The Stink

Before I plunge too deeply into the Mexican chapter of my life, it is necessary for me to digress a bit and describe to my faithful viewers my living conditions in the great city of Berlin. I will draw heavily from the journal I kept during that time and embellish where necessary. My intent is not to slander my former roommate, Ben Pham, who persists living in those conditions somehow. But it is important for me to reconstruct those days of squalor so I can figure out how it is I wound up here – working close to sixty hours a week for five hundred bucks a month – and how the hell I survived for so long in Germany, working six hours a week and blowing five hundred Euros a minute.

So, we will pick things up on the 4th of July, in the present tense:

July 4th, 2008
We live in squalor. Ben's room is big enough for two grown men to live in, provided they took the time to erect some kind of partition, but we have not. The room is segmented into sovereign zones of garbage. My territory includes the deflated air mattress that I no longer sleep on and the heap of musty blankets on the floor that I curl up into these days, as well as a sinister black bag that contains six months of unwashed laundry. Ben has an actual mattress, an empty bookshelf, and several islands of dirty clothes and Assorted Shit that dot the floor like a Micronesia of filth. Thankfully, he has disposed of the lime green nylon mesh tube where he used to stash his dirty laundry. It dangled from the Chinese lantern in the ceiling and the fusion of light and stink attracted the fruit flies in droves.

There is a frameless mirror leaning up against one wall, like a portal to another equally disgusting dimension where all the crap on the floor is reversed. There is a constant droning, as though someone is drilling into cement, that seems to come from one of the neighboring apartments but assails us from all sides. There is a long hardwood desk where Ben and I do our paperwork. The desk is cluttered with triple-folded visa applications, US passports, the phone numbers of people who might be able to bail us out of jams, half-eaten foil-wrapped bricks of chocolate, a webcam that Ben hasn't used once since I got here, and scattered bits of plastic. Curled up on the empty chair next to me is the bike lock that I bought Ben for eight Euros at the flea market. He hasn't used that, either.

The place is so sloppy that I can't tell if it's getting better or worse, whether I am having a positive or negative impact on the apartment's overall level of entropy. The kitchen floor seems to be getting progressively stickier. It is impossible to ignore the fruit flies. Perhaps they stowed away in my luggage and followed me over from Poland. Or perhaps they have been here all along and I just didn't notice them when I arrived. Fruit flies become more noticeable as you go along. The Stink works the opposite way. You notice The Stink the first time you enter a room and notice it less and less every day thereafter, until the only people who smell it are those unfortunate souls who come into your room, or the people who are buying your drinks, because by then, The Stink is on you.

I'm thinking about leaving the country again. I'm approaching the possibility of life in Berlin like a starved wolf circling a visibly diseased carcass. Surviving here seems financially doable, but it only appears that way because I am not yet trying to make a living in Berlin. I am just a loafer and hobo-speculator at the moment, so I must be leaving a lot of things out of the equation. I can sit here and say, "$200 for rent. $200 for food. $200 for language school. I need $600 a month and fuck the rest." But there are always intangibles, and not just the ones people usually cite – unplanned medical disasters, travel expenses, taxes, apartment repairs – but also the True Intangibles, like Where the Hell Did it All Go? Those intangibles are multiplied twofold-and-rising by the flaccid dollar. So although the Berlin Bohemeslebens seems possible on the most abstract bohemian paper, in reality working a lot and coming home sweaty and depressed to our crumb-strewn apartment might not be so great for my psyche. It would be much easier to volunteer at an Italian winery. I would have my daily work. My host farmers would feed me three times a day and take me to the hospital if I started squirting chyme from my pores. I could stay there through the winter without having to buy any new clothes. And by the time the Peace Corps summoned me back to Blade Runner USA for my cough-and-turn, I would fly home with 500 bucks in the bank, all suntanned and lithe from months of Mediterranean cuisine and romantic farm labor.

I need to shut down this computer. Staying inside is driving me mad. I'm going to kidnap Ben and take him out for a ridiculous night in the Valley of the Turkish Whores.

That was July 4th. At that point in time, Ben and I were still going out on the town. Our credit hadn't yet crunched. Today I had planned on writing a pretentious rant about teaching the present continuous tense, but for our purposes, I think it would be better for me to continue regurgitating Berlin stories until I am fresh out of them. Then the pretentious rants will continue.

Hasta más tarde,
- Karate Keith

Nebraskano: Ilegal

Oh, yes. Here in Mexico we have something that we simply did not have in Korea or Poland: danger. Peligro. Korea is a sexually frustrated antfarm. Poland is colder than a welldigger's ass. But Mexico.

Yesterday, one of my teenagers gave me a plastic spoonful of congealed caramel wrapped in a plastic baggie. I brought it home and left it on the kitchen counter, where it will remain for the duration of my contract. Today, the same kid reached into his backpack to hand me another caramel spoon and instead produced a big ol' orange-green bag of pot. I did what any English teacher would do: I whipped my head the other way and started scribbling phrasal verbs on the whiteboard. When I turned back around, the baggie was gone and nobody seemed to have noticed it. I'm not sure how the boss would have reacted if my First Certificate class had successfully hotboxed Room 4, but a career in beachside burrito vending would probably have been in my near future.

I joined the gym this afternoon and was walking downtown after work to give the place a whirl. I made it a couple of blocks before I noticed an unusual number of machine gun wielding soldiers. A few blocks later, I saw the canopied truck they were spilling out of, seeming to spontaneously generate like Pac-Man ghosts. Within minutes, the streets were flooded with troops. It was all I could do to avoid catching a Kalashnikov in the crotch. I slowed to a stop, stood very still for a moment, then turned and walked the other way. Whatever sense it is that warns us about impending gunshot wounds recommended in no uncertain terms that I go home, so that's just what I did.

The nickname for my neighborhood wasn't hard to come up with: I live in the Green Zone. In addition to the public hospital where at midnight throngs of exhausted people wait with blank expressions in a queue that winds halfway around the block, my street hosts six heavily fortified compounds where Zamora's rich and foreign hide from the indigenous poor. Stationed at forty-foot intervals on the sidewalk are several contracted security guards. They all cut the same Hitchcockian figure. I doubt any of them could chase down a Frisbee. The one across the street works a 14-hour shift and sneaks frequent pulls from the grenade-shaped bottles he keeps stashed in the front basket of his bicycle.

Tonight I went out with the roommates and we ate six tacos each for $1.20 a person. The taco stand was situated on the curb, so we sat on plastic stools in the right lane of oncoming traffic, making crunchy noises as screaming Chinese motorcycles whipped the wrinkles out of our shirtbacks. Jaded isn't really the right word, because I’m hypersensitive to my surroundings and I am often frightened by them. Denial is closer to the target: the danger is so palpable that I deny the danger altogether. But that isn't quite it, either. What is the word I’m looking for? Ah. Estúpido. Soy estúpido. Si, es correcto.

The Lazy Mexican

Today, as I was leaving school for siesta, I heard the word "Kimchi" screamed in my direction. It was one of my teenage students, smoking a butt on a park bench. I just started teaching two days ago; no doubt this nickname will spread. I asked him what he was up to. He and his friend were just smoking some dope before class, he explained. I nodded. I've never understood why my students are this cozy with me, but they always are. They spill their guts to me, tell me about their sex romps and drug regimens. It is my greatest asset as a teacher and it is my Achilles heel. In a profession where bonding with one's students on anything but the most platonic subject-verb-object level is strongly discouraged, I somehow wind up playing guidance counselor and wizened sage for people only slightly younger than I am. It's frightening and reassuring.

In Spanish class, my teacher turned around and searched the coffee shop for a la object. She couldn't find any. Everything in the room was male. (She finally found (and later devoured) a tarta.) While the rest of the class moved on to ser and estar, I couldn't get my mind off it: a room full of el objects, of masculine nouns. One could work with this. One could arrange one's rooms in a German gender-based feng shui. You could bring your MENSA friends over and have them guess the motif. "Wrong, Blaise. Everything in this room is neuter in Slovakian, not in Serbocroat." Would there be a palpable difference in aura? In a room of der objects, would a game of poker break out? In a room of die objects, would everyone start ovulating at once? My curiosity knows no bounds.

The lazy Mexican is a myth. True: for two hours in mid-afternoon – the standard hours of Nordic productivity – the Mexicans loosen their ties and lay around in the shade drinking and smoking and sleeping. But that just means that they get up earlier in the morning and work later at night. Mañana exists, but it only applies to social engagements: my friends show up an hour later than they say they will. Hell, I do that in America. But work-wise, mañana doesn't apply to me, or the taco vendors, or the bankers, or the clerks at the supermarket. It might be different with Mexicans in the States. I'm not sure. But after someone has made a mad dash across hundreds of miles of desert at the risk of death by gunshot, starvation, thirst, or combinations thereof; after they have lived in a sublet closet and spent months scrapping around for work before finally earning the privilege of disemboweling pig carcasses for twelve hours a day at minimum wage; after they have sent the last of their paycheck back home so their children, parents, and grandparents can scrape by in rural Michoacán; after all that, how anyone can call the Mexicans lazy – I must admit, it is beyond me. But then, so are many things.

Dia Luna, Dia Pena

And so here I am living in a walled-off compound across from the public hospital in Zamora de Hidalgo, Mexico. The view from my balcony is of the hospital junkyard: dumpsters overflowing with colostomy bags, bloated rubber gloves lying in puddles of gasoline, a fluorescent orange BIOLOGICAL WASTE sign, etc. It seems to rain every day at 3:37 PM sharp, or not at all. Last night a mariachi band played inside the hospital, which must have lent a Lynchian touch to any medical emergencies going on at the time.

The balcony is where I sit and listen to Radio Michocán. The plan is to learn Spanish by immersion. I absorb Mexican public radio for hours on end, then I walk down to the kitchen and fry my ham-and-parmesan tacos, waiting for it all to click.

I sit and watch the painters work. They have spent three days painting our vacant carport. When they smile, it's all gold and empty spaces. They are 53 year-old identical twins. For a while I thought it was one extremely diligent man, but instead it is two slow twins. One of the twins whistles verses and the other sings the choruses. When it is siesta time, they squat on the sidewalk drinking Pepsi and smoking Delicados. Yesterday one of the twins gave me his business card. "We are painters," he said, "and we don't drink beer." The question arises: would I rather be down there singing and painting walls, or am I happy where I am, perched on a balcony, binge drinking instant coffee and sweating about the four classes I'm about to teach? The answer is not clear. Probably there isn't one. Teaching suits my mental and physical build, but is there any way around all this white collar nausea?

Hats off to Spoon for composing the best hipster couplet of all time:

I spent the night in the map room
I humanized the vacuum

Richie Rich

On Thursday morning, I received a check in the mail for $3,500 and 75 cents. I haven't earned that much in the past year combined, but I was so attached to the idea of riding off into the Mexican brush with three grand in my saddlebag that I had already Mr. Zipped halfway to the bank before my father, sensing impending fraud, could get me on the phone and talk me into coming back home and submitting the check to his inspection.

The check was sent to me via FedEx overnight by a law firm in Birmingham, Michigan. My dad asked if I had won any cash settlements in The Wolverine State. I said no, but my mind was hard at work weaving a series of baroque legal scenarios: Petit v. The Detroit Pistons, Petit v. Lake Huron, Petit v. Tim Allen ...

I phoned the law offices of L___ & J___ and they informed me, in their chuckling litigational way, that the check was indeed illegitimate and that somebody was scamming them. In fact, seven fraudulent checks had been sent out already! I groaned listlessly. Is empathy the appropriate response when a law firm gets screwed?

I felt the need to plead my case. Fraud or no, surely the pillars of justice at L___ & J___ could find it in their hearts to slip some reward money into the shallow bank account of a circumglobal hobo. A hundred bucks could buy me a month's worth of taquitos. But it was not to be. They asked me to scan the fraudulent check and send it to them via email ASAP, a task I dutifully performed and was recompensed for with an email reading: "Thank you very much for sending the information." And so, feeling a bit like the mongoloid gardener from Being There, I slid back down into my office chair and slurped my bowl of coffee, read F. Scott Fitzgerald and plotted artistic revenge against the upper class.

The fuzz came around 2 PM, a police officer and his plainclothes intern. He asked what my profession was and I told him I was an English teacher. He looked me up and down and asked, "What kind of English teacher?" I had to admit that I was between jobs and that I didn't teach in America, but in other impoverished backwaters. He scribbled something behind his aluminum clipboard, probably "Hobo." He and his intern held the wacky check up to the sun several times while I sat rocking in my armchair under a swivel-necked lamp, hoping to be interrogated. It never happened, they just confiscated the check and waddled out to the cruiser, where they sat across the street making me nervous while I pretended to play with my dogs. Then they drove off. The check may never have existed for all I know.

A few hours later, deep in the torpor of lost fortune, I checked my email and found a note from the father of the young Swedish prodigy I was supposed to start tutoring earlier in the week.

"Hello Keith," it read, "Thanks for your time, and will to tutor my son, I am using these medium to let you know that payment would be arriving via fedex today."

And so it dawned on me that finally, after a decade of otherwise shrewd internet behavior, I had succumbed to my first email scam.

Before you start taking the piss, I'll have you know that this con artist did not type in all-caps, the hallmark of your Senegalese money laundering scheme. He did not claim to be related to any monarchs, existent or otherwise. He was charming and sane. He offered me $56 dollars an hour to teach his son English and American History.

At no point did he seem desperate (Mohamed Otis - Subj: URGENT TO HELP: ACCOUNTS IS TEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS USD 10,500,000.00), avaricious (Mariano Buck - Subj: We have fake Swiss Men's and Ladie's Replica Watches from Rolex), perverted (Roger Ejaculation - Subj: Blood flow to the penis), paranoid (Fergus Jacky - Subj: Urgent Dangerous News Usama Ben Laden!), or Joycean (Tawanda Weisbaum - Subj: Have he he surrogate a sanction. A it trinity. was a fabric opponent beaten. Not or spouse sheila program. deserts it cliff. clitoris be cynicism fiction. so cranberry.)

No. For the two weeks I corresponded with Mr. Tyler Perry of Sweden, he was an upright if somewhat incoherent and oddly named Swede, and I hadn't the slightest inkling that his son, Sven Perry, didn't exist as anything other than a demonic twinkle in his father's goldbricking eye.

For your edification and enjoyment, the text of the email I received reads as follows:

Once you have finally receive these payment- I would like you to go ahead and have the check payment processed and cashed, afterwards deduct your tutoring fees, and whatever the remaining balance is, Send it to the Nanny, who would be taking care of my son while he is in the US, the Nanny would handle my son being picked-up/dropped-off to the local library where you would always tutor him, after Nanny receives payment- Nanny would contact you to make proper time-table, schedule and arrangements. So in your own best interest, have payment cashed ASAP, deduct your own tutoring fee and send the remainder to the Nanny using Western Union Money Transfer services, You can look up the closest western union store to complete these transfer process on www.westernunion.com, I am aware of the western union sending fees, so deduct the fees from the remainder you are sending to the nanny. Below is the Nanny's info to complete western union transfer.

The odd thing about this scam is that Tyler Perry expects me to subtract my portion of the check and wire the rest of it via Western Union to the "Nanny," one Marva McGibbon in Ft. Meyers, Florida. I can't see how the scheme works. What is there to stop the sexually frustrated English tutors of the world from cashing their checks and sending nothing whatsoever to Nanny McGibbon? For that matter, how many people will actually go through with the money transfer when young Sven Perry doesn't meet them at the "local library" as promised?

Already the situation is too intricate for my cloudy little mind. There is nothing left for me to do but add this to my resume and catch my flight to Guadalajara, broke as the birdshit under my bootheels.

Peace Corpse

The plan, barring total failure:

Mexico 'til May.
Mongolia by June.
Then prison.
Then the madhouse.
Then the grave.

More updates to follow, as I understand a great many of you are concerned as to the whereabouts of me and my sanity.

Who Needs the Peace Corps?

What's there to live for?
Who needs the Peace Corps?
Think I'll just drop out
I'll go to Frisco, buy a wig
and sleep on Owsley's floor

Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I'm completely stoned
I'm hippy and I'm trippy
I'm a gypsy on my own
I'll stay a week and get the crabs
And take a bus back home
I'm really just a phony
But forgive me
'Cause I'm stoned

Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
Go to San Francisco

How I love ya, how I love ya
How I love ya, how I love ya, Frisco
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back!

First I'll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lore
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Haight Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope
I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
I will sleep ...
I will go to a house
That's what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there's a rock and roll band
'Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock and roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won't care

- F. Zappa

Au contraire, M. Sartre:

Hell is children with cell phones.

Asshole on assholes:

In a way trees have assholes but you can't find them, they just drop their leaves.
- Charles Bukowski

The National Anthem

Polski Hymn Narodowy

Poland is not yet lost:
We are still alive.
What the foreigners have taken from us,
We shall take back with the sword.

March, march Dąbrowski,
From Italy to Poland.
Under your leadership,
We shall unite the nation.

We shall cross the Vistula,
We shall cross the Warta,
We shall be Poles.

Bonaparte has set an example,
Of how we are to conquer.

March, march ...

Golden Freedom

[1654]

"Progress was defeated at each turn by the selfish interests of magnates who preached that they were acting thus to defend their Golden Freedom, and in a sense they were.

They were defending their freedom to neutralize the king; they were defending their freedom to keep the newly built towns subservient to their country areas; they were defending most strongly their freedom to keep their peasants in a state of perpetual serfdom as opposed to the liberties which were being grudgingly won in the western parts of Europe; and they were doing everything reactionary within their power to preserve the advantages they had against the legitimate aspirations of the growing gentry. The Golden Freedom which the magnates defended with every bit of chicanery and power they commanded was the freedom of the few to oppress the many, the freedom of a few grasping magnates to prevent a strong king from arising."

- Poland, James A. Michener

The Polish Immigrée's Phrasebook

Chapter One:
At the Paszport Biuro

Jak długo trzeba jeszcze czekać? – How long does one have to wait?
Jest zimno. – It's cold.
Trzeba czekać. – One must wait.
Nie trzeba się gniewać. – You shouldn't be angry.
O co chodzi? – What's the problem?
Trudno! – It can't be helped!
Co mam robić? – What am I supposed to do?
Tak źle i tak niedobrze. – It's bad whichever way you look at it.
To jest do niczego. – This is useless.
Zegarek nie nidzie. – My watch has stopped.
Wszystko strasznie. – Everything is terrible.
Nie chcą słuchać. – They don't want to listen.
To nic! – Forget it!
Mam dosyć tego. – I've had enough!
Co to ma być? – What is this supposed to be?
Gdzie idziemy? – Where are we going?
Widzę, że nie ma telefonu. - I see that there isn't a telephone.
Już nie wiem gdzie jestem. – I don't know where I am anymore.
Martwię się. – I'm worried.
Nie wierzę w Boga. – I don't believe in God.
To jest dla żony. – This is for my wife.

Recently Discovered Record Collection

(burlapgrain kitchen table included for much-needed perspective)


Boney M.




Tercet Egzotyczny




Janos Sarkozi - Gypsies Songs








P Ohio




Rodowicz - The Polish Madonna




The Ubiquitous Abba




Morton Downey, J ...
Dorin Anastasiu




Men Without Hats. Men Without Scarves. Men Without Black Stonewashed Jeans. Men Without Yellow Cardigan Sweaters. Men Without Hands Down Their Pants. Men Without ...




The Santa Maria, a claymation donkey, a Soviet-era cassette player, and Pana Kleksa - they're back from space
and they've brought down a record.




Smurfs








The Singular Grażyna Świtała,
whose name means something in Polish.
Caution: Diffident when veiled!




Creedence

From A Retired Teacher's Notebook

by Anton Chekhov

IT is argued that family and school should work hand in glove. Very true, but only if the family is a respectable one unconnected with trade or shop-keeping, inasmuch as proximity to the lower orders may hinder a school's progress. On grounds of humanity, however, one should not deprive shopkeepers and the wealthier tradesfolk of their occasional pleasures - such as asking teachers to a party, shall we say?

The words 'proposition' and 'conjunction' make schoolgirls modestly lower their eyes and blush, but the terms 'organic' and 'copulative' enable schoolboys to face the future hopefully.

As the vocative case and certain rare letters of the Russian alphabet are practically obsolete, teachers of Russian should in all fairness have their salaries reduced, inasmuch as this decline in cases and letters has reduced their work load.

Our teachers try to persuade their pupils not to waste time reading novels and newspapers since this hampers concentration and distracts them. Besides, novels and newspapers are useless. But why should pupils believe their mentors if the latter spend so much time on newspapers and magazines? Physician, heal hyself! As for me, I am completely in the clear, not having read a single book or paper for thirty years.

When teaching science one should above all ensure one's pupils have their books bound, inasmuch as one cannot bang them on the head with the spine of an unbound book.

Children! What bliss it is to receive one's pension!

Jupiter Mission

I took a film course a few years ago. Dr. D. encouraged us to bring in our favorite scene and play it for the class. I didn't, because I was still going through puberty at the time. But if I could go back, I would play this, my favorite scene in any film, ever:



Speculation?

Kamp Kielce

My apartment block looks like a camp, and not the Bible vacation kind.



They call it Barwinek, the Polish word for the vinca flower, whose name derives from the Latin vincire: to bind, fetter.

The apartments are grey, concrete compounds. The compounds are rectangles with five stories worth of square windows that, despite lacking any characteristics other than squareness, still manage to look sad. The Communists, the Nazis, whichever regime inflicted these prefab ruins upon the Poles, arranged the apartments three compounds to a block with only one end left open, either in mimicry of an Italian courtyard or to discourage escape.

All of the compounds are numbered in the Korean style, so you don't forget where you live. My compound is number five, but they go as high as 37. Numbers 25 through 37 are painted the same color as the deep end of a public pool. Numbers one through 25 are not painted at all, except by local graffiti artists. On the side of my compound, my translator tells me, they have sprayed "You will always have a place in my heart!" and "Hello!" Other compounds are less fortunate.

The apartment square is crisscrossed by cement paths. When the sun is up, tens of Poles can be seen traversing these paths in their own peculiar ways: with a buggy, with a cane, with a limp, with a whole lot of vegetables, swaggering drunk. Even if it is unusually crowded, probability dictates that no one path is ever likely to have more than one person walking it at any given time. This fact, in tandem with the new automatic check-out counters at the grocery store, grants almost total isolation to anyone who seeks it. On the grass islands between paths stand some battered playground structures, most frequently utilized by fierce-looking teenagers and napping drunks. There is a low, dissatisfied murmur in the air at all times. The apartment square has the feel of a prison exercise yard. But if you're young and spry with a spring in your step, as I sometimes am, you can walk these paths and pretend that you're the front-runner in some needlessly complex Olympic speed walking event.

There are dogs. Having lived only in societies where canines are kept under the nylon yoke of Man or cut up in His soup, I have never before experienced the pleasures of watching what dogs do when granted total emancipation: they act like humans. The Wild Dogs of Barwinek dart about with absent looks on their mugs, as though they are immersed in some unending task which demands 70% of their brains. They follow a scent with much enthusiasm for a few minutes at a time, then get bored and look for something else. They ignore humans like we are some minor species of rodent who sometimes gets in the way. They don't often sniff each other's rumps as you might expect: they tend to ignore other dogs, unless it's urgent. They do, however, lift their legs/squat and pee on all manner of phallic structures. You will sometimes see a dachshund and a much larger dog at play, the dachshund getting repeatedly tangled and smooshed under the larger dog's tires, the Poles gathering around to watch, the dachshund tumbling end-over-end like a fumbled football.

Along the southern fringe of the complex are some shops. There is a general store called Kolporter, a word that means "distributor" in Polish, no intended connection to the great Cole Albert Porter, American songsmith of Peru, Indiana. There is a lingerie shop, little more than a glazed window in a yellow shed, before whose sexy red UV lamp the hot matkas bask, babushkas tilted skyward.

The Barwinek vegetable monger is a cheat. The other day you eked out the word for "carrot" and he gave you some brownish dildo-shaped things. You handed him the money and he claimed the cash register was broken, or that he didn't have any change, or something, i.e. he was screwing you over and you both knew it. But as a chronic foreigner, you've learned which wars to wage and when to nod politely, bow, and say thanks, Pan Vegetable Monger, for the kick in the teeth. So you gathered your bruised mutant fruits and veggies, stuffed them into your inkstained messenger bag, and ducked out the door, forging into the cold, cruel headwind of an unkind exchange rate ...

False Friends

This evening, my boss gave me a ride home from school. He is a great man. He speaks the Queen's English and has one of those enormous Slavic heads I'd read about before but didn't believe existed until I saw his in its entirety. His past is a series of conflicts: conflicts with Russians, Germans, Czechs, Americans, conflicts with Polish radio executives, conflicts with technology. I suspect he had some prominent role in ridding Poland of the Soviets and installing the late Pope as Master of the Universe.

"And of course, szukać is the Polish verb for to search," he said as a gaggle of attractive Polish women bustled into the teachers' lounge. He lowered his voice, then stopped talking altogether. He bid everyone goodnight. I bowed, momentarily forgetting which continent I was on. The boss and I stepped outside, where it was, as it has been, as it shall remain: fucking cold.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't want to give you a Czech lesson in front of all those young ladies. Where were we?"
"Szukać," I said.
"Yes, szukać," he said. "In Czech, szukać means to fuck!"
He was gesticulating into the wind like a drunken peasant from an old Russian novel.
"So, these poor Czechs, they come to Poland, they go to the grocery store, and the nice girl behind the vegetable counter says, 'Please wait one moment, I must go fuck the cucumbers!'"
I laughed.
"Would you like to go shopping?" he asked, indicating the big-ass hipermarket across the street. I didn't say no, so we crossed the street.

I figured I would be doing the shopping while the boss tagged along to recommend spiced goat cheeses and Ukrainian lagers and carrots. But he grabbed a cart and started loading it with kielbasa. So it was I who was tagging along.

"The Czechs are the greatest civilization the world has ever known," he said.
I shrugged.
"I say that because they have given to humanity two things for which we will forever remain in their debt." He found the goat cheese he was looking for and dropped two, no three, no four blocks into the cart. Then he turned to me and held up two huge Slavic fingers. "(1) Pilsner, from the city of Plzen, and (2) bramboráky, a savory snack to go with your pilsner."
The shopping cart was piled high with meats and cheeses and now we were coasting inexorably towards the beer aisle.
"Other cultures have contributed to the great body of human knowledge in the fields of science, art, philosophy," he grunted dismissively, "but all such things pale in comparison to this." He swept his arm across the wall of brown bottles before us. I opened my mouth to say something irrelevant, but just then he started shouting in Polish. It wasn't until he turned around that I saw the Bluetooth in his ear. In the meantime, I browsed.

"Original Budweiser. Czech imported lager, beer from Budweis," I murmured, taking a bottle down from the shelf. "No shit."
I squinted at the red label, the Masonic American beer conspiracy shattering all around me. Then, after he had duly owned whoever was on the other end of his ear, the boss started stocking the cart with long, dark bottles of Czech beer.

I waited on the other side for my boss to check out. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I elbowed a passing Pole square in the face.

"Sorry," I shouted. "Er. Przepraszam. Er. Shit."

Skończył się dobry fart

So it's the last class of the day, twenty minutes to go, right? I'm dashing around the room trying to keep the deflated conversational beachball aloft. I learn all about Magdalena's dead hamster and the specifications of Piotr's washing machine. Then this smiling, blushing obese kid tells me to call him "Finger Boy" from now on. He is twirling a pencil between the fingers of his left hand.
"Because of that?" I ask.
"No," he says, "because of this."
He holds up his right hand to reveal a gnarled triple- or quadruple-jointed thumb that he proceeds to wrap around his wrist several times.
"Okay," I say, stifling a dry heave. I take out my attendance chart and mark it accordingly: "Finger Boy."

I start to sweat. There are ten minutes left and I can't make fun of Finger Boy for all ten of those minutes. I reach into my bag of shitty questions and ask if everyone likes the local soccer team, Korona Kielce.
"Um, yes." Shrugs, puzzled grunts.
"What other teams do we have here in Kielce?"
"Viva Kielce is handball team," volunteers Krzysztof.
"We have wallyball team," says Adam. "Fart Kielce."
I blink and clear my throat.
"Fart. Kielce."
"Yes," shrugs Adam, "Fart."
I take a deep breath and try to slow my galloping heart. Easy, Petit. These Poles have a way of clogging everything with consonants. Fart = Szfrzyrzt.
"How do you spell this Fart?" I ask, scrawling an "Sz" on the board.
"No, no," says Krzysztof. "F."
"Okay. Then what?"
"A," the class chimes.
"Yes, yes! And then?"
"R."
"And? And?" I bite my lower lip.
"T."

And I lose it. I spray a confetti of nostril fluid all over the whiteboard. I don't pee my pants but I'm not far off.
"What means fart?" Adam asks when I have regained verticality.
"Well," I sniffle, "when you eat too many pierogis – "
I draw a bent-over stick figure with a smoke cloud emanating from his behind. The class and I both dissolve into hysterics for five minutes. Finally, I summon enough of my voice to ask what "fart" means in Polish.
"Lucky," says Finger Boy.
Five more minutes of insane laughter. Then class is over.

I perform a Kramerian slide into the teacher's lounge and grab the first Pole I can find. I launch into my tale with the sort of mundane preface that is the meat and potatoes of the American work anecdote: "So it's the last class of the day, twenty minutes to go, right?"
"Yes," she says.
"And I ask the kids what sports there are in Kielce and – "
"Yes," she says, "I think the students are really like sport in Kielce, I think. They are like football and wallyball and tennis and handball."
"Right. Anyway, this kid tells me that there's a volleyball team – "
"Yes, wallyball is very popular in Poland," she says. "It is something like national sport."

She wanders off to make some tea. Defeated, I slump down into my chair at the formica table and wait for someone else to come, but no one else comes. The bell rings. I pick up some cheese slices on the way home. Later, I overcook myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Then, around 10 PM, I climb into in the bathtub with Noam Chomsky and we have ourselves a nice, long sulk.

One (1) Polish apartment (used)

Contains:

One (1) cactus
Several (6) dead plants
One (1) Soviet-era MИHCK 16 refrigerator, purrs when full
A lot (8) of poopstains left behind by previous tenant
One (1) plastic glow-in-the-dark Jesus, crucified, nailed into wall above garbage can
Two (2) bags of banana Cream of Wheat, one (1) box of instant rice, one (1) half-empty bag of sugar, two (2) boxes of Earl Grey tea, four (4) cryptic notes, also from previous tenant
One (1) skeleton key
Three (3) Agatha Christie novels, one (1) copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, one (1) Lassie novel, all in Polish, the most widely-spoken West Slavic language
One (1) Soviet-era Kahmama record player with CB radio capabilities
One (1) watercolor print in which guardian angel helps Polish boy in daisy dukes cross bridge from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom
Seven or so (7) Russian nesting dolls, un- and re-nestable, useful for propping open balcony windows when pirating wireless internet
One (1) VHS cassette: Femme Fatale starring one (1) Antonio Banderas and one (1) Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, distributed by Polsat Films, rated R for strong sexuality, violence and language

2,500 Polish złotych OBO

The Perseus Cluster

Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on [sic] the sky. Each of the fuzzy blobs in the above picture is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. We view the cluster through the foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. It takes light roughly 300 million years to get here from this region of the Universe, so we see this cluster as it existed before the age of the dinosaurs.
- Some copywriting stooge at NASA

See? There's nothing to worry about, now is there?

2.01.08 - In Transit

2.11.08

I'm back in Poland, the land of my rebirth as a 19th century peasant. Now that I've found a stable internet connection (if I part the curtains and prop the window open with a row of Matryoshka dolls and hold my laptop out over the balcony into the westerly Russian wind at the risk of freezing all those precious, social-life-sustaining silicon innards) I'm sifting through my Moleskine notes to piece together exactly how I got here without being kalashnikoved to death by the blessed customs officials at Pope John Paul II International Airport.

* * *

2.01.08

Here in London Heathrow, my nervous system is hitting a shrill, delirious pitch. As last night's melatonin dot slushes through my bloodstream like a pillow, I'm looking more and more Eastern Bloc by the minute. The bags under my eyes are turning black, my teeth are sprouting hairs. At this, the midway point of my journey, it is best just to keep out of everyone's way, lest I be mowed down by a luggage cart or jostled aboard a flight to Kyrgyzstan. I'm hiding out in Zone 27, where all of London Heathrow's displaced peoples gather to chatter in rodentlike tongues, looking like they've been camped out for weeks in front of chronically vacant check-in counters, the airline logos stenciled in Cyrillic or worse. I'm huddled over an orange backpack on top of a black bag, chattering in a displaced sort of way to myself.

At 9 AM (3 AM CST), I enjoyed a Real Actual Guinness at a Real Actual plastic woodgrain table in the corner of a Real Actual Dublin airport pub. Later, in Heathrow, I ate Real Actual fish n' chips prepared by Real Actual Serbian short order cooks, and guzzled another Real Actual Guinness dumped artlessly into a glass by a Real Actual Polish girl named Magda. And she totally smiled at me, the first of hopefully several unprovoked smiles from Green Card-hungry Polish matkas. I can't wait! But I shall. Oh, how I shall wait.

Keep on runnin'.

I tend to avoid any and all references to Journey cover art, but:

It's just history repeating itself.

Radiohead's Hail to the Thief opens with a burst of static. Nigel Godrich says, "We're rolling." Thom Yorke remarks, "That's a nice way to start." A drum machine fires up, spits out four stuffy beats. Then Jonny Greenwood sweeps in with a wave of sinister arpeggios and the album begins in full. They are the tentative sounds of a band that has dissected itself to shreds and is nursing its wounds, sitting down to work with tempered expectations and tea. I imagine they drink tea.

It is upon similarly ginger footing that I make my return to TEFL, Teaching English as a Football League. To borrow a David Foster Wallaceism, Korea was a supposedly fun thing I should never have done again. But here I am, doing it again. How do you prepare yourself? By running wind sprints through train station corridors? By binge drinking Listerine? By slapping a strip of duct tape over your mouth and attempting to get your driver's license renewed at the DMV? There is no cross-training for TEFL, no preparation for the absurdity. It is a decathlon of narrowly missed trains, substance misuse, shady bureaucrats, gross miscommunication ... Coming off my five month sabbatical with Dora the Explorer bubble bath in the upstairs tub of my sub-suburban compound, I feel I am up to the task this time around, though no one is ever up to tasks such as these.

This time, it is Poland. I flirted with Peru, made eyes at Estonia, strung along Kyrgyzstan for four months before I caved in to the cat calls of Katolicka Polska. I will be teaching at an English academy called Global Village, in a middling town by the name of Kielce, infamous as the site of the Kielce pogrom, the 1946 slaughter of 37 Jews by a frothing mob of deranged Polish policemen, servicemen, and steelworkers. It is also sister cities with Flint, Michigan. We shall hope Kielce is not the ugly stepsister.

Kielce hovers an hour north of Krakow - where my British leching partners yet remain, lurking in the alleyways between cathedrals, umbrellas at the ready - and two hours south of Warszawa, a city whose name, like Omaha's, evokes a grey sludge in my mind. I find myself in a geographically familiar position, residing in an overlooked mountain town nestled between two metropolises, but I don't expect that Kielce will be as much of an eye- or lung-sore as Daegu. The train station is a flying saucer, enabling quick and easy transport to places like the Kuiper Belt and Flint, Michigan.

It is a five month gig. I will be teaching high schoolers. The contract calls for nineteen teaching hours per week, somewhat less than the forty-or-so I'd gotten used to. I can't imagine how Polish teenagers could possibly surpass the pampered seven-year-old sons of Korean bankers, but I am not placing any bets. According to my director, the thus-far charming Urszula, "we had to thank the teacher you'll be replacing after only 2 months as it appeared he had a drinking problem." How much do you have to drink to get fired in Poland? How many 9.2% Polish porters for breakfast? How much buffalo piss vodka at lunch? How is it possible to get fired without dying?

I am polishing up on my Polish. This language has seven cases. Six of them are beyond me. I suspect everything will be beyond me for a while. But I'm feeling good about Poland. In the event of a Huckabee, Romney, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, Paul, or Thompson victory come November, I will have no qualms about my candlelit loft above the barn, in my cabbage-shaped, cabbage-scented Cathotopia across the sea.

NoKo

This is the best photograph I've ever been lucky enough to take:


If you look closely, you'll see that they probably have one of me, too.

LOOMINGS

... Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. ...