So glad to be a slab.

It's my third month in Korea.

The BBC hordes have been nipping at my heels this year. I was in Krakow for The Pope, I was in Berlin for the World Cup, and now I'm in Korea for the apocalypse. Call me Forrest Gump. And yet I've scarcely written a word about any of it. I'm not sure why, exactly. When I'm not at work getting ddong chimmed by Korean 4th graders, I'm brooding on how I will recount my travels to my cybernetic great-grandchildren of the future, whether I will narrate each episode in past or present tense, which digressions I will make, the length of said digressions, whether to omit sordid details for posterity ... but my misadventures, like this afternoon's kimchi, need time (probably several years) to be digested.

I will say - in highly general and mostly vague terms - that my travels have been rendered surreal by the sheer ubiquity of western shit. I feel very much like ... what's his name? ... Tartuffe? Voltaire? ... ah! - Candide! ... what with all the zany coincidences, the recurring themes, the lopping-off-of-ass-cheeks and all. Certain corporate logos have a way of running to your aid when you are at your most defeated, when a Berliner has jacked your luggage and an unprecedented late-May blizzard descends upon you; when your posh British roommates have locked you out of the flat and spending the night on a Krakowian park bench becomes a real (although not splendidly enticing) possibility; when you've just missed your connecting flight home and pause briefly to consider whether you (as a man) could sell yourself for a profit. But when all seems utterly and unrefundably lost, cutting through the frenzied squall of binge-shopping Asians, you spy those doughy electric letters - "DUNKIN DONUTS" - and rising above the consonant cacophony of a Polish Catholic anti-gay march, those glistening, golden buns - "BURGER KING" - and at the train station at the end of the earth, where there is nothing but a slab of rusty concrete and the tombstone-colored sky, where the wolves stand to come before the train ever does, just over your shoulder is a Starbucks, selling grande frappucino latés for half the gross domestic product of wherever it is you've ended up.

I climbed my first non-metaphorical mountain not too long ago. Here is a picture.



Nothing is impossible, just prohibitively time-consuming.

-Keith

The next step

... which way should I go?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Robbed

I am back in Krakow, 120 pounds lighter. Some Scheisskopf in Berlin stole all my clothes and personal thoughts. So it goes.

My bag contained:

everything I wasn't wearing at the time
a tube of toothpaste
a toothbrush
some dental floss
a bottle of shampoo
a bar of soap
a bottle of one-a-day vitamins
four notebooks full of writing
Being and Time by Heidegger

I'm not sure what he's going to do with all of that junk. Sit around in my underwear reading Being and Time, probably. At least Scheisskopf won't be making any money. The only person in the world who would pay him for all that shit is me.

But I'm zen about it. It's a fresh start. I've bought some thrift store button-fly jeans that are too tight and an argyle sweater that is too big and a snowboarding t-shirt that I hate wearing. All and all, I look like a circa 1984 Krakowian snowboarding bureaucrat. I am undergoing Polefication. I brush my teeth with myrrh-flavored toothpaste and wash my hair in goat tallow. Maybe I'll even start going to church. When in Poland, do as the Roman Catholics do.

What is it good for?

Colon City

Lody, lody - am I glad I got out of there.

Now I'm in Darmstadt. I have spent the past 24 hours on trains or in train stations. All the while I have been lugging around my body weight in dirty underwear. I feel a bit like Sisyphus except I'm beginning to think that I am Sisyphus, I am the rock, and I am the hill.

The day before I left the States, I got a coffee in the Old Market. I read this quote on the wall while I was taking a crap on the coffee shop crapper:

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."
-Franz Kafka

Alles in Ordnung.

The Fabric of the Cosmos will be the last spacey pop-physics book I read for a long time. I have spent the past year devouring one after another and it has been rewarding. But so many of these 500-page tomes reach the exhausting conclusion that we may never understand what the universe is made of, where it came from, or how it really works. By and large, I'm optimistic about it. We might never understand the universe, but I'm sure that computers will figure it out within our lifetimes. And if they're friendly computers, maybe they will do us the courtesy of explaining it in simple terms, like we're a classroom full of pre-intermediate Polish students.

An understanding of the fundamental structure of the universe is not something that is likely to reveal itself to me on some bleary random morning while I'm taking a dump. It's much more likely to reveal itself to some string theorist while he or she is taking a dump. And even if I did chance upon the fundamental structure of the universe easily explained and diagrammed in a little yellow leaflet handed to me as I passed through the Stare Miasto for a kebab, I would still have to live with myself, wouldn't I? I'd still have to clip my fingernails and tie my shoes and fumble with the keys every time I try to unlock a door. Cosmology collapses under the mundane weight of existential baggage. Tomorrow, I'm going to get on a train and curl up with some Kafka.

But on my field trip into the lonely realm of stoner physics, I have learned much about practical thermodynamics. Entropy is the way of the world. If you let things go to shit, to shit they will go. If you tear the binding off of your copy of The Brothers Karamazov and toss the pages up into the air, they will not land the way Dostoevsky would want them to, and never in a billion billion years would they sort themselves out. Fabric unravels, but it doesn't ravel. Likewise, eggs don't unbreak, people don't undie, and when you cheese off your British flatmates by leaving a festering bottle of grapefruit juice in the fridge for two weeks, they will not spontaneously start acknowledging your existence on the last day of your CELTA course. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall ...

"Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against nature ... the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worthwhile."
- Nathaniel West

They even want my chitterlings!

Provided I don't snap in my next lesson and start bellowing "Deutschland Über Alles" as I goosestep up and down the aisles, I will pass my CELTA course tomorrow and leave Krakow the day after. I'm anxious to get out of here. Krakow has been kind to me, but I am ready to step onto a train and go someplace else, to drink coffee and brood on my own for a few days without the company of a stumbling gaggle of British lechers.

Thursday morning, I am taking the train to Berlin. I might stay the night there. Over the weekend, I have a job interview in Darmstadt. It is possible that I will be living there. Then again, a lot of things are possible now that were just a daydream yesterday.

Poo-tee-weetski?

Walking home through back alleys late Monday night, I chanced upon the most encouraging graffiti I've seen since I've been here. Spraypainted across the side of some eight billion year-old mini-mall:

KILGORE TROUT PREZYDENT

I'm not sure how Jean-Jackets-and-Jesus Poland would respond to their first fictitious American pulp sci-fi writer/president, but it is nonetheless heartening to know that at least one person in Krakow possesses something resembling a sense of irony.

Wednesday night, I watched the UEFA Cup final with a cacophony of Brits. Changing the channel here is a kinesthetic art. I've never seen someone play the theremin, but I imagine it looks a lot like a drunk Englishman screwing around with the cable, trying to pick up a football game on his vintage Polish TV. After Barcelona knocked two goals past Arsenal in the last 15 minutes, the urge to riot was palpable - I readied my crowbar - but cooler heads prevailed and the Brits walked home with their coattails tucked between their legs, occasionally stopping to swat sidewalk trash with their umbrellas.

Krakow is the only place I know of where jazz is alive, if only in a semi-vegetative state. Back in the States, jazz exists as a depressing reenactment of something that will never, ever be hip again, and in that sense, it is more dead than ever. Here in Krakow, it's happening for the very first time. Poland has never had jazz before - i.e. they have never had black people before - so it's still new and exciting to them. There are dumpy little jazz clubs all over Krakow. Of course, there's nothing less cool than a tenorman with eight syllables and more than six Zs in his last name, so fat chance you'll ever find me in a Polish jazz hole.

Kod DaVinci is about to make its debut in Poland. I'd like to be far, far away from here when this bombshell hits. I've seen a few previews on TVP1 and, for a film that's supposed to incur the wrath of God upon man, it looks pretty dull. I don't know what Ron Howard was thinking when he decided to overdub the whole thing in Polish, but I guess when you've starred in American Graffiti and More American Graffiti, you're entitled to some artistic liberties.

Gdzie są toalety?

I got my hair cut today and it looks damned good for the time being. I told my Polish stylist to take a little off the top and she proceeded to straighten my hair and give me a kicky postmodern do. I look like Falco. When it was done and I'd forked over my four bucks, she asked, "You have all things at home?" I assume she meant all of the equipment that was involved in the styling of my hair, which included:

designer shampoo
designer conditioner
designer gel
designer hairspray
designer mousse
designer hair putty
designer water
an electric hair straightener
a Polish hair stylist

I shook my head, no. I do not have any of those things.

"Oh," she said, "then hairs will change."

So, my fleeting Polish sex symbol status has already been dealt its death blow. At the stroke of midnight - when I take my midnightly Suave For Men sponge bath - my straight hair will frizz up into its usual high-entropy state and my seven hours as a slavic heartthrob will come to an end. It's almost like Flowers for Algernon. I'd better walk down to the square and make the most of this precious time. Veal kebab and coffee it is.

The Jesus Zoo

Across from a kielbasa stand down the street from my apartment, the Poles have crucified Jesus three times. They've put up a fishnet to keep The Three Messiahs from escaping and mauling the passersby. When I walk past on my way to class, I am sometimes tempted to toss in a few peanut shells or some popcorn, but there is a sign in Polish that I suspect is advising me not to feed the Jesuses.

NIE KARMIĆ JEZUSÓW

Obligatory artsy-fartsy photo post

Muzyka polska

Every time I walk into the 24-hour delicatessen on the corner of Ulica Batorego, they are playing music that belongs in the next Tarantino film. I'll come in around two in the morning and pick up my usual Nutella, muesli, and uncarbonated water. Then, I'll wait in the queue while "House of the Rising Sun" by Eric Burdon and The Animals runs its course. Another favorite of mine is "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie. I could feel the cameras on me when they played that one. Last night, "One Night in Bangkok" came on and with a prepackaged kielbasa sausage in my hand, it was passably surreal.

There is no formula for Tarantino music, but I've found that certain oldies make for good impulse shopping scenes. Turbulent 60's rock in a convenience store really does it for me. Very Tarantinoesque. Sometimes it's tough not to whip out my glock, kick over a pyramid of canned beans and rob the place.

The radio stations here favor a mixture of 70's prog rock, 80's power ballads, and contemporary Pole-pop. You'll hear "Nights in White Satin" followed by "Take My Breath Away" followed by some techno-polka piece of shit with synth accordion solos. In short, Polish radio is almost lethally eclectic and I do not recommend it to anyone.

Sting is wildly popular here, as are Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. I suppose pillow talk rock will prevail in a culture that has been ravaged for decades by the trampling hooves of Nazi Socialism and Communism. How many Poles can even stomach Wagner? In the wake of eighty years of almost uninterrupted oppression, who wouldn't want to put on the Bodyguard soundtrack and have a nice bubble bath?

Keith 0, Poland 0

Last Friday - upon the completion of a 23-year light labor sentence served in the suburban gulags of the American Midwest - I caught a one-way flight to Krakow with no set plans to return. Equipped with six words of pidgin Polish and not a day of teaching experience to my name, I enrolled in a program to teach me how to teach Poles English. The course lasts four weeks - and then what? More than likely, I will hobo around for a few months and then instantly freeze to death when winter blasts across Poland like a liquid nitrogen cabbage fart.

For now, I live in an apartment two blocks from Krakow's thousand year-old Stare Miasto ("old city," in typically understated Polish) with two shimmering she-Britons in their early 20s. This has necessitated eliminating several personal quirks from my daily routine, such as walking around in the buff, ritualistically clogging the toilet every hour on the hour, and leaving half-empty glasses of milk sitting on windowsills for weeks at a time. By the end of my stay, I would like for my roommates to believe that America is a utopia of curly-headed mumblers who on Tuesdays and Thursdays wear t-shirts promoting bands that probably don't exist.

In the meanwhile, I have expanded my Polish vocabulary to include sixteen words, two of them profanities. This may not seem impressive considering that I've been in Krakow for nearly a week, but any linguist with an associates degree will tell you: Polish is not derived from Latin or Greek, but from the hissing and frothing of the dreaded Polish Baby-Eater, a baby-eating forest opossum whose centuries-long reign of baby eating and unprovoked pranking forced 13th century Poland - out of sheer terror - to adopt the beast's spitting cacophony as its official language.

On my fourth day here, I witnessed a massive anti-gay demonstration. Several hundred Christian soldiers turned out in the main square, marching and chanting "Krakow is not gay!" - "Man + woman = A true couple!" - "Men can't have babies!" - "Eliminate the deviants!" But even this must have gotten boring after a couple of hours, because many of the protesters skipped out early to pelt homosexuals with rocks. Long live Catholic Poland.

This weekend was Labor Day. Everyone in Poland will be drunk until Christmas. My roommate Sara and I were walking back from lunch when we were caught up in a potato farmer parade. A pair of gigantic black amplifiers two feet from our heads suddenly exploded with polka music thumping offbeats loud enough to knock Belarus into the Baltic Sea. Several men in straw hats darted past with wheelbarrows full of potatoes. A throng of boy scouts swirled around us, executing perfectly synchronized pirouettes. A herd of moped drivers sputtered about in listless figure eights. I will never understand those ten minutes of my life.

But for as bizarre as it is here in Poland, it is never hard for me to find some out-of-context American garbage that makes me want to seek exile in Kyrgyzstan. After class on Friday, my British mates and I were aching for a pint, so we walked across town to a joint called Rooster. Not long into the meal, it occurred to me that we had passed through a transatlantic wormhole and that we were eating at the Hooter's in Omaha. The waitresses were wearing lycra shorts and lycra tubetops and I'm pretty sure the burger I ate was made of lycra, too. Rusted out mufflers and American license plates hung from the woodgrain walls and if I weren't served a side dish of very oily cabbage ... if the TVs weren't playing Premier League matches ... if the name on my waitress's trampy dogtag weren't "Bożena" ... I swear I would have pulled my hair out and eaten it right there and then.

My friend Peter - in all respects a fine Welshman - remarked, "Ay, Keith. I really like the atmosphere in this place. Look at all those license plates on the walls!" I could see his enthusiasm was genuine. He'd never seen anything like this before. I nodded sadly and glanced down at the menu. Maybe I'd order a Bud Light.

Poland: A Cursory Examination

Poland: is 94% Catholic. The other 6% are Catholic.

Polish: A social experiment funded by Post Cereals where 50 million people are armed with de-voweled boxes of Alpha-Bits and encouraged to drink heavily and make up their own language.

Official Unit of Currency: Old Woman Wearing Babushka.

National Letter: L with a line through it.

"Butterfly" by Crazy Town: National anthem.

Polish women: Mostly adorable, sometimes actually men.

Minorities: Oil.

Poles: Water.

Pizza: Well-liked.

Motorists: Brazenly homicidal.

Bikers: Brazenly homicidal.

Pigeons: Brazenly homicidal.

Pedestrians: Obviously suicidal.

Sounds of neighbors having very loud Polish sex: Inescapable.

Threat of foreign invasion from any direction: Constant.