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

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

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

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

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

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

....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

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…

…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

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

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

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

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: