Imminent? I don't think so.

Launched on 20 August, Luis Elizondo's Imminent is already No. 1 in Amazon's Astrophysics and Space Science category, and No. 2 across all book categories. Lue Elizondo is currently busy on the podcast and video circuit; for those aspiring to have a well-visited channel in the UFO category, he is a must-have guest. Or at least Imminent must feature as this week's lead topic.

The blurb: "Former head of the Pentagon program investigating UFOs—now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)—reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe."

Is his story true? What's convincing about it, and what isn't? These are not the deluded ramblings of a New Ager wanting to sell some healing merch off the back of the book sales. Lue Elizondo, who came to the public's attention after the New York Times bombshell article in December 2017, is a serious man from the US national security establishment, as are Garry Nolan, Christopher Mellon, Hal Putoff, Eric Davies, Jay Stratton, James Lacatski, David Fravor, David Grusch.

Mr Elizondo's message to the US government is – "you owe it to humanity to come into the open about what you know of the presence of non-human intelligence among us". 

But could we cope with this knowledge? 

I think not. 

As I have been watching the interviews and reading the reviews, I have been thinking long and hard about the unintended consequences of mankind suddenly learning – officially, and in an unfalsifiable matter – that we are not the apex predator on this planet. That we are not the apex technological species on our planet. That non-human intelligences with superior technologies come and go as they wish. That they abduct humans. That they are interested in our nuclear programmes. That we have no clues as to their motives or purpose here.

Coincidentally, while watching the latest in the Rest is History series about the fate of the Plains Indians in 19th century America, the following quote by Dominic Sandbrook leapt out as relevant: "When Columbus landed on Hispaniola and the Spaniards started arriving, the Taíno – the indigenous people – were wiped out by disease and cruelty. There were descriptions of them just sitting down, staring into space, baffled that everything they had taken for granted, the rhythm of their life, their faith, their sense of what the world was, what the human condition was, had just been utterly destroyed." 

I could imagine that such a fate befalling mankind upon suddenly coming receiving indubitable proof that we are not alone. Ontological shock. Are the visitors benevolent – or are they an existential threat to our species? How would our spiritual views be affected by the knowledge that a higher intelligence has mastered, say, time travel, or faster-than-light travel, or inter-dimensional travel? That has harnessed energy sources beyond our understanding of physics? We would grasp the truth: we have been living in Plato's cave all along.

So – is there a disclosure agenda? Is there one faction within the Washington establishment pushing for UFO disclosure, competing with rival factions that want to continue the cover-up for as long as possible?

Acclimatisation – the steady drip-drip-drip of insinuation, rumours, ambiguous footage, pop-culture tropes – means that as a species, as a civilisation, we are more ready today to accept that we are not alone in the universe, not alone as an intelligent species on our planet that 100 years ago. UFOs-as-entertainment is here. The History Channel with its shows that leave viewers wondering whether there isn't a grain of truth among the bullshit.

I would suggest that it will still take many generations, and that Disclosure will happen within eight billion minds one by one. Each mind will be prepared, and changed, at their own pace, as quickly or as slowly as it takes for them to accept as much, or as little, as they can cope with.

So many questions. Mine focus on the spiritual, on the hierarchy of spiritual evolution and where our  consciousnesses, the souls of which our bodies are containers, lie on the continuum from zero to one. And where on that spiritual continuum those extraterrestrial – or extradimensional, or extratemporal – beings are to be found. My greatest fear would be to discover that we are more spiritually developed than these beings, even though they are greatly advanced technologically.

This time last year:
Dawn tourism – the sights without the crowds

This time two years ago:
Bike-ride to the past

This time four years ago:

Muscle memory

This time six years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time seven years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time nine years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time ten years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time 11 years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time 12 years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 14 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 15 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

Cider-making lessons as the season moves on

One lives and learns. My orchard bears fruit every other year, as it is gloriously untended, unsprayed and otherwise untouched by chemicals or machinery. This year, the bumper crop needs to be brought in and turned to cider quickly. Key takeaways:

● Use smaller demijohns. I've just bought another six of the five-litre sort. They can be filled up to the cork more quickly, so there's less time for the juice to oxidise and go sour. The smaller demijohns can also allow for customised batches (I intend to make one of perry and one of grape wine).

● Picked vs gathered apples. The ones I pick up off the ground (freshly fallen overnight) are ripe. The ones picked off the trees are not quite ripe. There is a difference. The ripe ones have higher sugar content, but produce less juice and more mousse when forced through the juicer.  They have yellow skins.The picked apples are juicier, tarter and crisper – you get that satisfying krahhh sound as the juicer mills them. They have green skins. Getting the balance right between the two is critical. Below: off the tree – crisp, tart and juicy, or off the ground – sweet, ripe and sludgy? Bit of both.

● The constant battle with sediment cannot be underestimated. I am running the juice extracted from the juicer through two sieves before it goes into the demijohn, producing a kilo of mousse for each litre of juice. Even so, the bottom 8% to 10% of what ends up at the bottom of the demijohn is sediment. This year, I have been cutting out the apple cores. Last time, I left them in; not only do they add to the sludginess, but they also introduce tannins that are not necessarily beneficial to the taste. And at the end of primary fermentation, the content of the demijohns will need to be sieved yet again. Below: in my cellar, the last dozen bottles of the 2022 production (to the right) – note the sediment at the bottom of the bottles. And this is after they have been decanted for a second time.

● Rather than leaving them in the cellar, this time I am storing the demijohns in my bedroom so I can keep an eye on them. Two years ago, I had one large demijohn fermenting in such a lively manner that it popped the cork and spilled the froth that rises to the top all over the cellar floor, something I discovered a few days later. Now, when I see a build-up of said froth, I can immediately take out the cork and remove the froth with a straw, lowering the level (and at the same time checking the alcohol content).

Below: this is how many apples go to make five litres of cider. Last time, the cores went in as well; this time they stay out. And count them – I make it at least 75 (or 15 apples to the litre). The ratio of green, picked apples to the yellow, gathered apples is evident.

This year's cider season has started much earlier than in 2022, at least a month earlier. Different apple varieties ripen at different times, but this year's apple harvest is unusual in that in started in July.

This time last year:
Getting to Sandomierz by bus and train

This time two years ago:
Inspiration

This time ten years ago:
Food shopping and dietary update

This time 11 years ago:
Photos from the Radom Air Show, part 1

This time 12 years ago:
Offloading PKP's risk at W-wa Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
Time to be stuffing yourself with fresh fruit

This time 15 years ago:
First notes of autumn in the air
[Still highest summer now in 2024! No sense of autumn yet!]

This time 17 years ago:
Large spider catches fly

Consciousness everywhere

I'm sipping my morning coffee in the kitchen, the rising sun glinting though gaps in the thick green curtain that is the forest next door, when a long-legged spider makes a dash across the table.

As I watch it, the first thought that comes to my mind is a quote from Alan Watts; "Every living being feels that they're in the middle of the world"; I sense the spider's sense of consciousness. It is clearly troubled by me. Reaching the edge of the table, the spider abseils down to the floor and makes a break for the fridge, rushes to safety underneath it (at least until Saturday morning when I vacuum-clean the kitchen floor). 

[This particular spider, Phalangium opilio, harvestman or daddy longlegs (kosarz pospolity) is one of several in the house; they perform a useful function in dealing with insect pests (such as fruit flies) which they catch in their webs and eat. I tolerate them and when cleaning, I will strive to deport them outside rather than suck them up into the vacuum cleaner.]

Since childhood I have had that sense that insects – as well as larger animals – are conscious. Now, here we must distinguish between intelligence and consciousness. A spider, like every creature great and small, is driven by the survival instinct, and finding itself in a situation of danger (in the immediate presence of a living creature a million times more massive), it works out the optimal route to safety. That's intelligence at work. Attention and instinct. But consciousness, that awareness of being, is something else; in a world in which science claims to have all the answers* an understanding of consciousness remains a great unknown. Or even, the great unknowable.

Whether it's those eye-to-eye contact moments with a cat or a dog, or even that shared sense of presence between a human and a spider, there are those flashes of recognition that suggest that we are not alone in seeing the universe with ourselves in its very epicentre, we are not alone in that. 

I recall walking along the beach at Międzyzdroje on a wet and overcast summer's day, watching the seagulls. Momentarily a gap in the clouds appeared, and brilliant sunshine swept the scene, turning a dull seascape into one that sparkled joyously. The gulls' behaviour changed. At once, they became animated, filled with an uplifting energy. The clouds rolled over, extinguishing the sun's rays. That moment had passed, but I had recognised it. The gulls had recognised it. I had become aware of their joy.

Today, 21 August is (I decided last year) International Awareness Awareness Day, when we should be aware that we are aware, we should be conscious of being conscious, if only just for one brief moment.

* All the answers except for what are dark energy and dark matter, why is the universe fine-tuned for life, what happened before Big Bang, and how to reconcile Einsteinian relativity with quantum mechanics. Etc.

This time last year:
International Awareness Awareness Day

This time four years ago:
Reflections on late-August

This time six years ago:
Conscious of a waning summer

This time ten years ago:
Plans for modernising the Warsaw-Radom railway line

This time 11 years ago:
World's largest ship calls in at Gdańsk

This time 13 years ago:
Raymond's Treasure - a short story

This time 14 years ago:
Now an urban legend: Kebab factory under W-wa Centralna

This time 15 years ago:
It was twenty years ago today

This time 17 years ago:
By bike to Czachówek again

Between idleness and stress

Getting the balance right in life, setting the sliders – so important. I tend to beat myself up if I catch my output flagging, if I'm not getting on with it – but then on the other hand, I hate getting myself into a state of stress. Stress happens when there's too much on my plate, when I'm failing to get done all the things that need to be done within the allocated time. And here, the Eisenhower Matrix comes into play. Sift away the task that are neither urgent nor important from those that are either urgent or important, whilst placing a top priority on those tasks that are both.

Today I start the day with jotting down my to-do list. I have to pay the annual insurance premium on my motorbikes (physically, at my local insurance office – three times cheaper than doing so online); do the weekly shop, have one online meeting with the UK, compose several emails, make a few work-related phone calls and juggle all this around a courier expected today bringing me another demijohn, stopper and bubbler airlock. Then there are my seven sets of exercises (ambition: beat last year!) and 90 minutes of brisk walking around the manor. And writing this blog.

The day starts well; the sun in shining – it's another cloudless morning – this is incredibly motivating.

One by one the tasks are accomplished. Parcel received, insurance paid, shopping done, several emails sent. The call takes half an hour longer than scheduled and requires couple of a follow-up phone calls.

All in all, this day is in hand, it's all fitted in. There has to be some action, some external factors that push me along – but not too much. 

This is called eustress, "moderate psychological stress, interpreted as being beneficial". Knowing where the boundary lies between eustress and stress (the sort that releases the hormone cortisol in harmful amounts) is crucial. Of course, this will differ from individual to individual, and with training, you can push that boundary. But most important is what drives you to put together that daily to-do list, what's on it, what's not on it, what stresses you, what you are in control of. 

And so I intend to go on working, so long as I can work at my own pace, and keep stress out of my professional life. That means knowing when to say 'no'. 

How much of the balance between avoiding all stress and being stressed out lies in the hands of fate? If you believe in the metaphysical powers of quantum will, you can somehow influence the outcome. And if you don't believe in that, well, good luck anyway.

I get it all done, and end the day listening to Martyn Jansen's most excellent soul and R&B show on West Wilts Radio. I retire in a state of gratitude.

Too much stress – bad; no stress at all – also bad.

This time eight years ago:
Ulica Karczunkowska, about to be bisected

This time nine years ago:
What I read each week.

This time ten years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time 12 years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw

This time 14 years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time 15 years ago:
And watch the river flow...

A run of perfect days

Hot, but not crushingly so; cooler nights, but above all – clear skies. Summer in its perfection. A breeze animates the greenery outside; my doors and windows are open, indoors and outdoors are as one. The insects are behaving themselves. Above all, the sky is crystalline blue; photons emitted by the sun entering into my brain undiluted by cloud, make me feel physically more energetic and sharpen my thinking.

Monday night was Perseids night; I saw 12 or so shooting stars flash by. Sadly none caught on camera, despite having it tripod-mounted on my rear terrace, 25-second exposure at 4000 ISO, wide-angle zoom lens set at f/4.5 zoomed out to 10mm and focused on infinity. Lots of stars and a few planes coming into land in the distance – but not one meteor captured. No matter – the experience was quite something.

Tuesday after work – time for an evening stroll. Below: the start of every expedition begins with me approaching the garden gate.

Below: beyond when the asphalt ends, my street becomes farm track and curves its way between orchards on its way to the dark wood.

Below: beyond the wood, and on towards Machcin II. That white dot is a setting half-moon.

Below: rural crossroad. The unasphalted track linking Adamów Rososki (behind me) with Machcin II and Dąbrowa Duża crosses the asphalted road from Jakubowizna to Machcin.

Below: heathland along the footpath that separates Jakubowizna from Widok. Note the lack of tall weeds, shrubs and bushes. The soil is too acidic and sandy. A habitat that's disappearing rapidly from the landscape.

 

Wednesday after work: today's walk will take me to Krężel via the wood that lies on the other side of Widok. Below: the footpath between Chynów station and Widok.

Below: where the wood meets the railway line. A setting sun illuminates the bark of the tall pines and silver birches.

I get to Krężel with a few minutes in hand before my train arrives to take me one stop, back home to Chynów station. Below: the sun, less than half an hour before it set, which it did today at exactly 20:00.

This time four years ago:
Twilight motorbike ride

This time five years ago:

Are we Bodies or Souls?

This time eight years ago year:
Popping out for a drink

This time 14 years ago:
In search of happiness

This time 15 years ago:
Mercenaries and missionaries

This time 16 years ago:
Spectacular sunrise, Jeziorki

Goldenrod – nawłoć – friend or foe?

A casual chat with my colleague Ilona from our Wrocław office led me down this rabbit hole – is the plant I have growing all around my house on my działka good for the environment or bad?

Ilona told me that nawłoć (goldenrod) was an aggressively invasive weed that is threatening biodiversity. I had hitherto understood that this plant, with its bright-yellow flowers, was a native to Mazowsze, as evidenced by the name of the street linking ulica Trombity and ul. Karczunkowska in Jeziorki – ul. Nawłocka. For indeed, nawłoć grows all along the side without houses on it. Maps of Warsaw going back to the 1970s show the street named thus.

This exchange prompts my curiosity. In my youth, a trip to a library to find some books on botany would have been in order; today, all such reference is just a few keyboard taps away. And so I find...

In English: "Goldenrod is a common name for many species of flowering plants in the sunflower family, Asteraceae, commonly in reference to the genus Solidago." And in Polish? Nawłoć (Solidago) – „rodzaj roślin z rodziny astrowatych. Należy do niego ponad 130 gatunków."

OK, the key question is – which species of goldenrod are we talking about? 

Comparing pictures of the flowering plant with the one I have in front of me as I look out from my kitchen window, it turns out that Ilona is right – the nawłoć that's taken over my lawns is indeed of the Canadian variety (Solidago canadiensis, or nawłoć kanadyjska). Is this a good thing or a bad thing? No apologies for copy-pasting a chunk of the Wikipedia article about S. canadiensis...

Ecology and distribution

S. canadiensis is sometimes browsed by deer and is good to fair as food for domestic livestock such as cattle or horses. It is found in a variety of habitats. It typically is one of the first plants to colonise an area after a disturbance (such as fire) and rarely persists once shrubs and trees become established. It is found in dry locations and waterlogged ones.

Canada goldenrod is visited by a wide variety of insects for its pollen and nectar, including bees, wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, and moths. It is especially strongly favored as a nectar source by bumblebees and wasps, it is also visited frequently by honeybees and some butterflies.

S. canadiensis can be extremely aggressive and tends to form monocultures and near-monocultures. It not only seeds a great deal, but also spreads rapidly via running rhizomes. Its root system is very tough, and plants that have been pulled out of the ground prior to freezing and left exposed atop soil have survived winter temperatures down to -26 °C.

Looking at my działka, I can see that the goldenrod is very attractive to the pollinators. It has effectively replaced the two lawns at the front of my house. Below: one of many bees on one of many goldenrods by my house. Look at how much pollen it has gathered on its legs. I'm not a bee psychologist, but this looks like a happy one.

As well as attracting bees and butterflies, it is also massively out-produces oxygen compared to lawn grass (even if not mown), due to a larger leaf area. Another advantage of S. canadiensis, according to ChatGPT, is that its flowers bloom late in the season, offering a crucial food source when other plants have finished flowering. Google Gemini adds that goldenrod is a "deep-rooted plant that helps improve soil structure, prevent erosion, and increase organic matter content".

It has spread widely across southern Mazowsze; it worries me not.

Overall, I'm happy to have had parts of my działka overrun by Canadian goldenrod. It doesn't compete with my fruit trees ("rarely persists once shrubs and trees become established"). It brings a welcome splash of bright yellow in August and September.

This time last year:
A low-cost future

This time two years ago:
Evolved Consciousness

This time four years ago:
Goodnight Belarus - may God keep you

This time nine years ago:
Motorbike across Poland to buy fine Polish wine

This time ten years ago:
Eat Polish apples, drink Polish cider

This time 11 years ago:
Hottest week ever 

This time 12 years ago:
Progress along the second line of the Warsaw Metro 

This time 13 years ago:
Doric arches, ul. Targowa

This time 14 years ago:
A place in the country, everyone's ideal

This time 17 years ago:
I must go down to the sea again

Book review: Jan Stepek Part 1: Gulag to Glasgow

If your parent or parents went through the living hell of a Soviet deportation, then this book is something that you should not only read, but you should own. Your descendents need to have it as testimony of the harrowing experience that their gene pool had survived. For this book could have been about my mother and her sister Irena, or about any of the hundreds of thousands of Poles who managed to escape the USSR after their deportation thanks to General Anders and General Sikorski. Many of the mothers and fathers of my Polish friends with whom I grew up in postwar London had survived this hell too, and this book, written in English, spells out exactly what they had endured and survived.

Jan Stepek Part 1: Gulag to Glasgow is the biography of a remarkable man, written by his son Martin. It is the story of human resilience and innate determination in the face of the most barbaric of circumstances. The book's power is drawn from the detailed memories of Jan Stepek and his sisters Zosia and Danka, all of whom – miraculously – made it through their Siberian ordeal to the UK, where they managed to live into their 90s. Their story captures the unspeakable privations – the hunger and the cold and the disease that preyed on starved and frozen bodies. 

Arrested on 10 February 1940 (the same night as my mother's family and 220,000 other Polish men, women and children), they were deported in cattle-trucks to labour camps in the north of Russia and Siberia. Here, in inhuman conditions, they were made to work in forestry, felling trees and turning them into timber and furniture, exactly the same as my mother's family.

After the 'amnesty' of August 1941, Poles were free to leave their camps and make their way across the USSR, journeys of several thousand kilometres, to bases on Russia's borders with Kazakhstan where a newly formed Polish army was being assembled, ahead of a journey across the Caspian Sea to the Middle East and freedom. The journey, undertaken in the winter of 1941-42, took place at a time when the entire Soviet Union transport system was being mobilised to halt the German onslaught as it approached Moscow.

The book begins with a look at the families of Władysław Stepek and his wife Janina, who were born in a partitioned Poland. Władysław, from a modest farming family and Janina, from a wealthy family, married in 1921 and created a new life for themselves as osadnicy in the the eastern parts of the newly re-formed Polish state. As osadnicy – veterans in the struggles for independence – they were given land in exchange for building up new communities and a new Poland. Neither Władysław nor Janina were to survive WW2. Their three children (Jan, born in 1922, Zosia, born in 1925 and Danka in 1927) were all teenagers as their ordeal began, shortly after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland. They cheated death several times; death through dysentery, typhoid fever, exposure and exhaustion. Above all, this is a story of extreme endurance and the innate human will to survive.

Jan Stepek, aged 20 by the time he escaped the USSR, could encircle his leg with his fingers so that thumb and forefinger would touch. His sister Danka weighed four stone (25kg) as a 15-year old when she reached the Polish hospital in Pahlevi in Persia (today's Iran).

The hunger, and its effects on the human body, are described in such a way that it clicks with the reader. This is not like going on a diet for a week. It is a gnawing hunger with no end in sight. Husks of wheat were often all that they could find. Everyone – refugees and local populations – were in the same boat.

With the hunger came lice, ulcers, night blindness and gastric ailments. Sex – reproduction – was on no one's mind. Survival was all. People helped out as they could; small acts of kindness from unexpected sources here and there saved lives along the way. And yet thousands perished, their bodies buried by the side of the railway lines, outside tented encampments. So many died when salvation was in sight.

Jan made it to join the Polish navy; serving on the ORP Krakowiak and later the ORP Ślązak. His sisters made it to Palestine, where the Polish authorities had set up schools for Polish teenagers (smaller children were sent to camps in Africa or India administered by the British authorities). Zosia and Danka went to the same school as my mother in Palestine, Szkoła Młodszych Ochotniczek ('Younger Girl- Volunteers' School').

The horrors of life in the Soviet system is powerfully conveyed in this book. The greatest fear of deportees or refugees being transported by rail in locked cattle-trucks was that their train would end up in sidings as the locomotive would be redirected for more pressing war needs, such as moving troops to the front. Miles from the nearest settlement, the human cargo could end up being left there for weeks in winter – until everyone inside froze or starved to death. Jan Stepek recalls their labour camp in northern Russia; at least when they arrived they had barracks waiting for them. These were built by an earlier wave of deportees – from Ukraine – who had also been dumped at the same spot in winter but with no shelter other than tents. He says there was a hill on which a group of Ukrainians were made to sleep the night in tents; overnight they all froze to death; their tents were covered with snow; no one knew until the spring revealed that the snowy hill had been covering a mound of frozen corpses.

Whilst there have been many books published in Polish about the Soviet deportations of 1940 and 1941, books in English are few and far between. One that covers the same ground I reviewed in 2017 (Adventures of a Young Pole in Exile, by Ryszard Staniaszek). Both books begin with a description of the life of osadnicy families, life in Soviet labour camps, escape from the USSR with General Anders and his army, and the family's fate in the UK after WW2.

In the same way as the world must never forget the Holocaust, the world must never forget the barbarities of the USSR; the inhuman treatment of tens of millions on human beings on the orders of a tyrant, and the ideology that created him. It is crucial that the English-speaking world understands the nature of the Soviet system and the Russian mentality, which to this day still has little or no regard for human life, which it will grind down, be it Ukrainian civilians or Russian soldiers.

The book is available on Amazon. I encourage you to buy it.

This time last year:
August sunsets around Chynów

This time two years ago:
"Don't call me Czachówek - my name is Gabryelin"

This time three years ago:
Accounting for Coincidence

This time four years ago:
Działka food

This time five years ago:
Proper summer in Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Poland's trains failing in the heat

This time seven years ago:
"Learn from your mystics is my only advice"

This time eight years ago:
Out where the pines grow wild and tall

This time 11 years ago:
Behold and See (part V) - short story

This time 12 years ago:
Syrenki in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'impostor'?

This time 14 years ago:
Running with the storm on the road to Mamrotowo

This time 16 years ago:
St Pancras Station - new gateway to London

This time 17 years ago:
Mountains or sea? North Wales has them both

Interrogating one's intuition

Intuition is defined as the "ability to acquire knowledge, without recourse to conscious reasoning". A sense of inner cognition; a sudden prompt that pops up in your stream of consciousness. The answer to a question that doesn't require the thought process or rationality. A brilliant flash you somehow know to be utterly true.

It's there; it is there. If you listen out for it, you will hear it. If you acknowledge its presence, it will be there for you. Ignore it not; heed your intuition, for it is a most valuable tool. Be mindful of its existence, of its usefulness as a guide in your day-to-day activities. It will support you, advise you, prompt you, comfort you, warn you. It will confirm a decision, or maybe suggest another option.

But is it necessarily right? Both in the sense of correct, and in the sense of morally right?

I have become attuned to being aware of intuition. Recognising the moment. And in this, a metaphysical moment – the touch of Big C Consciousness upon our small c consciousness. Here, I'd argue is the back-channel of prayer; it is the Cosmic Purpose in alignment with our own here-today-here-tomorrow human purpose.

Parsing the intuitive moment, to sieve the wishful thinking from the genuine intuition takes skill too. And here we get to today's point. When you recognise that you've had an intuition, examine it carefully – does it feel right? Will it help? Has it put your mind at rest? Usually, it just feels right. Sometimes, rarely, two seemingly conflicting intuitions will arrive simultaneously. Which one is correct? Or is this just an invitation to dig deeper and engage some rational thought? 

Don't demand – don't expect – an immediate answer. As my brother commented cryptically on the post before last, "the obligation runs the other way" (a quote from the Goy's Teeth scene in the Coen brothers' A Serious Man). Indeed. 

{{ Don't sweat the small stuff. }}

Wow! That just popped in, this very second. Yup – makes sense; too much time wasted on the inconsequential. Focus on the bigger picture, step up to the meta level. 

This time last year:
Notes to a future me

This time two years ago
The End of Times

This time three years ago:
Going round in circles

This time four years ago:
Between wakefulness and sleep 

This time seven years ago:

Hammersmith, on Thames

This time 10 years ago:
In search of quintessential English countryside

This time 11 years ago:
Behold and See – short story, Pt III

This time 14 years ago:
Another return to Penrhos

Warsaw's progress to normality

It was on a Saturday night in August 1989 that we ventured into Warsaw's Old Town square. The place was almost deserted and dimly lit. Only one restaurant was open, U Fukiera. We ventured in. Most of the tables were taken. A surly waitress showed us one for the four of us; we sat down and were given menus. Several pages of onion-skin paper in a black leatherette binder. Typed out through sheets of carbon paper, the board of fare. Every single item except for just four had been crossed through. All that was left were the following: Coca-Cola (33cl); mineral water (33cl), black unfiltered coffee (no sugar), and some Georgian (or Armenian, can't recall) brandy. We ordered the mineral water; the cap was rusty. The coffee was 100% Robusta, cheap-tasting and filled with sediment. At least the brandy was somehow OK. This, you will understand, was the height of the tourist season in the capital city of a country of almost 40 million people. Communism was falling, and with it the Marxist notion of a planned economy. 

And yet within five years of the transformation to free-market democracy, life had returned to the Old Town. In the summer of 1994, the City of Warsaw had inaugurated Jazz na Starówce (Jazz in the Old Town). This year marks its thirtieth anniversary. Every Saturday in July and August, there's a free jazz concert in the square. 

As a tourist destination, Warsaw is no longer jaw-droppingly cheap. But nor is it rip-off expensive. Quality is good, prices are reasonable. The city is clean and safe. No signs of drunkenness or aggression; tourists from all over the world, young folk, old folk. A normal city in other words. 

Below: early evening, and the pavement cafes, bars and restaurants are filling up. The weather is optimal – dry, blue skies, not too hot. The corner of ulica Nowomiejska ('New-Town Street'), which connects the Old Town to the New Town, and ul. Mostowa ('Bridge Street') that leads down towards the Vistula. On the walls of the Barbakan to the right, the shadow of the tower of the Church of the Holy Ghost. 

Below: live on stage last night was Piotr Schmidt and his quartet. Quality jazz; reminded me mood-wise of Miles Davis in his Kind of Blue phase. The square was filled with people appreciating the music. An hour-long set, one encore – and that's it, but one has to remember that people live on all four sides of the square.

The concert over, the crowd drifts off, but the bars, cafes and restaurants remain full; a sense of contentment in the air as night falls over the city.

If anyone should suggest to me that communism is better than a democratically regulated market economy, I would respectively tell them that it absolutely isn't.

Left: the corner of the Old Town square. Time to drift back, remembering visits here in years gone by. Good-natured crowds mill around this way and that; I'm not (yet!) getting that over-touristed vibe that spoils cities like Kraków or Prague. Yes, there's a wide variety of places to sit down to eat and drink, but it's not over commercialised; Warsaw seems to be in that sweet spot between being attractive to tourists but not a tourist trap. 

On the way back to Chynów, my train is delayed by a full half-hour, in the end it was overtaken by the last timetabled train of the night, which terminates in Warka. Below: an interstitial view of W-wa Służewiec station, between the stairs and the lift. Proper electronic signboards have been promised for this station sometime soon, as well as for Piaseczno and Warka. Good. The more information about delays etc, the better.

This time three years ago:
Summer winding down

This time seven years ago:
My Mazovian roots

This time eight years ago:
My father revisits his battleground

This time ten years ago:
Over the hill at Harrow

This time 11 years ago:
Behold and See - the Miracle of Lublin - Pt 1.

This time 13 years ago:
Quiet afternoon in the bazaar

This time 14 years ago:
The politics of the symbol

Procrastination, time and mindfulness

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." (C. Northcote Parkinson, 1955)

"If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do." (The Stock-Sanford corollary to Parkinson's law.)

But what if you don't do it, what if you just push it (whatever it is) further on into the future?

Mentally juggling the tasks ahead of me before I go out for the evening, I'm pondering which ones are most important and in what order I should tackle them, and what the consequences of not doing them are. There's a finite time limit: quarter past four in the afternoon, that's when I have to leave to catch the train into town.

It's Saturday morning. The worst that could happen is that I simply end up shifting the tasks on into the future. At least I have no office work requiring my attention before Monday; the weekend is my own. But is it? There's cider-making (clearing the ground under the apple-trees, collecting windfall apples, juicing them and filling a ten-litre demijohn). There's cleaning the house (usually, this can wait). There's blogging (I've not written for a while). And a book I want to read. And my exercises. 

Breakfast over. I take a peek outside – it's raining. And so, I have An Excuse. Not to waste time, I double down on my exercises. Wow! I managed eight pull-ups! (Four sets of pull-ups done. Seven, seven, eight and seven. Twenty nine in total.) Now onto the back extensions... six sets of eight. Done. Now onto the sit-ups... Sixty. Done. Now onto the weights. Four sets of 30. Press-ups, three times twenty, and eight minutes of plank (two times four minutes).

Time should be measured by entropy, not seconds, minutes and years. The process of order turning into chaos. Wasting time means letting chaotic processes unfold.

{{ czas chce nas skrzywdzić }} – 'time wants to harm us'.

I'm not one for being pro-active. Sure, I react, when prodded, I respond. What really drives me, though, is not material. It is mystical; metaphysical. I do believe in an overarching Cosmic Purpose. So much of what happens to us in our lives, the major junctions at which we take this turn or that, are determined by chance. We think we have control over our destinies, and yet looking back we can see how much was preordained. 

However, how much we do, how much we achieve – this is determined by our strength of will. How much we push over into the future, rather than doing today. But then on the other hand, avoiding stress is important to living longer. Don't get worked up over work. If your procrastination leads to levels of stress that you can't cope with, then either learn to let go, or work on reducing the amount of time you waste on the inconsequential. 

As I get older, I see the importance of measuring outcomes. My health and fitness spreadsheet (now in its 11th year) is crucial to this. But while I can demonstrate empirically how I can build up strength of will (and through it, physical strength) from year to year, seemingly in defiance of the ageing process, I cannot will inspiration, creativity, contact with the numinous. And at this moment, I receive an intuition – pray for these things, and they will come. Meditate, mindfully.

This time time two years ago:
Summer as it should be

This time three years ago:
Measuring the unmeasurable

This time five years ago:
Heading Home [my father leaves Warsaw for the last time]

This time seven years ago:
From my father's historic return to Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Country life in a capital city 

This time ten years ago:
My ogród is my działka

This time 12 years ago:
Mazowieckie province tempts with mini- and micro-breaks

This time 14 years ago:
Pride and anger