Saturday, December 11, 2004

Destination Poland: Saturday (evening)

In the evening, two visits.

The first one, with this fellow (but the photo was taken in Warsaw, in 1926) – a very close relative of mine (okay, my father):

He sort of looks the same... Posted by Hello
And the other with this family (she was my closest girlfriend at the U of Warsaw, between 1969 and 1972):

Four people with four fascinating perspectives on life in Poland; some of them even overlapped, occasionally. Posted by Hello
How fast do you have to talk to catch up when you see someone only a few times in the course of decades? Answer: It is 3 a.m. and my mind is set on Polish, which is no way to approach the Ocean blog, but let’s just say that I am hoarse and so are they.

What topics were contentious? Here’s one: what to do with the old communist guard – throw them in jail or let them be? Answer: opinions vary. Oh, and another speculative issue: how many Poles are worse off now then, say, 20 years ago? Answer: maybe 70%. One more: so how church-inclined are people anyway? Answer: in the city – less than you’d think, but not many dare admit it. And one comment made directly to me: “you are so forthright in your questions!” My answer: I have to be. I have so little time here to learn what people are thinking and feeling.

Destination Poland: Saturday

“Let the world be at war, only leave the Polish village in peace and quiet.” – S. Wyspianski (1901)

Why have I looked forward for so to blogging from Poland? Ocean is not, after all, a journal. Not at all. NOT AT ALL! What I most wanted to do was write about the Poland that I grew up with, through my now Americanized eyes. The pictures are ones that I have had, in a sense, in my mind long before they were taken. I truly carry them with me always, even though I rarely talk about it.

Okay, this week of Poland posts cannot be complete without a trek to my grandparents’ village, where I lived the first three years of my life and visited just about yearly until I left for the States as an adult.

Village life for me is, was, all about meadows and forests and farmsteads, dead pigs wheeled from the market, narrow strips of fields (Polish farmland remained mostly privatized after the war), farm men and women, chapels on dirt roads, children watching as you go by, watching, waiting, waiting for the next big event in their lives. [See photos of all these images below.] Village life in Poland has almost nothing in common with life on a Midwestern farm, of that I am certain. Crops are grown, animals are raised, there ends the similarity. I wonder if even from this handful of photos a reader can understand this profound cultural divide.

At the bottom of the photo-roll I’ve posted a picture of the house that my grandfather built, one room at a time. Eventually it grew, then shriveled and crumbled in disrepair. My sister has only recently managed to lay claim to it again and is now trying, along with my nephew, to bring it back to life, one floorboard at a time. Fifty years ago it was surrounded by cherry and apple trees and an organic garden (my grandparents were the original naturalists!). Little of that remains. But the pond outside has frogs and fish again and the river is getting so that you can see the sandy bottom once more. Progress in this case means going back to the way I remember it from almost half a century ago.


In Poland, village life spills onto the highways. He has a dead pig in the wagon. Posted by Hello

One of our neighbors -- she is our age, she stayed on the farm... Posted by Hello

The fields and forests, in December mists Posted by Hello

This "chapel" was built in 1916 (note date on the bottom) when there was no Poland on the map. It stands half a kilometer from my grandparents' house, at the intersection of two dirt roads. To this day, there is no paved road within miles of the village. Posted by Hello

A farmer's courtyard, across the field from my grandparents' home Posted by Hello

watching, waiting Posted by Hello

the house that my Dziadek built  Posted by Hello