Reading Required

All the books of Polish classics stayed in my family house. And now I‘ve just realised that I don’t have even an inch of Master Thaddeus with me. Somehow I just can’t read such pieces of literature via the Internet. 

I’d rather hold a book in my hand - touch it, smell it and celebrate the moment of reading. Hey, this may be a perfect opportunity to take care of my personal library! Excellent!

I set out on the prowl of Adam Mickiewicz’s works letting myself into a Saturday feverish shopping jungle. It is hard to call the high-street bookstores any other way since they’ve become places where it is easier to buy a cappuccino, brownie or a guidebook that tells you how to deal with a kid while cooking than a piece of the big-L literature. I haven’t realized, though, until now that it would take a miracle to get Adam’s works. Just to make it clear - the action takes place in the centre of Warsaw – Poland’s capital, the heart of cultural and night life, a theatre-land and the Mecca of Polish artists. Oh boy!

Firstly, I entered a three or four-storey high-street shop where you can buy or order “everything that can be associated with culture”.

In vain I looked for Adam, scanning the bookstore’s shelves tagged “Polish Literature(!)”. What I found instead was thick and weighty tomes of scripted top Polish TV series, such as “L for Love”[Pol. “M jak Miłość”], 

or confessions and biographies of Polish celebrities – yum-yum! And so Adam wasn’t there. Not to mention 

a shelve with Lithuanian literature...

I came up to the information desk, without a complaint I waited for hours for someone to appear, and finally when I could ask “Where can I find Mickiewicz’s works?”, I heard, “Have to check it... uuuuuhm... please go to the >>Required Reading for School << section. Please turn left here, then turn right and then go straight ahead and turn left again when you reach the “Fantasy” section. This will be next to the shelf with computer games”.

“Well. O.K.”, I thought.

Off I went.

I turned and veered and circled around – I felt like a weirdo in a maze. But the perspective of buying Grażyna or The Forefathers’ Eve was so tempting that I was ready to take all the turns anyway. Phew, I reached the destination shelf in the rhythm of “Last Christmas” hit – always and forever played in the shops between December and January...

There is a massive number of books on the “Required...” shelf, including “Harry Potter” (to my surprise without a summary or literary analysis added! Pure text!). I look for “M” – and here it is! Master Thaddeus – a beautiful edition, wonderfully illustrated, 3 kg or so. I think to myself “I will buy it for my godson”, but... it turns out to be in Kashubian. In Polish, though,.. what words should I use... “the number you’re trying to reach is currently unavailable”.

Another edition of Master... only as a literary analysis and a “light” version that only consists of some sample essays. Yet I would like to buy The Complete Works of Mickiewicz or anything alike, with no essays or 20-sentence-middle-school statements in it... Didn’t get it. Too bad.

I went then to another branch of the shop. Wise enough, I decided to go straight to the info desk.

“Hello. Where can I find Mickiewicz’s works?”. A polite info-guy responded that he would search the system in a minute. Again I waited. And waited.

“Adam?” he asked!!! I might be a little of an ignorant, but the surname “Mickiewicz” as it is, to me always goes with “Adam”: the poet regarded as one of Poland’s “Three Bards”, an artist and sometimes a philosopher. Anyway, “YES, ADAM!”

“Alrighty then, ...by Mickiewicz, Adam – we have only Grandma’s Favourite Poems, Good Night Poems and Master Thaddeus with literary analysis for school”. Disaster. Absolute disgrace. But perhaps Mickiewicz wrote poems for his grandma. Who knows? I had to go and see. Unfortunately, it turned out it was a thin booklet with colourful illustrations and poems of selected top Polish poets associated with poetry for children mainly. The last pages belonged to a poem that juniors should be familiar with, the one about those who were “eating, drinking and smoking pipes” [Refers to Adam Mickiewicz’s ballad “Pani Twardowska” (“Mrs Twardowska”].

Another two visits in other branches of the high-street bookstore turned out to be another disaster. So there were only two options left: a vintage shop or online purchase. Gosh, why can’t I buy an ordinarily published work of Mickiewicz, with no frills? Quite a few professors in this country owe this classic poet their academic carriers!!!

I was heading towards the bus stop, blankly gaping at the window displays flashing with “50% discounts for everything uglier, new collection very expensive”, when I saw a CHEAP BOOK WAREHOUSE. I walked in dispassionately and asked for Mickiewicz. Fortunately, the assistant didn’t ask if I meant Adam, Tadeusz or another “Kovalsky”, but pointed to the shelf where I could find cheap editions of a COMPLETE COLLECTION of Mickiewicz’s works, with no frills, hardbacked. Nay, the same story with Żeromski, Słowacki and Prus... also some excerpts from Herbert’s works! None of the books exceeded the magic limit of 15 zloty! It means that culture in this shop is affordable for a  Polish teacher! Hooray!

I bought three books and it felt awesome. I haven’t felt like that for a very long time. However, I cannot understand why I had to struggle so hard to buy some Polish classical literature. Does it make any sense? Or maybe it is only me who doesn’t have these books at home, because everybody has already bought them? Who knows...

Hang on a sec – what about the rain?

It is a beautiful spring afternoon and a eurythmix class in my beloved PUBLIC school. Six-year-olds around me. The room rather fatigued after the whole day of classes. Desks far from the initial order, some chalk dust in the air, also I – not at all in a perfect shape. To be honest, after all these classes I’m done and always want to cancel the last one and go home. But I can’t – and so I wait for my fellow-passenger. He is so neat and dutiful that he has probably never fleed from anything (OK, maybe apart form his own wedding, he really made off then...). Life. It rings for my entrée.

The youngest generation of the Polish intelligentsia walks in the room. Walks in? They simply fly in. I hold a teacher’s PC – a real state of the art, but a couple of years ago. Have to deal with it, smartly register attendance, type the topic in and manage to hit “enter”. Phew.

And here comes my favourite pupil, number 9. I absolutely cannot understand why Ignatius is his given name, not Henry. The sharp “i” and broken “gn” are a complete mistake. Harry fits perfectly. He always looks like as if he was fixing something in a sandbox and was kind enough to drop his gig, come to the music class and go through it. I, the teacher, have to deal with it and carry this burden. There are some more like him in the upper grades...

He usually behaves in the characteristic COOL FELLA way. He would probably eagerly rearrange the desks if he could, but because he cannot, he jumps under the chair instead, convinced that he is invisible and that I am too blind and too old to spot him anyway. I don’t have the heart to ask him to crawl out. His face says it all, “Hah! She can’t see me! Hah! I’m so smart, one more minute and she’s gonna look for me!” – and who knows why he really does it...

Harry doesn’t wait for too long, he takes his fate into his own work-worn and grimy hands and... joins in the fun when he hears the music. Hooray! Of course, as usual, I sincerely believe that I show them what the beauty of art really means. I myself get excited with the sounds I pull out from the half dead school piano. I tell them a story. The spring tunes us in to the metaphysical atmosphere... We are searching for the treasure. There are a lot of adventures on our way, completely made up, sometimes they’d better not exist. Finally, we make it to find a seed. Everybody is absolutely disappointed, ‘cause what kind of treasure is that? – to be returned to the shop (on presentation of the receipt). Meanwhile, I scale the heights of metaphor: spring, life, rebirth, a new thought, logos, dia-logos, ugh...

Harry zones out, so he bumps into each and every person as wild expression is getting out of his thin and small body. Eventually, we decide to plant the seed. A hole is needed. Harry digs in the parquet. In the end he stops, his feet spread and his arms akimbo, looking into the invisible hole, totally convinced that it really exists - after all, he himself made it, so he knows it does!

- Miss, we’re not gonna make it that way – he gasps – I need a spade. D’YA have one, Miss? – these are the moments when I know that I’m alive.

- I do, take the biggest one with a red handle. It is there, by the mirror – I answer with a poker face.

- Cool (!) – responds Harry raising his hand to show “thanks” while running for the spade. All is clear. There is no doubt which spade to choose, if one of them has a red handle. Full understanding. The seed planted. Harry finishes burying it with his foot, there is “no way he’d dURty his hands”. And I still keep on playing. And I say that now the seed sprouts into a fantabulous plant, never seen in this world before. Again I reach the heights of my wisdom – it is them who are the plant, they are a clean page, they sprout to life -  and so on, and so on... I start to get emotional.

But HARRY interrupts.

- Hang on a sec, Miss! What about the rain?

Grandma Teresa

The post is completely off the point, but still adequate, I hope.

It will be about my wonderful Grandma. Her name was Teresa. A grandma who couldn’t cook ( I am so sorry Grandma, but it is true, forgive me!) and who sang eagerly and relentlessly and ... out of tune; a peace-loving and patient woman, ready to forgo things, but when it was  necessary – also to do them “her own way”. 

Dear Grandma – I dedicate the name of my blog to You.

Today, on one of the radio shows, the host asked his listeners about their “incredible grandmas”. Each and  every grandson or granddaughter was interrogated on what grandma said about sex and what she said about grandpa. Quite disconcerting to be honest, as if sex were a public matter... My grandma never spoke about sex,  about grandpa instead – always with sparkling eyes. It wasn’t in the cards for me to get to know him personally, he died just before I was born. Grandma loved Grandpa more than life  - I’m more than sure of that. It was her from whom I learnt that “you can mourn somebody for always, no matter when they left you”. She loved his neatness and diligence; and I know he used to call her Terrie [Pol. Teresinka, diminutive from Teresa]. And so they were: “Merrie [Pol. Marysinek, diminutive from Marian] and Terrie”, even after their children grew up...

Neither being eccentric, nor having a madman’s soul, she discovered that for true love she was capable of denying her previous life. Grandma fell in love with Marian whose family wasn’t of strong, rich and intellectual roots. Whereas she used to live in a pre-war tenement house, on the first floor [In the US: second floor]...Her parents put her away in the convent where she was supposed to pray and pray (apparently to take “Merrie” out of her head and to receive blessings for the whole family while suffering in peace). But one day, while she was still a novice, my grandma together with Merrie simply ... made off. She went after him to sink into an uneasy everydayness, in spite of all the adversities. Of course it grew to a family legend how Grandma jumped out of the window right into Grandpa’s arms. Another version includes “bedsheets”. Grandma, to some credits, plaited monastic sheet to get out of the cold convent straight into Grandpa’s embrace, of course under cover of the night and in the moonlight . The wind was blowing horribly and it was raining, but she was running to Merrie carried on the wings of love. I’m so proud of my Grandma – she was such a lady! One thing we can be sure of – as soon as she fell into those arms, she stayed there forever. And so did Grandpa, searching no more.

Grandma had freckles and beautiful, thick hair. She wasn’t thin at all. She wasn’t effusive either, and she would never instruct me. I never heard “you mustn’t” from her, instead, she would tell me “you don’t have to do it that way”. I remember it well. She could dissuade people from their dumb ideas in a masterly way.

Sometimes Grandma talked about her vision of the future world. It is her from whom I learned that “soon (it was in the ‘80s!!!), my dear Grażyna, we are going to speak on the phone seeing each other’s faces”. Apparently, Grandma was more than right, it is a pity she only couldn’t realize it. Perhaps then I could focus on more important things than earning my bread and butter …

Grandma used to wear her wedding ring until she died. She would never let us forget Grandpa. She even had her own bench at his grave, just to peacefully sit in silence with her Merrie.

 I always think about her with love and I miss her very much. I hope that she got the same sector as Grandpa in heaven … but she would have managed anyway and “did it her own way”!