Say-So

In brief research for this essay I have come across accounts of rude and unfair treatment, poor judgment and discrimination by British and Canadian immigration officials among others. A Spanish, German, French or Italian language internet search would most likely produce similar examples having taken place in continental Europe. Rigid immigration laws and blind bureaucratic adherence to their implementation amount to an invisible, red tape equivalent of physical barriers erected by governments around the world in order to define political spheres of influence and restrict movements of goods and people. Examples are the Mexico – US border fence or the Israeli West Bank wall, the upcoming Israeli Egyptian wall and the no longer standing Berlin Wall, the fall of which was celebrated with pomp and fanfare throughout the world last year. At the core of protectionist immigration policies lies the idea that health care, education and professional opportunities are finite resources reserved for nations’ citizens or residents and are in danger of being depleted by those deemed unworthy by the qualification process and therefore of lesser human value. This forceful segregation on the part of the Developed World is a panicked attempt to preserve its economic advantage and ethnic composition of a given country, in Israel’s case, its national and religious purity. The restrictive immigration laws are generally economically and not racially motivated in my opinion, however a quick look at a wealth distribution map of first, second and third worlds makes it apparent that a more liberal immigration attitude on the part of First World countries would tip the racial balance away from its original makeup of dominantly white constitution.

United States attracts many desiring immigrants from around the world. In that sense, the country views itself as a victim of its own economic and political success. It therefore deems justifiable to hold a defensive immigration stance. The US maintains difficult to attain immigration criteria and the immigration process is expensive, lengthy and arduous, all aspects of which were made factorially more difficult with the advent of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Among the immigration processes of the Developed countries, the US practices of the last decade are arguably the most repressive. If you travel only occasionally and are rooted in a single place, jumping through the hoops of US immigration is a foreign experience to you. The inefficiencies and outright failure of the brute force, rudimentary psychology which border control agents engage in, may surprise you. If you are in any way ambiguous residency wise, rely on visas and have not committed to one country as your home, or are a citizen of a nation where day to day living is a never ending struggle - this post is for you, in solidarity.

Multitudes of people whizzing through airports daily, wide and long across North America don’t know about the “back room” behind the stalls of the stone faced immigration officials “greeting” visitors and citizens into the United States. If you are a US citizen - you have never seen one, unless you are visibly dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned and were racially profiled and therefore automatically classified as a threat or otherwise ended up on a no-fly list. It is very likely that you may not know that such rooms even exist at all international terminals in the US and at some Canadian airports where the Canadian flights are channeled into domestic gates. If you are a tourist - you are not aware of the Back Room either. That is, if you are visiting for a week or two and have secured the required visa. Residents - the Green Card holders and professionals on various types of work visas, roll through the Back Room at one point or another fairly smoothly yet without the courtesy due. To the rest of us who are not easily classifiable, commit the error of naive honesty, or who’s paperwork is out of step with the suspected intent - the same offices become interrogation rooms, where coercive questioning and forceful intimidation take place.

I lined up in the long winding queue indicated for visitors, my Canadian passport at hand, having disembarked off a Lot Polish airline flight Warsaw - Chicago. I noted with irony how consistent all arrivals to the USA are, irregardless of the port of entry. US citizens and residents stand a line apart which is always shorter and moves quicker than its languishing visitors’ counterpart. December 22nd, 2009 - our line constituted of Poles, but also Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and others to whom Warsaw - as if the Iron Curtain has arcanely shifted further east - is the gateway to the West. The visitors’ line I estimated, was tenfold longer than the other queue and unusually resistant. The flat screens over the immigration stalls looped a “Welcome to the United States” video. “Propaganda” - I ascertained to myself, looking at the images of healthy, happy, well assimilated people of color, images of African-American girls skipping rope in a sunlit park and smiling well dressed Central or South American Immigrants. I have learned to differentiate the fake PR face of the United States from the hard, street reality I witnessed first hand while living in the country as a professional class visa holder on and off for the last 10 years. The flyover views of Manhattan, the mandatory inclusion of the Statue of Liberty, lest anyone forget what America professes to be, did not mix in images of homelessness, rampant obesity among the low income population, perennial theft and street vandalism, violent youth crime, prison overcrowding, and extreme poverty in hallmark cities such as San Francisco for example, where I used to live.

It was my turn to step up to the booth and face the immigration official. The usual questions followed: why am I coming to the United States, how long and where will I stay. Being a poor strategist and arriving with genuine, lawful intentions, I didn’t think twice about telling it like it was: I was coming to stay with my boyfriend whom I have not seen in a long time, I was going to live with him and hoped to stay for several months. Tired after a long flight and unsuspecting, I spoke in casual, conversational manner. In retrospect I ought to have stuck to dry facts, for it soon became apparent that the job the immigration officials at the airport take upon themselves is to nail and indict and not to fairly adjudicate.

I was escorted to the Back Room for further questioning. I sat down not yet excessively worried and took a look around. There were others whose fate was swinging in balance, while they waited too. I noted right away, a young black woman on the bench in front of me. Her back hunched, arms resting on her thighs, head hanging low. Three hours later, when I was set free - she still maintained her posture, as if immobilized by the weight of her predicament. During that entire time, her name was never called, not a single immigration official had approached her, and she never gave away a clue as to what her story might have been.

Out of Vancouver, when the dust has finally settled, I investigated what went wrong for me that night. Not a hint of explanation was given to me during or after the interrogation to assure the office of US Immigration had a one sided, overwhelming position of power. I wasn’t informed of the bureaucratic inconsistency my case presented. As a Canadian citizen I’ve made a mistake of attempting to enter the United States on a visa waiver, whereas I should have applied for an entry visa after all due to my expectation to stay longer than the 90 days accounted for by the program. I was suspected of having a dual-intent without accompanying, appropriate visa or in lay terms, intending to immigrate into the US illegally.

“What is it that you want?” - asked the first female officer with an all-knowing smirk, leaning back in her chair and cocking her head. I looked at her apprehensively, sensing that I was presumed guilty before my personal situation was duly examined. - “I don’t think you are asking the right question, it isn’t up to me to say what I want, it is up to you to tell me what I can or cannot do.” I was scolded for getting smart and forcefully led on with the expected line of inquiry - “Do you want to work?”. I collected myself and delivered a vague explanation of being “in transition”, and how I expected to take the time of my stay in the US following a difficult apartment renovation project in Warsaw to reconnect with my boyfriend and decide on a direction in which I was going to take my life. So no, I did not intend to work, at least not right away and certainly not illegally. I proceeded to remind her what should have been glaringly obvious had she payed even the slightest attention to my immigration history as opposed to the stereotype she saw me as - that of an Eastern European woman with a marked accent coming to stay with her “boyfriend who has a job and will provide”, perhaps a case of a Russian Bride.

I lived and worked in the States for 7 years this time around while enjoying the H1B status twice, having had ample time to legally pursue a green card. I had made no such attempt. I consciously rejected the chance of becoming an American permanent resident - I simply did not want, or need to, having both a well respected Canadian citizenship and an EU passport as well. It wouldn’t make any sense, given my history, to pursue the illegal alien route to US immigration… That irony was lost on my overzealous inquisitor. I couldn’t point it out to her as I was rarely allowed to complete a sentence even in a direct attempt to answer questions.

It was time to get back to the benches, along with the others, and wait. A Latin American Family with kids was brought in, then another. None of the families spoke among themselves, but remained reserved, knowing full well their lower hand. Routine, random checks it seemed since they were processed and handed back their passports without a word before my second round of interrogation came up. A Russian woman in her mid thirties, wearing tall white boots, flowery knit stockings, elaborate coat and too much makeup arrived and sat down. She was confident. Perhaps she, like I in the past - armed with a thick stack of corporate documents and visa processing approvals - was yet unaware of the precarious, fine line she was walking. I overheard the officers speak among themselves within her ears’ reach, knowing she would not understand, that she had all the necessary invitations by the Russian Foundation. To their poorly disguised surprise, they had no grounds to detain her. An old man with a hearing aid, whom I seen lost and confused earlier when he was being helped by an airport worker also turned up and nervously tried to explain in his limited English that his son lived and worked here and he came to visit his son. He bowed repeatedly on exit when handed back his passport, thankful, shaken and teary eyed. There was Mrs. Ferrera or Ferreira a Spaniard or a South American, whose brother, husband or companion - an airline pilot - peeked in and asked: “you’re still here?” - to which she just shrugged and nodded - as if immigration detentions were something she has come to expect.

My name was called again. This time I was facing the first female officer and her supervisor, also a woman. The US border control watchdog was springing heads. The lights seemed to glow brighter, the entire experience started to take on a surreal quality. I realized that my words would make the difference between an allowed discretionary entry and a deportation. I repeated my story as I have recounted it previously. The supervisor kept interrupting. Questioning became personal, my relationship to my boyfriend quizzed, private arrangements and money matters combed through in embarrassing detail. I maintained that my stay would be a visit - not a migration. I was not listened to, believed or otherwise my story did not compute. The supervising officer summed it up: “You are not a bonified tourist” - I was told, likely intending to convey that I did not deserve a special consideration. Sadly, that is precisely who I was. I arrived bona-fide never intending to break the law. While on a work visa in the past, I dutifully payed taxes having had all the responsibilities of a resident but none of the privileges. With a squeaky clean immigration record, never having overstayed my visas, arriving as a tourist for the first time in a decade - my good faith was being violently questioned without justification. I was ordered to get back to the benches, once again.

I was summoned back, for the third time, sometime later. The US immigration personified this time by a three-headed all female, blood thirsty chimera - Cerberus - guarded the gates of Hades. The newly arrived, third officer turned the interrogation up yet another notch. I was yelled at and heard myself say: “Please don’t raise your voice, why are you trying to intimidate me?” - “If you feel intimidated that’s your problem” was the response. I recall eventually hunching forward, resting my forearms on my thighs. Cerberus, sensing capitulation, slowly started sieving her words and the verdict. I held my breath. I was being graced with a two week entry into the United States of America. One of the officers indicated that I should follow her to finalize the visa. She lectured me on having “an attitude and no respect for authority” which would be recorded in my file, while all I ever tried to accomplish, was to calmly and respectfully answer questions I was being posed. She added: “I bet that have you had to deal with Polish authorities, you’d behave all together different”. I waited for her to stamp my passport then looked her in the eye, shook my head in resigned disbelief and muttered: “Why do you assume so much, you don’t even know me.”

My personal story was recently, uncannily echoed by the story of a Nova Scotia woman Ayat Manna who was denied entry to the United States when flying to visit her husband. She was interrogated, yelled at and intimidated by the US immigration, as I was, perhaps more, and was never told why she was being subjected to such treatment. It is clear that neither mine or her incidents are unique and that they weren’t a case of a few bad apples among the immigration officers who took out their bad mood on random travelers, they are too similar. The abuse is systemic. The women officers were expressly trained and instructed to coerce and brutalize instead of investigate potential migratory transgressions. When did we as human beings, as citizens of the world, come to accept and condone a governing system that not only monitors and restricts our movements but keeps us from visiting loved ones?

As I was stepping of a gate and onto a San Francisco-Vancouver flight precisely two weeks later, an airline official took my boarding pass, checked my passport and smiled: “Going home?”, I nodded - “Yes I am, and please take that I-94″. - “So you’re not coming back?” - with great satisfaction I answered: “No, I am not” and lighter than air I floated on board.

This entry speaks of forking paths. More specifically The Garden of Forking Paths. Crossroads, but more accurately the kind that is a bifurcation, where two diverging directions surface ahead, while turning back on your heels is an impossibility. I found a volume of Jorge Luis Borges’ stories on my desk at work one day. I knew whom it was from. Men wanting to step over from casual friendship to courting, dip their toes by bringing by books and stories, interviews and poems. They learn words in my native tongue to surprise me as if to say: “I care about who you are, here, look at these books and see who I am”. By now, so predictable is this behavior that I suspect the existence of a lost manual of which pages were randomly scattered. Or, is it I who dismiss and walk around oblivious to any other cues, or men, except those who cause me to raise a brow.

In the short story, Dr. Yu Tsun shoots Stephen Albert. Presumably it is one of many possible outcomes. As professor Albert explains to Yu Tsun minutes before his death:

The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts’ui Pen conceived it. In contrast to Newton or Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one other for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist and not I; in others I and not you; in others both of us. In the present one, which the favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost.”

The Garden of Forking Paths Wikipedia page cleverly observed:

This idea is remarkably similar to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was not proposed until over a decade after the writing of this story.

Borges was a writer, a mind, ahead of his times. The biographical story studded with graceful readings of his poetry appears in the documentary Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Jorge Luis was my husband before I had blossomed. On a balmy island of Oahu wanting to calm my mind after an argument, I scanned titles and authors’ names in a bookstore, searching, meandering, needing, lacking. I was pacified at last while leafing through the pages of the Spanish publication of Seven Nights as if the inspired transcribed lectures were capable of transferring some of the author’s insights to his incidental namesake.

A literary antonym of Borges is possibly Pablo Neruda. Contemporaries, born in neighboring countries, their backgrounds differ. One born to an educated middle class family in Buenos Aires, the other a son of a railway worker having grown up in a remote town south of Santiago. Their life stories involve travel and prolonged periods of living abroad, Borges as a youngster, Neruda in his early adulthood, a fact which influenced both their writings respectively. Borges wrote short stories, essays and poems depicting richly layered internal world where reality and fiction interwove. In his concise style not a word may be missed since each is deliberate or carries a cross-cultural reference. Neruda - a poet by birth by his own account, whose lingering compositions are often as elaborate as short stories, had a facility for words. His profuse stream of consciousness, some critics argue, may have produced a few lesser poems. The five volume Obras Completas contains 6000 pages.

An Argentine, in many ways uncannily like the postmodernist master, with his frequent use of “conjecture”, his anxiety about the “infinite”, superior intelligence and a reluctance to pair bond, came to me as I sat on a grassy knoll newly arrived to sunny California, reading Isabelle Allende’s Daughter of Fortune in its French edition. He asked whether I read the book in French because of the Latin, lingual proximity to Spanish (original version) and what I thought of the book. I answered, my heart unsuspecting and complacent, that the novel was exceedingly melodramatic and French was just one of the languages I wanted to brush up on.

One pertinent difference between Neruda and Borges is not stylistic but temperamental. While J.L. Borges retreated from the outside world, lived in semi seclusion and spoke of constant underlying melancholy, Pablo Neruda though shy and introspect in his youth, interacted and engaged. His wonder and poetic expression encompassed everything from salt, artichoke and lemon, the smallest of things, to the drama of human existence and the tragedy of men’s actions. He used his writing unabashedly to serve his political convictions and to propagate his vision of justice. Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling is an independent documentary in the works, crafted in California and narrated in Spanish by Isabel Allende. A couple of clips are available online here and here along with a few select interviews .

Neruda dripped into my inbox, trickled, flowed and floated me. Revolutionary hoarse whisper brimmed my bath tub. San Francisco’s streets came alive with people, buildings and hotels housing personal biographies, insignificant, except to those whose lives they described.

The universality of Neruda’s love poetry is sensually palpable to all men and women of flesh across the divides of geography and culture.

In You the Earth is a favorite among favorites in Captain’s Verses.

The traditional Polish dish served on Christmas Eve, Kapusta z Grochem is also commonly used as the proverbial equivalent of the Kitchen Sink in the English language, or the “anything and everything” of a particular topic. Having listened to a recent Forum interview with Jennifer 8. Lee about her book, “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food”, and having read yet another fascinating chapter of Liao Yiwu’s Paris Review series of encounters - “The Retired Official” which recalls the Great Chinese Famine, I tip my hat to the resilience of the Chinese people and their creativity in search of comestibles in dire circumstances. Similarly, putting split peas into a pot along with sauerkraut, as baffling as the combination seems to me, is the legacy of the poor people of Eastern Europe and their lean years.

The lethargically crawling days of the first months of 2008, come spring, culminated in a sudden “peas and cabbage” barf of events in my personal life. Back in the lull of February, with first whiffs of spring air and warm and decisive sunshine, I watched the virile forces of seasonal rebirth in the ubiquitous mating pursuits of male pigeons. The aggressive pacing and puffing-up of feathers that is not a dance but a chase, leaves me dumbfounded by its euphemistic name - the “mating ritual”. Sexually driven males relentlessly trot behind females (or other males) who invariably attempt to get away. They persist until they succeed, or until they tire, or till their attention and their path of pursuit swerves to follow a new potential subject. If intercourse is achieved, it bears no similarity to the way human females positively respond, embrace and unfurl in the act of copulation. Nor, is the human male pursuit of sexual encounter limited to cornering a female into a situation of no escape routes. Men must employ psychological tactics to come up with the right combination of sound-bites, visuals and olfactory stimulations to trigger a positive response of the women they desire. The process is self selecting since simple minds and cliché methods procure simple, cliché women. I vividly and fondly remember a scene from Martin Scorsese’s film Raging Bull, when rising boxing star Jake LaMotta meets the budding, almost a woman not quite a child, beautiful Vicky. He swaggers over towards her, looks her over in silence for a moment and after a short introduction by his brother Joey, points over to his car with a nonchalant head gesture and says: “You wanna go for a ride?” to which she plainly responds: “All right…”. The minimal dialogue exchange between the two throughout their courtship brings forth the body language and emphasizes the simplicity of their psyche but more importantly, the archetypal nature of their connection. The beautifully acted love sequences, more than any other I’ve ever seen, depict the bare, naked essence of human male and female, falling in love.

“Love is only visiting” - she said. Smilingly, she dedicated the practice to the appreciation of love in our lives saying that we bask in it and enjoy it deeply because it does not stay. I frequented Studio Rasa for their lunch sessions. On one of the last practices, a teacher shared an introductory thought induced by her own personal turmoil. These words meant to bring student yogis in touch with the present moment in humility and surrender, had the contrary effect of almost launching me out of the classroom. I am a conscientious objector in fatal matters such as death or loss of love. I cannot deny or dispute the factuality of such events. Yet, I refuse the implication of reveling in their existential aspect. Death is easily defined, universally recognized and accepted, love is nothing like it. The word may embody a wide range of concepts from friendship, to admiration, physical desire, infatuation or habit and attachment. It is not measurable in pulse beats. Its presence or absence are not definite, clinically defined states. Yet my approach to both is equally “unenlightened”. Life and Love are to be lived with every fiber of our bodies and mourned with equally dooming abandon.

- - -
Note: This entry was written in early April. It was stashed and unpublished till now.

The sudden spell of undisrupted gorgeous sunny weather over San Francisco is mocking me.
The weight of a headache I carry uphill to my apartment is threatening to grind me down into the pavement. I welcome the stupor that comes with excess food and drink. My maternal grandmother has passed away.

We were not close. I could not describe who she was, what were her passions or driving motivations in life. She did not fascinate me when as a teenager I watched her serve food or light the Sabbath candles. I don’t regret in typically nostalgic manner not having taken more time to know her. Our relationship for all it was and wasn’t, was a result of a generational and cultural gap which neither one of us could honestly transcend. The lacerating wound of her departure comes not from close emotional loss. It is strangely visceral. I know that in her death, there is a little bit of my own.

With my grandmother’s passing the single persistent link to my Jewish heritage has disintegrated as if let loose by her last breath. The history of the Jewish community of Bessarabia and later the Soviet Republic of Molodva seems a little less my own.

Dr. Zvi Vasilavski on Yizkor Book Project wrote:

Small and tiny was the Jewish tribe that placed its tent, a nomadic Jewish tent, in the wide fields of Bessarabia. Poor and negligible was this tribe among the great Jewish tribes that lived in the dry lands of Vohlin, Podolia and new Russia and that were densely populated and carried an ancient history. Minute was also its part in the Jewish culture of the Diaspora of the last generations: A few sad melodies, a gypsy Moldovian-Vohlin Jewish mixture, bringing tears to your eyes and softening your heart with the sunset on a Saturday evening, and bringing a unique flavor in the prayers during the days between Rosh Hashana and Yom-Kippur – this is the only gift to the nomadic Jewish temple, that Jewish Bessarabia brought with it. Simple Jews lived there. Their food – mamaliga, and their drink – Bessarabian wine. Their food more than an egg, while their religiousness, less than an olive. Only the reflecting light of the Podilic Hasidim, is shining their light from the black land to the blue sky. Their life table is full, but their spiritual table, poor and miserable. If a Jew from Lita would come by, only lightly knowledgeable in the Bible and the Mishnah – he would be considered a scholar, a Rabbi. In contrast, many of the Jews are farmers, workers of the land, muscular and strong. In their love for the land, they were not blessed with being overly pampered, but were closer to the origins of life and the world.

At the turn of the 20th century Kishinev ’s Jewry constituted 43% on the city’s inhabitants, attracting migrants escaping persecution from within Russia while offering a glim hope of better living conditions. While the Kishinev pogroms were the birthright of my great grandparents, my grandmother’s lot included the Soviet takeover of Moldova soon followed by the Nazi invasion. Riva Milshteyn-Rozenfeld must have been her contemporary, only a few years older. Her memoir describes those days.

My mother’s youth set apart by another 20 years, was an energetic break from the past. She as many of her generation, took on a true progressive outlook encouraged by the Soviet propaganda, shedding the burdens of history by distancing herself from Jewish identity and religion. She still understands and speaks a little Romanian. This language did not traverse the next consecutive generation however, and is entirely foreign to me. The only reminder of this part of my genetic compound is the knowledge and affinity of mamaliga .

Not having formed any deep attachments to places or loyalties to new nationalities while having traveled a lot, I remain a true cosmopolitan. On sad days like this, I find myself being eroded, as if with the sale of the piece of land which belonged to my father’s family and where I was born, and with the passings of my family members - what constitutes me, my heritage, my brief personal history, is being cut loose and floats off into the distance, bit by bit.

At Luton airport on a flight heading to Warsaw, members of this insolent and impudent nation of finaglers and comers (qualities which purportedly have assured the people’s survival during the hardships and near starvation of communist rule) were returning to their homeland. I, having been born “under the commune” but having grown up in freedom and democracy of the West, speaking and clearly understanding the Polish language, feeling incredibly estranged from my own genotype, was being outmaneuvered in the deeply ingrained race towards shorter lines, better seats, quicker exits. It escaped the general attention that Warsaw was our final destination and we all sat together on the same aircraft, arriving at our destination at exactly the same time, walking out through mainly symbolic (within the EU) passport check within minutes of each other.

I thought of the importance and validity of “homeland” in today’s globalized world of instant communication and widely accessible travel. The people whom I silently recognized in the streets as compatriots, the frequent yet scattered appearances standing out from the ecumenical sample of humanity which is London, have a convergence point of 312 000 km2 nestled these days between Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and the Russian exclave . While boarding the flight which was managed by English crew of EasyJet, the travelers, almost entirely Poles, progressively relaxed, jubilant loud conversations sprang up. I thought - homeland is good, it is a physical space which allows for the display of characteristics shaped by specific history and a distinct language with the approval and acceptance of members sharing the same eccentricities.

During my childhood in Warsaw, foreigners, especially darker skinned and non caucasian featured, were a rare and strange sight. One was a step father of my childhood friend, a tall dark man from a distant land of Mexico, a musician who slept in late and took his tea with milk. I don’t remember having heard him speak, ever the less speak Polish. Nowadays, a charming, pretty young girl waits an assortment of teas, coffees and fresh squeezed juices at a dessert shop a minute walk away from my Warsaw apartment. I can barely contain myself from asking: where are you from and how wonderfully you speak Polish. The cheerful string of words and flawless Polish accent come from a girl with Asian features. I second guess myself and pause realizing it may be inappropriate, she may very well have been born and raised here. I, on the other hand, having lived abroad for most of my life, am the one with awkward phrasing, hesitant grammar and noticeably foreign inflection. I imagine a situation where conceivably the tables were turned, and the young waitress would appropriately ask me: where are you from and how wonderfully you speak Polish. More encounters of this type take place at which only I am inclined to marvel. None of the Varsovians seem to notice it anymore: a Syrian man selling kebab along side typically Polish long, toasted halves of mini- baguettes with cheese. He snaps photos with his phone saying that he loves candid street photography, those are the most beautiful he says in Polish which bears only a slight hint of the world beyond; and a Japanese woman with a generous smile, inviting me to a meeting of a world peace organization. Perhaps more than the yearly seven percent economic growth, this is the reminder of a new era for Poland, one that I know many still 30 years ago did not dare to dream of.

Writing about anything else but the crisis in southern Lebanon these days is trivial and superficial. Half a million displaced. Countless wounded, how many dead? And yet, here I am. Finding myself unexpectedly with spare time on my hands I spent time over two documentaries this weekend. One is The Human Face narrated by John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley which I realized would be a second viewing, and the other a Charles Bukowski reading at Bellevue.
Alligators have no facial expressions or facial muscles because they are solitary animals. Humans have 90. We are optimized to communicate, and we are social creatures. That is why, John Cleese reminds me, solitary confinement is an acute form of punishment.
Charles Bukowski’s name was netted within my peripheral vision when browsing Bound Together, on Height street in San Francisco. Easily remembered due to recognizably Polish last name I didn’t hurry to discover his work first hand, having read that he was controversial, a misanthrope, disputably a poet. Being appreciative of spoken word and literary readings, the documentary seemed promising as performance and for the opportunity to observe the author in person enunciating his own work.
Prejudiced by earlier criticism, I was initially put off by the disinterested, monotonous tone. It seemed disingenuous. Then I listened in…
Of course! How else would one seethe insulting epithets.
The images are painterly Caravaggio-like, discordant.
I enjoyed “My father was…” and “I think of the Little Men”. Here is “Another Day”:

having the low down blues and going
into a restraunt to eat.
you sit at a table.
the waitress smiles at you.
she’s dumpy. her ass is too big.
she radiates kindess and symphaty….

… more here

I was smiling. Instead of attending Laughter Clubs a dosage of rasp, micro depiction of humanity, of myself, the things I touch, the thoughts running through my head daily, is what I’ll take.

Introspection catalyzes artistic expression as in this solitary confinement art example. Interaction brings about laughter at best.

This short animation making the rounds on chat rooms, message boards of polish domains, makes for a graceful metaphor to Polish history of the last 2 centuries. Presently it speaks to frustrations of young Poles trying to catch lift, show off, “make it”. After all, the age of “opportunity” has dawned on Poland in 1989 with Solidarity officially defeating the old Communist wreck of a regime in free elections. Ever since, most resourceful young Poles have desperately tried to make up for the lost ground and to live up to the western capitalist standards. Change isn’t easy, progress never quick enough, unemployment is high and competition fierce. It seems that repeatedly any venture meets with failure, by now any young Pole has learned to expect being flamed. Being scorched runs deep in Polish history, back over 200 years when in 1772 Poland was partitioned for the first time. Any uprising attempts have only resulted in further partitions in 1793 and 1795 when the neighboring Russia, Prussia and Austria helped themselves to the remains of Polish territory until the eradication of its statehood. And, as in the fairy tale of the sleeping beauty, Poland ceased to exist for over a hundred years. Then came along General Pilsudski , who through political and military maneuvers made Poland into a viable player in the complex politics of Europe during WWI. Just as Poland seemed to have been catching lift again, proudly taking reigns of its independence, the Bolsheviks in Russia claimed their own victories and were marching west to bestow the bliss of communism on the Polish, German and possibly all workers of the world. Poles, newly endowed with state ownership, jealously guarded their borders and Russia marching now under a new standard of USSR had won no credibility. After all they were the same neighbors to the east who only a century ago laid claim to Polish property and spirit. The noble ideology of common good and sharing did not matter, the Bolsheviks were bloodily fought off in the Warsaw Battle during the Soviet-Polish war 1918-1921. And so once again the Poles attempted to rebuild a sovereign country, when this time the German giant to the west was stirring. In 1938, Poland refused to grant Hitler access and a corridor to the Prussian territories back east and to become an ally against the Soviets, and so a year later Hitler and Stalin while signing their pact, decided once again that Poland’s fate was to be obliterated. Flamed again. This time, unbearably heavily so. After WWII, Poles finally succumbed to the greater power of their neighbors. Though they were freed from the Nazi occupation by the same Stalin’s hand which betrayed them at the war’s outset, the Poles never forgot or forgave the offense. The Soviet stand-offish reluctance at the Warsaw uprising in 1944 added assault to injury. The Polish Republic became part of the eastern block, disgruntled, accepting the de facto influence and governance of USSR. Barely a generation later, Poles have rebuilt and replenished barely enough to start raising their heads against a regime that was never their own, against ideology which however good in its intentions was imposed and kept in place through brute force. They were dreaming of high flight and applause. Maybe this time around?…
The fly’s saying has become a part of contemporary national identity: ‘ale nie no nieda sie, no poprostu kurwa, zawsze cos, zawsze cos, zawsze kurwa cos…’ (but no, it is impossible, no simply fuck, always something, always something, always fucking something…)

Last night I spent five hours sleeping, tossing and turning on a cramped seat of American Airlines red-eye flight San Francisco - Boston. It was a nightmare scenario, due to a late flight and a missed connection I had to decide whether to pursue my luggage all the way to where it needed to be claimed triggering a cascade of delays which would never (or so it seemed) get me to my destination , or forego the luggage and spend the 2 weeks bare, with only purchased emergency necessities. Luckily it was a decision which did not come about. A coincidence had me cross paths with a personnel who was relaxed, knowledgeable and willing to help. I managed to intercept my luggage in Boston and remained there until the next flight allowing me a few hour’s peak at Boston’s downtown. I came across two events which had me reflect on the fragility and a single face dimension of my middle class, definitely bourguois existence. An incident in chinatown where a woman driver has seemingly hit and possibly injured a pedestrian (it is my imagination filling in the gaps as I did not want to disturb the scene by gawking). She sat in front of her car possibly where the victim once was and cried remorsefully. Consoled by another woman, she was fully oblivious to the busy streets, the pedestrian rubber necks, the high sun at noon and a warm summer day - the fragility of our “safe” daily routines threatened by others but more obviously by our own falliability. Next, in a park I was approached by a stranger who literally invited himself to come and stay with me in San Francisco for what could be a lengthy visit. Ivan, a Ukrainian man approaching 50’s who’s been roaming the US for 2 years, living hand to mouth, with no permanent address, no doubt sleeping frequently under the open skies. He recognized a slavic face. “Am I in your way?” I asked startled by his intense gaze. - “Maybe”, he muttered hinting that I may be of help to him rather than an obstacle. Polish hospitality is historically a subject of national pride. A popular saying loosely translates: “A guest in the house - God in the house”. When somewhat awkwardly the topic of illegal labor came about, he excitedly exclaimed - there is no other country like Poland. He recounted how he could easily find day jobs at flea markets simply by talking to people. He was offered accommodations and once, was able to spend 3 months in his hosts house all by himself. His story has a flavor of old rural Poland and its population, a romantic picture of a simple human interaction, an exchange.
I can’t place it in the context of the current socio-economical reality with very high unemployment rates and people who have been held back for decades under a socialist regime, just bursting to realize the economical opportunities which they believe they were robbed off. Even less so, I can imagine how Ivan was able to survive in the United States, where even an occasional baby sitter is required to be CPR certified. I am not around a milieu which could offer a day job to Ivan and I squirm at an idea of having a long term guest at my apartment. As Ivan pereceptably commented: “you are not like other Poles” noticing my reluctance. “I suppose I am not” I admitted.
Ivan walked away with my email address, which he still has to figure out how to use. I have the time to ponder whether I was unreasonably defensive, being unwelcoming to a stranger bound to me by ethnic origins, or whether I am being outlandishly romantic by reflecting back on the incident.

The unstoppable churning of the present moment into a past memory, the impossibility of “return”, the futility of nostalgia, and the “pain of ignorance” beautifully traced in Milan Kundera’s novel “Ignorance” epitomize to me, what is a Blog.
Neisthai, an abandoned blogspot. I will be re-posting here opinions and thoughts which still resonate.

I resisted Blogger and Friendster while in hype, dismissed the popularity value, sullied the inherent self promotion factor.
Because the two phenomena focus on outward expression and communication with others, I understood “the others and their response” to be the central focal point and the purpose of engagement in Blogger and Friendster activity…

Having had some experience, my Bayesian Inference would have to be seriously re-adjusted.
Both are forums for self expression, “I” is the topic, the public nature is secondary, a response whether in form of site hits or new friendship invitations is trivial. I do obsess about the hit statistics, length of visits, origin and ISP. Work my social network to acquire new friends, write messages to strangers, search demographics and interests, compare friends in common, the number of friends, admire size and vitality of an extensive Friendster network. But, my drive is expansively Apollonian, I am very proud to say. It is about acquisition, numbers and status.
As I revel in my cyber persona, muse about being a disembodied sentinel, watching and reading, absorbing and ingesting news and information online, I reflect about my stat tracking and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. How much the information I gather about my visitors affects my posts? I also occasionally follow the entry pages back to the visitor’s homes. Read their posts. Do they track? Do they revisit my Blog? Would the reality of my blogging experience be different if I didn’t track?
Since the subject borders on esoteric why not check out your past life experience? Only make sure to read the disclaimer, next.

CANTHAVE is a self publishing medium for street photography and opinion commentary on current affairs, social phenomena, science and culture.

The CANTHAVE photoblog - Okular - is a collection of street photos taken primarily in San Francisco, but also in other locations in North America and Europe such as Seattle, Montreal, Vancouver, Paris, Prague and Warsaw. The camera of choice is a Pentax *ist DS. All images are taken RAW and are contrast and color enhanced.

The CANTHAVE blog - Say-So - is a collection of thoughts, reveries and rummage, reflections on current day living, its idiosyncrasies and challenges. Put together, Okular and Say-So are a snapshot - a slice of life as seen through the eyes of Patricia Pawlak, or Rolling Red by her online alias.

Patricia is a CG Artist, an amateur photographer and a self-professed writer. She presently works at Electronic Arts as Character Technical Artist and pursues her artistic self expression by means of this website, in her spare time.