After a spell in Jakubowizna followed by a longer spell of wet weather, I've not had a good chance of late to follow progress on the S7 extension as it carves its way through the fields between Jeziorki and Dawidy.
Below: just to the east of the Action warehouse, the S7 is taking shape nicely. In the distance, the new road bridge that will take local traffic over the expressway; part of the junction Węzeł Zamienie. The viaduct is about half a kilometre north of ulica Dawidowska (from which the photo was taken), and will replace it as the link between Jeziorki to the east and Zamienie and Dawidy Bankowe to the west.
Ul. Dawidowska will be closed once the S7 is ready; a pedestrian footbridge will at least allow local residents to cross the expressway here on foot. Below: looking south-east from Dawidowska across the S7, pillars going up will support the new footbridge.
Looking across the other way towards Warsaw, two cement silos and a crane suggestive of the work going on between here and ul. Baletowa, the next east-west road cutting across the S7 (which will cross over it on a viaduct).
Below: looking east along ul. Dawidowska, just outside the Action warehouse. Two bus stops, currently serving the 715 and 809 routes, will be moved up to the new viaduct.
Below: the fields between the railway line and ul. Starzyńskiego have become a no-go zone because of the intensity of building work, but mainly because of the mud resulting from days of rain. When finished (opening scheduled for September 2022), this will be a massive interchange (three-quarters of a cloverleaf plus three roundabouts).
Below: a short video from Leniusz, member of the Polish Skyscraper City community, showing the state of progress of the works, starting at ul. Baletowa, then moving south via ul. Dawidowska. Taken one day before these photos.
Bringing some strands together here. How to feel good within yourself, experience repeatable moments of joy, even when the world outside looks grim and the news is uniformly dismal. Strong sunlight plays a part but it's rarer at this time of year than in summer. Every moment of blue-sky day should be made the most of; cram in that Vitamin D; let the sun lift the mood.
But when it's dark and wet outside, retreat to a rich inner world. A world of imagination beckons; a world broader and deeper than the one we could possibly hope to visit physically. Unlimited in vistas, where time and space form no barriers. Here's one I did - what will you conjure up?
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Imagine. It's a beautiful autumnal morning; the storms have passed overnight leaving the sky intensely blue, entirely cloudless. You walk down the golf-course fairway, perfectly manicured, leaving footprints on the dewy grass. The sun sparkles off the river that forms the water hazard; you cross the small wooden bridge, past the next green, where a red flag on a white pole rattles in the wind. To your left, sand traps, recently raked. It's a quiet weekday; hardly anyone out with their clubs. To your right, tall fir trees, the sunlight accentuating the redness of the bark. The trees climb a slope towards a ridge, then fall away toward the ocean. You can just about hear the breakers. To your left, on the horizon, the serrated peaks of a distant mountain range, its tips already white with snow. Your morning walk across the golf course has been exhilarating. You're not there to play a round, but to meet some old friends for a late breakfast at the club house. Crispy bacon, pancakes, maple syrup, fresh orange juice - and some decent coffee. There are a few cars gleaming in the car park outside the moderne club house. They've arrived. You step inside, to be cordially greeted by the Maitre'd, who shows you to your table where your buddies have just sat down. Time to catch up and crack a few jokes. The windows are from ceiling to floor, and you can see the promontory and the ocean. Life is good.
How do you imagine a good morning?
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Now imagine uncorking a bottle of single-malt whisky from Islay; you know - those peaty ones. Pour some into a cut-crystal tumbler. Swirl it round and smell it - get a good nostril-full. Now raise the tumbler to your lips; feel the warmth on your tongue and within your mouth as you take a small sips, and the conviviality rising through your bloodstream as the whisky takes effect... Can you feel it? Can you imagine it? (I have conducted this thought-experiment many a time during Lent!)
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Joy can come unexpectedly in the tangible form of a kitten; Felusia, who was brought to us by Pani Natalia, our Ukrainian cleaning-lady of long standing. Two months old, Felusia's mother died soon after she was born. Pani Natalia's son found the kitten, gave it to his mother, who was told by their landlord that they couldn't keep pets. So Felusia came to Jeziorki. The fifth full-time cat in our household, she breaks the golden rule that male cats are fun and companionable, while female cats are sulky and keep themselves to themselves. Felusia is an affectionate scamp, and very sociable, following the humans to where they are. Curious and intelligent as was our dear, departed Lila, but far friendlier.
Having her sitting on my lap, stroking her behind the ears and hearing her purr contentedly is a certain and repeatable joyful event. Which is good for the health. Happy = healthy = happy = healthy = happy, a virtuous circle, for which one should feel deeply grateful.
It's been four months since Papuś died; a goodly interregnum. Or intercattum, indeed. I wish Felusia a long and happy and joyous life; if she lives as long as Papuś, I'll be saying farewell to her at the age of 81.
A really useful word, one lacking in English. "How are you feeling?" is the nearest to "Jak tam Twoje samopoczucie?" but it misses out on the precision. Literally, samopoczucie means 'self-perception'; the root of poczucie is czuć, to feel, to sense, to be aware - the Polish scouts' motto 'Czuwaj!' means 'be on the alert' - as in sniffing the air for signs of danger. Czuć means to feel, but it also means to smell - not as in 'to reek' but as in the transitive verb, meaning to sense the smell of something. Czuję, że coś jest nie tak - "I feel/I sense that something's not right."
Samopoczucie then is about gathering feedback from your self - from your body and mind. What ails you? What troubles you? Samopoczucie is mental and physical, and the answer to the question "jak samopoczucie?" can range all the way from Jak młody bóg! to Tragedia, panie!
We all know that the answer to "How are you?" in English is always "I'm fine, how are you?" while in Polish "Jak się masz?" is an open invitation to listen to half an hour of woes about pains here and there, missed doctor's appointments, pills being taken and full descriptions of the symptoms.
At this time of pandemic, our bodily self-awareness is sharpened for those first tell-tale symptoms - a fever, a cough, and disappearance of senses of smell and taste. It is all too easy to fall victim to hypochondria, and overimagine symptoms that aren't really there. It is also easy to brush off or ignore symptoms that are, pretending they're not. As ever, balance is key. If you feel a tickling cough - hold your breath, count to ten. If you can do that without coughing - you're OK for the moment. Be grateful for that. Be grateful that you've survived the first seven months of what could be a pandemic that lasts a couple of years. Gratitude sharpens awareness of risky situations.
Coughs and sneezes often presage colds and flus. I cough. I sniffle... "Where's that from? ...If I can catch a cold virus I could just as easily catch Covid-19..." Well, don't forget that we have mucous membranes in our noses and throats and bronchi, we have to clear mucosa from time to time, a one-off blowing of the nose or clearing of the throat isn't synonymous with catching a viral infection of the respiratory organs.
The more we learn about the after-effects of Covid-19, so-called 'long Covid', the more important it is to avoid getting it. The mental effects - dementia-like forgetfulness, grasping for words as well as gasping for breath - worry me.
I find that exercise is great preventative medicine. Should I feel just slightly dodgy - I knock out 30 press-ups, focusing on their quality (hold that plank position, chest to the floor then up until arms lock at the elbow). Sit-ups and planks work too. Keeping a record of my walking, exercising and diet is important to me. I've maintained a daily spreadsheet since 1 January 2014; and filling in a decent day's results is a boost to samopoczucie.
Daily walking, fresh air and catching that sunshine whenever possible. Lots of fruit and veg (today: apples, banana, grapes, tomatoes, leek, lentils and chickpeas, plus fresh orange juice). Alcohol in moderation, when writing - today, one bottle of Noc Kupały Polish Foreign Extra Stout, 6.4% from local brewery Perun. And lots of sleep. Eight and half hours last night, nine and half the night before. And I am so grateful I had a sauna installed in Jeziorki when we were building the house 20 years ago; nothing beats two x 15-minute sessions at 95C on a dismal autumn evening or freezing cold winter's night.
Today is World Mental Health Day. It is heartening how public awareness of mental health issues has been raised; depression is now understood to be very real and not something that can be dealt with by shouting "pull yourself together!" at the sufferer. I will share this graphic, and ask you also to bear its message in mind, and pass it on if you can.
Mental health is as important as physical health; a holistic approach to mind in body is needed. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is about changing maladaptive thinking, and in milder cases of depression it has been proven to be more effective than medication. Raising your thinking to the meta-level helps vastly, as does, I believe, a spiritual, rather than materialist outlook to life. I'll refine that thought - having the right balance between a spiritual and a materialist outlook.
Believing that life - the Universe - has a purpose - keeps one going. It keeps me going. I have a reason to reach an advanced age. I will not be swept away by some vulgar virus! To quote Marx (Groucho, the quotable one), "I intend to live forever - or die trying."
I was cooking myself some curried cod and couscous for lunch today. Stirring the pan, watching the white flakes of cod come apart, I became aware that I'd soon be eating fish muscles, muscles that once propelled this metre-long creature around the North Atlantic. Until it came into contact with a fishing net. Now, Gadus morhua can live up to 25 years, swimming around, eating smaller fish (including juvenile cod), and reproducing during the spawning season. Not much to do other than swim, eat and reproduce. As I stirred those flakes of muscle tissue into the curried couscous, I pondered upon the consciousness of fish.
Mammals - including the ones we eat - clearly have consciousness similar to ours. They have evolved in different ways to us humans, yet I am certain that there is a link in the way they perceive the environment around them; they feel joy, surprise, sadness and fear just as we do. Birds too - there's more intelligence going on per cubic millimetre of bird brain than in the same volume of brains (but the same can be said about our brains and elephant brains). Listening to birdsong instinctively tells you that birds are supremely aware. Yet intelligence, creativity, the capacity for abstract thought and the ability to communicate that thought - this is what ultimately sets us above other species. But consciousness is very much present there too; mammals and birds are clearly sentient creatures.
Fish, though? I have tended to see them as automatons of the deep - kept moving by instinct, with no capacity for reflection, emotion or self-awareness.
Not having any idea of what goes on inside a fish's mind, I have less trouble eating one that I do a cow, a pig or a chicken. I cannot relate to the sheer monotony of 25 years spent in the depths of the North Atlantic. Today, I ate cod for lunch, tinned tuna for breakfast and a slice of smoked salmon with supper, added anchovy fillets to flavour a lentil stew, and ate some cheese (Roquefort, Cheddar), but no meat. I am certainly eating far less meat or poultry than I did when I was younger; but giving up meat isn't going to happen outside of Lent. The occasional treat.
Anyway, we eat more than we need. On those days when I'm too busy to feed myself properly and yet still put in a lot of walking, I'm surprised how long I can go before blood sugar levels fall to that level where I start feeling wobbly. One should really eat enough to keep going and know when to stop. You can't pour more petrol into a car than it uses. And another great dietary mistake we're all prone to is eating too much before going to sleep. "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord, supper like a pauper."
As we evolve away from our hunter-gatherer past (that hunter-gatherer lifestyle was 90% of our past as a species!), we need to apply consciousness to our diet. It's easy to let your instincts dictate what you eat, how much of it you eat and when you eat it. The sugar-industrial complex suggests through advertising that we should give in to temptation: "Go on - it's me time!" "Naughty - but nice!" "Indulge yourself!" Bombarded by such messaging, we buy too much and eat too much. Food has become much cheaper as a proportion of our incomes spent on it.
We have evolved high levels of consciousness. We should buy consciously, consume consciously and eat consciously. Eat, mindful of the consequences of what you eat - for your body and for the planet.
[Update, October 2021: Light travels differently through the medium of sea water than it does through air. On land, animals can see a potential predator miles away, and this gives their brains time to devise a strategy to escape death. In the sea, there isn't this luxury. Therefore fish brains are less able to think about the future.]
After five days in Jeziorki, I returned to Jakubowizna on Saturday morning, and have remained here since - I am lucky enough not to have to go into the office, so I shall avoid travelling into Warsaw while the Covid cases continue to soar. Working from the działka - especially on sunny autumnal days - is a pleasure. I punctuate conference calls, editing and responding to emails with walks around the neighbourhood, and I'm impressed at the pace of work around the railway, in particular the roads.
During my five days' absence, new asphalt has been laid on both sides of the northern level crossing, which is now officially and finally open. All that's needed is a new pair of barriers. Today, the asphalt received white lines, traffic signs are up and all looks good. Above all, there's pavement, so my walks between the działka and the station have become safer - although there's still much work to go before the underground passage linking Jakubowizna to the platforms (and to Chynów) is opened.
Below: new asphalt, new road markings - and new pavement. Looking towards Chynów station from the southern end of Jakubowizna shortly before sunset.
Below: once the underground passage is completed, I will be able to walk part of the way home (the busy part) along a pavement. There's less traffic on the other side. No overtaking! 30km/h speed limit! Safer roads, I hope.
Below: the modernised level crossing awaits new barriers. For the time being, the old ones are in use. Like other level crossings along the modernised line, they come down very early - some three minutes before the train passes, which can frustrate drivers. To the right, the road towards to my działka, which has also been finally asphalted all the way to the junction.
Work on the roads on this part of the project nears completion, but the new level crossing at the other end of the station, by Widok, is still closed. I expect it will be ready within a week to ten days at the latest.
Below: bonus shot - a rather alarming cloud hangs over Mińsk... Mazowiecki.
While it's still relatively warm, I shall endeavour to keep out of harm's way and spend as much time working from the działka as possible. This morning, the temperature in the house (without any heating switched on) was 20.5C, while overnight the temperature outside had fallen to 9C, so the thermal insulation applied to the walls is effective!
Out on the działka, my nearest shops are in Chynów. There's a Mirabelka and a Top Market to choose from. Despite being located right in the heart of the garden of Poland, there's a dearth of local agricultural produce on sale. I was amazed to see Top Market selling fruit from South America, North Africa and the Far East, yet very little from Powiat Grójecki, our county.
Chynów has no farmers' market. If you open Targeo.pl, you'll find that all Chynów can offer is 'sprzedaż przydrożna' - roadside sales. Every Saturday, a number of pop-up stalls appear on the top end of ulica Wolska next to Top Market's car park, selling clothes, shoes and household goods.
At first sight it's odd that living in the Polish countryside, one cannot easily source local products from a local shop. If I want spinach, I have to buy Hortex-brand frozen spinach; even in season neither Mirabelka nor Top Market sell leafy fresh spinach. I can, however, buy leeks, nice tomatoes (malinowe - the best) and potatoes, but little more. No herbs in pots, no seasonal asparagus, no bundles of fresh szczypiorek...
Meanwhile in Warsaw (in particular in big suburban hypermarkets), the selection of food stuffs is mind-bogglingly huge. Whatever you want, in or out of season, local or exotic, you can find it easily. Why is it that agricultural products gravitate to the cities, whilst being unavailable in the places they are grown?
A simplistic answer is that this is due to an imbalance in the supply chain, caused by changing market demand, changing demographics and the response of the big retailers and wholesalers.
Agriculture in Poland is reshaping itself around the demands of modern retail. Here in Jakubowizna, my neighbours who are running efficient orchards have learned exactly what to do to maximise yields and crop quality, and get top zloty for their apples. Yet the left-behinds, who have not invested in manageable orchards, irrigation, crop protection or machinery, and still grow traditional apple varieties rather than those wanted by the supermarkets, are failing to make ends meet.
Beauteous apples destined for the tables of Warsaw
The gulf between rich farmer and poor farmer is opening up quickly. The former are buying up failed orchards, and consolidating them into ever-larger acreages, making it easier to negotiate directly with the buyers. But in the medium to long term, this will lead to falling biodiversity, lost varieties and an ever greater dependence on agrichemicals.
There is an answer. It is for small farmers to go organic and go local. But this needs a greater degree of organisation and sophistication than they can generally muster. Technology has part of the answer, using the tools and apps of e-commerce to make it easier to connect local grower with local buyer.
There is a demand. Everyone who has tasted the apples from my old trees says that while they look far worse than the perfectly uniform jabłka deserowe from the supermarket, they do have a taste which takes them back to childhood - and they are guaranteed 100% free of chemicals. But no supermarket buyer would ever buy apples as blemished as mine. And here's the problem.
It's not just about apples, potatoes, carrots and berries. Locally made cheese and sausage (kiełbasa) is starting to make its way to the big cities, where urban sophisticates give such artisan fare pride of place on their tables when entertaining, along with premium Polish wines. Again, the supply chains run one way - from field to the cities' forks. Na wsi there's little demand for a good, mature goats cheese, fine poultry-liver patés or gamey kabanos made from wild-boar meat. Certainly, the convenience-store chains, whose networks are penetrating deeper and deeper into the countryside, have no mechanism for dealing with individual producers at the local level. For them it's easier to sell packaged cheese slices and generic smoked-meat products from the big players. Add sliced-white toasting loaves, frozen vegetables, beer, vodka and cigarettes, and you have a reliable business model that ticks over nicely right across Central and Eastern Europe.
But it doesn't help the several hundred thousand Polish smallholders who are just a step up from subsistence level.
Technology can play a part. Imagine an app which tells you where the nearest 'wild' orchard is, what traditional varieties of fruit you can find there, and how much a kilo costs if you pick it yourself. Enter the orchard, switch on the GPS-enabled app, the farmer can see you're there, you pick as much as you need, and you pay the farmer directly to their online bank account.
But here's a scheme already up an running, founded by an old friend from Polish Saturday school and from the legendary Błękitna Trójka scout troop, Rafał Serafin. The film's in Polish, but it explains how local food from local producers is ending up on local tables. The pilot project is being replicated, but it needs to scale up to become a systemic solution for left-behind rural Poland. As Rafał says, subsistence farming in Poland is on a scale that tips elections. Read about the EU-funded Prosto od rolnika ('straight from the farmer') project in English as well as in Polish here.
Initiatives such as Koszyk lisiecki and Wiejska e-skrzynka have a big part to play in the EU's Green Deal, to spur recovery after the economic battering that Covid has delivered. This is win-win-win-win. Win for local producers who can get their food directly to consumers, cutting out the middleman. Win for local consumers, who get access to a wider choice of quality fare, produced locally. A win for the environment; less transport, less fumes and traffic. And a win for society, as an entire swathe of the population is lifted out of rural poverty (and thus less likely to vote for populists selling answers that sound simple but are wrong).
Rafał is looking for crowdfunding for a documentary film that will show how to get there in practical steps. One target group that he identifies is the children of smallholders, many of whom emigrated to the UK seeing few prospects for themselves in rural Poland. Rafał wants to make them think of the family farm as an investment opportunity with potential - and offers them a route map to do it.
[I'm amazed how much has been done in the past 12 months, especially given Covid! Czachówek-Warka is nearly ready, still much work to be done on the Chynów station passenger tunnel.]
Here we go, another birthday... first one without my father, whose advanced years had hitherto given me perspective and hope. I used to be able to say: "How can I consider myself 'old' when I have a father who's 34 and half years older than me!"
Well, he's gone; my father remains with me in my dreams - I dream of him more often than any other human being; I dreamt of him again last night. In that regular no-man's land dreamscape that's part Warsaw, part West London, we were on our way by bus from Jeziorki to Acton.
My father's death wasn't something I was prepared for this time last year. I had complacently expected him to sail on until 100 at least. His death, however, came quickly, mercifully, and unexpectedly. At the time of my father's passing, I suddenly became the Oldest Member of My Family; and my age is now upon me – although I should still realistically hope for another 25 to 30 years of active life.
I am mindful of the fact that my mother had her first heart attack weeks before her 59th birthday - the first of three, and that heart eventually killed her at the age of 88. Yet despite those heart attacks, she didn't change her lifestyle. She did zero exercise and ate cake for everybody. My father lived to 96 before his heart gave in. Question: do I have my mother's heart or my father's heart?
Update: I received the answer to this question on 5 April 2025. On what would have been my father's 102nd birthday, I had a heart attack. The cause: genetic. My liver was unable to process excess fat from the bloodstream, leading to clogged arteries in the heart. The solution: stents and a lifetime of taking meds.
Meanwhile, summer might be over, but the sun can still shine. My early-autumn birthday is becoming more and more of a metaphor for life with each passing year.
The sun is out – make the most of it! Don't waste time! Do something! I finish my breakfast, and get a 6.5km walk in before the clouds close in from the south-west bringing rain by the late morning. Manage that – get back for a second breakfast, still no rain - so time for a sunny motorbike ride around the manor. Top temperature today - a wonderful 24C. Rain, accompanied by thunder, came at lunchtime; then office work occupied me while the dark clouds roiled northward. They passed in the early evening, leaving an hour and half of cloudless skies before a perfect sunset to enjoy on a second stroll.
I give thanks for my health, I am grateful that I've so far managed to avoid SARS CoV-19. I did not feel comfortable going into the office last week; the journey home in a crowded train on Thursday was not something I'd want to repeat while numbers of cases are rising dramatically. It feels safe in Jeziorki and in Jakubowizna, but the centre of Warsaw - getting in and out of it in particular - does not.
Time for a quick look at blood pressure, an important indicator to keep track of. Back in June 2017, I had a short episode of high blood pressure (don't really know what caused it), and was prescribed a lifetime of pill-taking. I said no. I will deal with it naturally. More walking, more exercising, better diet. And it seems to have worked - see table below. But as with everything - there's no room for complacency, don't take your conscious mind off it.
Systolic
Diastolic
Pulse
4/10/2017
115
78
77
4/10/2018
116
79
75
4/10/2019
117
79
76
3/10/2020*
113
80
75
* Reading from yesterday as I don't have a blood-pressure monitor on the działka.
The systolic measurement is holding steady (below 120 is 'optimal'); the diastolic has crept up from 'optimal' (79 or less) to 'normal' (between 80 and 84); pulse stable. The American Heart Association states the normal resting adult human heart rate is 60–100 bpm, so 75 is around the middle there. Readings always taken first thing in the morning after waking up. I can but surmise that the doctor who prescribed me a lifetime's pill-taking more than three years ago has an agenda to shift product rather than to work with the patient for a more holistic approach to their health.
Exercise - so important. Press-ups: quality, not quantity. After filming myself knocking out 75 earlier this summer, I was appalled by how shallow and floppy they looked. So I'm now doing a minimum of 30, twice a day, but each one with a straight, plank-like back (imaginary tailbone tucked under the pelvis and thrust forward); chest down almost to the floor, then up until arms lock.
Walking: less this year than last, mainly because of lockdown. So I'm averaging 11,000 paces a day rather than the 12,000 I managed last year.
Pull-ups and weights: I'm so far ahead on last year that if I did no more until the end of 2020, I've already beaten 2019 in both categories. But of course, I shall carry on with both. And sit-ups, which I wasn't doing last year.
Portions of fresh fruit & veg: averaging 6.9 portions a day compared to 6.1 portions last year (and a mere 4.4 portions back in 2015). And alcohol - at the three-quarter mark of the year, 14.5 units a week average, compared to 17.3 weekly average across the first nine months of 2019. So the UK government guidelines of 14 units a week is within reach.
As the Polish Ministry of Health's slogan has it: 'I'm planning a long life' (Planuję długie życie). Good advice. Life is good, life is worth living, there are Things to be Done, Thoughts to be turned into Books, so staying positive is the key. Time for a walk.
Below: the forest to the east of my działka - pines and oaks.
Below: between the orchards and the tracks, Jakubowizna. A most special place.
Below: today's sunset over Wola Pieczyska, seen from across the tracks in Jakubowizna. Sublime end to the day.
An interesting phenomenon, I wonder whether anyone else experiences this, is sensitive to it - or am I unique? It's not a frequent thing; this is something that happens once every other day or every three days; I'm doing something - around the house, at work, on a walk, and suddenly, out of nowhere comes a word, interrupting my train of thought, a proper noun, a name of a person or place jumps into my consciousness. I must point out that this is soundless, not an auditory hallucination, more like a telepathic insertion.
Over time, I have learnt to notice this phenomenon, and examine it. First of all, I winnow through my immediate train of thought from the past few minutes, seeing whether there's been any thread or link that could have sparked that word, by association. If yes - dismiss. If no, I roll the word around my consciousness, seeking any other associations - with what? With anything I've read in recent weeks, or years even? Again, if it's an identifiable memory that's suddenly resurfaced - dismiss.
But these words which I will share below have passed these filters unscathed. They are genuinely puzzling. None of them I've ever knowingly pondered. Yet *PAFF!* and here there they are.
What's all this about?
These, then, are the puzzling proper nouns (nazwa własna) that have popped up, just like that, into my consciousness, unbidden, unassociated, unexplained, over the past month. At the beginning of last month I started to make a note of these in my notebook, for future appraisal. Popping into my stream of consciousness in the kitchen, over the laptop, or out on the street, they appeared the following order:
Capharnaum -- Demosthenes -- Pargeter (surname) -- Picayune (newspaper) -- Holy Sepulchre -- Karolinska Institute -- Brickyard 'M' -- Methuselah -- Scutari. What does this all mean?
There are two explanations: one is - this is a physical phenomenon of the brain - not one we understand, but nevertheless something rooted entirely in the tangible, within my skull.
The other is metaphysical, supernatural, magical, mystical, other-worldly meaning - there is some deeper significance, some message that I, Michael Dembinski, should... do what?
We are entering the Coen brothers' world of A Serious Man again. Was Reb Groshkover a dybbuk, or not? What was the meaning of the Hebrew letters found on the inside of Russell Krauss's lower incisors?
As I said, this is a regular, ongoing phenomenon; random names, place names; proper nouns.
Let's have a closer look at last month's main selection. Three are from the Bible (Capharnaum, a fishing village to the north of the Lake of Galilee, is mentioned in all four Gospels; the Holy Sepulchre is the tomb is which Jesus was interred after the Crucifixion; Methuselah is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, he lived to the age of 969 years old, and was the grandfather of ark-builder Noah). Demosthenes was an ancient Greek statesman; the New Orleans Picayune existed under that title from 1837 to 1914 after which it became the Times-Picayune. The Karolinska Institute is a research-led medical university in Stockholm, and Scutari was home to a British Army barracks and hospital (of Florence Nightingale fame) at the time of the Crimean War. Pargeter and Brickyard M - too broad to pin down.
They do seem like random misfirings of long-term stored memory; neuroscience, however, has more urgent tasks to take on that looking into this particular phenomenon, so I'm not hopeful of a satisfactory answer from science. Seeking metaphysical answers may take a long time, a fruitless search for meaning. A long wait one way or the other. In the meanwhile - it's fun, it's interesting. I shall continue jotting down these proper nouns as they come to me.
To quote from A Serious Man, "Please - accept the mystery."
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