finally! that time of the year has come
when i'll be taking a 2 week hiatus to the "old country":
perched on a windowsill drinking
some Napoleon brandy
donning a baseball cap donned in
reverse: cool as a cucumber...
oddly enough: if baseball caps are anything
to go by: i could get used to a kippah...
sure as **** not to a monk's tonsure...
ah... the night... a time of solace...
ah... die nacht... ein zeit auf trost...
the "old country", monochromatic, among
"my fellow" countrymen:
none of this Loon'don Babylon of the world
congregating... a little ****** town that
once had ambitions to compete with
the metallurgical industry of Cracow...
collapsed... sold off...
from a population nearing 100,000...
reduced to... perhaps 40,000...
since everyone left once the economy collapsed:
how Europe exported its
metallurgical industry... it's production
to Asia... some "disappeared" else in this
native land... some left for Canada... England...
i love going back: even though my
dementia riddled grandfather isn't alive...
i'll still get to read some books...
on the to-do list...
finishing Knausgaard's vol. 4... taking a break
by: finally! reading some
Rousseau... letter to M. D'Alembert on spectacles
& the social contract...
lucky me i own a copy that has paired these
two books together...
i have reached a point of tedium
reading the genre of autobiography...
esp. autobiography that borrows so much
from memory...
of course i'll finish volumes 5 & 6...
but i need a break...
i need to get away from internet access...
i need to walk into a pine forest...
i need to sniff the air in Eastern Europe...
funny... i was in Russia for a month once:
never watched the t.v.:
we ******... she played video games...
i was either reading
a book of her choice: the Master & Margarita
or studying chemistry to resit
a failed exam...
i need to immerse myself in propaganda...
see what's happening in politics...
i'm way behind the culture...
i tried to keep up... last time i heard
bands like Lao Che & Żywiołak are not in
the mainstream... every time i turn on the radio:
no chance in hell...
it's like that conundrum of Iron Maiden's
Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter reaching
no. 1 in the charts... but... "for some reason"
BBC Radio 1 not giving it any play...

we used to walk around the graveyard and
talk about life and how:
death is the only true democracy...
among other things...
i dubbed us: the hyenas of the graveyard...
now i'm going to stand over his grave
and probably pull a smirk onto my face...
a sort of gleeful: i'm coming...
you shouldn't have had that tirade
of yours over your brother-in-law's early
death: how you boasted that
you were still living while he was already dead...
i think you were teasing death then
but i can accept the fact that you wanted
to be finally rid of that woman...
how you said:
old people should live more cordially
with each other: not this stereotypical
Hemingway: men without women array of
short stories...

do i still regret breaking up with that Siberian lass?
of course i do...
but if for your happiness me giving you
grandchildren: but being slapped in the face
for no reason other than her paranoia
while she was still in close contact with her ex?

that's the difference between
Catholic and Protestant nations...
while the protestants have their little Halloween
****** Doo thrills of dressing up...
some Catholic nations celebrate the day after
the 31st of October...
the feast day of All Saints...
a big ******* deal in Paul-and...
the people light candles at the graves...
whole graveyards start looking like
starry constellations: hell... more...
when spotted on the Maldives...

i like this approach more than the insurrection
of monsters... fake or real:
mostly fake... life's this one grand party...
i hardly think so...
if i'd be content with life i wouldn't
be inquisitive of it... or off it...
the necropolis beckons...
names etched into marble...
important dates...
oh not the dates of a person's birth
or a person's death:
all those important dates not written onto a grave
those in-between... written into the riddled flesh
of the living...
tattoos akin to... 2001... 2019...
  
but oh so welcome... this impeding break...
from... whatever this is...
a return to: this little ******-town that once
grew & grew & could have been something...
sold off...
sleepy little town... it would be rather
impossible to put Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
on the map...
mind you: the mindset of the western folk is:
to put hardly anything on the map:
except for their bellybutton...
i don't mind: "we" sort of don't exist...
so far far away: further even than India...
further than the Americas... further than Spain...
or Italy... as a sort of wilderness "non-existent"
before you arrive in Russia...

watching two matches today: super Sunday, what?
even though West Ham only beat Tottenham Hotspurs
a meagre 1 - nil...
it was just as entertaining as watching
Liverpool thrash Manchester United 5 - nil...
sport is fun when you don't take sides...
when you're in it for the mere spectacle...
it's like automated chess... football...
please: don't get me wrong...
no... get me wrong... but American football
is a load of crap...
so many ******* interludes...
it's unlike rugby where there are clear rules...
the oval needs to be passed back...
the charge is forward...
what is it with H'american football...
you throw the oval forward...
you run off the field: STOP... let's realign...
the oval touches the ground: STOP... let's realign...
what a **** sport...
only two sports came out of north america:
hockey &... eh... but cricket is better
than baseball... period...
American "football" is ****...
it's the ******* sport imaginable...
too many interludes...
there's no fluidity! the game doesn't: FLOW...
**** ****, double ****... thrice ****... **** ****, ****...
how can you play a game
when it's only about a throw forward
and the game has to be restarted: reset
when some ****** runs off the field or drops the oval?
with all these interludes...
you could probably have about 2 cricket tea-breaks
for tea...
American sports: with the exception of basketball
& ice hockey: ***** MAJOR ***...
***** ***** MIDGIT ***...

but this kind of football is like: chess playing by itself...
i've come to appreciate good sport...
unlike the Olympics... although...
give me an hour watching some classic Greco-Turkish
wrestling & i'll tell you:
there's no need for boxing...
was boxing even remotely related to rhetoric?
was it? was it?

but sport per se is so much more fun when
you're not taking sides...
you're there for the spectacle:
i never understood these little pockets of tribalism...
how many football teams are playing
in the premier league: all from London?
7?
Chelsea, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Watford...
West Ham... Tottenham...
Brentford! and how many are in the Championship?
Millwall... QPR... however many...
little nations within nations...
i was always from elsewhere and from elswhere
when i first came to England i supported
Manchester United... because of the moniker:
the red devils...
& because Eric Cantona was playing for them...
****** view from behind the goalposts
at the old Wembley when Manchester United
played Newcastle United at the 199- charity shield
match... ****** view at the old Wembley...

a welcome break from everything "western":
from the bellybutton crew:
from: if it happens in western europe
it: by default ought to happen everywhere else...
a break from the anglophonic claustrophobia
and sort-of solipsism...
a return to the Slavic barbarians:
imbeciles... etc. etc.
well... one man put the name of the town
on the map: a Witold Gombrowicz...
but then again... he was born into an aristocratic
family in a village shy of the "urban centre"
of this little ****-hole of a town...

thank god it's not exactly Warsaw...
or Cracow... or Danzig... it's a nowhere with
as much of everything to offer
as a "here" town...
on the map: distinguished...
a town of: ghosts & retired people...
2 weeks of splendour...
rustic scoops...
       2 weeks of this...
         rest my mind... read some Rousseau...
i don't think it would require
me to take a cruise...
give me the pines, the clouds, the night...
the scent of the graveyard...
the superstitious folk...
                 not that i'd want to feel superior:
just doubly distant from
the already narrowed-down distance
i feel when cycling through London.