My name is Calypso and I have lived alone

On Monday night, most of the Kropka people went out to party. I tagged along, and it was cheek-muscles-cramping-from-smiling amazing. There was singing, and dancing (the first time I saw Rafal and Piotr, aka the Beauty and the Beast dance - both were quite spectacular, if for different reasons), and drinking, and general merriment. And on Tuesday morning I packed my stuff up and went back to Warsaw to see Suzanne Vega live - still undecided whether I would come back to Wroclaw afterwards, despite the previous night's events.

I went to the concert with filmmix and - unexpectedly - Irmina, who got her ticket as part of some despicable corporate tie-in. I spent the first two songs mildly anxious about how bored she would probably be by the experience - Suzanne isn't exactly the most flash-boom-bang type of performer. The gig itself was a bit uneven - I found myself drifting off at times. The middle part was the strongest, with a killer arrangement of Tombstone (which I had never heard live), My Favourite Plum, and of course Left of Center, which I find to be absolutely enchanting live (it's just vocals, bass, and - as is usually the case with Vega - pretty compelling lyrics). She did, however, play Some Journey, which I love, and then came the encores - 4 songs: Calypso (with a killer, spatially nautical electric guitar background), Rosemary, Pornographer's Dream and In Liverpool. It's not even that much of an exaggeration to say they're my 4 favorite songs. Or at least they represent the absolute pinnacles of achievement in the 4 major emotional realms of her music. I was over the moon.

And it turned out Irmina really enjoyed herself, so things were good.

I eventually decided to go back to Wroclaw for the remainder of the festival - mostly because the appartment was in desperate need of cleaning, and I was in desperate need of not having to wash any dishes and/or vacuum anything. I think it was a good idea. I've developed some sort of laid-back rapport with the Kropka managment, so most of the time I just end up lounging at their Wroclaw HQ, translating odds and ends, and enjoying the general ambience.

Last night we went out drinking again, and I finally got to talk to the girl with whom I had clashed during the run-up to the festival. It's a good thing I did, because while we were completely unable to resolve our differences, I at least learned that I'm an incompetent emotional cripple with personal issues, which is in turn a very good thing to know when you're having second thoughts about how you handled a particular situation. I love the sizzling sound guilt makes as it dissolves in a pool of vitriol.

And today marked ao and Irmina's arrival. We went out to dinner, ate some ridiculously delicious stuff (seriously, Wroclaw rocks cuisine-wise, it makes bulimia seem really appealing), and got shitfaced on Sangria. Right now I'm chilling in my hotel room, riding out the last of my buzz, about to pour myself a bath, and get ready for a night out with fun, intelligent, cheerful people... Those Somalian kids have it a bit worse, right?

p.s. part of a short text message from Asia. In Polish, deal with it : "uslyszalam po drodze goscia, ktory spiewal: 'a ja wole moja mame, bo ma oczy jak twoja stara'

Ballpark

- So, what's the story behind your t-shirt?
- Actually this is one of the very few I own that doesn't have one...

...but I do have this one with two unicorns fucking under a rainbow, which would save us both a great deal of time.

Naturally, I didn't say that outloud.

The least you can do
Is be flattered
By affections squandered

Working at the milk farm

They serve breakfast until 10 a.m. but after getting up at 8:45 for 2 consecutive days I was at the end of my rope, decided I won't be terrorized anymore, and slept in. It was glorious.

Then a bubble bath with Anansi Boys (which are better than I thought they'd be), a short hike downtown, a big mocha, and 4 pieces of mozarella & tomato toast. I'm ready to begin work.

3 peons in the gold mine, 3 peons gathering lumber, and a turret up. Bring it on.

Edit: Ok, a kitten just sauntered in, made its way onto the table next to mine, and lied down on it, preparing for a nap. I feel like I'm in the Eastern Bloc's answer to Ithaca.

Edit2: a random dude just picked the cat up apparently only to peer inquisitively at its genitals, and then tossed it back onto the table. My mellow was somewhat harshed.

Unexpected

Fun fact - I just decided: enough of this bullshit, time to start posting on the Polish(ish) blog again. Except apparently it doesn't exist anymore. I mean, it's still there, you can access it, but I can't log into the admin part of it. Which means, I guess, that I'm stuck with this experiment for better or worse.

Anyway, tonight was some sort of solstice. My main problem during the Wroclaw festiwal usually is being very acutely aware of how far away I am from my power source, and not having a dedicated wingman who would alleviate the resulting anxiety. Even when I come here with friends, I'm never the no. 1 person on their priority list, which means that potentially there are times when I'm either on my own or forced to tailor my plans to someone else's agenda.

Which is, as you can imagine, a nightmare in our time.

All this has heretofore been merely a nuissance. This year, however, I have actual unpleasant shit to deal with (or to desperately try to avoid dealing with, as seems to be the case) and could really use some backup. So, naturally, almost none of the usual suspects bothered to come, and those who did are, by nature of the aforementioned shit, benevolently neutral at best.

The critical evening (for reasons too boring to get into) was tonight, and it sent me into a downward spiral followed by a total mobilization. I tapped ley lines I hardly even sensed, just to get through the potential showdown in one piece - or at least have something to fall back on. The bloodbath thankfully never happened, but I was so flush with reinforcements that sudenly I was having the best time, darting strategically to and fro, and reveling in my newfound sense of security.

All in all, a great evening. I just hope that overkill won't result in some sort of mana burn. Hopefully they abolished that mechanism in this edition.

ENH

I arrived in Wroclaw, and there's already shit I don't need.

Life, the universe, and everything

Hung is off to a very slow start, but it did manage to sum up my entire existence in a single, brilliant telephone monologue:

"I wanted to call you, but I've been been drowning in paper all night, the whole law firm is freaking out... I'm not really certain, some bank is going belly up... I don't know, I just make sure all the words are spelled correctly when it does."

Embrace your redundancy.

Things that are black

I think the thing I miss most about my old room is the sound of rain on the street outside my window, and of the odd car driving in the night over the wet asphalt. There's something about nighttime storms that I find incredibly comforting. The more tempestuous the better. Here, none of my windows face the street (thought that's actually a blessing, JP2 is far too noisy), and something's off with the angles - the raindrops never seem to hit them. And when they do, the sound is abrupt and unpleasant.

When my dad was 20, he decided that he would spend his 40th birthday in Vienna, his 50th in New Orleans, and his 60th in Reykjavik. He went to Vienna alone - it was a big deal back in 1989. Mom tells me that she took me to meet him in Budapest, and then the three of us came back home. The only thing I remember about that journey is that I got a Hungarian Tom & Jerry comic book. We didn't have those in Poland yet. Ten years later, he took me to New Orleans - that trip I recall much better, though for me the entire thing was still mainly about seeing Tori Amos live for the first time in my life. But I do remember walking with him down Bourbon Street on his birthday night.

On Tuesday, I bought him tickets to Reykjavik, trying very hard not to think about the whole thing in terms of a "proper sendoff". I could tell he didn't expect it, but we're both titans of emotional display, so the whole exchange took maybe 10 seconds, and then we were off to the next topic. Mom was incredibly happy, and later told me he actually teared up. Of course I never even noticed.

We'll know on Aug 8th when he starts chemo.

The sky is really uncanny tonight, Pitch black. You can almost feel the void beyond. No moon, no stars, not even any of that reflected city glow. And certainly no rain.

Open'er and other festivals

Back from the coast, with somewhat mixed feelings. It was probably my last Open'er (unless the lineup is totally stellar - never say never and all that). Too much of a hassle for too small a gain, at least music-wise. I was only actually having a good time for a few moments during Santigold's set. Otherwise it was a world of meh tempered with hysteria (Crystal Castles, what the fuck?)

...

Aaand I drifted off to do other shit on the Internet. Writing in English still doesn't come naturally. Anyway, there were several surprises. For one, it was probably one of the most effortless group holidays EVER - at least that's how something in my brain chooses to remember it. We had this easygoing cameraderie, and things just flowed naturally. And most of the time I felt perfectly content with where I was at the moment, which is a new development - I usually keep wondering what's going on with the OTHER groups, regret not staying up with the rest, or resent not having the good sense to turn in when I should have. Yet for some reason during this weekend, I felt equally at ease surrounded by friends as I did making my way home by myself (I was usually the first one to call it a night).

But probably the most interesting - at least to me - part of this weekend was that I returned home yearning for a real vacation. Like... at a lake. Or in the mountains. Or something. I don't think I've done that in... well, years. Ten, maybe more.

I won't write about the obvious stuff, because I beat that horse to death in actual conversation, and I won't write about the less obvious stuff, because I just unloaded that part on an unsuspecting victim. So thank you for reading my Open'er odds-and-ends presentation, and good night.