Dorian Gray

Surely all of you read Oscar Wild's masterpiece "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (if not, you can download it from here), but probably not all of you met such character in real life.

I did. And it was a very bizarre experience. Even though the guy was unquestionably handsome, successful and smart, still I found him extremely repelling as his major life concern seemed to be finding a way of staying young (and beautiful, presumably) forever.

That was a very interesting lesson to me. Some time ago I realized that I overestimate the physical beauty of the people that I find internally beautiful, but until meeting this guy I had not known that it would also work in the other direction, that objectively beautiful people can become unbearably ugly in my eyes when I find their life values/character repelling (I honestly found it impossible to look at the guy without showing disgust on my face, so all the time throughout our date I was focusing my attention on the wine glass that I kept in my hand... And as you can imagine it was also one of the longest hours in my life... An hour that I will never get back - if he would only understand that it is not about how long we live/are young but how well we use the time that we have. I guess he was not that smart after all.)

2007 in review

Here is Monika's "the best of 2007":

Top 5 books:

• Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts by Sylvia Plath - not as captivating as Bell Jar but still it makes a very good reading
  
• Rwący Nurt Historii. Zapiski O Xx I Xxi Wieku by Ryszard Kapuściński - so true, that it hurts, unfortunately no English translation exists of this book
  
• The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors by Ann Gibbons - a very well written book about scientific quest to find origins of our specie
  
• Hardboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto - spooky and spiritual
  
• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer - a story about fundamental Mormons that reads better than many criminals
  

Top 5 movies:

• The Rape of Europa - an absolutely amazing documentary about the fate of art during and after WWII
  
• The Namesake - a beautiful story of national and cultural identity in the times of progressive globalization
  
• Once - a story about love and friendship expressed through heart-grabbing music
  
• The Lives of Others - a stunning movie about totalitarian system that highlights the importance of individuals and their moral choices
  
• Grease-sing-a-long at The Castro - everybody knows this one... It's not the greatest movie of all times, but "seeing" it in The Castro is something that everybody interested in mass culture should experience at least once in their lives...
  

Top 5 restaurants of San Francisco:

• Parea It is actually a (Greek) wine bar, not a restaurant, so there is not much food there. Still I like this place a lot as it is cozy, has great wine selection, is very intimate and whenever there is live music it is really good.
  
• Burma Superstar Burmese restaurant that serves amazingly good food with many vegetarian options. It has excellent QPR. The only problem is that you usually have to wait 30-45 minutes before you get your table...
  
• Tawan Best Thai restaurant in the city (well, at least the best among 9 Thai places that I tried). Family-run, "hole-in-the-wall"-type of thing, but excellent, very light food, great service, moreover the prices are bargain and you even do not have to pay a corkage fee if you bring your own wine!
  
• Frisson American/Californian food. Nice decor, good food and special points for having my favorite dessert wine on the menu...
  
• Fresca A truly wonderful Peruvian restaurant specializing in seafood located just a block away from where I live.
  

Top 5 artistic performances (theater/opera/symphony/ballet):

• tings dey happen at The Marsh, written and performed by Dan Hoyle - a very well performed, intelligeny and funny story about oil companies in Nigeria
  
• Blackbird at ACT - an absolutely captivating story about ghosts from the past that sometimes hunt all of us...
  
• Sweeney Todd at ACT - a minimalistic, yet magnificent musical/thriller
  
• Carmen at SF Opera - the most beautiful of all Carmen performances I ever saw
  
• Grandpa, It's Not Fitting at The Marsh, written and performed by Will Franken - a very witty political satire that makes you laugh and cry at the same time
  

Top 5 most interesting youtube videos:

• Bush and Rice: Who?
  
• Benny Lava: Have you been high today?
  
• Giertych contra Kurski only in Polish... from the parliamentary session summarizing achievements of Kaczynski's government
  
• Miss South Carolina: such as...
  
• Window by Bajzel and Muzeum - had to be here, I am emotionally involved with it :)
  
• Bonus: something from Assen ;)
  

Monika's personal top 5 achievements:

• I am very happy with myself that I finally started running regularly (at least 3-4 times a week, 5-7km at the time). Thanks to that I feel that I am in reasonably good shape. (I also do other sports - I bike to work every day (that's 10km a day), 3-4 times a week I bike "hill-plus program" at the gym (then it is 30-40km and many many hills...), 2-3 times a week I play squash with Tadhg and Della, but somehow running makes me feel the best about myself. Maybe it is because it is something new that I started doing this year. Or maybe it is because I have a slight muscle fetish and it feels so nice to finally enjoy them also on my own body.)
  
• I am also very proud of myself that I started writing a blog, and that I still find time to do it more or less regularly.
  
• I am very happy that I managed to find a great place to live with really nice roommates and that within this past year I also managed to find a lot of great friends, many of whom - even in this short time - already managed to make a lasting mark on my life.
  
• I am very happy that living in California made me more open towards strangers and that now I can even start talking to people on the streets by myself!
  
• I also feel that within this year I managed to balance well time spent on working vs traveling vs having fun/doing sports/seeing people. That definitely feels good and contributes a lot to my overall happiness.
  

Monika's top 5 failures (and at the same time top 5 things to improve in 2008):

• I am not a good swimmer and I planned on changing that this past year. I failed. I think now my strategy will be to take swimming lessons - that will at the least make me show up at the swimming pool.
  
• This year I only read around 20-25 books, arghhh. That makes around 2 books a month. Embarrassingly little - I definitely have to start reading more.
  
• I made no progress in learning Spanish or any other language. My plan for the new year is to start every day with a breakfast during which I will learn at least few phrases in Spanish (or probably in Russian first as I am still planning on going to Moscow and St Petersburg in late April 2008).
  
• This year I also allowed myself to sleep much more than I needed to. I decided to cut on that and start waking up every day at 7 in the morning no matter what. In that way I will also finally have time to do yoga regularly and to eat breakfast at home.
  
• I definitely feel need to increase my efficiency at work and have my day better structured. For example I feel that I spent too much time checking my email and reading news while in the lab. I will try to limit myself in doing that. Let's hope it will work...
  

Mr. Cogito

Years after Carpenters' translation Zbigniew Herbert's poems make their way back to the American bookshops thanks to Valles translation: see a NYT review.
If translating poetry in general is challenging, then in particular translating Herbert must be a nightmare. So even though according to the NYT review the new translation is far from being perfect, I would still think that it should be a-must-read for any poetry lover.

Nothing Special by Zbigniew Herbert

nothing special
boards paint
nails paste
paper string

mr artist
builds a world
not from atoms
but from remnants

forest of arden
from umbrella
ionian sea
from parkers quink

just as long as
his look is wise
just as long as
his hand is sure -

and presto the world -

hooks of flowers
on needles of grass
clouds of wire
drawn out by the wind

see you on the other side

Whenever I was deciding where to go for holidays I always did a lot of internet digging to find first-hand reports of like-minded people. In this way I found an internet journal of Kinga and Chopin. These guys started their trip in October 1998 in New York with 600$ in their pockets and with these money they managed to travel throughout both Americas, Australia, Asia and Europe. This trip took them five years. Detailed description of their adventures you can find on their webpage. After they came back to Europe Kinga wrote a book "Led by destiny", which is based on their experiences from all over the world. I haven't had a chance to read it, so I do not know if it is good, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't. After a year break in Europe Kinga decided to travel alone in Africa. I followed first few months of her trip on her new webapage dedicated to this trip. For various reasons I had not visited that webpage for several months and only two months ago I again checked it out. There I learnt that Kinga died a year ago in Ghana from cerebral malaria. I know that it does not make any sense, but I do feel like I lost a friend.

Kinga, see you on the other side:

polish literature

perception of Polish literature abroad link

I agree with Kutz

Reading this interview with Kutz changed my opinion on why curriculum of books recommended to be read in high school has changed (see previous post).
Kutz argues that omissions and forbiding things is the best way (mechanism) of creating modern intelectual elites. ("Wykluczenia i zakazy, proszę pani, to najlepszy mechanizm tworzenia nowoczesnych elit intelektualnych.") I have to agree with him - forbiden fruit tastes the best... (zakazany owoc smakuje najlepiej). I already see crowds of eager intellectuals with glasses on thier noses reading "Faustus" under their blankets in the candle light... Eh, sweet childhood times...

are they crazy?

Polish ministry of education decided to remove from the high school curriculum books written by the following authors:
Gombrowicz
Witkacy
Goethe
Kafka
Conrad (Korzeniowski)
Herling-Grudziński
Dostojewski
Their plan is obvious: It's easier to rule over non-educated society.

link po polsku

sense of humor

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

travel journalism: Ryszard Kapuscinski

Since we are talking about travel journalism, I have to mention Ryszard Kapuscinski - Polish first, and for long time only, foreign correspondent. Among his many books my favorite one is "The Emperor", which describes the rise and fall of Ethiopian King Haile Selassie. Read this book, and I am sure that it will convince you to read his other books.

Also read this interview with Kapuscinski to see how interesting person he was and how much he was committed to what he was doing. Here is a piece taken from this interview:

Why am I a writer? Why have I risked my life so many times, come so close to dying? Is it to report the weirdness? To earn my salary? Mine is not a vocation, it's a mission. I wouldn't subject myself to these dangers if I didn't feel that there was something overwhelmingly important—about history, about ourselves—that I felt compelled to get across. This is more than journalism.

And here you can get a taste of Kapuscinski's writing from "The Soccer War":

I was driving along a road where they say no white man can come back alive. I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself. I know that a man shudders in the forest when he passes close to a lion. I got close to a lion so that I would know how it feels. I had to do it myself because I knew no one could describe it to me. And I cannot describe it myself. Nor can I describe a night in the Sahara. The stars over the Sahara are enormous. They sway above the sand like great chandeliers. The light of those stars is green. Night in the Sahara is as green as a Mazowsze meadow.

I might see the Sahara again and I might see the road that carried me through Yoruba country again. I drove up a hill and when I got to the crest I could see the first flaming roadblock below.

It was too late to turn back.

travel journalism: Blaine Harden

Africa: dispatches from a fragile continent is an amazing book. I would definitely put it on my list of Top 100 books. Jochen and I bought it in Pretoria (South Africa), on our way to Namibia. We both loved it and discussed for hours. Among many books that we read about Africa this was by far the best: the most honest, unbiased and eye-opening.

This book was written by Blaine Harden, when he was the Washington Post bureau chief in sub-Saharan Africa (from 1985 to 1989). There are seven chapters in his book, each focusing on a different African country: Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Zaire, Sudan, Kenya, and Zambia. Harden writes about his travels and the people he met, and thanks to it the book reads like an adventure story. But at the same time he is analyzing the political situation of each area.

Even tough “Dispatches…” were published 17 years ago and describe the situation of only few countries, still, the observations Harden makes can be applied also today to almost all African countries. For example Harden says:
Westerners who give money and economic advice to Africa, as well as those who write about the continent, spend far too much time looking in the wrong direction. We concentrate our energies on semi-fictional, barely functional, frequently irrelevant Western imports: central bureaucracies, ministerial policy papers, macro-economic statistics, and the "sincerity" of leadership commitment to free-market reform. All of which can be condemned, applauded, or made fun of within easy walking distance of a four-star hotel. Meanwhile, we are ignorant of the indigenous system that help hold the whole sorry mess together.

As much as we are unwilling to accept it, the African way of keeping “the whole sorry mess together” is to have a rule of Big Men who forcibly takes control of the country until some other Big Man wrests power from him. This again proves to be true even in the case of today’s “democratic” presidential elections in Nigeria:

Nigeria's presidential election was tainted by violence and fraud, a far cry from the credible democratic vote many had hoped would mark the country's first handover from one civilian president to another.

Nigerians hoping for an honest leader to fight endemic corruption voted in presidential elections Saturday, but disarray at the polls and a failed truck bombing caused unease in a country trying to solidify democratic rule.

Obasanjo admitted that the vote was flawed, but said Nigerians were nonetheless devoted to democracy. (...) As was widely expected, Umaru Yar'Adua, the 56-year old Muslim governor of northern Katsina state, won in a landslide.

If you are still not convinced to read Harden’s book, maybe this review will convince you (The book can be bought on amazon under 1$!!!).

Here is also a sample of Harden’s writing for the Washington Post about Nigeria in 1987. Even though it is an old article, it is still very interesting and could equally well be written today.

Stanislaw Lem

Why is Life on Earth Impossible?
A fragment of THE TWENTY-SECOND VOYAGE from The Star Diaries

Then the examiner asked:

"Can the candidate for graduation demonstrate why life on Earth is impossible?"

With a little bow the youth commenced to give an exhaustive and logically constructed argument, in which he proved irrefutably that the greater part of Earth is covered with cold, exceedingly deep waters, whose temperature is kept near zero by constantly floating mountains of ice; that not only the poles, but the surrounding areas as well are a place of perpetual, bitter frost and that for half a year there night reigns uninterrupted. That, as one can clearly see through astronomical instruments, the land masses, even in the more temperate zones, are covered for many months each year by frozen water vapor known as "snow," which lies in a thick layer upon both hills and valleys. That the great Moon of Earth causes high tides and low, which have a destructive, erosive effect. That with the aid of the most powerful spyglasses one can see how very often large patches of the planet are plunged in shadow, produced by an envelope of clouds. That in the atmosphere fierce cyclones, typhoons and storms abound. All of which, taken together, completely rules out the possibility of the existence of life in any form. And if concluded the young Andrygonian in a ringing voice-beings of some sort were ever to try landing on Earth, they would suffer certain death, being crushed by the tremendous pressure of its atmosphere, which at sea level equals one kilogram per square centimeter, or 760 millimeters in a column of mercury.

This thorough reply met with the general approval of the board. Overcome with astonishment, I sat for the longest while without stirring and it was only when the examiner had proceeded to the next question that I exclaimed:

"Forgive me, worthy Andrygonians, but : ... well, it is precisely from Earth that I come; surely you do not doubt that I am alive, and you heard how I was introduced to you ..."

An awkward silence followed. The instructors were deeply offended by my tactless remark and barely contained themselves; the young people, who are not as able to hide their feelings as adults, regarded me with unconcealed hostility. Finally the examiner said coldly:

"By your leave, sir stranger, but are you not placing too great demands upon our hospitality? Are you not content with your most royal reception, with the fanfares, the tokens of esteem? Have we not done enough by admitting you to the High Plystrum of Graduation, is this still insufficient and you wish us in addition to change, entirely for you, the school program?1"

"But ... but Earth is in fact inhabited ..." I muttered, embarrassed.

"If such were the case," the examiner said, looking at me as if I were transparent, "that would constitute an anomaly of nature."


The links below will direct you to the official page dedicated to Stanislav Lem and his work that is written in English by his son.
link 1 and link 2

linki po polsku
Ten wywiad jest niesamowity. Kto go nie czytal niech przeczyta! A tu mozna znalezc wspomnienia syna Lema o ojcu. A ten artykul zostal opublikowany tuz po smierci Lema.