Matching Tracksuits

Month: November 2001

Books and School

Friday 30 November 2001

Last night I finally finished Bleak House, all eight hundred and four pages of it. Certainly a worth way to spend my time. It was quite a great read. The first two hundred of the last three hundred pages or so really move along. After five hundred pages of scene-setting, there are two hundred pages in which so much happens.

There are really some memorable characters, chief among them being Grandfather Smallweed with all his declarations of his senile wife being “a brimstone beast” or warnings to George not to be a “a brimstone magpie” (my favorite). And then there’s Harold Skimpole, a man I would give anything to strangle. Never in a book have I encountered such an ineffably annoying, selfish man. I also really enjoyed Mr. Bucket — a great and unexpected change in opinion. When he’s after Jo, one really hates him. But he turns out to be simply a man with a strong sense of duty, doing what he has to do (or what he feels he has to do) to the utmost of his ability. I came to respect him in the end, which I assume was Dickens’ plan.

There’s something about a Dickens novel, no matter how much I like his corpus as a whole (though I’ve only read four or five of his books as of now), that annoys me. They are, in many ways, predictable. You know that no matter how many characters he introduces and how unrelated they seem to be, they’ll all end up in a tight web by the end of the book, and most of them will turn out to be long lost cousins or brothers to boot. And yet you can’t say that all his novels have unqualified happy endings. In Bleak House Richard dies, as does Lady Dedlock — two characters indispensable to a truly happy ending.

And of course, there’s all the names: Dedlock, Skimpole, Smallweed, etc. Almost every name he chooses is suggestive of the person in some way: remove the “k” and “o” from “Skimpole” and you get “simple,” which is precisely how Skimpole presented himself, though he was far from it. Grandfather Smallweed was a minor (read: small) character but he was something of a pain in the ass most of the book (read: weed). In the end, even when he was being beneficial, he was still self-serving.

Yesterday I had class 4a group b. I think. At any rate, it was the group with Basia in it. Once again, no problems at all out of her. In fact, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s a “dream” student, she is usually quite attentive and hard working, and she’s more than willing to speak English in class. She chatters away during activities without reservation. I don’t know what happened that day, but I certainly hope it doesn’t happen again.

Yet it confirms (or it seems to confirm) my method of handling it — give the student space and the benefit of the doubt and let everything work itself out. I did that with Marcin (4a) to some degree. I talked to him, making it clear that I wasn’t going to take shit from him and that how I treated him depended solely on how he treated me. He’s still something of a pain in the ass, but he’s not as bad as he was on those particular days.

Today marks the close of yet another month here. This would make about my thirty-seventh month in Poland. And almost the end of another year.

Time is only accelerating. I haven’t really written about time in so long; haven’t plopped down to moan about how it’s been “x years since thus and such happened and I can’t believe it’s been that long” in quite a while. I guess I could scour my journal and determine how many years it’s been since I was last obsessed with how many years it’s been . . . but I won’t. I’m not where I thought I would be when I was obsessed with time, though. Enough said.

School Thoughts

Monday 26 November 2001

Today I had the unfortunate but all-too-frequent experience of having my schedule changed at the last minute. No — today was a first. It wasn’t at the last minute. I was ten minutes into my lesson when [a teacher] came in and apologetically took away my whole class. There was some guest speaker and so they were whisked away for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When did they know about it? Certainly not just before the woman — a tall, lanky woman who looked to be in her forties but trying to look young and sexy — arrived. I ranted and raved about it for a little while with Danuta, but I’m over it. No sense worrying myself over it, really.

Otherwise classes went well. I had class 4a/a today (I think — Basia D’s group) and I had to pull something out of my ass because they’re one lesson ahead of the other group. I introduced them to the stupid Stinkys and I was shocked at how well they responded. After they’d established that they could talk about anything, as long as it was in English, they just chattered away.

November Deep Snow

Saturday 24 November 2001

Today I went for a walk in the fields behind the school. It’s been snowing continually since Thursday afternoon, and the snow-laden trees and blanket of white was just too tempting. I went for a walk of about an hour and a half, and in some places there were drifts up to my thighs.

Wednesday 21 November 2001

Today was “Circle of English,” so by default it was at least a decent day. We had a brief discussion of Treasure Island, and then we sang a few Christmas carols. They’re going to teach the “circle of music” folks a couple of songs, and they were fairly willing to do so when I mentioned it to them.

Most of my lessons were fairly successful (including a very amusing one with 3a, during which I introduced Mr. and Mrs. Stinky). I had two lessons with 3c: one of them was the usual Wednesday business English lesson.

One of my lessons today was with class 3b, and they are becoming, in some ways, my favorite class. There are a lot of people there (mainly girls, but a few guys) that I really like, and with whom it’s a pleasure to work. Janusz is a sweet kid who has a cute childishness about him. Aśka is, basically, a dream. She’s a pleasant person; she’s a hard worker; she’s intelligent. I really like her. Dorota Z. is quite but always attentive. I never worry about their class because I know I basically have everything under control.

Today in 3a I introduced the Stinkys, as I said, and I was surprised at how well things went. Wiola D. and Stasiek ended up with the socks, but I don’t think that’ll happen often — at least not with Wiola. She seems intent on not getting it next time.

Dziubek in Action

Monday 19 November 2001

Last night was one of those nights that can only happen here, I think. I went to Quattro around ten for a beer, expecting to see Marcin, Stasiek and the usual group. They were there and I sat with them for a while. Around 10:40 I decided I’d get something to eat, so I went up to the bar and ordered a pizza. I talked to Ania for a little while and just as it was about to stagnate, I heard someone walk up behind me — it was Andrzej Dziubek. I guess I’m easily recognizable even if you’ve never talked to me, so he said, “Hi, how are you?” I answered that I was fine. “I’m drinking, drinking, drinking,” he said. Indeed, he was quite inebriated. Then up came Stasiek’s dad1 (who previously had been dancing with a number of different young girls — and I do mean young. Enough so to be his daughter) and he started talking to Andrzej. And Andrzej responded, “You are my friend!” in English. Truly blasted.

Dziubek ordered a bottle of wine and eventually staggered out to the dance floor, SD (Stasiek’s Dad) in tow. When the DJ saw who was out there, it was predictable what would happen, and sure enough, the next song was De Press. So, having almost finished my pizza, I decided to go watch. After all, how many times do you get to watch an inebriated Pole dance to his own music that’s quite famous and popular in Norway? The tragically amusing thing was Dziubek’s philandering. He grabbed one girl’s ass, then slide his hand farther down her crotch. She nimbly avoided his groping hands, but continued dancing near him, and talking to him. Next he grabbed her and tried to kiss her — or rather, grabbed her and simply shoved his tongue in her mouth. She managed to escape that as well — and continued dancing there and talking. After two songs, the DJ stopped playing Dziubek’s music eventually he moved off the dance floor. Still on the periphery, though, he just walked up to a girl, grabbed her, and tried to shove his tongue in her mouth. She saw it coming though, and blocked him. She simply ignored him, though, and he just left.

1 Indeed — this was his brother-in-law. 6 February 2004

School Christmas Show Prep

Sunday 18 November 2001

Friday: woke up to snow. I was sitting here preparing the outline for class 3b, who will be having a fairly useless test Friday1, when suddenly it started snowing — quite heavily. The sun came out, though, and the snow was gone by mid-morning. Still, it was nice while it lasted. And there’ll be more to come, certainly.

Friday night I did nothing but work on “A Christmas Carol” for the kids — rather, the girls, since no guys ever come — of the “circle of English,” something we must rename as soon as humanly possible. The plan is this: I’ll give it to them now, a couple of chapters at a time, and then we’ll discuss it during the circle, and hopefully they’ll be able to make an even more simplified version that we can put on the bulletin board in about a month. That will be great if it works out.

Friday I also talked to Mirek Smoleń about a joint circle of English/circle of music presentation during the opłotek meeting. I’m going to be teaching the girls a few Christmas carols and they’ll be teaching them in two weeks to the kids in the circle. Then we’ll perform them for the school. Not bad, I think.

1 I thought they’d done more business English stuff than they actually had. There’s in fact only about three topics, but that’s fine, I guess — the good kids will get good grades and the bad kids will get bad grades. I hope.

Znalazłes?

Wednesday 14 November 2001

It’s amazing how much one can implicitly communicate through one’s choice of words. “Znalazłes›?” asked the woman in the big store as I was looking for szpilki. My first thought was, “Znalazłes›? Don’t you mean, ‘Czy Pan znalazł?’” The lady in the small flower shop had used the formal, polite “Pan” with me just moments before, but this woman chose the familiar form – something that would be positively rude to do to unknown Pole. Given the fact that adults use the familiar form with children, I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at this perceived slight. Putting the foreigner in his place, so to say.

I’m curious how other Poles would interpret this.

First All Saints

Thursday 1 November 2001

There’s something about waking up in a house when it’s a holiday that has a similar feel no matter where you are. Waking up this morning and realizing a) I didn’t have to go to school and b) it wasn’t the weekend made me suddenly feel as if I could be at home (whatever those two words mean for me now) on Thanksgiving morning. Or at least in Nashville, waking up in a place that isn’t “home” but at the same time is familiar and rather comfortable.

Speaking of “home,” I guess I’ve come to realize that I don’t really have any place that I think of like that. I feel like I’m visiting when I go to my parents’ house, because even though I’ve been there several times now, I still feel like it’s not really “home.” It’s familiar, but not like 106 Lamont Road was. And of course if I went there now it would feel completely alien.

I read some reviews of Hitler’s Willing Executioners and I have to say that a lot of the things I read had a familiar feel — that feeling of reading something that you’ve felt but not been able to put into words. For example one reviewer (I’m not sure who — I just copied this from the internet and I didn’t collect any information for an individual review other than what was on the actual page itself) wrote, “Goldhagen’s book has been aptly described as ‘angry.’ He writes like a lawyer rather than like an historian.” This lack of a historian’s voice came up again in the review several pages later:

In this fashion, Goldhagen systematically discounts all statements indicative of normal human emotion by the perpetrators. However, at several places in his narrative he is quite willing to casually throw empiricism to the winds and to liberally conjure up fantasies to bolster his portrait of collective German brutality! For example, on p. 339 he muses about what went through the minds of the soldiers as they “. . . made love in barracks next to enormous privation and incessant cruelty. What did they talk about when their heads rested quietly on their pillows, when they were smoking their cigarettes in those relaxing moments after their physical needs had been met? Did one relate to another accounts of a particularly amusing beating that she or he had administered or observed, of the rush of power that engulfed her when the righteous adrenaline of Jew-beating caused her body to pulse with energy.” One can legitimately ask whether Goldhagen is writing history at such points, or creating a short story.

I remember thinking as I read that very passage, “This really doesn’t read like history. It reads more like a novel or something.” I think I might have even assumed that it wasn’t in the original dissertation but was added when it was edited with a mass-market in mind.

And the whole time I read it, I thought, “Nothing counts against this guy’s thesis. He can dismiss almost everything in some fashion or another.” Somewhat similar to how Armstrongians will accept nothing that comes from a non-Armstrongian source. Once people get something into their heads, it seems it’s all but impossible to get it back out.