Matching Tracksuits

Fun in Fours

Results For "Month: February 1997"

Language School

Monday 3 February 1997

We had our first language classes today and it’s good for a couple of reasons. It was good to learn a little more Polish. But more importantly, it taught me a lot about what it’s like to be a student. As I struggled to think of something to say to Sue, I thought of how all my students must feel. It’s not an effective teaching method. Even simple things that I say so often came with great difficulty. I must find more effective teaching methods which are also more comfortable for students.

I’m finding that I’m falling into that strange apathy I felt in K. Dolny. I am alone at times, and I don’t want to be with anyone. Still, I don’t want to do anything that might assure me of being alone.

It seems that I am always taking the initiative to talk to people. Few people have sought me out of the group to talk. As we walked through Sopot today I didn’t really talk to much of anyone. And after the reception I wandered around, not really feeling like I’m part of the group. I don’t mind in a way.

Waiting in Krakow

Sunday 2 February 1997

Location: Krakow Glowny Train Station Waiting Room

I’ve about an hour until I leave for Sopot on a horrific six hour train ride. I’m in the waiting area, sitting beside the first woman I’ve ever heard say kurwa. She turned toward me as she laughed – many teeth were missing and the few that remained were any and all colors except white. Two police officers are winding through the crowd – no, three – asking questions I don’t understand. They’ve said nothing to me, and I am a little grateful. Two tired bums sit with blank expressions. They probably haven’t shaved or bathed in weeks. A drunk just bumped into me and he apologized with glazed eyes. An old man sits across from me, his hands folding in his lap and gazing quietly with almost childlike eyes. A group of gypsies sit together, looking at photographs. Some people read, some eat, and we all wait.

Waiting is not something I will miss when I return to America.

EKG Forest

Saturday 1 February 1997

I am now sitting at my desk which is now in front of the bedroom okno looking occasionally at the school. I borrowed a chair from Roy so that now I am reasonably comfortable as I write. It was snowing heavily until a few moments ago, but now it’s not falling at all.

I can see the hay fields to the left of the school, the fields from which I’ve taken so many pictures. The hay triangles/pyramids are slightly visible, and the forest is a hazy band of darkness on the hill-top horizon. The doubled glass in the window makes everything sway and bend as in an amusement park mirror. The half-built house beside the school shrinks and grows as I move my head just a slight amount. The tips of the trees form a jagged border resembling an EKG chart. What it’s graphing, I’ve no idea. The clouds are whizzing by, and I can hear the wind that carries them whistling around the corners of the apartment building. There is a small patch of clear; I can see the baby blue sky through it as if it’s a floating window. The clouds around it, illuminated, form a white border in the grey. And I hear an unseen jet above the grey ceiling.

I like being in this room. I spend so much time in the big room that it becomes a bit stifling, I think. I guess now I’ll be spending much more time in here. I think any change can be good, and this one is very much so.

Crucifix

Saturday 1 February 1997

There are crucifixes in each and every classroom at my school.  Separation of church and state is not a goal of the Polish democracy.  So every day I teach with a little statue of a man nailed to a tree hanging right above my head.  “It gives some people comfort,” says Danuta, my counterpart English teacher.  I suppose that’s possible.

Early in the first semester the director told me to come down to the new English classroom to tell him where I wanted the bulletin boards.  (The boards were actually sheets of styrofoam attached to the wall.  Economical.)  He drilled the holes, put up the styrofoam, then drilled the hole for the crucifix.  I wondered how he would respond if I said, “I don’t want that in my classroom.”  No doubt he would be confused, and maybe (probably?) a bit upset with my irreverence.  Of course I said nothing.  “When in Poland . . . ”

It’s got me to thinking about the whole religious symbolism in Christianity.  The cross is a sacred symbol because it represents Christ’s death to millions of Christians around the world.  It is a simple character, almost reminiscent of minimalism in its barest form.  Most people wear crosses because it is an outward expression of their inner convictions.  Yet I wonder: If Jesus had slipped in the shower and bonked his head, would we be wearing Soap-On-A-Rope?  Would giant bath-size Dial bars replace steeples at churches?  Would we make bathing motions every time we enter a church?  It would shed new light on what Pilate said: “Okay, I wash my hands of the whole issue!”

Anyone seen Monty Python’s Life of Brian?  Remember the scene where they’re trying to decide what symbol they’ll use to indicate that they are followers of Brian?  “The shoe!  The shoe!”  I suppose that scene prefigures my own speculations.  Yet both point out how virtually arbitrary religious symbols are.  If Christ were to be put to death today, I suppose twenty-first century Christians would use the electric chair or a hangman’s noose as the primary symbol.

The crucifixes are just one indication of how strong Catholicism is in Poland.  For many, to be Polish is to be Catholic.  They are virtually synonymous.  In fact, next to every crucifix is a relief in plastic of the national symbol of Poland.  Religion and nationalism, hand in hand, as they so often are.