Chwila

Wlasnie zadzwonil Michal spytac, co robie, a ja bez glebszego zastanowienia odparlem, ze siedze w hotelu, gapie sie przez okno na deszcz i czekam, az w moim zyciu cos sie wydarzy.

Maly kneejerk, a cieszy. Mam do niego nawet obrazek.

Bubbles filled with smoke

I bought my tickets, and I'm ready to go. Wroclaw is ready for me to go as well, as it just started raining. Again. I shall not be defeated though, I'll have the reception SUMMON ME A TAXI CAB as I step out of the elevator in my non-existent shades. Much like the Jet Set do.

I think it's the longest I've ever stuck around. Full 10 days. It's been very mellow and low-key, with just one night of hectic drunken fun (the remaining nights being less hectic and somewhat less fun, but not necessarily less drunken. I'm all alcohol'd out.)

Yesterday, we had a back to basics kind of moment, when our food took so long to arrive that we actually missed our screenings... and didn't feel particularly bad about it, as the sun was shining, the food was good, and the beer kept flowing (not for me, obviously, but the others seemed to appreciate that aspect as well). We reminisced about the Cieszyn days. Apparently someone actually puked during a screening of Cremaster. Didn't know that story. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

We tried playing BSG last night, but we started at 1 a.m. so it didn't end well. Tonight it's Southland Tales (again) followed by farewell drinks at the festival club.

Next year I intend to mingle more. I feel I should be... well, maybe not networking, but at least making sure people know I actually exist. I'm pretty sure most of the festival people don't know who I am, or even that I do anything to make this thing happen. I'm also pretty sure I've already made this declaration at least once.

As usual, the city seemed to be filled with eminently fuckable people. Unfortunately, as usual I didn't get to know any of them. I can't say I'm particularly bummed out about it. Homesick, if anything.

Simply bubbles!

I really don't want to work at the moment, so here's a report from this year's NH festival. Or an attempt, at least.

One of the co-owners of the subtitling company just called another one of the co-owners and said: "Dress up nicely tonight, we'll be doing PR."

I haven't been doing PR at all, not yet at least, but it's been nice regardless. There's less work than last year, and I got put up at a nice hotel very close to the main cinema, so I haven't missed a single screening yet. Not that I've attended that many.

I arrived on Thursday, to torrential rain. Which was nice, since I brought two pairs of shorts and a ton of t-shirts. Wroclaw's main train station is being renovated, so you leave the platforms through this makeshift tunnel lined with aluminum siding. Which apparently gets flooded during the monsoon season. There was actually water streaming down through a crack in the (also aluminum) ceiling, like we were escaping Shawshank, or something. I lugged my ultra-heavy bag through half the city before I found a cab. And the rain lasted two days.

It's sunny now which means that we get to listen to a bad violin rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit 27 times a day. The office has windows facing the main square of the old town, so there's street performers aplenty. I like the fire dancers, and the ballerina/policeman mime, because they don't make noise. The violin lady is Satan, or at least so we thought until we were subjected to a boy with an acoustic guitar and his own amplifier. Dude wailed like there was no tomorrow, but he didn't return on the next day, so here's hoping in his case there really wasn't.

The food has been good for the most part, and the company - better. It was a bit hectic for the first few days, but things took a turn for the silly and mellow. The moment the braindead gigglefest commences keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier - I think we set a new record with Kasia today, as we simultaneously imploded around 1 p.m.

I saw Southland Tales on a huge screen, and it was hilarious, I'll probably go see it again on Saturday. This movie should not be watched alone.

Yesterday, I got an impromptu in equal parts pleasant, hilarious and disturbing shoulder massage from Rafal, and listened to one of the translators talk about his thesis, the title of which included the words transcendence and singularity. It was really interesting, but also the most challenging train of thought I ever had to follow while drunk. It was all I could do not to pop a blood vessel.

What else... there's lots of jokes, but most of them emerge from the hermetic cesspit of our subtitling coven. The technical guys' favorite pastime seems to be finding quotes from movies that sound like they are referring to us and posting them to Facebook, where they are completely ignored by everyone not currently synchronizing subtitles at this particular festival, and greatly appreciated by the few people who are. Most of whom are in the same room and have already heard/seen the humorous line in question.

Obviously it's great fun.

Unfortunately, now I kind of have to do some work. Asia is stripping in front of me. It's not her point, exactly, but the damage remains, so I'm relocating to the table.

Coordinator out.

Good morning!

I dreamt that I was being terrorized by someone/something monstrous, and that I had one last chance to try to kill it - before something horrible happened - by severing its spine at the base of the skull with a chisel. The horror of the climactic moment was such that I woke up, and felt my right hand still going through a slack, paraplegic version of the stabbing motion.

Out of sequence

I have ended up for the weekend at a spa that refuses to call itself a spa; an "institute" with a terror of the world so crippling as to have no newspapers. No surprise, really, had I but taken the time, prior to my arrival, to seriously parse the terms "self-help" and "retreat." The former unabashedly egocentric, the latter alluding to defeated flight.

(...)

The word I most overhear, flying from mouths like spittle, is "intense." But it usually seems to apply to a massage or a movement class. When I do chance to overhear of a true test of faith and character, one person telling another, "My father died last Christmas and it was fairly intense, so I went to a bereavement workshop, which helped a lot," the response she gets is "Yeah, when everyone in the room is facing the same direction and the energy is aligned, it can be a very powerful force."

(...)

The evening's concerts are held in the Lake Theater, a barn-like structure with a small stage. The overhead light is grimy and yellow and flickering as moths and June bugs ping against the bulbs like rice at a wedding. A young folksinger on guitar and piano is accompanied by her ponytailed husband on bass. The audience is sparse, mostly women, alone and in pairs, the demographic hinted at on the first day. They sit with the studied serenity, the composed posture, that broadcasts for all the world to see "I go to things all the time alone. I don't mind."
In Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, the heroine Lily Bart - no longer as young as she once was, the financial promises made to her failing to pan out, her prospects at marriage dwindling daily, has a friend named Gerty Farish. Gerty is also unmarried. Gerty has no annuity. Gerty takes her meals in public dining rooms with other single women. And she does so good-naturedly. Every time Lily sees Gerty, she experiences an interval of panic. Wharton writes: "...the restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the charm of contrast, now reminded [Lily] too painfully of the limits to which her own existence was shrinking."
After a day of angry, dismissive contempt, the blood beats behind my eyes with identification. I am uncoupled by this unexpected Gerty Farish moment in this crowd of women trying to make sense of a world that has ruled them out of hand for the cardinal sin of having dared to remain single past the age of thirty-five. I have sat alone in theaters, restaurants, parks, my back straight, a book, perhaps. I am acquainted with this good posture.
At one point the singer looks over at her husband and they give each other a smile of such amiable companionship, a look of such pleased and secure partnership, that it reaches all of us with the cold immediacy of a slap in the face. It turns out to be true: when everyone in the room is facing the same direction and the energy is aligned, it can be a very powerful force.

David Rakoff, Fraud

He's not always this good, but sometimes he is.

Clusterfuck!

I was just asked how I would translate "commotion [surrounding the treaty]" (except from Polish into English). My brain immediately sprang into action: Kerfuffle! Hubbub! Brouhaha!

None of which, obviously, can be used in a document about some treaty. For I am the master of correct, yet completely useless answers.

Unfailing

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations - boring lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, those necessary breakup conversations, and the like: maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and masklike, with the faintest hint at a Gioconda smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can, and just as you feel you are about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone's neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now, with the index finger of your left hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you..." over and over gain as you pretend to listen. You will find that this brings a spontaneous look of interested and pleased engagement to your countenance. Continue and repeat as necessary.

David Rakoff, Fraud