July 2003 Archives
Divorce by text message has recently featured prominently in the Malaysian headlines; I've always been proud of how dedicated my erstwhile countrymen are to the tight integration of all technologies into daily life - Malaysia may still be classed as a third world nation, but most people I know there have more gadgets than any similarly classed Westerner - though, as this case shows, things are sometimes taken a little too far and too seriously.
A man texts his wife to say he divorces her; it is validated in court. Fortunately, the government recognises the farcical precedent set in this instance, and imposes a fine, but not a ban, on people who divorce in this way. While being allowed to divorce by text is utterly ridiculous for obvious reasons, it is pretty efficient, and far cheaper than going to court. It also saves on petrol and energy expenditure, making the process more eco-friendly. I'm torn.
Three feet to my left, a spider hangs, unmoving, upon a single thread of silk, six of her eight legs spread gracefully about her delicate body. A seventh rests tentatively upon the filament by which she is suspended, whilst the eighth, elegantly extended, tests the still air for artefacts beyond my senses. Her silk, diaphanous, emerges from nowhere to materialise within a soft shaft of sunlight, itself visible for the motes of dust that drift lazily past, to slow rhythms very much their own.
There are two of us here, you and I. Your stillness impresses upon me; you haven't stirred for minutes, tens of them; your manner is so refined, so tranquil. I wonder whether all that you do is instinctual by nature, whether you move through the governance of need, or whether conscious perception, and thoughts thereby derived, are your decision makers. Even as a child, I know better than to presume that the spaces we each inhabit could be perceived in any equivalent fashion. This room, your town, prison, or universe; I'm the one drawing comparisons. Fuck it, I'll never know; I don't speak spider.
Still, there's nothing here for you. I don't even know how you got in. There's barely gap enough in this window mount for air to pass through, let alone one of God's own. The door is flush with its frame; even when I brave the cold of the concrete against the side of my face, I can't see under it.
You came because you heard my cries. I just know it. We can all sense these things when we're sad. You put up with a great deal in remaining here; no food, just the sterile whiteness of the walls, the sound of my tired lungs drawing each half-hearted breath, one to the next. Ah, cherished companion, so very kind indeed. But so insubstantial; you'd go further with a little salt.
A small and unexpected trickle of emails from my students in Poland has found its way to my inbox; they're all very sincere messages, and rather reassuringly, it seems that many of us are of one mind in wanting to go back next year. I wish that I could commit to the idea, but it is something that can only be addressed at a later juncture.
I've had the chance to sort through most of my pictures now, as well as the dozen or so mpeg bursts I took at various points ("Stairs Travelogue"!), and in all, they seem to have captured all of the things that I remember most fondly about my stay. I'm not going to post them here, though they are all online elsewhere for those involved to find. For an idea of the weather we were dealing with much of the time, here is a picture of myself with another volunteer, Julia, following a four hour hike to the border with Slovakia, where we are pictured (click to enlarge). 
We crossed the fence that marked the border, of course, just for the "been there done that" experience, and then continued on our way toward Kasprowy Wierch, where an antique cable-car affording a fantastic view of nothing but cloud ferried us quickly back down the mountainside in next to no time at all.
An upside of the constant wet is that it makes you look years younger; this picture puts me at about eighteen all over again! Nonetheless, I'm happier dry and wrinkly in the longer term, much as I love hiking, whatever the weather.
I did come away with one downer, however, a case of iliotibial band friction syndrome; it was just setting in before I left for Poland and was exacerbated by the hours of steep downhill walking. Excruciating, but the worst has subsided and I'm on anti-inflammatories and forced rest, so hopefully back to normal soon.
There are so many things I'm going to miss :)
I arrived back in the United Kingdom this morning a good hour ahead of schedule, which is great considering the terrible weather on departure from Krakow Balica airport. I came within a hair's width of missing my flight because of the rain, but it made for some exciting sprints across flooded car parks, and a couple of amused glances from people at the security check and departure lounges; I was wearing white, so chances are that they could see my chest in its entirety. "Hee hee, check out those nipples!" Nipples is such an ugly word.
Yes, like all good Englishmen, I had an umbrella in my rucksack, but I was foolish enough to have my third arm removed before my eighth birthday in order to fit in. Big mistake for the baggage-laden moments of my life, and it certainly prevented me from keeping myself dry on this occasion. Flight was good, turbulence was fun, journey home was very quick. And it's Pride tomorrow... quality sleep is in order.
Ulica Florianska is a pretty street off the main square in Krakow; I arrived here this afternoon following a two hour bus-ride down from the mountains. Distance 100+ km, bus fare, about two US dollars. Nuts.
I am currently sat in an internet cafe, somewhat recessed from the steady flow of passers-by on the main pavement, checking up on the outside world for the last time before I begin my journey home, early tomorrow morning.
Saying my goodbyes, today, to the people - friends - with which I was working was a very moving experience for me. It has rarely been the case that I've found myself treated so affectionately by so many and in so short a time, and this morning was certainly an exception that will stick in my mind. The strangest aspect of it all is the fact that I've only been here for eleven days; perhaps sticking together pretty much 24/7 made all the difference, but whatever the case, there were many handshakes, even more hugs, and even some tears. It really didn't seem silly at the time, though I expect that in due course, the memory will become static in my mind and perhaps lose much of its poignancy.
But in the meantime, it is all fresh, and I have plenty to digest - getting a good look at my mountain of pictures will be a great reminder of what has been a really wonderful experience; I'd like to recount some of it here if I find the time, but until then, all I have to say is my own private "thank you" to my friends and students for making it all so very memorable; I know you'll never see this, but that really isn't a point of consequence.
A wonderful country. I'll be back in Poland one day, and hopefully soon, mark my words.
Current position is a tiny internet cafe on the main street of Zakopane, gateway to the Tatry (Tartarus) Mountains of Poland. I'll only be here for a couple, but thought it'd be nice to post a little "Czesc" to the Universe in general. It has been a really wonderful experience out here, and things are going well, but I'm sure I'll get onto that when time is a little less precious - id est, when I'm home, rested, and supposed to be getting on with my real work once again. Fantastic country; add it to your list.
The last few days have been a flurry of activity whilst I batten down the proverbial hatches to prepare for my incipient departure; the stress seems almost to undermine the whole point of going away, but I have to face the fact that taking a break from work, in science particularly, is such a nightmare. Especially when your experiments are living; so much to see to, so many people to depend upon, and what is worse than having to depend on others?
Today I learned that my Aussie labmate has been to the very place I'm headed before - small Universe - and I gather it's very beautiful. That's really reassuring; I just hope it's half as hot as he says it is; I'm a bit of a heat monkey. Warning: catharsis: fUUUUuuUUUUUUuuuuuuuuck! So much to do - grrr! And I miss most of the Cambridge film festival, so no Goodbye Lenin!, Petites Coupures or Veronica Guerin for me (and Cate Blanchett will be there tonight - in fact, right now! @*!&±%). At least I saw Être et Avoir; so very touching. Sigh.
Greetings, planet earth.
Taken from a list of best-ever quotes (read 'best-ever American-only quotes'), the words of Teddy Roosevelt. I hold that the message he sent is absolutely valid; it's a simple, ineluctable truth. I lament that so many people are blind to it.
Tonight, I ate sardines. Even as I took a bite, the mashed-up fish taunted me with its gelatinous, edible backbone and positively animated pectoral fins. For someone who happily eats pretty much everything, from frog and snail to snake, tinned sardines have long bordered on the stuff of phobia. And now, I have prevailed.
They were pretty good. And I'll probably never buy them again. They really don't compare to freshly caught and grilled sardines anyhow; those, as I learned in Casablanca last September, are an entirely different class of food entirely. Better than se Almost as delicious as calamari.
Fans of hunky Viggo Mortensen - we interrupt this broadcast to highlight the fact that I am not a Viggo fancier, merely having a personal interest in this movie as I was on set whilst it was being filmed on the edge of the Sahara in September - aka Strider/Aragorn, will be glad to know that his next big not-The-Lord-of-the-Rings movie release has now got an online trailer. Incidentally, he is a nice chap, and I'll afford him his privacy, but I strongly contest his insistence that rattlesnakes abound in the lower Atlas; I'm no herpetologist, but I reckon they're exclusive to northern and central America. Live with a biologist and experience the might of pedancy for what it really is.
The last week ended with me at Wimbledon, catching up on some good games of tennis (Isn't it all so exciting at the moment? Some new faces in this year's semis, and Serena got her own back on Henin-Hardenne - wohoo!), I had a busy weekend that included both work and pleasure (also during which I read all of the latest Harry Potter, on a whim, despite having vowed not to buy it), went running in rain so heavy that I looked pretty much naked in my white shirt, simultaneously witnessing the violent collapse of our two months of perfect weather, streamed the two-hour long Apple Keynote speech at the expense of a talk that I had to give on Tuesday (which I completed just in time, and to my own satisfaction; the keynote was worth it), buggered up one of my knees whilst running on a drier day, ate chocolate digestive biscuits nearly to the point of being ill, was nearly blinded by the painful myopia of almost seven solid hours of careful, tedious, closeup analyses of my latest experimental samples with a pair of unwieldy tweezers, and managed to avoid writing a single word about it on here. Which is why I had to relate it all in a single sentence.
There appears to be a point of balance between which one finds the time, or is at least comfortable enough, to sit down and weave the tapestries of inanity that constitute our online spheres. Judging from my attempt at a summary, I seem to have been madly dashing around at the busier end of the comatose-to-nuclear fission scale.
Nice. It makes time fly. And I was just photographed in a novel way - à la American beauty - but covered in banknotes instead of rose petals. Nothing remotely sordid (Mena Suvari was naked)... just playing around with concepts for the photographic scavenger hunt, 26 things, a follow on from the May Day project. I'm hoping to get some of these done in Poland. Got a site and bandwidth to spare - why not take part?
