chronicles

I promised to edit an essay for my little sister by tomorrow, which is why I was digging through the documents saved onto my computer. I found her essay, but I also found a word document called “writing in Poland,” with about ten unfinished pieces from my holidays. I had already forgotten it. Was I really visiting my family in Poland only three weeks ago?

It’s probably not a good idea to publish it, but I’m so sleep-deprived I don’t care. Here is something of a journal entry that made me particularly sad to read, and not just because I referred to myself in the third person.

Kasia had forgotten how to write. Not logistically, of course. She still knew her alphabet. She knew how to hold a pen to paper. And she knew how to type on a computer. And she hadn’t forgotten how to write everything. She could still write a mean essay and a damn good journalism article.     

But there was a reason that she wanted to study English in the first place, and that was because she wanted to be a writer. The kind of writer who knows creativity, and can write a story that sucks the reader into a different world and then lingers in the reader’s mind for days, months, and years afterward. And this was what she had forgotten.

That’s probably why she hadn’t updated her study abroad blog for a while, and was focusing instead on her original tumblelog, typing up personal posts about New Years’ resolutions and pop culture analyses.  It wasn’t that she didn’t have the impulse to write, because she certainly did. And writing these dinky little articles not only came to her as naturally as tying her shoe, but she enjoyed it greatly too. Crafting each sentence, picking the right words. Making clever jokes here and there. It was great fun for her to write. But she could no longer write a story.

She didn’t know how to end this story, for instance. So she sat there, on a crowded bus, staring at the Polish dude on the television screen who was instructing passengers that gambling was strictly prohibited on the 15-hour ride.

She didn’t know how to end this story.

(A poem by Wyslawa Szymborska)

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word “woods.”

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they’ll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what’s here isn’t life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof’s full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

Szymborska is one of two Poles who receieve the Nobel Prize for Literature.  I’ve been blogging about my home in terms of the Ozarks, but a part of me is also a Polish patriot, proud to identify with Szymborska. Do I belong in the Ozarks or in Poland? Is it possible for both identities to reside in me harmoniously? I wish I could say yes, but I honestly do not believe so. I want to feel at home in either culture, but every time I visit “home” in both Missouri or Polska,  there’s always a part of me that feels out of place.

This night is turning out to be kind of dark for me, isn’t it? In most of my creative work, I have a very satirical sense of humor, but this blog is turning into something very serious and very personal. Maybe I should change directions? We’ll see, I suppose.