Once on the way to Bangkok

The fortune to get that window seat on the flight Zurich-Bangkok checking in at midnight on the way from Lisbon. For once the Swiss got the vegetarian meal right. Tune into the entertainment - films. Suddenly I am awake. Suddenly someplace in my twilight zone, one thing is real. For once. For once Once is the film I know I want hear again and again. It touches the core. Ireland with the Czech soul. I hear my own parallel. Music. English pop that is the constant background to my own love story. Music that is background to any story... The film I wish we could have made. If only I wouldnt be on the plane again and again. Kocham go, kocham ciebie, miluje cie...
See it if you can.

Roma - La Cità delle Donne!

Rome - the city of women. It was so for Fellini and it is so for me - not that I aspire to compare myself to the cinematographic genius of La Bella Vita in the times when Via Veneto was filled with life and laughter as opposed to the overpriced cafes with bad bellinis for confused tourists on the honeymoon Soprano's style at the Exelsior. Of course I belong to the less posh but far more lively and authentic Roman quarters. If you know me and you've been to Rome with me on one of my weekday evenings - chances are you have been dragged to the Tre Scalini on at least one occassion. This certainly is not the place for those in Italy after refined wine tasting tours offered on the Tuscan vineyards. This is the place though that certainly offeres the best atmosphere that a Roman wine bar can possibly pull off when in need of a table to meet your girlfriends. The food is good and most importantly cheap, the bartenders still remember me from the time we shared that bottle of Zobrowka straght out of Warsaw (courtesy of my friend Olga) securing a small "sconto"(discount) for future libacies and you can always find a good bottle for a decent price on the wine list - the trick is not to go for it per glass.

So it is in Tre Scallini where we often meet. Probably the best addition to the oh so "BOBO" (Borgouise - Bohemian) Monti quarters. I can just hear Lynda lecturing me that Monti still lives in its antique tradition of small fruit vendors and proper working girls behind the facade of Soho styled boutiques and Chinese dry cleaning.

But I was supposed to write about women. Yet, they are not just women, they are my friends, my amazing friends. THe people with whom one can discusses the pains of love, the misunderstandings of distance relationships, the need of hugs in the time where good hugs are a rarity, the twisted stories about everpresent exes or unpresent future love interests. The expat stories of what brought us here. The conversations are worth writing down - they strike me as better then in Sex in the City. So perhaps, I will, one day, risk writing it all down in the form of a new series starring a multiculutral community of women in Rome with the Cheers like element of the regular meetings in the Wine Bar where everybody knows your name.

Post Landing Tomato Blues

Landings are always difficult. Especially landing back in the hot, small apartment in Rome after all the airconditioned spaces of airports and hotels, after the cool breeze of the summer evenings in Poland. Opening myself to let all of the African and Bengali culture in and closing in on the so called roots back in Poland. THere was a week of traveling up to the Baltic Coast - the place where I saw the sea for the very first time. Went back to that very wide and white Baltic beach in Jantar, the amber coast, where my sea addiction has began at 1.5 year old. And now, after 12 years in New York and 7 years in Rome, I can't imagine living too far from the deep blue..And as Warsaw changes daily, maybe not in the same frantic rhythm as Shanghai, I still spotted the same houses crafted out of the wood, the same fishermen selling freshly smoked fish in our northeastern coast... Letting so much in: the smell of the Baltic sea, the smell of the moonsoon rain in Dhaka, the odorless winter dry air of Johannesburg. An intense summer of mixing more work then pleasure but still the "gratitude" for having been able to work for a bit back "home". And so hit with the difficult landing back in Rome. The job, so fascinating, but so insecure. All of it so that I can pay for this tiny, hot flat. The digital divide between Montefiridolfi and anywhere else in Europe. Almost as if the perfect taste of these round, red, perfumed tomatoes is not enough to soothe the fundemental question "why am I here?" But just when I am about to launch myself into the project of applying for jobs in Brussels I am reminded of the words of Andi Shiraz "Anyone who’s lived and loved the proverbial bel paese knows that the only thing harder than living in Italy is walking away from it. Italy is a dream that when you settle into it makes you think hard about what you’ve done". And so I know I will read her article again and again on the American Mag: http://www.theamericanmag.com/article.php?show_article_id=568 because she is back home in Rome. Seeing Andi in Tre Scallini is filling that empty spot I felt back in Warsaw. Picking my peperoncino from Calabria to spice up my pasta while cooking for my friend Gary made me feel home. Having the Australian grils crash over to see Rome - made me feel home. Yes, Luca and Javier have left to London and Madrid respectively and they took with them the soothing sounds of their guitars. But it is thanks to my mad job that I have an intimate understanding of the samba in Brazil and it is my life in Rome that tought me just how good it is to have a big window open to the sounds of the world. Even if I miss Poland's green grass and the skies that make fool out of my attempt to praise the sun when there is sometimes much more poetry in the shades of grey.

Peperoncino

Oh.

Am in Warsaw now escaping the uberable heat of Rome...Am happy and trapped and missing the spice of my urban-gypsy-Roma lifestyle. Home? My language. The language in which I choose not to write this blog... Home? The bar on Via Marmorata where everyone knows my name. Home? My small urban apartment near the Gazometro...

I am calm though...at least that much. Not stressed. Morning mist intenesely green grass under my feet. Laptop on my laps. And too much clean new funky shops and houses with perfect gardens to find any reason to write poetry.

I miss the spice. I don't miss the heat. Ready for the South Africa and Bangladesh tour courtesy of my work...

The Immigrant Punk

It is not so much that I think that Gogol Bordello is the greatest rockin man out-there, but he is definitely one of the most original... I have certainly not seen such intense energy exhibited on stage since ages. Yet, the best part was being there with my little expat group of friends: Ukrainian, Norwegian, Russian, French, American and of course Polish. You may say that the representation was skewed in favour of those familiar with the so called slavic folk sounds, but Gogol grooves in many dimensions.

Viva expats! OH YEAH!

few words

Lately I have been captivated by reading the words from the blogs of my friends...Andi, Lynda, Marco, Luca. Writing as a cure, writing to restore sanity, writing for the beauty of it.

Lately I have been captivated by the idea that I can sleep more and do less
Lately I have been captivated by the idea that I want to do the parts of my work that energize me and not the ones that destroy me
Lately I have been captivated by the fact that I need TIME to read and to write
Lately I have been inspired by the idea that I will get through the unpaid month of working by perhaps not working and actualy doing the above..
Lately I have been dreaming of connecting people and countries on my own terms while pushing or my own women empowering discourse
Lately i realize I can't empower others without standing up for myslef
that this is not being selfish, this is not excusing myself for having to pay my rent, this is what I might just as well deserve..
and that I am not going to be anyone unless I believe that I myself deserve to get credit for being phenomenal...and this is not being selfish.

But I had to erase the Maya peom as found it a bit too cheesy for my taste.

But I believe that believing thin things turning out alright is being half way there...I try to remember this.

The Unreported News from India

There is still such an incredible institution called United Nations. Its processes are frustrating, not only because 200 countries need to reach a consensus in order to do something but mostly because if a very few oppose the actions of others the "it" is blamed for disfunction. Never the governments that make the decisions that lead to dysfunction...The idealistic United Nations system also continues to have its specialized agencies such as the one with the ambitious yet underminded mandate to fight hunger and promote rural development... It is called FAO and it continues to attempt to sometimes try to fulfill its mandate...against all of the gossip that you have no right to decide what to grow or what to eat...

Last week FAO had two Committees...one on the commodities (probably not a blog word..) and another on agriculture... Do you remember the mandate?

So here is the NEWS from India...The one of greatest importance to me. This one makes me want to work to help people understand that these non immediate processes in our immediate media culture can make a difference.

Hardworking women hungry for change

As Sharad Pawar, India’s minister for agriculture, sits down in Rome this week, ActionAid hopes that women like Kamala and Rambati will be at the forefront of their minds. Kamala and Rambati are making determined steps towards ending hunger by ensuring women in their villages have land titles and a say in decisions which affect their lives. But they need support from Mr Pawar and his counterparts if this is to translate into widespread and enduring change.

As the main food producers, women’s access to land and natural resources is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty, but progress on this front remains erratic and inadequate. Decades of discrimination have also placed women firmly amongst the poorest of the poor. By adopting recommendations from numerous international forums since the 1996 World Food Summit, the 20th session of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Committee on Agriculture in Rome this week could be a crucial step towards concerted governmental action on the issue.

In India the need for action is clear. Some 70% of the female workforce is engaged in agriculture yet only 10% of women farmers own land. At the same time one in four Indians go to bed hungry.
India’s Land Reform Act passed in 1954 shortly after independence, addresses land rights for dalits and other marginalised groups. But it makes scant mention of women and anyway has not been implemented. Since the mid-70s, calls for women’s land rights gained strength with social movements such as Bodhgaya in Bihar at the forefront. In 1977, mass mobilization and judicial intervention led to a landmark ruling paving the way for joint pattas (land titles) in the name of both men and women. Currently India has a patchwork of Acts guiding women’s property and land rights in line with different religious and customary practices. Laws vary from state to state and between caste, religion and ethnic group. Yet none of them succeed in meeting women’s constitutional right to equal and non-discriminatory access to these means.As a result, women and children are being left destitute or at best in highly unequal bargaining positions within the family and wider community.

The situation is compounded by neo-liberal growth model which has widened the gap between haves and have-nots and put women and men in the firing line. Nandigram where at least 14 people lost their lives threw a stark spotlight on community struggles to protect land from being grabbed for Special Economic Zones. Women in Jagatsingpur district of Orissa are still guarding barricades to prevent government officials from taking over their villages for South Korean steel giant POSCO.

Meanwhile in the village of Nuaput, in Koraput district of Orissa, Adivasi women are taking their own small steps towards land ownership. Supported by ActionAid through local organisation SPREAD, villagers have applied for joint pattas so that both husband and wife have a legal claim on the land they use. Kamala Matan explains the significance: “This patta gives us strength. We don’t fear the men now – they can’t threaten us with throwing us out (of the home) now,” she says.
“Other people can learn from us… When we get the patta we can claim land and after us, our children will inherit.”

In the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, 35-year-old Rambati an emerging leader in the poverty-stricken Sahariya community (a primitive tribal group in which men typically marry twice) shares her concerns: “If the government doesn’t give ownership of land to women, what will happen to the first wife? How will she manage her and her children’s lives? In 1995 the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh announced pattas for tribals and landless labourers in the state. Since then, partly due to persistent demands from local women, joint land titles are slowly increasing. Despite this favourable legislation, many Sahariyas are still struggling for their land entitlements. Nandigram where at least 14 people lost their lives highlighted women’s part in ongoing community struggles to protect land from being grabbed for Special Economic Zones. Women in Jagatsingpur district of Orissa are still guarding barricades to prevent government officials from taking over their villages for South Korean steel giant POSCO. While local women’s groups are having some success in securing land titles and national level dialogue between concerned citizens is underway – including an innovative initiative Consult for Women and Land Rights which encourages women to mobilize around land issues – this needs to be matched by further action at regional and international levels.

ActionAid has written to G77 agriculture ministers - the largest group of developing countries in the United Nations – urging them to use their voice in Rome and beyond to support specific measures including convening intergovernmental regional roundtables on women’s rights to land and natural resources and establishing an database system on land tenure and agrarian reforms to capture the global picture and monitor progress. In India activists are also calling for a review of laws related to women’s land and property rights and collective land ownership, accompanied by affirmative action to implement policies and practices that will help women tackle hunger and poverty.

Notes to editor
1. The Government of India has acknowledged that improved access to land and natural resources, especially by women, is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty in the framework of international commitments at World Food Summit 1996 and its Plan of Action; in the Voluntary Guidelines on the Implementation of the Right to Food unanimously adopted by FAO Council; and most recently at the FAOs International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) that was hosted by Brazil in March 2006.



2. The 20th session of the FAO Committee on Agriculture meets in Rome 25-28 April 2007.

Returning to Botswana

I came back to Botswana after little less then 2 years since my first vist in June 2005. I came back two years later maybe a little calmer, a little older, a little wiser (?) and most definitely much much more sober. I was begging Gina to please take me back to the land near Mokolodi where during one cold African night in the bush we have turned liver-destruction into pure art form and a movement... Unfortunately, the original "EAPS" founding group is slightly dispersed at the moment. Goddess bless our Chairman whose 2 year long failure in establishing a proper website for the group is fully excused by his current work with MSF in Chad helping Darfur's refugees. http://www.hodder.whereareyou.net/

Jokes apart, it is not only about being in Botswana but about being in Botswana with Gina. I adore her because she is smart, fun, honest, real...She is my true co-conspirator, my Thelma and my Louise, but most importantly a good friend with whom I can discuss the Economic Partnership Agreements, relationship woes, and who above all understands the importance of a good pedicure before a walking safari.

What I also adore about the idea of living in Gabarone is arriving at the airport 20 minutes before the plane leaves and not being the least troubled by the possibility of missing it. So yes, after late night Friday mini-EAPS celebrations, we departed on Saturday at 8 am to Maun in Okavango Delta.

Here is the luxurious tent where we slept:


And here are some pictures... Can you locate the elephant?

The hidden Diva within

I am really not Mina nor youtube obsessed but...

Watching her sing makes it alright to be dramatic, emotional, proud..

She is stunning, powerful, authentic, dramatic, diva.

Viva Mina. You make heartache feel grande. You are THE DIVA.

back on my motorino

It was an emotionally difficult landing after a great trip to Botswana and Johannesburg. The stories are all stored within me and are just waiting for a better moment to be published...

Overwhelmed with this constant lack of certainty with regard to my future. No, not scared or afraid of uncertaintly but perhaps enjoying the certainty of the things I love. Such as driving my motorino being one of the most healing experiences.
Driving with my mp3 player on.

Today, driving through Garbatella...thinking of Nanni Moretti on his vespa.. Laughing to myself at the lines of the film I used to watch several times many, many years ago before I even knew where Garbatella was.

And you can't understand this because the person i want to take on the ride doesn't have dsl. Yes, my colleagues from India don't believe that there are places in the heart of Tuscany without dsl connection.

My disoriented Tuesday night back home realizing I don't even have any coffee in my cupboards and then my neighbours open up their windows and sing out laud "Grazie Roma". This was their reaction to loosing to Manchester United. I didn't know about the game, I just heard them sing and couldn't help but to smile to myself and say "Thank God am back in Rome".

So here is the ride through Garbatella... wishing to find my man to take him on the ride...again..

And maybe just like Nanni we could also enter one of the houses, just to see, tell them we are making a film...And when they ask what the film is about, then we'll say it is about a Marxist owner of local pasticceria living in the conformist 1950's, in Garbatella... A musical.. Where is my partner in crime??? Yes, I know everyone in Garbatella knows this line.. but what has happened with being a little crazy?

Snow in Heidelberg

Two days in Heidelberg and arrived here not exactely knowing what wil be the next country where I will spend my nights in: South Africa or Malawi? No, I will be going straight to more meetings in Johannesburg as thank God I need a visa for Malawi.. Am tired of this constant readiness for work related adventures..

Yesterday was the first day of Spring, the Equonox and after warm winter I find Heidelberg covered with that white poweder I missed this winter... The witch in me misses the forgotten slow arrival of Spring...

http://www.ciae.ntu.edu.tw/chinese/newsletter_3/heidelberg%20snow.jpg


A few moments looking at the contrast between blooming spring and the melting snow... Another few minutes thinking to myself what it would be like to grow up in this perfect small German town... What are the lifes of people who have normal jobs and families? Do they feel the angst to get away from it or are they aware how prescious this tranquilty can be? Suddenly the idea of living in a small town and of having a more normal job without the objective of saving the world seems appealing.

Sunday morning I will wake up in Johannesburg...I love traveling but hotel meeting rooms, however fascinating the meetings, make me feel sometimes as though this is my second home. To succeed in what I am doing I need that home base with someone waiting for me with a cooked dinner.

Am looking forward to going back to Africa...

Having Faith

......And sometimes it becomes just so difficult to believe that having "faith" alone will get us through the difficult times. Faith is such an intangible concept, so ethereal, and so confounding when you dismiss any form of religious fundamentalism.

To have faith, to have trust in the world, to believe in the good in others... How difficult to cultivate faith in the face of all the injustice, all the wars, the momentary sense of powerlessness and despair.

.....AND THEN MUSIC ENTERS MY WORLD...

…she gives me a warm embrace, she carries me, she gives me strength, she guides me and restores my faith. SHE!, LA MUSICA; MUZYKA.

.. .. And when I doubt why I am working for a smaller salary then back in New York City, then I am reminded that I am where I need to be, that I am making my contribution of faith in the humankind. And I thank Jovanotti for inspiring my passionate love for the Italian language, for seducing me with his music back in the cold lights of New York City walking with my walkman through the endless underground corridors of the dark metro stations. And now with my mp3 player, years later, he reminds me to have faith. And Rome is simply beautiful when the wind blows in my face as Lorenzo sings to me when I drive my little motorino... Yes, as much as I love tomatoes it was more then the hunger for taste that brought me to Rome. It was also hunger for music with meanigful lyrics... Thank you Lorenzo for seducing me with your serenatas rap... Thanks to myself for having faith to follow your music.

Here she is, for all of you my friends, listen....

This is Ashtanga Yoga

For those who ask: this is ashtanga yoga. Isn't beautiful? .....Depending on how much time I will devote to it, depending on how much discipline I will gain, depending on how much courage I will have to let go of fear and how open I will be to change - maybe in a few years from now I will get the elegance of some of these magic postures..

This was a very stressful week as the eclipse has stirred up so much in store...and I am still learning how to take care of myself in the mist of the job that is swollowing all of my energies. All I am thinking is how angry I am that I will loose time from practice during my upcoming travel and how to squeeze in a mat into my luggage.

This weekend I detoxed (relatively as the concept is still new) and attended a marvelous yoga workshop at my Ashtanga Yoga school.

LIFE BEGINS WITH A LUNAR ECLIPSE

And so I have graciously turned 30 years old.

I began counting my blessings with sarcastic satisfaction of a pagan goddess/witch/samba dancer and decided to write a love letter to my evil twin sister before the lunar eclipse that was to accompany my birthday's celebrations. I wanted to meditate naked under a waterfall reliveing my last days of childhood, but instead was interrupted by phonecalls from Spain and Turkey reminding me that I (and my evil twin sister) are both very much loved. Since life begins at 30 I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of giving myself another chance. I dreamed of stealing the peaches of immortality from a dragon guarding the entrance to the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant near Santa Maria Maggiore. I want to relieve the PRESENT feeling of being blessed and 30!

As if suddenly good karma has come back... Basking in friendship and love. Thankful to live in Rome where boys at the bar where I get my coffee everydays since 3 years give me flowers (would that have happened in the starbucks to which you go everyday???) Maybe happy to be in Rome and not traveling in foreign lands, happy to be able to be with those whom I love. And thankful, immensely thankful to have so many good people in my life..

Yes, this one is a big blessing. Thank you for making me a moon child!

And here are some pictures from the celebration with/of people I love:
http://photos.yahoo.com/magdalena_original

No More Snow

I hate Valentines. I hate February. I hate chocolates. Most of all, most of all I hate long winters without snow.

Here I sit with a second bad cold in the past 2 weeks which I don't cure because I still work from home instead of curling up under warm sheets with a cup of warm tea. .I realize that the world won’t fall apart if I just let go, but I will fall apart if I let the winter blues take over.

And the world is falling apart. It has been such a long winter without snow... Kapuscinski books no longer keep me warm with their descriptions of African sun, samba from Rio no longer soothes my saudade filled soul.

What has happened to the snow? I spend December in rain covered Portugal, Warsaw without the hazy shades of dreamy white powder, no frost cracking under my feet... And Rome with its moonsoon rains making me catch terrible colds on my scooter. Yes, I laughed and smiled and danced when I saw snow for the very first time this winter. I woke up last Thursday morning in the silence of the beautiful B&B owned by a sweet Belgian artist - it felt as if I woke up inside his painting. Standing watching the snow fall on Brussels through wide, huge windows. How ironic, the Polish girl goes to Brussels to see the very first snow this winter. By the evening the snow has melted, but at least I still had the rare luxury of taking a soothing bath inside the painting.

It has been a first time in two years that I haven't gone to Sri Lanka or Brazil to break the long, winter blues working under the steaming sun. I cherished being still, but not in the winter where moonsoon like rains have replaced the little beauty that winters bring... And I never really loved winters – climate being the most often cited reason for the “what are you doing in Rome?”

And what has happened with the time when I used the long winter nights to write? In which translation have I lost myself?

This, I think, is the only good poem I wrote...May it remind me that snowless Roman days used to make me write. May it remind me that even in Rome there used to be beautiful frost in the mornings... May it remind me that my heart has healed.



Roman Frost
24-01-2004

Misty moist frost breaking the structure of my bones
As morning sun fills spaces between antique ruins of human desire
I listen to gypsies sing the same Russian song
On the tram stuck in the raining confusion of Rome
Late to work late to work late to work
Late to begin anew because I belong
I belong to my memories of la dolce vita summers
I belong to the chaos eternal of inevitable traffic jams

Wind from the Castelli mountains carries
Answers to the riddles of forgotten witches and gods
Answers rise like bubbles to some vast horizontal plane
Where oxygen changes form.

Across the table I warm myself
At his eyes’ transparent fire
How grizzled his eyebrows are
Underlining the black quick lines of no repeated
This is what love means: returning where you can breathe.

I refused at my return from deserts’ vast spaces
At my return from white silence of snow covered birthplace
The difficulty presented by any instance of contact
Homecoming month later breaking the surface:
Inhaling - shaking my head in wonder.

Because days now I knew
I must give up wanting him
Resolved not to offer more unguarded smiles
On the terrace I moved upwind from his cigarette
To move away from his intense eyes and break with discontinuity.

His affection is huge violating a fixed boundary
Violating the resolve of his own contradictions
Violating the safety stones he drops with each sentence
Keeping it all in the realm of inevitable erotic clash.

And I leaned into his touch as if it were home
To end it speaking about unfeasibility
Months and days it seemed of making love later
As moist cold Roman winter pierced me with pain.

As frost sets on dead trenches of elegant Cyprus trees
I belong to the stones that witnessed my bliss and ache
The mouth of truth where I held my hands in marriage lies
The frozen water in the fountain where I worshiped my youth.

"We'll always have Lisbon"

- he said. Then I was left in Coimbra with my fado and Lisbon on my mind.
Oh, this one is an irrelevant entry written on an irrelevant night, just celebrating that I was in Lisbon when the moon was just as young.

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them. (Secret: #36)
RUMI

WARSAW lost in translation...

Warsaw is home. But what is home if I lived away from this capital of suddenly remembered state for, now, most of my life? Is it going back to the twisted beauty and the richness of my slavic-latinized tongue? I try to explain to my English boyfriend that we have about 100 ways to say the word cat = KOT. But nobody says "kot" unless you are a veterinarian... My parents' big black cat - Zulus - he is so big he is a "kocur"...Yet my mother calls him "kociu", "kiciu", "kociaczku", "kiciuniu", "kiciaczku", "kiciulku", "kocinko moja"... It is in the lost in translations ways that my friends and I address each other when we meet after years over a few too many glasses of beer, our lifes twisted with time and circumstances but the friendships still the same. It is in our sense of pride, the history of my ravaged city reconstructed only with the sheer force of love and perseverance... And then about watching as an outsider how the insane capitalist drive takes the better and the best of us. We have always been the nation of survivors, the in -between of Germany and Russia with an older statehood then both. Now, given the chance, we are proud to show off what we are capable of..

I experience Poland as an inside-outsider. For I am Polish - not only because this is the only citizenship I hold for which I curse the current Polish powers to be for their shortsighted inability to integrate with Europe. Poland is young. Poland has children. This strikes you if you live in Italy. Poland, though, to me, is not about its landscapes but about the Poles. We are tragically irrational in our capacity or rather incapacity for dealing with foreign affairs - the stigma of the Iron Curtain’s fall less then 20 years ago. Romantically carried away, we say what we mean, hence the English diplomacy is fails us all. Yet, comparing us to Russians with whom we share the "Slavic souls" is wrong for we are too straightforward in comparison. Uncapable of the Russian grand scale skimming perhaps because we are just too democratic in the sense that no Pole would allow another Pole to rule over him unconditionally. "Freedom" is the word to which too many Polish rock songs have been dedicated to. Economy is booming and I see my old country transforming with the force of the young people unafraid to take risks. What a difficult past we have had: it is refreshing to think of our 18-year-old MTV generation that doesn't remember any of the communist education. Yet, at the same time disturbing to see them raised in the mindset forgetful of what we and who we are. I am sad, very sad to see our political system being played out in terms of domestic divisiveness for the sake of power and not for the sake of what is good for the country. Yet, I know it will pass because the young generation, however MTV it is, will not fit into the Catholic fascism of the current, short-lived, stage. It is just sad to see that the Polish politicians are destroying our potential, that everything is suddenly defined in anti-communist terms forgetful of the fact that we have had a Soviet imposed system which is currently denying us the capacity for a healthy social democracy. At the end, it is the frustrations of lack of social state that led the right wing to reign. So I hope that one day I can be a liberal Polish leftist without accusations of Soviet sympathies.

Home. Home is in my language. Not politics. Home is my dog and my cat, my friends who show up in a small bar in Warsaw to be together. Home is a place where friends give me their skates so that I don't have to rent them out when I go ice-skating. Home is our dinners, home cooked, our immense and overbearing hospitality. Where everyone makes homemade liquors, where food is love, where conversations are filled with intense passion and laughter. Home is where people call me by my name. Home is where people argue through a series of articles over the meaning of postmodern Polish art...

Home is Warsaw. Being away means romanticizing it and we know that romantic means Polish. THis time, the very first Polish Christmas without snow was still romantic...even if less visual. Maybe a little lonely becuause what I hate about Poland is that if you are not married with children then you are not eligible to be happy as a 30 year old Polish woman on Polish political terms. But these are the terms imposed by a Polish minority. And I am happy.

Running Away from Uncertainty

Sitting in my house as my beloved Canadian-Italian friend just left: the bottle of wine opened, my bedroom a mess again as I am slowely getting ready to pack, the damn e-mail not working on my damned outlook as I am desperatly trying to shoot the last work e-mails. The picture above, made by an incredible woman who lives in Madrid and who spend some time with me in Brazil, Riga and in Rome, is the reason why I am pondering over the future of my Roman flat. For this is the time I get to have a home on my own expat basis: the widnows and the doors are always opened to the visits of my friends, past and future.

As I am sitting here I am wondering if my dear friend Bachus will come back from Canada in time to still see me sit in the same apartment, will I be in Rome or will I have to take the matters in my hands and eventually move to a different part of the world? "I love Rome" is the mantra I repeat daily, but making my life here is becoming increasingly difficult... December will not see much of me in Rome whereas it is Rome that it is all about: trying to stay here. I have been fired and hired several times past weeks by the same organization without my knowledge as it is all about the fight for next year's budget within the divisive politics of North-South dynamic over the future of a person that is neither from the "West" nor from the "South". These weeks of demotivation and uncertainty about my work have been a blessing and a gift. I have had a rare chance to explore my new neighborhood, to spend time with my beloved Roman friends, to live a more "normal" life.

I hope that Portuguese Fado will heal. Hopefully the works side of the Portuguese trip will be less dramatic.

This orchidea was all about the rare moments of being still... Still as in not down nor depressed, just still. Admiring its beauty. I thank Sonia for this picture.

Yes, all the pictures in this blog are my pictures hence each time I use those of others I give due credit...

In Chianti Veritas

What's so romantic about this Tuscan grape obsession? They need your desperate care whole year round. Each month of the year is defined by the almighty power of "the vines" in transforming the Chianti's scenery. So innocent, bare and naked in January - the non tourist season - when you can admire their artisticly twisted roots holding on to the wires. So needy, even in the cold February mornings, out there in the vineyard you make sure each and single one of them is trimmed to perfection. The barren landscape suddenly shows signs of life around March - the green leafs begin to shoot out as the sunsets begin setting later into the day. Then you are hit by the indecent freshness of the green colours of the Spring.. The green so intense that it makes your head spin under the bright rays of mid May sunshine as the grapes intoxicate you with the taste of that newly bottled Chianti Classico from the last year's vintage.

And when all the organic chemistry of Spring turns into the Summer, the vineyards are wild, the green grape leafs cover hectars of land while the fruit is slowely forming under the unberably hot Tuscan sun... And then you worry and wait. You wait and hope that the rain will not last too long in September, that the temperature will be just right to allow the purple Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet to arrive in all their health and glory for the picking season. The Vendemmia.



Though I have only picked one day this year, I have lived from October to October through the agonies of the winemaker's life. All I know is that 2006 is a very good year for the Il Borghetto Chianti... Oh, the climate change sensitive labour...

And now, as the wine is being pressed in November, all I know is that I regret that I couldn't spend more days picking these beautiful grapes from this small homerun winery... Instead, I was busy trying to remind the world that humanity has failed to deal with hunger. Reminding, that if we could devise a more lausy way to distribute food, we couldn't do better then now. The economics of agricultural polcies, the food politics where farmers have no voice.. But at the end of the day, the best conversations between Mexican activists from Oaxaca and Indians from Rajahstan, Spaniards from Madrid and Italians from Milan, French from Brittany and Mozambiquans farmers, Brazilians from RIo and Kenyans from Nairobi- were the ones held over the glass of wine...

In vino veritas.. In Chianti veritas.

Salute.

I will always have Paris

the city that awakes my Polish melancholic heart and makes it breathe...Only Paris in September, even in just two days, can fill me up with poetry to last. Too little time in between work related meetings but enough to visit my two favourite couples...
One cooks me an evening meal and listens patiently to the stories of my confused heart...I am reminded that American expat women who move from Rome to Paris have depth, courage and wisdom they share freely with younger expat sisters...

I visit another couple early in the morning at Montparnasse..Simone and Jean Paul.

The Death of Lovers
We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,
Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves
Will be strange flowers that blossomed for us
Under more beautiful heavens.

Using their dying flames emulously,
Our two hearts will be two immense torches
Which will reflect their double light
In our two souls, those twin mirrors.
Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue
A single flash will pass between us
Like a long sob, charged with farewells;

And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,
Faithful and joyous, will come to revive
The tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.

Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)