Friday, November 10, 2006

Some recent developments

So my life in NY continues. I see NY a little more realistically again as opposed to enthusiastically, as I saw it when I just returned over three months ago. It is, as I have always thought, the craziest place of all the places I have seen… but I manage to stay sane and hopefully will remain in the blessed state of sanity till I am ready to leave. I really like the subjects I study, of course, and I really like working at PQ. I like the staff, the managers, the waiters and the kitchen staff. I think that I am learning as much about human nature and behavior at PQ as I learn in the Clinical counseling class. And I train myself in understanding people and situations, and dealing with whatever comes my way in a flash. This is a very useful experience. I basically work, go to school and study. I try to squeeze in the gym and boxing and spinning classes and so far it’s been possible. Sometimes I just go to relax in the steam room after work – it feels really good after a day of running around. I lie down on the bench, put my legs against the wall and let my thoughts drift away… when the mind comes back and the body relaxes and regenerates, I go home light. I also try to get enough of sleep… which isn’t happening now since the roof is being repaired and the early bird construction workers like to start drilling and hammering at the crack of dawn… Mr Czesiu and Stasiu, as I can get from their conversations, are the type of men who like to throw meat around all the time (it’s a direct translation from Polish: throwing meat means using obscene language) and use the fcuk (translated as kruwa) as a punctuation mark (“Dej mi Czesiu kurwa ten mlotek kurwa bo mi sie zepsol tamten kurwa.”). Today, since it is my only, one and only, day off I thought I would sleep until I can sleep no more but alas, kurwas woke me up and kept me awake. At one point I heard grime falling into my aircondicioner and couldn’t take it any longer and opened my window and screamed at them kurwa, for breaking my kurwa aircondicioner kurwa! Just kidding… I didn’t throw meat to that extend. But a few minutes later I heared the doorbell and who do I see through the hole in the door: the super and a man – must be Czesiu or Stasiu I thought. I open the door wrapped around in a stripped men’s bathrobe (*the story about the bathrobe below), hair standing in all possible directions from tossing in my bed since the early bird’s ruthless awakening me, green on the face, and steam coming out of my ears… If looks could kill they would be dead on the spot so the super disappeared like ether and the other trembling and stuttering men came in to fix the a/c. When I calmed down and started looking at the man with my usual calm and understanding composition, we started talking and ended up talking for half an hour and it turned out that we come from the same city and lived within, I would say, about five km from each other. And, who knows, maybe we have some distant relatives! Isn’t it incredible? And it was neither Mr. Czesiu nor Mr. Stasiu but Przemek. Isn’t it an interesting beginning of a friendship? When Przemek left I thought of some PQ’s French crème donuts I had in my fridge and didn’t get the chance to give to my neighbors, and so I took the nicely packed box and delivered it to the roof and asked Przemek to share with Czesiu and Stasiu. It turned out to be a really amusing morning in the end. I keep encountering these really funny situations and I am wondering if it is now the stage in my life where just fun stuff happens or is it my perspective which makes these situations funny and amusing.

Maybe I feel so light and in a laughing mode because I have no contact with media. I have no tv, I don’t read papers or books other than the textbooks. I was surprised to find out the other day that elections to the Senate took place. I had no idea… I heard that Rumsfeld resigned, who would think? I used to be so involved in art and culture, politics – I watched public tv to know what was going on locally and globally; I wanted to find out about all the conflicts, human rights, etc., etc. Then I went out to the world and I decided that whatever I read in the magazines, most of it anyways, and saw on these believed-to-be-good-and-objective programs was really not the truth. I sometimes see the headlines in the papers people read on the subway and just the headlines themselves give me chills, they are so silly… So I feel I know what goes on in the world and I always have it in my mind, but I am not exposing myself to the manipulated information and the fake melodrama and maybe from this also comes my lighter state of being…

*The bathrobe is the only thing I kept which belonged to my ex-husband and it wasn’t really his bathrobe but his uncle’s. The uncle died before I had the chance to meet him so I didn’t even know him but from what my ex’s family said about him it seems like he was the nicest in the entire family so when my ex wanted to get rid of the robe I thought that I wanted to have that thing which belonged to a nice and wise person. The robe remembers the time of Edward Gierek, or maybe even Gomulka (someone’s hands made it during the 5 year plan, and reached 300 percent norm), so it is a historical artifact on top of everything else. So that’s how it is and if you ever surprise me with an unexpected visit early in the morning I will greet you in the Gomulka bathrobe of my ex husband’s uncle. Isn’t that hilarious?!