Warsaw.

It’s taken me this long to write another post for one reason. Although I’ve been here since August 20, I’ve been staying in hostels the entire time–until yesterday. This was on the heels of months and months of uncertain living situations, and it finally caught up with me. I was unable to write while I didn’t have my own space.

But I do, now–I have a lovely room in a lovely apartment that I’m sharing with a lovely roommate (about which and whom more later) and I am finally in possession of brainspace with which to tell you how I got here.

So, to begin–after my visit to Teatr Cinema concluded (and I still need to write about that) I had about 48 hours to pack up, clean the sublet apartment, and get out of town. I did manage to have a couple of excellent Italian beers (Peroni? Why have I never heard of this before?) at Literatka na rynku, in the Stare Miasto, in the company of M. from the Grot Institute. We discussed future Wroclaw visits.

Even though my FB project is, from now on, going to be primarily rooted in Warsaw–I have moved to Warsaw, in case any one missed that–I will be coming back to Wro. frequently to collaborate with TPK and others.

My project in Warsaw now consists of interviewing theater directors and observing rehearsals. And writing articles. Many, many articles. It’ll be the same project when I travel elsewhere in Poland–Wroclaw, Lodz, etc.–but Warsaw is the base.

So. I took a plane from Wroclaw instead of a train–it cost the same, and I had far too much luggage. I felt like the Spaceballs princess at the terminal, but it was worth it.

When I arrived, it was a warm and bright afternoon. The place reminded me of Chicago, as I have already said to many people–in the wide streets and enormous open skies swept with enormous fast-moving clouds, in the strong winds, in the sense–part of the air–that a body of water is nearby, and most strongly in the packs of giggling young people hurrying down the street. I ate Turkish takeout food on ul. Marszalkowska, around the corner from my hostel, overlooking Plac Konstytucji, and was overjoyed to be in Warsaw. The only fly in an otherwise unobjectionable ointment was that my hostel, advertised as WiFi-enabled online, only had WiFi for PCs–not for Macs.

But I was not in a mood to be disappointed. It felt exhilarating to be in Warsaw. In my first days here, I went running around. I saw the Universal-backlotesque Old Town, reconstructed after the devastation of Hitler’s destroy-Warsaw campaign; the enormous Vistula, which I have already told my parents is as wide as the 405 (it is!); the statue of Zygmunt; the Chopin memorial in Lazienski park; the smaller Ujazdowski park with its statue of Paderewski. I rode the metro (the subway is just a line, not a loop) to see where it went. I even saw a play in my first 48 hours here–a Polish-language version of “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia,” by Albee, at och-teatr.

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for the interim,

here are the opening few minutes of Andrzej Wajda’s film “Ashes and Diamonds.” There’s some violence, but then most of the movie after that (until the end) is a lyrical exploration of emotions and relationships in post-war Poland. If you haven’t seen it, it really is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. Ever.

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Poland

Warsaw!

Dear Milo, and everyone,

It has been a whirlwind few days; I got back from the trip visiting Teatr Cinema in the mountains, I packed up and moved out of the Wroclaw apartment, and I got on a plane to Warsaw. Things are settling down now and I have lots of pictures to share–I took a whole bunch of Wroclaw, Michalowice, and of my first day here in Warsaw–but my blogging is limited by the lack of Internet connectivity at my hostel. I am otherwise really enjoying staying at the place, but I am frustrated that the free WiFi they promised on their website doesn’t work for Macs.

Some time soon I will find a cafe and do some update blogging and photograph-posting–but for now, I am having too much fun running around Warsaw to oblige. This place reminds me, a lot, of Chicago. Big open streets, a largely flat city, a huge river, powerful winds, and people enjoying the summer like they know it’s going to end. (And, of course, the presence of lots of Polish people.)

More soon,
Dara

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Poland, theater

Day of the Blessed Mother of Herbs

August 15, 2011

Dear Milo,

I didn’t realize today was a Polish national holiday until I left the house. My favorite Piekarnia Familia was closed, as was every other piekarnia (bakery) on my walk to the theater. It was too quiet for a Monday, and the people I did see on the street were walking slowly, holding their children’s hands, taking photographs, or carrying little bunches of flowers and plants tied in green and yellow twine.

I still had to get some work done today, though, even though it was a holiday, because I’ll be taking the bus to Jelenia Góra tomorrow to spend some time (just a day or so) with the surrealist theater company Teatr Cinema.

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in brief,

The blog has been silent for a few days because I’ve been busy trying to get some new paperwork finished. These obligations are crucial. But I’ve been watching lots of great SOTG archival footage of old, wonderful productions–on which more later–and I am thrilled beyond words that Philip Levine is the poet laureate.

“Like most great triumphs, Levine’s achievement has a simple beginning.

It was the early 1940s and 13-year-old Levine was living by the outskirts of Detroit, about a mile from 8 Mile Road. That was back when the city really ended at its borders; Levine remembers there were five or so houses in an area of six city blocks and, beyond that, emptiness.

After dinner, he went out into the groves of trees. He would stand in the dirt, in the dusk, in the dark, and compose poetry in his head. He’d always had a fantastic memory, so it was no trouble to recite and revise his words on the spot. It became a weekly ritual.

“What I found was a voice within myself that I didn’t know was there,” said Levine, now 83.”

– Jessica Goldstein’s “Profile of Philip Levine, poet laureate” in the Washington Post this morning

And here are the beginning stanzas of one of my favorites of Levine’s poems, “You Can Have It.” The rest is online here at the Poetry Foundation site.

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

[…]

– Opening stanzas of “You Can Have It,” by Philip Levine. Read the rest of the poem here.

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lazy niedziela

Dear Milo,

Many stores in Poland are closed on Sundays. The streets were very quiet–the people who were out and about in the morning seemed to have a sort of devil-may-care skipping-church demeanor, compared to the usual seriousness. I may have been imagining that, though. The Biedronka (ladybug) grocery store was only open for a few hours. I went in and got groceries for the week for about 37 zlotys. (That’s less than $15.)

It was a gray day, with intermittent rain. This was the view out the window–I tried to take it when the clouds were as ominous as possible. This is at about 8 PM.

See how the winds of change do blow the clouds hither and thither?

I avoided the clouds, stayed in and did more laundry (you go through a lot of clothes when you work out as much as I was doing in the two SOTG workshops!). I did some freelance work. A lot of writing happening in this down time.

And (drumroll) I spent a few hours uploading films from ANTHOLOGY I to Parallel Octave’s YouTube channel. Some time tomorrow or the day after, you’ll be able to see 6 of the 8 films online. This is the kind of thing that takes a lot of time, but is well worth it. There’s no speeding it up. You just have to say to yourself, “Well, I’m waiting for the video to upload.” Like watching water boil.

Speaking of watching water boil, I also finally some more few pictures of the temporary apartment and the view from my window, while I was making dinner. They follow.

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