believe me: you cannot do better than at Hest 

(From Warsaw): changes

One blogger leaves, another, along with B., arrives. Madeline is the bridge. I am the one with the yellow bag and the camera, recording and writing and not sleeping.

Everything and everyone pushes me to slow down and so eventually I do. Oscar is speaking Polish and I am listening. Czy pani mowi po Angielsku?

The sun is trying desperately to take the chill out of the air. We set out to explore Warsaw and as always, I gravitate towards the parks. There, we join the countless others who use this setting to talk. Because really, talking, in one form or other is what we, humans do best.

Out on the street, we come face to face with a large protest march. Miners and laborers demanding improved working conditions. What’s interesting is that none of the people out and about seem to care. I ask several to tell me about the march and most shrug with indifference. The police expect altercations. We leave before we’re swept away by the force of a defiant protesters.

In the afternoon some of us eat delicious salads and pastries and some of us feel obliged to clean the apartment that was left abandoned after the party of the night before. And those of us who clean, talk. Talk is good, talk is forward moving even as it relies on recounting the past.

Madeline and I move to the hotel where Oscar and B are staying. I remark on how I feel like Martha Stewart, switching residences from her estate to a more institutional setting. The new hotel is actually an old hotel and I like it for its location and clean sheets. That’s all.

We visit a gallery in the Old Town where a friend and photographer, Konrad, is displaying his work. I have one of his pieces back in the States and I have blogged about him here. In the gallery I am extremely aware of how different the light is. The sun is winning the battle against the cold, wet skies.

We sit at the Old Town Square and drink beers and black currant juice – two beverages that to me are as Polish as… apple pie.

is it spring in Warsaw? 

Next to Lazienki Park there is another: Ujazdowski. So many parks, so little time... 

pausing to talk 

defiant 

ready 

she has seen her country go through a lot 

the photographer and his display 

a man, a meal, a dog 

(From Warsaw): over breakfast

[Reflections on what happens when two worlds collide. Or: how does it feel to be the only one in a room of a dozen who knows everyone and where no one else knows more than half of the others? Or: when the author of Ocean hosts a party in her old family apartment, where her American friends meet all her closest Polish friends.]

I sweated that one.
Really? I didn’t.

You weren’t hosting.
No, I was sitting back and thinking that this was the perfect tableau: books piled high to the ceiling, mountains of food everyone, people exchanging stories.

Food piled high? I know, I probably wasn’t serving it in a fast enough way.
Such fascinating conversation! Didn’t you hear it?

I was thinking that maybe mixing different worlds is not the right thing to do.
Really? If I hadn’t been more tired, you would still find me there right now.

Honestly? I like that image…

among friends 

(From Warsaw): best ever

When I hear that phrase said over a lunch treat, I want to protest. Because really, one cannot hope to compare Polish pastry to French pastry. Or can one?

chocolate eclairs and fruit tarts 

(From Warsaw): conversations under gray clouds

Why the gray skies? It is the last day of gray skies in Poland, they tell me. It will all clear. Summer-like weather starts tomorrow, they say.

But when we walked through Lazienki Park, it was gray. It was gray even among the lilacs. Peacocks paced the park, moving slowly among gray statues, resting occasionally, waiting for a warmer moment.

But the moods were gray.

And it was gray on the streets, and in the buses we rode to and from the Old Town. And on the Square it rained.

Inside the souvenir store, Madeline, Jeremy and I shake off the wetness. The saleslady is looking at us as we stand there dripping, me shivering, Madeline clutching an umbrella. And she scolds: “how can you ladies let that poor man suffer so? Why doesn’t he have a sweater or a wrap on? He’ll catch a cold! Can’t you find him something to keep him warm?”

a sundial without the sun, a peacock passing through 

resting  

looking for good things 

On the Square, fighting the clouds 

(From Warsaw): what stands out

…on the train to Warsaw: farmsteads, small strips of land, meadows. (When was the last time that I had seen a meadow in the States?)

A hand plough pulled by a horse, an orchard, a forest. Dirt roads with farm wagon tracks. No cars. Chickens let loose in a field, willows bending down, wooden fences made of brittle gray boards, unpainted.

Is this my home? Is this no longer my home?

Returning with sentimental thoughts but also returning with an understanding that because I left so long ago, I think it is no longer possible for me to live here (even as it is not possible for me to feel that home is elsewhere).

Wild lilacs blooming against the side of the tracks, a small train station – Dziadowki – passed slowly. No one there anyway, no one in sight anywhere, in fact.

looking out 

wooden fences, fruit trees 

green fields 

(From Krakow): …deck my garden walk

Lilies of the valley. Everywhere, buckets and buckets of them, in big bunches.

powerful fragrance 

I have no time to write. I realize that. My blog entries have a bare-boned feel to them. I have so many excuses. Work was today’s baby. Churches and castles and lizards were yesterday’s. Tomorrow we leave Krakow (though I will be back next week) and the day will spin into a madness that will make today and yesterday feel like a day at the spa – though one where sleep is withheld.

Poland for me demands both blogging and my attention. I want to write when I am here more than at any time or place in my days, at the same time that I want to not lock myself in my room just now.

One day at a time. Today I blogged. Tomorrow I will try very very hard. But it may be the first day where I will just have to hang up my posting mittens for a day. Understand, it will be a miracle to work through all that has to be done and no time will I be anywhere near a computer.

At least when an impatient reader clicks on Ocean, they will see the lilies of the valley. Life’s not bad if you can see all those lilies of the valley in buckets, everywhere.

(From Krakow): Kazimierz

If only 160 Jews live in Krakow now, are they dispersed, or do they concentrate in the old Jewish district of Kazimierz?

Can two cemeteries adequately commemorate those who lost their lives here?

the older Jewish Cemetary 

close together 

moving slowly, taking it all in 

a wall of grief 

in a forest, yellow flowers 

white flowers