when all seems bleak upon the blank
plateau and the calm seas of
thought being voided -
i tend to find scraps of language worth
keeping,
odd bits of letters no written,
interrupted narratives -
conversations never had - or pivoting
upon an alternative choice of words,
never mind...
i acquired english and made myself
its father -
audacious, i agree -
but psychopathic? i hardly think so.
to out-speak a native means:
doubling down - standing ground -
digging trenches...
i have made english into
the equivalent of an armchair,
sitting pretty, sitting cosy,
in some shady part of an east london
pub: peering into the stage, attempting
to differentiate the actors from the props
and the props from an: authenticity.
trick is... well, i can't read in my native tongue
when in england...
which is why i am extremely anticipating
the december hiatus impeding...
immersed in an environment filled with
the nativspreschen - notably from
devices such as the radio and the t.v. -
i can digest a book in my nativspreschen
with as much ease as:
spreading butter on a slice of bread...
but that's because when in england:
i'm wholly dedicated to the language,
perhaps not the culture which i mimic -
but i have allegiance to that ******* comfy
armchair that's the english language.
- i remember this one incident of being
thrown out from a local pub on the grounds
that i "launched a glass pint in rage across
the pub floor" - xenophobia tickle -
i spoke too much like oliver reed
to one schizophrenic and some other lost soul...
a few days later i tap the shoulder
of one of the bar mistresses and ask her
if she's feeling o.k., if you want
a depiction of constipation, you should have
seen her, she has harbouring a hedgehog in
her *** by that point...
a complete ******* of a pub anyway...
you see, even with an acquired accent,
if the question is asked: where you from,
and you say: not from around here,
even if you've lived here pretty much
all of your life: you're not puritanical enough...
mind you... i'm the pedigree breed,
surrounded by mongrels...
i am, but a mongrel of the soul
nurturing an adopted tongue, while
"trying" my hardest to forget my native tongue...
*******, i'm not going to turn into
a terrorist, which, by the way,
english society has bred...
polish is not omnipresent -
it's not the king-quack-**** sitting on
the throne of hippo-******* that's
the meridian - you have you dream,
taken from the spanish -
die ***** von sonnezunge
ständig suchen für die mond:
die schlaflosigkeitreich -
the empire of (the) sun-tongue -
perpetually looking for the moon -
insomniac empire.
hell, have it, maybe by having it
you can have your, little elaborations
of the dream fabric...
point being:
my native tongue is an equivalent of
the iron maiden by comparison...
the merovingian was wrong:
you truly wipe your *** with silk
by speaking english...
notably by introducing the
amputee R's worth of trill to sound old-school
and a knowledge of latin always helps...
but nothing quiet comes across
as speaking the native tongue better than
the natives...
i think that's called ambition...
or a heckling of some sort -
a heckling where no one is staged or is
telling a joke...
a bit like being generous
to the turk and his predicament...
he owns a store, the local council comes
to him, he literally has a caravan outside the store...
and he's worrying about employing
lawyers to solve the matter, he doesn't
know what the problem is...
two bottles of wine and some coca cola
and i peer outside: ah!
so i tell him: you're obstructing
an item of public property...
the simple answer is that you have to
revise your makeshift caravan shanty and
expose that bench...
did i get a thank you, or a free bottle of
whiskey... turks... what do you expect,
he thanked me by increasing the price of beer...
if people older than me have no
standards of etiquette - why even expect
any study of ethics? you first learn aesthetic,
then you learn etiquette,
and then comes ethics...
you think i bought anything from
him ever again? loser.
- became a corporate ***** -
but then again at 16 quid a litre of ms. amber scot,
i can't complain.
- but come one,
you've been given free legal advice and
you can't even repay a debt of being given
advice... ah... i see...
it would have made the proprietor look
stupid, i.e.: d'uh! a bench!
funny you should ask (without even asking):
whenever i go back to poland i feel grounded...
nay, cushioned - after all i am not there
to visit my countrymen as such,
more or less imbued with a sense of
proximity to my neighbours,
the germans, the czechs, the white russians,
lithuanians and the ukrainians....
and to read a book...
but mostly about feeling the vicinity of
the neighbours...
and inhale a breath of
authenticity, in historical terms...
because back in england -
well i have a patriotism for the language:
but not the people -
the language i can cherish -
the people mean diddly-squat to me...
after being barred from a pub on false accusation,
well... expect any different?
if only i were black,
i could call that racism...
alas, i have the ****** luck
of the irish...
then again...
none of this even matters
beyond a squabbling defaced impression
of a memory...
it still stands:
i'm comfortable writing, since i deem
english to be an armchair -
but the nativspreschen i find
as an iron maiden...
although when wholly immersed
in an environment when the only words
in english you hear are: weekend, etc. -
there's this aura of oddity that
surrounds me:
either i'm a ghost among the living -
or i'm alive, immersed in ghost town...
i can never tell...
all in all:
continental air is so refreshing having spent
an entire year on an island...
the almost complete lack of moisture,
the crispness of dry cool,
the crackling of the foot on snow
in imitation of walking on egg shells -
and the mere snow - notably falling crisply
during the night...
islanders are a very strange people...
whether the british, the icelanders,
the maltese, the cypriots, the irish,
you name them...
islanders have this knack at
believing themselves to be superior
to kontinentalvolk -
notably when it comes to the basic
etiquette of tourism...
in was in paris, twice...
each time i had the luck of a fellow tourist
who spoke french...
once it was this
italian girl, another a canadian girl with
russian roots: a pole's luck, i guess.
