Hyperlocalism – that's where I'm at

 "Hyperlocalism is a philosophy that focuses intensively on a very small, well-defined geographic area, such as a specific neighbourhood, village, or a few city blocks, rather than a broader region, nation or continent." Hyperlocalism is about where you're from, not where you're visiting. It is about identity through connection - a connection of repeated subject experience, qualia, memory, awareness, observation, being a part of the local landscape, not just a passer-through.

I'm never going to take an award-winning photo of the Taj Mahal nor capture the ambience of Machu Picchu at dusk, nor snap the Northern Lights from within the Arctic Circle – nor have I any ambitions to do so. But to photograph in and around Chynów, year after year – yup, that's very much my thing. The land, and the seasons, and the weather. Locally. Geographic depth, not breadth.

Below: gold in the trees, a warm sun on my back, and the last of the clouds racing away. Just round the first corner from home, heading towards the orchards.

Left: boundary line between the birches and the orchard. The sky was clear overnight; at this time of year, that means frost. Below: looking west along the track from Grabina and Adamów Rososki towards Jakubowizna; there's a puddle at the bottom with ice on it. The first time that's happened this autumn. Meanwhile, the last apples are being gathered in.

The road leading through Adamów Rososki has recently received asphalt, making access to the houses along it so much easier. The top end of the road (below), beyond the last of the houses, is still without asphalt, and it's likely that it will remain so.

Below: another of my favourite views that I must have photographed scores of times; looking up the lane towards my działka. Several minutes after sunset on this occasion. The sublime aesthetic.

Below: the Koleje Mazowieckie przyspieszony (limited stops) double-decker service between Warsaw and Radom Główny approaches Chynów station. It departed W-wa Służewiec station just 23 minutes earlier. Again, the sublime aesthetic.

Below: the western horizon, after the sun has set and the train has passed. A chilly night beckons.

Connecting the local with the eternal and infinite.

This time last year
In the early-November sky

This time two years:
Autumn joy, continued

This time seven years ago:
Recycling my father's possessions

This time eight years ago:
You can always go downtown

This time ten years ago:
Opinions vs facts – our media today

This time 11 years ago:
Judging PO's eight years in power

This time 12 years ago
Cloudless, 18C – the beauty of Polish autumn

This time 13 years ago: 
Call 19115: Warsaw Fix-my-Street

This time 15 years ago:
Vapour trails at sunset

This time 16 years ago:
Autumnal blues

Drop it, swap it, let it live again

News from gmina Chynów last month – the opening of a new facility in the municipal waste recycling centre – bring your stuff that you no longer need and leave it that others may benefit from it. And if you need things, just turn up and help yourself to whatever takes your fancy. 

This is the punkt ponownego użycia (reuse point, or Drop'n'Swap Centre) in Chynów's PSZOK (punkt selektywnej zbiórki odpadów komunalnych), literally 'point of selective collection of municipal waste' or municipal recycling facility. The investment, supported by a grant of 84,000 złotys (about £16,500) from the Mazowsze province, opened on 21 October.

I went to have a look, and give away a rucksackful of unwanted clothing.  All good quality, washed and ironed. It did not surprise me to see that the bulk of what has been given away was for women and children. Just turn up and help yourself to whatever takes your fancy. 

There were also books – mainly school textbooks – and other items, toys, kitchen utensils (a nice set of four beer glasses, for example), a smaller amount of furniture, gardening things. 

This really is a super idea, in a village with no charity shop, at least the quality end of the 'I need to dispose of this' can end up going to a new home. Punkt Ponownego Użycia is at the  PSZOK in Chynów on ul. Główna 92. It is open three days a week: Tuesdays from 08:00 to 15:00, Thursday from 10:00 to 17:00 and Saturdays from 09:00 to 15:00.

Remember the Buyerarchy of Needs: buy new only if you can't mend it, borrow it, or get it second-hand.

Getting to the PSZOK on foot means walking the 550m from the Dino supermarket along the road without pavement. Earlier this year, the supermarket was connected to Chynów's pavement network with a 150m stretch to ulica Leśna, a popular and much-needed investment. Although through traffic now takes the new DK50 Drwalew-Chynów bypass, this road still feels uncomfortable for pedestrians. I hope to see the pavement/cycle path extended out all the way to Drwalew. 

With each month, I can see successive improvements in the quality of life here in Chynów.

This time two years ago
First frost, 2024
[Still not had one this autumn]

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki Park + Ride finally opens

This time five years ago:
Are you serious about going green?

This time six years ago:
Nail-biting walk
[Six years on, Trump's party gets battered]

This time eight years ago:
Insights in the search for consciousness

This time nine years ago:
Loving Vincent – review

This time 13 years ago:
UFO credibility test

This time 14 years ago:
Junction ready for road to unbuilt sports centre

This time 15 years ago:
Park nad Książecem – Vistula escarpment, beautiful autumn

This time 18 years ago:
Obama wins US presidential election

What surprises does the weather hold?

One of the first things I do after feeding the cats in the morning is to check the weather app, to see what's the optimal time for my daily walk. Today, the forecast seemed totally at odds with reality. Rather than simply resign myself to staying in all day because app say 'rain all day', I chose to go out after an early lunch and risk it.

Below: rain clouds are sliding in from the north west. A few minutes later, I reach Grobice and the rain starts pelting down. I wait it out under the shelter in the park, watching the blue in the sky pushing the grey towards the south east.

Below: new pavement that allows pedestrians to walk in safety from Grobice to the DK50 and Sułkowice beyond. Another valuable infrastructure investment delivered!

Below: looking westwards along the DK50 towards the railway line. Note the tractor towing crates of apples; the harvest is slowly coming to an end.

Below: just by the viaduct, a new pharmaceutical warehouse is being built by the DK50.

The blue sky was sporadic and more grey clouds rolled in, soon extinguished the sun. Below: the local Chynów to Sułkowice road rises over the DK50 to the right, the service road winds along the foot of the embankment.

More rain fell on me on the way home. Left: looking across at the station buildings at Chynów, the railway signals mast on the horizon.

Across the tracks, through the pedestrian tunnel, which at the moment is being repaired. The drainage of the tunnel proved to be inadequate; after heavy autumn rain, the tunnel floor at either end was often flooded – and when frozen in winter, it was a danger to people hurrying for their trains. And once up on the Jakubowizna side, here's the view towards Warsaw, below. Just to the left of the mobile base station, you can see the top of Varso tower, the EU's tallest building. Further to the left (amid the power lines), the grey shape of the Warsaw Unit tower.

Below: up the lane, on my way home. This reminds that it will soon be time to drive down the hill to Pan Piotr's warsztat (left) and get my tyres and oil changed for winter.

Another month with a daily average of over 13,000 paces. And October has come and gone without any overnight air frost, and only one morning of ground frost. Climate change is noticeable.

This time last year:

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (IX)

This time two years ago:
Valencia and manmade climate change

This time three years ago:
On death

This time five years ago:
Improvements on the Radom line

This time six years ago:
Rural rights of way, revisited

This time seven years ago:

Cause of death

This time eight years ago:
Opole in the late-October sunshine

This time nine years ago:
Work begins in earnest on the Karczunkowska viaduct

This time 11 years ago:
Sublime autumn day in Jeziorki

This time 12 years ago:
CitytoCity, MalltoMall

This time 13 years ago:
(Internet) Radio Days

This time 13 years ago:
Another office move

This time 15 years ago:
Manufacturing a City of Culture

This time 16 years ago:
My thousandth post

This time 17 years ago:
Closure of ul. Poloneza

This time 18 years ago:
Scenes from a suburban petrol station

Losing the plot – paying attention to attention

I'm about fifty pages into Microcosm by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, the book I'm currently reading. The book is a history of the city of Wrocław, whose turbulent past encapsulates that of Central Europe as a whole (full review in a post in about three weeks' time).

The book's prologue, Götterdämmerung – the fall of Festung Breslau in 1945 – was utterly absorbing. I read through it in one go, full of drama and violence, the clash of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Chapter One, however, jumps back to the palaeolithic times and the beginnings of human settlement. This is not my most favoured period of history... consequently I'm finding it harder to stay focused on this story. As my eyes scan over the words, my mind is wandering...

And I can recall this precise sensation – from school, from university, from reading boring press releases at work in the 1980s. How long is this chapter? How much more of it? It is as dull as sifting through soil looking for tiny pottery shards on an archeological dig. I want to get on to the Piasts and the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, but I'm stuck on archeological finds such as fish-hooks and flints from the fifth century BC. I want to skip ahead.

BUT NO! STOP!

Here's the fundamental difference in the way my mind works, age 69, and how it did when I was a teenager. I am aware of my awareness. I am aware that the words passing beneath my eyes hold little interest to me, especially after such a vivid opening to the book, soaked in blood and destruction. And now I'm reading about islands in swampy rivers, the migrations of primitive tribes – the Slenzanians, the Marcomanni, the Przeworskers, the Venedi, none of whom I'd ever heard of. A little peek into the next chapter, maybe?

NO! I have learnt enough about learning to know that every detail, every knot along the thread, has its importance. In a good history book, seemingly inconsequential details can acquire significance hundreds of pages later. Skip over one of them, and you might miss a link in the chain of cause and effect.

And so, having caught myself in the act of skim-reading and not taking anything in, I stop. I consider where in the narrative I (literally) lost the plot, and return to that very paragraph. And I start reading again from there. After a page or two of more focused effort, once again I find my mind drifting. And again, I catch myself in this process. Again, I go back to identify the paragraph where my attention began to wander. And again, I proceed with a more consciously determined attempt to read with understanding. Slowly and thoroughly. Got it? Good.

What's going on? I'm recognising that I've stopped taking in the words I'm reading. And, aged 69, I now have the metacognitive control required to bring myself back to the point at which comprehension broke down. And I'm making the conscious effort to go back, despite the temptation to skip ahead. 

A teenaged me, reading an uninteresting passage would have experienced the same wandering of attention as I  have just now, but not noticed it, and jumped forward to something more interesting. The older me recognises the departure from the task. It's not an increase in the quality and quantity of my attention; it's an improvement in my ability to notice when it slips, and manage it back on task.

Metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking; recognising when one's thoughts have strayed, and consciously steering them back on course. I could not do this when I was young! (Or if I could, I was not even anything I was aware of.) Age doesn't automatically confer this ability; it develops through experience, practice and self-observation. This ability varies between individuals. It is a capacity I have learned to cultivate; this is not as such a universal benefit of ageing.

This time, I try to get into the subject matter more deeply. I look up the Wikipedia page about the Przeworsk culture, and learn something new. Why, I've even been to Przeworsk, unaware that the town gave its name to an Iron Age material culture that existed across southern Poland for around 700 (!) years from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD. Then I dip into the Marcomanni page, and again I learn something new (the etymology of Bohemia). Wikipedia really is the wonder of our age to anyone with curiosity. In my childhood, any unanswered question that bothered me long enough would have to wait until the fortnightly visit to Ealing Public Library. In the 1960s, curiosity had to survive the delay between wondering about something and obtaining the information that might satisfy it. 

Nowadays, curiosity can be rewarded immediately. But instant gratification also makes it easy to pursue another question, then another, then another, until one has forgotten the original enquiry – the dreaded rabbit hole. The internet has simultaneously made it easier than ever to chase up some arcane topic but easier than ever to abandon that chase halfway, distracted by a tunnel leading off the original rabbit hole.

Thinking about this at the meta-level: yes, it's easier today to get distracted (have I got any more new replies or likes to my recent Facebook posts?) but it's also much easier to find out answers to questions you may have. 

Back from five minutes on Facebook. Gosh, yes. Self discipline. [I have a craving for dried mango, and have lacked the self-discipline to stop myself from eating 1.2kg of the stuff in under three weeks. Yes, dried mango counts towards my daily fruit-and-veg, but Google informs me that a mere 30g of dried fruit constitutes a portion; eating more than 30g per day has no health benefits. A waste, then, because I didn't have the self-discipline to stop.]

Here's a distinction worth making: when I stop reading to look up the Marcomanni, am I being distracted, or am I deepening my understanding? The distraction takes me further into the subject rather than away from it. Contrast that with Facebook, where I emerge five minutes later knowing nothing more about early Central European history, but quite possibly having forgotten why I put the book down in the first place.

I am not arguing that all distraction is bad; I'm saying that we need to become conscious of where our attention is leading us.

Self-discipline – so important. The clouds have moved away, the sun is out, the cats are asleep – time for my walk.

And as I walk, I ponder more upon this subject further. Getting absorbed into any activity, be it reading, writing or painting – for example, getting into that flow state. Being 'in the flow' means having to expend little to no conscious effort in staying focused; you barely notice the passage of time. You are engrossed. This is the opposite of the effortful attention required to concentrate on something that is not naturally holding your interest. Dozens of distractions are lurking within your easy reach. Getting into the flow state requires the self-discipline to persist through the less immediately rewarding bits.

Our minds have two competing tendencies. One is to wander about, covering ground, seeking novelty, new sensations, fresh information. The other is to settle upon one thing and pursue it relentlessly, to the exclusion of everything else. We all experience both tendencies to varying degrees. The trick is not to eliminate either one, but to recognise which is taking charge at any particular moment. 

Metacognition. Pay attention to attention.

This time last year:
Cherish the Morning Light

This time two years ago:
Post-consumerist hygiene

This time three years ago:
October's benign end

This time four years ago:
Disclosure day tomorrow?

This time five years ago:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)

This time six years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland

This time seven years ago:
Sifting through a life

This time nine years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time ten years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again
[This is what going to be early in winter protects us from!]

This time 11 years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time 13 years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time 14 years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time 15 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 17 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden

Beating the time-change blues

The clocks have gone back. All of a sudden, the sun sets at twenty past four in the afternoon. To quote Jacek Koba, "they give you an extra hour in bed in late October, but they'll steal an hour of your daylight every evening for the next five months".

The time change no longer holds any fears for me. I have learnt to deal with the Hammer of Darkness. Stick to summer time the whole year round! Tonight, as for the past three nights, I will go to bed at half past nine (new time) and wake up at half past five (new time) and hang on to that precious hour of evening daylight which they would otherwise have stolen from me.

The only clock to follow is your body clock, not the clock they use to tell you what their time is. (Shame on the politicians for not being able to scrap the nonsense that is the time change. Many people suffer mental health issues as a result of the autumn one, and heart attacks and strokes from the spring one.)

This morning I woke at half past five; by six thirty (seven thirty according to my body clock), the sun had risen, the cats have been fed, coffee had been made and enjoyed, and it was time for an early morning walk. Outside it was +1°C according to my digital thermometer, but frozen dew on vegetation told of ground frost. Puddles, on the other hand were entirely ice-free.

I love these intense autumnal colours. Never mind the temperature; what counts is the clarity of the sky.

Below: looking east at the thermonuclear phenomenon for which we must give thanks.

Below: looking the other way, at a full moon descending in the western skies. As with the sun we owe the moon so much, including our very existence.

Below: with the first frost, it is at last time to gather the sloes, fruit of the blackthorn, prunus spinosa, or in Polish, tarnina. To be gathered after the first frost, for the making of sloe gin. I shall be steeping these in 95% spirytus rektyfikowany for a few months, with sugar to taste. (The red blobs out of focus are rose hips.) Picking blackthorn in the cold, without gloves, mindful of the thorns, isn't easy, still, I have gathered half a kilo, enough for a litre of sloe gin.

Photos from yesterday's afternoon walk. Below: house, car and cat (one of the dozen – Hipek, aka Ol' Mr. Heaps), who awaits my return.

Below: two new houses are being built at the bottom end of my line, near the railway line. The builders are working rapidly to achieve stan surowy zamknięty – 'raw state, closed' – before winter sets in, whereby the unfinished structure is enclosed from the elements, with windows, doors and roof in place.

Below: a Whovian sky, looking towards Chynów station. [Shock discovery: William Hartnell was 13 years younger than I am now when he finally stepped down from his role as the grandfatherly First Dr Who…]

Below: view across the fields to Jakubowizna beyond. This is next June's crop of strawberries, awaiting the straw that protects the young plants from frost and gives the berry its name. My raspberry bushes, on the other hand, are still producing fruit – I gathered 90g yesterday (more than one portion!), and more than double that two days ago.

Below: for apple-growers, this is the busiest time of the years, getting the harvest in before the frosts arrive in earnest. Each crate filled with quality dessert apples is worth 600 złotys at current prices.

Left: Dąbrowa Duża is surrounded by forest to its north and east. I discovered that what I'd assumed for years was just a drive leading to a private property is actually a public road (albeit untarmacked) that's a neat short-cut across the village.

Talking of 'years', it's now nine years since I found my działka in Jakubowizna. An excellent purchase in an excellent location. I could never move back into a city or its suburbs. Green acres is the place to be. Indeed. Having said that, it's always good to know that I can be in central Warsaw in under an hour if necessary. The 08:42 train from Chynów gets me to W-wa Służewiec in 23 minutes, in good time for my 09:30 physio appointment.

Below: the forest between Dąbrowa Duża and Machcin II, leaves beginning to turn gold. In the strong sunlight, the path is easy to tread.

Below: the lane just outside my działka. It will soon be dark, but I will be up well before the next sunrise.

I have just used AI to do my first-ever bit of coding! I wanted to build an app that lets me know, at any time, how long I have to the next sunrise/next sunset. I now have a small box on my desktop that informs me that sunset will be at 16:18 today – in 02 hours, 17 minutes and 10 seconds. I told Google Gemini what I needed, and in simplest terms to explain to me what to do. And so I have used AI to build myself a custom app keeping me aware of celestial movements above me. The whole process of building and testing the app took just over half an hour.

This time three years ago:
Cross-country train-travel tales

This time five years ago:
Mother of Invention

This time six years ago:
Autumnal lockdown walk

This time seven years ago:

End of the warm and sunny part of autumn

This time eight years ago:
Remont of Metro bridge over Puławska

This time nine years ago:
We are what we read, what we watch, what we listen to

This time 13 years ago:
Extraordinarily warm autumn

This time 14 years ago:
On behalf of the work-shy community

This time 15 years ago:
Classic truck cavalcade

This time 16 years ago
Suburban back-roads clogged with commuters

This time 17 years ago:
Autumn gold, Łazienkowski Park

This time 18 years ago:
Quintessential autumnal Jeziorki

Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone

Having read a book about Siberia, how Russia expanded eastwards to the Bering Straits and beyond, I was keen to compare that story with the westward expansion of the United States. [Many thanks to Bob for suggesting and lending me this utterly compelling book, which has been with me for the past month and half.

The author, Irving Stone, is famous for The Agony and the Ecstasy, and Lust for Life, his biographies of Michelangelo and Vincent Van Gogh respectively. The title comes from Sam Walter Foss’s 1894 poem The Coming American: "Bring me men to match my mountains, Bring me men to match my plains, Men with empires in their purpose, And new eras in their brains." Stone's book was first published in 1956, 62 years after those lines were written – but already 70 years ago.

The opening sentence of Men to Match My Mountains speaks of building a civilisation; the closing sentence calls the American Far West “the cradle of a culture freer and richer than any the world had known”. These bookends suggest that the opening up of California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado by European settlers was something destined from the outset to develop into a great land – in stark contrast with Siberia and Russia's Far East that was merely plundered for its natural resources, from furs and timber to gold and oil. But the narrative itself is far more complex, and the author Irving Stone focuses on the drive, determination, courage – and yes, greed – of the men who shaped the Far West in the second half of the 19th century. 

The book tells several overlapping stories, beginning with the first settlers from the East moving over mountain ranges and deserts to reach California, then a part of a newly independent Mexico. The settlers to this Eden quickly revolted against the rather lax and arbitrary Mexican rule. This was a time when a hundred soldiers was a huge force that could settle territorial disputes one way or another. The next story is that of the Gold Rush of 1849, the subsequent discoveries of silver in Colorado, and their vast macroeconomic and social impact. Interwoven into these narratives, Stone tells of how the Mormons created Utah, and how the federal government clamped down on their polygamous practices. And then we read about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, and the unethical practices of the men who ran it. Finally, we see how the four states became integrated into the political and economic maps of the USA. Throughout the book, the author explains how institutions came about; the rule of law, education, health services, and how Washington DC extended its rule over these territories as they became states.

What makes the book fascinating for me is how much information in it was entirely new to me, or maybe not new, but offering me new insights. Bear in mind that 50 years ago this month, I began my first year of Comparative American Studies at Warwick University – I regret this book was not on the set list (but then it is hardly a revisionist Marxist critique of US history). Stone believes that the West was won by strong individual personalities, not by ideologies.

The most striking fact from the first chapter: to get to San Francisco from Boston or New York in 1840 took the best part of six months however you went. By sailing ship around Cape Horn, it was a journey of 17,000 miles through some of the roughest seas on Earth. Across the Isthmus of Panama it was a shorter route, but with the dangers of malaria and yellow fever ever-present in the jungles, and no regular shipping route up along the Pacific coast. The most dangerous route was across the American continent, west of the Missouri River. To reach California, travellers had to scale the Rocky Mountains, traverse desert, and then face the sheer granite cliffs of the Sierra Nevada. There was, in 1840, not a single road that could take a waggon all the way. Early settlers would have to dismantle their waggons and haul them over mountain ridges using block and tackle. Pianos, printing-presses and entire iron-foundries came to California this way. And the natives tended to be murderously unfriendly.

Stone's writing style gives the book a memorable feel. He seems to have deliberately used the writing conventions of late-19th century newspapers, which he drew on to a large degree for the facts underpinning the narrative. [It's worth noting at this point that Samuel Langhorne Clemens became Mark Twain while writing for a newspaper in Virginia City at the height of the Nevada silver rush, which had lured him there.] 

I found the story of the Mormons fascinating. Last week, having made the mistake of drinking a strong cup of coffee mid-afternoon, I was unable to go back to sleep after waking at 2am, so I spent the next two hours reading about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, Mormonism, Brigham Young and Salt Lake City on Wikipedia. After the killing of Smith by non-Mormons, Brigham Young led the Latter Day Saints west to Utah. The man had 43 wives (according to Stone, 54 according to Wikipedia), marrying eight in his peak year. For the Federal government, such egregious behaviour was entirely unacceptable, US marshals were brought in to track down and prosecute recalcitrant polygamists. In the end, the Mormons gave in, banned the practice, and by 1894, Utah became one of the United States.

It's hard to imagine that anyone today could dream up 600 pages of a book compelling enough to persuade 12,000 people to follow them and live together in a theocratic community. Joseph Smith did just that, dictating the entire Book of Mormon in about eight weeks in 1829, when he was 23. To this day,  there are many Mormons who believe in the literal truth of the Book of Mormon. But then there are vast numbers of believers in other religions who believe in the literal truth of their sacred scripture to be literal word of God – it's just that their holy books have been around for longer.

The story of the ruthlessness of the four railway tycoons who drove the Central Pacific east over the Sierra Nevadas to link with the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869 is well told. There are two stories here – the building of the line from the west, up and over the mountains, using large amounts of imported Chinese labour – and the monopolistic exploitation of the line once completed, sucking the profitability out of any business that needed the railroad to get its goods to markets back east. The profits were used to buy Congressmen who effectively kept other railroads out of California. The monopoly created vast wealth for the four men; one of whom was Leland Stanford, who ended up endowing the university named after him. It was only after the Santa Fé railroad reached the Pacific that honest competition broke out – the price of a one-way ticket from Chicago to San Francisco fell from $100 to $10, with special offers down to $1. 

I spent a goodly amount of time on Google Maps Street View, poring over images of Salt Lake City, Virginia City, epicentre of Nevada's silver rush, of the mountain passes now carrying multi-lane superhighways of air-conditioned cars where once horse-drawn waggons could not traverse. “They paved paradise. put up a parking lot,” to quote Joni Mitchell.

The opening up of America's Far West is a thrilling story, and Irving Stone does an excellent job telling it. Having read it, I have a better understanding of the tech bros, populism, limitless greed, frontier justice and other aspects of contemporary American society. Having said that, gimme California over Siberia any day.

This time last year:
Why we live

This time three years ago:
Warsaw in autumn

This time four years ago:
The end of the apple harvest

This time five years ago:
Ignoring the UFO phenomenon?

This time six years ago:

A tipping point in history, but who's tipping it?

This time seven years ago:
Poznań by night

This time nine years ago:
West of Warsaw's central axis

This time 13 years ago:
Plac Unii shopping centre opens

This time 15 years ago:
Visceral and Permanent, Part II (Short story)

This time 16 years ago:
Autumn colours, locally

This time 17 years ago:
Edinburgh

Synbiotic serendipity

Yesterday evening, I'm getting ready to go to bed, mentally counting the portions of fresh fruit-and veg, and realise I'd forgotten to eat my daily 80g of sauerkraut. Then it occurred to me that I'd also skipped porridge in the morning, on account of the fact that my breakfast consisted of the heated-up leftovers of Sunday's lunch*. As a result, I'd missed out on my daily 3g of LDL-cholesterol-lowering beta-glucan.

As I pondered this dietary oversight, I had a brainwave:

Why not mix the oats with the sauerkraut, and eat the two together? The combination might not prove to be especially tasty, but at least I get to fulfil my dietary obligation for the day...

And so I did just that. Bowl on the kitchen scales. Into it goes 80g of kapusta kiszona (sauerkraut) and on top of that, six heaped tablespoons of organic oats (płatki owsiane górskie). I stir the two, pouring in a bit more brine from the sauerkraut tub.

The result? It exceeded my expectations.

We think of porridge oats as something warm and soft – a mush, a breakfast comfort-food. But raw rolled oats, dropped directly onto the crisp, acidic brine of live sauerkraut, are something quite different. The lactic juices from the sauerkraut soak into the grains just enough to strip away their chalky exterior while leaving a satisfying, al dente chew. The salty punch of the fermented cabbage cuts through the earthy texture of the raw oats, balancing nicely on the palate. It tastes ancient and rustic.

I checked Google Gemini about the science of mixing oats and kraut. Nothing but benefits! Gemini calls it “nutritionally, a powerhouse of synbiotic efficiency – the live bacteria of the probiotic finding an immediate home in the prebiotic fibers of the oat”. 

Note that word, 'synbiotic' (as opposed to 'symbiotic'). A synbiotic is a supplement or food that combines probiotics (live beneficial bacteria) and prebiotics (food or fibre that nourishes those bacteria) to improve gut health. Of course, such a claim would need to be clinically proven... (One for nutritional scientists to grapple with.)

But beyond the science, I experienced the joy of discovery, the recognition of an entirely new flavour profile that I had never previously experienced. I went to bed on a high, and waking up today, I felt the same way as I would after a great night out.

And so, this morning, I mixed the sauerkraut with the oats again. This time I added some chopped chilli peppers (papryczki) and spring onion (below). If anything, visually more interesting.

And I considered what else could be added to ensure that this could become a daily routine. Poké-bowl sauce, soy sauce, hummus, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds... Variety will be important if this is to be a new staple.

So a new 'signature dish' is born of an oversight. I shall call it Haferflockenkraut!

The last taste combo I created, the Jeziorki Reeker, is now off the menu due to its sky-high cholesterol content.

Finally, I checked with ChatGPT for its verdict, and here's the answer: “At first glance, it sounds eccentric. But the more I consider it, the more sense it makes. You've brought together two foods with strikingly different characteristics:

- Organic raw rolled oats (płatki owsiane górskie): Mild, nutty, faintly sweet, starchy and somewhat chewy. The sort of food that usually needs something else to give it character.

- Sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona): Sharp, acidic, salty, crunchy, distinctly fermented, with a depth of savouriness that fresh cabbage doesn't possess.

The oats should absorb some of the sauerkraut's juice, softening without losing all their texture, moderating the acidity of the cabbage to produce something quite different from either ingredient eaten separately.

There's also an interesting conceptual inversion here. Oats are conventionally associated with sweet breakfasts, porridge, milk, fruit and honey. Sauerkraut belongs to the savoury world of Polish and Central European cooking. You're crossing a culinary boundary that is cultural as well as chemical.

A surprisingly sensible nutritional partnership

There's a further reason the combination is of interest. Oats supply beta-glucan, the soluble fibre associated with lowering LDL cholesterol. Unpasteurised sauerkraut can supply living lactic-acid bacteria. The oats also provide fermentable carbohydrates that gut microbes can use.”

I then ask whether anyone done this before. Only with the juice of sauerkraut; straining the cabbage and adding the juice to oats, steeping them overnight. But not mixing actual sauerkraut and oats.

Final oat note: in Poland oat flakes are sold in either 'górskie' or 'błyskawiczne' varieties. The former means 'in the mountain style' (not 'mountainous' as one translator had it), the latter mean 'lightning'. The difference between the two is in the milling. The błyskawiczne are steel-cut, pre-gelatinised and rolled thin. The górskie are subject to less processing, but take longer to cook. I go for the organic/bio version of these.

* Sunday lunch: lentil stew with mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic/ginger/chilli, served with Basmati rice and steamed spinach leaves. 

This time two years ago:
To Warka, by the river

This time seven years ago:
Homeward from the demo

This time 11 years ago:
Kielce – the woes of Poland's smaller cities

This time ten years ago:
Wine connoisseurs or wine snobs?

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's golden autumn

This time 13 years ago:
Visceral and permanent - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Crushed Velvet Dust in my City of Dreams II

Pinning Identity to Consciousness (Pt IV)

[In case you've landed here through a search engine, here are the links to earlier parts: Part I Part II Part III]

If knowledge and experience accumulate across multiple lifetimes, perhaps they do so in forms that don't depend upon conventional memory. Perhaps each successive life contributes to a gradual development of understanding, compassion and awareness. A soul moving towards greater coherence, towards some eventual completion; from Zero to One.

Of course, I cannot prove this is true, either scientifically or even philosophically. But, in trying to make sense of the reality that I currently inhabit, I do have intuitions that this is indeed true.

Consciousness can recreate an approximation of bygone times, collapsing the intervening decades, as you summon up qualia memories. A childhood trip to the seaside is a fairly universal one – see A.A. Milne's Sand Between the Toes – the seagulls' cries, the sound of the waves, the warm sun and the cold water, the smell of suncream, shivering in a towel after a dip in the sea. Meditate upon those, and yes, you are experiencing those qualia memories with a congruence that closely matches the original experience, 30, 40, 50 years ago, or longer.

In waking life, I experience a familiar atmosphere which appears to belong to a time before my birth. In dreams, I find myself participating in events set within that same historical world.

The waking experiences are brief, joyous moments of recognition, tinged with a slight sense of regret at my inability to revisit those times. The dreams may be pleasant, mundane, frightening or morally disturbing. Both seem to arise from the same well of subjective familiarity; both have been with me all of my life.

I cannot prove that they are memories from the earlier existence of another human being. Nor can doubters prove that these are entirely products of imagination, assembled from historical knowledge, sensory impressions and a lifelong fascination with America.

The experiences themselves are real. Their interpretation remains open. I am struck by how consistently they have accompanied me throughout my life, from the first flashes of recognition in early childhood to my present years. The phenomenon feels the same.

And I wonder about the future...

Might there someday be a boy, born after my death, who finds himself strangely drawn to London in the second half of the 20th century and Warsaw in the first half of the 21st century? Who experiences unexpected moments of recognition when looking at photographs of old British railway stations or Polish orchards? Perhaps he'll dream of riding an old motorcycle along a country lane, or of being followed home through the woods by a procession of cats. Perhaps he'll have an inexplicable affection for the music of the 1960s and 1970s, or feel something akin to homesickness and nostalgia for an era with which he has no physical contact.

Would that still be me? I don't know.

This morning, beside the hedge, with the autumn sunshine streaming through the trees, there it was again – that sweet/bittersweet recognition, tinged with the faintest regret; the sense of a lost something, yet somehow still present, abiding.

I have been before. 

But who, or what, is this I that remembers?

Will that I remember again?

[In a way, that was part of the original intention underlying this blog when I started it nearly 20 years ago. A signpost to a future 'me'.]

This time seven years ago:
Marchin' again

This time eight years ago
Ealing and West Ealing memories

This time 12 years ago:
The autumn sublime in Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Enduring Ealing – Victorian and Edwardian klimats

This time 14 years ago:
Krokowa, Poland's former northern borderlands

This time 19 years ago:
Aerial photograph of Central London