AIR-SICKNESS BAGS
On a plane from Warsaw to Amsterdam I was playing with a paper bag without realizing it; then I looked and saw it had been written on:
‘10/12/2006: Striking out for Ireland. Final destination Belfast. Students of the Rzeszów Institute of Technology.’
The inscription, in pen, was visible on the bottom of the bag, in the empty space between the official print which repeated the same thing in multiple languages: ‘air-sickness bag… sac pour mal de l’air… Spuckbeutel… bolsa de mareo.’ Between these words some human hand wrote in those other few words with the ‘1’ at the beginning, as though their author hesitated for a moment about whether or not to leave behind this anonymous expression of anxiety. Did they think the inscription on the bag would find a reader? That I would in this way bear witness to someone else’s journey?
I was moved by this one-sided act of communication, and I wondered whose hand had written it, how their eyes had looked as they had guided that hand along the line of pre-printed text. I wondered if it was working out for them there, in Belfast, for those students from Rzeszów. As a matter of fact I wanted on some other plane in the future to find an answer to my question. I wanted them to write: ‘It went fine. We’re going back to Poland now.’ But I know that writing on bags is something people do only out of anxiety and uncertainty. Neither defeat nor the greatest success are conducive to writing.
THE EARTH’S NIPPLES
These young people – a girl, at most nineteen, studying Scandinavian literature, and her boyfriend, a small blond with dreadlocks, insisted on hitchhiking from Reykjavík to Ísafjörður. They were categorically advised against it for two reasons: first, there’s not a lot of traffic in Iceland, and especially up north, so they might get stuck somewhere along the way; second, the temperature is liable to plummet out of nowhere. But these young people did not listen. Both warnings, as it turned out, came true: they got stuck in the wilderness, where before getting off the road to go to some distant little village their previous car had left them, and no other car was forthcoming. In the course of an hour the weather changed radically, and snow started to fall. Increasingly worried they stood by the road, which crossed a plain full of lava rocks from one side to the other, and they kept warm by smoking, hoping that some other car would finally come along. But it didn’t. Evidently people had given up on getting to Ísafjörður that evening.
There was nothing to make a fire from – only damp cold moss and sparse bushes the fire wouldn’t even put in its mouth, let alone digest. They camped out in sleeping bags between the rocks in the moss, and when the snow clouds disappeared and a starry freezing sky was revealed, they saw faces in the lava stones, and everything started whispering, murmuring, rustling. It turned out that all you had to do was reach under the moss, under the stones, in order to touch the earth, which was warm. Your hand could feel distant, delicate vibrations, some far-off movement, a breath – there could be no doubt: the earth was alive.
Then they learned from the Icelanders that no real ill could have come to them: for lost souls like them the earth is able to bare its warm nipples. You just have to suck at them with gratitude and drink the earth’s milk. Apparently it tastes like milk of magnesium – what they sell in pharmacies for hyperacidity and heartburn.
POGO
Tomorrow is the Sabbath. Young fledgling Hassidim pogo dance on the boardwalk to the rhythm of a lively, trendy South American music. ‘Dance’ isn’t the right word. These are wild ecstatic leaps, twirling in place, bodies bounding into one another and bouncing back off – it’s the dance stamped out by teenagers all over the world at concerts, in front of the stage. Here the music comes from some speakers placed atop a car in which sits a rabbi, supervising everything.
Some entertained Scandinavian tourist girls join in with the boys and awkwardly, holding hands, attempt a cancan. But then they’re issued orders by one of the teenagers:
‘We ask that if women wish to dance, they do so over to one side.’
WALL
Here there are some who believe that we have reached the end of our journey.
The city is completely white, like bones left in the desert, licked by tongues of heat, polished by the sand. It looks like a calcified coral colony grown up over the hill from the times of the immemorial sea.
It is also said that this city’s runway is uneven – difficult for any pilot – a runway from which gods once took off from land. Those who have any idea about those times repeat, unfortunately, contradictory things. No one can agree on any one version of events today.
Beware, all pilgrims, tourists and wanderers who have made it this far – you sailed up in ships, came on planes, crossed on foot over straits and bridges, military cordons and barbed wire. Many times were your cars and caravans stopped, your passports carefully checked, your eyes looked into. Beware, traverse this labyrinth of little streets according to signs, stations, do not be guided by the index finger of an extended hand, the numbered verses in a book, the Roman numerals painted on the walls of houses. Do not be misled by stalls with beads, carpets, water pipes, coins unearthed (supposedly) from the sands of the desert, spices sprinkled in colourful pyramids; do not be distracted by the colourful crowd of people like you, of all possible types, colours of skin, faces, hair, clothing, hats and backpacks.
At the centre of the labyrinth there’s neither treasure nor a minotaur you’ll have to fight in battle; the road ends suddenly with a wall – white like the whole city, tall, impossible to climb. Supposedly this is the wall of some invisible temple, but facts are facts – we’ve reached the end, there’s nothing past this now.
And so don’t be surprised by the sight of those who stand before the wall in shock, or those who cool their foreheads resting them against the chilly stone, or even those who out of exhaustion and disappointment have sat down and are now snuggling up to the wall like children.
It’s time to go back.
AMPHITHEATRE IN SLEEP
On my first night in New York I dreamed that I was wandering the streets of the city at night. I did however have a map, and I checked it from time to time, searching for a way out of this grid labyrinth. Suddenly I came to a big square and saw an enormous ancient amphitheatre. I stood, completely astonished. Then a couple of Japanese tourists came up and pointed it out to me on my city map. Yes, it really is there, I sighed with relief.
In the thicket of perpendicular and parallel streets that intersect with each other like warp and weft, in the midst of that monotonous network, I saw a great round eye gazing up into the heavens.
MAP OF GREECE
It’s reminiscent of a great Tao – if you look at it closely, you can indeed see a great Tao made of water and earth. But in no place is it as though one element were gaining an advantage over the other – they embrace each other reciprocally: earth and water. The Peloponnesian Straits are what the earth gives to the water, and Crete what the water gives to the earth.
I do think that the Peloponnese has the most beautiful shape. It’s the shape of a great maternal hand, not a human one, that is dipping into the water to check if the temperature is right for a bath.