The Krakow Diaries

Farewell, Mirek Nahacz

2007-09-15T10:03:00.000+02:00

I've been trying for a while now to find out for sure how Mirek Nahacz died, why, and whether his fourth book is being published. But the Polish media seem to have dropped the story after the initial reports in July that is was suicide and besides, I can't read Polish, so the end of his story will remain closed to me as if it had happened on another planet, just as I will never know his books, which were never translated into English.

In the last days of July, they found his body in his apartment in Warsaw. Though I waited a while to find out more details and asked a Polish-speaking friend to comb the papers for additional news, all I could out was that the police believe it was suicide. I will probably never know more. The language barrier is complete. I will never know what happened; I will never know what happened to his girlfriend or speak to her; I will never know if his fourth book was published or will be published or if it worked out to be the masterpiece he wanted it to be.

I liked Mirek and I was jealous of him, too. I liked him because, from talking to him in his broken English, it seemed that he had a similar taste in literature as I did. He liked the American post-modernists; we were both fans of John Barth; he liked the beat generation more than I did, especially William Burroughs. I asked him about his new novel, the one he was working on – his fourth – and I liked what he said.

It was to be a science fiction novel with a real page-turning plot and written in a prose style with high literary standards. I too had always dreamed of that: combining the genre adventures I loved like Tolkien and Conan the Barbarian and all those things with a literary quality that lifted them up to the level of Shakespeare (after all – in a way, isn't that what Shakespeare did?). Though I could not read his books and never will be able to, I felt I was speaking with a kindred spirit. And I felt that perhaps he would succeed. That gave me hope, for I knew that I would never succeed in that one goal.

And I was jealous of him. I was jealous of his gung-ho, all-or-nothing personality. He would drink early in the morning. At night I would hear techno music blaring in his room. He would write all day and all night and then he would go out and party hard. He was a full-our worker and a full-out partier. He was extreme and radical and never let up, made no excuses, made no compromises, took no prisoners. I always wanted to be like that and never could.

You can say: "Yeah, but look, now he's dead and you're alive," but that makes no difference. He was still the kind of writer I wanted to be.

Now he is gone, disappeared behind a language barrier that will forever hide him from me. Goodbye, Mirek. I wish I could have known more of you.

Here are two excerpts - from his first two novels - taken from his website http://www.nahacz.czarne.com.pl, which was recently brought to my attention (see comment below):

From the first novel "Eighty Four" (translation Antonia Lloyd Jones):

We knew that even so one day it would all end in wives, families, homes and banal, tidy little vicious circles. One of us could land in the shit, of course, but probably not. We knew that very few people manage to end up any other way, and that those guys become legendary. We also knew that in spite of all we were just as stupid as everyone else, no different from our whole spoiled generation and that you don’t win just by talking about it. But you couldn’t win anyway, coz there was nothing to fight for. All the better, coz nowadays who’d want to anyway? Andrew was loaded, none of us was dying of starvation, nor could any of us truly say we lacked anything, or someone had abused us, our father had been an alcoholic or we’d been beaten at home. The problem was often it was an illusion of normality—in spite of all, something wasn’t quite right about this reality, some element of it was extremely fucked up. Something wasn’t working the way it should. We’re sure to grow out of it, we’ll forget, we thought. What bollocks! If nothing happens, we’ll end up fucking this planet to bits. It’s even stupid talking about it some-times, because it really does go against all logic—nothing has happened, no war like for the poets of the resistance, no regime persecuting freedom of thought like our parents had, nothing. We had something to eat, admittedly the work situation was a bit shaky, and consequently so were our future prospects, but the problem wasn’t in the shape of reality, it was inside reality itself, in its basic foundations, in its substance perhaps, I don’t know any more, maybe the Creator of the Universe fucked something up.

We were semi-aware of our hopelessness; I felt like throwing up the whole time, definitely not because of smoking, because I often gave myself a break, and anyway I smoked least of all the guys. Somehow I managed. The symptoms were like a sort of permanent downer. You don’t feel like getting up in the morning and you’re gripped by the total pointlessness of it all, then somehow you truck along, and it attacks you again. God’s played a trick on us to stop things from getting boring—he thinks to himself, “You’ve got everything OK, so I’m gonna keep fucking you up with existential fears, just so you can’t ever have heaven on earth”. And everything keeps rolling along in its own sweet way—we’ll find ourselves wives, skinny or fat, we’ll screw them a few times, they’ll have some lovely little babies, off we’ll go to work, and it’ll all fall into shape. Amen.

…It had started again, something was always starting. Someone started to say some-thing, someone started to drink something or to smoke a cigarette, someone started to stop smoking, drinking, or whatever. We could only remember the beginnings, eve-rything was always starting, and the ends were always miles away, no one ever noticed them.
The drinking never ended, the hangover just started, that’s how it was with everything. The beginning and the continuing, more and more new beginnings obscured the old endings.

Patol was filling his glass, and Andrew was waiting for someone there with a carrot-and-banana juice to kill the taste of the mushrooms. Not everyone likes them raw. You felt like saying something, words were flying around, crowding the air in the trailer, you just had to reach for them and say them. But they refused to let themselves get caught that easily—either sobriety or intoxication was needed. An in-between state didn’t re-ally do the trick. We were a bit nervy—give it here, come on, quickly, hurry up, like when you desperately want to get a present and the person hands it to you very slowly while going on about something really stupid. He was crumbling the dope, mixing it with the tobacco very slowly, way beyond any sort of hurry. It made me wonder, they all made me wonder. I once spent the night at Muko’s place; we got there pissed as farts some time aer midnight. He opened the door and we went in ever so quietly, or at least that’s what we thought. We went to bed and there was total hush. And in the morning, my God, it was like a film straight out of America, the kind with the perfect modern family, two plus one and the kid’s friend from school. So how’s it going? How’s school? More cheese on your bread? Mummy, Daddy and Muko. Something about that image grated on me, coz it stayed in my head for the next ten hours or more as he spewed along the way and paid a couple of visits to the ditch. Totally abstract. Now it’s just “yes mum, yes dad, don’t joke, don’t say more, it was great, we’re just terribly tired coz we had to help Adam clean up the cellar”.

…Patol and Andrew must have been inside by now. They were seeing things different-ly—eyes like those can’t possibly see the same way. Sitting was getting uncomfortable, the filth in the top right corner was really obvious and I couldn’t stand it any longer, I wanted to get out, to escape, I was seized with frenzy, I wanted them to stop being, talking and enjoying themselves. But I didn’t let it show, I just went on laughing.

I felt as if it wasn’t me laughing, just the shell of my body, with me inside, and it was just blocked up, something in it got jammed the moment I laughed, so I couldn’t stop. I was scared, until I saw my own frightened eyes and face, then I started looking at the rest of the guys as if they were crazy, watching what they were doing—we’re gonna kill each other any moment, they’re gonna start quarrelling and someone’s gonna pull out a hidden knife and stick it in my head, then ask “what have I done?”, but it'll be too late, with schizos there’s no joking, or we’ll go for someone, I don’t know, something’s gonna happen, something could happen, there’s too much tension that’s got to be released. And then Euzubiusz went off somewhere, and Andrew started singing a mantra, modulating his voice, and I knew it was bloody stupid, I was ashamed of my own voice, of what I was doing and how I was behaving, I was afraid Mama might hear me—what would I say to her? then I realized I wasn’t at home and no one was coming, but I couldn’t stop feeling scared, coz that’s how it works, the fear stays with you and grows; I went on singing, and the walls were shaking, I was bloody afraid, it was getting closer, it was just about to happen, something huge, the biggest thing ever, God and Satan all rolled into one, I could feel the presence on my skin and in my chest, it was huge, enormous, and we went on singing, trying to catch up with the ever escaping tune.

…Right then I’d much rather have been somewhere else. At home. I’d eat something nice and watch telly. Right through to zero hour. I could sit there forever, pitting myself against the scheduling. At about three a sign would appear on the screen to say that’s the end of broadcasting. I’d have beaten them. It’s easiest with the Polish programmes because the foreign-language ones are on round the clock. There’s always some guy blathering on, or the news, or a film. On the German channels they’re almost always screwing. What a nation of perverts. They say ordnung muss sein, but every night on TV after midnight there’s hanky panky. Das ist gut, schnella, schnella, ooo sehr gross, macht mir gut. Those silicone women squeal as if the muscular blond guys were stabbing them with metal skewers at least. So you sit and surf the channels. People on a pilgrimage click lady’s girdle ad click holy mass broadcast click gut gut ich liebe click two hundred people killed click take these tablets and your muscles will expand click one hundred and sixty wounded. I sit there clicking away—I hate television, I spend at least six hours a day hating it.

Tępy came over, chewing something. “I feel really fucked up,” he said.

Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have been poisoned. Only now. I imagined him having convulsions, losing consciousness and his skin changing colour, going completely cold and white with his mouth open. It could happen like that, like in the films, first we’d bury him, then fuck up and all kill each other, the ultimate massacre to deal with all the insinuations.

Actually I didn’t care; I could see I should be concerned, but somehow I wasn’t getting any feeling. After all, Tępy was a great guy, and I was nothing. I did worry a bit, not to be completely heartless, and then I felt calm again. I was tired and gradually I was starting to feel ill. I didn’t realise I’d already drunk several glasses; for a while I thought I’d only been drinking one, but having a sort of déjà vu. Muko kept bringing me more, like the helpful mate he is. As soon as it lit me up, I felt like puking, or rather I felt nausea. I lit a fag and thought, “I’m hungry, that helps, I must just be careful not to think too hard coz usually when we’re hungry we imagine food, and if I do that it’ll all come flying out of me.” I knew that was how it’d end, but I didn’t want to throw up just yet, at any rate I didn’t want to be first.

Everyone was talking about something, but all I could hear was a buzzing noise, like the radio in bad weather or when you’re trying to find a channel. The only way out was to throw myself into the swing of the rave, keep chatting to just about everyone without stopping, listen to the music, and for it to be thumping loud and strong, no thoughts, just dance and think about nothing but bullshit.

I got up and went to the tent, just like that, leaving them by the bonfire, without saying anything or looking at anyone. I neatly avoided the obstacles, I got knocked over once, but I tried to be tough. In the hangar-like tent I was surprised by what I saw. Tępy was lying in the corner holding his belly. I was convinced he’d stayed by the bonfire. It completely threw me off kilter. On top of that Połka was tinkering with some sort of gadget fixed to the socket and the tape recorder. He should have been by the bonfire too, not here. Połka was big and dumb, but terribly nice. He always went about in the same track suit, black with yellow stripes, and he had catarrh. I liked chatting with him because he always talked in such a funny way.

“Hi, Połka, how’s it going? what’s that you’re fiddling with?” I asked casually.

“It’s a stroboscope, but the rheostat’s fucked and won’t go for long coz it’ll blow. If I had four zlotys I’d buy a better one and it’d all be OK.”

“Isn’t it better to have it unplugged from the current? Doesn’t it fuck you some-times?”

“Eeee, no problem.”

“Great, you’re a brave guy.” I decided that was quite enough chat for now. With Połka anyway. I’d stopped feeling like talking again, but it was less of a problem now. A year ago he’d finished a professional electrician’s course, he knows his stuff. He repairs lots of things for us, walkmans and stuff like that. Połka is best mates with Todek. I don’t know him all that well, coz the way it works out I only ever see him when we’re stoned and at those times he always laughs at what I’m saying. Maybe that’s why I like him, with him I feel valued and funny.

Tępy was lying in the corner trying to say something, but for some reason he couldn’t spit out his words. Along came that so-so Heidi in the red fleece, that’s how I recognised her. She leaned over Tępy and started mothering him, saying: “What’s up, Tępy, can’t you tell me?” I immediately put in a word, telling her there was no need to worry. “He just got drunk too fast and it’s caught up with him, he feels like throwing up. I’ll help him.” I did him a good turn and didn’t let her meddle in the business with the mushrooms. Why spoil the party for others?

From the second novel "Bombel" (translation Antonia Lloyd Jones):

Pietrek’ll be here any moment and I’ll have to start talking faster to enjoy it to the full. ‘Cos I feel like saying some more, my voice sounds nice in here, bouncing off the walls of the bus stop without flying away, just drumming against the wood—it’s dry and muffled, more serious than when I speak normally. Now it’s deep, with twice the depth, like a priest saying mass, it’s inverted, vast, majestic, and partly incomprehensible. ‘Cos some-times what I say escapes me. I spout away and I’m amazed. But I’ve already said that. This voice criss-crosses itself and dissolves like the light. I noticed it ages ago. In chinks in the walls, when the sun’s shining or when a single ray falls through a knothole in the shed and reveals all the dust hanging in the air, all the tiny particles of wood, because that dust is made of wood and is tinier than anything, as tiny as air. And thanks to the knothole, thanks to the chinks I know light dissolves in straight lines. Just like my voice is doing now. Only when I get drunk it all goes bent, it doesn’t break off, well, maybe sometimes it does, but usually it bends like rubber or lino.
What’s up? Pietrek should be here by now, and I guess I’m sweating and feeling sick at the thought he might not come, ‘cos come to think about it, where exactly did I get the idea he was going to come so early? I’ve persuaded myself to go on sitting here, freezing and hoping. ‘Cos why should he come? I’ve got it all in a muddle.

It’d be best if he came before eight, before the bus comes. And then, if we’re lucky, maybe some guardian angel of mine might just be thinking, “Poor old Bombel, he’s had an awful life, his mother didn’t love him, his father used to beat him, and his wife turned out to be a whore—his whole life’s been bad luck, so I’ll do something good for him, ‘cos actually I’ve never really been bothered about him, just this one time I’ll make sure he has a good driver, who out of Christian goodness will turn a blind eye to his lack of a ticket”. And everything’ll be absolutely fine. We get into the bus, me and Pietrek, modest, but proud, good morning, good morning, what a nice day it is, yes, it is, just a bit too cloudy, then we sit down, with two nicely turned-out women in front of us; I tell them they’ve got a nice, choice bouquet of shampoo and deodorant, to which they say thank you and ask if they can sit on my knees because I’m so polite. The driver turns on some soft music, everyone’s smiling, it’s wonderful and no one’s bothered that we haven’t got tickets. It could be like that.

Worse if the bastard feels as if something depends on him, then he’ll remember he’s got a big fat wife with massive buttocks waiting for him at home—each of those enormous cheeks is like a whole separate arse—all hope of any sort of subtle sexual nuance is off the agenda from the very start, all because of that fat, which is a better defence than an iron chastity belt. And maybe it’d be all right if he couldn’t see women sent straight from heaven at every step, ‘cos these days they’re everywhere: on posters, in the papers, on telly and in calendars. And then the poor old driver thinks he’s got the biggest fatty in the world, he’s the worst off of anyone, he’s got to deal with the devil, and when he remembers all that, that great sonofabitch of a bus driver, that lord and master, that lord over life and death, that moustachioed image of destiny, then he’ll ask: “So where’s your ticket? Got a season ticket? sell you one?”, and the joker can see he’s not dealing with millionaires.

But if everything went according to my plan, we could go down to the border and buy some cheap alcohol, cheap vodka, ‘cos Pietrek’s supposed to be bringing a bit of cash, and if not vodka, maybe wine, ‘cos it’s cheaper, better and there’s more of it.

We can cross the state border now, it’s all sorted now, it’s allowed by law, we’ve got passports and everything. It’s a year since zero hour went by, fucking hell, there was so much happening then, the very thought of it makes me want to part-laugh, part-cry, in both cases with a touch of fear thrown in. Something immediately tempts me to tell myself about it, hear it all from the beginning, via the middle, right through to the end. But it was already a long time ago, a year is a long time ago, half a year isn’t, but a whole twelve months, with so many seasons in between, that’s so much time I’m amazed you can remember something for such an age. But if the days are all alike, if in all that time only the outside look of things changes, the temperature and all the other variables, it’s hard to remember anything, ‘cos it all merges together. If you spend a day drinking, then a second, a third and all the days after that too, after a while you remember the whole lot like one single day.

But I’ll always remember that outing with Pietrek, whether it was a whole lot of days or not, merging together or not. To this day whenever I see anyone darker, with browner skin quite literally speaking, I get the creeps and start looking round in case there are more of them, in case there’s one of Hitler’s secret weapons hidden in the bushes, some artillery back-up, five Gypsy ragamuffins with knives, sticks and fuck knows what other home-made weaponry. ‘Cos you never know what’s going on with darkies. My mother was wise to scare me with the Gypsies when I was still in nappies, ‘cos to this day I’ve been le with a sort of caution, a sort of instinct that tells me to watch out for darkies, so if one appears in the corner of my eye at once a red light goes on in my head to give the full alert, bells ring and I’m on my guard. Sometimes they come to the village to sell a carpet which, fuck it all, I’d bet my right hand or a bottle of wine they knocked off in some other village far away from us so word wouldn’t get round. But it gets round any-way, ‘cos they’re darkies, Gypsies, someone called them that, didn’t they? Except they’ve got hot chicks—if I had one of those Gypsy birds with the coal-black hair I’d use her properly, the way nature intended; she wouldn’t have to do a thing for me in the kitchen, I’d even do the cooking, washing and cleaning myself. I’d tie her to the bed, but not by the hands, ‘cos they’d come in very useful. But getting back to what I was talking about, they come along with that carpet, to our village, they say they’re looking for a buyer, they say this and that, it’s nice and cheap, it’s a real bargain, lady, so you think about it; on top of the carpet they’ll chuck in a ring made of stainless gold for free, so you think some more, and finally you say no, and you mean no, end of story, you don’t have to explain yourself to the Gypsies, do you? So they say they’re going now, but they’re lingering, saying lady, lady, why not buy the carpet—the opportunity won’t repeat itself… fucking right, you can be sure it won’t, ‘cos the owners won’t let their carpet get nicked a second time. So finally they leave; the house was full of people, children, the husband, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, grandchildren, the neighbour over for coffee, and then it turns out the gold chains have gone, the ones the kids got for their first holy communion and first confession in one—just as holy or even more so, ‘cos without the one you couldn’t have the other—those chains were hidden in the sideboard. Sometimes the TV’s gone—the moment no one was watching it they took it away, or it’s a man’s leather jacket that’s gone, or other valuable crap like that.

Τηεψ ωερε ηερε βεφορε τηε ωαρ τοο, σομε οφ τηεμ φορ γοοδ, Ι δον τ κνοω φορ συρε χοσ Ι δον τ ρεμεμβερ, Ι ωασ τοο ψουνγ. Ι σαιδ εαρλιερ ηοω ολδ Ι αμ, ωηιχη σηοωσ Ι χουλδν τ ηαϖε σεεν ιτ μψσελφ ανδ δον τ κνοω ωηατ ιτ ωασ αλλ λικε βεφορε τηε ωαρ. Σομεονε τολδ με αβουτ τηεμ—maybe the Captain was bemoaning their fate when he was drunk, ‘cos even though they’re darkies, even if I hate them and I’d immediately kick out any of them who came into my yard without a by your leave, the main thing is not to exaggerate. What’s happened to them is nothing but weeping and wailing.

Sometimes when I’m drunk I feel pity for the lot of them welling up inside me, tears squirt from my eyes unasked for, then all you can do is huddle up to a mate and cry on his shoulder, with all the darkies before your eyes, all the people who used to be alive but aren’t any more.

The Villa Decius Writer's Guesthouse Rogue Gallery

2006-12-13T18:10:00.000+01:00

But before we start, let me introduce you to the players.

Writers, always secretly aware that they really have no social standing whatsoever and forever striving to improve on that condition, are constantly competing among each other to be cool.

It's in the way we dress (or refuse to dress well). It's in the way we talk about art. It's in the way we seek out the perfect description for a leaf and hope it will be recognized as much better than someone else's description of a leaf. It's in the way I try to tear down sacred cows and provoke a fight by claiming that everything about art is crap. (It's not true of course – as Sturgeon said, only 90% of everything is crap. Nor did it work. My game is an old game and no one took it seriously, alas.)

It's a competition that is never spoken, never acknowledged and is often subconscious, but deep inside we are always competing to be Coolest Writer. So now that the competition is over, here are the winners.

One more thing: Over nearly three months I learned to respect and love all these people, though I hardly know most of them and will see few of them ever again. In some way I consider all of them friends. The Villa Decius experience was only partly about Krakow. Mainly, it was about them.

Most Mystical: Ambrosi Griszikaszwili

2006-12-13T17:59:00.000+01:00

Ambrosi won the prize hands-down for Best-Dressed Man, which automatically puts him in close competition for Coolest Writer. But he is disqualified by the fact that he has already won the prize for Most Mystical Personality.
Ambrosi looked good in a three-piece; he had taste in color combination, a woman would not fear to venture into the opera on the arm of this man. In fact, he was always going off the opera or something like that. He looks not only cultivated, he looks like he has a job. Hell, he does have a job. He is an economist, works in the public relations department of the National Bank of Georgia (next door to Russia, not in the Southern US) and is a regular contributor of learned articles on the economy to various Georgian publications. So what is he doing in a literary charity house with a bunch of loser-poets?
Ambrosi's true love appears to be literature and he indulges his love by translating literature from the Polish into Georgian. Translation is a money-losing proposal in most countries, and it is that even more so in Georgia with its population under 5 million people. But Ambrosi has found a way to do it and finance the venture as well: He translates books (in this case, a book by a great Polish journalist) at his own expense, then he pays for the printing as well, bypassing a publisher altogether.
Then he takes the copies to the Polish ambassador or other Polish institution and hawks his books to them, who buy the books in order to redistribute them to their contacts in Georgia – for them, it is a way of spreading Polish culture. Does he actually make any money this way, or does he simply cover his costs? I have asked him that several times, but I don’t think I got a straight answer. But he is an economist, he must know what he's doing. Maybe all writers should start out as economists.
One day he cooked for us. That is, he imported his ex-wife and son, and she cooked for us, a Georgian dish they called "cold meal." It consisted of cold chicken in a cold sauce of nuts and something else. Whatever else it was, it was fabulous. She gets the Prize for Best Meal Cooked in the Villa Guesthouse.
Ambrosi speaks limited English and my Georgian is also limited, and that difficulty of communication did a lot to form his personality as perceived by those of us who did not speak Georgian. Whereas lack of language would make another man seem simple, it lent him an aura of transcendency. With or without language, Ambrosi was forever calm, satisfied and grounded, but he employed his English to make himself seem wise. Though he was often a good sport enough to join us at the table and try to communicate in English, just as often he .limited his language to a knowing "Ye-e-s." There was something about that "Ye-e-s" that radiated calm, even wisdom.
For a long time I thought he was using that "Ye-e-es" in the sense of "Yes," but after a while we learned that there was more to it than that. Andi picked up on it first. We passed Ambrosi as he was leaving the Villa on a bike and asked, "Where are you going?" He answered: "Ye-e-s." Andi asked me, "Did he not understand the question, or did he understand it better than we?" Yes, there is a there. There is only one there. No need to say where it is, it is the only there where worth going to. The question is only whether we are going. And yes, Ambrosi was going there. He was perhaps the only one of us who knew that the there was there.

Most Enigmatic: Larysa Andriejewska

2006-12-13T16:59:00.000+01:00

Tall and shy, Larysa wins the prize for Biggest Enigma. She levitated through the house like a ghost. She would appear in the kitchen late at night, nod and say "hello," one of the few English words she knew, and make tea, and then you would turn around and she was gone again. Leaving lots of speculation behind. Was she shy or did she just hates us all? I asked her to dance with me once – it happens once in a while when I am in a very good mood – but she declined, citing a cold.
She tended to have breakfast around 2pm and dinner after midnight. One morning around 5am I came down to the kitchen to get coffee so I could wake up and found Larysa and Tanja, both being Ukrainian, wrapped up in conversation. But Tania refused later to tell us what it was about. On another occasion, she poured some kind of vodka into a pan and lit it on fire and served us all a warm, spicey drink. After she won the Nobel Prize wager (see below), she cooked us a heaping, steaming platter of Turkish rice-and-chicken-dish and thereafter would dare to come among us on some occasions and sit and drink or smoke and nod at certain points in the conversation. It was then we began to notice a beautiful smile.
Larysa, it turns out, is a translator. I could not figure out what she translates, other than from the Polish into the Ukrainian, but I did learn that her husband is a famous Ukrainian poet and her daughter has already translated Stephen King short stories into Ukrainian. Somehow, both facts made her very cool. Here is a poem by her famous husband:

Untitled
by Ihor Rymaruk

Keep talking, keep talking.
You’ve managed to utter just one word —
while hundreds of words keep disappearing,
keep getting lost forever, with no return,
the eyes needlessly
leap over the cemetery gate.
Keep talking.
Why do you keep silent?
Perhaps for years you’ve shuddered
at every knock on the door?
Or, perhaps, like a movie camera,
glory closes in on you now —
for that one word?
And so — to ennoble the film,
you’re scrubbing away everything else from your memory,
like blood from the floor.
Is this not why your spirit
is so silent and stubborn?
Just like the wax figure of Karmeluk*
standing in a refurbished museum tower —
holding a sign: “Do not touch.”

*(Ustym Karmeluk (1787–1835) was a Ukrainian rebel leader who fought against social and national injustice. A wax figure of him is at the Kamianets-Podilsk fortress.)
Unbeknownst to us, she was secretly famous in her own right. One day, Katja came back from an expedition into town and announced that she had seen Larysa outside the university surrounded by eager students. Apparently she had given a lecture there on translating, but when confronted directly about it, she admitted nothing, but instead only nodded and smiled and retreated into her room. Leaving us to speculate in an almost jealous, admiring way.

Most Heartfelt Patriot: Andrej Chadanowicz

2006-12-13T16:46:00.000+01:00

Andrej gets the prize for Most Heartfelt Patriot

More than anything, Andrei the Patriotic Belarussian (whenever anyone said "White Russia," which is the literal translation, he immediately corrected them: "I am from Belarus") is a physical poet. It's the way he lifts his arms straight out from his shoulders, like a champion flexing his muscles or a bear about to embrace or squeeze you.

Here's a German translation of one of his poems (courtesy of www.lyrikline.de, which has more of his poems and spells his name Khadanovich.)

Brief an die Freiheit

Wir sind noch eine ungeborene Nation,
wir sind Häftlinge versteinerter Eizellen,
wir sind wirr denkende Vegetation;
mancher schon ein Spitzbube, mancher noch ein Bub,

mancher schreibt und führt die jungen Männer
mit althergebrachten Phrasen in die Irre:
Kämpfer, Fleißiger, Held, Draufgänger
Titan oder Titanik der lokalen Renaissance.

Verdrossen zählen wir den Lauf der Jahre,
Jahre im Gefängnis schleichend, lang wie Schlangen!
Wo ist sie denn, die vollbusige Dame,
mit der wir auf die Barrikaden gelangen?

Was wir besitzen, würden wir ihr zu Füßen schleudern!
Und die Wächter hören unser Flehen,
wenn wir nachts in unseren bunten Träumen
diese Beauté mal unbekleidet sehen.

Wir fällen Bäume, behauen Stein,
Wir graben Gruben, konzipieren Kanäle,
erwarten Besuch, ertragen die Pein,
zählen die Tage, vergöttern unser unübertrefflichs Sein.

Denn wir glauben, der uns umgebende Dreck
wird noch zu wunderbarem Mist in unsrem Heim.
Durch das vergitterte Fenster mit Schreck
härten wir den Atem für das Atmen in der Freiheit.
At his readings, he plays guitar: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, the Eagles' "Hotel California" and a few others, all translated into Belarussian. He sings in a sensuous voice that has a firm yet gentle grasp of the melody, and when he gets to the chorus of Hotel California, he doesn't sing "Welcome to Hotel California" but something like,

"My heart belongs to Belarussia,
My heart is still there,
I love my native land
Like I love you."

In that moment his voice in full of longing, and you understand how close patriotism comes to love.

Hippest Pa: Serhij Zhadan

2006-12-13T16:40:00.000+01:00

Serhij changed radically in the last moments of his stay in the villa guesthouse.

Rumors were attached to him when he came. He was a big bestselling writer in the Ukraine. A hipster, an author of cool and dangerous novels and poetry, and a rock 'n' roll singer too. He gave a reading in the Ukraine before I arrived, but the others traveled hundreds of miles to attend it and reported to me later that he was surrounded by admiring female fans. I witnessed him in action in Krakow: He shot the words off the page as if he were a verbal machine gun, chopping the air with his hand as he did it (see below).

He was stand-offish. I learned nothing about him from himself. But one night I was talking to his fellow Ukrainian Tanja told her, as a joke, that Serjih had spoken to me about her, and said that he thought she wasn't a very good writer. Poor Tanja. Always joking, never taking anything seriously – when I said that, her face dropped, she nearly choked. It was the worst thing she had ever heard and I had trouble convincing her it was just a joke. That told me something about Serhij. But he made one false move. A few days before leaving, he showed up one morning with a young blond boy in tow: Ivan, his son. Suddenly the cool chain-smoking, cutting-edge hipster was a tender, responsible father. We watched in awe as they cooked hot dogs together. And this just in (Jan '08): His book "Anarchy in the UKR" has just been translated into German and published at Suhrkamp. Spiegel Online gave it a good review and called Zhadan a "post-proletariat punk" (here) and it's available on Amazon.de:

Best Poet's Poet: Nicolai Kobus

2006-12-13T16:19:00.000+01:00

Kobus is a poet's poet. He dresses like one – pony tail, jackets and often in black - he talks like one, he thinks like one. He's not about turning his personal experiences into poetry, he is about poetry itself, in the sense of "There's a hell of a of poems out there and I want to read them all and nothing else." I have never met anyone who knows so much about German poems and poets. That is the world he lives in and that is the world he writes about.

I think I feared him most. He seemed most closely attached to the German high culture establishment and it was clear that we would rub. How was I to know a poet's poet could love pop culture? And have a sense of humor? And be good to hang out with? And be vodka-proof? I ended up really liking the guy, and that's when I took a second look at his poetry.

I liked his cycle of poems best called the "Calendar of Sighs," in which he writes a love poem to "Anna" for every month of the year. The first time I heard them, they seemed incredibly sexy. When I took a closer look that them, I realized that there is hardly any actual sex in them at all. It's just the language. Kobus may be describing water, rain, drainage, but his lines still exude sex. Here's one of them:

ach anna
seufzerkalendarium

1
ach anna im januar bin ich ein könig. ein könig im regen mit tropfnassem haar. Es braucht so wenig bewegung ein könig zu sein. eigentlich reichte es ohne regung als ein stein die wolkenbrüche durchzustehn und um sich die pegel steigen zu sehn.

mittlerweile anna weiß ich es ist gleich ob ich gehe oder renne im regen – ich werde in jedem fall weich und nass. ach anna ich sag dir was: im januar bin ich der könig der siebenundzwanzig stürzbäche. könig der reißenden rinnsteinströme. könig gefluteter abwassersiele. Mein reich liegt jenseits gebrochener deiche. überspülte felder bis zum horizont.

am morgen anna bin ich das nordmeer. Ich bin eine wasserpfütze. des abends trockne ich aus von den rändern her.

But most of his poetry I heard or read while I was in the Villa guesthouse is poetry-referential. He takes an unfinished poem by Gottfried Benn and finishes it. He takes Rilke's "The Panther," renames it "The Poet" and has the chutzpa to correct Rilke, making the point that animals don't really dislike their cages. I like that. Here’s an anagram he wrote based on a Trakl poem (the original first, the anagram second):

Rondel (Georg Trakl)

Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage,
Des Abends braun und blaue Farben:
Des Hirten sanfte Flöten starben
Des Abends blau und braune Farben
Verflossen ist das Gold der Tage.

lodern (Kobus)

dass inselvers oft: rage geld tod
daneben bussard und fernab blaue
feen sehn trist da raben totenfels
und faerben laub absurden abends
gold der tage: verfassend solist

After he had written this in Krakow, Kobus realized that Trakl had died here, of a cocaine overdose.

Here's one based on a poem by Gottfried Been entitled (something like) "Come, let us gather together, he who speaks not is dead." Kobus turned it into "He who fucks not is dead":

komm
oder was dichter wirklich zu sagen haben

komm, vögeln wir zusammen
wer vögelt ist nicht tot
es zittern doch die strammen
schenkel sehr vor lauter not.

komm, treiben wir’s im freien
komm, das ende droht
wir sabbern, stöhnen, schreien
wer vögelt ist nicht tot.

allein lässt sich die wüste
lust doch nicht verdaun –
du, streichle deine brüste
laß uns das bett versaun!

und schon so nah den lippen
sie sind so prall und rot –
komm, fang jetzt an zu strippen
wer vögelt ist nicht tot.

If I were a publisher, I would hire him to write a lexicon of German poetry – from Goethe to graffiti - in the form of revisions, corrections, anagrams, parodies, inspirations etc. Poems about the history of poetry. I would buy it.

His prize: Best Poet's Poet.

Most Interesting Way of Looking At Life: Katja Thomas

2006-12-13T16:06:00.000+01:00

Katja is a tall, lanky girl in her mid-twenties whose charm is one part her affinity for birds, one part her sense of humor and a third part the fact that she has never grown up and probably does not have the least intention of ever doing so. She has a way of fumbling about with her long fingers in front of your face when she talks, and often she'll let off a barely audible, breathy laugh at some little thing she's seen.

One day she told us a story of how she washed her outside windows from the inside: She thrust her arms into the air, pulling the window down, stooped, twisted, got her arms up on the outside of the window, all the time dancing back and forth like … well, like Big Bird in a matting ritual. It was a joy to behold.

She likes little things. She once told a story of how she left a single potato on her plate and began to feel sorry for it, as if it felt lonely. While the others fought about Marxism, the only references to news articles she ever mentioned was about a swan in some lake somewhere that had fallen in love with a peddle boat shaped like a swan, and followed it around the lake all day in total devotion.

Her mother sometimes tells her to write something funny. I have to say, I tend to agree: Katja has a quiet sense of humor that does comes across in her work, but I’ll bet there's more. I suggested to her a compendium of stories about unlikely animal love stories and I think she's even considering it. Just you wait: If she does it, it won’t be what you expect.

As a student at the Leipzig Literary Institute, Katja writes "texts" of the kind that are popular in our disoriented society. They are called texts because they are not short stories or articles or poems or anything else that you can put your thumb on, yet, because they are written with a certain expertise, are still literature. In other words, bits and pieces. Descriptions of this and that. Thoughts on this and that. But she is so devoted to finding or creating a new perspective on something other people haven't noticed, her texts slowly suck you in until you are seeing the world not full-on, but from around some corner you didn't think existed. Katja knows it exists.
Here's one of her short texts:

Liebeserklärung

„Ich habe gerade 38 SMS von dir bekommen. Sollte das so sein?“ Ich hatte dir keine 38 SMS geschickt und kannte dich nicht. Als wir uns dann das erste Mal trafen, sagtest du: „Ach das macht nichts, jeder hat mal so einen Pickel. Man kriegt sie immer dann, wenn man sie nicht will.“ Wann will man Pickel? Du küsstest knapp daneben.
„Wie oft muss man Gladiolen gießen?“, frag ich dich, du hast sie mitgebracht. „Ins Wasser stellen, nicht gießen“, antwortest du. Gestern habe ich verweste Rosenblätter von der Tischplatte gekratzt und es wurde Zeit, dass neue Blumen kommen. Ich habe nur eine Vase mit Vögeln, die farblich nicht zu den Gladiolen passen. Ich niese gegen die Vase. Du sagst, ich erkälte mich, weil ich draußen in der Kälte immer den Mund aufmache. Ich dürfe kalte Luft nur durch die Nase einatmen. Du willst dich nicht anstecken.
Ich sage, gut, dann also keinen Kuss jetzt, das passt mir gut.
Du sagst, immer dreh ich dir die Worte im Mund rum.
Ich sage, da komm ich gar nicht ran. Ich glaube eher, sie verrutschen dort von ganz allein.
Du meinst, eher verrutschten sie in meinem Ohr.
Ich höre immer ganz andere Sachen, als du sie sagst. Ich liebe dich nicht an den richtigen Stellen, ich weiß.
Ach, ich geh ins Bad. Dort sitze ich auf der Toilette und merke dann so richtig, dass du nicht mit im Bad bist. Nur deine Zahnbürste. Und dein Shampoo für feines Haar.
Ich sitze auf der Klobrille, bis ich einen roten Druckring auf den Beinen habe.
Ich finde, so feines Haar hast du gar nicht.
Es ist elektrisch aufgeladen, aber nicht fein. Aber das macht nichts.

I wish I had more, but that's all she gave me.

Her Prize: Most Interesting Way of Looking At Life

Interlude: The Loading Bar

2006-12-13T15:06:00.000+01:00

Toward the end of our stay, I asked Katja how much progress she was making in her project of finding herself. She said she couldn't attach a value to it. Germans are always avoiding questions by saying "I don’t want to generalize," or, "You can't express it in numbers."

I said, "Yes you can: If the project of finding yourself were a loading bar on a computer, at what percent would it be right now?"

She refused to answer that question for several days, but shortly before we had to leave, she gave me an answer: 80% I was surprised. I would think that of all of us, she would be least "loaded."

"But there's another loading bar going at the same time," she said. "Deloading. That's at about 50%."
I asked Kobus if the project of finding himself were a loading bar on a computer, where would it be now? He said: "At about 75%. But frozen there."
My Loading Bar:

If I had a "becoming myself" loading bar, I think it would be closer to 51%, 52%. Maybe that's not true. I am very set in my ways, I have strong opinions about who I should be and I am well into the second half of my life. Probably it should be about 80% or more. But I can’t bring myself to do that. I want it to go on and on. It feels like I have only recently earned the right to find myself ion the first place, or gotten on the right track. I want it to go much further than just another 20%, and I don't really care where.

Best New Writing Hope: Tanja Malarchuk

2006-12-13T14:59:00.000+01:00

"I don't even want to be a writer," said Tanja, who has published two books of novellas and has a contract for a fourth. "I think I will never write anything again. I hate writing."

Ironically, though we hardly spoke, and though I could never understand what she wrote, I had the feeling that Tanja was one of the most interesting writers there. She never took anything too seriously, which I thought was a good prerequirement for writing. She was always laughing. When I asked her what she regretted about her stay in Krakau, she said she should have not bothered to write a word and simply used the opportunity to travel all around the place and see everything she could. She didn’t want to leave.
She wrote about her family, which grounded her writing in the real. And then there was her tendency for big myth. She told me tales of the forests and countrysides in the Ukraine, where she is from: the molfars, the mavkas, the legendary robber Ivon Soly whose ghost still roams the highways, the ghosts of dead women that haunt the forests and are beautiful, but have holes through their backs, and when they seduce young men, they eat them. She loves that stuff, and she loved watching old Hollywood movies on DVD in her room. We discussed the proper way of doing the Robert De Niro-in-front-of-the-mirror scene in Taxi Driver. I thought: That's a real writer.
So I told her: "You're a writer, Tanja, I can feel it."

She said: "You only think that because I talk like one when I'm speaking English. But when you speak a foreign language you are a different person."

I told her: "You have to get out of Kiev." She gets the prize for Best New Writing Hope.

Best Friend: Erica Fischer

2006-12-13T14:52:00.000+01:00

Did I ever mention that journalists are the best people in the world to hang out with? They are generally well-traveled and informed, much more so than most people, more so also than most other kinds of writers. And because they have seen so much, they are relaxed, they have developed a distance between themselves and what's going on. They have a good bullshit-detector. They take everything with a pinch of salt and a sense of humor. This way of seeing the world is far more grown-up than most other ways. They also know how to hold a conversation.
So I was glad to find out that the journalist Erica Fischer was among us, and, predictably, it is she I hung out with most. When she was younger, Erica was a diehard feminist, maybe even close to a militant feminist, in Vienna, where she grew up. When I took a look at her website (www.erica-fischer.de), which has a photo gallery of all the fantastic things she did, I realized how much she believed in what she did. She was really out there protesting, activating, working at creating a better world. I don’t think I've ever believed in anything enough to do something like that. Her passion and courage was overwhelming. I was impressed, and – I'm not ashamed to admit it – a little bit in love.
Now, she writes mainly about Jewish themes. She had a bestseller with "Aimee and Jaguar," the true story of a German woman and Jewish woman who fell in love during the Third Reich. I accompanied Erica to a theater where the film made from her book was shown and where she had a discussion afterwards. She was quickly surrounded by beautiful young women – lesbians - whose lives she had touched with that book. She wishes her book and the movie would have more effect on people in the sense of teaching them about the Holocaust than it does on young lesbians. But what she forgets is that people don’t write fan letters to authors who have opened their eyes to anti-Semitism. But the effect is still there.
Here at the Villa Guesthouse Erica finished her next book (her twelfth, I think), a very personal book about her relationship to her tyrannical mother and her troubled, suicidal brother in Vienna. She read a few pages to us: It is personal, intense, lyrical, powerful and fascinating, and I think there is potential here for a big success. I keep telling her that, but she doesn't believe me. But no one believes an American. She doesn’t believe me when I say Marx didn’t understand a thing about the economy, and I am right about that, so maybe I will be right about this, too.

Here are the first few pages:

Der Schmerz sticht zu wie ein Messer, ein starres Korsett umklammert Nacken und rechte Schulter. Ich kann den Hals nicht mehr drehen, Zurückschauen ist aussichtslos. Sogar das Atmen tut weh.
Zu spät. Das Telefon schrillt in Pauls Wohnung sechshundert Kilometer entfernt, dreimal, fünfmal, zehnmal. Die Wohnung ist klein, bis zum zweiten Klingelton ist der Flur von jeder Stelle aus zu erreichen. Dort steht das Telefon auf einem niedrigen Schränkchen, gleich neben der Eingangstür. Beim Telefonieren kann man sich im Spiegel sehen. Drei Schritte rechts das Bad mit dem Klo. Daneben die Kammer für den Staubsauger und die Urlaubskoffer.
Die Wohnung ist leer, ich kann es förmlich hören, der Klang der Klingel hohl. Dieses widerwärtige schwarze Telefon mit dem Schmutz unter der Wählscheibe. Der Hörer schwer und unhandlich. Wie oft habe ich ihnen gesagt, sie sollen ein neues Telefon bei der Post bestellen, es kostet nichts. Ein modernes Tastentelefon, mit dem man telefonieren kann, ohne sich den Finger zu verstauchen, neu, leicht und sauber. Doch alles Neue macht ihnen Angst.
Oder: Mein Bruder liegt röchelnd auf dem Bett, würde nicht abheben, auch wenn er noch könnte. So ist es schon einmal gewesen, vor zwanzig Jahren.
„Ruth, Paul röchelt!“ Die Stimme der Mutter am Telefon hysterisch. Sie wollte über Nacht wegbleiben und kam überraschend zurück. Er lag auf seinem schmalen Jugendbett im Kabinett und röchelte. Über ihm türmte sich seine Bibliothek. Die Dichter und Denker schauten teilnahmslos auf ihn hinunter.
„Mach kein Theater“, schnauzte ich die Mutter am Telefon an. Wenn sie Gefühle zeigte, wurde ich zu Eis. Dass sie es damals schaffte, die Rettung zu rufen, wundert mich heute noch. Wohin er gebracht wurde, ließ sie mich nicht wissen, ich musste es selbst herausfinden. Das hatte ich davon.
Im Spital klang Pauls Atem wie durch einen Lautsprecher verstärkt, Plastikschläuche überall, der Magen bereits ausgepumpt. Er warf den Kopf hin und her, und wenn er die Augen einen Schlitz weit öffnete, sah man nur das Weiße.

Es ist tief in der Nacht und plötzlich stiller als sonst. Meine Berliner Wohnung liegt an einer Pflasterstraße. Wenn ein Auto vorüber fährt, poltert es. Rund um meinen schmerzenden Hals ist die Welt erstarrt. Meine Stimme am Telefon klingt fremd, wie eine automatische Ansage. Die Kusine. Merkwürdig, dass ich in Wien tatsächlich eine Kusine habe, wir sind einander in der letzten Lebensphase meiner Mutter näher gekommen. Sie hat sich um sie gekümmert, und um Paul.
„Warten wir bis morgen“, bittet sie. Sie ist erkältet, und draußen türmt sich der Schnee. Doch warten kann ich nicht.
„Ich melde mich wieder.“
Das Kreischen des Telefons durchschneidet die Stille.
„Ja?“ Meine Stimme ist tonlos. Die Feuerwehr ist über die Balkontür eingestiegen, berichtet die Kusine, auch krank und um drei Uhr früh immer noch effizient.
„Wir werden ein neues Glas in die Balkontür einsetzen lassen müssen.“
Sie denkt immer an alles. Die Wohnung ist leer, sagt sie, mustergültig aufgeräumt. Auf dem Couchtisch ein Schlüsselbund, die Schlüssel passen in die Wohnungstür. Daneben drei beschriftete Kuverts. Sie hat nichts angerührt. Sie klingt erleichtert, eine aufgeräumte Wohnung ein Zeichen von Normalität. Gewiss ist sie froh, kein Blut vorgefunden zu haben, keinen am Fensterkreuz hängenden Paul, ja nicht einmal einen röchelnden Paul. Eine aufgeräumte Wohnung beruhigt.
Ich rufe eine andere Kusine an, in Sydney. Vorher überprüfe ich, welche Tageszeit dort ist. Auf keinen Fall will ich sie wegen einer Frage wecken, deren Antwort ich schon kenne. Meine englische Stimme klingt noch fremder. Noch nie habe ich mit Australien telefoniert. Wenn man in Wien aufgewachsen ist, telefoniert man nicht mit dem Ausland. Nein, Paul ist nicht hier, meldet die australische Kusine als ob sie die Frage nicht überraschte. Macht nichts, war nur so ein Gedanke gewesen.
Ein neues Leben in Australien beginnen, Pauls Traum. Oder in New York. Die Emigranten von damals haben es auch geschafft, sagte er. Sie kamen mit nichts und haben sich ein neues Leben aufgebaut.
„Damals gab es Hilfsorganisationen“, wandte ich ein, „du bist kein Flüchtling. Die Schoa ist vorüber. Das Leben in den Vereinigten Staaten ist hart. Wenn du es schon hier nicht schaffst, wie erst dort?“
Das war böse, das hätte ich nicht sagen sollen.
„Du weißt nicht, mit wem du es zu tun hast!“, blaffte er zurück.
Ich verstand. Immer diese Drohung, seit Jahrzehnten schon.
Als die australische Kusine und ihr Mann ein Jahr zuvor in Wien waren, ging ich mit Paul das Nachtmahl einkaufen. Meinl am Graben, das vornehmste Geschäft der Stadt. Er suchte die teuersten Sachen aus, Käse, Schinken, Lachs, Wein. Ich wollte ihn mäßigen. Die Familie hat immer sparsam gelebt, große Sprünge konnten sich unsere Eltern nicht erlauben. Nach dem Tod des Vaters war die Mutter stolz, mit der kleinen Pension so gut zu haushalten, dass immer noch Geld für den Urlaub blieb. Der Urlaub musste sein, seit den fünfziger Jahren fuhr die Familie jedes Jahr in den Urlaub, nach Italien, Jugoslawien, Griechenland. Für diesen Höhepunkt des Jahres musste man sich im Alltag einschränken. Und jetzt Meinl am Graben. Paul war wie im Rausch. Aufgeregt packte er immer mehr Köstlichkeiten in den Einkaufswagen.
„Es ist ja nur für dieses eine Mal“, sagte er.
Er sagte nicht „das letzte Mal“, das nicht. Aber es klang so.
I was in awe of her and I still am. She's a freelancer like I am and has the same kind of financial insecurities that I do. I asked her how she manages to deal with it and she shrugged and said, "I'll be working till the day I die. That's fine with me." That's courage.

Her prize: Best Friend.

Most Intense Writer: Mirosław ("Mirek") Nahacz

2006-12-13T13:56:00.000+01:00

When we talk about Mirek, we're talking about hardcore cool.

The first thing we came to understand about this Warsaw Pole is that he has the physiology of an alien. He starts in on beer early in the morning (that is, when he wakes up, which in the beginning at least was not early in the morning). Then he plugs speakers into his laptop and turns up the screaming thumping techno-whatever music he listens to. Then he can start working. (He also DJed for us on our Vodka Nights.) By the time he is through working in the evening (and he really sits in his room and works all day), he is ready to do some real drinking, so he calls his pals in Cracow and off they go until early in the morning (in this case I mean early in the morning in absolute terms).

But he got more work done than all of us put together. Before our very eyes, he wrote the entirety of his fourth novel - in three months. We were astounded and jealous. To do this, he stepped up the pace. Toward the end, in the last month, he would really get up early in the morning – 6am or 7am. We could tell because the bass shook the entire house. And he would work. When he was finished, in the end of November, he printed it out, read a few pages of it before an audience in the Lokator, and went off and partied with his friends until it was time to get on a train to Warsaw in the morning (and, a few weeks after that, onto the plane for India, where he was determined to experience something life-altering).

Mirek's first book was about young party life in Warsaw, something he clearly knows a lot about, and it was his biggest hit. The next two novels were more ambitious, though less popular: he described them to me as somewhat surrealistic.

Mirek is 22.

His fourth novel, the one he finished in Cracow, is the most ambitious of all: It is the attempt to combine pop with art. This is something I dreamed of as a kid and probably something a lot of young writers today dream of: Take a story as exciting and popular as an airplane novel and write in a language fit for Shakespeare. (I always wanted to do that with a sword and sorcery novel in the style of Conan. It didn’t work out.) He calls it - I think – "The Amazing Tale of Robert Rubber."

But the coolest thing about him is love. Not only did he get into a fight with the presenter at his reading over love – the presenter felt that love was a bit corny and things like politics were more important, while Mirek made clear that in his opinion love is the most important thing of all.
We had also been speculating for some time about the tattoo on his arm with the name "Ania" over a heart. On his last weekend, we traveled with him to Warsaw, where Katja and Tanja were to hold a reading that weekend.

At the reading, he showed up to with a young woman who seemed very happy to have him back again. When I asked her if she had any tattoos anywhere, she flashed her midriff, and suddenly everything fell into place.

And the Winner Is: Coolest Writer: Danuta Borchardt

2006-12-13T13:50:00.000+01:00

Though all these people are clearly cool writers, the prize for Coolest Writer definitely has to go to Danuta. There is no doubt about that.

It's not because she translated the coolest Polish writer ever into English: Witold Gombrowicz is sometimes referred to as the Polish James Joyce (the Poles, I believe, refer to him just by him name, and refer to James Joyce as the Polish Gombrowicz). Danuta won a prize for her translation of his classic "Ferdydurke" and is going on to translate his other two classics, "Cosmos" and "Pornographia."

Nor is it because she is dedicated to her art of translation. It took her something like seven years to translate Ferdydurke, especially because she had to invent so much of the English to go with invented Polish. Professionally, she is a psychologist (retired),and gets paid a pittance for translating – clearly this is a labor of love.

Nor is it because she has had such an interesting life. I won't reveal how old she is, but she was born in Poland and remembers fleeing the Nazis. Then came England for a while, and now she lives in (near, actually) Boston.

Nor is it because she also writes short stories on the side, two of which I am presenting here:

An Onion

Gray stockings were her favorite. They went well with all her dresses and set off their color to advantage. Red, blue, navy, coral, green. No matter which dress she wore, she knew all would be well, but especially well if the color of her dress was indigo. This carried her with gusto everywhere. But where was everywhere?
Everywhere was inner sanctum, everywhere was outer sanctum. It was the green underleaves of precaution, it was the overleaf of jeopardy. Everywhere was everytime, and everytime was everywhere. It would be in the heel of her stocking, once a hole appeared in it. Then the bald onion of her heel would take over and everywhere would be just that. The hole would take over the whole.
The onion was bitter and strong, and even policemen would cry at the sight of it. Especially one policeman, though he had even less than all the others the capacity to cry. But the sight of an onion in Amanda’s gray stocking, in the inner and outer sanctum, under and over the leaf of everywhere, was more than he could bear. He relinquished the badge of valor that he had won conditionally and reservedly, upon approval, and followed her to the end of her tether. That was somewhere he had never been before. It was at the end of a green lane where preputias were blooming, and where the scent of heretofore was bitter and sweet and obviated the scent of the onion of Amanda’s heel. Here joy rested with sadness and blended with the indigo blue of her dress.

Our Rudolph

The big sister was like a huge rambling house, a mushroom, a fungus, a toad sitting above the three little ones. She was watching over them through her windows, winking at them with her lights. Her drooping breasts were like the sagging balconies of a genteel, old house. The three little sisters were perky enough, though low to the ground. They were looking up at her and she was looking down and, at first, there was nothing oppressive about it, nothing at all. But gradually, little by little and in barely perceptible smudges, grubs and grime encroached on their minds, the way fungus spreads and engulfs. Through leaves eaten by vermin, through gaps in the everlasting sky, mortification and horror seeped into the soul-marrow of the three little ones.
It all began at the one indelible moment when the crest of the bounding sky fell to the pit of eternal abyss. When the abbots and prelates met their congregation as one eye to another and cast the great We over the little thou. When the big sister sat in the pew with her little sisters and held them by their not yet fully developed, puny wrists. The wrists squirmed and wriggled, but the vice tightened.
Outside the church the sun was shining. A breeze, now gentle, now brisk and rough, was sweeping leaves over the steps to the entrance. A man was about to enter the church when he was grabbed from behind, his arms held tight behind his back, and pushed into an incredibly beautiful car, white and shiny, golden trim all around. He was shoved into the back seat and driven off. The abbots and prelates were to catch up with the kidnappers later, such was the arrangement.
The man’s name was Rudolph. He was to have joined his sisters in the church just at the moment when the abbots and prelates were to meet the congregations as one eye meets another. However, he was delayed by a new and unexpected turn in the road, which took him through hollycobbles and hillycocks, pireas and putreas where the devilscums lived. Finally, when he arrived at the church, it was great, he thought, to have arrived there at all. He was to deliver his little sisters from their big sister and from the abbots and prelates. But the devilscums had signaled to each other in the field of the pireas, and the next rudolph that passed by was to be their victim.
The prelates had finished their sermon, the abbots had placed the last dot after We. All decked in their incredibly beautiful vestments, satin-white and embroidered in gold, they were about to leave the church. They were heading for the back door, better known as the vestry, when the three little sisters shouted:
“Where is our Rudolph?!” they shouted.
Their wrists half-worn through by their wiggling and squirming, they wanted to know where their Rudolph was. Their big sister, her breasts hanging like baboons on a sagging branch said oh shut up and behave, or I’ll knock your blocks off. Their wrists worn thin, they were white with fear and wanted to know where their Rudolph was.
“Ah, la-di-da!” sang the abbots and prelates running out through the vestry, for they were in a hurry to join the devilscums, as had been arranged. They hopped into the equally beautiful golden-trimmed white cars and drove off with a whiz. Through hollycobbles and hillycocks and beyond the field of pireas they reached the wide open country of putres and decayas, where the devilscums lived. There on the ground, stretched into a square like a painter’s canvas, lay our Rudolph. They were serving Ginseng tea that he was hardly able to drink because his head was flat on the ground. They placed a piece of yummy bread in his hand that he was not able to eat because his arms were held stretched out. And so they tempted and teased him till he confessed: yes, those were his little sisters, yes, he was going to rescue them from the grip of their big sister, and yes, he was going to prevent them from coming eye to eye with those scoundrels — the abbots and prelates. And why, pray, was he going to do all that? Because, pray, he scoffed back at them, because he was going to save them from oppression and humiliation, from frustration, degradation and mortification, and from the la-di-da and from the I’ll knock your blocks off in answer to their little questions. At which point the devilscums shoved a painter’s stretcher down his throat and another up his ass, and that was the end of our Rudolph.
The big sister is like a huge house rambling above her three little sisters. She is watching over them through her windows, winking at them with her lights. All is genteel again, and there is nothing oppressive about it, nothing at all.

Nor is it because Danuta has remained young.

There is nothing dusty, cobwebby, conservative, easily shocked or in anyway …old about her. This is the kind of person I want to be when I get older. But it's not because of that, either.

No, she wins the grand prize because of the tattoo.

Look at it. You remember your mother telling you never to get a tattoo because it will embarrass you later in life and you won’t be able to take it off? This tattoo – I think they call it "tribal" - is in a very modern style. It is not a folly of her youth:

Day #75: Thursday, Nov. 30: Time To Go

2006-11-30T13:02:00.000+01:00

It's been 75 great days in Cracow. The Poles are great people. Cracow is a great city. The denizens of the Villa Decius Guesthouse were great writers, interesting people and I hope they will remain good friends.

A few of us who were left - Erica, Tanja, Katja and her friend Katja - sat around in the Gosopda restaurant last night and discussed whether we had accomplished what we had set out to acccomplish.

The goals were wildly different: Erica finished her book but did not "finish" learning Polish; Katja did some writing and did not "find herself," but she almost did. Tanja just plain didn't want to leave.

And me? Did I accomplish anything here? I didn't finish my great renaissance novel, but I did sold two books, one of which is a comic novel, I finished the website and there was something else strange that happened. Spending 75 days surrounded by writers who take their work but not necessarily themselves very seriously, I began looking at myself a little bit differently too. Can't really say how. And no one else noticed it, I think, but I did.

Late last night around 1 a.m., I put on my headphones, found Bob Dylan's latest record on my iPod, cranked it up and wandered outside into the damp, deserted dark. I danced. Through the parking lot, around the Villa, into the park and around it, through the sculpture garden and back home. Don't know why i did that. Haven't ever done it before and will never did it again. But let me tell you: If you've never played air guitar in the dark in the fog in the middle of the night alone in the park behind the Villa Decius, you haven't lived.

Time to go.

Day #74: Wednesday, Nov. 29: Guesthouse Emptying Out For Good

2006-11-29T14:07:00.000+01:00

The house is almost empty. There have been many goodbyes, mostly associated with too much vodka much too late at night. There have been many heartfelt promises to keep in touch. Now it's time for me to go too.

What have I learned about Poland?

They use very thin napkins. Their sheets do not cover the entire mattress. The poles are great cooks.

Do I have any regrets?

Yes. That I did not buy a fly strip in the first week.

Has this experience changed me?

Let me see... When I arrived, I was struggling to turn my career from journalism toward book writing and unsure of myself in terms of whether I was really a book writer. In the Villa Decius Guesthouse, something happened. And it happened because of the other writers in the house. They took it for granted that I was a writer, like they took for granted that they were. None of us were all that successful, few of us were very established, we all had different opinions and different ways of looking at writing, but everyone felt like writers and acted like writers.

It may sound strange for a man whose been a journalist for 15 years and has already published two books, but until now I felt like a wanna-be. When I came out of the Guesthouse, I felt like a writer.

Fellow Writers of the Villa Decius, if you're listening: I owe that to you.

Day #73: Tuesday, Nov. 28: I Miss Someone

2006-11-28T16:59:00.000+01:00

Sunday Morning. A little hung-over, a little lonely. Listening to Hank Williams again.
He's telling me: You've been away from home for quite a while now.

I have been, Hank. But I have one or two things more to do here.

How long is too long? When is it time to hit the road back home?

Soon, I tell him. Very soon.

Day #72: Monday, Nov. 27: The Gospoda

2006-11-27T17:00:00.000+01:00

The Gospoda makes a great plate of pirogis and as been a great place to hang-out. On one of our last nights, we found out that the owner, to whom we had been speaking mainly English the whole time, speaks nearly perfect German and has spent time in Germany with her husband, a physicist who worked at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin.

Day #71: Sunday, Nov. 26: The Last Readings

2006-11-26T17:01:00.000+01:00

Oh yes, and I almost forgot. The reason we were in Warsaw was because Tanja and Katja were invited to a multi-lingual reading alongside a couple of more established Warsaw authors. though I only stood a few lines, it seemed to me that Katja and Tanja stood their own pretty well.

Then we hit the bars.

The very next day, Nicolai recieved us in the Villa for his reading.
He too was paired with a local writer.

And again, I have to say: Not only was he miraculously somehow sober and capable of performing, he wrote rings around the guy. Ah heck, I'm just plain proud of my Decius Gang.

Day #70: Saturday, Nov. 25: Ugly and Beautiful, Palms and Monsters

2006-11-25T17:02:00.000+01:00

I had forgotten what a small town Krakow is until we took a weekend tour to Warsaw.

Big, bustling, dirty, raw and alive, Warsaw is a real city.

But it's not a faceless moloch. Alongside its historical and Soviet architecture, it has real surprises to offer.

In the middle of town there is a big intersection with a roundabout surrounded by massive flat-faced buildings that reminded me of the airy, generous squares on the Riviera. And lo and behold: In the middle of it was a palm tree.

In Warsaw! I asked our Villa-babysitter Renate how they managed to keep the thing alive in the cold and she said: "It's plastic."

Like Krakow, Warsaw also has a monster legend: A basilisk - a poisonous half-cockeral, half-snake with wings that can kill you by looking at you - haunted the cellars, streets and air of Warsaw until a hero (again, an artisan, I believe) killed it by tricking it to look into a mirror. But it is rumored to still be hiding out in the cellars here somewhere.
As we wandered through the rebuilt old town into the dark, more and more I had the feeling that we were being followed, but whenever I turned around, I saw nothing suspicious.

But the feeling grew finally I heard a fluttering, looked up and got this photo of the basilisk flying out of a window into the night. It's true, then: The basilisk lives!

Day #69: Friday, Nov. 24: Content vs. Form

2006-11-24T17:08:00.000+01:00

There it was: The glass of Nutella, just sitting there on the breakfast table.

Nutella is a creamy, chocolatey, nutty breakfast spread that is very popular in Germany and is becoming more and more popular in other parts of the world as well. It comes in a hundred different brands and flavors (This particular jar is a different brand and thus not officially Nutella, which is a trade-marked brand, but still I call it that.)

Seeing it there on the table was a clear sign that were would soon be a fight. A fight about aesthetics. That’s how things happen in these literary houses: All it takes is one little thing like a glass of Nutella to set us off and we’re at each other’s throats. This is how it happened:

Erica: Who eats Nutella around here? Isn’t that something that kids eat?

Eric: Oh my God, you just made me realize that there is more meaning in that glass of Nutella than there will ever be in a beautiful poem about a tree.

Katja: You filthy bastard, there you go disparaging the beauty of nature again, if you don’t take it back I’m going to pour this scalding coffee right in your face!

Kobus: You dirty dog! I’ve had enough of your disrespect for poetry. If you open your mouth one more time I’m going to ram this kitchen knife right into your gut!

Eric: Just you try it, you literary wimps! I’ll show you that a glass of Nutella has more meaning than a whole book of poetry! Erica would never walk through the park and say something like that about a tree: “Oh, that kind of tree is for kids.” In the Middle Ages they did, of course: Trees, birds, weather all had meaning, a crane was a symbol for Jesus, everything had meaning, but today it’s no longer the case. We see the beauty of nature and we feel transcended, closer to God perhaps, but there is very little real meaning in it.

This glass of Nutella on the other hand is full of meaning. It means childhood for most Germans, and because of that to see someone eating it makes him or her appear to be endearingly nostalgic for his/her childhood. For me, it says something specifically about German women: I have never met a German woman who doesn’t love Nutella despite all talk of diets and will secretly eat it with a spoon when no one is looking.

And there’s more: Nutella is a huge success in Germany and I think of it as a German food, but I believe – correct me if I’m wrong – that it was an Italian invention that didn’t quite work in Italy but became a big hit when exported to Germany. That’s a little piece of ironic globalism right there, and it tells you a lot about Europe, about the relationship between Germany and Italy, and about the German perspective on their own live and environment (Germans complain a lot about Americanization and hamburgers and Hollywood influencing their culture, but not many know that Nutella is from Italy).

So all this meaning is in that glass of Nutella. You can’t say that about any of the beautiful trees in the park, though you can devise a thousand ways to say the same thing over and over again: That a tree is beautiful. In fact, I would go one step further and say that glass of Nutella is of much higher cultural value to Germany than about 80% of all poems written in German.

Next time you’re in a non-German country, like, say, Poland, try this experiment: Go to a café and talk to a table with three or fours Poles sitting at it. Ask them: “Can you tell me who Lessing was? Who Heine was? What is ‘Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’?” Then ask: “Can you tell me what a Mercedes is?” Clearly, products are just as important to German culture as “culture” is, in many cases more important.

Of course, the whole point of writing poems about a tree is that you can use the tree to create an analogy to some part of your own soul. You can’t do that with a glass of Nutella. It is so fraught with meaning of its own that it overpowers the poet and defeats him entirely.

Kobus: That does it! Take this, you swine! Aaaargh!

That’s when things really heated up.

Day #68: Thursday, Nov. 23: The Truth About Litfaßsäulen

2006-11-23T11:58:00.000+01:00

You know the Litfaßsäule, those pillar plastered with ads that stand around on random sidewalks all over Europe, from "The Third Man," of course. And if you've seen that movie, you've certainly wondered if they are hollow inside. Well, now you know the truth about what – and who is inside them.

Day #67: Wednesday, Nov. 22: The Rynekites Part 3

2006-11-22T12:05:00.000+01:00

Day #66: Tuesday, Nov. 21: The Stuff of Krakow Part 2

2006-11-21T12:05:00.000+01:00

I loved these chess-stuff photos so much I couldn't decide which ones to leave out, so I didn't.

Day #65: Monday, Nov. 20: The Rediscovery of the Drinking Buddy

2006-11-20T12:06:00.000+01:00

After weeks and weeks of high-brow literary discussion and non-stop parsing of James Joyce and the aesthetics of the use of the qualifier in sentences under five words, I needed a break. So I imported my old friend Christoph the Rock 'n' Roll Doctor for a weekend.

Christoph has more of an artistic vein than I do – he plays guitar and composes (in fact, he revealed himself, standing before a busking guitarist at the Krakau Rynek, to be quite a guitar snob, if I may say so myself). But was less interested in that aspect of his personality than I was in another: He is also a great drinking buddy.

I know an old-fashioned drinking buddy may not be all that hip in certain circles, but sometimes that's precisely what a guy needs. We toured the clubs of Krakau, watched the beautiful women, watched the other guys watching the beautiful women and made jokes about to old to stand around watching the beautiful women anymore. (Though I have to admit I thought it was a little bit shameless the way he weaseled his way into everyone's heart at the Writer's Villa by whipping up an excellent pasta in the middle of the night, while I've been trying to get their attention using all my literary cunning and prowess and have made no headway so far. But that's all water under the bridge now.)
Nothing much happened, really. We bartered our way into a hip club that was closing. We sat in an old people's cafe where Lenin once sat. We climbed to the top of a mound outside the town said to be a place where old generals were buried. The strangest encounter we had was at McDonald's at four in the morning. While Christoph went in search of the toilet...

...I pulled out my camera and took a photo of a drunk Irishman. Some nights, you think drunk Irishmen are worth photographing, don't ask me why. Suddenly there was a security guard at my elbow: "No photos."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

In the meantime, Christoph was getting closer and closer to the toilet.
"Well, if it's a rule," I said, "there must be a logical explanation. Can you get the manager to come over and explain the rule to me?"

In the meantime, Christoph was still getting closer and closer to bathroom.

A conversation ensured as the manager tried to think up some reason why it would be forbidden in a place like McDonald's to take photos. No one really seemed to know, and the greater their uncertainty grew, the more I rubbed salt in the wound, by saying, "There must be a rule book around here someplace, I'm sure there's a simple enough explanation, maybe we should all go into the back office and look through the bookcase, maybe we can turn it up."

In the meantime, that toilet was down there somewhere, for sure...

Finally the McDonald's security guard and manager decided the best thing to do was to just wander off and leave me, my camera and my two cheeseburgers alone. But as they left, I heard them mutter something in Polish. Though I can't be sure, I'm pretty sure it was, "I'm not paid enough for this crap." Or something very similar.

In the meantime, Christoph was still getting closer and closer and closer to the toilet...

Christoph never did find that bathroom.

It was a great weekend of a lot of nothing special. Nothing special. Hanging around. Goofing off. With a drinking buddy, you don't have to worry so much about impressing people. You can afford to make stupid jokes, stupid comments, do stupid things, just hang around like a loser and not worry about it. It's one of the simple pleasures that guys have, and it's been such a long time since I did it. Thanks for coming, Christoph.

Day #64: Sunday, Nov. 19: Guest Blog: Photos by Christoph the Rock 'n' Roll Doctor

2006-11-19T12:07:00.000+01:00

Day #63: Saturday, Nov. 18: The Krakow Klezmer Band

2006-11-18T12:08:00.000+01:00

I get this question all the time: "Eric, there's so much Klezmer music in Krakow, what's the best Klezmer band?"

A difficult question, but I found the answer:

It's called the Krakow Klezmer Band, they mix Klezmer, Jazz and various experimental noises and such modern stuff, and they record on John Zorn's label. And they sweep you off your feet.

This is what they look like (there are four of them playing in the basement of the Camelot, but I didn't get the bass player). And they play pretty much this way too.

Day #62: Friday, Nov. 17: Mystery Mound

2006-11-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

Everyone told me: "Go out and see one of those mounds at the edge of town. There's a great view from there."

"There's a great view from the top of the church tower and I didn’t climb that, either," I said.

"Yeah, but those mounds are man-made."

"So is the church tower."

"But you can see one mound from the other mound."

"I can see one church tower from the other church tower."

"But there are some kind of generals buried underneath the mounds"

"There are a lot of kings and bishops buried under the church but I didn’t go down to see the crypt either."

"You have no sense of exploring the place you’re in, do you?"

Then Christoph arrived and said, "We really have to go see one of those mounds." So we did. It looks pretty much like a big grassy mound. I still don’t know what's so important about it. So I took a picture. And then I took some photos of the view.

Day #61: Thursday, Nov. 16: Two Doors

2006-11-16T16:54:00.000+01:00

The sacral door.
The secular door.

Day #60: Wednesday, Nov. 15: Still Life at Bus Stop

2006-11-15T16:59:00.000+01:00

Day #59: Tuesday, Nov. 14: You Can't Take Dominique Anywhere

2006-11-14T17:02:00.000+01:00

That does it. I've had enough. There was a knock on the door last night. Two or three women were standing there. They seemed surprised to see me. "Where's Dominique?" they asked. "And who the hell are you?"

I'm glad that guy is finally gone. Okay, he's the little brother of My Beautiful German Frolein, but when he had told me something about coming to Krakau to visit for a few days, I didn't listen to him. Somehow, he managed to get here and ended up sleeping in the extra bed.

Once in Krakau, he took over. Let me put something straight here. I'm the writer. I'm the intellectual. I'm the international globetrotter. So what was he doing running around Krakau as if he owned the place? He seemed to know all the cool bars instinctively. That one place, the club that went over four floors... how did he know about that? The bouncer at the door didn't even want to let me in until he noticed Dominique.

Then he started up with my so-called "friends": Talking poetry with Nicolai, DJing with Mirek, discussing Jewish history and international politics with Erica. True, I hate poetry and can't talk to Nicolai about it without getting into a fistfight. But still, that's my job.

I've been trying to get a poetic text out of Katja for months and she refuses to show me anything. I saw Dominique reading a sheaf of papers on morning, asked him what they were, and he said, "Oh, Katja gave me some of her stuff to read."

You know that old saying, "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes?" Well, not only did he take my shoes, he took my booties too, and I want them back. I'm glad he's finally gone. Don't tell the girls, though. They're still sitting on my bed, waiting for him to return.

Day #58: Monday, Nov. 13: Guest Blog: Photos by Dominique

2006-11-13T17:07:00.000+01:00

Then there's this: Eric goes to bed early. Dominique doesn't. Eric snores. Dominique can't sleep. Dominique is bored. So he starts taking photos from bed.

Day #57: Sunday, Nov. 12: The Rynekites: The Soap Bubble Maker

2006-11-12T17:24:00.000+01:00

Day #56: Saturday, Nov. 11: Razzy Dazzy

2006-11-11T09:55:00.000+01:00

The service isn't all that great, the cocktail menu is about 400 pages but has no whisky sour, the jazz band kept playing the same song in about a thousand different versions and you have the vague feeling of a tourist trap...
But I still loved the Razzy Dazzy Jazz Club, which Dominique and I visited with Katja (who snapped these photos). The tables have lamps, and they are set up on terraces that decline toward the stage, with a huge bar in the back and a balcony (where we sat, looking down).
It looks like the Cotton Club or one of those Jazz clubs in the old movies, where Benny Goodman or Billie Holiday played. One of those classic places that just don’t exist anymore. Ah, but they exist in Krakow, don’t they?

Day #55: Friday, Nov. 10: Back to Krakow... But Not Alone

2006-11-10T10:05:00.000+01:00

The next morning I woke up in a coffee shop in the Frankfurt/Hahn airport with no idea how I go there...
...and THIS staring in my face.

Day #54: Thursday, Nov. 9: Fiction or Non-Fiction, Part 2

2006-11-09T10:29:00.000+01:00

Fiction or Non-Fiction, that has been the question for the last few weeks.

We took a chance. My Beautiful German Frolein and I wrote up three book proposals – two non-fiction and one novel. I won’t say what they are about, but one non-fiction was in the style of my first book Driving Through the Dark Ages / Nibelungenreise, another non-fiction was in the style of Planet Germany, and the fiction is a comic novel set in Germany. There is another novel here in my room in Krakow but it's not ready to propose yet.)

Since we have no credentials for fiction, we were very aware that we didn’t have much of a chance with the novel. Even my Sly and Cunning Agent told us she didn’t think it would work.

But when I flew to Frankfurt to talk to my publisher and editors, something strange happened.

We sat around at first in the office then in a restaurant and chatted. I noticed that the publisher, Scherz Verlag, happens to publish Robert Little, whose son recently made a big splash with his first novel at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I asked: "Does anyone know how much the German rights for that book eventually went for?"

Someone said, "Probably about 650,000 euros."

My heart nearly stopped. That's a lot of money.

Later, at dinner, the real discussion got underway. The publisher asked this question: "Why do you want to write novels?"

I wasn't ready for that question, so I blurted out: "Because I'll never get 650,000 euros for a non-fiction book."

They said, "Exactly. We want the novel."

My heart nearly stopped again. So now I am, alongside My Beautiful German Frolein, a novelist. They took two books: the neo-Planet Germany non-fiction title and the comic novel about Germany. Not for 650,000 euros, and not for any price even vaguely near that, but it's a beginning.

About four in the morning I found myself in my hotel room with my Sly and Cunning Agent. She called My Beautiful German Frolein (an now co-author) to tell her the good news. And I stood there thinking:

1. I have to get to the bus in one and a half hours.

2. I can’t believe this is really happening. I've worked for this and wanted this and waited for this and doubted that this will ever happen since I was fifteen. And now it's really happening.

3. How the hell do you write a comic novel?

Day #53: Wednesday, Nov. 8: The Camelot

2006-11-08T10:34:00.000+01:00

Day #52: Tuesday, Nov. 7: The Real Smaug

2006-11-07T10:42:00.000+01:00

If you're a friend of dragons tales, Krakau has a great one:

It seems a cruel mean dragon named Smok (what a coincidence - Tolkien’s dragon was named Smaug) terrorized the town for many years (though frankly, to judge from the Smok-souvernirs on sale for tourists, that dragon looks pretty snuggly and sweet to me). Finally a cobbler’s apprentice named Krak figured out a way to kill it. He took a sheep and stuffed it with spices, sulfur and salpeter and set it up at the mouth of the cave. The next morning the dragon quickly devoured the sheep, and when the horrible contents of the sheep hit his stomach, the dragon desperately tried to quench his thirst by swallowing half the Vistula River – the dragon drank so much water, in fact, that he exploded. For his reward, Krak received the hand of the king’s daughter in marriage and a large part of the kingdom, including the city now called Krakau.

This legend reminds me a lot of one of the earliest legends of the Southern Rhine German town of Worms, which also celebrates a craftsman, as opposed to a strong-arm action figure, as the hero. Worms is connected to the legend of Siegfried the dragon-slayer, who, in the Nibelungenlied, slays a dragon not in Worms but in the North somewhere. But Worms has its own dragon tale (the word “Worms” may come from “Lindwurm” or dragon), which I will try to reproduce here without referring to the original text:

The dragon terrorized Worms until the residents built a wall around the town and never left it, appeasing the dragon by throwing a virgin over the wall every morning. Finally a trio of blacksmith brothers came up with an idea. They put together a suit of armor that had spikes and sword blades sticking out from it at all angles. One of the brothers got into it, then they dressed it up in a dress like a girl, and threw him over the wall in the morning when the dragon showed up. Without hesitating, the dragon devoured it. Now the blacksmith was in the dragon’s belly and he started kicking his spear-point feet and waving his knife-blade arms, cutting up the dragon from the inside and finally killing it.

I love that story, it’s the most imaginative dragon-slaying story I know. But there’s another interesting thing about it. First, the oldest record of the tale is written in a Jewish book from the old Jewish quarter. Second, there is a similar story in ancient Greece. That brings the question to mind: where does the story come from? Did the Jews in Worms hear it from the Germans, or did they bring it with them when, generations before, their forefathers wandered into Europe from the Mediterranean to set up trading posts? Could it be that one of Germany’s oldest myths – perhaps the Siegfried myth itself – came not from the Germanic tribes, but from the Jews?

Day #51: Monday, Nov. 6: Ghost Messages

2006-11-06T10:43:00.000+01:00

It's been a week now since Katja was murdered, and strange messages have begun showing up. Random photos on my camera, I can't explain where they came from.
Like this one above. I don't remember taking this, but the caption is "Art by Katja." And how about this one? Is it a photo, or did some strange... essence simply imprint itself upon my camera's thumb drive?

Then this morning everything got worse. I swear, I was not in the kitchen last night. Not only that, before i went to bed, I emptied all images out of my camera. But when I turned it on this morning, I found these photos:

Katja is here. Somewhere. Somehow. I just have to find a way to make contact with her.

Day #50: Sunday, Nov. 5: The Stuff of Krakow Part 1

2006-11-05T16:00:00.000+01:00

There's a lot of stuff in Krakow.

Day #49: Saturday, Nov. 4: The Communists Are Rewriting History Again

2006-11-04T16:09:00.000+01:00

That Proto-Austro-Militant-Femino-Marxist we all know and love has struck again! Here is the comment she wrote correcting - or perhaps simply "improving" - my report on our visit to All Saints:

"My dear friend and room neighbor in Willa Decjusza, responsible for many a happy vodka-evening, has, alas, a bad memory. I did not say "we", although, of course, he would have liked me to say so for the sake of a good line. I said: "That's why communism failed." I never was a communist, though I still embrace socialism in its milder social-democratic version of the long ago seventies. I have, in fact, contributed to the downfall of Czech communism by actively supporting Czech dissidents in and outside Czechoslovakia! (You should have seen me traveling to Prague with secret letters taped to my youthful body.) But, of course, such subtle differences are unknown in Hawaii.

Regards from Erica (www.erica-fischer.de)"

PS: Erica, if you're reading this: Should we both strike it rich with our next books, I will accompany you to Hawaii and show you why it is exactly we Hawaiians don't have a very good memory for little details or otherwise pay attention to meaningless world politics!

Day #48: Friday, Nov. 3: Space Ship

2006-11-03T16:13:00.000+01:00

This space ship must have landed years ago. Why did no one ever notice it?

Day #47: Thursday, Nov. 2: The Katja Murder Mystery Continues

2006-11-02T16:23:00.000+01:00

Something about Katja's murder bothered me. It just didn't feel right. When no one was looking, I investigated, looking through her room for clues. I found this. It's her pillow. She had been sleeping on this all the time, and didn’t know it, because it was wrapped in a white pillow case. No wonder she was tortured by strange nightmares and inexplicable visions. Did someone put this inside her pillow case on purpose, when she wasn't looking? Was it some kind of curse put on her, a Polish version of a voodoo doll? I may never know.

Day #46: Wednesday, Nov. 1: All Saints Day

2006-11-01T16:26:00.000+01:00

Hearing a rumor that the action in Poland on All Saint's Day was at the cemeteries, we found our way to the main one in the north of town. The streets around it outside were cordoned off by police. Vendors selling flowers and candles in colored plastic jars crowded the sidewalks.
It was dark. The cemetery was crowded with quietly strolling couples, families, kids, grandparents. Hardly a grave didn't display two or three candles in garish red, yellow, orange, green jars. The graves were lit up in the darkness like a thousand miniature carnivals in the dark.
In the chapel, four priests intoned Latin and Polish, and loudspeakers carried their reassuring words throughout the cemetery. Women kneeled inside and outside the chapel.
Just in back of the chapel was a shrine "To the victims of communism." It was loaded down with candles; candles spread around it like a spreading puddle of colorful lights. People kneeled, stood and watched, murmured prayers.
Erica Fischer, that stalwart Austro-Feminist-Proto-Communist, was astounded when she figured out the words on the shrine: "We couldn’t compete with this," she said. "We should have just given up."

Day #45: Tuesday, Oct. 31: All of Krakow in a Litfaßsäule

2006-10-31T16:33:00.000+01:00

Look at it closely. At the bottom you see a new film about none other than – yes, you guessed it – Pope John Paul II. I.e.: Religious tradition. In the middle you have an ad for Da Vinci's "Woman with an Ermine," Krakow's most famous art treasure. I.e.: tourism. And at the top you have what is clearly some kind of ironical poster for a cabaret or something like that: In German (and English), but in a way that every one can understand it, and sarcastic too. I.e.: Intellectualism and irony.

Day #44: Monday, Oct. 30: Mirek is alive!

2006-10-30T16:36:00.000+01:00

Already I had suspected the worst. I hadn't seen him for days. His room was strangely silent. The thundering techno-dance-beat music that otherwise shook the villa guesthouse during the day had ceased. Late at night, after three or four in the morning, i would creep down into the kitchen in hopes of finding him and a bottle of vodka waiting for me, but the kitchen was empty. Did he return to Warsaw? Or... worse? I lay in bed nights wondering if I should venture into his room and look for clues to the silence, but whenever I reached the door, a strange superstition, a fear of what I might find behind it, drove me away.

Then, today, thirsty for the comfort of a beer, I entered the dark, silent kitchen, reached into the fridge and found... this.

Oh Mirek, I forgive you! You're alive! Alive! That's all that matters!

Day #43: Sunday, Oct. 29: Too Soft and Too Hard

2006-10-29T16:38:00.000+01:00

This is a famous non-lesbian Polish writer by the name of Joanna Oparek who apparently likes to write novels featuring male lead characters, in whose voices she writes.
When Erica asked her why she, as a woman, chose to speak though male characters, she uttered a great line: “When I write as a woman, I am either too soft or too hard.”

Day #42: Saturday, Oct. 28: Cool Polish Lesbian Hang-Out

2006-10-28T16:40:00.000+02:00

There were a number of great nights out in Cracow. Cracovians, so many of them students, know how to party. But the best night was the night of the Cool Lesbian Hang-Out.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about the great journalist and bestselling writer Erica Fischer (many of which I myself have helped to spread!), but of these, the greatest is this: She is not a lesbian.

Her big hit, "Aimee and Jaguar," was a lesbian love story about a Jew and a Nazi German woman during the Third Reich. As a Jew, Erica was most interested in the Jewish/Holocaust aspect of the story. But when the movie came out, young women all around Europe identified with the love story, and so when Erica today shows up at a reading or a movie screening to answer questions afterwards, she finds herself surrounded by young lesbians who want to get to know her. “Why can’t I attract MEN with my writing?” she says helplessly.

That is an irony, but more important, it is an opportunity for guys like me and Andi, who came to visit me about a week ago, who are hanging around in Crakow on a Saturday night with nothing to do. So when Erica was invited by a handful of adoring lesbian woman to go on a pub crawl, Andi and I tagged along.

And what a pub crawl it was. Our experience included insulting a non-lesbian Polish agent (I was just trying to make a joke), insulting a non-lesbian Polish writer (it was just a joke!) and trying to convince a non-lesbian writer-to-be to come meet the non-lesbian agent and non-lesbian writer (how could she reject my offer and instead she chose to stay at the bar talking to the drunk Scotsman? Was that some kind of a joke?).

Not to mention the voluble Polish guy we met in Kasimiersz and only managed to escape from after promising to buy him a single malt scotch if he found us in another bar during the course of the night. He found us.

One of the final bars we ended up in was the best: the Red Dog or the Red Dog Vomiting or something like that. Erica claims it was not a lesbian bar, but that doesn’t matter to me.

Maybe I should insert a caveat here. It appears that Erica is monitoring this blog, having heard silly, inflated rumors that I am spreading outright lies and slander about her person. Oh, these paranoid artists!

So let me state for the record that when I call the bars we attended “cool lesbian hang-outs,” they may not have been lesbian hang-outs in the sense of “actually” being lesbian hang-outs; and the women we were with may not have all been lesbians in the sense that they were “actually” lesbians, but that is just reality.

But don't forget one thing. I'm a guy.

The very thought of hanging around with someone who attracts lesbians drives me nuts and thus the entire evening was one solid blur of lesbians in bars. I can't help it. It's in the genes.

Still, for me, Cracow will always be the place of the Ultimate Cool Lesbian Hang-Out.

Day #41: Friday, Oct. 27: Into the Tatra

2006-10-27T16:49:00.000+02:00

Day #40: Thursday, Oct. 26: Love and Tourism

2006-10-26T16:55:00.000+02:00

Day #39: Wednesday, Oct. 25: The Cloister

2006-10-25T17:04:00.000+02:00

Day #38: Tuesday, Oct. 24: St. Mary's

2006-10-24T17:14:00.000+02:00

Day #37: Monday, Oct. 23: They Got Katja

2006-10-23T17:20:00.000+02:00

I never would have recorded the horrible deed on camera if I hadn't heard her blood-curdling screams. They went on for hours. I know because I was watching my clock as I stood behind my door, listening. When it was over, I ventured out to get this photo with a camera, and saw that someone was still there - I only saw the legs. However, I am not just any writer. My reactions are honed by years of experience. I no longer have to think about it. No, I am not one of those men who stand around discussing options and weighing circumstances while the pool of blood gets larger and larger. Not me. I act. And so it was this night: Before the murderer could even get a glimpse of me, I ran back into my room, bolted the door, shut off all the lights and waited in the furthest corner of the room, ready to scream bloody hell should the murderer knock at my door. He didn't. He knew I wouldn't go as easily as Katja did.

The next morning when I woke, I went back out to the stairwell. She was gone

Day #36: Sunday, Oct. 22: Our Favorite Vodka Dealer

2006-10-22T17:21:00.000+02:00

Day #35: Saturday, Oct. 21: The Rynek

2006-10-21T17:30:00.000+02:00

Day #34: Friday, Oct. 20: Pop Envy

2006-10-20T17:37:00.000+02:00

We had another knock-down-drag-out last night. It was brutal.

Kobus the Radical Militant Poet and Mirek and Post-Modernist Gonzo DJ/Novelist ganged up on me with the ridiculous claim that, as Mirek put it, “Pop is here, in the middle, like this – like this glass here on the table, and like this bottle of vodka, and like this espresso cup, here in the middle, and art is all around it, like this, here, just like this, all around it.”

I wasn’t having any of it. I explained to them patiently and clearly that pop and art are best defined by their audience and thus can only be seen as separate and equal – equal in the sense that both are valid expressions of the human soul but pop is cool while art is uncool.

I patiently explained the history of both: art coming out of an elitist tradition which put the artist at the beck and call of his ruler/masters, which is still true today (a poor man never bought a Picasso; evening the case of artists like Maplethorpe, who are subsidized by the state even though they appear to pose a threat it, are anything but working-class artists).

Pop on the other hand comes out of a democratic tradition: it is the people who support and buy pop, and pop speaks directly to the people. Mozart could never have said the things in his operas that Springsteen can sing in his songs. Art serves the state and/or the status quo of the educated, privileged elite; pop serves the dirty masses. There’s no way around that.

The only thing they could bring against this shattering argument was that pop and art influence and inspire each other, which is certainly true. Liechtenstein is certainly elitist art (look at the price of his paintings) and is unthinkable without pop. Kobus mentioned that the split-screen effect used in matinee movies many years ago and again in Stars Wars and other modern films was inspired by split-canvas of modernist artists, and that is certainly true of many movie-making techniques.

But it bugs me that Liechtenstein got all that money and fame and the original comic strip artists like Irv Novick and Russ Heath had to keep churning out comic strips for a pittance all his life. These guys were successful, but they ended up not only sending their own kids to college, but Lichtenstein’s as well. If Lichtenstein has respected the pop culture he was turning into art, he would have bought the rights to the originals. But of course for him, comic book art is found art, like trash on the sidewalk that only becomes value once he has copied it. That just drives me nuts. Sure, I like Lichtenstein, but there is an irony and distance to his work that disparages the comic strip. It is not a homage to pop culture, patronizing of it, it is a kind of cool elitist slumming.
The guy who half-buried the Cadillacs in the desert created art, yes, but he did not respect the Cadillac. On the contrary, he was criticizing material culture. When Springsteen sings about a car, he respects it, even glorifies it. He experiences the car as the simple man goes: as a part of his life.

The artist experiences the car, any product in fact, as the elite does: as a potential threat to his status. He wants to be seen as standing personally far above the material world, as a critic of capitalism while reaping the rewards of capitalism, and in fact so do his customers. The buyer or subsidizer of art depends on the profits from car-manufacturing but at the same time does not want to appear as a superficial materialist, so he employs artists to distance himself from the material world. The rich man who has a vacuum cleaner in a glass case in his living room is a man who wants people to know that he views his own wealth with irony and distance. The working man who has a vacuum cleaner in a glass case in his living room has a problem.

Day #33: Thursday, Oct. 19: Last Day With My Beautiful German Frolein

2006-10-19T17:38:00.000+02:00

Wherever she goes, at some point she's bound to bump into a pussy cat of one kind or another.

Day #32: Wednesday, Oct. 18: Culture Days with My Beautiful German Frolein

2006-10-18T07:01:00.000+02:00

Day #31: Tuesday, Oct. 17: Tourist Days with My Beautiful German Frolein

2006-10-17T08:05:00.000+02:00

Day #30: Monday, Oct. 16: Free Hugs

2006-10-16T08:16:00.000+02:00

And they really didn't cost anything, either. I know because I tried it. Four times! Didn't cost me a cent.

Day #29: Sunday, Oct. 15: The Wawel

2006-10-15T08:18:00.000+02:00

Day #28: Saturday, Oct. 14: Rynek Days with My Beautiful German Frolein

2006-10-14T08:36:00.000+02:00

Day #27: Friday, Oct. 13: Who Knew?

2006-10-13T09:10:00.000+02:00

Well, I lost again. Yesterday I put ten sloty on Bob Dylan winning the Nobel prize for Literature, and instead it went to some guy named Pamuk. Who knew?

Last night we all got together – those of us remaining in the house – and decided that we would defy fate and do what true literary-minded souls would do in this situation, which is bet on who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature. We were all there except for one – the elusive, mysterious Larysa. We discussed the ins and outs of the situation over a bottle of vodka. Then we all threw 10 sloty into the pot and wrote down our bets:

Mirek – (first Updike, then Androkovich, then…) DeLillo
Danuta – Roth
Ambrosi – Kapuszinsky
Kobus – Pynchon
Erica – Pamuk
Eric – Dylan

But when I went down to the breakfast room this morning, only about an hour before the announcement, a new name had been added to the list:

Larysa – Pamuk.

The elusive, mysterious Larysa had been watching us, somehow, all this time.

When Erica saw the new name, she realized that she would either have to split the pot with Larysa or change her bet. So she changed hers:

Erica – Updike.

We're going to have to find out a little bit more about this Larysa person.

Day #26: Thursday, Oct. 12: The Mysterious Package Part 3

2006-10-12T09:19:00.000+02:00

This morning I got up and decided to put an end to it. These nightmares of missing the cookies, of cookies going stale, of Katja appearing out of nowhere, saying, "But those cookies were for you!"

When I was young and a Mormon, I thought a lot about the phenomenon of temptation and resistance. A friend, another Mormon, told me a parable about a Buddhist monk. He is walking along a path in the woods with his pupil beside him when they come upon a stream. At the stream, a beautiful woman is standing. "I'm afraid I will slip and fall," she said. "Can you carry me across the stream?" Without hesitation, the older monk picked her up in his arms and carried her across the stream.

When they were alone again, the pupil, who was a little concerned, asked: "Why did you do that, master? Didn’t you vow never to touch a woman?"

"I did, Grasshopper," said the monk (I don’t think he actually said "Grasshopper"), "but I knew if I didn’t do it, I would be thinking about it for the rest of my days – in my mind, touching her over and over again. this way, I touched her, I know how it felt, I got it over with, and I can go on."

This is the story I thought of as I sat in bed after another terrible night. So I got up, pulled on some pants, and in the early morning hours I stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, determined to make that package of cookies mine.

But when I got there, it was gone.

Day #25: Wednesday, Oct. 11: The Mysterious Package Part 2

2006-10-11T09:19:00.000+02:00

I couldn’t sleep last night. I was tortured by nightmares of homemade cookies fading from my grasp before I could bite into them. Then I woke up – with a start. I was no longer in bed. In my sleep, I had gotten up, walked out the door and was standing before the stairs leading down to the kitchen.

No, I can’t do that. I have to stay away from that package. I forced myself to go back to bed, and was tortured by nightmares all night long.

Day #24: Tuesday, Oct. 10: The Mysterious Package Part 1

2006-10-10T09:20:00.000+02:00

A package has been sitting around in the kitchen for some time now. If there is indeed someone still in the house with me, no has claimed it. I keep thinking about it. I can’t get it out of my mind. It haunts my dreams. It's the kind of package that looks like it might contain cookies. Homemade cookies. The name on the return address label is a motherly kind of name – the kind of name that would bake cookies and send them.

It is addressed to Katja, but Katja is gone. I don’t think she's ever coming back. I'm no longer sure she was ever here. That can only mean the package is meant for someone else. Someone who is smart enough to figure it out. I am beginning to think maybe the package is meant for me.

But still, something holds me back. This Katja person… maybe she does exist. Maybe she will return. But how can I know before the cookies go stale?

Day #23: Monday, Oct. 9: Faust Was Here…

2006-10-09T09:22:00.000+02:00

...and so was Copernicus.

Day #22: Sunday, Oct. 8: Choice of Weapons

2006-10-08T09:26:00.000+02:00

Kobus' flyswatter of choice (see comment one post below).

Danuta's flyswatter of choice.

My flyswatter of choice.

Day #21: Saturday, Oct. 7: A Tale of Two Flies

2006-10-07T09:26:00.000+02:00

They come in pairs. You get one, the other one keeps quiet for a few minutes, out of sight, until you think it's gone. Then it starts up again. Buzzing. Whishing.

They act like the own the place. They like alight on my computer screen as if to tell me: "We're not afraid of you. Got ahead, do something about it."

They never buzz off in a corner somewhere by themselves. They always have to be where I am. They have a way of buzzing around the fringes of my attention. They alight on my arm somewhere or hand or cheek, lightly, almost lightly enough to ignore, but not quite. Just to alert me to their presence. To whisper to me: "We're here. We're here. We're here."

When it's dark, I try doing the "come into the light" trick. I turn off the lights in the room and open all the windows and wait a while, hoping they will get bored by the dark room and go off to investigate the street lamp outside. And when I close the windows in the dark and turn the lights back on, for a moment I believe it has worked. No buzzing. It feels alone. I sit down to work and I feel that I can enjoy the work at last, but just as I'm ready to concentrate, they're back. Buzzing. Landing. "We're here. We're here. We're here."

Once in a while I am able to kill one. I use a knotted-up white towel. I got one yesterday and was so happy about it that I put its corpse on a tissue paper on my desk. One down, two to go. They always come in pairs. I waited for the second one to land on a vulnerable spot. Soon I'd be free. But after a while, I noticed that there were two of them again. They're like in the Roman army: As if a soldier falls, his spot is filled immediately. But how did it get in? I glanced at the corpse of the dead fly on the tissue on my desk. It was gone.

Day #20: Friday, Oct. 6: It's Not My Imagination

2006-10-06T09:27:00.000+02:00

I woke up this morning, went down to the breakfast room and discovered that Katja is gone now, too.

Day #19: Thursday, Oct. 5: Ten Little Intellectuals

2006-10-05T09:32:00.000+02:00

Life at the Guesthouse of Villa Decius is getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser. I'm beginning to think I've arrived in a situation that may end up being threatening to my life.

It's slowly becoming clearer and clearer that there is more to the mysterious Laryssa than meets the eye. Every time I try to corner her, panic invades her eyes and she slips past me and behind locked doors, avoiding my questions. The proto-Austro-Feminist-Communist Erica is clearly hiding something in her past. There's a strange nervousness to her laugh when I innocently mention the never-resolved crimes of the elusive group of militant feminist terrorists who called themselves "Maenner her jetzt!" Erica would have been in her twenties when they were active. I believe now she's in some kind of witness protection program.

Then there are the post-Hegelians. When I arrived, there wasn't a single post-Hegelian in sight. Now, they're everywhere. Did you see that comment a few posts back? Crawling out of the woodwork with their freindly, probing ways and vaguely threatening intellectual puzzles. I know jiu jitzu and karate, I have the CIA handbook on my harddisk, but how do you protect yourself from a post-Hegelian?

I haven't seen the Ukrainian novelist since his reading a week ago. The White Russian poet can no longer be seen lounging around the kitchen listening to his own poems on CD. The Polish novelist Mirek has disappeared. When I ask where they are, someone says, "Oh, they're around," but before I can ask for specifics, they change the subject.

One by one, everyone is disappearing. The unnatural quiet in the house is getting eerie. When we talked about it the other night, the Ukrainian novelist Tanja made a crack about Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians": One by one, the people on an island begin disappearing. Is that what's happening here in this very house? Since she made that remark, I haven’t seen Tanja.

This morning, as if to belie my fears, Mirek showed up. He smiled unnaturally and said he had been in Warsaw, though I hadn’t asked yet.

But there was something strange about him. Something… changed…

Day #18: Wednesday, Oct. 4: Novel vs. Non-Novel

2006-10-04T09:40:00.000+02:00

We had another knock-out-drag-out fight last night – Katja, Erica, Nicolai and I – about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. (This was before we went to a horrible all-out-self-gratifying-middle-class-we- listen-to-jazz-mushy-New-Age-Wagnerian-concept-jazz-funk concert – see photo). Anyway, during this discussion, I claimed – rightly so – that non-fiction is superior to fiction because it shows the world as it is (give or take a little for perception and honesty of the writer), whereas fiction can say whatever the hell the writer feels like saying, and the more I know about writers, the less I feel like trusting what they have to say.

There was some disagreement. Erica said, "Yes, but fiction depicts what is inside us." She hasn’t heard yet that Freud has fallen into disfavor. (Erica is conflicted on this issue – she is writing the story of her family and is waffling between writing it as fiction and non-fiction. As a novel, she could more easily play with the chronology. I am trying to talk her into making it non-fiction, and I almost had her there when she discovered that I am thinking about writing as novel and now she doesn't believe anything I say anymore. I suspect it doesn't matter whether she writes is an autobiographical novel or a non-fiction memoir, it will be her second bestseller.)

But I ask: Why is it we are so fascinated with what we feel "inside" and are so disinterested in what's really going on in the world? If we're going to discuss the human condition, let's at least try top bring a minimum of objectivity – not to mention research – into it.

There's an old novel dictum that says, "A character (and a human being) is not what he says or feels, he is what he does." The same goes for the human race: We are what we do. If you want to know us, don’t listen to what we've been talking about for the last 2000 years, look at what we've done. If Hitler had ever written down his stream of consciousness, it would probably have made him look really good. No, this "fiction helps us learn who we are inside" stuff I don’t buy. Show me what we are on the outside first.

Needless to say, I was able to convince no one. So I immediately sat down and wrote this stream-of-consciousness blog. That'll show 'em.

Day #17: Tuesday, Oct. 3: The Villa Decius Guest House is Quiet

2006-10-03T09:41:00.000+02:00

Quiet has settled over the Villa Decius Guest House. I don’t see anyone anymore in the breakfast room. Or in the halls. Or in the laundry room. I don’t hear noises, the slamming of doors. No one is sunning themselves on the back lawn or drinking tea and gabbing out by the front fountain. Maybe the others all have important places to be and exciting things to do. Maybe they are all hidden away in the house and I don't know it – perhaps they have partied too much on the weekend, seen too many friends, explored the city too much, and are now retiring to the stillness of their cubby-hole rooms.

Is the house empty but for me? I sit here alone in my well-lit room, surrounded by books to read and notes to take, in the quietness, and think about how far away I am from the ones I love until a satisfying melancholy comes over me. Strange, because it is satisfying at the same time, like the exhaustion after a day of hard but successful work.

Most likely, everyone else is doing the same.

Day #16: Monday, Oct. 2: Geeks Are The Same All Over The World

2006-10-02T09:42:00.000+02:00

....as witnessed by this photo taken of the nerds hanging around Ye Olde Lord of the Rings Shoppe in the top floor of the Galeria Kazimierz.

Day #15: Sunday, Oct. 1: They Really Sing

2006-10-01T09:47:00.000+02:00

Chili and Vodka Night at the Villa Decius was a real eye-opener. It's amazing what you can learn about your fellow intellectuals under conditions such as these (chili and vodka) that you can't learn elsewhere.

It didn't surprise me that Katja and Tanja danced.

It didn't surprise me that the Elusive Laryssa Andriejewska offered not only a toast but an unknown Ukrainian drink she set on fire (then doused).

It did not surprise me that hip post-modernist Polish novelist Mirek Nahacz (on the right, talking to Nicolai) had country music on his laptop and just happens to be one of the only people in Europe who loves "The Sot-Weed Factor" by John Barth as I do...

Nor that German poet Nicolai Kobus' brand new book of poetry is looking spectacular...

Nor did it suprise me that both Big Intellectual Bears - Ambrosi Griszikaszwili the Georgian Translator...

...and Andrej Khadanovich the White Russian Poet (you can read his poems in German translation here) - both showed up with vodka from home (in Andrej's case it was 56.5/103 vol.).

But I never thought I'd see the day when all those stories you hear about Slavs suddenly breaking into song were absolutely true...

Here's the proof:

(You can also go directly to YouTube: (Click here.)

Day #14: Saturday, Sep. 30: This is For All Those Women Out There…

2006-09-30T09:55:00.000+02:00

…who have been complaining about my tendency to notice beautiful Krakow women over-proportionately to good-looking Krakow men. This photo of a sweet specimen of all-out maleness, snapped in the upscale shopping mall Galeria Kazimierz, ought to keep you busy for a while.

Day #13: Friday, Sep. 29: On the Funkiness of East European Sculpture

2006-09-29T09:56:00.000+02:00

I cannot avoid the subject any longer. I have been challenged to explain why I insist on 1) calling a sculpture "East European" and on 2) calling East European sculptures funky."

It was Katja, in her comment below and in the background of this photo), who put this challenge to me. To make matters worse, a friend of mine write, in an email to me (he was apparently too cowardly to publish it as a comment. He wrote, somewhat threateningly:

"Noch schreibst du mit ironischer Distanz über die slawische Bohéme. Warte nur bis die östliche Subversion dich von Grund auf - wie man früher gesagt hätte - bolschewisiert haben wird! Erste Anzeichen werden sein: du stellst die Friseurbesuche und das Rasieren ein, und plötzlich verweilst du auffällig länger vor den Pfeifenauslagen von Tabakgeschäften! Weitere Anzeichen: sich anbiedern, in ukrainischen Problembüchern verewigt zu werden - und sei es als sterbendes Kapitalistenungeziefer! Vom Wodka ganz zu schweigen!

"Und soeben lese ich von den haarigen Diskussionen, die unter Autoren, bzw. unter Autorinnen geführt werden. Let me tell you one thing: Wie du siehst, haben wir komplizierten, individuellen und unetikettierten Deutschen/Europäer noch immer das letzte (intellektuelle) Wort - hah! Und was für ein fantastisches Wort! Sag ihr, ich liebe alle sich auf Moleküle berufenden Erklärungen! 1:0 Leipzig vs. Honolulu. Die Zeit ist jetzt gekommen, dass es sich rächt, immer nur Mittelalternovels gelesen zu haben statt die Werkausgabe von Marx/Engels."

I see no other choice but to apply myself herewith to the Funkiness Question.

Here, dear Katja, is my answer:

That sculpture is East European neither because it is in Eastern Europe nor because an Eastern European made it: It has an East European flair (which is very similar to a Scandinavian flair.)

This is clearly a sculpture about the condition of man – run down by the machinery of life, fleeing but taking his burden with him, etc. But at the same time it is pleasing top the eye. Even beautiful. The man portrayed could be flying (or, as my hero Woody once said, falling with style). Eastern Europeans tend to do this kind of thing – they take a drastically depressing background theory and make something out of it that you would be happy to have in your living room. That is how I define funkiness.

The Germans are exactly the opposite: When they make a sculpture about the futility and hardship of life, there's nothing "pleasing" about it. It's all glass shards and barbed wire and blood. You can hear it scream, it's full of tension, pain and depression. When it comes to tension, depression and pain, the Germans are very serious. You don’t want to put that German sculpture in your living room. But you want to abstain from eating or drinking anything for several hours after seeing it.

That's what often makes East European sculpture recognizable. Of course it helped that I asked our babysitter Renate, and she confirmed that the artist was a young East European.

Day #12: Thursday, Sep. 28: The Shocking Truth About Socialism

2006-09-28T09:57:00.000+02:00

Suddenly, this whole question of communism vs. socialism takes on a new, bone-chilling aspect.

You see that bottle "Strong" beer, second from left? That's my beer. Only, it's not really beer anymore. It's the sad, hollow, emptied husk of a beer; the remnants of a beer, the remainder, what's left for the worms to invade when the soul of the beer is gone. Yes, that beer is beer no more. But I – the owner of the beer – did not drink it.

I bought the beer, I transported it form the Supermarket to the house, I stored it in my room until I felt a need to enjoy the beer slowly rising, I placed the beer in the fridge to prepare it for drinking the next day, but when I came down to the kitchen this evening to actually take and enjoy the beer, it was gone. I took everything out of the refrigerator, every item, one by one: the packages of sliced cheese and sliced sausage, the plastic bag with the stalks of parsley in it, the cartons of orange juice and milk, everything, one by one, and when I was done: no beer.

Then I discovered the empty bottle in the corner. Oh, what mockery: the beer thief placed the empty bottle neatly in the corner to be disposed of. Perhaps I am meant to dispose of it myself.

Who could have done such a cruel mean thing? Surely this is the work of a communist. Might I even venture so far as to suggest that it might well have been the work of a Ukrainian-speaking communist?

The question of what is and what is not capitalism has, for me, taken on a new definition: A capitalist is the one who buys the beer with the intent of controlling it; a socialist is the one who wrests control of the beer from the hands of the capitalist.

Day #11: Wednesday, Sep. 27: I Am Committed

2006-09-27T10:06:00.000+02:00

So, I have made the big decision: I am going to use part of this time to write a novel.

That is, part of a novel: The first fifty pages or so plus the outline. I should be able to get that finished in three months.

I have written novels before: as a kid, mainly, full of ideas about expressing my self and competing with Shakespeare and entering literary heaven. With that in mind, I feel just a tad silly about trying at my age and as an established journalist to write a novel. I have to assure myself that this is not about expressing myself or creating greeat art or any of that crap; it's about depicting my subject in a different way - in a potentially more popular way (more people buy successful novels than successful non-fiction books) - i.e., it's about taking my subject to a larger group of readers (and at the same time being able to takew liberties with my subject that I could not take as a journalist). Telling me that, writing this - this thing - as a novel makes sinse.

The non-fiction book is not lost. Parallel to writing my novel, I continue researching the non-fiction book. Since both the novel and the non-fiction book have the same theme, there is no conflict as far as time goes. And if my energy holds out (and a publisher is interested in the idea), I can publish both the novel and the non-fiction book as companion books: two ways of looking at the sme subject.

I still have a back door to slither out of, of course. If the pages I wrikte her ein Krakow (Krakow, hear my plea) are crap, I just bury it and forget I ever mentioned it. Of course, now that I have declared my intention to the world, if I fail, I will make a fool of myself. So even if I have a back door, the stakes are high.

Wish me luck. Here goes nothing.

Day #10: Tuesday, Sep. 26: Capitalism

2006-09-26T10:07:00.000+02:00

Last night was vodka night: A bunch of European writers sitting around the kitchen table drinking, so of course the conversation turned to capitalism. This time, the conversation surprised me. When I claimed, just to get it out in the open, to be capitalist, they disagreed. Not because they think I am a good person, but because I don’t have the money. It turns out I had been misunderstanding the European/German definition of capitalists all this time:

"A capitalist isn't just someone who lives in and agrees with a capitalist system," claimed Erica the Post-Socialist-Feminist. "A capitalist is someone who controls the capital, like Bill Gates. Didn’t you ever read Marx?"

Per this definition, Bill Gates has only been a capitalist since becoming a success, which is when he was able to "control capital." When he was working in his garage, determined to someday control capital, he was not yet a capitalist. Neither was the guy working in the garage next store who failed, though he would have liked to control as much capital as Bill Gates does.

That means a capitalist is someone who is successful in business and a socialist is someone who fails in business. That goes a long way in explaining Germany, where capitalism (even though Germany is a capitalistic country where all socialists wish they had the capital that the capitalists control) is synonymous with evil. If capitalism is morally reprehensible, business success is morally reprehensible, which may be one reason why Germany lives comfortably with 5 million unemployed, an embarrassing economic slump and a long tradition of discouraging innovation.

All of which is, by the way, in my book Planet Germany! In fact, here's My Beautiful German Frolein's illustration for that chapter:

Day #9: Monday, Sep. 25: What's Wrong With This Picture?

2006-09-25T10:08:00.000+02:00

On the Rynek I saw this group of kids walking around with German flags on their cheeks. Patriotism is a good thing, of course, but I wondered if this was a wise way to show it.

As I passed, however, I noticed they were speaking Polish. That was even more puzzling, so I asked, and it turned out that they were language students of German and English and this was World Language Day.

Day #8: Sunday, Sep. 24: Intense

2006-09-24T10:09:00.000+02:00

This is Tanja Malarczuk, a Ukrainian autobiographical novelist with three books (collections of short stories and novellas) under her belt at 23, and she is a Xenologist (?), which, she claims, means she can understand languages without learning them. Three months ago she didn't speak English. Then she went to Germany for a visit and everyone was speaking English and she felt frustrated, until a couple of weeks passed and she could suddenly speak English. Just like that. I believe her. (Maybe it helped to have watched a lot of English-language movies all her life).

In this photo she is speaking not English, but a more international language, one far more powerful and widespread than English, and in course you don’t understand what she is saying, this is the translation: Don’t take my picture!

Last night I came down into the kitchen to get a beer before retiring and there was Tanja. Cagey Tanja, who does not like to talk much about herself. Ah, but I knew I would catch her in a talkative mood someday, and today was the day. Finally she talked about her autobiographical novels. "Sometimes I think I am sick," she said. "I think everyone in the world around me is a character in my novel. I could write about you right now and in the novel you would die."

Am I the only one who finds aggressively, intimately personal writing sexy? There is something forbidden about it, like Noah's son Ham seeing him naked. There is something courageous and mad about it, it is the spiritual equivalent of bungy-jumping or of the things they do on "Jackass.".

She said her father will no longer tell her personal things because she wrote about her family in one of her books and they didn't like what she wrote. She's not the kind of writer, I think, who puts a lot of harmony, love, understanding and universal warmth into her books. I get the feeling they are interesting books, though. I understand the heartbreak that her parents felt, but I know also that intimate and true writing can touch countless souls and enrich many lives without her parents ever knowing, and I believe it is worth it and good for her to write those things. Tanja's parents, if you can hear me: forgive her and continue to tell her your secrets; even if it embarrassing for you, it is healing and wisdom-making for people like me.

It would be an honor for me to appear in one of her books. If I die in it, that would be a small price to pay.

Day #7: Saturday, Sep. 23: My Widersacher: the Young German Intellectual

2006-09-23T10:10:00.000+02:00

I told Katja Thomas, the young writer from Leipzig, that I believe she is using this grant not so much to write, but to find herself as a writer. She avoided the subject by saying 1) we all use our entire lives to find ourselves, and 2) that I the kind of person who always has to stick people in drawers, as the Germans say - labeling them. She is right of course, I am that kind of person. (In fact, I think that's what it says on the label of my drawer: "Guy Who Is Always Labeling Other People"). The Germans are excessively afraid of someone putting them in "drawers." In fact, one of the drawers I put Germans into in general has the label: "People Who Think They Are Too Complicated, Individualistic and Unique To Be Put Into Any One Specific Category."

(Photo: I warned her that this bad photo of her, with the shadow falling as it does, makes her look like her head has been chopped off and digitally pasted back on, she said, "Yes, that's me.")

Ah, but now the plot has thickened and I have added a drawer to Katja's profile: More Dangerous Than She Appears.

It happened while we were chatting in the kitchen. Three women were chatting, I was more or less listening, so every once in a while a woman-thing crept into the conversation: "Curly hair grows slower than straight hair," said Katja.

That sounded to me patently absurd, but she explained: "The molecules have form into a certain pattern, and that take more time."

There are two explanations for this rather bizarre statement:

1) It's true.

2) She knows she is in my blog and is feeding me nonsensical items in the hope that I will publish them and make an even greater fool of myself than I do on my own.

However, since I know very little about hair molecules, I have no way of knowing which of the above is true. I only know that I have to be careful around Katja.

Day #6: Friday, Sep. 22: Long Live East European Intellectualism!

2006-09-22T10:24:00.000+02:00

The good news is: It's still alive! Yes, young, thin, angry Slavs still read complex poetry to adoring fans in trendy run-down bars about (according to the woman sitting next to me, who claimed to understand a few phrases) young, thin, angry Slavs who refuse to join the rat-race and express their rebellion by sitting around drinking beer all day.

I felt like the guy who walks into a meeting of the Jehovah's Witnesses as an atheist and walks out a beleiver. Coming from the West, where young writers know about getting an agent and selling film rights before they have something to write about, I was ready to roll my eyes at this kind of writer. "Posing" is what I would call it. And in a bar in New York it would be true. In the US, the age of Beat is over, and now all that's left are writers who strike the angry-young-artist pose until the Hollywood scout shows up.

Serhij (Sergei) Zadan, a young (30-ish), hip Ukrainian writer and poet, had a reading in the Jewish Quarter tonight, in a club called the Lokator. The Krakau Jewish Quarter is not very Jewish nowadays. It would be more correctly named The Trendy Quarter. It is filled with young, slightly run-down but exceedingly hip bar and clubs. There were about 20 or 30 of us in the Lokator. Serhij read for several books and a manuscript, including his first book, called Depeche Mode after the popular pop group, and he was translated.

(Photo above: On the left in the ironically retro green sweater and fetchingly strict bangs you see the Polish host and co-reader [I stand corrected - see Katja's comment]; on the right is the aloof Polish translator; in the middle is Serhij, prolific writer, Ukrainian intellectual and, apparently in his country, rock star.)

Serhij is a proto-East European intellectual the way they're supposed to be: thin, scruffy, serious, slightly greasy hair, white-skinned with a light black scruff about the chin and cheeks. He read standing, banging out his words like bullets, loudly, quickly, each sentence a little rant. The audience was with him all the way, silent when it got serious, chuckling at the jokes.

It's amazing how unimportant it is to understand the language at a reading. It was a real joy to watch him, no matter that the only works I picked up were Johnson & Johnson, Jesus, prostitute, marijuana and "fucking" (as an adjective).

While we would roll our eyes at him in the West and say "Is this cosmic Weltschmerz or should he just grow up?", here they appear to take this seriously. Being taken seriously is a terrific freedom for a young writer. Why are the creative writing classes of America producing so much artificial, soulless word-prettiness? Because young writers are seeing their work through the eyes of adults: their teachers, critics... and Hollywood scouts. It is cynicism that keeps youth from being young.

Serhij made a believer out of me.

Day #5: Thursday, Sep. 21: Erica

2006-09-21T10:25:00.000+02:00

There is even a famous writer among us lesser stars on the firmament:

Erica Fischer, the Viennese/Berliner journalist who wrote, among many other books, Aimee & Jaguar. It is about two women, a German and a Jew, who fall in love with each other during the Third Reich. (It was turned into a popular movie that should have made her rich, but Germans tend not to pay much for movie rights.)

Now, if you're a journalist looking to write a book, the secret is finding the right subject, and I have to say, if you want to learn how to pick one, follow her example. Aimee & Jaguar has everything: Nazis and Jews, love and the Holocaust, not to mention lesbians. Most journalists would kill to find a subject like that. This woman has a pretty good eye.

What is she working on now? I will find out.

Day #4: Wednesday, Sep. 20: Meetings

2006-09-20T10:30:00.000+02:00

The others have arrived.

There are nearly a dozen of us living in the guest house behind the Villa Decius for three months. I arrived late, as I was still in the US, and so I missed an excursion they made together over the weekend to the Ukraine. They returned Monday night, so I am beginning to meet them in the halls and in the kitchen.

Larysa is a tall Ukrainian translator (Ukrainian/Polish). I don’t know what she translates because she doesn't speak much English. She is shy and you know what that means: I suspect she is hiding some kind of mystery. Alas, I will never know what it is. Unless I start learning Ukrainian.

Here's a photo of the funky East European sculpture in garden.

Day #3: Tuesday, Sep. 19: Novel or non-fiction?

2006-09-19T10:48:00.000+02:00

Settling down to work. Always a difficult project. I have about a week to make a decision: What am I going to write? Novel or non-fiction? Or both?

The reason I have a week is because once again I am behind: I did not finish my two non-fiction book proposals before coming to Poland. That means my Beautiful German Frolein and I are finishing them up this week per e-mail and she will send them to our agent then.

I will be in Krakow for three months. Three months of just writing, working, being a writer. In Krakow, no less, reputedly the most beautiful city in Poland. This is what I've dreamed of for years. And I still don’t know what I'm going to write.

The question still stands: Novel or not?

Day #2: Monday, Sep. 18: The Krakow Women Gallery

2006-09-18T10:59:00.000+02:00

Day #1: Sunday, Sep. 17: The Arrival

2006-09-17T11:00:00.000+02:00

The Truth About Krakow: It is filled with beautiful women. And when I say beautiful women, I mean really excruciatingly, painfully gorgeous women.

It was a sunny and sweatingly hot Summer's day, which is unusual for this time of year, as it is no longer summer, in this part of Europe. Arriving in the Villa Decius, I was tired from getting up early to get the plane from Berlin and shlepping hundreds of pounds of books through Berlin then through Krakow, so the plan was to flop down in bed and write off the day. Then my Beautiful German Frolein called and gave me a piece of her mind: You're in the most beautiful city in Poland on one of the most beautiful days of the year and you’re laying around in your room?

So I struggled with the map and the bus schedules and got into town, had a couple of beers (the only word in Polish I know – I can’t pronounce thank correctly, but "piwo" is easy) and sat around watching the girls go by. It was a day to remember. You should have been there and saw what I saw.

These women know they are beautiful. They like tight jeans and tight blouses and showing their navels and wearing high heels when there's absolutely no need to. They love showing off their charms. And when I say charms, I mean their bodies. But that alone does not beauty make. The most beautiful of these women – would you believe me if I said there is something, well, Japanese about them? If not Japanese, then at least manga-ish. It's their round faces, huge eyes and their sharp noses – they look like the beauties in manga comics. And they are proud, which makes them even more beautiful.