Review

  • Friday night:
  • Mary and her “boy”
  • Talked to Iwona’s sister Agnieszka
  • Stupidity with Edyta — about Mary and so on
  • Camera worries
  • Danny’s adventures
  • Sprite and wódka
  • Benia
  • Not always happy
  • Boys to bed
  • Talking like old friends
  • “You can go — I want to talk to Gary, please leave.”
  • [Sat with Halina for a while, speaking Polish at her request]

Saturday

  • More stuff with Edyta
  • Watering flowers, chatting with Mamo
  • Meeting Monika Styla — works at the Haven
  • Talked a little to Agnieszka Kubacka
  • Żurek — “children”
  • Anna P.
  • Trouble with “boyfriend”
  • [Walked home
  • “You are a good friend”]
  • Visit with Ramzes, Agata, and Adam

“Plan maximum” — every moment of every day should be put to use. For a week now I’ve been trying to do that. I want to go visit someone (anyone — but some in particular) then go on to the next person, and the next, and so on. Of course they’re almost all girls, my students of old. Almost all of them I’ve already seen once or twice. I feel that all this week friendships have only begun showing their true potential and now I see how they can be, so I want to develop them. Beina, for example, could be a great friend, and it’s sad to realize that and then leave once again. Sad and a little stupid.

I really feel I almost belong here. Yet being here as a visitor and as an inhabitant — two different things.

Monday Morning

2:45 a.m.Lipnica Wielka

I will be leaving — again — in about an hour. I don’t want to sleep, though I should.

I’m so sad. I feel empty. I want a life I can never have. It exists now, but it will fade as the sun rises. I want never to leave, and I want never to return. I want a life filled with moments like my first meeting with Danuta, or teaching IIB, or walking with Benia, or chatting with Kamil on the balcony. “I try to tell myself to hold on to these moments while they last.” But the attempt to suck the marrow from life often turns into desparation. And that’s how I feel now. I’m grasping for a life that doesn’t exist. It existed for three years, was resurrected for a week, and will die again in about two hours.

I feel so empty. And homeless.