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.
