Do Nowego Roku

As the holidays subside, I’m finding, or rather taking, time to anticipate leaving, the actual, physical driving off, rolling away in the night to points east. The auto insurance has been adjusted for my absence, but the oil will still need to be changed before I go. I’ll leave the brake work until July. And the packing has begun. I discover that you cannot travel light when you are transporting books, and I cannot live six months abroad without a few at hand—okay, two dozen—or write without reference. Heavy as bricks, they serve as both touchstone and ballast to a mind like mine. Just one black bag full though, no steamer trunk. A couple of laptops and the merest modicum of clothing.

My colleagues gathered not long ago to bid me bon voyage; my children visited for the Christmas holiday. Their company reminds me how fortunate I am to have them and their affection, and how, in some sense, illogical, even unwise, it is to leave them. Love is here, you know, affection, regard, comfort. And love is no small thing. And it’s not as if one were going on some great, necessary quest or to war or in search of truth. Perhaps this reconnaissance will prove merely the walkabout of a gadabout. And bad things can happen to gadabouts on walkabouts. Earlier this month, “The 485-foot Baltic Ace collided with the 440-foot container ship Corvus J in darkness near busy shipping lanes some 40 miles off the coast of the southern Netherlands…. Four crew members died and seven were missing in the icy waters of the North Sea.” (AP, Dec. 7, 2012). Awful. Granted, no mention is made of the loss of gadabouts, but my point is that love, at least in my experience, has never prevented anyone from doing something stupid—quite the contrary. And yet, in my experience, things, even stupid things, have worked out to the relatively loving present. Love doesn’t prevent anyone ill-advisedly going anywhere; love does insure, however, that he will return.

Let’s then into the New Year. 

Wesołych Świąt!

Merry Christmas! Or more precisely, “merry holidays!” Veh-SO-wikh SCHWEE-ant. A tricky phrase, I think. Wesoły is pretty straightforwardly “merry” or “joyful” or “jolly,” all adjectives that comport with the overtones of English-spoken Christmas. The ending –ych indicates genitive plural. Świąt is the genitive plural of swięto: neuter nouns drop the ending –o, and in this particular instance, we sound shift the vowel from ę, the nasal “EWnh”, to ą, the nasal “AWnh”. I don’t know why, and in trying to divine the various resonances and possible derivations of the word, I find myself confused, though affably, by the word associations: świat (“world”), światło (“light”), świetny (“splendid”), and święty (holy). As if, etymologically, the greeting itself infuses the whole world with light, splendidness, and sacrament. Now, as for the grammar, because the idiom appears in the plural genitive form, wesołych świąt must be the expressed portion of a larger, partially implicit idea. In English, “Merry Christmas” means “have a merry Christmas” or we hope you have a merry Christmas”. But that can’t be the meaning in Polish, unless the implied verb requires the genitive case, instead of the more usual accusative. More likely, the preposition dla (“for”) governs the case, as in “best wishes for Merry Holidays.” Let’s go with that for now.

 

My visa has arrived this week, and my passage ticket, this morning. Merry Christmas to me.

Papers

I drove down to Chicago on Sunday night for a visit this morning to the Polish consulate—a total of 12 hours on the road (six each way) for 45 minutes in the office. But they were easy travel hours, with a pleasant overnight at the Pension Hellman, and a friendly chat with Jacek, 3^rd secretary and fellow bureaucrat.

Prior to leaving I had bridled a bit at the cost and inconvenience and pondered going visaless. It did not help my mood that Saturday night I ran across a conspiratorial line in Miłosz’s Native Realm, “After all, documents were thought up by bureaucrats to poison people’s lives, and one should not have to stick too closely to regulations.” (66) Certainly in Czarist and Soviet Russia, and probably in Communist Poland…. Okay, here, too, but a bureaucrat myself and rule follower (coward), I maintain that bureaucracy has as well its legitimate uses and, besides, has treated me pretty decently over the years, and while I can be irreverent toward it, I countenance no outlawry and only occasional scofflawry. Also, I must confess a certain relish for the idea of “papers,” you know, that get-out-of-jail-free card, that fourth trump, that golden ticket, that letter of introduction from God.

Papers are amazing. Black marks on official bond, nice stamp, have the power of life and death, and other even more important transits. I’ve always wanted papers. I’ve always wanted to have to produce them and then, produce them. I’ll shuffle around a bit just to prolong the moment, patting my pockets, before saying, ”I think this is what you’re looking for.” My documents. My challenger unwraps, unfolds the leaves, that delicious (to the ear) uncrumpling of paper. He peruses, hands them back, and sends me on my way. I’m legit. It’s great.

And Jacek and I had a lovely conversation. I learned that Borowicz is a very Polish name, possibly even Lithuanian. In fact, the name appears in Jacek’s own family line. Does it mean “son of the forest?”—I wanted to confirm. Of the deep forest, he replied. And when I mentioned that my father was born in Poland in 1925, he brightened up further and let me know that if a Polish birth certificate exists, I can claim Polish citizenship. I might already be Polakiem, if I can only document the bloodline. Blood, ink—the indelible fluids of identity. I’ll be documented soon; visa comes in a week.

In honor of Miłosz, I parked illegally—not out of courage, only impatience.

ETD

Word has arrived that I am tentatively scheduled to depart Philadelphia sometime during the weekend of January 11-13. My old friend the Mayor, burmistrz, and my other old friend, the Musician, muzyk, have agreed to accompany me to the docks and see me off: the road trip we never took in our youth, I alone venturing on to the old country to take up temporary residence in Nowy Świat. The Mayor, now grown cranky and cynical in office (he was cranky and cynical to begin with actually, in a good way), grumbles about my choice of transport and grouses doubts of my return. I could fall overboard or in love. I reassure him, “I’m 54 years old.” Other friends and colleagues likewise tease that I won’t come back. Yes, well, I suppose I could fall overboard.

My doctor, lekarz, has examined me and found the patient fit for duty, “in excellent health.” All of the appropriate boxes on the FREIGHTER PASSENGER MEDICAL CERTIFICATE have been checked, as well as that one particular walnut-sized and only obliquely accessible internal organ. Taking one for Team Polska. I should probably visit the dentystę as well. More fingers in another orifice.

I have spoken with a secretary of the Polish legation in Chicago, who advises me of the necessary documents I will need to apply for an extended-term tourist visa. I think I can make the trip mid-December.

Half of the necessary computer hardware has been acquired. I’m reminded that to use it proficiently, I must acquire yet another language, Technologuese.

Otherwise, I’ve made little further progress in Polish acculturation. I have been reading Stefan Żeromski’s The Coming Spring, 1924, published in the year that my grandfather returned to Poland. A sober book on the whole, the title yet implied some promise of hope, and my father was born there in April, 1925; however, Żeromski died in November of that year, and my grandfather ended his repatriation efforts soon thereafter. The short-lived history of that republic nevertheless produced this delightful passage and its attitude of sly restraint that I’ve come to appreciate as consummately, literarily Polish. Cezary, the main character, has just fallen into the arms of the yummy widow Kościeniecka, when the author interrupts:

*The prudery of the author and his profound respect for the prudery of the reader, and above all obsequiousness toward the super-prudery of the critic, prevents the inclusion of details of this evening in Mrs. Laura’s locked rooms. (p. 242)

Please, no shades of gray. Thank you.

  

ul. Karmelicka

The question of living quarters has been settled without recourse to my cousin’s gypsy lawyer real-estate agent. I had begun to draft a note to him in Polish, then, thinking better of the challenge, delayed. In the meantime occasioned by this delay, my friend and colleague, Dr. hab. Monika, has secured for me most suitable accommodations, a studio apartment on ul. Karmelicka, Carmelite Street, not far from the order’s house, which gives name to the thoroughfare. So, the Carmelite brothers will be my neighbors, and while not strictly avowed to silence, but only more or less quiet contemplation, prayer, and activities that keep them out of trouble, they strike me as my kind of brothers and neighbors. The small cell that will house me for six months of Polish devotion has an agreeable, monkish air of simplicity (though without austerity), utility, and a corridor of rusticated masonry. Old brick, the touchstone, for me, of memory.

I learn, belatedly, and as a result of my own reluctance to discover difficulties, especially bureaucratic ones, that I need a visa to remain in Poland longer than 90 days. Duh. A country reasonably wants to know why you might linger beyond the typical stay of a tourist. You might be up to no good. Of course, if you were up to no good, you would merely need to invent a lie to cover your ill intentions—thereby adding to your no-goodedness. Fortunately though (because I’m a lousy liar, even of honest white lies), I have perfectly good reasons; it’s just that now I have to make a special trip to the Polish consulate in Chicago to file the application and pay the new fee. Schedule an interview. Immerse myself in Chicago traffic. And I have to say that after reading Gombrowicz’s fictional account of his encounters with Polish officialdom in Trans-Atlantyk, I sigh non-fictively. I’ve got about six weeks. Pick a Friday. 

Always, eventually November

Accommodations in steerage secured, yet I’m no closer to Poland. The remains of this year, the days, the moments pass by not swiftly enough, and though now closer in time, I feel myself no closer in spirit, as my language drifts away about equally. Busy with work and lazy without, I don’t study, feeling both anxious and becalmed, anxious because becalmed. Such are the intimations of November, the month of the fallen leaves, listopad.

A colleague of my dear ex-wife, my była żona, (“was wife,” I love that) importuned upon hearing of my travel plans, “Has he ever been on the ocean?” On the Atlantic? In the winter?

No.

Hereinafter the Passenger

As the news of my appointment circulates among family, friends, and my university community, I receive attention, congratulation, good wishes, and one question: Aren’t you excited? No, actually, not that I’m aware. I’ve never been a particularly excitable boy.  And after eight years of remote possibility and over two more of stated intention and increasing likelihood, going to Poland seems the most natural thing in the world. Next step. Not quite as predictable or periodic as the sun coming up, but certainly logical and consequent, maybe casually destined.

This week I’m reading the terms of my contract for carriage aboard cargo vessels, and the reading is much to be preferred to the small print of airline tickets and the user agreements of electronic devices and social networks. It reads of a previous century, maybe two. The passenger is “asked to kindly take note of the following important information” as to “the peculiarities of passage aboard a cargo vessel.” As mentioned in my previous blog entry, the passenger, hereinafter, “the passenger,” must be able-bodied and visibly so with a certificate from a doctor verifying fitness. In “cases of doubt” as to fitness even with a certificate, the passenger may be subject to “a medical examination by the Association of Seafarers.” Who would not want to be examined by the Association of Seafarers and pronounced fit for duty? Who would not want to be enrolled in their company, the men who go down to the sea in ships? Fitness, the contract advises us, is “a matter of principle.” Ancient idea.

Among other ancient ideas, we find obedience and good order: “all passengers shall be subject to the authority and rules of the captain and the officers of the vessel.” Consumers, customers are not a law unto themselves here, and in fact, on a cargo vessel, are pretty much afterthoughts; “the transportation of cargo essentially takes precedence over the interests of passengers.” We seem almost to be paying for the privilege of being considered potential flotsam and jetsam. Rather tonic, refreshing. In the event of any of the following, the carrier may discontinue the passage and disembark the passenger at the nearest port of the carrier’s convenience:

Force majeure, marine, port and river risks or risks related to other navigable waters, actions taken by public or government agencies, epidemics, collisions, shipwrecks, fire, errors in the navigation or control of this or any other vessel, confiscation or seizure of the vessel as part of a legal procedure, sudden or unexpected shortage of fuel, war, hostile actions, civil war, terrorism, piracy, riots, strike or industrial action or any other causes and circumstances outside the control and responsibility of the carrier.

(Talk about covering your aft.)

So, Josh, are you excited yet? Maybe a little.

Transatlanticism

Yesterday I authorized my bank to wire a deposit reserving a cabin on a container ship, Rickmers Shanghai, “or [a] sister vessel,” for my Atlantic passage. Departure from Philadelphia, enchantingly imprecise, is listed as “on about [sic] early January 2013.” Apparently we still sail, rather, by the seat of our pants when once we flew. I emailed as well some personal information to the marine contractor. The form requires that travelers be able-bodied, given that, unlike cruise ships, no doctor is aboard; “Passengers must be able to walk and care for themselves unaided.” Check. They do not transport exiles over the age of 75. Understandable, no problem. Their stipulation that “[h]ealth/accident insurance is mandatory for the duration of the entire freighter voyage” as well as “insurance covering international emergency medical evacuation” reminds one how fragile life can seem on the high seas and how effing expensive it must be to preserve it in extremis. The total cost, thus, of ocean-going one-way amounts to almost double the cost of round-trip airfare, so that tramp-steaming is not for tramps anymore. Freighter travel caters to the more upscale vagabond.

I was charmed to learn that my port of destination will be Antwerp, in Belgium. Initial discussions had me leaving Charleston, North Carolina, and arriving in either Hamburg or Bremerhaven, which is closer, I suppose, to Poland, but much less poetic. You see, when my grandfather emigrated from Europe in 1902, he departed from Antwerp and landed in Philadelphia. Forth and back.

And of course, ironically, the headline from today’s Polskieradio: Kontenerowiec Huelin Renouf zderzył się ze skała u wybrzeży Alderney, jedną z Wysp Normandskich. “The container ship Huelin Renouf collided with a rock near the shore of Alderney, one of the Channel Isles off Normandy.” One's Polish is always just good enough to read headlines like that.