What a glorious stretch of bright autumnal weather! From Friday through to Monday, the sky almost entirely cloudless, the sun beating down, 19C high - and glorious orange/red leaves on trees as they prepare to fall.
Time to walk, and walk and walk; make the most of the shortening day. Leave Jeziorki, take the train to Chynów, walk to the działka, afternoon stroll, morning stroll, and another afternoon stroll. Left: Your Own Marching Pace. Provisions for the long weekend. Below: my train from Jeziorki to Chynów, to my surprise, is a brand-new Newag Impuls, which I hope will start to replace the increasingly unreliable EN57s on the Radom line.
Below: one of the oldest ones, EN57-935, three front windows and ribbed sides, broke down on Wednesday evening at W-wa Dawidy station, causing delays of up to two hours on the Warsaw-Radom line. This particular unit dates back to 1973, when Edward Gierek was first secretary of the Polish United Workers Party. It belongs in a railway heritage centre, not on a busy commuter line.
On my walk on Wednesday evening, I'd crossed under the tracks between Jeziorki and Dawidy, and could see its lights in the distance. The level crossing barriers were down, but neither train nor traffic moved. Finally, after some 12 minutes, the train crew admitted to the crossing keeper than the train was dead and the barriers could be lifted, releasing a tidal wave of frustrated traffic. Shortly after I took this photo, the conductor informed passengers to alight from this train and cross over to the other platform. The following train was switched to the 'up' line, causing problems for trains heading to Warsaw. The knock-on effects of this breakdown lasted until after half-past eleven at night, according to email alert service Utrudnienia w ruchu pociągów na linii Warszawa – Skarżysko-Kamienna to which I subscribe.
Good to see, then, this afternoon, approaching Chynów station below, that the Impuls train I travelled on yesterday was not a one-off but seems to be a regular fixture. This is the first time I'm seeing Impulses south of Piaseczno. May there be more of them, and fewer breakdown-prone EN57s.
A perennial topic on this blog, covered many a time in the past; I shall cover it again now.
At 3:00am tonight, the clocks go back and it will be 2:00am all over again. All over Poland, night-train services will stop where they are at 3am for one hour, reaching their appointed destinations at the same time in the morning as every other day of the year (and not depositing their passengers there an hour early).
For the rest of us, the time change means an extra hour's lie-in tomorrow morning, but at the cost of one hour of evening daylight every day for the next five months. By 8 December, the sun will set at 15:23 in Warsaw and will do so until 19 December, when it sets at 15:24. Below: today, Chynów, 17:11. By tomorrow, 16:09. One hour and two minutes less afternoon daylight than today.
And then the daily loss of around two minutes a day every day until that earliest sunset on 8 December.
Other than that extra hour in bed for all, the time change benefits the early riser, who gains an hour's daylight first thing in the morning. Now that is not me. I need that hour in the evening. The annual pain that comes from the Hammer of Darkness around mid-November, once I've adjusted to the time change but before the jollity of Xmas comes into play, gets to me. Seasonal Affective Disorder.
But surely, time is relative? Determined by convention? Surely I can choose to go to bed today before 22:30 and wake up around 06:30 tomorrow morning, having had my eight hours' sleep, and then go to bed tomorrow night at 21:30, sleeping until 05:30 on Monday and then keep on doing so until Sunday 27th March 2022?
Could do. But then I'd suddenly become out of sync with society. I'd have to work 8am-4pm while my colleagues kept the nine-to-five; I'd leave social gatherings an hour before everyone else so as to get my sleep timed right. So no, it's not practically possible. I will certainly do so tonight and try keep at it for as long a possible, but with Xmas approaching, it's unlikely that I can keep this up until the clocks go forward next spring.
The EU has suspended work on abandoning the seasonal time change until 2026 because of the pandemic. It is clear from opinion polls that the time change is not popular (78% of Poles want it scrapped), and that the extra evening daylight hour - which means keeping summer time the year round - is the preferred option (73% of Poles). As well as arguments for human health, there's also the energy saving from having that daylight hour in the evening rather than in the morning.
However, it's not clear that this will happen.
The notion of 'natural time' (12 o'clock noon being when the sun is in the zenith, equidistant between sunrise and sunset), is a strong argument for keeping winter time all year round. It is astronomically, mathematically pure. It is symmetrical.
Yet it is suboptimal from the point of view of energy use and also from how people spend their lives in post-agricultural society. I would argue very strongly against those who counsel for keeping winter time and not switching to summer time.
From the health point of view, I keep a daily record of my blood pressure, and I can see a clear correlation between going to bed late and high blood pressure the following morning. If I go to bed at or before 22:30, my blood pressure tends to be at or below 120/80. If I go to bed around midnight, it can be as high as 135/90 the next morning. Late nights also mean a weaker immune system. All those viruses coursing around the blood system get to seize their moment. The body's circadian rhythm (body clock) doesn't cope well with a sudden one-hour shift in bedtime.
I shall therefore endeavour to go to sleep at the time I've been used to for the past seven months, and not take advantage of the extra hour - I'll go to bed tonight at 22:30 (summer time) and wake up at 5:30 (winter time) tomorrow morning. And see if it turns me from an owl into a lark.
Two years ago today, my father died, at the age of 96. I have dreamed of him more often than anybody else; keeping a dream diary since 1 January, I can see the frequency with which he appears. One dream in particular, and one event gives me something to ponder.
On 14 May this year, I dreamt of a bazaar in Ursynów; it's just about to start raining, the clouds are very dark and threatening; people in their summer clothes are hurrying home. The bazaar - a collection of stalls and booths - is surrounded on two sides by blocks of flats. A young man is pushing a pushchair, in which sits an infant boy. The boy's father looks after him, because the mother has a high-powered job in a banking corporation. That boy, I dreamt, was the reincarnation of my father.
On 6 October this year, I was in Ursynów, and passing the bazaar in Kabaty, I noticed a young man pushing a boy, between a year-and-half and two years old, in a pushchair. [I mentioned this here.] Is this my father reincarnated? I know that he'd have wanted to be; to see what happens next in the story of mankind, to grow in understanding, to live in his beloved Warsaw once again...
It is comforting, reassuring, to think that traces of my father's consciousness, his deepest memories of pre-war Poland and post-war England, will continue to exist, albeit in an intangible form.
Following his death, I was in Ealing often sorting out matters (would you believe the transfer of the title deeds of his house have still not been sorted out; the Land Registry estimates this will be completed in January next year, and there I was moaning about the six months it took for the court in Grójec to transfer the deeds of my działka after I bought it...). My last trip to Ealing was in March 2020; I returned to Warsaw and lockdown; since then I haven't been to the UK, and frankly, until the pandemic is well-and-truly over, I won't be going. Too many friends and colleagues have been caught out by expensive tests, quarantine hotels and other costly indignities.
In the last two years of his life, I'd visit my father every month, typically staying a week in Ealing. The cost of these flights in CO2 emissions were about the same as if I owned a large SUV and drove it 20,000km each year. I no longer need to travel to London, and shall be seeking greener alternatives. A kilometre of train travel emits eight times less CO2 than does air travel, so with the reopening of a Warsaw-Brussels rail connection, I shall be exploring that alternative.
Jeziorki is, in that well-worn cliche of travel programmes, a suburb of contrasts. On the one hand, where modernity touches it, it looks and functions well. But there are also oddities, incongruities, places out of sync with today's increasingly regulated world.
One such street is ulica Sporna (literally 'Disputed Street'; 'Arguable', 'Contentious'). Quite what is disputed is buried in local history, but a quick look at a map gives some clues. From end to end, ul. Sporna measures three kilometres, with one end on ul. Puławska and the other in Dawidy Zwykłe (lit. 'the Ordinary Davids'), on Warsaw's border. One name, one street, you may think. Actually it is one street, one access road and two footpaths, separated from each other by a factory, a cemetery, a railway line and (coming soon!) a six-lane expressway.
Ulica Sporna begins at the eastern end by the Mitsubishi/Kia/Subaru dealership opposite McDonald's on ul. Puławska. It starts off as a normal suburban road, mixed-use residential and services, a pavement on one side, with a row of bollards further protecting pedestrians (and preventing parking). Four hundred metres to the west, ul. Sporna hits ul. Farbiarska, and there, you might think, it ends. The first bit of it, anyway.
Old maps of Warsaw clearly show one, single, continuous road connecting both ends. Today, it is cut into pieces, and it is impossible to drive or even walk it from one end to the other. Firstly, there is the Solaris Laser factory - a manufacturer of laser coding equipment. Sporna used to run through it. Now it is diverted to the south of the plant, a short access road that comes to a dead end at a brick wall beyond a few more industrial buildings. Beyond the wall, there's a path that follows the southwestern edge of the cemetery fence; there are two gates into the cemetery; one is usually closed, the other is always open, and from it emerges Szlak Turystyczny (tourist trail) MZ-5143-c, (from PKP Dawidy to the botanical gardens in Powsin). However, only 135 metres of Sporna forms part of MZ-5143-c, before it turns left onto ul. Jeziorki.
Below: White-red-white, like the Belarusian flag, the colour coding for MZ-5143-c is visible on the cemetery gate and on this signpost on ul. Jeziorki. The other tourist trail going through Jeziorki, MZ-5142-z, is coded white-green-white.
Ulica Sporna continues over ul. Jeziorki, continuing along asphalt for a while, past the sign marking the beginning of Warsaw's second taxi zone. On to a site advertising cars from Switzerland, Jeziorki's answer to Swiss Tony, who currently has but two SUVs on his forecourt. Here the road ends, but Sporna continues westward as a grassy track.
This runs across cultivated fields, is often ploughed up to the extent that you can't see it, and local residents walking dogs, jogging or Nordic walking have great difficulty crossing. Below: is this Sporna? No - Sporna is in the next field to the left. Farmers evidently don't like walkers on their land. The area is also blighted by fly-tippers dumping household rubbish and building waste. Bring back the stocks, I say!
Below: Is this Sporna? Yes it is - looking east towards ul. Jeziorki. This stretch is right under the flight path to Warsaw Okęcie airport's Runway 33.
And then Sporna merges with ul. Hołubcowa, another of Jeziorki's unasphalted roads. This section of Hołubcowa, between ul. Sztajerki and ul. Baletowa (by W-wa Dawidy station) is 1km long and impassable when muddy. I regularly see vehicles bogged down axle deep around here. Below: this Tatra 6x6 digger will get through come what may; conditions at the moment are good, if dusty.
Sporna reaches the Warsaw-Radom railway line; below; there used to be an ungated level crossing here - it was removed many years ago, but shows up in old maps.
Below: this one, from 1989, shows ul. Sporna and ul. Kórnicka both crossing the line; maps from the 1960s also showed ul. Dawidowska doing the same. From the five crossings that originally existed, just two remain today; the level crossing on ul. Baletowa, and the viaduct over the line along ul. Karczunkowska.
Today, not only does the railway bisect ul. Sporna, but also the new S7 extension, which, when opened, will be uncrossable on foot.
Below: the S7 extension taking shape, the new section to the left, the existing rump-end of the S79 to the right. In the distance, you can see some football goalposts - to the right of those, ul. Sporna, no more than a footpath, passes through the treeline.
The final, westernmost, stretch of ul. Sporna is 560m long, ending at the junction of ul. Śliska (lit. 'slippery street'). Less than a two-minute walk from the bus-loop terminus of the 209 bus, which used to terminate in Jeziorki, but now ends its route in Dawidy Zwykłe.
The Drake equation postulates the number of communicative civilisations in our galaxy, technologically advanced enough to reach out to other star systems.
But what of civilisations who are intelligent and wise, who have overcome their innate tendencies for anger and aggression, but have little by way of technology? "On my planet, there are no wars, no hatred; we live in harmony with one another and with our environment. But then we've not even developed a simple wheeled cart. Our evolution has been spiritual."
The development of technology on our planet required the coming together of a number of innovations; one was a counting system that allowed for multiplication and division (try dividing MCMLXXI by CLVII. And how does one express fractions of whole numbers in Roman numerals?).
As important was a motive. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but making money is the father.
The railway (the bicentenary of which is drawing close) was the fusion of two already-existing technologies; the steam engine, which had been in use to pump water out of mines for about a century, and the iron rail, which had been around for half a century, [There is a clear correlation, then, between the invention of the internet, which was the coming together of the telephone network and the computer, both of which had existed for a similar time.]
Driving progress in the railway industry was the profit motive. Getting coal out of the ground was one thing, getting it to market another - but more profitable was getting people to markets. From the first inter-city railway to the first international airline took humanity less than 100 years of innovation, innovation that resulted from war as well as from market adaptation. It is likely that tourist flights in space orbit will be commonplace by the time we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway on 15 September 2030.
But imagine had humanity not taken that direction. Imagine a life without modern technology, modern medicine - all the practicalities and comforts of human existence - yet a society driven by kindness, rather than by greed. A society in which the dog-eat-dog hardscrabble of mammalian hierarchy and its attendant violence had evolved away, but in which technology had failed to take root.
Sea creatures such as whales and dolphins, squid and octopus, display high levels of intelligence, the cephalopods even being adept at making and using simple tools. They are also sociable. Yet life underwater - which began some 100 million years before it did on dry land - is not suitable to the construction of technologies. Not least because of the impossibility of fire. Not even in a hundred million years would dolphins or squid ever develop aircraft or submarines. But evolve they will, at some stage, perhaps, as I have posited here before, in the area of consciousness.
Our imaginations are constrained by our understanding of physics, in particular by our inability to grasp intuitively the implications of quantum mechanics, despite the underlying theory being proven around 95 years ago. We may not be able to get our heads around quantum mechanics - there are several competing interpretations - but it works. Without quantum mechanics there would be no modern electronics, no computers or mobile phones. And remember, the foundations of quantum mechanics were defined less than a century after the first inter-city steam railway opened.
Technology, therefore, is advancing at an exponential speed. Those of us who used the Internet a quarter of a century ago remember how slow and unreliable it was, and yet it existed - I had my first modem and laptop hooked up to the 'net in early 1993. Can you remember the whistle and crackle of the modem as it attempted to connect to a server over a telephone line?
Extrapolate the rate of the past two centuries' technological advance and take it forward another two centuries to 2221. Assuming humanity hasn't destroyed itself or its planet, assuming no cataclysms such as a mega volcano or asteroid strike or a really deadly pandemic.
I would contend that the development of understanding of human consciousness, on the basis of quantum effects within the brain, would open up new areas of technology such as telepathy and psychokinesis. We can expect huge advances in personalised medicine, driven by an understanding of genetics, and attendant advances in mental health, based on meditation becoming a mainstream therapy.
We must strive to live our lives in comfort, removing and reducing all elements that cause discomfort. [Comfort, though not luxury! There's no such noun as 'disluxury' nor adjective 'unluxurious'!] Inventions that ease discomfort will continue to prevail; however it will be the inner discomfort that will take our attention. Materialism has run its course - we need things, of course, but there is a limit. Modest comfort and a rich inner life, based on deeper spiritual yearnings.
It's cooling down, frost on the lawn this morning, but what a sky - perfectly azure all day long. Below: view from my bedroom window around 9am. [Incidentally, my laptop awoke to display the time as one hour earlier than it was, despite the change from summer time happening next weekend. Neither did my office laptop, also running Windows 10, nor my desktop, running Windows 7, do this. Can't figure out why.]
Mid afternoon, I set off for a walk. Office work was completed shortly before 8pm, but with the day getting shorter, every minute of such sunshine needs to be benefited from. Below: the field behind my house, giving me those familiar exomnesial vibes of 1950s USA.
Below: classic Jeziorki, the northern pond, full of water, algae bloom gone. In two months' time, maybe three, the ice here should be thick enough to walk across - I hope for a proper winter, not like the dismal, almost snow-free one we had in 2019-2020.
Below: the corner of ulica Trombity and ul. Kórnicka, another classic view of Jeziorki.
Below: a view that anyone who's not been here for six years or more wouldn't recognise - ul. Karczunkowska as it climbs over the railway line. Note the decent infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians - it all ends within a few dozen metres of either side of the viaduct.
Approaching 4pm, still nearly an hour and half before sunset. This time next week, after the clocks really do go back, the sun will set soon after four. Get ready for the Hammer of Darkness. The photo below, taken from the eastern approaches of the viaduct, show how dangerous ul. Karczunkowska is for pedestrians. Imagine the verges on either side either filled with muddy puddles or being ankle-deep in snow on a dark evening. And look at the traffic. No pavement.
Make the most of it while you can! "While sun shines, you better make hay," sung Roxy Music in Editions of You. The hay has long been made, the sentiment remains.
Last week’s press conference given at the National Press Club in Washington by former USAF officers who had experienced UFO activities over nuclear bases was compelling. Three gentlemen, now in their eighties, all of whom had in the 1960s commanded units of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), talked about what they had witnessed.
The events took place in remote launching bases in Montana and North Dakota in 1964 followed similar lines. The officers – David Schindele, Robert Salas and Robert Jamieson, all holding the rank of captain – would be 60 feet underground in blast-proof bunkers; arrayed in a circle around them were 10 silos each holding an ICBM. The launch control centres which the officers commanded were linked to each of the missiles, which – should the order ever come – would be launched against targets in the Soviet bloc. Topside, there was a perimeter fence, a few buildings – and armed guards.
The three men told their stories plausibly, without undue drama. A phone call from topside from panicked guards, saying that an unidentified craft was hovering silently over the command centre. Then, one by one, the individual missiles would go offline (to use the parlance of the day, they 'lost their strategic alert status'). This was unprecedented – from time to time, one, maybe even two missiles might malfunction, but never ten all of them.
The officers reported this immediately; they were then visited by senior, anonymous, Air Force staff, who’d tell them that nothing had happened and that they were not to speak of this to anyone, ever.
Over the decades, found that they were not alone in experiencing such incidents; they discovered each others' stories and collectively decided to come forward and speak publicly about their experiences. They mentioned visits from technical specialists who were at a loss to explain how it came about that all 10 ICBM launchers had been somehow switched off – at the same time as there were reports about unidentified flying objects over the base.
Watching the entire press conference, which lasted just over two hours, I was struck by the normalness of these elderly men; these were not attention-seekers, but – it seems to me – they had all experienced something that had profoundly shaken their lives and wanted to share their testimony. Not just the UFO incidents themselves, but the cover-up, the aftermath, the ongoing pretence that nothing had happened.
I have been writing about the UFO phenomenon here for some while; it is clear that the US government is becoming (being forced to become?) more open about what’s been going on, for at least 75 years. The press conference begins with testimony of a WW2 pilot who had been scrambled to intercept UFOs over the top-secret uranium enrichment plant at Hanford, Washington state, as early as February 1945.
How should we react to such stories? With a healthy dose of scepticism, looking to pull the stories apart, seeking character flaws in the witnesses, inconsistencies in their narratives – or, when taken together with newer UFO encounter stories such as the ones mentioned in the report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to Congress on 25 June – does the weight of evidence start to become convincing?
As American scientist Eric Weinstein has said – whatever the truth is, this must be the biggest story ever.
Either the US military is recruiting fantasists and weirdos, sending them up from carriers with faulty radars in aircraft equipped with badly calibrated sensors. Who between them have recorded in recent years along, 144 such incidents that the Navy is unable to explain.
Or that China or Russia, or some other power, has managed to build craft that can perform manoeuvres that current science cannot explain. Since 2004.
Or that the US has managed to do this, and has been trying out this technology, unannounced, in restricted airspace where it poses a threat to its own military aircraft and ships.
Or that these craft are from other worlds - other star systems, other dimension, another time.
One way or another, this cannot be ignored. A pattern has been emerging clearly over the decades since mankind has harnessed the power of the atom for mass destruction. Our nuclear weapons attract phenomena which conventional science cannot explain.
I have written about disclosure before – many of us are just not ready to have our Newtonian worldview upset. Many of us would rather ignore the phenomenon, rather than accept that mankind is not the most (and only) advanced civilisation within our purview.
The Drake Equation, which suggests our galaxy is teeming with intelligent life, clashes with the Fermi Paradox, which states that despite the Drake Equation, we have yet to have any concrete proof of the existence of that intelligent life.
I posit that any technologically advanced civilisations that are here, be they from another star system, another dimension or another time, they are doing all they can not to upset our worldviews. Human science, on discovering a primitive tribe, would today no longer go in, unbidden, to make contact. Similarly, aliens are unlikely to turn up offering us magical technologies in return for our planet’s resources. So we should just take it easy; one day a future US government might come clean over Roswell - but I think it better that it didn't, at least just yet.
Here's the full conference (starts around 00:03:29).
Capt. David Schindele's testimory re: Minot AFB event, September 1964, from 00:46:53 to 01:06:02
Capt. Robert Salas's testimony re: Malmstrom AFB event, March 1964, from 01:08:30 to 01:20:35
Capt. Robert Jamieson's testimony re: Malmstrom AFB event, March 1964, from 01:21:32 to 01:27:42
And as in Travel as in Life, the Unexpected happens when one gets complacent - quantum luck. Willing a trouble-free journey to Wrocław, all went well (a mere six minutes delay). But the way home... On leaving the conference venue, the wind was whipping up; it hadn't occurred to me to discount the possibility of travel disruptions. On arriving at Wrocław station, the arrivals and departures boards were both showing several trains with long delays. Again, I had not causally linked the two concepts of 'strong winds' and 'long journey home'... The Warsaw train didn't leave for some ten minutes after the appointed time, then it crawled towards Opole. The conductor told us that indeed, power lines had been torn down and that diversions were in place.
Still, the dramatic weather made for some good photography - dark clouds flying north-eastward at speed, lit by a low, late-afternoon sun.
Agriculture in western Poland (former German lands) was collectivised to a far greater extent than in the Polish heartlands. As a result, such prairies are a more common feature of the Lower Silesian landscape. Below: maize awaits harvesting. Soon after, we would see a heavy goods vehicle attended by three fire engines and a police car after having been blown over sideways by the wind.
Below: straight out of the box, no fiddling with the sliders, the natural colours of trees in autumn, untouched by Photoshop.
Below: approaching Opole, crossing the Odra river - the left bank...
...and the right bank below. The low clouds, long shadows and strong sunlight on the tall trees remind me of the landscapes of Rowland Hilder.
Below: having departed from Opole station, some track-side tenements lit by a low sun, with dark clouds racing east, driving by strong winds.
Below: somewhere west of Częstochowa, traffic streaming out of the town under a setting sun.
My train home to W-wa Jeziorki was due to depart W-wa Zachodnia at 21:00; as that time approached, the indicator board described the train as running 25 minutes late. As 21:25 approached, the indicator board showed the delay had extended to 60 minutes. So I boarded a train headed for the airport and caught a taxi home from there (58 złotys). Below: delays of up to five hours shown here.
Poland's trees are unused to coping with such fierce winds; old trees were uprooted or snapped in half. New trees will adapt to the changing climate; along with flash floods, droughts and snow-free winters this is the cumulative price we pay for our environmentally irresponsible lifestyles.
A journey to Wrocław - however brief - holds much joy. Historic cities should work their magic regardless of time of year or time of day. Arriving in Wrocław on Wednesday evening after dark, I walked from the station to my hotel, not the direct route, but including a detour through Park Juliusza Słowackiego (below) then along Bulwar Xawerego Dunikowskiego following the Odra river. This walk added another 3km to my daily paces, and gave me ample opportunity to soak up those unique Wrocław klimaty.
Below: the entrance to the Most Piaskowy bridge (literally 'sandy bridge', so called because it links Wyspa Piasek, or 'sand island' which lies mid-stream of the Odra river). Cast iron, cobbles and tram tracks, street lamps and bollards create an atmosphere that recalls Imperial Germany; distinct from the Russian architectural influences seen across historic towns and cities of eastern Poland.
The trams that run frequently through Wyspa Piasek lend it much charm. Even the modern ones, still clanging their bells.
Below: clouds scud past a full moon, over the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew, with the twin spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist behind it. Both are on Ostrów Tumski, a part of Wrocław that's worth visiting in its own right.
I stayed at the three-star Hotel Tumski - perfectly located for Ostrów Tumski. Breakfast was on the Odra, on the barge moored in the photo below, right. Note the provenance of the cars outside the hotel - from left to right: Ukraine, Czechia, Romania, Germany, Luxembourg and two from Poland. Wrocław, a very European city.
The trams are advertising kranówka - literally, tap water. "Drink tap water" is the slogan. "Everything begins with water", plus a list of the minerals that go into it: calcium, sodium, magnesium and potassium. The bridge in the foreground is the Most Młyński ('mill bridge'), connecting Wyspa Młyńska ('mill island') with Wyspa Piasek ('sand island'). The Odra river splits into three around these islands.
Below: more trams plying the main street through Wyspa Piasek. The ochre building is the Wyższa Szkoła Prawa ('higher school of law') implying that somewhere there's a lower school of law ('Niższa Szkoła Prawa').
Work done, it's off to Spiż, the famous (and one of Poland's very first) microbrewery in the old town hall in the middle of the old town square... Beautiful late-Gothic building.
Below: Spiż is down in the basement. Very much the bierkeller atmosphere.
Spiż brews good beer, which you can also buy to take away. The American IPA (7% ABV) is to be recommended. Warning: don't come to Spiż for a light lunch - portions are huge. And before the main course arrives, you're treated to a complementary starter of pork dripping with skwarki (smalec) on fresh rye bread. Could have done with some gherkins pickled in brine which go together so well with smalec.
Wrocław needs plenty of time to explore; mid-week makes more sense than weekend, off-season rather than on. I have been here many times, and, like Gdańsk, it keeps calling me back. I am awaiting the chance to finally read Microcosm, a history of Wrocław by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse. I bought it for my father a few years before he died, it's now in the box of books to be shipped back to Poland.
Our ego - our sense of self - is the product of a process of biological evolutionary selection that goes back to the origins of life on earth. In biological terms, the stronger the ego, the more likely its owner's genes will propagate more forcefully. Yet on a planet of almost eight billion people, we are now beyond that point in the evolution of Homo sapiens where any individual's ego is of much benefit to us as a species.
The demands of the ego - to be flattered, feted, followed and feared - lead to many negative consequences for humanity and for our planet. The maladjusted ego, soaked in materialism (rejecting the spiritual) is harmful for the environment. Thoughtless addiction to ever-bigger cars, exotic holidays, luxury goods, and endless consumption to show off one's social standing, means burning through single-use resources as our planet inexorably heats up.
We do owe it to ourselves to live in comfort - we must work and save and spend to avoid living in discomfort - but we should never strive to live in luxury, and we should avoid those people that do; for usually they are toxic, bereft of spiritual traits.
Yet we are (all of us? some of us?) not just biological entities, we are also conscious beings. [Do philosophical zombies exist? Somehow Trump makes me believe in them.] Our consciousness - our subjective experience of being alive - can be equated with the religious concept of the soul. Can this transcend physical death? I certainly believe so, based on my personal experience of anomalous qualia memories (which I call exomnesia or xenomnesia). This reincarnated consciousness is shorn of its attendant ego at bodily death, although past-life dreams may show episodes experienced by the previous ego, so as to highlight the progress upon this short stage of the spiritual journey from zero to one.
I wrote about my observation in childhood that there was a 'mądry Michaś' and a 'głupi Michaś'; the former an attribute of my consciousness, the latter an attribute of my ego. In adolescence, the conscious, wise, self was almost entirely pushed aside by the testosterone-fuelled ego. In adulthood, the former has returned to push away much of the latter.
If the material body can evolve, why not can the soul? Can one compare spiritual evolution with the bodily kind? A slow refinement, a coagulation of consciousness into ever greater units of understanding which grow along with our expanding universe.
I feel that humanity is at a tipping point, this crisis, along with similarly existential crises of the past century (1914-1920, 1939-1945) when little by little, lessons learnt pushed us back from a path to mutual destruction, and the awakening of a more spiritual approach to life in the developed world.
Five billion good people living in comfort (but not in luxury) in the mid-22nd century on a restored planet is not unimaginable, we may draw it forward with our actions today. For those that believe, as I do, that our consciousness, shorn of its ties to the body, will return, an increasingly uncomfortable climate is something that should be avoided if only for selfish reasons!
The last week was gorgeous; so many bright days under clear skies, starting with a light ground frost. This, alas, means that heating is now needed in the mornings to stave off Discomfort. [And just then, on cue, up pops 'Comfort ye, my people' from Handel's Messiah on YouTube autoplay.] A day's electricity bill on the działka now costs 12zł per 24 hours, rather than the 1.40zł - 1.60zł in summer (unoccupied, it's around 48 grosze per day - keeping the burglar alarm and modem going). The long-term answer to winter heat is of course solar panels - another capital investment project for the near future.
Meanwhile, every opportunity soak up the early autumn sun needs to be taken. A selection of the sublime, including several of the XII Canonical Views of Jakubowizna are presented for you to experience a snippet of the joy I felt as I walked through these landscapes.
Below: this orchard's owner is a few days late for harvesting (it was ongoing a few rows to the right); many of the fallen apples are now suitable only for juice or puree.
Below: the path between Machin II and Jakubowizna - oak and pine on sandy soil.
Left: a long exposure and small aperture to get maximum depth of field, together with polarising filter to draw out the profound, crystalline blueness from the sky; the sublime aesthetic. The silver birch, the oak and the pine - my favourite trees.
The deciduous trees will be devoid of leaves before too long; the pine, however, still looks good on those clear, crisp days of midwinter against a blue sky.
Below: a farm on my way from the działka towards Chynów station.
Below: ' Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God' - Isaiah 40:3. The road parallel to the tracks, looking north towards the DK50 and Sułkowice.
Below: shortly after sunset; at equinox, the sun sets due west; in summer north-west, in winter south-west. No longer does it set over Sułkowice or Wola Pieczyska, it now sets over Drwalew.
Left: the moon is facing the sun; much of the far side, hidden to us observers on earth, is bathed in sunlight. The same side of the moon always faces the earth because of tidal locking; it takes as long for the moon to orbit the earth is it does to rotate around its own axis. As a result, we can never see more than 59% of the moon's surface from earth. That 9%-over-the-hemisphere is due to the moon's libration.
The main difference between what in Poland is considered a village (wieś or wioska) and a town (miasto) is the presence of a market square. The former tend to be settlements strung out along a straight road with fields coming off it a right angles. The latter are typically built around a centre, dominated by a market square.
Warka, then, is a town of 12,000 people dating back to the 12th century, a centre for brewing and trade. For a while, Warka was bigger than Warsaw! The town suffered the usual devastation caused by various invasions, from the Swedes to the Germans; little remains of the town's pre-war appearance. In a straight line, about 50km south from the centre of Warsaw, 40km from Jeziorki and 15km from Jakubowizna. My Jeziorki neighbours, Tomek and Ania, suggested a visit to Warka's market on a Saturday morning, and so we went on a beautifully sunny early-autumn day.
Now, in England, the notion of a 'farmers' market' is a recent phenomenon, in Poland it never went away. It's worth pointing out here that the proportion of Polish society classed as urban today (62%) is the same as British society a century and half ago (61.8% according to the 1871 census).
A brief linguistic digression; Polish has three words for market - rynek, targ and jarmark. [There's also the loanword, bazar, as there is in English and many other languages.] 'Rynek' is the physical location for a market, while 'targ' is the event itself, taking place once or twice a week. But then 'targowisko' is also the physical location for a market! Historically, one of the principal rights of a town was to decide for itself on which days the targ would take place. Jarmark (from the German jahrmarkt) was an annually-held fair of regional rather than just local importance.
The bi-weekly market on Warka's targowisko (32,000m2) on Wednesdays and Saturdays (6am-noon) has vastly outgrown the town's rynek, a mere 1,500m2, and is situated in a large flat expanse of land below the escarpment, on the banks of the Pilica river.
Below: on the targowisko, behind it the escarpment of the Pilica, upon which stands the clock tower and water tank of the volunteer fire service. Beyond that, the old town square. Plenty of stands, tents, backs of vans, benches, people selling clothing, footwear, tools, fresh local farm produce, lumps of coal, furniture even. And lots of it.
Below - you can get an idea of the size of the targowisko by noting the clock tower on the distant horizon, and how far the picture above was taken from this one. By 10am the early rush has subsided and shopping is relaxed. The range of locally-produced food is far greater than in Chynów and cheaper than in Warsaw hypermarkets. A food-truck or three selling hot, local, ready-to-eat specialities would have been appreciated. Certainly worth another visit!
Below: the steps leading down the escarpment from the rear of the rynek towards the targowisko and the flood-plains of the Pilica.
Below: the north-west corner of the rynek. Tidied up significantly, there's now a fair number of cafes and eateries, the sign of a prospering community. The small shops are for local folk; unlike the targowisko, which attracts shoppers from all over the district, the rest of Warka's retail scene is limited.
Below: ulica Lotników links the rynek with what will soon be the new station, Warka Miasto. As I wrote here, Warka Miasto ('town') station will be just 700m away from the rynek; the present station, Warka, lies a kilometre further away (1.7km). This will make it far easier to visit the town by train in future.
