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boston
Work and More
Home alone. Chhavi left for Tennessee Monday, and I’ve basically been alone since then. It’s been strangely nice, strangely empty. As I told her last night, I don’t really miss her during the day because I never really see her during the day. But at night, it’s a little different. I really don’t find I miss her, though, until it’s time to go to bed. I guess that’s just indicative of the lifestyle we’ve been living for several months now: we come home and then basically do our own things, alone, until it’s time for dinner, then again until it’s time for bed.
So the big DLI news this week: Tuesday we went out for lunch with Kali — Sweet Chili’s in Arligton — and as we were sitting down, Beth said something to me under her breath: “Did you know Val’s leaving?” I thought she was joking at first, but she had known well enough about Kali, so I took it as being probably true. Then Kali told us all. “Val’s leaving. Today is his last day.” So we went to Carberry’s and got a cake for him, then to Buck-a-Book and bought a card for him.
This means that the whole production-side mid/upper level management is now gone. Well, that’s not quite true since Natalie has her new position. Still, a whole level of the hierarchy has been taken out (i.e., vice president of production). Natalie will report straight to Layne now, as will Adam I suppose. I don’t honestly see that this will be much of a problem. If Val was incompetent as Peter always said, then it will actually be a good thing.
It’s interesting — six months after Rob quit and about three months after Peter quit, everyone they had problems with quit as well: Celina, Val, and Kali. Of course Rob would figure out someone else to have issues with. He seemed to latch onto hating Dale for the hell of it, so maybe someone else would get his dander up. And of course not everyone who annoyed him has left — Ron Smith (who, I admit, is fairly annoying) is still there. What the hell he’s doing, I’ve no idea.
How many people does that leave that were at DLI when I arrived? Bob, of course, and maybe a handful of others. I think Ellen Dixon was there before me, as were a few of the graphics folks and Kiki. Otherwise, I’m probably in the top ten as far as longevity goes.
Now for the big news. Yesterday I was talking to Natalie to see if there was anything she needed me to do, and she said, “No, but I wanted to talk to you.” Off we went to her cube, where she explained that Layne (!?) had asked her whether she would be willing to give me up to tech. Basically, the COO has noticed my work on the tech side of things and talked to my superior about getting me to change departments. Of course I said I was interested, and we then went over to meet with Kevin, the new CTO.
He’s a fairly mellow guy, I think, at least as far as his personality goes. I foresee him being a good guy to work with, though. I think he’ll expect a hell of a lot out of the people under him, but at the same time I think he’ll provide all the support we would need to get the job done.
We talked about the Big Dig that’s coming for the DLI site. Basically, we’re going to reconstruct the site while keeping the existing site going — hence the Big Dig metaphor. I’ve been thinking for a while that we could reduce the whole site down to ASP and SQL and have each page dynamically generated for each user. “That would entail creating a new linking tool,” I thought, “As well as completely re-doing the site. And that’s a huge expense that I don’t think DLI is interested in incurring.” Well, guess what we’re doing — something very similar. No ASP, though. Instead, it’ll all be XML with a Unix base and an Oracle DB. Three things I know nothing about. When Kevin explained the use of Unix and Oracle, I said, “There’s two things I know absolutely nothing about.” His response was quite encouraging: “So that’s two things you’ll have to learn.” Or something along those lines.
One of the things he mentioned was something else I’d never head of — digital dashboards. It turns out that we’re only using a small percentage of the Exchange server and Outlook’s capabilities. These two things can be used to provide massive amounts of information to in-house (and probably outside) employees, but we simply haven’t made the most of it. That’s one thing that Kevin wants us to do, and that makes me, in turn, very excited. I love the idea of being able to make stuff that directly impacts others’ lives and makes their work easier.
Speaking of that, one thing I haven’t written about but that I’m very happy about is the impact my silly macros (I must admit, I’m really sick of that word.) have had on others. Stephen Cebik told me that my macros have cut a process that used to take him upwards of five days down to a day and a half. That’s a major time savings. And of course part of me wants to say, “Hey, why don’t you tell Layne and Jay that. Maybe they’ll send a bit of those hundreds of dollars I’ve saved the company back my way.”
Back to my meeting with Kevin. He told me that I should think during the Christmas break about what kinds of things I’d like to do, then added with a laugh, “And then I’ll have you doing something entirely different.” I think that’s what I’ll do now — a list of things I’d love to do at DLI.
I’d like to be able to work with people a lot. That’s why this digital dashboard stuff seems so exciting to me. It would be like making macros in that I would be creating things that helped people in the here and now. So I think that would be a great thing to get started on — creating these dashboards, working with people to find out what then want/need in such a tool, teaching people how to use the tools (both the old and the new tools), and so on.
I think I could be most useful as something of a liaison between the editors and the software developers as it comes time to begin planning and coding the new tools necessitated by the site’s renovation. I know how editors work; I know how editors use the tools they already have; I know the problems editors have with the existing software. Who better to help plan the production-side tools?
I finally got a letter from someone in Poland — Halina sent me a letter with a Christmas gift — a tape called Śpiewają Gwiazdy Polskiej Estrady Najpięniejsze Kolędy, which I haven’t listened to. She told me about how things at school are going. Recently the liceum celebrated its fifth anniversary — I don’t really wish I could have been there for that, though. A bunch of speeches? No thanks. Of course there would have been some student recitals and singing, which was always nice. Anyway, it was nice to hear from her, though I wish she’d written sooner.
I found recently a new site dealing with the WCG and it’s spliters — including some I’d never heard of. It’s at: http://www.apollo.spaceports.com/~truth/index.html. Anyway, here’s something fascinating:
William F. Dankenbring now believes that the Israelites ignored Moses’ instruction to stay in their houses all night and that the Passover was on the fifteenth day of the first month, rather than on the fourteenth as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA). John D. Keyser, one of William’s associates for the past ten years, has gone even further, breaking away from Triumph Prophetic Ministries to start his own splinter group called Hope of Israel Ministries. Ignoring the Genesis account, John Keyser has now started to teach that the week has a pagan origin, and that the weekly Sabbath changes each month due to the new moon and can fall on any day of the week.
I just found the website, so I’m going to explore for a while now.
Party
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Speech
Last night I went to hear Elie Wiesel’s third and final lecture in the 2000 BU lecture series, and as seems to be the tradition, he spoke about contemporary times. I arrived late (I waited for about 25 minutes for a B train — about five D trains, three or four E trains, and a couple of C trains went by in the meantime.) and had to sit in the back section. Two rows ahead of me and to my right sat a black couple — I would say “African American” in some stupid effort to be PC, but I don’t know that they were Americans. They could have been “African French” or even simply “African” — for what any of those labels are worth. Anyway, an interesting thing happened during the lecture, and it happened not once but twice. When Wiesel began talking about the troubles in the Middle East, he said essentially that these events showed the world what kind of man Arafat truly is, namely as someone who can’t be trusted. “When you see the generosity of Barak’s offered concessions . . . “ he began, and the black woman in front of me began shaking her head in disagreement, her brow wrinkled to show her disapproval. She sat slightly to the right of me and was watching Wiesel on the monitor to the left of me, so I could also see her eyes, which she rolled several times as if she couldn’t believe what Wiesel was saying, as if he were saying something as ridiculous as, “All the world’s troubles are due to Arafat.”
This reaction really didn’t shock me. “Perhaps she’s just a person with extreme leftist views, one of those who really feel that Israel as no right to exist as a state,” I thought. I didn’t really think any more of it for a few moments.
Wiesel continued by condemning the violence in the Middle Ease, and then violence in general. “Where words leave off, violence begins,” he said, continuing by essentially saying, “There is never an excuse for violence.” — surely, I would have thought everyone in the room would have agreed with that. Yet I glanced at the black woman and once again she was shaking her head, as if to say, “What a fucking idiot — of course there’s a time for violence. Sometimes that’s the only course left for someone to take.”
I was tempted — though I did not act on this temptation — to catch up to her and the individual she was with and ask them what they found so offensive in what Wiesel was saying, particularly about violence. Maybe they were Muslims who support the Intafada. Who knows. Who cares, in the end.
Monday I met Chhavi downtown to watch a film (You Can Count on Me — I give it a 7 or 7.5 out of 10, with its realism being its greatest strength.) and so I rode the Orange Line down to Back Bay and Mary accompanied me. For some reason she mentioned that she heard we were getting raises — everyone. She even said that Kali herself had said something about it. The figure she’d heard? A huge one percent pay increase. Wow. That’s a whole $350 a year. Shit — I don’t know what I’d do with that kind of money. Surely she must have heard wrong, for that amounts to less than $30 a month. Anyway, I mentioned to her that Chhavi had been encouraging me to ask for a raise, and then she said it — the bombshell — “Yeah, you should. I mean if Michael Lacoy asks for a raise every week, why shouldn’t you?” Now if what she said earlier was true, specifically, that the new editors are getting offered $40,000 to attract “more qualified” individuals, then he’s already making something like twelve percent more than I make. And he’s only been working there for a few weeks — less than three months, I think. That’s fairly ridiculous. If it’s true, of course, and I can’t assume it is.
I can “assume” (to continue with parallel grammatical structure) that I haven’t gotten a raise since I started working there, and that I’ve been working there for almost a year now. Marlon told me he got a $5,000 raise at one point, and that everyone in the tech team has gotten a raise. But the other side of production? I guess we’re just a cliché dime-a-dozen. Or perhaps $480,000 a dozen.
On to another topic — Edyta. I haven’t written to her since I left Poland, and that was almost six months ago. At first I purposely didn’t write to her because I didn’t know what to say. Now I want to write to her, but I’ve no idea what to say. What I need to say is, “Sorry. That shouldn’t have happened, and I’m afraid that the fact that it did has ruined our relationship.” I guess in the end, it’s just not that important to me. I hesitate to write to her because I don’t want all the work that would be required to try to get things back to normal between us.
Other news — I got a message from Kamil Sunday (though I didn’t actually read it or even know about it until I got to work Monday morning) and he told me that Jasiu has agreed to re-employ him. His plans are to finish out the school year, then look for a job in Kraków. Barring that, he wants to try to come to the States for a while. So it’s now conceivable that I could go back to Lipnica (provided Jasiu gives me a job) and neither Kamil nor Janusz would be there — just as Chhavi predicted. And of course Kinga would be off at university most of the time, leaving me fairly alone. Does that disturb me? A little, to be honest. But more than anything it makes me think, “I need to get cracking so that I can tell everyone of my intentions.”
A Mess of Nonsense
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Parents’ Visit
In a couple of days my parents arrive. I haven’t seen them since last Christmas. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, in reality. By the time they get here it will have been ten months, but it feels only like half that. I guess despite the horror of it, this last year has gone by fairly quickly.
In the middle of my parents’ arrival Thursday and the last time I saw them lies my trip to Lipnica. Five months ago. It doesn’t see that long, either. I guess that’s what happens when you spend every day obsessing over something. I have to admit, though, it’s gotten a whole lot better. In fact, when I think of going back to Lipnica, I’m not filled with this sickening surity that I must go back or I’ll go insane. I guess saying it’s getting “better” is a relative thing because there’s still a large part of me that wants to go back, and another portion of me — God, how many parts have I divided myself into? — wants to cling desparately to that bit of desire to return, to encourage it to grow somehow.
Truth is, I’m not that terribly unhappy at work. The job is, indeed, somewhat boring when I’m stuck doing editing, but I’m doing that less and less these days. And working with people I like is a vast improvement over my job in Lipnica where I could barely stand the sight of the other teachers. And yet at the weekends, it hits me — I’m terribly lonely and I feel awfully empty when I don’t have anything to do. I guess the trick is keeping my mind busy.
Anyway, my parents are coming, but they’re not bringing the cats. I feel awful about that, but I don’t really know what we’re doing next year and I think it will be better if we just find the Puck and Lily a new home. The trouble, though, is that it is not I who will be doing it, but my parents. I feel like I’ve asked so much of them regarding those two. I guess it really is unfair to them in a lot of ways, but what can I do?
When they get here, hopefully we’ll have a chance to have dinner together just the three of us. Well, I guess we’ll be spending a lot of time together in the afternoons without Chhavi so that won’t be necessary. At any rate, I guess what I meant was that I’d like to have the chance to talk to them alone. I’d like to see what they think about all this returning-to-Poland/not-having-kids/lack-of-fulfillment/lack-of-happiness situation.
People at Work
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General Thoughts
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Critical Conversation
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General Entry
I was reading a little from Luci Shaw’s Life Path and if course I’m thinking, “I should be writing in my journal every single day. Every morning.” I write more in my journal these days about the fact that I never write than anything else. What all could I write about? My job — dealing with the nonsense that goes on there. My continuing frustration with Kali’s “I don’t get it” juxtaposed to her increasing “confidence.” There we go — I’ll write about that for a while.
Kali seems to be almost arrogant with her confidence at times. It’s very strange because on the one hand she complains about “not getting it” with certain things that I have written that I think are crystal clear, and then she seems to say that she can do anything she wants, that she’s the greatest asset our whole company has. I’ve just learned to deal with her on a case-by-case basis and realize that almost everything I give her will be declared completely incomprehensible at some point — one passage, one sentence, one silly word even.
I’m listening to BNL’s “When You Dream,” and it’s making me think about what it would be like to have a child. Originally I wrote “what it will be like,” then changed it to “will/would,” then dropped the definitive verb altogether and just stuck with the conditional. Second conditional in fact — used for things that aren’t the case and probably won’t be the case. Like saying, “If Bolek were a king,” I might have explained in class with last year’s IVB. So it’s almost the middle of September and I still haven’t talked to Chhavi. I still haven’t asked her a short (but not simple) question: Do you really think you’ll ever want to have a child?
And I guess I really need to ask myself beforehand: how much do I really want a child? Would I want one right now? No — certainly not. There’s no certainty in our life right now. We don’t know how long we’ll be living here or there or anywhere. And why would that stop me? Because it goes against everything I’ve always imagined my life would be like as a parent: having someplace that we stay for several years. A place to settle down, to put roots down — all those stupid cliches for which there are no other words, or for which I don’t want to search for replacements. So that’s the situation. I have this preconceived notion of how my life would be — probably an image I’ve had since I first took an interest in girls — once I fell in love and all that jazz. And yet nothing else has turned out as I would have thought when I was 15 or 16, so why should this be any different?
What are my alternatives? If C were to say she didn’t really think she would ever want children, and if — and that’s a huge “if” — I were to decide that because of this I should go my own way, what are my alternatives? Not many as I can tell.
I’ll finish this later today I hope.
More Complaining
It seems that every Saturday or Sunday morning these days I wake up feeling that I really don’t want to do anything — as if it’s too much work even to get out of bed for a cup of coffee. It’s not like I’m really depressed or anything. I just feel that it’s more effort than it’s worth to get up. I think of all the things I could do that day — today for example I could work on the little light box I’m going to try to create — but I just don’t feel like doing anything. Do I lie in bed thinking of LW? Not really. I just don’t feel like there’s anything worth doing. I think, “At least during the week I keep myself busy.” It was similar to when I first arrived in LW, I think. No — I was just generally depressed and alone at first.
It’s amazing — I just have nothing to write about. I could write about Marlon coming over for dinner last night, but why? We just chatted. I don’t know how I could write so much in Lipnica. Page after page. And now I haven’t even finished a full page in the first nine days of the month. In Lipnica — this would have been just the beginning of my first entry, writing about the first day back to school.
This week it’s been really weird walking to work. It was so sunny out — not a single cloud in the sky — and it made me think about the beginning of school and such. Fall crispness and I was thinking about not the beginning of my own school years, but the beginning of the three years in Lipnica. And how technically this should be the beginning of my fifth year there.
I’m still so sad. I still feel like I’m not where I belong. I still feel like I’m missing out on life. “When you dream, what do you dream about?” sings BNL. Lipnica. Always.
Moving
The move is finished — accomplished — done. Or perhaps more appropriately, survived. I left at 7:15 Tuesday morning to pick up the moving van and I finally fell into bed at 55 Adams Street, 99.99% of our belongings in the apartment, at 11:30 that night. And of course we’ve spent the next several days unboxing everything and working the stiffness out of our muscles. It was, in many ways, hellish, but it certainly wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.
The new place is a dream. We have more storage space in this apartment than we would have had we used the whole apartment at 168 North Beacon for storage. In other words, we have more storage space now than we had living space at the last place. And as far as living space goes, we have so much of it here that we don’t have enough furniture to fill it! As far as I’m concerned, we can stay here for as long as we live in Boston.
The only bad thing is the movie rental situation. The closest place is Blockbuster but they won’t let me get a membership there without a valid Mass ID. I can rent a truck that costs tens of thousands of dollars with my VA driver’s license, but I can’t rent a movie. I asked whether a passport would suffice — no go. So I can get into any country in Western or Central Europe with my passport, but I can’t get a Blockbuster membership card. How insane.
I’ve been thinking the past few days about the obvious: Lipnica. It’s now been four years since my arrival in Lipnica Wielka. I would — perhaps should — be starting my fifth school year if I were still there — and I think in many ways I should still be there. More later.
More Leaving
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More Leaving
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Back in the States a Year
I’ve been in America for a year now. A year has passed since my time in Lipnica, since my departure from my home, more or less. I’ve been thinking about that for some time now and I’ve decided that it would be a good idea to do some accounting at this point — figure out what I’ve paid and what I’ve earned and see whether I’m in the black or the red. So I shall begin making breakfast and think about it for a while — I’ll be back shortly.
So let’s do a year in review. Maybe a chart: what I did, how I feel it has helped me, and how I feel it has helped others. Yeah, and maybe I could add some percentages and make charts and use that to determine whether I should be happy now or not. I’m being too analytical about all this, thinking, “If I just look at the data the right way, everything will be just fine; I’ll have my decision laid out for me right there, clearly and simply.”
Pride Parade
Two days in a row — something of a record for me, no doubt. I thought I’d write a little about what’s been going on at work, just for the hell of it. And because it ties in somewhat with all these thoughts of going back to Lipnica for a year.
First I think I’ll write about my bike ride yesterday. I was going to go on a very long ride and get very exhausted. Instead, I went on a very short ride and got very exhausted. I rode to the Common where, I discovered, they were having the Pride Day activities — for “Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, and Allys.” I’ve no idea what an “Ally” is. For a moment, I thought (as I was typing that), “It must be ‘allies,’” but then I thought carefully about how to spell it and realized that either a) they must have misspelled it yesterday, or b) there’s something called an “Ally” of which I am completely unaware. At any rate, there was a concert (Joan Jett, I think — or someone playing several Joan Jett songs), some booths (including the “Long Dong” booth — I don’t know what it was, but there were lots of Chinese characters decorating the booth, so I’m assuming it might be an organization for gay Chinese Americans), and lots of same-sex couples being affectionate in public. It was a little strange to be walking through there. I kept thinking, “What if they’re looking at me saying, ‘What the hell is a straight guy doing in here?’” and of course it hit me — they’ve no idea.
Close to the visitors’ center there were three men with placards hanging around their necks saying, “[Rainbow triangle] = Hell!!!! Repent to Jesus.” Another read something like, “Sex out of marriage, homosexuality, masturbation, sex with condoms are condemned by God!!” Nice Catholic touch with the “sex with condoms” being made into a sexual sin. It was really sad to see them, though. Such intolerance. Such unhappiness. And how fulfilling can their life be if they think they worship a God how will condemn them to everlasting torment for touching themselves?
I was watching them — they were polite and quiet, and while their signs were offensive, they at least weren’t saying, “God hates fags.” I watched them, and I really saw them as fellow people — a nice change from thinking, “You backward asses!” They’re people — plain and simple. I completely disagree with everything they believe, but still I was able to separate that from their stupid, misguided intolerance and realizing that they’re doing this because they feel they must. It must pain them to think all these people walking by are going straight to hell when they die. It must make them feel guilty, in some way. “I’ve failed them! I didn’t lead them to repentance.” Of course God should be able to do that on his own, but that’s not their point of view on the matter. I wish I’d talked to them a little more than I did.
Now, on to DLG news: First, when I came in to work Tuesday 30 May, I rode up in the elevator with Armando. I noticed he was somewhat sullen — or maybe simply “quiet” is a better word choice — and as the elevator doors closed, he asked me if I’d heard about Rob. “I’m not sure, but I think he was fired Friday.” And that’s how my return to DLG began. I went to my cube, sat down, and wondered whether it was true. I knew that it was — I don’t know how I knew, but somehow it just made sense. Still, I didn’t know what to do, so after I checked my mail and did some other stuff, I went to Katherine in Western Civ 1 and asked her if there was anything I could do.
I don’t really feel like going into detail, actually. Suffice it to say, Rob, Dale, Matt (Searles, not Maslin), Nancy (the strange, middle-aged graphics woman), and Chris Conty got fired. The last one was a real shock — I didn’t have any idea how things were going on the other side, I guess, and I assumed that the “Director of Marketing” would get the axe.
Rob called me and we talked a bit — he said he was going to quit that week anyway. I think I know why: not only was he not happy with Val and others telling him what to do, but I think things were spiraling out of control. He had no management experience and I don’t think he’s really cut out for it, either. Anyway, one of my jobs was to go through his stuff and dig out any email addresses of people we might need to contact, figure out the status of various people’s contracts, &c. I found a series of emails between Rob and Kathleen (from somewhere in Canada) that were, in a word, disturbing. There were several misunderstandings about the contract: Rob screwed up and left in part of an old contract with Neusner and so it had something about writing Judaism terms and so on — something Kathleen had not agreed to do. At any rate, they worked that out, and then upper management pulled the plug on the religion textbook in general. Rob sent Kathleen another email, this time saying that he wasn’t going to be able to hire her now because of all this and so on. She sent back an email saying she was going to report DLG’s highly unethical hiring practices to the journal where she found the ad (I can’t remember which one it was) and this and that — basically a nasty email that I wouldn’t want to have received. At any rate, I don’t think Rob told anyone about it — it seemed to me that Celina and Val weren’t taking a “Oh, don’t worry about this — we’ve seen it and we’re taking care of it” type of attitude.
Of course I about screwed up in sending that stupid email to Neusner. I think, though, it was for the best. It showed Celina, Kate, and others first of all that I’m honest — I didn’t try to hide it, even though it crossed my mind. And second, it showed that I’m fairly responsible — even when I fuck up — and I want to clean up my own messes, so to speak.
I have to admit, though, that life at DLG without Rob is somehow more enjoyable. Less stressful for me, at any rate. And I don’t even think I realized it until he was gone. I felt he really had no idea how the textbook should be heading, yet he was very stubborn in that everything had to be his way. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m happier working with Katherine than I was working with Rob.
And of course now I know exactly how I report to, so to speak. Kali can herself be a pain in the ass to work with because she too is stubborn. But she seems to be more in control of what’s going on than Rob ever was. More responsible. More — in some ways — mature. I really got fucking tired of Rob bad-mouthing everyone: Kali, Val, Celina, Dale. (It’s funny that he and the one person he said he hated got fired at the same time.) Anyway, there seems to be a much clearer chain of responsibility now and that now-formalized structure gives me a sense of security, I guess. I know where I belong; I know to whom I answer — it’s better.
And of course that sucks. Part of me would rather hate working at DLG so that I would have more of an excuse to go back to Lipnica. But the truth of the matter is that I actually like it — at least this past week I’ve enjoyed it.
Thoughts Back at Home
I’m back in America. I have been for almost a week now. And I feel awful. Just as I suspected/expected I would. Even “just as I feared I would.” “Tell me that it’s nobody’s fault, nobody’s fault but my own,” sings Beck now, and I guess that’s somewhat appropriate. I don’t know if “fault” is the best word choice, but all the same . . .
I feel like I have a huge choice to make in about six months or so: stay or go. The implications are huge. I want to go back to Lipnica so badly it’s killing me — paralyzing me with depression sometimes. Yesterday I just lay on the couch, thinking, “I have to go back, and yet I can’t go back.”
Let’s way the pros and cons again, beginning with what I wrote some days ago — about a week ago, flying home:
As I write all that stuff, I think, “Now, most of these things aren’t really problems if I’m honest.” There’s plenty of people I have there, and the fact that the disco is now at Quattro (which is primarily a bar) seems to show how silly my worries were. My life there would be just what I want it to be. It’s simple: I work my ass off and become as nearly fluent in Polish as I can possibly be (barring grammatical perfection, that is), and who’s to say what my limits are?
My life here could be just what I want it to be if I’m honest. I can make anything of my life I want to here in Boston. The thing is, I don’t really want to.
So what are my options? One option seems most promising: go back for one year to see. I don’t know that I can ever stop thinking, “I might have made a terrible mistake in leaving,” unless I go back for a while and test the hypothesis. At any rate, that’s what I want to do. The implications of that are fairly substantial, though. I could say to Chhavi, “It’s just for a year — I just have to see for myself if I made a mistake,” but the obvious correlative of that is, “. . . and if I decide I did make a mistake, I’ll want to stay there.” When I left for Lipnica sometime next year, it would be worse than the first time I left (by then it will/would have been five years ago).
And here’s the shock: four years ago I’d just finished my first day of training in Radom. It’s around 4:30 in Poland now — I’d be just about to finish the first day. Four years ago. Four years. That’s 1,460 days ago. A long damn time. No, quite the opposite. Four years is almost nothing. Two years is nothing. I guess it’s true what they say about time going faster the older you get.
What I don’t want is to realize that I’ve been back from Poland for four years and think, “I’ve done nothing important with my life in that time.” I don’t want to think at the age of sixty, “I wasted my life, by and large.” And that’s exactly what I’m afraid will happen — unless I go back. I keep treating that as if it’s my only option, and it really isn’t. But it’s the only one I’m aware of; it’s the one I feel is sure to bring me happiness and fulfillment.
Two quotes — from the same song — seem particularly relevant now:
The nearer your destination,
the more you’re slip slidin’ away. . . .
A bad day’s when I lie in bed
and think of things that might have been.
What makes all this so difficult is that I could talk to someone in Lipnica about my dilemma — Teresa Wojciak, for example — and she would simply reply, “So come back.” How I wish it were that easy! I would have talked to Jasiu about coming back for this coming school year. Can you imagine the reaction of the students?!
Back to Boston
12:40 p.m. Okęcie Airport
I feel almost as empty now as a year ago. The only difference is that I know what awaits me. Otherwise, it’s as if I’ve stepped into some kind of time machine: I’m traveling alone; my thoughts are filled with images and faces of Lipnica; I sit wondering whether I’m doing the right thing in leaving; and I feel generally shitty about what awaits me, as compared to what I’m leaving behind.
What I dread most is going into work tomorrow morning. For a week I’ve been having the same conversation: “I really would like to come back, in fact.” To which Mary, Anna P., Benia, Teresa, i.t.d. respond, “So, come back.” “It’s not so easy,” I say, and I wonder — maybe it is so easy — maybe it’s nearly impossible.
I just feel basically trapped.
On the plane now, wondering more intensely than ever, “Should I be here? Now?” And the opposing question: “What would I be accomplishing if I weren’t here?” Teaching some lesson, I guess. Feeling a little better than I am now.
Sunday —
- Woke up at 9:30 after 6 hrs of sleep
- Helped with lunch — barszcz z uszkami
- Met with Edyta — 1 hour and said bye
- Went to bistro for ice cream and last words to Agnieszka
- Met with Danuta; no tears this time
- Rode with Kinga (around 7:30) to Murowanice to see Mary; forgot about her oral FC
- Rode on to the lake for a while
- Visited Benia: “You have a guest” as I approached; short conversation, think her sister Kamila offered to stay in the room with us; Kinga came up, talked with Benia for a while, including, “I hate English”; “No good at foreign languages in general.”
Last night in Quattro
- Short talk with Benia, Mary, and Teresa
- Conversation with Janusz’s friend [Marion]: would like to speak English as well as you speak Polish
- Conversation with Kinga — you think like a woman
- Talk with Kinga about waking up in someone’s arms
- One hour of sleep before I left
The farther I get from LW — both in distance and time — the less realistic my thoughts of returning. As much as I want it, it will never happen. Once again, the farther I get from LW, the less realistic it seems. I was there only a few hours ago, and it might as well have been years ago.
I have this unrealistic hope that I’ll be getting more letters from various folks: Anna P., Kasia M., Marcela J., Kasia (IIB), Agnieszka Kubacka. And while part of me is of course hopeful, I can’t help but think it’s the exact same hope that’s been making me sprint to the mailbox every day for the last year.
Why exactly is it unrealistic that I’ll ever go back for good? First — it’s a simple matter of one person — C. She has no intention of going back — no desire. And even if she were willing, I’m not sure it would be quite the same. What I’m thinking of is a total immersion in the culture, which, as things stand, is impossible for Chhavi. And that emersion in culture that I want is total. Being with Chhavi would create an us-them division that would be all but impossible to overcome.
Second, there’s the ever-nagging worry that the life I’m looking for has disappeared. Enough of all that.
Third, I owe $10,000 for my student loan. I could never pay that off making the little amount I would. This seems to be less of a problem if I could just work a bit extra and pay it off now while I still have such a good job.
Fourth: A. I refuse to deal with that dork. Of course, that too seems to be less of a problem. I could just tell Jasiu, “I won’t come back there if he’s teaching at the liceum.”
Fifth there seems to be some kind of barrier that I would never be able to cross. I would always be something of an outsider.
All in all, I think what I’d be looking for is some kind of idealized life there that is unattainable. This desire to return is based on an exceptional week which would be impossible to sustain for very long. The new-ness would wear off for all involved, I think. Everyone wants me to come back to teach because they have Bucky as a comparison. That won’t always be the case, obviously enough.
Another factor: I’m growing ever older. I couldn’t continue living the life I had. A few years at most. A 40-year-old hanging out at the disco seems a little stupid. If I’m honest, I also have to admit that a ot of my social fulfillment came from friendships with students. There were few “adults” I was really good friends with. (And yet I think, weren’t there enough? Ramzes, Agata, Kamil, Kinga, Piotrek, itd.)
It’s all just a silly dream.
Almost Returning
An awful start to a month that will turn out to be one of the most eventful of my life. Though I had no idea at the beginning of the month — or even the last journal entry — I’ll be leaving for Poland in three days! It’s difficult to believe, but I’m leaving for Poland this Thursday.
This evening I read some of my journal entries from my last days in Lipnica. There are so many people that I want to see, to talk to — will I be able is another story. At any rate, the thought of going back and being among some of the people who were so very important to me during the most formative period of my life — it’s difficult to describe how I feel about it, but I feel equally at peace and anxious about it, often experiencing both at the same moment.
Because of that, I won’t be writing much more than ten pages this month, if I’m lucky. I’m not planning on keeping much more than a rough outline of my days there. Every night (or morning) I hope to jot down a few lines about what happened since the last time I wrote something and then flesh it out when I get back. I’ve bought a new, small notebook for that purpose. Zobaczymy.
“I try to tell myself to hold to these moments as they pass.” Those words have haunted me since I’ve returned, and I’m determined that for the time I’m in Poland I will make the most of every single moment. I don’t know how much I’ll sleep — I”m hoping not much; I don’t know how much time I’ll spend sitting around doing nothing — I’m noping, not much. I want every moment to be something to cherish; and I want to be aggressive enough in initiating visits that that’s the case. I want to hunt down Józia and talk to her; I want to go see Anna P. if she’s not at the disco; I want to drop in on people without worries. I’m going to do it if I can. I’m going to walk across the street to Agnieszka Kubacka’s house and find out where she is and whether I can get a phone number to contact her, and the same for Maggy. I’m not going to have a single moment of regret while I’m there; no wasted time whatsoever. It’s completely unacceptable.
Excitement at Return
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but in two weeks I will be in Lipnica. Two weeks. I’ll actually be arriving in much less than two weeks. Still — last night I was thinking, “Two weeks and I’ll be back at Zurek.” A very comforting thought.
“I try to tell myself to hold on to these moments while they last.” As Adam says about chess, I’ve got to be “balls-to-the-wall” with this. I’ve got to be aggressive in seeing people — not wait for someone to invite me over for a visit, in other words. I’ve got to savor each and every moment — even the time taking the train from Warszawa to Kraków. In fact, I’m sort of looking forward to that more than anything else — my initial adjustment period, so to speak. Every time I’m on the orange line going to work, I look out and think, “This could just as easily be a train somewhere in Poland.” And I get a little tug of nostalgia. So now in the coming days I’ll get something similar, but a sort of nostalgia-in-advance.
I hope that my trip to Poland will help me adjust to being back in America. I don’t know if I’m being blindly, naively optimistic about this or not, but I really think that going back to Poland for just a little while will give me the necessary perspective to appreciate being back here. What I miss most about my life in Lipnica are the friendships. It’s not the apartment (though of course it would be nice to have such a place here); it’s not really the teaching (it’s more the interaction with students, not the act of teaching them when to use “a,” “an,” and “the”); it’s not the cold winters; it’s not even the thrill (which quickly wore away) of living in another country. It was the friendship — knowing that I had something to do on Saturday nights and, more importantly, someone to do it with; sitting at talking around an ognisko; smoking and drinking with Janusz while listening to our mutually small blues collection;’ having an unplanned lunch with Mastelas on a Sunday afternoon.
So now I’m listening to Trzycie (sp?) Simfonia Góreckiego. It’s music that demands to be listened to — commands one’s attention — and it’s probably not the best music to be listening to while trying to type in my journal. Still, I’m in the mood to listening to something Polish, and this is the best I’ve got (without a doubt).
At some point I’ve got to start really planning what I want to do while I’m there. I don’t want to go and just let things happen. I’m afraid if I do that then I won’t get to do certain things I really want to do. Among them — a day in Kraków, perhaps with Kinga J. or Edyta; a day in Zakopane, definitely with Charles; a day of riding a bike around Lipnica, hopefully with Kinga M. when she gets back. I want to have some sort of idea of what my time there will be like.
Other than this exciting bit of news — and the accompanying news that I’m flying for less than $700, thanks to Michelle — nothing much has happened this week.
Oh, part of the motivation for going so soon: Kamil was drafted into the army! He leaves 4 July for a six-month stint. That means if I were to go for Charles’ wedding in September, I wouldn’t get to see Danuta or Kamil. I found out about this Monday, hence the suddenness of the trip.
I had to talk Kali into letting me get time off. At first she wasn’t keen on the idea, but I had a strong argument: we have two course developers starting — one tomorrow, one the next Monday. The first thing they’ll have t do is read all the chapters and start making some changes. I’ll have enough time for them to read the chapters and discuss them with me before I leave for about a week. During that week, hopefully, they’ll have time to make some changes, re-write stuff and so on, so that when I get back, there’ll be a pile of work for me to do — which certainly hasn’t been the case of late.
Another interesting development in the workplace: I had my evaluation this week and Kali feels I’m not making the most of my skills. What exactly did she mean? Well, she’d like to see me more involved in the tech side of things as something of a liason between the tech staff and the editors. An editor who knows a lot about the ins and outs of the software we’re using and things like that. She also wants me to design and implement some workshops for editors to help them make the most of Word. Several of them — including Kali — would like to learn how to make macros (as if it’s terribly difficult), and so I’ll be teaching again. And I won’t have to worry about not being prepared and such — I’ll be able to prepare this stuff while I’m at work. Part of my job will be to prepare for these workshops! What a novel concept!