Accident of birth

Twice a day, as I wash my teeth - I pray. First and foremost, for my health, for the health of my loved ones. It is an occasion to give thanks; for my health, for what life has given me. I have written about this before. I was lucky enough to have been born where I was born, and gifted with a good education and more lucky breaks in life than unlucky ones - and conscious of that fact - and for this I give thanks to God.

Born lucky but born human; mammalian biology that shares certain traits with more basic life forms, born with the simple goals of surviving and thriving. Born human means being born with the faculty of appreciating the higher levels of consciousness, of being able to rise above animal nature. The animal in a strange herd has its eyes wide open for potential threats, for potential mates - assessing weaknesses and strengths of other individuals in the pack. Our biology makes us born judgmental. And our baser nature appeals to this; the desire to drive expensive cars or wear flashy gold watches merely to impress one's status on the herd.

But being aware of our mammalian herd instincts does give us a tool for rising above our simple biology - consciousness.

In his book The Prophet, Lebanese mystical philosopher Khalil Gibran likened parenthood to an archer letting loose an arrow. How far - and in what direction - that arrow flies is determined by the archer's aim and his or her pull on the bowstring. But once the arrow is loosed - there is nothing more the parent can do to determine where it will land or how far it will fly. In short - upbringing is all. I always found that a useful metaphor as a parent.

But what of the child? As the arrow? Are we, our parents' children, the archers' arrows - doomed to fly along that one set trajectory determined simply by where we were pointed and how strongly our parents set us off? Isn't this too deterministic vision of human nature?

Life is a journey of continuous - continual - improvement. The Polish saying "Całe życie się człowiek uczy ale umiera głupi" ('One's learns throughout one's life but still dies stupid') is incredibly fatalistic, carrying with it the same notion as of an arrow in flight which cannot change its path. Is this so?

There are moments in life when one is brought short by the inadequacy of one's thinking or behaviour in response to difficult or new circumstances; these moments offer us the chance to reflect, to learn, to step up reach a higher meta-level, closer to Godliness, and further away from base animal nature.

Being thankful for what you've got is a first step - being able to cast aside biological judgmentalism in favour of a higher level appreciation of the potential of the human spirit that resides in us all - you, me, them - everybody.

Keeping that part of the basic animal nature under control requires will, and prayer; a kind word to the lady at the check-out, a friendly dzien dobry to the postman, a thank-you to the driver who holds the door open as you run up to his bus; a smile not a scowl at those people crowded in that late-running train. Behaviour that will result in greater social harmony.

Atonement

Sweeping generalisations, value judgments and stereotyping are the stock-in-trade of the blogger. And exaggeration and simplification are rhetorical tools in use from before the dawn of journalism. (A sweeping generalisation in itself!)

However here, I have to force myself, with the goal of delivering meaningful insights into everyday life in Poland, to pass my observations through a filter of cultural sensitivity. Pointing a satirical finger at Polish phenomena may win a quick laugh from my British or North American readers, but these phenomena so often have at their core some painful historical truths.

Nor should I mock the English of people who've worked much harder to acquire the language skills than have than native speakers of English, who acquired their language skills effortlessly. And here I must also confess that my less-than-100%-perfect Polish was learnt with a lot less effort than that of those ex-pats with Polish wives who've strived extremely hard to acquire the local language.

It is said by English writers about Poland that Poles are notoriously prickly about criticism of their country by foreigners. The Economist's Edward Lucas (who knows Poland exceptionally well, and speaks Polish having studied in Poland) says he is regularly criticised by Poles for saying how good things are here ("you live in fancy Warsaw hotels and know nothing of the poverty and deprivation of small-town Poland") and for saying how bad things are here ("you know nothing of the tragic history we've endured"). Finding an objective balance is especially difficult to do for a foreign writer commenting on Poland.

Sometimes humour is a useful tool for highlighting salient features of Polish life - but beware - the joke may well fall flat and your reader mistaking gentle teasing for sarcasm and takes offence. Or the cultural references used are completely lost on our Polish readers ("Dad's Army? The Simpsons?") Or a word-play lost in translation. Tread carefully here!

Analysing the dangers of writing for a mixed Polish and non-Polish readership, I conclude that the roots of the problem lie in differences going back to our early years. Those who spent the formative part of their lives - and indeed for anyone between 40 and 90, the greater part of their lives - in the communist system, will see things differently to those who by accident of birth were born in the bountiful West.

Above all, communism was a system in which everyone was supposed to be equal - and to a great degree it was so. In 1989, inequality in Poland (defined as the difference in wealth between the poorest and richest quintile of society) was - officially - lower than any country on earth apart from Japan. And communism's message of material equality was bolstered by the Catholic church's strong message of spiritual equality. How different, then, to the notion of inequality as the norm imbibed in the dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost secular, capitalist world!

Worldviews acquired in childhood are hard to reconfigure. I guess that there's less of a difference between the way that today's young Poles see the world and their counterparts in the West do than between the way their parents and grandparents see it compared to how middle-aged and elderly Westerners do. In particular the desirability of social equality. But then time will blur differences between Poland and the West, time will reconcile, dialogue will heal.

Education and the social divide

Today's Gazeta Wyborcza leads with the news that Poland has done reasonably well in the latest PISA rankings of educational attainment of schoolchildren. Poland is catching up with western Europe, with strong progress in reading and natural science, yet is not so good in maths. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) looks at 14-15 years olds across all the OECD countries (and indeed the EU member states) and compares their level of educational progress. Download the full report here to see how Poland compares.

The good news is that Poland is making rapid progress; in the nine years that Poland has been covered in the PISA rankings, it has jumped from 'below OECD average' to 'above OECD average' - and is well above the UK.

I've mentioned many times before the social divide that splits Poland into poor rural and rapidly-enriching urban. The PISA summary confirms that education is the key to overcoming social and economic disadvantage. Giving talented children from impoverished rural communities the chance to attend a decent school that gives them the chance to realise their potential and to contribute fully to society.

Eddie's school has a scholarship fund aimed at such children. I am supporting this fund to help (in a tiny way) to reduce social imbalance in Poland, and I'd ask my readers at this time of year to consider also helping poorer children get a good education. So please chip in!

SZKOŁA PRZYMIERZA RODZIN IM. JPII
FUNDUSZ STYPENDIALNY
Nr rachunku: 87 1600 1127 0003 0122 0640 1001

My children have had a good primary and middle education - I'd like some less privileged children to have the same chance too.

"What's the English for kombinować?"

Yesterday in the office Ewa and Mariola were reminiscing about the old communist days, when obtaining consumer goods was several orders of magnitude more difficult that in is today. Mariola was talking about getting a washing machine, and how one had to kombinować in order to get one.

Teasingly I asked "What's the English for kombinować? Quick as a flash, Ewa replied 'to combine', which left the entire office helpless with laughter for several minutes. But such is the nature of etymology, that indeed, there must be some truth in Ewa's rejoinder. Kombinowanie, the gerund from the infinitive kombinować, is about seeking combinations, putting together several elements in a none-too-straightforward puzzle.

Getionary has kombinować as 'to be involved in shady business'. Kombinowanie may well (hurrah!) have been pushed back to the fringes of acceptability in today's Poland. But back in communist times, the practice was mainstream. Kombinuj or starve.

Yes indeed. Though my English upbringing spared me the privations of communism's consumer hell, I have a vicarious cognisance of everyday life in those days. Example: my cousins in Wrocław lived in a block of flats. One day, a consignment of lawnmowers appeared in a nearby shop. Immediately, a queue formed to snap them up. Most of the people in the queue did not have a lawn. But they knew the power of physical goods in a deficient consumer market. My cousin's husband swapped his newly-acquired lawnmower for a large number of windscreen wiper blades for the ubiquitous Maluch (Fiat 126P), obtained via unofficial channels. These were readily exchangeable currency - for meat, tights, toilet paper.

A joke of the 1980s stated that the worst sentence a court could mete out to an offender was '20 years without contacts'. To survive you had to kombinować. To kombinować you needed contacts. Someone working in this factory or that warehouse, someone working on contract in Libya, someone with an uncle in Chicago. You had to know who could be trusted (for as we now know know from the IPN, many Poles were sneaking on their neighbours to the security apparatus), who you could offload the latest Mud, Smokie, Deep Purple and Abba LPs on in exchange for Levis jeans or Marks & Spencers knitwear from Bazar Rózyckiego.

A final question remains. Is kombinowanie a product of 45 years of communism - or did Poles kombinować between the wars? If they did, was kombinowanie the result of 120 years of foreign rule and oppression? Does the verb kombinować appear in Polish literature prior to the 1790s in the current context?

UPDATE: Worth dipping into Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776. For here we come face to face with 'to combine' as used in the Polish sense. In the passage below, consider the verb 'combine' as kombinować, and the noun 'combinations' as kombinowanie:

"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate [...] Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people". In contrast, when workers combine, "the masters call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen."

It's about atmosphere, klimat

Early sunsets limit walking time. A clear blue sky means temperatures will plummet away after dark. Below: the sun is sinking fast though it's not yet three pm. Ul. Trombity.

Sunset today was at 15:25, which rather cuts back walking time on a weekend afternoon after lunch. Photo below taken ten minutes after sunset, and indeed here is the klimat, that ambient mood of stillness and cold on the face.

Below: Looking towards Zamienie. It's -8C; not too cold, though you feel it when you take your gloves off!

Time to turn back and head for home. As I return, those *PAFF* moments multiply - I've been here before, yet not in this lifetime. I try to savour them as they happen, like holding my breath, keeping that feeling like the waking aftertaste of a dream. Days like this I never experienced in childhood, and yet they feel like they were experienced in childhood - yet as an adult. These experiences are regular, commonplace and familiar - and yet entirely inexplicable. One that befell me later the same evening. Driving in the snow, traffic, cold, I look left then right before turning into a main road. *PAFF!* Now, where could I ever had such a recollection from? I can't recall ever having driven in snow in the UK, yet the memory was from more than 15-30 years ago...

Winter wildlife, Jeziorki

The swans and storks have long since flown south for the winter. In early October I was out and about with long lens looking for wildlife; a local farmer told me that 'ptactwa już nie ma' ('the birds have all flown'). But then pheasants are perennial around here.

This chap (above) was foraging in the field next to our house; I caught him with long lens from my bedroom window this morning. A reminder to feed the birds at this time of year. Below: A flock of crows that had been hanging around the apple trees in the adjacent field take off and fly to the poplars across the road.

Today, not so good.

The 07:27 from W-wa Jeziorki into town didn't arrive. Neither did the 07:52. The 08:12 came on time, and when it did, it was carrying the equivalent of three train-loads of rush-hour commuters. Below: Passengers cluster around the level-crossing keeper's hut in the hope of learning when their train would come.

Below: Room for another 20 inside? Fortunately, passengers showed plentiful reserves of social harmony, helping one another in, and putting up stoically with the crowded conditions. I met fellow blogger and near neighbour (Student SGH of Politics, Economy, Society blog fame); at the station. we both regretted not taking Puławska into town today.


Only as the train approach W-wa Centralna did I realise the scale of the chaos on Polish railways today. There were four trains backed up from Centralna (headed by one bound for Berlin with a broken-down locomotive) going nowhere. And on arriving at W-wa Śródmieście, I boarded this train (left) to take me the one stop to W-wa Powiśle. It soon became apparent it was going nowhere, already having been standing here for 90 minutes. The indicator board said Opóżniony na czas nieograniczony (delayed for an unlimited time).

And so I walked from Śródmieście to my first meeting of the day, arriving over an hour late. My journey from home had taken two hours and ten minutes; one of the people I was meant to be seeing had a two-and-half hour journey in, including a 7km walk.

Jeziorki, dawn, winter

I wake well before dawn, do some writing and observe the cloudless night sky. I can tell that it will be a most perfect dawn. Below: view from the kitchen window into the garden.

I have to get to Platan Park for my first meeting, five and half km from home, by 8am. It's just over an hour's walk in these conditions, so I decide instead rather than walking all the way to stroll up to Puławska, take a bus towards ul. Poleczki, and then walk to my destination.

Setting off up the path that links ul Trombity to ul. Sarabandy (below) shortly before sunrise (7:21 this morning), the temperature was -15C. And *PAFF* there's that old feeling of anomalous familiarity again!

Below: Snow lying heavy on the branches suggesting stillness of the air overnight; plenty of untrodden snow on the ground. The sun is just rising over the Las Kabacki forest.


Left: ul. Sarabandy, drainage ditch to the left. During the June floods the water blocked the road. The ditch is still fuller than usual. A snowdrift has blocked access to the continuation of the footpath between Sarabandy and Klarnecistów ('Clarinettists' Street'); I have to scramble over it, up to my knees in snow. The path (below) itself is slippery, treacherous. An icy dip awaits the incautious!

Below: ul. Drumli ('Jew's Harp Street'), approaching Puławska. Southern Warsaw's infamous artery is bad this morning, as ever. The bus takes 25 minutes to get from here to ul. Poleczki, just over 4km away.

Below: From Puławska I walk across to Poloneza via ul. Wodzireja (lit. 'Dance-leader's Street'; 'Master of Ceremonies Street'). The last bit is without asphalt. Churned up totally by trucks and four-wheel drives, it would have been impassable to pedestrians had the puddles not frozen over solidly. I arrive at Platan Park one hour after leaving home. I could have walked the whole way and had a more aesthetically-pleasing experience, plus more exercise, had I eschewed Puławska and the frustratingly-slow bus ride.