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More from Kep:

Okay, Nina and I talked tonight and here’s the scoop: she wants me to continue for a little while longer, so bear with us here. She wants me to say something reassuring, ‘cause the emails are pretty freaky concerned. So: she is healthy, wealthy and wise. Okay, one and a half out of the three are for real.

After all is said and done, I agreed that she can “out” me, but in the meantime, quit asking her who I am. She wont tell and neither will I. If you approach me and ask: is it you? I’ll say: of course not, I swear! So don’t ask. I prefer it this way and so does she.

Listen, if you’re a good friend of hers, it’s a good time to send your kids over so that she can feast on their awesome grins. She told me today that she was sitting at a table tonight watching three little tikes wolf down food and she felt the world was a good place again. If you don't have kids, then go buy her some diamonds or pearls or something (see Nina: I look out for you!). Whatever you do, don’t pay much heed to me. I’m just the blogger de jour. There’s a real person behind Ocean, and it ain’t me.

guest post 8

More from Kep:

I had lunch with Nina last month, just before she left for Europe. I should have taken a picture of it, because I find her lunch habits so irritating that it’s time to shame and humiliate her in public. Nina – you knew this was coming!

You ask her out to lunch and right away she says: fine, but it has to be at a place that has good coffee.

So I am rackin’ my brains: what’s close to campus, has good food and good coffee? I give up. You pick, I tell her. So we wind up not at all close to campus, at a place that has no food to speak of (“oh, I guess they ran out,” says ms. charmer herself), and I have to watch her slurp milky caffeine, all hour long. I mean, how long can you work a cup of coffee, for God’s sake.

I noted that she carries with her chewing gum which is good. Friends, if you drink milky coffee, do remember that the combo gives a person terrible halitosis. Try riding in the front seat with someone who insists on swinging by Starbucks drive-up and then orders some latte or cappuccino and neglects to pop a spearmint baby into the mouth. Crank open the windows!

But about the lunch. I asked Nina if she thinks it’s healthy living to crunch a bar, drink coffee and then devour a pear back in the car (did anyone besides me ever get her lecture about healthy living? I know what I am doing wrong, damn it. It’s the doing it wrong that’s the problem, not my lack of knowledge about it!) and she ticks it off on her little Polish fingers: protein, produce, grains.

All the women I have ever lived with did lunch basically around rabbit food. There were piles of greens, mixed with more greens, with an occasional orange carrot or red radish thrown in (talk about fetid breath! Do not smooch after a radish; just write the day off for intimacy; your partner will understand and be grateful, believe me). And when I was in college, all the women would band together around lunchtime and do yogurt. Yogurt. Pop the lid, dig in the spoon and you’re done in 25 seconds. I defy anyone to take longer than that over a yogurt.

So fine. Protein, produce, grains. My asiago roast beef sandwich (roast beef, smoked cheddar, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and creamy horseradish sauce, on an asiago cheese demi) happens to have the same. We swung by Panera on the way back and Nina did one of those fake hit her hand on her head routines, with an “oh yeah, I forgot they had good coffee here!” as I rushed through my prize meal in the five minutes we had left for our break.

guest post 7

More from Kep:

I was sitting around trying to get work done while watching the Tony Awards last night – don’t ask, don’t ask, I do not know why – when I get a “you got mail” on my computer. It was an email from Nina.

You are alive! I wanted to shout, but it was email and so I just kept quiet.

She wrote the following (edited by me for reasons of readability here):

Kep, thank you. (This is good, I thought, she’s not firing me. She is saying thanks.)

… can I tell you this: the language of your posts is at times is a bit …colloquial. You never talk like that when you and I connect. Be yourself. (Oh God, I hate it when people say that to me. What does it mean to be not yourself? If I am a certain way, I am myself, Nina, shut up!)

I was surprised that you had to resort to that bean-up-the-nose story. You do not have to write about me, but if you do and you are short on material, ask me. I’ll give you some pointers. (Hey, you have given me years’ worth of material! No worry there. Simmer down, I have stuff on you!)

But really, you're terrific, thank you. I have had nothing but positive emails about you. (So why didn’t you share them with me? Your box is littered with precious little notes, and me, I am sitting here in my wicker chair wanting someone to say: you are an okay human being. Do not hold back on the praise for shit’s sake. Oh, I don’t care if the rule is that I keep curse words out. So kill me for saying shit on the blog. Oh fine, I’ll try to do better tomorrow. Okay, Nina, send me the next message – I can take it!)

guest post 6

More from Kep:

When Nina first asked me to guest post here, I was skeptical. How many readers do you have? I wanted to know.

Two – she answered.

I’m doing this for two readers?? Christ, tell them to pick up a comic book in the interim, what’s the matter with you – you’re worried about pleasing two readers?

No, I’m only worried about pleasing one. The other is an add-on.

Okay, ha ha ha, so funny. How many then?

Forget about numbers – she tells me. Write for the person you respect most as a reader and don’t worry about the rest. I switch back and forth. Typically there is a person or two in my mind’s eye when I’m thinking of a post.

Alright. My sister – hey, are you reading this, sis? I hope not! I just insulted you here yesterday – but maybe her anyway. She’s pretty loosey-goosey about stuff. So this story is for you, sis:

Nina once told me that one of her earliest memories is from back in Poland, playing with her sister, saying to her -- I can, too, stick string beans up my nose if I want to! Then she proceeded to demonstrate. Up, up, up, went the skinny bean. Her sister watched, horrified. Eventually, parents were summoned and all hovered over Nina with her nose plugged by two very far-reaching beans. Special tweezers had to be used to get the damn things out. She says she’s glad her grandparents farmed organically (this was Poland in the fifties – I did not think anyone farmed organically then, but she assures me that her ancestors were the original composting anti-pesticide freaks) because it made the beans stronger and therefore they did not fall apart and cause trouble up her nose.

So look what we have here: a sib who is an audience for her, who will allow her to perform and test new things, even if it is just sticking beans up the nose. Today it’s beans, tomorrow it’s some impressive cure for the common cold. From buggered beans to the Nobel Prize in chemistry maybe. Of course, I don’t think Nina is on anyone’s short list for a science prize, but still, you could say that her experimental, daring-to-be-different nature started to develop right there, with her sister watching.

Hey, sis, at least I wasn’t a handful for you: I don’t remember sticking anything up my nose, your nose, anyone’s nose.

Not that I wasn’t tempted sometimes.

guest post 5

More from Kep:

We have this Deep Throat thing going. I am to get a cryptic signal from the Ocean author herself when she is ready to resume her blogging duties. No sign of anything this morning, so here I am posting again.

I woke up this morning thinking that bookstores are overrated. I see it this way: I go to one, I pick something and either it’s interesting and then I am there reading and getting cramps in my legs, how stupid is that, or it bores the crap out of me and I feel like a complete moron, not worthy of the various academic degrees stuck in a moldy box in some basement. (Mom? Dad? Do you know where my degrees are? Yes, I finished school already! Jesus!)

Nina is in love with Borders. She told me that when it was abandoning its original Madison building, she felt emptier than when her last kid left for kindergarten. She has one of those frequent everything cards – buyer, drinker, Internet user, all for Borders Borders and more Borders. Sick.

I asked if she was equally fascinated with bookstores in Poland and France and she gave me one of those “you poor pathetic chump” looks. Apparently bookstore-love does cross oceans. Of course, it’s not like Borders. At Borders you can eat, read, drink and play footsie with your loved one for all they care. In Paris, she tells me, the atmosphere is more serious. In fact, after her last trip to one this past month she wrote me this: God, I love how all the bindings there are so white that when you enter a bookstore you feel like you’re in a book hospital!

These days, she says she is especially drawn to leafing through Gogol. Okay, fine, make me feel like a moron. It’s not as if I hang out at Farm and Fleet on my days off. I have my special places. If I blog here long enough, I’m sure you’ll hear about them.

I need to say this: everything I write here about the Ocean author is true. She swore that if she ever caught me doing anything more than giving slight poetic flavoring to a story about her, she’d fire me without pay (the compensation being our friendship). I take her seriously. Polish women can really deliver on the threats, I’m told.

guest post 4

More from Kep:

So the day after she got back from Europe, I asked Nina what she was up to and she said that she was searching for a hole in the wall. Say what? That kind of answer just demands clarification.

She told me she had to be in France again in July to present a yet-to-be-written paper at a conference. The plan was to hide out in some rural hole for a few days before the conference and write like mad until something presentable appeared on paper.

I told her to do a no-show. Your heart’s not in it – screw the French and their damn homards and coquilles. They think just because they cook like there’s no tomorrow that they’ll have us running there at a snap. (Okay, that was transparent. I am enamored with all things French.)

But what’s with the hole in the wall?

Nina said that she had absolutely no cash to put up for this project, so she was looking at her voluminous Gault Millau, le guide, to find the cheapest possible room anywhere within a day’s train ride of Paris.

So any luck? She pointed to a listing – at 31 Euro per night it had to be a hole. Le Stasbourg. Sounds like crap, I told her (I was bluffing; I don’t read French). Is it at least in an interesting location? Her answer: There are many ways to view a location as interesting. There’s one thing about it that appeals to me. The name of the village* is a name I’ve heard quite recently, thrown out by a woman who clearly was displeased with my way of handling things. So maybe it’s a match. I sent them an email. We’ll see what they say.

The thing about being friends with Nina is that it gives you plenty of screwy stories to recount for the blog. One of our common friends said that she is a complete wild card. Oh yeah! Now, if I had to do this for my sister, for example, I’d be stumped after the first post.

*name of village: Bitche

guest post 3

More from Kep:

Nina’s still out, so it’s back to me posting here. I am told not to worry too much about what I write on a Saturday since it appears that no one reads blogs on the week-ends. Don’t you feel stupid, you few who are glued to the screen? And what does it say about me that I am both reading and writing on this great big beautiful day? I should be swinging a bat or building a shed or doing something manly and worthwhile. Instead I am dutifully typing away, trying to play the good guy here.

I like blogs. I’m new to them, but I like them. People seem to be chasing their dreams and fulfilling their creative impulse right there on the Net and I am all for it. Show us your closet artwork! Come on, post it and let us take a quick look!

But here’s the truth of it. We, the readers, are cheating. We give you just a minute, maybe two, and we walk away thinking – okay, we’re done. We can return to shed-building, duty to friend discharged.

I had the following happen to me with respect to Ocean and its author. Some weeks ago I sent Nina a message with a direct reference to a recent post, telling her that it was awesome how she was enjoying a spring walk or something to that effect. Hey, I thought I was being decent by going to the trouble of emailing, given that Ocean does not permit the easy route of commenting with a click on the blog.

I got a chilly note back with this little jab: “how little you know.” Holy Hannah (I was warned not to use curse words in posts here), open up your comments if you want a discussion of your internal state, I retorted (using a nicer tone; I know all about the fragile feelings of friends and bloggers). She said something like – if you can’t even go to the trouble of typing in an email address then obviously you do not have anything important to tell me.

She is right of course. Her post on the spring walk said nothing about her day really. I imputed into it stuff that wasn’t even there. And I wanted to be done with it quickly, before shed building and bat swinging.

So now I think that blogs kill the impulse to write an email or pick up the phone and ask “how’s it goin’.” I counted up the minutes I give to checking Ocean per day: maybe five, at most. And I looked at my saved emails and counted the number I’ve exchanged with Nina since she’s started posting. It’s down. And since I hate the phone and she hates the phone, that says something about what her blogging has done to the frequency of our contact. Even as I relish having a quick peak at the life of an Ocean liner every single day that she posts.

Okay, now I really want to go out and pound a few nails.

guest post 2

More From Kep:

Culinary pickings

Not too long ago Nina asked me what I thought of Polish cooking. She explained how it’s come a long way since some abysmal levels of gastronomic hell (her words). I listened patiently and then responded with a somewhat more tentative assessment.

And then I watched that furrowed brow of hers grow deeper – you know how she gets, so that you become convinced that you have committed some gross violence against humanity by implying that an aspect of Polish culture is less than perfect.

I explained that my assessment was merely based on color. I am a color guy. I like to see reds, greens, pale yellows on my plate. I think a cuisine that parades all those shades of brown, virtually in every plate of food, cannot aspire to anything but secondary status.

Of course, Nina got all defensive, claiming that if I wanted something more piercing than burgundy – another common hue on the Polish plate – I was a little too demanding.

To which I responded that her defense is fundamentally flawed, since burgundy beets and burgundy cabbage cannot, under any circumstance, elevate the cuisine of the land to great prominence. Cabbage and beets. Think about it. Are you excited? Likely not.

I stuck my ground. Work on the color and then come back and ask my opinion. (a little aside: anonymous writing on a blog rules!)

On the other hand, I have to say that the photo of the pan with wild forest mushrooms, sautéed with onions and doused with cream had me clicking endlessly on Ocean just so that I could lick the screen and pretend the stuff was real. And yeah, I understand that mushrooms look their best if allowed to remain in their brown incarnation. Brown is desirable. In mushrooms land. Whatever you do, great chefs of Poland, do not get rid of that dish of sautéed ceps and chanterelles. That’s just paradise.

guest post

From Kep:

Okay, Nina is indisposed so here I go:

I am so damn happy that it is June. Because if today had still been a May day, along with the message asking me to post something, I would have heard an “I told you so” from the Ocean author herself.

Nina wrote me this message early in the week (edited a little by me):
Did you know that there is a curse hanging over me? That the last week of May has always delivered the most violent assaults against my body and soul?

I don’t much subscribe to the supernatural and so I countered with:
Oh yeah, ms. smarty-pants, what violence against your body and soul was committed in the year…1969?
I was “taken advantage of” in matters of the heart.

In 1971?
I had major surgery. Don't even ask about '78: ditto.

In 1980?
My closest friend in Madison died of cancer.

Now I’m grasping for a really off year…1995?
My brain exploded.

Okay okay, she’s making this up. I don’t believe you! 1999?
It was freaky wild! (I remember now, she’s right, but I can’t post it. It is not for public reading.)

Ditto last year, ditto this year – man, she is so right! She is cursed.

So I did some research. A skill I have. I dug up on google a “how to” guide which had an entry on lifting curses. Unfortunately it also had the following: “how to become irresistible.” Please, do not tell me you would be so noble as to lift friends’ curses when you can, instead, make yourself out to be the most desirable human being on earth.

Because I got distracted, the Nina curse lives on. If you know anything about knocking down curses, write her, or me. I will do all I can, I swear.

Meet Kep

I have to step off the planet occasionally in the next days. In the interim, Kep, a trusted soul who knows me inside and out, will fill Ocean pages with typical Nina-like dribble. Several things you should know about Kep:

He does not want his identity revealed (even though he will allow me to say that he is known to many of Ocean readers).
He may not even be a he. He may be a she. Though let’s not squabble and move back and forth between genders: Kep is a male in Ocean’s eyes.
He knows Madison.
He has a digital camera.
He does not want an email address set up for his (short?) stint as an Ocean blogger. If you have comments to him, send them to my address. I will be checking email and forwarding things.
Kep will be using my account rather than that of a guest blogger. It’s easier that way and I trust that he will not fiddle with Ocean’s past. Right, Kep?
Kep is kind of an audacious and quirky guy. I am not responsible for whatever he puts out on this blog! He said he’d adjust his style of writing to my Ocean tone, but I’m wondering if that’s just him making fun of my East European way of framing things. I’ll be reading and I’ll wrap his knuckles good and hard if he oversteps boundaries.

I've asked him to write a few words by way of introduction in this post.

From Kep:

You know what is so fun about this project? I am to try writing as if I were a normal academic, with an oddball sense of humor and a lot of good ideas on what should go on a blog.

Only one of these three claims has any truth to it whatsoever.

I promised Nina I would post at least once a day on days where she goes into sleep mode. So, until further notice, I am here, ready to jump in and save the ship. It may be rocky, I may go overboard, but I am here to comment on things – and throw in some juicy gossip on the original Ocean liner herself, ms. nlc.

All this nautical lingo is really not my thing, by the way.

so, so, so...

So cool

A reader who happens to be a professional photographer took this Ocean photo, balanced the colors a bit and turned it into a poster. I found it in my office mail yesterday, on my first day back. Awesome! Thanks.

So good

… to slosh through cosmos and metros and eat this with a blogger friend:

where is it and what is it?
[ans.: seared tuna, at the Crave]

So pretty

Like a fresh dusting of snow, but really a neighborhood tree, releasing puffy clumps of seed.

white powder everywhere 

a tree grows, then sows 

Here comes my Polish thing again...

Today is a day of note in Poland. On June 1st, the country celebrates children. Oh, they say it's become too commercialized. I don't even know what that means, given that kids in general like to celebrate with things, prefereably acquired, preferably by them, preferably in huge amounts.

I understand that indulging greed is not the way to go to raise happy healthy people and I know it has not always been all about bribing a kid to be good by offering up a storm of gifts on this one June day. When I was a kid, I thought that all those ice cream cones freely handed out to kids on June first had more to do with a Lenin mentality (we learned young): you know, him saying "give me one generation of youth and I will transform the entire world" or words to that effect. I thought by dousing us with sugared treats, the country was saying -- hey, we want YOU to return the favor one day. [I wasn't really as cynical as that sounds. I just believed that Lenin was everywhere, much like some people believe that a divine spirit is everywhere.]

I'm straying here. I actually just want to say "happy children's day" and to throw out a few photos of Polish children, taken quickly, randomly as I jumped and skipped from one place to another in the last several weeks.

wanting to get to his juice, in Lazienki Park, Warsaw 

before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Warsaw; "fix your hair for the photo!" the teacher shouted -- and they listened. 

secrets 

in a mountain village, near Zakopane