Persistence of identity beyond biological life

The notion of 'persistence of identity' is key to exploring survival of consciousness after bodily death. What is it when 'I' have an experience? Crucial to persistence of identity is memory, in particular the memory of qualia.

The physical matter that makes up your brain is in constant turnover. Cells renew, the biochemistry flows on – and yet a memory from childhood can snap in with astonishing immediacy. You remember conscious experiences from childhood – being at the seaside, the feeling of warmth on wet skin, the salt tang of the sea, seagulls' cries, the sparkle of the sun on the waves. Or shopping before Christmas, snowflakes on your face, the hurrying crowds, the brightly illuminated shop windows, wet pavement at dusk. Complex, multisensory memories of being there, that snap you back decades in an instant.

These qualia memories define the essence, the youness of you, untampered by the ego. 

In your life, there have been events, some which proved to be memorable, some of which you have long forgotten. Reminiscences with former classmates highlight gaps in event memory. They remember events involving you that you have forgotten, or vice versa. 

But qualia memories linger. Event memory is highly susceptible to ego-narration. It is rarely just 'this happened'; it becomes 'this happened to me'; 'I did well', 'I was wronged', 'I was vindicated', 'I failed', 'I was admired', 'they misunderstood me'. The remembered event is often recruited into the ongoing project of self-construction; a palimpsest. 

Qualia memory feels closer to the raw material of consciousness. It does not depend on external validation and is less easily recruited into the ego’s story about itself. Qualia memory may preserve identity more deeply than autobiographical event memory – because it is less contaminated by egoic narration.

The scientist may tell me that memory is reconstructive. Fine. But the qualia flashback is not a forensic claim; it is not a witness statement. It is the resurgence of a conscious texture. Congruence, not a facsimile. When it comes, I know it from within. I instantly recognise it. This was what it was like to be there, then, as me. Me, the observer, the experiencer, not me the ego.

From the point of view of persistence of identity, qualia are a fundamental part of 'what is is like to be me'. And yet, we are told that "to attain spiritual awakening, we must lose the ego".

First-person – the ego as a construct – should be separated from consciousness as an observation platform. Let me explain in the form of a thought-experiment.

Chic stride through piazza - image generated by ChatGPT

You are walking through a crowded piazza on a sunny day. You have presence. You are tall, attractive. You are attired in cool, expensive clothes, wearing cool, expensive sunglasses; a classy gold watch on your wrist. Your credit card is limitless. People notice you; they look at you admiringly, jealously. They want to be like you. You have status. You feel proud, haughty as you carry yourself through the crowd with supreme confidence.

Now imagine that you are walking through that same piazza, but you are invisible.

No one can see you, but you see, feel, hear and smell the same scene. You are pure consciousness, pure awareness – but there's no ego. This is not not the extinction of the first-person perspective, but the stripping away of the socially reflected self. Consciousness moving across the face of the planet, aware of all around. It's still you, you have identity as observer, but now there's no ego-vehicle. In decades' time, the qualia memory of the scene around you will still flash back, not as an event that sees you playing the lead role, but as the cocktail of sensations of having been there.

The ego relies on external validation; consciousness does not. 

When it comes to delving into the mystery of reincarnation, spiritual traditions often speak loosely of 'losing the ego'. This should not be seen as the annihilation of consciousness, nor even the annihilation of individuality, but the loss of possessiveness, vanity, grievance, entitlement, status-hunger and compulsive self-reference.

When it comes to delving into the mystery of reincarnation, there are two schools of thought, two inherited frameworks that shape thinking about reincarnation. One tends towards the dissolution of individual identity after death into a larger field of consciousness (the Buddhist tradition); the other tends towards moral continuity across births, often expressed through karma (the Hindu tradition). Both contain profound insights, but neither quite satisfies me. The first can seem to dissolve the very thing whose persistence we are trying to understand, which we so acutely feel. The second can too easily be reduced to a cosmic ledger of reward and punishment, an instrument of social control.

If there is a middle way, it lies not in the persistence of the ego, but of the witness: an ego-less observer moving through space and time, inhabiting many observation platforms, gathering experience, deepening perception and slowly learning what consciousness is for. Acquiring ever-deeper wisdom across myriad lifetimes, on an upwardly spiralling path of spiritual growth.

Identity does not persist because memory preserves a perfect archive of events. Identity persists because consciousness recognises its own textures across time. Familiarity, instantly recognised; the quintessence of the youness of you.

This time last year:
Awaiting the asphalt from Chynów to Piekut

This time three years ago:
The sounds of summer

This time four years ago:
My działka - powered by the sun

This time six years ago:
Poland's town/country divide explored

This time ten years ago:

A long walk to Czachówek

This time 12 years ago:
Half a mile under central Warsaw, on foot

This time 13 years ago:
Dzienniki Kołymskie reviewed

This time 14 years ago
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time 14 years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time 17 years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time 18 years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time 19 years ago:
South Warsaw sunset

Police-dog school open day

One station north of Chynów is Sułkowice, home to the famous police-dog school (Zakład Kynologii Policyjnej Centrum Szkolenia Policji or the Police Cynology Department of the Police Training Centre.) This is Poland's national centre for training dog-handlers and service dogs. Today was the annual open day at the school, so I popped over to see.

Below: the handlers began the day by showing off their dogs' obedience to commands, verbal and non-verbal. The dogs, mainly German and Dutch shepherds and Belgian Malinois, seem focused and well-behaved; the handlers have on their belts bags of treats that are frequently given to reward correct response. 

Police dogs are trained here for general patrol work as well as searching terrain and buildings; pursuit and arrest; and tracking human scent. Specialist tracker dogs are used for sniffing out narcotics, explosives, weapons, ammunition and human remains. I have also been told that the national revenue administration trains dogs here to sniff out illegal alcohol stills. The tracker dogs, which include bloodhounds, terriers and spaniels, were not on show today. 

The school is located on a 45-hectare site that includes 21 hectares of training ground, where dogs learn to cope with various forms of obstacles and simulated conditions that they may encounter on service duty, such as smoke (below).

As well as the dogs, there was also a police-horse display, with six horses and their riders down from Warsaw for the event. The horses wore visors and nose-guards, and like the dogs, were entirely comfortable dealing with fire (below).

The dogs showed their worth on the big obstacle course that straddles the Czarna river behind the school. Here, we could watch the hounds scramble over a wooden wall (below).

After all the dogs made it over the blue planks, three more unpainted planks were added to the wall. The final one raised the wall to around two and half metres, and here the dogs finally met their match, none could make it over this height.

Below: the dog tower tested the animals for surefootedness; getting down was harder than getting up, but this obstacle proved to be no problem for these dogs. In the distance, the forest of Wola Pieczyska.

Below: the final display involved police dogs involved in catching a 'criminal' in well-padded clothing. Blank ammunition would not deter the charging hounds; once caught, the dogs would not let go of their prey; the actor playing the thief had to have the padded jacket removed from him, the dog still attached to it! Police dogs are not to be messed with.

The school stresses suitability, health and working ability as paramount considerations when taking on new dogs. They are typically bought at one to two years old, so assessors can test an already visible temperament and body, rather than gamble on a puppy. Dogs must pass obedience and health tests before being trained further. They are function-first dogs. Sułkowice is not producing show dogs; animals are selected that can work around noise, crowds, vehicles, slippery floors, strange buildings, civil-defence exercises, scent trails and a handler under stress. Polish police dogs are bred for utility rather than appearance.

Many of my neighbours in Jakubowizna are retired police-dog trainers, and have set up canine-adjacent businesses; there are dog hotels, dog breeders, service-dog equipment makers, and civilian dog trainers (at weekends, groups of dog owners together with their charges and a trainer, make their way up and down my lane, the dogs learning to respond to commands).

Sułkowice is also famous as the place where Poland's most famous dogs on film were trained.

This time last year:|
Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (IV)

This time two years ago:
Poland's sleeper-train services – summer timetable

This time three years ago:
Conscience, consciousness and sensitivity

This time four years ago:
Little annoyances and optimising one's life

This time five years ago:
The 13th thirteenth

This time six years ago:

Ghastly June day in London

This time seven years ago:
Perfect weather week in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Further progress is unimaginable

This time nine years ago:
Baletowa reopens as rail works move on

This time ten years ago:
Polish doctors in UK offer new healthcare model

This time 15 years ago:

The closure of the Góra Kalwaria-Pilawa railway link

This time 17 years ago:
My blazing bus pic gets on front page of Gazeta Stołeczna

This time 18 years ago:
Storm clouds rising

Epigramology by Jacek Koba

"Dogs fetch. Cats bring. Therein lies the difference." An example of Jacek Koba's witty sayings, a few of which have ended up on this blog – Jacek being a regular commentator here for over 15 years. Now he has published a book, Epigramology – Modern Epigrams and Aphorisms, which is an absolute delight. The contents: over 600 epigrams covering modern life, from politics, money, religion, work, education, relationships, travel and... cats and dogs.

Epigrams and aphorisms are an antidote to the expendable content scrolled up by modern media. They require pauses, consideration and return. "The reader is encouraged to dip in and out at random," it says in the preface. Indeed – this book is perfectly suited for confined spaces; it has been designed to be dipped in and out of, during those brief private moments in which the reader can extract meaningful insight. Epigramology should be read in short bursts. Read a few, close the book, pause to think – and then return.

The very title Epigramology sounds half-classical discipline, half-laboratory mishap: the scientific study of the sentence that goes off in your hand. This is the territory of the epigram. A miniature essay that won't waste the reader's afternoon. The book's original subheading was to be "Quintessence, Luminescence and Incandescence", which neatly categorised the epigrams around the three – definitions, insights, and rage.

The epigram is an unforgiving literary form. A weak poem can hide behind atmosphere; a padded essay can take refuge in nuance. But an epigram is out on its own. It must enter, strike, take a bow, and then vanish. If it lingers, it becomes advice. If it explains itself, it becomes a LinkedIn post. If it moralises, it becomes a bumper sticker. Epigramology is a project to revive a classic form that demands intelligence, compression and a pinch of elegant cruelty. It diagnoses our troubled civilisation one sentence at a time.

Personal bugbears I must say intrude somewhat – Epigramology has it in for the urban cyclist in the same way that my blog has it in for the SUV buyer/driver. And this causes me to reflect. Both targets are sublimations of the real villain – Homo inconsideratus incogitans – the inconsiderate unthinking. Czlowiek, który się nie zastanawia (the person who contemplates not).

The book was self-published via Amazon, and I must say that self-publication has now been made vastly easier and cheaper than ever before. AI's role in the publishing process is making big changes. Authors can now check their content for originality – and for epigrams, originality is crucial ("I must have read this somewhere before but forgotten it"). For publishers, AI is a vital tool for protecting themselves against accusations of profiting from plagiarism. Large language models are ideally suited for sifting through everything that's ever been written to ensure that what had genuinely come from the human mind is fresh.

Raise a wry chuckle with your after-dinner speeches by dropping some Koba epigrams into them.

My favourite Jacek Koba quote, one that I have successfully deployed in my life, is "Happiness is an expectation-to-reality ratio of 1:1".

Epigramology is available from Amazon.com (link here).

This time two years ago:
Qualia Compilation 8: Eye operation

This time three years ago:
A date for the history books

This time five years ago:
WinterCity/SummerCountry

This time six years ago:
Homage to Americana

This time seven years ago:
This land is my land

This time 11 years ago:

The day, seized.

This time 14 years ago:
Classic British cars for British week

This time 15 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 17 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 18 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

Politics: An objective assessment of your subjective reality

WRITTEN ON THIS, THE 37TH ANNIVERSARY OF POLAND'S TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY

So many people today get wound up by things that do not remotely affect their day-to-day lives. Migration is a good example. People living in picturesque English villages that have seen an influx of three foreign workers say they feel “swamped”. Young people with no direct connection to the Middle East drifting into anti-Semitism because of Gaza. The issues may be real enough, but the emotional weight attached to it is often wildly disproportionate to its actual impact on the individual’s actual reality.

This is not to say that migration, war, terrorism or national identity are trivial matters. Of course they're are not! But proportion matters. Russia is an existential threat to Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles in a way that Israel is not an existential threat to citizens of South London. Islamic terror is an existential threat across parts of Africa and the Middle East in a way that it is not to people living in rural Poland. 

The closer a threat is, the more materially it constrains daily life, the more rational it is for politics to be organised around it. If you like in Kyiv right now, the prospect of being killed by missiles or drones sent at you by a bloodthirsty madman is very, very real.

National politics should, at root, be about two things: the economy and security, internal and external. Citizens have a right to feel safe. They also have a right to expect that their hard work, thrift and enterprise should be rewarded by growing prosperity. When governments fail on these fundamentals, anger is justified. When anger is transferred instead onto distant symbolic causes over which neither the citizen nor, often, their government has much practical control, politics becomes emotionally satisfying but civically useless.

Sitting here in rural Poland, I see a country on the rise. That rise is not accidental. Macroeconomics are not just a matter of government policy; they're also the aggregate result of habits, incentives and behaviours of millions of people, earning and spending money. If people are entrepreneurial, hard-working and forward-looking, the economy moves in one direction. If too many people become comfortable sitting back on generous welfare benefits, it moves in another.

There is a simple test. If there is something you can do about a situation you dislike, do it. If there is nothing you can do, then moaning is pointless. And 'doing something' does not mean shitposting on social media. It means acting in the real world.

Don’t like massive increases in traffic, density and suburban overdevelopment? Move out to the countryside. That's what I did. Don’t like the direction of your country? Build something, employ someone, stand for office, volunteer, organise, write, teach, invest, persuade. Face to face, not online. [Ditching Twitter/X in November 2024 led to an instant improvement in my mental wellbeing.] Politics should not be a theatre in which people pin their frustration onto remote causes. It should be the practical art of improving the conditions of life where one actually stands. Delivering solutions rather than winning arguments.

We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum; the UK economy is some 3.5% to 4% smaller than it would have been according to official reckoning. That's a huge difference to the budgets of households on the edge. Diddly-squat to the billionaires who convinced the precariat to vote Leave.

This time last year:
Farewell, beloved grapefruit

This time two years ago:
Sixty-Six and Two-Thirds

This three years ago:
Marching for Openness and Normality
[We have it. Let's not get complacent.]

This time six years ago:
40th anniversary of the Osieck railway accident

This time six years ago:
Moonrise, Nowa Wola

This time seven years ago:

Awaiting the Summer Sublime

This time ten years ago:
4 June - a date remembered for...?

This time 11 years ago:
Corpus Christi, rural Mazovia

This time 12 years ago:
25th anniversary of Poland's transition

This time 13 years ago:
Poland's infrastructure progress

This time 15 years ago:
Wetlands in late-spring

This time 16 years ago:
Jeziorki's flood of floods: Puławska and Pozytywki

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Sarabandy and Karczunkowska

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Trombity and Kórnicka

This time 17 years ago:
Another time, another place

Chynów gets new eaterie!

At long last. After the sad closure of J&B Snacks, a Covid victim, in the summer of 2022, Chynów became a gastronomic desert for over two years. Nowhere to sit down and eat. Then, in November 2024, Luxor Kebab opened on ulica Parkowa, followed by Amigo Kebab (which doesn't offer eat-in dining) on ul. Wolska. Today saw the opening day of Loft Chynów, which I of course had to visit. I must also mention Zajazd u Latoszków round the corner in Nowe Grobice, by the TransOil petrol station, which opened late last year, and offers excellent value lunch menus during the week for 30 złotys (£6.11) for soup and main course.

Loft Chynów (below) occupies the last vacant space of the new retail development next to the Biały Dom ('white house') shopping centre, which was completed last year. 

The menu at opening is a cautious toe-dip into the tastes of local diners; though the logo outside says 'burgers', they are not (as yet) available. At present it's pizza and pasta, with one size of pizza, 40 centimetres (16 inches) – which is ample for three. Price-wise, excellent value at between 39 złotys (£7.94) for a basic Margherita and 56 złotys (£11.40) for the seafood version. A giant pizza being too much for one, I chose the most sophisticated option on the menu, the Tagliatelle sepia, loaded with prawns, and cherry tomatoes in a delicious garlic butter sauce. This was 45 złotys (£9.16), and it was truly delicious – I can recommend. (The bowl is looking a bit empty because I was halfway through it before I realised that my desire to tuck in had overcome the presence of mind to snap the meal as it arrived.)

Wine is available by the bottle only meant that a beer was in order, and as it was a hot and sunny afternoon, a half-litre of Królewskie, at 12 złotys (£2.40, yes London, you read that right), brewed eight miles away in Warka, was a good decision. 

More details and full menu on Loft Chynów's Facebook page, which reveals that there's also a lunch menu from 11:00 to 16:00, soup and main course for 29zł (£5.91).

I sincerely wish the very best of commercial success to the owners of Loft Chynów; may the menu soon expand (to include at least burgers and wine by the glass), and may the clientele grow in number.

From my motorbike trips around Poland, I can say that nothing defines a successful small town than its number of eateries. Sad places with nowhere to eat are just ride-throughs. No life, no vibrancy; people eating at home rather than partaking of social life and creating a sense of community. 

The opening of Loft Chynów reflects the rapid development of the village and surrounding district; a virtuous circle of investment public and private making Chynów a better and better place to live.

This time last year:

This time five years ago:
US Government's first tentative steps towards UFO disclosure
[It's one data drop a fortnight right now!]

This time 15 years ago:
Szmulowizna

This time 16 years ago:
Jeziorki's Storm of Storms

This time 18 years ago:
How to tell you're flying over Poland

This time 19 years ago:
Poppy fields

Post-coffee bliss

I wake up before six, having gone to bed around half past nine. The sun's already been up for an hour an half by now! I check the kittens – all five and mum are doin' fine. As soon as the shutters are up, the cats, who have spent the night outside, besiege the house. Before they're let in, I fill seven bowls with a tin and half of cat food. Céleste takes priority – she's feeding for six; her kittens are putting on ten grams of body-mass a day. Once she's tucking in, I open the front door and in they all charge. Like a shot they're all plugged in, tails wagging. Scrapper, Czester, Wenus, Hipek – and Arcturus, who brings individual chunks of food up to his mouth with his paw rather than simply sticking his face into the bowl. No sign of Pacyfik yet.

With the cats engaged, it's time for coffee. Out with the tin. I fill the grinder to the top with 40g of beans (currently, a mix of Colombian and Brazilian, 100% Arabica*, light-to-medium roast, Lidl's Bellarom brand). The task is to convert about half of the beans in the grinder into 20g of ground coffee – enough for my one cup. [Below: the equipment, the beans, the process. I cook on bottled gas; filthy stuff. Had I known in 2018 that I'd be installing solar panels in 2022, I'd have bought an induction hob, not a gas cooker.]

As I turn the handle, ceramic gears grind the beans into medium-fine grains with the consistency of table salt. I count the turns. The counting can be done subconsciously, but it must be accurate. The 120 turns are a precise value. They equates to 20g of ground coffee in the grinder's lower chamber. 

Meanwhile, the kettle has boiled. Some water goes into my coffee cup to heat it up. Then I pour 150g of freshly boiled water into the tank of my Bialetti moka pot**, right up to the safety valve (no higher!). I carefully transfer the freshly ground coffee into the basket, levelling it off gently, though not tamping into down. Steam must be allowed to flow between the grains to extract as much of the coffee flavour as possible

The top gets screwed on to the base; I keep a small black hand-towel to insulate the tankful of boiled water as I turn it tight. Now onto the gas. The lid – crucially – is up, so I can watch the expressed fluid, darkest brown, start to rise up into the upper chamber. And aroma begins to fill the air... Once the liquid starts to pour freely, I raise the pot above the flame, surfing the heat. I'm after a steady flow of coffee – I want to avoid the angry sputtering of superheated steam; this scorches the coffee and gives the beverage a burnt taste, and generates the smell of burnt coffee. The instant that the steady flow of liquid starts to turn into hissing bubbles – that's it! Coffee's ready! 

The hot water has been thrown out of the cup, now hot enough to keep the coffee warm for several minutes longer than a cold one. Carefully, I pour the precious coffee into the hot cup. About 110g of beverage comes out. [There's 10g of water left in the tank, the solid puck in the basket now weighs 40g, so double the weight of the dry ground coffee that went in; the remaining water has turned to steam. The coffee grounds go into the compost.]

Now, to drink. This is a solemn ritual. The internet radio is on; ideal coffee background-listening at this time of the morning happens to be the BBC Shipping Forecast, that familiar litany of sea-areas, compass points and numbers. "Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger"..."Veering south west, four to six, occasionally moderate... Background volume. Individual words don't intrude on my stream of consciousness, rather they wash across it; the reassuring tone, those familiar terms – "North Foreland to Selsey Bill, rain at first, thundery later, good occasionally poor"– offer me timeless comfort.

I am a coffee conservative. Not for me capsules, being locked into one system with a finite choice. Nor instant coffee – an abomination, a last resort. Coffee is not something to be corporately commoditised. The act of grinding coffee beans fresh each morning takes time and effort; extracting a good brew from the Bialetti requires care and focus, but the result is deeply satisfying, as long as complacency isn't allowed to creep in. Zen in the Art of Coffee-making. Beans, grinder, pot, stove, cup must become One.

The coffee is sipped, delighted in. It brings life and warmth and drives the morning, sweeping the cobwebs from the mind. The aftertaste lingers around my tastebuds. The whole house smells of coffee. All is good. The day is set fair.

* I noticed about a year ago that many coffee roasters stopped selling their beans as '100% certified Arabica' and replaced that wording with '100% certified coffee', having introduced unspecified amounts of Robusta into a blended product. I roundly reject such low deceit! I will only buy 100% Arabica. I don't care about brand, I care about the bean!

** My moka pot is advertised as being 'three cups'. That's, like, 40g a cup, dude? Ignore the one- and two-cup Bialettis, they make no sense.

This time last year:
Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (III)

This time five years ago:
Consciousness, memory and familiarity

This time seven years ago:
Classic Volgas, London and Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Memory and Me

This time nine years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time 11 years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 15 years ago:
Rail chaos hits Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Hurting and healing: a certain symmetry

This time 18 years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born

This time 19 years ago:
A wet start to June

New batch of kittens at one week old

It's so wonderful; a repeat of last year's event. Again, the perfect mother, five healthy and happy little ones, growing nicely, gaining weight, although the smallest one, at 131g this morning, is still below the optimal range for a week-old kitten which is 150g-250g. The rest comfortably fit within the parameters, the biggest one weighing 171g. Céleste, like her mother at this stage, is eating like a horse, trotting out into the kitchen at regular intervals to remind me that she's feeding for six. Extra portions have been well and truly earned!

There is no room for complacency; for every miracle one must be truly grateful. Other than a bit of hissing from grandmother Wenus and uncle Pacio, the mature cats have accepted the situation as something that happens. Pacifyk requires a little extra attention to let him know he's not been forgotten, Wenus, meanwhile, has become a rare visitor to the house, popping by twice a day for a feed, and going back out straight away. (What is the English for 'obrażona'?)

Below: the entire quintet chugging away happily, making contented grunts and squeals as they do so. Grey is the colour. I miss an orange one here. Céleste is shedding fur in tufts; her long hair impedes the young ones' access to her nipples and is unnecessary for warmth as the temperature in the house is in the mid-20°Cs. I wonder how many kittens have inherited her long-hair gene.

No names for the kittens yet (though the fifth one – the lightest of the brood, the dark-grey tabby with long tail – is likely to be Quinto/Kwinto) At first sight it looks like they are all male. I hope so – a female will either have to be given away or sterilised, as I feel I am approaching the absolute limit of the number of cats I can optimally look after. 

Meanwhile, life for the other cats goes on; below: in the forest next door with Scrapper, Czester, and in the undergrowth, Hipek. They all followed me there, and followed me home for brunch.

This time six years ago:
I'm from the south – the south of Warsaw

This time seven years ago:

Summer day at school, 50 years ago...

[Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]

This time nine years ago:
Warsaw wealthier than most of UK shock!

This time 11 years ago:
Opening of the railway line to Warsaw's Okęcie airport

The Arms Salesman – a short story

{{ The first four paragraphs came to me as I looked down on the beige marble windowsill in my bedroom. The following scene flashes into my mind. What follows beyond, I composed. }}

James was asked to take a seat and wait. He looked across the beige marble floor. "Impressive," he thought to himself. "Real money here." In front of him, a wall panelled up to the ceiling with wood veneer stretched up some thirty feet, a huge clock behind the reception desk, consisting of a circle of Roman numerals in white, with white hands. Quarter to four. On either side of the clock – a white map, the same diameter as the clock, of the Western Hemisphere to the left and the Eastern Hemisphere to the right. The remaining three sides of the vast reception space were glass, wall to ceiling. James noticed a distinct lack of company logo on the wall.

Hush. One or two people crossing the enormous reception area. Sunlight sweeping in from the west.

He sat down in a low cream-leather sofa, by which was a glass table with reading matter: the New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and that same corporate brochure the recruitment people had sent him.

[AI image generated by ChatGPT, using above text as prompt]

An officer in an Air Force uniform, holding a clipboard came out to greet him, the sound of his metal-tipped heels clicking on the floor as he crossed the empty reception area. "Mr. Martin? Good to see you. Come on through." James stood up, shook the outstretched hand and followed the officer. Elevator up to the eighth floor, along a corridor and into an airy office, large window offering a beautiful view of Cincinnati in the late afternoon.

The officer joined three men in suits and a guy in Navy uniform behind a long desk; James sat down in a chair across from them as they shuffled papers.

The Navy officer welcomed James and began to read. "Drafted USMC, Pacific campaign 1944-45, Assistant Aircraft Mechanic rising to Master Technical Sergeant... Honorable discharge October '45, volunteered June '50 for service with USAF, Flight Engineer school, flying WB-29s and SB-29s over the Sea of Japan, and then RB-36s... Won't ask you where you flying those... Impressive resumé, Mr. Martin. You can keep planes flying... but, uh, can you... sell?" 

"I sure can sell if I believe in the product, sir. If I can trust my life to it. And that's why I'm sittin' here, and not at the offices of your competition." James gave a practiced wry smile.

"The job involves travel, Mr Martin. Europe – NATO member countries. England, West Germany, Spain, Portugal. And some Latin American customers – Argentina, Chile. Another team handles the Far East. You'll meet people from ministries of defense, air ministries, air forces; all of them are sufficiently proficient in English. They are conversant with the technical specs of our products and the products of our competitors – American and foreign. The foreign competitors will be typically be from Britain. The domestic ones, you know 'em well. 

A civilian guy introduced himself. "It's all about handling objections. It's about future promise. Upgrades in the pipeline. Service levels. Maintenance and overhaul schedules. And budgets. Can you tell a good story, Mr. Martin? That's what we're lookin' for... A sharp guy – smart guy  Got the patter, as well as the technical ability to diagnose any malfunction."

"And budgets" repeated one of the suits.

"Brought up on a farm, huh?"

"That's right. That's where I learnt to keep engines running."

"Martin - I'm rootin' for you here," said the Air Force guy. "Prove to us that you can sell."

James leaned forward. "See, if they really wanna – if they really have to buy... then I don't really need to sell them anything. They've already bought our product before I've even walked into the meeting. These boys – they're all damned scared of communism, of communists, of Russia. We have proven equipment that's way ahead of what the Soviets have. So I'm here to say I know this kit, I know it inside out. I've flown with it. I'll tell them that I'm physically here, with them, in their office, because I trusted my life with this kit time and time again, at 35,000 feet and it did not let me down. And I know full well that what's coming next in the product pipeline will be... far enhanced, ahead of what I was using on active service just two years ago."

The panel all nodded.

"If we take you on, you'll need some, shall we say, polish. Don't mean to sound disparagin', but a farm boy sat next to a foreign defense ministry official at a formal dinner at some tony restaurant or in our embassy has to sound right. Small talk, what have you."

"I can learn!" laughed James. "Easier than fixin' carburettors!" 

Another suit asked: "You like dames?"

"Sure, who don't?"

 "Just know when to behave yourself, that's all."

"Uh huh."

"You never know who that dame at the hotel cocktail bar you might strike up a conversation with really is."

The interview changed tack.

"Mr Martin – you know the internal combustion engine real well. You know turbosuperchargers, you know fuel-injection systems. You have completed a transition course to jet engines, but we still sell piston engines to military customers around the world. The world's air forces are switching to changing to jets and turboprops. How do you see the future of turbosuperchargers?"

"Well, they ain't nothin' new, but there are still thousands of piston-engined aircraft still in frontline service and will be for the foreseeable future. Until jets can fly for ten hours at a stretch on maritime patrols..."

That reply had the panel nodding again.  A few more formalities, and then "Mr Martin, would you mind waiting outside a few minutes while we reach a decision?"  He thanked them and went out into the corridor and lit up a cigarette. 

Five minutes passed; the door opened and the Air Force officer stepped out. In his hand, what looked like an airline ticket. "Congratulations, Mr Martin – you have the job. We want you to start straight away. Here's a travel voucher to New York City.

[Continues into this short story, written 18 months ago.]

This time last year:
Cleaning it up

This time two years ago:
Ciechanów

This time seven years ago:
It's the 31st of May and where's the viaduct?

This time nine years ago:
My mother's little suitcase – on show at the national army museum
(from June 2025-September 2026 it's showing at Kraków's Schindler's Factory museum)

This time ten years ago:
Stormy end to May

This time 11 years ago:
Where's it better to live: London or Warsaw?

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki, magic hour, late-May

This time 14 years ago:
Świdnica, one of Poland's lesser-known pearls

This time 17 years ago:
Spirit of place