Scribblings with Green Chalk

(Image found when googling Virginia Woolf; astoundingly, that’s pretty much what I look like in the morning)

If a room of one’s own is all you need to unleash your hidden Shakespeare’s sister, why does it not seem to be working for me? Apparently, the brilliant writer/scholar in me, once unleashed in my room, is primarily interested in dusting the bookshelves and washing the dishes. Vacuuming is also good, as is unclogging the kitchen sink. She is the artist of domestic neuroses. If I had a striped wallpaper, I’d have phantom women figures pulling at the bars whenever I was left alone.

It’s all much better when I put Virginia Woolf’s ideas in a box and go write in cafes or the library. No dramatizations of “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” no cleaning, perhaps no genius. But text. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what the game is about.

Maybe Shakespeare didn’t have a sister for a reason? (Maybe he did, I don’t know; maybe Anne Hathaway wrote his books anyway, and no, not wearing Prada.) Or I could never be her, not just because of temporal impossibility.

Yet another maybe: Maybe there is a good reason why Virginia Woolf wasn’t an advice columnist? Having servants could have skewed her understanding of the domestic, since she never attended to the hygienic and aesthetic aspects of the water-closet.

Sunday. Birds and all. Rain clouds hanging in lazy indecision. Open text document devouring on my screen. I’ll face some more hours, having cleaned everything in the house, and skip the walk to the river.

Thesis is being written. I can’t tell you how exactly but it’s happening. With the side-effect of a big dent in my provisional “coffee fund.”

 
 
… I would be able to finish this sentence in French. As things are, I can still read certain things and ask about the restroom. If I were her, I would be quite shameless in decorating my apartment with Elliott Erwitt’s portraits of myself. I wonder if de Beauvoir had a secret room where she retired to absorb them in narcissistic abandon.

As an existentialist, she might have discarded the temptation that I would probably act upon: to haunt him sometimes as a punishment for publishing all those photo albums about dogs after my demise.

My presentation on America Day by Day already done and delivered, I will reread The Second Sex and leave Mr. Erwitt in peace. Note to self: keep growing the hair, get an interesting necklace and shawl, and practice elegantly nonchalant occupation of uncomfortable chairs.

You can think many contradictory things about Charlotte Perkins Gilman (I do), but the title of her autobiography is a proof of sheer brilliance in at least one respect. She knew that when you noun it, you put a pin through it. Remember Baudelaire’s dusty love letters tucked in drawers? Butterfly collections under dust. Gilman didn’t want it, so she didn’t say “life” — an object, able to be caught, caught, lying there — she said “the living of.”

It’s the verbing, that’s how you get up and run. Gilman knew it, Whitman knew it, Stevens knew it. I wanna verb me.

This is probably how many cat blogs are born.

There are many great things to be said about cats, but they’re not hijacking this space.

And yet I owe it to that gray cat to finish his brief story…

It was a he and his name started with “M” as I learned from a plea for help at the tram stop. The cat I saw fit the description: big, stripey gray male (judging by the size, it must have been a castrated male). I ripped off the phone number and left a message on the owners’ cat’s human companions’* answering machine when I got back home. I believe they found him, because the next day the note was gone.

I’m somewhat ambivalent about the idea of having pets. I don’t know if I could keep any of my own. If you’re not dead serious about your pets, it doesn’t seem fair to me to have them. Cupboard love has its laws. So do other dimensions of the relationship. I wish I had had the chance to hear a voice on the phone, to hear the relief of knowing that the cat’s still alive, the hope of finding him. I could have gone to bed that night hearing phantom purring, my “good deed” done.

I didn’t see it as a great feat, just fortunate coincidence. Yet, together with vitamin D, M.’s cameo in my life brought back the opening of Herbert’s “Mr. Cogito Ponders Suffering,” with “desperate actions to save stray cats” failing to bring inner peace.

Wishy-washy winter continues…

* I don’t know a good word for someone who keeps pets. If they’re mentally sane, the compromises they make don’t fit mere “ownership.”

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

My guiding thought for the new year. Or any year.

It might seem like a sign of sad disenchantment to say that people generally aren’t good and kind, but outside of Disney movies that has always been the case.

Some time before Christmas I had an interesting conversation about censorship and “smoothing out” fairy tales. All those cut tongues, cropped toes, missing fingers were taken away from us. And in exchange we got Bambi. Not even close to a real deer. Not like the ones I watched as a child run through the orchard, the ones I’d meet on a walk in the fields near our family house. Where my parents live has become suburbia: Bambi and Desperate Housewives. Neat laundry, controlled scream.

In my deep wintry sleep at my parents’ this Christmas I dreamt of toads and snakes coming out of my mouth, like in the uncensored Grimms’ tales. What doesn’t have to be kind by decree, may still discover its own kindness. Coughing roses doesn’t bring you closer to your truths, while toads and snakes make good company when what you think or say suddenly gets the stamp of vulgar and unacceptable.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, or don’t let the bastards grind you down, as the Wikipedia translation reads. The Handmaid’s Tale was published over twenty years ago. My last angry letter to a newspaper was in response to an interview with Atwood on the occasion of the anniversary. The interview is hardly worth mentioning, the interviewer wasn’t even skillful in concealing that she hadn’t read the book. She got the number of Polish editions wrong, unaware of the first one in the 1980s. The epitome of idiocy was reached with the question “What is the idea behind your writing? As most (sic!) readers, I’m interested in the thoughts underpinning the prose”… more than in the text, she should have added, because I can’t be bothered to read. Because critical insight, no, mere skepticism is too much to ask. We want Bambi, an easy conviction that if not “good” then at least everyone is “OK.” That all the ranting is useless, that apocalyptic visions belong to cold-war sci-fi, that what a woman wrote in Canada over twenty years ago has no connection to where we are heading.

I didn’t reread The Handmaid’s Tale over Christmas. As always during my visits, I tried to catch up with Polish press. The Republic of Gilead was dripping from the pages of weeklies and women’s magazines. Neo-Nazi rightwingers temporarily removed from power but lurking in the shadows. All-powerful clergymen checking the wires on their brainwashing machines, getting government funding for their latest whims. Celebrity women talking drunken nonsense about how they wish they were housewives, locked away with their kids in a space between the kitchen and the church. Single women as the new plague and a theory to put their sexuality in a box labeled “disease.” Feminist politicians laughed out of court for their lack of “dress sense.” A sex scandal victim shamed for not being pregnant with the corrupt politician who abused her but with someone else (in the zany world of prim and proper logic she probably should have been “faithful”)… and the rape jokes, the rape jokes that crop up everywhere… The Republic of Gilead adds bricks to its walls. We can’t be bothered to read, so we don’t know we’re not even original in this madness. And of course, let’s bow our heads and be nice in an eternal Christmas, let’s cough roses and say things are changing for the better.

Toads and snakes are creatures of the margins that remind us that darkness exists. There’s no place for them in the well-lit world of Bambi and newspaper rationalizations of everything. Where all the people are wonderful and our culture is our home, our religion is our law, and our thinking is anathema to the happiness that lies in complicity. I don’t believe any country and any people can be sane if they simply rename their totalitarianism. Is being ruled by a one-sex hierarchy claiming power over souls really any better than living under the boot of a foreign working-men dictatorship? This Christmas we didn’t even have snow to cover it up.

I want toads and snakes, a space for the genuine, so that smiles are not merely painted, but the tension of muscles could be felt under the fingers when you touch someone’s face. Not crowds frogmarched into churches but believers and non-believers and outright heretics safe from clergymen’s home archives’ all-seeing, all-punishing eyes. I don’t want a morality that comes from religious tribunals and our corrupt traditions but from people’s lives. In fact, I don’t want to write about how my visit to the country brought me down. I want toads and snakes, uncensored stories, uncut minds.

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Don’l let the bastards in you get you.

Happy new year, everyone.

I blame it on Denise (on whom I essentially blame the existence of Scribblings). If it hadn’t been for this post, my forever overactive curiosity would not have been piqued, I would not have written to a musically-literate Canadian friend about the possible bonds between curling, Canadian serenity, and good music. Moreover, I would not be stuck wondering–as always–about my personal level of musical literacy and my taste.

Far from being a musical explorer, I tend to rely on friends’ recommendations and good poetry. I tend to think I’m easily bought by well-written lyrics, persuasive praise, and perhaps a good concert atmosphere. In high school I went to dozens of garage band gigs: I can’t remember any names, only that I had fun. I can’t play any instruments, I’m convinced that on some level I’m incurably deaf (maybe the garage bands are partly responsible?).

So in the case of the Weakerthans, I’m recruited via Denise’s enthusiasm, obscure hints at curling’s zen-like qualities, their indirectly experienced concert skills (browse!), great lyrics, and the cat named Virtute.

Samson’s not a dead poet, so I won’t paste the lyrics to “Plea from a Cat Named Virtute,” but go into an unlikely linking frenzy: the lyrics and the NPR interview.

I honestly don’t know how he does it, but he manages to be optimistic and disillusioned at the same time. Virtute’s a tenderly-written cat. And while my mother’s cat would gladly taste my tinny blood, I’m sure it wouldn’t cure my melancholia. (Maybe curling would help?)

is the line with which my favorite moment in Tori Amos’s “Father Lucifer” begins. Sometimes, on nasty rainy mornings, like the ones we’ve been having here recently, I am reminded of that line. No matter how ugly the day, it’s my wedding day. In the evolving relationship with myself (or yourself), vows have to be renewed often, every morning needs a promise. If you’ve ever experienced self-hatred, you know what I mean.

Today, I could actually put on a tiara or a veil and have a tiny wedding reception. As I was leaving the apartment this morning, Mr. Technician arrived to install internet. Getting an internet connection in this town seems as involved as arranging a wedding ceremony. Only you can’t get 20 magazines about it… After over two months of waiting, through desire and thirst, we got to the moment where most popular romances end. We’re all enamoured of our router tonight. And, you know, Sebastian and I might try some homemade Glühwein later. José’s in bed with a cold, but we might talk him into a toast with Heisse Zitrone, if he’s not asleep…

Since I’m in a celebratory mood, I thought I could send you to “Father Lucifer”… Enjoy.

No, I have not suddenly been blessed with insight into technology, I’ve just found something that responds to my obsessions. I am the person who walks around the house turning the lights off in empty rooms. I segregate garbage. I tell people to put black backgrounds on their PowerPoint slides because it’s easier on the eyes. And I like little black dresses.

Black is less tiring for your eyes than white. (Yes, the background of this page is white, maybe that’s why I don’t have a crazy number of readers.) Black is also better for your computer screen and it saves energy. Though I hate to think I’m advertising something and doing it for free, for the reasons stated above I link here to Blackle — i.e. Google in black. (Not: ‘Google for Black people’ as a website for young Black professionals clarified.)

I wrote to the Blackle team to ask them why you can’t set it as your default Google option in the internet browser but they kindly replied that they’re snowed in with emails and directed me to their FAQ site, which didn’t work. Nevertheless, I like the idea of black (dress) search, because I like my eyes. And since I do like other people’s eyes too, I wrote this weird post.

This is an in-joke among the initiated.

I see the Manhattan skyline everywhere: and I need not look at my holiday pictures. I see the Manhattan skyline when I look at the rows of books on my shelves. At 2 a.m. black print pretends to be an unruly grid creeping towards the ceiling. My turquoise thermos wants to be a tea-filled skyscraper, and the mess in my bag (as I stuff things in it quickly in the morning) is the jazz of the skyline. The blog stats on my blog are the Manhattan skyline. The gray matter of my brain says it’s the Manhattan skyline: a process, desiring sleep, staying wide awake, leaving things unfinished. Coffee overdoses turn my veins into the Manhattan skyline: they’re pretty tired, pretty boring, and yet, pretty. If people don’t stop coming back to Kouwenhoven in class, I promise, I will throw myself into the Hudson in my thermos.

jeśli się nie mylę, tak zaczynał swoje listy do przyjaciół Zbigniew Herbert. Podoba mi się, więc kradnę. Moje kochane Zwierzątka, chyba nic z tego nie wyjdzie… z mojego pisania tutaj po polsku. Myślałam na początku, że będę przeplatać, ale nigdy się na to nie składa.

Nie mówię “nigdy”, ale nie chcę obiecywać. Myślę, że ci, którzy mnie dobrze znają, rozumieją lub zrozumieją, o co mi chodzi. Moja czteroletnia wojna z polonistką w liceum sprawiła, że uciekłam od pisania po polsku. Studia w obcym języku też mnie do tego nie zbliżyły. Nie oznacza to jednak jakiejś bolesnej alienacji od języka ani kultury, mimo że chwilowo nie mieszkam w kraju. Nadal lubię polski jazz, poezję, Kazika, humor Grzegorza Halamy, filmy Barei i Poznań. Ale jeśli chodzi o pisanie, postanowiłam na razie pójść kawałek drogą Conrada. (Nie, nie zaciągnęłam się na statek i nie planuję napisać alternatywnej wersji Lorda Jima.) Zobaczymy, co z tego wyjdzie.

Proszę, piszcie, niekoniecznie na temat. Prawdę mówiąc, bardzo cieszą mnie komentarze po polsku, szczególnie gdy mają to szczególne, nieprzetłumaczalne poczucie humoru.

Życzę Wam smacznego Św. Marcina, moje Zwierzątka.

I caught a cold and am miserable: sneezing and coughing. My thinking pace has slowed down considerably. To cheer myself up a bit, I’m shoving ’serious work’ aside and enjoying a few stolen moments with hot tea and a book I got from a friend. (But because this is the age of multitasking, I am at the same time typing this. In the pre-multitasking era, I would recollect this in tranquility and put in a diary which would quite likely be lost or burned or never read for whatever reason.)

It’s been ages since I got a book gift of this kind. A few months ago I got a set of anthologies and, of course, it made me happy as a student. But this book makes me happy as a child: I don’t need it for any practical reasons and it’s got illustrations!

The book is about Paris seen through the eyes of a painter. I’ve never been to Paris and I’ve never been good with watercolors. But while the lines and specks of color don’t make me want to freeze my nose off with a pencil by the Neckar, I would like to go to Paris and amble aimlessly down the streets. With a warm coat and gloves. In a Dupin mode, watching the crowd, or slightly bored like Baudelaire’s flâneur/flâneuse (I don’t care what the old misogynist would think), or agitated in a silly way, like a tourist. If I don’t do it, it’s still fun to be a kid with a book. Looking at pictures that don’t have to be anywhere near real, but draw me in anyway. This is the one good thing about my cold. This moment.

is a more or less permanent word of the day according to the notice on one of the doors at Cornell’s Morrill Hall. It is my more or less permanent word of the day and will be until I finally get internet at my apartment. Sound like an addict’s confession but it isn’t. I cannot do things for school and I’ve fallen behind terribly with my correspondence. Apologies to all those who have been waiting for letters that never arrived. I’m alive and well but sleepy most of the time. I am stresstrated.

A question — prompted by a friend’s comment to the previous posting and another friend’s remark in a conversation — and I don’t want to turn this into an opinion poll, I’m just curious: do you think I try to show off my vocabulary? Which brings about another question: do I seem pretentious in the way I express myself? I am not counting on your honesty, maybe reassurance. Stresstrated, remember?

But first of all, before buying dresses, typing as quietly as I can, not to wake Asia, who does not even know I slipped her into my scribbling. Sneaking in friends’ names is a bit like using charms or pretending to be spiritually related to Frank O’Hara. Or showing off that one has read Barthes’ “The Reality Effect” and knows what Flaubert was thinking with the piano or whatever instrument was the bit of unchewed reality. But, above all, showing off that I remember a poem by Denise Duhamel where she says it more neatly.

Once again I find myself object-struck. Not with German milk cartons (which are modestly European in their sizes) but with cheap clothes and cheap Ikea stuff. Our little trip to Ikea with Asia and Dan was slightly epic in its mission of conjuring home in dorm rooms and rented apartments. Among my various purchases there was one I am particularly proud of: the cheap bamboo blinds I had always liked but never had a good reason to get. I put them up today after getting a set of curtain hooks at a big, confusing hardware store, where the assistant couldn’t help me although I put a lot of effort into explaining my intentions towards the curtain rail in German.

To this stream of non sequiturs let me add that I catch myself looking at gray clothes. I even bought a gray coat for my walks in autumn frost.

Sometimes, despite the blissful effect of the early autumn sun, I let slip in conversation a bit of my bitterness. And it goes like a snake in the grass or lead in a lipstick (a haunting factoid Asia scared me with), making me sound like a tragic recluse. As if I were just a step away from announcing how I enjoy to sit by the dead.

Yet since my apartment is in the basement I can neither jump out the window nor send notes to children in a small basket. What I can do is keep Asia’s fashion advice in mind and consider white dresses next time I think of buying another gray sweater. They would certainly go well with Rhine wine and the refrigerator magnet Gretchen promised to get me from Amherst. A homemade Emily Dickinson lurking in suggestions and objects… Because I’m back to Dickinson just like I’m back to drinking coffee.

I dreamt that the neighbors’ dog discovered my literary talent.

This is what I dreamt about at my friends’ Poznan apartment. A few days later I left. Just like that dream, the past month was surreal and what I found out was not something I was willing to write about.

and similes and — of course — very, very bad movies. See Rudraksh, an extended Bollywood rumination on how you get better hair the more evil you become. The movie sort of alludes to Highlander, at times pretends to have a plot, but in reality it is a clever measuring device. If you don’t know how much ludicrousness you can take, see how far you can get with Rudraksh. I listened to the faith healer/night club bouncer explain that God is like the internet and was so astounded by the pure idiocy of the explanation that I kept watching. After our hero rescued the posse of 20-year-old American scientists/lingerie models from the threatening debris of styrofoam pillars, I got what obviously was an email from the “divine internet” which told me to take a shower. When I came back, the movie was over. Debbie, who bravely sat through the hairstyle adventures, told me it ended quite abruptly, without the anticipated resolution (the hero purging himself of evil and getting the girl). Her hypotheses were: (1) the crew and cast realized they could not stuff more absurdity into the picture and just stopped, (2) they ran out of money, (3) Sanjay Dutt (faith healer/nightclub bouncer) had to go to prison.

Only the “divine internet” knows why people cannot resist bad movies.

Honestly, I feel discouraged. The lack of comments makes me wonder whether I should continue with this blog. Perhaps I fail to appreciate voyeurism and am not enough of an exhibitionist, but I don’t like to feel like I’m talking to myself in public. If I wanted an intimate overflowing monologue, I’d stick to keeping a personal journal. If, in addition, I liked the thrill of having the monologue unanswered but seen, I’d leave copies in public places. But I wanted neither of the above. What I had in mind putting up the first post was to have some sort of exchange of thought: precious trivia for my trivial observations. Apologies for the scarcity of serious matters and deep thoughts, but didn’t I warn about this at the very beginning? Why read at all? I believe it is knowing that sometimes someone happens to read this that makes me so upset. (No, I will not post a link to Baudelaire’s “Au lecteur” even if the decadent misogynist was whimsical in a more charming way than I am. I would be tempted, though. Quoting Baudelaire seems to me a bit like sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to eat chocolate. Baudelaire was the midnight snack my BA thesis revolved around. Baudelaire is a midnight snack and therefore ought to be eaten by defiant women.)

I should perhaps set out on a pilgrimage to the land of unnecessary parenthetical remarks instead of finishing this post. And what I will do very soon is take my machete to MA thesis territory. And what will you do then, reader? Find something good to read, I hope. Baudelaire had good reasons to get annoyed, I don’t. The world is littered with bad metaphors, bad blogs, unnecessary insights.