Withdrawal

It started a month ago. Or perhaps a year before that. And another five before that. Thirteen before that, but for our purposes, let's leave off those extra thirteen. Five years before the first year I was depressed, emotional, and seeing a therapist. She prescription an antidepressant. It was wonderful. My emotions stabilized. I felt happier than I had for years. Those were the five years - being happy, feeling stable, developing a wide range of coping mechanisms besides just medication. Thinking, from time to time, that perhaps it was time to end the prescription.

And then, one year ago, I read The Chemistry of Joy and did decide to top, very slowly and under the guidance of a my therapist. That brings us to one month ago. That is when, October 23, I took my very last half of a 5 mg tablet of Citalopram. I was proud of myself and I thought, "Well, I'm finished with that."

That week I cried without reason, I flew into rages and, on Thursday, I was so angry and terrible to my husband that I immediately called and refilled my prescription. If this is me without the drugs, I can't do it.

It wasn't until I started feelng headache and very very sleepy during the day that I thought maybe something else was afoot. Withdrawal symptoms. I looked them up. There is a long and agonizing list of withdrawal symptoms for this medication, and most people described enduring the torture for weeks, if not months.

It has now been one month. One month many extremes of emotions. For a week, I was nauseated and barely able to stay away. I would fly into a rage at small things - a dizzy monster version of myself. One night, I jolted awake in the middle of the night, heart pounding and filled with terror. I turned on the lights, feeling that my brain was collapsing in on itself. That I was trapped inside my brain - like an episode of Stranger Things. R asked me what was wrong, and I knew there was nothing he could do to help. I put my head between my knees and counted to 100. The next day, I diagnosed it as a panic attack, the first I'd really ever had.

Intense anxiety is listed with the withdrawal symptoms. So are fits of crying. Irritability. But also with the withdrawal symptoms was something of a time frame. After one month, the symptoms should mostly be finished.

Yesterday I was on edge all day. It was a familiar feeling, something I remember feeling in high school or in college, in the days before the medication. It was also something I may have brought on myself. Against all better judgement, I had reacted to an extreme article on someone's Facebook wall and then nervously waited their replies. i drank too much caffeine and ate too much sugar. In the evening, I called my mom and wept, telling her all my political frustrations and fears, and then felt numb and tired.

Finding me like this, my husband told me that he'd come to expect a breakdown at least once a week. The present situation: emotions flying all over the place, and me trying to determine what to do with them. Which version of myself is the one that is the medicine-free me? When emotions and anxiety strikes, how much do they reflect realty and how much have they been exaggerated by the symptoms? I don't want to be left invalidated or ignored. These are days in extremes.

How to Live a Creative Life

After viewing this lovely little infographic, (which I came across on a truly wonderful blog–thanks, Abi and Pakou!), I chose to create my own procedure for living a creative life.

I do not have a scanner and creating the whole thing on paint, or the like, would take way too long. So I took these photos with the camera on my laptop.

Here’s the full diagram.

And then I figured out how to make my laptop take pictures that are not mirror images.

 The first page:

 The second page:

 If you really want to know, here’s what it says. You can look at the pictures while I read it to you.
Ahem.

“How to Live a Creative Life”

Wake up. Lay in bed for 30 min longer.

 Think about how you wish you had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Try to remember who wrote that quote.

Go make oatmeal. Put lots of good things in it -> all your favorite things so it won’t taste bad.
Coconut, peanut butter, chocolate, bananas, cinnamon, sugar…
Cheetos
– not Cheetos.

Bad idea. Start over. [Bad ideas go in the compost heap.]

Ride your bike to work. Wear lots of flashing lights. And sing while you go.

Send a clever text message, you clever fool.

Do yoga at your desk. Make up your own poses. Wear your bike helmet.

Bad idea. Start over.

Paint a water-color at a coffee shop.

Write fake journal entries. (“Today I rode a motorcycle.”)

Read your fake journal. Try to remember which entries are true.

Accidentally leave your fake journal someplace where someone will find it.

Perform in a poetry slam.

Bad idea. Start over.

Play an instrument. Maybe a kazoo.

Try to have really good handwriting.

 

Play softball with a rubber chicken as the ball.

Play softball with a banana as the ball.

Bad idea. Start over.

Start a blog which you’ll never post on.


If you create a creative life diagram, please share. I’m looking for a reliable manual.

May 13, 1943

Background:
Carl has finished his army training and now he waits with his company to be sent into duty. They have been moved to three different camps in three states within the past month, with no idea where they will be sent next. He is now in New York City, preparing to ship out any day.

He writes on U.S.O stationary, with the words "IDLE GOSSIP SINKS SHIPS" printed in red on every piece of paper and on the outside of each envelop. Each letter is subject to censorship and already a few lines were cut out from one he wrote earlier in the month. Somehow, he knows that this letter will not be censored--probably the last uncensored letter he will write until the war is over.

To preserve his writing, I have not edited any spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Here are his words:

Well dearest it seems like the zero hour has arrived. I have no idea where we will be transfered from here. Plans and prepairations are being made for our exportation. It is quite certain that we will leave New York in a boat. I assume it will be either England or Alaska, according to the clothing that have [sic] been issued to us.

These two options of England or Alaska seem very arbitrary to me. What sort of clothes could they have been given which would suggest these two places? Did my grandpa really think they would be taking a boat from New York to Alaska? Was the U.S. Army really sending troops to Alaska during WWII? At first I thought this was a joke. It might be, but this next excerpt made me wonder.

I have a plan to out-smart the censor. In case they do not permit me to tell you where I am I will give you names of persons representing places. Here they are. Loyd = London, Alice = Alaska August = Australia Alfreda = Africa Irma = Ireland Isaac = Iceland, Alta some Island in the Atlantic and Paul for some Island in the Pacific (Greenland = George). I will questing [sic] you in the following manner; How is Paul by this time, hereby you will be able to tell where I am. I sure get radical ideas you may even smile at them. I hope to be “smarter” some day.

As someone looking back on WWII, I find these choices of countries very odd. There seem to be several glaring omissions. What's the code for Germany? France? Italy? Did he really think he was more likely to be sent to Australia or Greenland than to Germany? Did the U.S. Army even have operations in Australia during WWII? Since this is the last uncensored letter Carl will write for the rest of the war, it would seem he would want to cover all bases. Thoughts?

Letters from World War II

From September 1943 until March 1945, my grandfather wrote a letter to my grandmother almost every other day. My grandmother kept every single one. She only told us about the existence of these letters a few years ago, very close to the time of my grandfather's death. I now have the letters in my possession and am slowly reading through them, typing them up, and tracing my grandparents' relationship.

Since these letters are so intensely personal and highly valued, I have hesitated to say anything about them here and am still unsure what form my posts take. But I wanted to share some thoughts and some tidbits with you. My knowledge of World War II is not great, so I also want to pick your brains and get some feedback.

As an introduction, let me just say that the man who wrote these letters, a 23-year-old awaiting both the right moment to propose to his sweetheart and his summons from the draft, is a man that neither his son nor his grandchildren knew. He was a hard-working, no-nonsense father and by the time my sister and I came along, he was a quiet, serious grandfather. But the man I have met in these letters is, as he labels himself, a "wide-eyed dreamer," filled with philosophies and theories about the world, writting tenderly and candidly to my grandma.

I first started typing out the letters in November, 2010, exactly 67 years after my grandfather first penned them. I was typing his letter from November 12, 1943 on November 12, 2010. He was 23 when he wrote them. I was six months older and 24 at the time. I have since fallen behind in my recording, but I strive to keep this connection as I follow my grandfather's pen strokes.

I do my best to type at least one letter each night, and so spend my evenings developing an intimate relationship with my 23-year-old grandfather, a stranger who is quickly becoming a friend.

Flutter

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Psalm 126:1

They blink—

new day

light slants through

tired blinds

—and rub their eyes.

Slip bare feet onto the carpet,

yesterday crusted and thin.

Today feet fall so slightly softer

upon the first coat of Lamb’s blood,

of Yes, Lord.

A glance up

 toward the—how many is it now?

Let’s call it the first

of the  seventy times seven.

Later, they will eat spoonfuls of grace with their cereal,

find forgiveness in their dryer sheets.

Last Friday, Jesus prayed that we would all be one.

Today, light bulbs buzz laments.

They sit at the loom

again,

tying frayed ends,

weaving the tapestry that is their marriage.

               One row.

 Two rows—

Tear it out.

                One row.

                                Two rows.

A three-row day.

They do not notice the thread,

a new color becoming more prominent:

the prayers of people they do not know.

Exhausted, wordless, they fall to bed, to sleep,

               unaware of the loosening grave clothes.

It is only the first day,

and two long nights

before the third morning.

Holy eyelids flutter.

Ash Wednesday

Humans of God,
Take your place in line.

Ashes in pie tin
mix with ashes on skin.
When you rub my forehead
are you applying
or uncovering?

Priest to priest,
From dust we have come--
vertical line
--to dust we shall return.
horizontal
passed from ashes
to ashes.

Pastor Jeff said,
“The reason for the ash
is to remind us that we all come
from the same place:
we are all dirt.”

So.
An endless chain of fetid priests,
every white-washed one of us.
Priests.

The first emerging from dust,
the last disintegrating.

Dirt caked nails,
ratted hair,
stinking breath,
burnt wick, broken incense.
Image of God,
Give me your sacrament.

Reveal my ash.

Until we return to the ground,
let's take our place in line

to be anointed by the whore priests
in the footsteps of our Lord.

Waiting for Wedding

This weekend I received a free book in the mail, Love Worth the Wait: Trusting God for Real Romance and Real Relationship, from a certain conservative Christian organization as a thank you gift for my recent donation. Now, I don’t remember ever having any contact with this organization, and as far as I know I never donated to them. I have no idea how they got my address—although I do have a sneaky suspicion that my Grandma, who is always sending me literature on getting married, donated in my name.  

I really only read about three pages of it, but they were very thought-provoking. After flipping through a little, I turned to a chapter called “Living with Unmet Desires,” which sounded considerably more interesting to me than “Is this ‘The One’?”  The first suggestion is to “Practice active waiting.” While you’re waiting for your man, ahem, Prince Charming, to sweep in, you may as well do something. The author suggests, among other things, that you “Take a class or finish your degree,” “Explore and develop an enjoyable hobby, whether it’s seasonal like softball or something ongoing like photography,” “Volunteer somewhere,” “Read at least two or three missionary biographies,” (ah yes, that’ll definitely make the time pass faster—I’m sure to have a husband by the time I finish J. Hudson Taylor: Pioneer Missionary and David Livingstone: The Pathfinder of Africa), and my personal favorite “If you are in debt, begin to climb out of it.” Oh I certainly hope there is not a man out there waiting to marry me before he starts paying off his debt, because I can tell you he’s going to be waiting a long time.

It beats me what this author assumes single women are doing with their lives while they wait to be wed. However, I am not exactly the intended audience of this book: while I do have unmet desires, mine fall more along the lines of wanting a travel partner to go with to India than wanting someone to “provide for me,” whatever that means. Perhaps there are women out there who are not exploring hobbies, getting degrees, earning money, or reading missionary biographies (okay, there might be several who aren’t doing that), people to whom it never occurred to invite a friend out for a Saturday morning brunch. Maybe there are women who are actually doing nothing besides sitting at home waiting for someone to propose.  And that is very sad. What is this underlying message that a woman’s life begins once she’s married? You’ll never hear that a man’s life begins once he’s married: more likely you’ll hear that it ends! I say, why wait? There’s plenty of happiness to be had without combining your laundry with someone else’s, or listening to someone’s breathing all night long.

At any rate, I thought the list of “waiting” activities in this book was unhelpful, and rather unpractical. (Can’t we also play softball and read missionary biographies after we’re married? I should hope so.) So I set out to think of a few practical activities that one could do while waiting to get married and start a family, things that will make life easier once this family is in place. I enlisted the help of my cousin, and together we created the following list. Some of these suggestions are more specifically for waiting to become a mother and some are practical for marriage.

• Stock-pile frozen meals. I have seen mothers, and believe me they are busy people. Isn’t it a paradox that being single means you have the time to cook enormous meals? Why not work ahead for those days of running the kids to daycare?
• Get yourself onto a polyphasic sleeping schedule. If you’re only taking six twenty-minute naps, you will have no trouble with mid-night feedings, or nightmares.
• Start sewing baby diapers (or any sort of baby clothes) 
• Do arm curls. Those children can be heavy--particularly when their weight is combined with that of a car seat!
• Hang out in sewers, hog farms, and dirty bathrooms to increase your tolerance for nasty smells (which is good preparation for having kids)
• Spend a lot of time with highly opinionated people with whom you do not agree, so you can practice communication and conflict resolution. Lock yourself in close quarters with these people. In fact, maybe just turn yourself in to the local jail. If you can maintain working relationships with those people, conflict resolution with a future spouse will certainly be a breeze!
• Live with opposites. For instance, if you like to sleep with the windows closed in the winter, sleep with them open. If you like eating meat well-done, practice eating it raw. If you like to be able to see your bedroom floor, take out all of your drawers and strew their contents around the room. By the time you get married, you'll be very well adjusted to living styles that are different from your own.

Neither my cousin nor I are married, which gives us a slight disadvantage. Are you a married person? Do you have children? What do you wish you would have done  while you had more time and personal space? Are you single and "actively waiting," or "actively living as a single person"? Do you have more ideas? 

What can "actively waiting" singles do to practically prepare themselves for marriage, besides reading books like the one mentioned above?

Driving Home, Spring 2008

The Sichuan earthquake in south central China killed at least 80,000 people and left more than 5 million homeless.

 

The road

is outlined

five, six, ten deep

with people

 

who gather to its warmth

hang from its length.

 

Your eyes in my headlights

are slivers in midnight's deep gray

grasping for your child,

 

powerless to wrench him

from road's belly.

 

The road,

your last belonging.

 

With this piece, I would really like to hear what you think works and what does not work. Could a few of you let me know what you think is happening in the poem and what it poem is saying? That would be really helpful.

 

Upon Returning

Many people I know (myself included) are standing at shifts in life. The years right after college seem to be filled with changes, leaving behind people, places and ways of being that we had grown used to. Here is a piece that I wrote specifically about my return to the US after studying in Lithuania, but it applies to any stage of life we are leaving behind.

You will hold tight to the string

and measure the distance

between you and the diamond

of those days, the kite

that whips and twirls

against your memory.

 

Three weeks, you will count,

since you and Ana

biked to the beach

to look for amber after the storm.

Five months since the

landlady handed you your key

and just ten days

since the corner bakery

and the peach pastries with Andi.

 

Nadia's long blue scarf,

Luan's Albanian rock,

the frozen dumplings

fried in olive oil,

the child with the kitten

in the next apartment—

all floating far above your head.

 

Up, up the kite flies

over photo albums,

past letters and phone calls,

behind the entry-level job

and new friends.

 

You stand beneath it,

reaching for Andi and Nadia,

for the kitten, and the dumplings,

but they are in the kite in the sky

floating further and further away.

 

So you return to the ivy-grown

apartment and retrace your steps

from the bus stop to the market

where you bought the tomatoes,

hoping to find the kite

on the ground somewhere

or to see it hovering over the ferry

and run and catch it and pull it down.

 

But the winds won't relent.

And so you will look at the string

in your hand and follow its line up and up

 

and finally watch the diamond

growing more obscure

thinking how beautiful it is

against the backdrop of the sun

and the leafless trees.    

            Spring 2008

Ella in Her Armchair

Hands folded,

I am breathing her in.

 

My open eyes adjust to the dim room

and her silhouette against Venetian blinds.

She perches in the armchair.

 

Undaunted by silence,

we are both listening.

 

Tick—tick, grandmother clock.

My heart beats,

Her ribcage rises.

 

The well-worn wing-back

upholds a formal distance.

Once they shared a kindred bond—

Proper both, but also tender.

 

Now its arms awkwardly protrude.

Hesitant to embrace,

it is afraid like me in my shortened breaths

 

to find it cannot take her in.

The reverberations of her life have been

widening since they met while

 

her earth-grain skin slips undisturbed

through floral upholstery onto the floor

beneath wooden baseboards.

 

With Strong German Self-Assurance,

and a spine shriveled, curved,

and slowly diminishing, she perches.

 

Spring 2007

Readings of This Poem Aloud

Shortly after this post, Carl recorded himself reading this poem (aloud, of course)!  Listen to him read the original or listen to a fun, artistic "double reading".

Read a Poem

...aloud.

But

do not read a loud

staticky public service announcement

—as though its only aspiration was to be a broadcast,

like it was raised by a pack of HEY-YOU!'s

in a spit-molding megaphone.

 

Do not read a poem

like a hot lunch menu—

    Creamed Turkey

    With Mashed Syllables

    Alliteration

    And Canned Metaphor

(Now raise your hand if you thought the imagery was dry.)

 

I don't know what you've been told,

but a poem is not the IBM Financial Statement of 1995.

Or the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Killer Whales

you used for your fourth-grade science report.

 

A poem

is a looooooooonnnnnnngggg word to massage your ear,

the sound between this breath and the next,

the space between your eyelashes or your two front teeth—

a gap in time so full it can't be pushed shut.

 

Read a poem aloud—yes, read it aloud—

but don't rattle-tattle-prattle

or flick-a-lick-a-tick it.

 

A poem

should be held and savored,

    like the last of your European chocolates

    that you hold in your mouth until

    it dissolves by itself.

 

And after it's gone,

    you do not brush your teeth,

    you do not drink your coffee.

You lick the wrapper,

    You hold your taste buds still

    so they will be sure to remember.

 

A poem should be

greeted "Good morning,"

    and invited over for dinner

    (and perhaps also for dessert,

    just in case it thinks of more to say.)

 

And ssssssssssswwwwwwooooooooooonnnned,

And cccrrrrroooooooooooonnnned,

     (and tuned),

     And caressed,

And humored,

And savored.

And spoken.

And heard.

     And read.

Aloud.            

Keeping the Sea Keepers: Poetic Reflections on Living in Poland

Here are the poems I presented at the conference in Krakow. I will add more as I finish them. Unfortunately, I have not been able to coax this web page into formatting the poems correctly. As you'll see some of the spacing is off, but we will have to make due, I suppose. For the official versions, please contact me and I will send them as a Word attachment.


This first poem requires three "voices": the normal print, the italics and the words in parenthesis. The italics is a traditional Polish carol which marvels at the wonder of God coming to earth. It is filled with oxymorons, such as "Lord of Heaven naked" "the infinite limited," "brightness made dim."


Family Caroling Party

Angels sing sweetly o’er the plains
and I am tracing the words with my finger.

Bóg się rodzi, moc truchleje,

(Have some serniki—Ciocia Danuta worked all day on it!)

God is born, power is afraid,
and this carol is so full of consonants—
I break off pieces and work them over
with my tongue.

(Did you see Anna’s ring? But I hear the boy’s not employed.)

Pan niebiosów obnażony!

I try to swallow.
They hand me a tambourine.

(Her parents aren’t happy. Take some cake. Who is your friend?)

I brought four words to the party.
I put them on the table
between the makowiec and szarlotka,

Ogień krzepnie, blask ciemnieje,

but there’s no place for the silence.

(Well, she must be someone’s friend. Who’d she come with?)

I push it behind me and hope no one sees.

I’m afraid this looks a little rude.
Let me explain.

But my mouth is too full of the spaces
spaces without letters
to say even this.

ma granice Nieskończony,

(Did you offer her cake? Tell her Aunt Danuta prepared it.)

The dish is coming around.
First family members help themselves—
their Ciche noc, święta noc,
then my Grandfather’s Stille Nacht,

and then it comes to me.

I pour the silence in their cups.
They warm their hands while I sing.


A Słowo Ciałem się stało

And God sent His One and Only

(Dobranoc— Dziękuję bardzo)

His One Word

i mieszkało między nami.

They say it dwells among us.


The Virgin Mary is, in Poland, a cultural icon, a symbol of what it means to be Polish . Our Lady of Częstochowa is particularly important to Poles and is said to have miraculously saved Poland in several battles. During Communist times, all sorts of organized religion were repressed and in Soviet-era poetry, I believe one can sense a certain bitterness surrounding the Sacred. It is, on the one hand, a bitterness toward God--that He seemed to stand by and do nothing while His Faithful were put through such disgrace. But it is also a defensive bitterness that their beloved Christ and Holy Mother were defaced and made to suffer along with the least of these.

Poland is a place where you will find the sacred brushing against the profane. From where I live in Brzezno-Gdansk, I can hear the church bells and sometimes the sea. I can also on occasion see drunks from my window and twice I've seen men relieving themselves next to the sidewalk. This next piece attempts to deal with the contrast of the sacred and the profane as well as with the shift happening now with a generation growing up outside of the Soviet Block, leaving behind the sufferings of their parents, but also possibly some of the values such suffering brings. The result is a reflection upon and a presentation of the place where I live.

"Brzezno Mass" also requires more than one voice. Once again, think of the italics as another speaker.


BRZEŹNO MASS

The Litany to Our Lady of Częstochowa was written by Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko who was murdered by the Polish secret police Oct. 19, 1984.

THE HOLY MOTHER
. of those who are deceived,
is here at Brzeźno tram stop.

Forget the golden crown.
The Fleur-de-lis has become the fleur-de-lice.
Swollen fingers feel their way toward the child
She twitches to hold a weakened bladder.

The scars are bleeding again.
The Mother
. of those who are betrayed,
fumbles with a soiled kerchief.
Drops it. The child howls.

Number 13 belches body and spirits.
A drunk slams to the floor,
his bottle crashes down
at her feet. “Matka,” he smirks.
Mother of those arrested in the night,

She bends,
extends cracked fingernails.
. Grace to those who speak the truth.

The tram chastises her.
The Child’s head jerks back. Mother
. of those who are imprisoned,
falls against the door.

Those tapping down SMS SMS
SM turn S S O west-
ward to avoid contact.

. Mother of those who live in fear,

Those pulsing under beat and heat
of hooded sweatshirt
do not rise for her.

. Mother of those who suffer from the cold,

No one looks to her baby.

Holy Mother
. of those who were subjected to interrogations
stumbles toward me.

Her glassy eyes focus eventually on mine.
Parched lips open and close.
. “Grace to those who place their hope—”
. “I don’t speak Polish.”
I lope to the back of the car.

The drunk murmurs,
his head connected to the floor by a line of phlegm,
“O Mother,
. in whom resides the hope of millions”



"The Day of Mourning and Hope" is a reflection upon my time in Lithuania, upon the semester I spent there as a student and the summer during which I lived with a Lithuanian woman and her two-year old grandson. Throughout my stay with Aleksandra, I wanted to help her around the house, but she spoke no English at all (and I spoke virtually no Lithuanian) and was very particular about the way she wanted everything done. This made it hard for me to be much more than the bumbling, mute (if not semi-crazed) foreigner.


The Day of Mourning and Hope
Klaipeda, Lithuania

On June 14th, members of the Baltic States remember those who were sent to Siberia by Soviet Authorities in the mass deportations which began in 1941.

After class I stay behind
. I told you, save the water
to ask you
Why?

. from the shower
scientists and poets
. so we can flush the toilet.
families carted

. I will peel the potatoes.
into the cold
. They’re different from yours.
How did they explain?
. Close the curtains, please

And what
. because the sun
am I to do
. will dull the sheets.
now that I know?

. Carry this Little One
. down the stairs.

My classmate interrupts.
“She’s an American.
She can’t understand.”

. Can you do that much?

You sigh.
“But she needs to,”
you say.




The final piece I have posted comes out of my experience and the experiences of some friends of living as a foreigner in Poland. It is my sense that during the Soviet Era, Poland was a sea of bureaucracy in which it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do almost anything. This has, of course, lessened immensely, but it is still quite frustrating for foreigners to be directed from office to office and to work through reams of paper work. A close friend of mine was able to get a visa herself, but near had to return to the US when Poland would not grant one for her 12-year-old daughter, even though they are both here through a partnership between the American and Polish governments. Experiences like this make me want to ask, "Well, Poland, do you want us here or not?"

Tomasz Jastrun wrote poetry during the Soviet Era and, as the epigraph states, he attributes this mess a bureaucracy to a need to mature, a search for identity. Poland doesn't know who she is quite yet.


Post-Soviet Poland, Age 19

We are fleeing Poland itself, a Poland which is free, but which we just cannot lift, and the problem isn’t that it’s heavy, but that we just can’t get a handhold. Two hundred years shattered with a hammer, smothered fifty years or so by the Soviet system…, we’ve lost our shape entirely. And we ourselves don’t know if we are some proud nobility or just a bunch of smalltime Jewish merchants driven away from the market stalls of Europe.

“August 1990”

And, worst of all, they still don’t know if it’s better to open the door or not open the door whenever someone starts ringing.

“November 1990”

from Awry, Tomasz Jastrun, trans. Daniel Bourne

Can we come in?

It’s just me
and my friend—

she’s only twelve
and I’m twenty-two.

So can we come in?

We won’t even talk.
We’ll just sit
while you read our papers.

. Yesterday I was here.
We drank Coke
talked about Eurovision.

Today you’ve
adorned the door in
red and white tape
“Property of Poland:
Authorized personnel only!”

We wait.
Silence.

Then you re-cross your arms
and turn up your music.

See you tomorrow.

Poland, the Sea, the Swans, and Me

I walked down to the see the other day.

I had been planning to do this for a long time. "It's winter," I told myself. "I have never seen the sea in winter." What does it do when it's surrounded by snow? And when the snow is falling, where do the flakes go? Do they abandon their selves right away and become immediately part of the sea? or do they float for a moment, holding onto their last shreds of iciness?

On the days when I wanted to walk to the beach, I told myself, "This is my chance. The sea, the winter. I have to see it. " On the days when I didn't go, which was all of them, I told myself, "It's the sea. Sand, water. The sky will be gray. The sea will be gray. What's to look at?"

But then I did go.

In the winter, the beach had become the territory of the swans. Earlier we had had cormorants, and of course there were always the gulls. But now the huge birds--twenty of them, at least, a mixture of the old, pure white, and the young, mostly brown--formed a large cluster extending from the water out across the beach.

Two of the birds, at least waist high to me, stood guarding the entrance. We watched each other for a while, them making small movements toward me, me standing very still, petitioning to enter. I must have passed because when I finally did walk by them onto the beach, the looked away disinterestedly.

I made it a point after that to visit the sea and the swans. Because when I am there, there is me and the water, quietly moving along the shore, and there are the swans. And the other sea-watchers with their dogs, who come to bid good morning. And I am not alone.

One afternoon, I saw a man standing at the edge of the water, feeding the swans from his hand. The birds were grouped all around him and not just swans but ducks and gulls as well. They fought over the food at his feet, squawking and nipping at each other. And in the midst of all this sat his huge, black St. Bernard. And the swans were not scared, and the dog was not scared, and the man stood letting the birds pluck at his clothes and snatch the food from his hand.

A few mornings later, I went for a run along the water's edge. As I passed the swans, one leader and then another and another stood up from the water and began their slow waddle toward me. The whole group came sauntering casually after me. Swans, white and brown, rising from their stations in the shallow water to crane their necks toward me, walking slowly, a hint of suspicion in their eyes. Why had they chosen me? It was not the two middle-aged women, strolling arm in arm that they approached. I was their choice.

I did not wait to see what the birds would do when they reached me, but still I was not afraid. We were here, all together. The swans, the sea, the gulls and ducks, the middle-aged women, the St. Bernard, and me. All together in this mix of a beach. That seems to be one of the points of Poland. Maybe it is some leftover Communist mentality or maybe it comes from living so long in a state of need. For years, the food was rationed and the stores were empty. Who cares about money where there's nothing to buy? And this puts people more or less on the same plane. All of us are in need and so we help each other.

And now, still, the professor at the university bids good morning to the cleaning lady, calling her Pani Dorota. The teenage boys on the tram with their hoods pulled up spring out of their seats for the woman with the cane. And when the child on the tram shouts and screams with laughter, we all smile toward her, and then toward each other.

The St. Bernard stands among the swans and, I suppose, so do I.

This poem was actually written about writing short stories, but I've been thinking about it, and I think it can also describe fairly well the state of my first few weeks in Poland.

A Poet Writes a Short Story

I could count them
if they would just stand still--

I know these four children and their parents,
and have learned the names,
ages, pets and hot dog/hamburger
preferences of two more.

The six of htem now sit with me
on carpet squares, but what will I do
with the thirteen, at least,
still making laps around
the craft tables?

Or all the children
--too many to count--
who have just slammed
their car doors on
their sisters' fingers
and are now approaching
my small classroom
at alarming rates?