Touched by Boris

A few days ago, I received a message suggesting that a massive storm was heading towards Central and Eastern Europe. Checking Meteo.pl, I saw that its epicentre is due to move through Czechia and southern Poland. The weather app  on my phone was telling me that Mazovia would be hit by heavy rain in the late afternoon. I got all my paces in before 3pm; shortly after that, the sky darkened and the rain began. No thunder, no lightning – just just intense rainfall. Around 6pm I was watching a The Rest is History podcast – suddenly the banter stopped, the internet buffering had ceased, electricity was cut. Outside, the dark clouds made it as black as night. There was nothing to do but go to bed early.

Four hours later, I was woken by the kitchen lights coming back on. The router reset itself; the internet was back, so I checked social media for news of what was happening. Obviously the south was bearing the brunt, with floodwaters rising rapidly. 

But here locally – what's happening? I checked the Facebook page of the local volunteer fire brigade (OSP KSRG* Chynów) to discover that in Grobice, the next village to the north-east of Jakubowizna, there has been massive storm damage, with roofs ripped off houses.

Today, I went to check. The sun is shining. Stepping out of the działka, the first thing I see is a fire engine in the distance, then a police helicopter flying low across the sky. Other than that – everything's normal. No trees fallen across the road. Not even snapped branches, or tons of windfall apples on the ground in the orchards. Two trains pass each other at Chynów station, both on time. I walk northwards towards Nowe Grobice, turning into ulica Sezamkowa (lit. Sesame Street), then straight into Grobice. No sign of any passing storm other than a few small puddles on the asphalt. People getting on with their garden chores, out for a walk, washing their cars.

But then I pass the road junction in the centre of Grobice and the village shop. Beyond it, I see the scene captured by the fire brigade. The bulk of the mess has already been tidied up, the road is passable, but it's clear what had happened. Some five or six houses and outbuildings have had their roofs pulled away and scattered across the other side of the road. 

Fences had been blown over, garden furniture flung hither and yon, a children's playhouse lifted over the garden fence and into the street. One house, still under construction, has a huge plastic sheet where a roof once covered it; remnants of that roof lie across the road in the grass verge. Overhead a drone is buzzing; probably from an insurance company, assessing the damage from the air. Wreckage is strewn across barnyards, people are tidying up. The damage is highly concentrated. Just 30 to 50 metres up and down the street there's no sign of anything untoward. Old barns, gardens, untouched.

What happened here? Was this a tornado? Later, I'd walk home along the farm track that runs parallel to the south of Grobice. Not even a snapped branch let alone any fallen trees. If this was a tornado, it must have been extremely localised, appearing suddenly over Grobice, rather than leaving a path from south to north or from east to west. 

The rest of my walk revealed no further damage. A puzzling meteorological phenomenon. 

Meanwhile, southern Poland and Czechia are bracing themselves for rising waters as the peak rainfall in the mountains makes its way towards Wrocław and Prague. Lądek Zdrój (where my aunt lived in the 1970s and '80s), Kłodzko and Głuchołazy have been heavily hit by the flooding. 

The storm's fringes have passed central Poland, Tuesday promises to be hot (25C or 77F) and dry. The second half of September and it's still like high summer in my youth. Climate-change deniers – get real.

[Update Monday 16 September. I cannot believe how far the wind carried the roof. I measured it today; 80 metres or 260 feet.]

*KSRG = Krajowy System Ratowniczo-Gaśniczy (National Rescue and Fire-Extinguishing System)

This time last year:
Clinging on and letting go

This time four years ago:
Out in the mid-September heat

This time five years ago:
Poland's ugliest building?

This time 10 years ago:
Weekend cookery - prawns in couscous

This time 12 years ago:
Draining Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Early autumn moods

This time 14 years ago:
The Battle of Britain, 70 years on

This time 15 years ago:
Thoughts about TV, Polish and British

This time 16 years ago:
Time to abandon driving to work!

This time 17 years ago:
Crappy roads take their toll

Ten grand a year

What was that? Something has guided me away what I was doing; I'd started watching a documentary about an American WW2 fighter aircraft (the Curtiss P-40) and I'm being told... write. OK then, I close YouTube and open Blogger. What will happen? I wait; the conduit is open.

{{ Nonsense. I'm tugged back. It doesn't work every time, but looking up, the desert sky says "yes". Yup. Nodding my head. Thirty-three palm trees, shimmering heat. Thin, wispy clouds, and a feeling of betrayal? A dog barks in the distance, I stand up and brush the sand off my trousers. Gripping the rail I climb back up into the hot cab. I don't really want to. But the exercise is over, time to move. Can't be any better though? Thirty-three palm trees – nah! Didn't count 'em. It's what they say. C'mon, move. Start the truck. A bottle of gin for the officers' mess? Procurement procedures? Forget about that. Use the money from the crap game. Who snitched on me? WHO? Pete?

Night falls as I reach my destination. I park the truck and head straight for the Schlitz neon. An ice-cold beer. TV. Some laughs with Jack Benny. Aw hell, I forgot about that gin. "Sir! A bottle of gin with my compliments!" About turn, quick march. Back to my next beer. Dollars. Yeah, dollars. Many of them. Parked. Parking. A parking lot. A vacant lot. Parking – two bucks a day. Fifty cars. I pay my man ten bucks a day to look after 'em, I pay City Hall fifty bucks a day for the lot, that's forty bucks profit. Two hundred a week, ten grand a year. 

Another beer, bowl of salted peanuts some olives! Yeah ten grand a year. Jack Benny. Swell guy, huh? Always makes me laugh. Ten grand a year? Whaddya say? Keep City Hall sweet, that's all there is to it. Veteran of the Pacific War, Korean War – who's gonna say no? Invest the profits, build up a chain of parking lots right across the Midwest. A man can dream. Big dreams. Soon as I'm outta uniform. 

Thirty-three palm trees. Why's that coming back to me? Anticipation; another mission looming. No, nothing dangerous this time. Ferry flight south as flight engineer. Senioritas. Americano. Few dollars go a long way. Should be good. Bottle green, bar-room lights through bottle green. ZTILHCS. Reminds me of a movie I once watched.

A time, a place, an industry. Yes, we are all one. Scattered here and there, each with our own stories to tell, except – who wants to hear them? Lost in a muffled cacophony of voices, of stories, some stand out, others are just, well, plain ordinary, just the kind of stories that most folk have to tell. You wanna listen? You're rare. Most folk are in too much of a rush to listen. Me? I wanna get on. No time to listen to you. But you – I want you to listen to me. A life interrupted, trying to get it back together after too much trouble. 

A better man? A worse man? Who can judge, padre? That's how it was. Twentieth Century Fox and United Artists. Did they get it right, or did we play out the stories they showed us?

Another beer, then the long drive back. At least the night's still warm. }}

This time last year:

The ephemeral pleasures of materialism

This time two years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia modernisation – a long way to go
(Two years on: still a long way to go)

This time three years ago:

The Wilderness and the Garden 

This time four years ago:
Back in Aviation Valley

This time five years ago:
My flight to Rzeszów – delayed

This time eight years ago:
English as she is used in Europe

This time nine years ago:
Where asphalt is needed – Nowy Podolszyn to Zgorzala

This time 14 years ago:
I cycle to work along the cyclepath along ul. Rosoła

This time 16 years ago:
First apple 

The Ineffability of Consciousness

I continue to be troubled by the relationship between spirituality and scientific method. Does Big-C Consciousness, that precedes all, that is the origin of all matter and energy in the Cosmos, does it will itself to be disrobed by our science?

Our personal subjective experience of consciousness is central to our being. Is it merely a byproduct of human evolution, along with instinct and intellectual capacity for problem-solving, existing only within our skulls? Or is it a fundamental property of the Universe, which we experience locally as essence of our existence? Can we tap into that cosmic, non-local consciousness, our brains being like wifi-equipped laptops that can function autonomously as well as being able to tap into the world-wide web? 

Neurologists have been trying to pin down the seat of human consciousness for decades and still have no definitive answer. Google Gemini frames it thus: "Consciousness is likely a result of the interconnectedness of multiple brain regions rather than a single, localized area. Scientists continue to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness through various techniques, including brain imaging and neuropsychological studies." 

Good luck with that. As with attempts to reconcile Einsteinian relativity with quantum physics.

But scientists will go on trying. Curiosity is an innate gift in us, we have that thirst to understand, both the scientific and the spiritual. But is it enough to know? To know enough? Is it sufficient to know that there are things that we will never know? 

Does Genesis hold the clue?

¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded Adam, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

¹⁷ But the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

In a talk on YouTube I heard a reference to Stanford professor William Tiller and his experiment with the pH of a beaker of water becoming one unit more acidic after being left overnight in a room in which people had been meditating.... Now, that's should be easy to prove or debunk. 

But do metaphysical phenomena wish to be quantifiably reduced to a physical proof, empirically checked out? 

I don't think so. Which is why his paper has disappeared. Flaky woo-woo; not something he should have even attempted. I have written before about attempts to nail down paranormal phenomena using an approximation of the scientific method. Scientists would be loathe to admit the possibility that those paranormal phenomena might not want to quantified. Even scientists who fully embrace spirituality and religious practices, such as Rupert Sheldrake, still hold out for scientific explanations of the nature of consciousness: "Electromagnetism and light ... I think they're the interface with consciousness," he says in his discussion with Jesse Michels released today. [1:33:31-1:33:47]. But maybe consciousness exists in a realm inaccessible to the scientific method. Maybe consciousness is destined to remain a mystery for the scientific method.

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking says that in trying to reconcile the loose ends of physics, there are only three possibilities: 1) it's just a matter of time before science brings it all together, 2) there is no ultimate theory of everything, just an endless succession of theories that describe the universe with ever-increasing accuracy, or 3) this is no ultimate theory of the universe that can describe reality in merely scientific terms, leaving us with an eternal, ineffable, unsolvable mystery.

I revel in the notion of mystery for mystery's sake; mystery as an aesthetic. We all love a good mystery – but we want it solved. We seek closure.

The ending of what is still my favourite film, the Coen brothers' A Serious Man, disappoints so many viewers. Has Larry Gopnik just been diagnosed with an incurable disease? Will Danny Gopnik and his classmates be killed by the tornado heading towards them? Joel and Ethan Coen are saying to the audience: "Please, accept the mystery." I like this. It is realistic. There's rarely closure in life.

Maybe we are not ready – nowhere near ready – to understand the true nature of reality. It is important to preserve a sense of mystery and wonder about the universe, why it exists and where it's heading. Belief that humans have complete knowledge of Cosmic reality and can explain it with mathematical formulae diminishes our sense of awe and reverence, and it is that sense that makes our lives more rich and purposeful.

But whereas full understanding may never come to us, faith is there in its stead. What as I child I'd call 'God', these days I'd call 'Big-C Consciousness'. It is that which that predated and predicated matter; in the beginning was Consciousness, and it has a Purpose, a teleology, a destination, an endpoint towards which the Cosmos is evolving, the Universe unfolds. That gives me comfort and hope. And a happy life.

This time last year:
Summer's welcome extension

This time seven years ago:
All hopped up

[Boiled local hops today to add taste to alcohol-free beer!]

This time nine years ago:
September song

This time 11 year ago:
A traveller's tale (reading this shows how fast Poland has progressed in transport infrastructure)

This time 12 years ago:
One for the record - hot September day (30C)

This time 13 years ago:
MOSTTOMOST

This time 14 years ago:
The half-closed airport

This time 15 years ago:
Last of the summer bike rides to work?

This time 16 years ago:
My own Polish Adlestrop

This time 17 years ago:
Laurie Anderson's chillingly prescient 'O Superman'

Late end to high summer

The past week has seen settled weather over Poland, hot days with maximum temperatures over 30C, just a few wispy clouds – exactly the kind of weather you'd want to enjoy on a summer holiday. Evening after evening of gorgeous sunsets, the red sun descending cleanly over the horizon. Summer weather, to be enjoyed (even though it was too hot for a walk before the evening cooled the air outside). The leaves are just starting to turn yellow from green; it still feels a long, long time before leaves fall.

All this will come to an end overnight, as rain sweeps in from the west. Rain is expected for five of the next seven days (which farmers will welcome as August and early September have been unseasonably dry). An end to the spell of sunset walks.

Below: the new way (described in this post from last week), and on it, a roe deer (Capreolus capreolus, sarna europejska). It darted off to the right, and then a second deer emerged from the left to follow the first one. Two mistakes, the first forgivable (I didn't have time to swap my 18-55mm for my 70-300mm telephoto zoom), the second less so – I looked down the check I'd captured the image below rather than staying alert to see what happens next, and so I missed the second deer. So wonderful to share an ecosystem with these shy and elusive creatures. Hunting them for sport is for the psychopathic.

Below: fields and forest, between Chynów and Krężel. I recognise this view, though not from this life.

Below: the setting sun shines through trees at the edge of the forest between Węszelówka and Chynów. 

Below: ulica Spokojna (lit. 'Peaceful Street'), Chynów, between where the asphalt ends and the forest begins.

Below: the sun dips towards the orchard treeline; ul. Ogrodowa (lit. Garden St), Chynów.

Below: sunset the day earlier, ul. Torowa (lit. Tracks St.). I have yet to experience what the Japanese call mono no aware, the sensation of transience as the first hints of autumn arrive in the air.

Below: double-decker Koleje Mazowieckie train on its way to Warsaw, pushed by the loco from the rear. These limited-stop services link Chynów to W-wa Służewiec in a mere 22 minutes. 

Below: Robinson R44 Raven, registration SP-WWW, catching the rays of the setting sun over Chynów. A shutter speed of 1/1250 sec almost freezes the whirling rotor blades.

As I prepare to press the 'publish' button at 2pm, the clouds have obscured the sun, but my digital thermometer tells me it's still 28.7C outside. No doubt cloudless days will return, but they will become less frequent and the heat will be dialled down. Last year, I didn't have to start heating up the house until 22 October; the bricks hold the heat well. Will that record fall this autumn?

This time six years ago:
Ulica Zatorze gets civilised

This time 12 years ago:
S2/S7 junction, Hołubcowa viaduct, under construction

This time 13 years ago:
To Stara Praga, and back

This time 14 years ago:
Late summer scenes, Warsaw

This time 17 years ago:
Roadworks and detours on ul. Puławska in Mysiadło

To ease the soul

Unexplainable moments of euphoria, followed by a bit of a downer – nothing to worry about, once you accept the cyclical nature of reality as we subjectively experience it. Take it easy! Mood is to personality as weather is to climate. Things change. The key is to understand that, and keep those worse days in check. They will pass.

In my youth I was rather taken with the pseudoscience of biorhythms; though debunked long ago, I remain of the opinion that we do undergo short-term and long-term waves of physical (and mental) ups and downs that are of internal, biological, origin. The biorhythm theory posited exact time periods of around one month (which kind of makes sense given the menstrual cycle), though tracking this back to birth is ridiculous. Yet biological cycles are there, for men as well as for women, it's just that  the frequency and amplitude of these, however, too subjective for science to concern itself with. A purely biological low ebb and high tide is something experienced by all; overlay that with psychological lows and highs and something definite clicks into place.

So we all have better days and worse days, we cycle through them. But taking this onto the metaphysical plane, have I an obligation to myself and to the Cosmos to be happy? Regardless of external factors that add or subtract to the sum of personal happiness, there's also the issue of satisfaction. Satisfaction from a job well done. Dissatisfaction from putting off a task until tomorrow. Has the biological container that hosts my soul have an obligation to the Cosmos to do more? 

Moni suggested that I suffer from 'productivity anxiety' and recommended me a YouTube video to watch. Productivity (which I mentioned recently here) is one issue, but the other is consistency, especially professional consistency. Good days and bad days at work. Sometimes I think to myself that professionally, I'm rocking it. Speaking at seminars or conferences, I take a theme and offer brilliant new insights that clearly impress the audience. At other times, however, I find myself mumbling inane cliches; I'm not taking the audience with me. I leave the stage disheartened. Again, the ups and downs, cyclical in nature – or rather spiral in nature, as one lives and learns, each low is still higher (in terms of lessons taken in) than the previous low last time round.

Reality is far more complex than the way it's portrayed both by physicalists (who claim that there's nothing more to reality than physical matter) and by organised religions with their overarching God that they'd place somewhere outside of reality. Subtleties are too nuanced to portray easily.

Often I'd ask on this blog – how much spirituality do I need? And now, having written those words, I feel back in the groove. Wu wei – effortless effort, no forcing, actionless action. If I'm having a downer, let it be, it will pass. Like a cloudy day, it makes one appreciative of sunshine. 

But hold on tight to the Cosmic Purpose and stay aligned with it. I feel the need to open up and channel, let my fingers pour out over the keyboard and forget the humdrum routine, the calls to do this and that; stay connected with the Ineffable. Stay in awe of the Infinite & Eternal, and stay grateful. Shun complacency, and rise. Spiritual evolution. 

Letting go and wandering off is not a good idea. There are many things one can let go of, one should let go of – but faith is not one of them.

This time last year:
Retrocausality and Goneself

This time two years ago:
Many Machcins

This time five years ago:
The Long Dark Half-Hour of the Consumerist Soul

This time six years ago:

Early-September travel news

This time seven years ago:
Fields filling up with houses

This time 14 years ago:
Battle of Britain: Poland's contribution

This time 15 years ago:
Sewer under ul. Karczunkowska

Sunset's Trip Revisited

The past few weeks have been superb – weather associated with southerly climes, now available in Mazovia. The sun now sets earlier and earlier; today at 19:19. In just over three weeks, it will be Equilux (exactly 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night). And then, on 25 September, the sun will rise over Chynów (seat of a third-order administrative division) at 06:26 and set at 18:26. The days are shortening rapidly.

While the evenings are clear, a walk at sunset is in order. Watching the earth spin and the sun disappearing is a moment of connection with the Cosmos; that sudden sense of, "YES! I am on a planet within a solar system!" comes into sharp focus.

At this time of year, the sun no longer sets over Sułkowice, but over Wola Pieczyska. A mystical, magical moment awaits. "Slow-burning star sinking low/Heaven knows where you go"

"Horizon's appoint you'll keep" – "as the world turns at the edge of night"... The magic effect lasts for about half an hour, maybe a bit longer; as I return home, I pass neighbours out for an evening walk; life is indeed good and happy and carefree; but tempered with an awareness of the shortening days. 

In the distance, a hot-air balloon. Sunset flight. Soon.

This time last year:
The Unbearable Pleasance of Flashedback Familiarity

This time last year:
The imperceptible end of summer

This time two years ago:

Another new bus stop for ul. Karczunkowska

This time three years ago:
Energy, focus and state of mind

This time four years ago:

50 years on - Gunnersbury Grammar school reunion

This time six years ago:
All things visible and invisible

This time eight years ago:
Work starts on Warsaw-Radom rail modernisation

This time nine years ago:
Won't be long 'til summertime is through

This time 11 years ago:
It was a good year for the apples

This time 13 years ago:
Early-September moan about the commuting

It's the new way

Three years ago, I wrote about no-entry signs that had suddenly popped up on either ends of a thoroughfare between Machcin II and Adamów Rososki. The situation is as is; though the new signage suggests the old ones were defaced or torn down. Below: the farm track in question. Note the sign to the right, in the shadows... Question – has this any legal status? (My take is no – it doesn't.) But does it stop people from using it? Yes and no.

Although the unasphalted farm track is shown on local authority maps as a public right of way, according to the same maps, the actual land is privately owned. Below: as official as maps go, that yellow line is pretty unambiguous. All entirely transparent; check it out online. The light-blue lines demarcate individual plots of land, and further drilling down gives ownership details.

And yet although the road is clearly marked as being 'private, no through-road' at both ends (below); the land between the house halfway down the road and the lower end of the map is indeed shown to be privately owned; but the top end is not part of that same land. This sign, however, suggests otherwise.

Talking to local people, this unilateral decision by "new people from town" to close off the road to farm traffic has been controversial, to say the least. On today's walk, I have seen that a compromise work-around has been reached. Approaching the track heading north from Machcin II, I noticed a new way (below) carved out through bushes, running parallel to the disputed road. There's nothing like a new path to explore!

Below: I go. Further down the path; see the tape-topped staves marking the left-hand edge of the path.

This is important at this time of year, when wagon-trains of apples are hauled by tractors from the orchards to the collection points (punkty skupu – thanks Roman P for the correct translation). The unilateral closure of the road had meant a two-kilometre detour for the apples, bumping over unmade tracks (bumping means bruising, means lower prices for the crop). Interesting to see whether the new way acquires a proper surface.

Below: I have drawn in this new way in yellow and the location of the no-entry signs. Comparing the Google Maps satellite image with the local authority map (top), you can see on the latter that there is actually a space demarcated between existing land-holdings, presumably for access purposes.

A difficult issue to judge. The people in the house keep two large dogs that are allowed to run free outside the enclosure. Now, while pedestrians are not explicitly prohibited, knowledge that those dogs can rush up to you barking puts people off. I take a big stick with me when using this route. Now, local walkers have an alternative.

September begins as hot as August ended. Temperature outside at half past four in the afternoon is over 27C.

This time three years ago:
September (and Jupiter)

This time five years ago:
Fiftieth anniversary of me starting grammar school

This time six years ago:
Two films about the legendary Polish 303 Sqn

This time eight years ago:
Kępno's intriguing station

This time ten years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2

This time 11 years ago:
A green light for consumer spending

This time 13 years ago:
Procrastination - is it the same as laziness?

This time 15 years ago:
Remembering the outbreak of WW2