saving ink

About three years ago, I was going to have a column in an English-language Krakow-based magazine. The magazine ended up folding after a few issues due to lack of funds and the column never got published, and I completely forgot about the pieces I had written. I dug them up recently as I was backing up some files, and as I re-read them I realized they still made sense; so, I’ll post them up here.

Keep in mind, they were written with the intention of being part of a monthly column, kind of like Bukowski’s Notes From a Dirty Old Man.

Notes From Under a Bridge - Number 1

George Orwell (or perhaps his publisher) put out a very slim volume titled “Why I Write,” which had surprisingly little to do with the process of writing, and more about his criticism of the politics and character of Britain during World War Two. Though its contents are eerily relevant today (something about history, erm, re… hmm, re-something itself?), more important is its title in context: the reason he writes is because he has something to say on the state of the world, not because of an urge to create Art (with a capital A of course). And I suppose that’s more my reasoning than any other.

So this is supposed to be an introduction. Who I am. Why I write. But the two are so interconnected that any explanation of this sort would be redundant, as I feel that over the course of this column both will reveal themselves, eventually.

So instead maybe I’ll just write what I’m doing in this city. I’m finishing grad school, eating at bar mlecznys and spending far too many nights in the time-stealing black hole that is Łubu-Dubu. I already have a degree in English, meaning I’m qualified for absolutely nothing, but my grammar is superb. So I’m writing, finagling a way to stay in this city, and trying not to starve. If my column ever stops appearing, that means there’s a good chance you might see me under the bridge at Hala Targowa, so please toss me a grosz or two, or perhaps even a two zloty cheeseburger (I’d really appreciate it. I could possibly even rhyme for you or something).

Mostly though, I’m fighting boredom. Maybe I’m alone on this (but probably not), but life in America (or England or parts of “Western” Europe) had become quite boring. No great wars, no great famines; our biggest problems are our iPods breaking or our dry-cleaning coming out ruined. The everyday takes on epic importance when bullets aren’t falling on our heads. I do admit, sometimes I miss the convenience of living in an English-speaking country. It’s nice to have air conditioning, subway lines, satellite TV, sushi, (real) Mexican food, Orangina, Virgin Megastores; to be able to pay with credit cards everywhere. But the fact that I’ve lived a year without these things means that they’re not as indispensable to my existence as I once imagined. When you’re forced to pack twenty-two years of your life into two suitcases, you suddenly realize that you don’t need most of the possessions you’ve acquired and placed so much importance on through the years.

So I and my two suitcases have decided to stay in Krakow; part of me has to admit that the temptation of a return to “normality” of Britain or America is still strong. But another part fears the boredom and complacency that inevitably follow from this kind of life. That same part believes that great writers need great wars to write about (that part also reads too much Orwell and Polish literature). But in the end I must face reality: boredom is the burden of the middle class. It comes from being born into (or emigrating into at an early age, as in my case) a stable society, battling neither exorbitant luxuries nor risk of starvation; having the higher education and intelligence necessary to contemplate one’s boredom on a daily basis while at the same time to envy those without the same burden; possessing the insight to contemplate one’s society but lacking the influence to realistically change it; being born at a time of stagnation in almost all aspects of humanity, punctuated by feelings of mass impotence, both culturally and politically. I bet this is what growing up in the 1930s in the free world felt like, minus the economic setbacks of a Great Depression: watching the world turn for the worse, screaming in a sealed glass cage for the rest of the world to pay attention to you.

So, how does one reconcile one’s boredom with the unchangeable fact of being born/transplanted into a middle-class existence in a stagnant, comfortable society? Some people buy sports cars; some people go crazy; and some of us move to Kraków, where between the kamienicas older than our grandparents and the people on the streets at four in the morning, at least there’s a sense of something happening.

Number 2

Every week in Krakow I wake up with new bruises. Sometimes they’re discovered in bed, but most often in the shower, as I look down when shaving my legs or scrubbing my sides and notice an oval darkness, sometimes raised and yellowing, usually just a dark bronze face looking back at me, and I wonder why and how I manage to abuse my body so without even noticing. This morning, for instance, I was shaving and I noticed a new bump as my disposable razor wavered momentarily in the air. So I had this great idea for a story involving a man perpetually covered in bruises, until he’s unrecognizable as anything but. There may have been ninjas involved. But then I lost it.

Every writer should have a recorder in the shower and pen and paper in the toilet. Because you never know when a good word, a good sentence, good alliteration or good idea will come, and you have to put it on paper immediately. Or at least I do, with my consciously ever-worsening short-term memory.

It’s mental menstruation: you have to catch it as it’s starting, or you’ll end up with a bloody mess later.

So here I sit, one sock on and just bra and jeans (the day’s t-shirt still unselected), hair still shower-wet, screaming at my iBook to open Word faster (“For fuck’s sake, optimize my fonts later, I only need Times New Roman anyway!”) because if I don’t get it down, it will flow out immediately, the nuances lost, and like the difference between the first seconds of waking and five minutes later, the haze sets in, the significance is forgotten and the next Great Idea of Man is lost forever. Imagine if Hemingway had been a pothead instead of a drunk.

I don’t really know where my bad memory comes from. Sure, I’ve been known to drink excessively and occasionally partake in illicit drugs (or as I like to call them, ill-tastic!), but nothing to the extent of significant brain cell loss. Perhaps it’s compensated for in my smell memory. Seriously. I have photographic (photoolfactory?) smell memory. I can smell a scent and tell you when and where I smelt it last. The other day, I sniffed and got my aunt’s elevator in Munich. I’ve smelt my grandmother often, but only in Poland. I’ve even gotten my parents’ house in Houston here once. I’m perfect with ex-boyfriend colognes. I guess that’s my superpower, though the jury is still out on whether or not I’ll be granted a costume for this (oh, please let it have latex).

But this is why I write, because actual memories are so fleeting. Because I can’t even remember what I did last week, much less a year ago or ten, unless I have thoughts and events recorded somewhere. The details fade; old cities, old lovers, it’s hard to remember the architecture of either sometimes. They disappear because I failed to write them down, to record them in some place more permanent than my mind. And all around this city I’m constantly surrounded by couples, holding hands around the Rynek, making out far too often on the Planty benches, and I wonder, are any of them going to remember this moment in twenty years? Or is history, even our own personal histories, a sketchbook of ordered events, left uncolored and unfinished?

Gombrowicz wrote “writing is nothing more than a battle that the artist wages with others for his own prominence.” Yes, we’re all attention whores, but what if the greater battle is with your own mind, or memory in this case? But maybe it’s just my bad memory that necessitates this urge to take up pen and scribble every facet down. Hopefully everyone else finds some other ways to remember their time in this city, because the world is already overflowing with writers, one sock on and half-naked, trying to get their ideas out for their audience of one.