Vicky Christina Barcelona

I just saw this movie with Hania and I loved it. It basically reflects what I have been thinking about lately which is such: although I dislike melodrama, it is better to live life fully, expressing all emotions and being honest to the point it hurts about them even if it means there's going to be some melodrama involved in life eventually, than live life half-heartedly, always sticking to the "plan" of what we imagine our life should be or sticking to the norm or to the society's rules, never risking anything and being afraid of trying anything out of the ordinary. And maybe that is the reason why I feel better in places where people are hot blooded, live emotions on the spot, never look back and never regret anything. And that is why I feel so bored in societies in which everything is according to the plan of a "perfect" life, perfect family, perfect job, perfect house, etc. and not taking any risks so that that perfect life remains "perfect". I feel very connected to Juan Antonio and Maria Elena and to their living out of the moment. Hania said an interesting thing: the triangle Maria Elena, Juan Antonio and Christina is honest and out in the open. Dough will be in "perfect" marriage with Vicky, until he gets bored out of his mind one day and gets a mistress on the side and will go to great lengths to hide it. In the first triangle everybody deals with their emotions as they come and everything is discussed as it happens. In the second triangle, in the "perfect world", when the wife (or the husband) finds out about the spouse being unfaithfull, then the melodrama starts and there's so much of it that it can kill everything. In any case, and in my case in particular, I come to the conclusion that there's nothing worse than a boring life and it is better to ask for what you want and to get it if you can than lie flat and hide in the never changing status quo. It's interesting how at one point Christina, the American tourist, suggests to Juan Antonio that Maria Elena should see some shrink about her suicidal attempt and mood changes in general. I don't think Maria Elena would think there's anything wrong with her, anything that would require any doctor's help: this is how she is and how she deals with life, in a compulsive way but that is what make her feel ALIVE. Would she want a doctor to proscribe some pills so that she would not be able to feel all the emotions, the pain, the tragedy? Hell no! She may want to kill herself at one point but to be half dead while being alive by numbing herself by prescribtion drugs - I don't thinks she would want that. I liked so many things about this movie. I also loved the scenery of Oviedo. We decided with Hania that we will some time in the future undertake a road trip to see all this beauty.

My story about Morocco will come. I have talked to Gosia who is coming with Rashid to Poland in June and we will go to Morocco to visit Rashid's family and the friends whom I made there recently. So I think I will get to the details of my trip before we set out to Morocco again but if not, then I will write with new impressions.

Now I am almost done with the house renovation. I will start looking for school of acupuncture, hopefully to start in the fall. In the summer I will still be here in Poland, making short trips here and there, visiting friends whom I haven't seen for a long time, visiting Katarina in Slovakia for a few days, visiting Marcin and Dorotka and their son Tomek (the next baby will be born in a few weeks) in Warsaw, visiting Gosia and Rashid in Lodz, and enjoying the good time.

Easter greetings

I have been thinking about you dear friends during Easter. Easter is a big holiday in Poland and probably the most spiritual one. It lasts two days so there's lots of time to celebrate life, to sit at tables full of traditional dishes, share the food and conversations with friends, family and neighbors, and to think about spiritual and earthly things, and about people we love who are far away. And in my case I always think of people who are far away since due to my nomadic nature my friends and loved ones are spread out throughout the planet (and beyond).

Starting with spiritual stuff, on Sunday morning, after I woke up and patted Maksio who came for his morning back rub, I thought how the Easter morning is the celebration of resurrecting from the dead, from non-existence, and how for me every day is the Ester morning and every day I live as if I lived the whole full life in it. I was resting in bed, in the quiet home (my mom went to the South of Poland to visit her sisters and extended family so I was home alone with Max), feeling incredibly well and peaceful. Then, after contemplating resurrection, other dimensions, and the wonderful unexpectability of things, I got out of bed and started the day. I went for the Easter breakfast to the house of my neighbors and friends whom I will call "the Dezor Kids" since, although they are grown up now, to me they will always be kids because I remember how they were all born (I was a teenager then) and how they all were in diapers, how they were changing teeth and growing. Out of 8 kids (they were 9 kids but the second oldest boy Adam died) 7 still live in their family house: Ania, Michal, Julia, Marcel, Liliana, Laura and Luiza (the twins). The 8th child Helena lives in Belgium with her family (her partner Emmanuel and two little babies Julian and Celina). We were also accompanied by Ania's boyfriend Max (who is from Argentina) and Julia's boyfriend Pawel. Girls bake delicious cakes and cook good food so the table was full of all kinds of home made delicacies. We had lots of fun eating and talking and afterwards we went for a long walk with Ania's dogs Taco and Lilo and with my Maksio. Everything is blooming in the forest and it is getting warm so the walk was great. We really are lucky that we have this beautiful forest and lakes so close to our homes. We were chilling out the whole day, talking, watching short films made by Filip (Liliana's boyfriend) and sharing lots of laughs. The next day, still a holiday in Poland and what is called Smingus dyngus - the tradition of pouring water on each other - I met with Patrycja and Hania for coffee and cake and then later we went altoghter with the Dezor Kids and their cousins for a long walk again and got somehow wet. The Smingus dyngus tradition is still very much alive (it comes from the very old times as I heard): people run around with little plastic bottles or bags full of water but also with buckets and water guns so one can get quite wet if one can't run fast... I had the camera so I was spared. After the walk I visited Hania and her family and once again we set down at an Easter table eating and drinking and enjoying the time together. In the evening we all met together again in my freshly renovated house for a party that ended at 2 am. I ate a LOT of cake this holiday... a few types of cheescake, two types of poppyseed cake, a few types of babka, a yeast cake, chocolates... Today I started the day with drinking liver-detox tea... But it was all worth it because everything was delicious and what are the holidays for?! Today my friend Przemek came for leftovers because he couldn't join us yesterday but I still have cakes until the rest of the week. More friends will come and all will be eaten in due time. I enjoyed the holiday a lot - it left a very warm feeling in my heart.

Well, and about Morocco - I will write about it soon. I just have to finish that freaken tax return which I pushed aside until now and now is the last day so got to do it before the deadline. How I dislike this paperwork stuff... absolute torture... but what has to be done has to be done and then I can move on to enjoyable things. Hugs to everyone.

House Renovation

Hi Steve! Nice to hear from you. Where should I start? The craziness in my life continues...

Maybe I will start with the latest. The latest is such. While I was away in Marocco the main water pipe in the house broke, hectolitres of water spilled into the basement/first floor and everything got wet and the parquet floor started swimming... Around the same time my mom got sick with the flu and then got a Bell's Palsy (paralysis of the face due to the facial nerve infection). I came back with my own infection but nonetheless pulled up my sleaves and got to work. First I did acupuncture for my mom (her face got back to normal and she also noticed that her facial wrinkles got smaller, as a side effect). Then I went to work on the house. And I am still working, after six weeks! Due to a wonderful coincidence (or God's finger, as I believe) my elementary school friend Michal, whom I haven't seen since I left the elementary school, came for a visit because he had an idea of a 25-year reunion of our class and I was on his list. So I asked him if he knew a plumber and he did and that's how I found Mr. Marian who turned out to be a plumber, and electrician, a painter, a floor fixer - in two words we called such a man "Mr. Gold Hand". So Mr. Marian also pulled his sleaves and together we have been fixing the house bottom to top. Today Mr. Marian came for the last time and the rest, such as fixing stuff outside like the roof, garden, etc., he will do when the snow finally thaws... because it is still cold in Poland although the spring is in the air. So the floor downstairs got replaced. We also had rats which most likely came from the stables which are close to the house so we got rid of them and had to replace some pipes which they chew, these nasty rats. Everything is fixed. Now I also have a heap of garbage in the backyard, an incredibly big heap of garbage, which was in the basement because my dad had the herding disorder which means he couldn't throw away anything and everything was collected somewhere in the house. I still have about 100 screwdrivers, lots and lots of bolts and nails of all impossible kinds, three lawn movers, different types of plastic garden chairs, miles of cables, tin, carpets, not to mention most likely a few cars in car parts stored in the garage and the garden. I also have a whole VW of 30 years which I decided to sell. I love the VW but it is a car that requires constant work and I don't think I can do it. So there's still more work to do but the worst part is done. At least the house became brighter and lighter and I made happy a lot of people with all the stuff that I donated and gave away. I still have to drive some stuff for the flee market, but when it gets warmer, and books to the library. Mr. Marian became part of the family and enjoyed home cooking of my mother and the espresso I made for him in the italian espresso machine. Mr. Marian drove 50 km every day, because he lives in a village outside of my hometown (25 km away), so I am espacially grateful for his services and that he agreed to help me with everything.

I take breaks from fixing the house and I go everyday for a long walk with Max and then with my friend Hania to the gym. We found a great place for spinning. It's called Magiel fitness. Magiel is the old device to press the loundry so we are pressing our bodies hard there. It is located in an old townhouse and all the beutiful ceiling fixings and the wooden floor have been kept so it's like spinning in a colonial house. The instructors are great. So we start a day with driving Hania's son Wojtek to school in the morning and then we speed to catch a class. We get energy for the whole day. Sometimes after that we go for a coffee to our version of Barnes and Nobles. And then Hania goes to her chores and I go to meet with Mr. Marian who is waiting in the house. On Sundays Mr. Marian had a day off and I had days off too to enjoy some theater and museum activities. I am really impressed how nice my hometown has became lately. So many nice cultural things are happening and so many nice coffee places flourished for conversations. It's really great.

I don't know if I mentioned earlier that I decided not to go back to Amsterdam and to study there. I decided to look for a different school. I found a school in Poland, 100 km away from my hometown, and I will ask if I can continue my education there. Classes start in September. I will look at this school and some other schools in Europe and in China. In any case, I am very glad the water pipe broke because I did what had to be done and what was waiting for me to be done since my father's death. After this part of my life is cleaned and fixed, I can move on to the next chapter, without worrying there are things waiting for me to finish. So until September I will most likely be here, at home, enjoying friends and nature. I started giving English lessons as a way of getting some money and I will most likely just do this so that I can be free in the summer to spend some time in Wiselka on the Baltic coast.

And now I can start writing on Marocco. I will do it in a new entry. I actually woke up with a cold today so I will take a break for rest and some linden tea and write some more soon. It seems I have been sick on and off this entire winter. Time to work on my immune system... I am sending you lots of hugs, my friends everywhere.

Finally!

Dear friends, finally! I have the internet connection at home. I will be connected to the world and to you now. I will soon write about my travels in Marocco and about my life in Poland at the moment. It's midday now in my hometown Poznan and I have to run some errands but I will be back soon. Ciao!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!

By some strange turn of events I came to Marocco a few days ago. I will write more if I find a keyboard that resembles the one I am used to. Until then all good wishes to everyone.

more on Amsterdam

Zinnia's comment made me want to write more about the "attack" issue because I left out in the last entry of what else came to my mind after it happened. I also thought of how easy it is for people to blame immigrants for whatever bad happens. That is basically what I thought after the man told me it's the "immigrant problem". I didn't see the faces of the men who attacked me. They spoke in English and I couldn't point at any specific accent. The policemen suggested they could have been drug addicts because yes, they do also have people addicted to hard drugs here. So... To assume immediately that immigrants attack people is racial or national or however you want to call it, profiling. Most of the people who are begging for money on the New York subway are Americans. How many times have I listened to elaborate stories of how they came to live on the street (one woman was begging for the eleven years I was in Queens for diapers for her little baby...). Of course, I understand these people are sick, weak, mentally unstable, addicted, for the most part. But they have legal status and the knowledge of the language of the land. At the same time all these immigrants work minimum or below minimum wage (if they have no legal status or they don't speak English), working long-hour and hard jobs the autochtons would never even consider doing. And they are not respected for what they do, on the contrary. I actually found an article in the Dutch paper discussing this issue. There was a voice defending all the immigrants doing the work that needs to be done but nobody wants to do here except immigrants - because immigrants have no choice, basically, but to take whatever. And lets not forget that what the "rich" and "developed" countries do affects hugely the entire world. Many of the world poverty or the political, tribal, etc. conflicts, fueled by arms provided from developed countries (and I mean ALL developed countries because I don't think there is one which would not be guilty of trading arms), made the people flee their land in search for a peaceful and better life conditions. Everything is very connected these days. Before we point a finger at anyone we should think long and hard...

After a week of living at Martijn's apartment I moved to the apartment of Nicole - a person I met in Colombia in October. I came to visit her and she offered that I stay with her as she has a spare room at the moment. Nicole was born in Colombia but has lived in Amsterdam since she was four years old. Nicole took me to an opening of a restaurant where her daughter is a manager, she took me to the huge outside market which I very much liked (with all kinds of things to wear, furniture, herbs, bikes, street food... anything under the sky) and the cafe "Granny" which she has visited all the years of her adult life and which remained unchanged all these years. We went to see a movie which was a part of the Documentary Movie Festival. I also walked on foot, since I love walking, through many streets and found some streets I particularly like and a cafe with good vibes and great capuccino on Utrechtstraat. So I found some nice things and places in Amsterdam and it will be nice to be coming here the next year for school and more wondering around.

Yesterday we also had a party at Femke and Vivhar's apartment (and their 4 cats), my schoolmates, to celebrate the end of the semester. I very much like the atmosphere at school. It's very different from my former school. I begin to fully understand the importance of Qi Gong exercises. What we did at Swedish was kind of playful and was used more for relaxation and a break from all the other theoretical classes. The Qi Gong here is really taught for the purpose of self-cultivation and basically means that we have to do the Qi Gong exercises for minimum of 3 hours a day. They are exercises which teach us the power of mind over body as everything else stems from it, from the perspective of Daoist philosophy. In the beginning the exercises are very strenous, for the body and the mind. It's sitting, standing and wide-stance meditation for the most part. I find it painful and challenging but everybody does in the beginning, so it just takes time to get into the practice. However, after the exercises I experience incredible lightness and clarity of mind. It's very hard work but very rewarding. Apart from the Qi Gong exercises I have also other subjects to study but the Qi Gong is the base. This is most important because the mind free of delusions is what makes a person compassionate and understanding so a doctor who know the mechanics of using needles and point combinations, etc. cannot be a good doctor if he is also not cultivated toward mindfulness and mind and body clarity. I think that once one does the Qi Gong exercises one fully understands the difference between self-cultivated and unself-cultivated mind. The insturctions are given in one-on-one classes and it is up to the student to decide how to schedule them, whether once or twice a week, depending on the student feeling ready to go to the next step. There are specific modules/classes to be taken but it is up to the student to design the schedule so the responsibility belongs to the student. Depending on the self-cultivation process and the student's seriousness and self-discipline, he or she will need less or more time to complete the program, and will graduate sooner or later.

I woke a little sick today, I was biking with Nicole in this cold and damp weather, so I think I will stay home today and read Chinese Anatomy and Physiology reader as a way of bed-rest entertainment. Warm hugs to everyone.

Amsterdam

Going back in time: after returning from Brazil I packed my stuff and sent it to Poland and gave up my apartment in NY. Then I went to Colombia for two weeks. I went snorkling in Islas Rosarias north of Cartagena - beautiful islands on the Caribean Sea, then for a few days I stayed in Cartagena, and then I went to Santa Marta and Taganga - a small fishing village with fishermen, artists and tourists. It's a lazy, laid-back small village where everyone who stays there for a few days knows each other. I met some old friends there whom I knew from Tyrona before and made new friends. Wonderful people live there, mostly the local artists who went there from all over the South America and the fishermen. I met also "hippie Cogui"as they are called by the locals or indigenous people who live on the verge of the jungle and the modern world, have built small houses and live partly according to old indigenous ways and partly according to modern society's ways. I learned a lot of many interesting things about the amazonian plants, also medicinal, about purification processes done by the peoples deep in the amazonian forest and about the possibility of going there and studying with the medicine man in the future, with permission of the tribal governing bodies. I will use these contacts in the future when I am ready to travel into these villages in the heart of the selva to get purified myself and to study the medicinal plants. When I came back to NY I stayed with Marzenka, Jarek and their daughter Nadinka, who were my neighbors all these years in NY and who became my friends. I went to the last herbal classes to get the certificate and then packed what remained of my stuff, said goodbye to everyone dear to me and left for Poland on the 21st of October. Katarina visited me in Poland a few days afterwards and we went to visit Michal in Wiselka. We had a wonderful time, walking on the beach (with my doggie Maksio whom we took with us), visiting the little towns on the German side, visiting the Polish buffalo natural reserve, eating delicious Polish home cooking at "Maria's Restaurant" in Miedzyzdroje - a town 10 km away from Michal's home. It was a very relaxing time. We slept many hours each night, getting used to the fresh ozonated and iodided air of the Baltic coast. After our return Kasia went home to Slovakia and I got ready to leave to Amsterdam. I arrived on the 6th and immediately went to my new school to get acquinted with teachers and students and to see what my schedule would be like. As I am quite advanced in the program I will need to do only a few courses to get the BA (with the BA in Europe it's possible to already work in the field of Chinese medicine) but they are stretched out throughout the year so what I have decided to do is to go back to Poland and come here for a few days every two weeks or so. Prices of rooms and apartments are quite high here and in gereral I like my home town more than Amsterdam. Amsterdam must be beautiful in the summer but at the moment it is gray, windy, it rains a lot and in general this is not my type of energy. I walked a lot through the city. It has very nice streets going along the canals, very nice architecture, people from around the world so it resembles NY in that sense, very nice parks so it looks like the city is build in a park in some places. There's general sense of freedom: dogs run in the parks without leashes, the famous "coffee shops"are everywhere (the places where you can smoke marihuana) and the smoke of weed is overpowering at times (seems like the locals smoke responsibly because they will always have the possibility but the tourists smoke themselves to death and they look very stoned sometimes on walking out of the coffeeshop), and so are the stores with all kinds of goods made from cannabis and various halucingenic mushrooms, the ladies in langerie are in the windows waiting for the customers in the red light district (I went to take a look and they are of various colors, shapes and sizes from around the world looks like), live porno shows are advertised in the same district. Looks like very open society. I live at the moment in the apartment of a schoolmate Martijn in the Turkish-Marrocan district and most of the women there cover their heads or are veiled altogether in black chadors and it's hard to find a restaurant that would serve anything else than kebab. So it seems Amsterdam welcomes everything and everybody. Seems like nice but somehow the energy here is stale. For some reason, maybe because it's autumn, there's just no fresh vibrant energy that I know from other places. My hometown is not as open as Amsterdam but I feel some of that energy there. I walked with Katarina and then with Patrycja in the old city, around the lake and forest behind my house and I felt vibrant. So in any case I see myself more there than here. Another thing is that I got robbed the day after I came here. I was walking from school at 8 pm in a quiet residential area and two men attacked me from the back, one threw me on the bushes and the other put a knife next to my belly. They asked for money and I gave them a little sack I had in my pocket with about 10 euros. I was so deep in shock, that this has happened to me here and never during my trips to "dangerous" places around the globe, that when they asked for more money because "that was not enough" I was just laying in the bushes, not moving, thinking "rats, I come from the exhile to my home continent after all these years and I get this?!?!?!". More than anything I was angry. I had a laptop and more money in my backpack but they would have to lift me from the bushes to get to it and they didn't because some people were coming from a nearby hotel and they ran away. Nonetheless I felt really bad after it happened because nothing like this happened to me before. I asked a man who was passing by shortly after the incident where the police station was and he offered to walk me and while we were walking I told him what happened and he said "I am sorry for what happened. It used to be such a safe place but for the past 3 years, since the coming of, sorry for the word, "immigrants" it's not as safe as before."I told him I was an immigrant. He said he was sorry. I said he didn't have to be, he was not the one who robbed me. He was sorry in any case. Bla, bla, bla. What came to my mind later was that some long time ago people from this land went to sack others and their houses and their land and they even named it New Amsterdam after they robbed it away so the inevitable law of karma always gets fulfilled. It seems that maybe we should not be punished for what our grandfathers did but maybe we were the grandfathers in a different life? Or maybe it's the responsibility of the collective conscious of the land and its people and what must be paid must be paid? So if I owe you any money I forgot to return, just let me know... I don't want to drag it to the next incarnation... The police officer who interviewed me said that such robberies are commmon nowadays in Amsterdam but usually no one gets killed in result ("usually"did not necessarily made me feel better). The good thing (and it seemed like a bad thing but it turned out it was a good thing) was that I lost my wallet the day before I left NY so I didn't have any credit cards or ATM cards and only the little sack with what usually be my wallet (the wallet was found after my departure and is in possession of Kasia in NY at the moment). So as a result of the robbery I made friends at the police precint and was given a ride home - that evening I was not feeling like walking after dark in Amsterdam (after dark is 4:30 pm). In general people are very nice here, very kind and helpful. It's a different type of kindness than the South American kindness, less open and spontaneous I would say, but nonetheless it's kindness in the way people know it here and it's genuine. A few times I asked for directions and I got a bike ride on the back of the bike. Lots of people ride bikes and the bike lanes around the city are splendid: very clear and safe. People ride the bikes and they ride them with smile on their faces - they seem to be happy. At least the people who live in the wealthy center of the town. The immigrants who live in the place where I live now (outside of the center), don't exhibit that kind of happiness but that's the condition of being an immigrant: no matter how welcoming the place is, it is not your place and you will never feel as good there as you would at home no matter how hard or difficult it is at home. That may not apply to people who fell in love with a particular land and decided to stay there but it applies to those who left their homeland in search of better life conditions or a better future for their children. There's a difference between an expatriate and an immigrant. One chooses to be somewhere else, the other is forced to leave his or her homeland because of economic, political, etc. reasons. So Holland is not a place I fell in love with and I am tired for now, it seems, of being an immigrant (I will one day become an expatriate) and I will go home to complain about the immigrants who don't want to assimilate and wear strange things on their heads... Just kidding.

Coffee and cake

I didn't have the time to write as I said and I am again at the library, getting another break for coffee and cake... It seems I live in the library - it's such a cool place, archtecturally beautiful, with so many interesting things to do, and such great cafe upstairs that I just spend a lot of time here. So eventually I will get to write about the past two months a little later today. Until then hugs to everyone.