Introvernia — A personal journal by an HSP (03)
june 30th • tuesday
As part of strengthening my tenuous ties with the Far East, I'll work out for myself a completely subjective set of Polish kō — seventy-two postcards from perceiving a city in twenty-four sekki the world has never heard of.
These kō will have none of the discipline of imperial calendars and no moon above a perfectly shaped spruce branch, unless the spruce itself nervously flicks cigarette ash onto the windowsill and the moon spreads in a buttery stain across the cold frying pan of the sky. There will be no such scrupulous register of plants germinating, flowering, and ripening, though plants will remain at the center. There will be no uguisu, seri, or ume. There will be no clean order of things, because there will be no countryside.
If the year in Wro really does come apart, it doesn't break into four great rooms, but into dozens of secret passages, hiding places, and little wine cellars. For twelve licensed months, I look closely and try to find out what moves in those corners, what shimmers there. Not in the cosmos, not in history, not even in nature as such. In afterimages. In oxymorons. Under the skin. In the disharmony between understanding and notation. Out of that dissonance a catalog will emerge — a list of small shifts in private tectonics, ridiculous illuminations, tiny chips along the edge of the legend, the one that belongs to maps, not heroes.
Japan gave refined names to the moments when nature changes its tone of voice, but Japan is the mother of haiku. How could I ever measure up to her? I suspect my kō will be, to some extent, iconoclastic in this context. Perhaps banal. Possibly arrogant. Object, element, emotion, metaphor — order optional. Irony? I don't know. That would probably verge on a crime.
I'm not trying to make this universally applicable. I'll assemble my calendar out of walks, illuminations, fits of fury, and tastes. Out of gravestones in the cemetery, on the way under the bridge. Out of evening spying on other people's lamps in lit, uncurtained windows. Out of gloves and allergies. Out of sudden changes of mood. Out of early mornings in the season of leaves still too small to raise a murmur, but already numerous enough to convene their own little parliaments. Out of vegetables and a spine picking a fight. Out of bread and circuses.
The second sekki of June — three faces of a storm that delights me, drives Milka mad with fear, and couldn't matter less to Goblin and Beza. Kō? Poplar snow.
july 1st • wednesday
Cornelius insists that dividing each conventional calendar month into two sekki is the simplest solution. Fine. Geshi is underway, the summer solstice. Japan says — ayame hana saku, the irises open. And in Wro, the lindens are taking what's theirs, without apology. I feel a constant need to ritualize everyday life, to experience it consciously, decorate it, celebrate it, so I gave symbolism a scratch behind the ear and bought myself linden honey. Even in the city, in lipiec — July, whose Polish name carries lipa, the linden, inside — there is no escaping the lindens. Only bees are harder to come by here. The neighbors of the veterinarian and the nurse will gather blossoms by the handful. All they have to do is lean out from the balconies of the yellow house, while I can pluck one tiny centuries-old wing if I manage to swim through the asphalts melting like cheese all the way to Szczytnicki Park.
Polish seasons are always smeared with something — and the dog days most of all. In that department, they are the Sèvres standard, an alloy of platinum, iridium, jam, damp pollen, ice cream, sultriness, sweat, and magma. They are fat and nauseating, hideously waxed. In Goblin's ranking of unbearable bodily adventures, wet fabric stuck to his back wins; in mine, juice running down my chin — or rather summer in toto. I have to defend myself, so I bought linden honey. After all, there is something noble in honey — it clings more subtly, gleams with gold, not pinchbeck, civilizes the glare, restores meaning to the scorching heat. I will give it a kō out of respect for the ruthless bees, on account of the blessed dried linden blossom and the scent that unrolls its Persian rugs down the corridors of the streets. I will give it a kō because it won't let me forget that summer is not only a ravager and a predator.
july 2nd • thursday
Ever since I recovered my favorite time of day — very early morning — that bird with his aseptic song has been keeping me company. In the well of the courtyard, his voice gains an almost unbearable precision, as if fingers of crystal were running across glass keys. Some part of me is waiting for the windowpanes to start cracking. And I could leave it at that if I weren't an Abhidharmaist, a fucking analyst who shot out of the nurse's womb with a long list of things to look into, because surely this whole racket — me, life, the sheet, and the miracle — calls for inquiry. I wasn't screaming because they had traded away water for light, although I still have my sincere doubts about the soundness of that transaction. I was screaming because I hadn't managed to see everything and write everything down. The stupid pressure of birth.
And yesterday I went hunting. At dawn, with a phone equipped with a recording function. And I brought home digital prey, and dressed the electronic meat in a program created solely for such purposes. Then the enigma bird suddenly became a complicated male. A vessel of contradictions. A proud, self-assured macho who loiters beneath the windows of low shrubs and draws plaintive serenades from his flute. Sylvia Atricapilla — Blackcap to friends. Annoyed by my curiosity, today — he did not perform.
Or perhaps Thursday is simply feather-washing day.
july 3rd • friday
For the record — in the morning, there are usually three musketeers. Sylvia Atricapilla, a true Aramis, a muscle-bound poet, a Blackcap without a cap in a cavalier hat — takes the lead in ornate cadences and wind etudes. Passer Domesticus, more widely known as Sparrow, a plump little Porthos, a gourmand of plenty — brandishes the rhythm section's clapper whenever he can find a moment between crumbs. Apus Apus vel Swift, cool melancholic, kindred spirit of Athos — disciplines the scattering phrases with the sharp whistle of his pipe, and raises the baton high.
And so a single piece of digital prey multiplied itself, while I established that I was dealing with an orchestra.
Geshi is underway, the summer solstice. Japan says — hange shōzu, sprouting pinellia closes the rice-planting season. Wro still under the sign of honey, with bees among concrete, against the backdrop of the first July sekki — the powder of the dog days is weathering. Aramis — washed and pressed — is back to screeching his beak off along with his mates.
july 4th • saturday
On the way to our ritual Saturday breakfast — milk with coffee and raspberries with sponge cake, with Goblin performing a brief volcada toward a frappe with Filipino ube yam — blessed coolness and swifts above the basin of public transport in a shopping gorge. I hear pipes, I watch those magnetite-black, strikethrough parentheses, and I know that everything is as it should be — there is a living sign, a body that separates itself and assimilates in the same instant. I am not seduced by constant motion, and I am not seduced by constant stillness, but they are unmoved in their chase. Which means hope still has breath in it.
july 6th • monday
I remember a small child who, on the first of June, kept getting under my feet, glancing curiously at the botanical investigation, and, as I walked home, my mind full of Abhidharma, climbed onto the spirea's lap and tried to mouth the candy-pink petals. The following morning, on my way to buy heavy rye bread, I came across a girl, maybe nine years old. That evening, I found the same girl petting my dogs outside the shop, and nine had already left her. She seemed to mature at an absurd pace, like a film run through in preview mode. Fluid, overexposed — difficult to take in with one look without slipping into a fever. The next day, her lightning-fast childhood came to an end — charming, pointless innocence gave way to the hunger of expectation. Seventy-two hours had passed. The dog-day heat had done her makeup carefully — a bold line, foundation flawlessly smooth — and headed into town.
Back then, in June, she was invincible. She'd hit all six numbers in the lottery of youth — she trusted and did not apologize, took and felt no fear, had it in her and asked no questions. She entered everyday life as if joining a tango. A tourist drunk on adventure, one who belongs everywhere. In pastry shops and at student picnics, at open-air cinemas and train stations. At vegetable markets and bus depots, in libraries and on promenades along the Oder. Under bridges, in the synagogue, in the ring of petty offenses and serious crimes. Needing people in order to define herself, she looked for them at openings and in abandoned buildings, in underpasses and on school playing fields. She was in every place at once, and at night she danced in clubs. She did not sleep, because youth does not sleep — it only rests its forehead on the table for five Hail Marys or a quarter hour. Her body checked its creditworthiness and granted her a high-interest loan.
She appeared uninvited and did not disappear without consequences. Shameless and disarming, she stole dignity, cash, grub, and common sense from others. She laughed too loudly, until at last someone seduced her as part of crossing another item off his vacation list. Then — he moved on.
The sekki had turned toward three faces of a storm. Makeup resisted, not unscathed. A lash, sticky with mascara, fell out. The nose said goodbye to a touch of matte elegance. Blush went gray on her cheeks. Scabs of strawberry ice cream had set in the corners of her mouth. But when the woman was drinking herself into a stupor and smashing bottles in the air above the guy behind the bar, no one was looking too closely. They understood. Youth, split by thunder, wandered through the rain-sobbing streets of its own humiliation, with a hailstorm of disbelief in the background. The woman herself — did not cry.
Older by that bitterness, the heat got out of bed at the beginning of July, fixed the liner, swept ultraviolet shadow over the lid, and went back to familiar ways with fresh intensity, though already stripped of intense freshness. Now she existed everywhere, passively and ruthlessly. No longer having it in her, she grew exacting. Interactions were exhausting, so attention shifted to the city. She saw the sights, admired architecture. Evenings, she still drank, finding a perverse kind of sense in it. But July was not June — in July every pleasure waved a receipt, nights demanded a warranty, four in the morning warned of an overdraft. When the creditors appeared, the woman retreated into a cocoon of cigarette glow and calmly drifted home. On the walk, a tally of effects took shape — scalded gateways, chapped squares, faded fountains, lawns dyed with ocher and sienna, red-hot metal handrails. A new passion emerged. Wro occupied her, that pretty body farm. She recognized her reflection in the softening storefront windows, except that something strange was happening to the powder.
Apparently, it was eroding.
It did not melt dramatically, did not make a scene. It weathered dry and stubborn. Lost character. First, the scent of heliotrope and chalk wilted. Later, smoothness failed to persuade. Here and there, a freckle broke free. The skin noted, with surprise, the unevenness of its texture. The blush was planning an evacuation. At the temples, under a plastery haze, a river basin of capillaries was becoming legible. Had this been detected yet? Was it visible in the flash of a disco ball, in the dimness at the bar, in the tropics of afternoon?
A wash could return the surface to unblemished porcelain. No longer having it in her, the woman suspended the standards for the moment. She felt a little sick. Probably the stomach.
The dog-day heat is stuck before the mirror, fingers at the throat — this will not last, things are unsettled inside. Yes. She'll buy ginger, take a break from the tango, go on the BRAT diet, let the hair fall loose. She will apologize to sleep, lure it with satin and lace. The city breathes more deeply and catches cold right away — since the woman drew the curtains, it is much cooler.
(photo credits — polina kuzovkova • david moum • sergio artnoart • vladan vučković
• www.miel-factory.com • yaroslav sumar • seval torun • jose ignacio pompe • susan wilkinson)