I.
I recently found out, by way of a poorly made short documentary, that Jacek Kuroń was unstoppably loquacious.  This interests me because his widow, Danuta, is a relentless talker as well.  Fond of business dinners, she keeps us at the table for excruciatingly long periods of time. She will hold a meeting past the closing of the bars, the singing of lovely large ladies, the molding of the pumpkins – no matter if no one else says a word.  If she chose to, she could probably talk a person to death.  So, when Jacek was alive, who did the talking?

II.
Yogi has contracted Lyme Disease and is experiencing arthritis, myocarditis, and fatigue.  He pinched me to demonstrate what it felt like on his heart (the myocarditis).  It hurt.  I bruised.  You can hear the parched cricking of his joints.  He has massive knees.

We decided to take a plane to Somewhere in Asia rather than the Trans Siberian to Somewhere in China.  (You try getting four separate visas – Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, and China – in Warsaw while living in Teremiski.)  I’m crossing my fingers for Goa or Colombo because Thailand interests me less and tickets to Vietnam, where Minh is, are too pricey.  Beijing and Hong Kong are a possibility, but we’re looking to skip the Olympics and LP says it’s possible to barely get by on $250 a day in the HizK.  However, if we end up there, I want to try this sandwich, from Australia Dairy Company, before I hightail it out.  Who am I to turn up my shapely nose at the 5,800 strong Facebook group dedicated to this eggie goodness?

But, we don’t know if Yogi’s illness will go away with antibiotics.  He has to return to the hospital in early June to be tested, and we had been planning to leave the first week of June.  If his Lyme is chronic, he’ll have to be hospitalized for an indeterminate period.  We don’t know whether to bet on his getting healthy and buy our tickets now, or to...wait.

III.
My mother had the expected reaction when I spilled the beans (some of the beans) on my future plans.  I never got around to telling her about wanting to study Chinese in Taiwan and live with family there, because she railed in on me right away – I’m selfish and economically unstable, my parents’ health are failing and who knows what’s going on with my brother – and then she hung up on me.  Don’t be hard on her.  She’s right.  I took it pretty badly that night, but when I woke up the next day, I made my peace with my parents’ anger and moved on.  The recuperation time from these arguments have curtailed over the years.

IV.
Emma and I have decided to break spring in Warsaw.  We managed to get the museum apartment for TWO WHOLE WEEKS.  We’re beyond ecstatic; we never thought Jerzy would agree to it.  To lend us an apartment, this apartment, for two weeks?  Two weeks?!  DAMN! Time to see if it’s really true – does Warsaw really, honest-to-Godly, trulysuck?  Reactions to this age old question from various inhabitants (many of them lifelong) of The City have, over the past year and half, been:

„This is a terrible city.”
„It’s ugly.”
„I hate Warsaw.”
„I’d move if I didn’t have kids.”
„Oh, well, it’s my home, what can I say?  I have no choice but to like it.”

I kid you not.

Aside from methodically gathering evidence to answer The Question and Other Important Questions About The City (like: How could there possibly not be any ethnic neighborhoods with the numbers of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Africans in Warsaw?), we will be searching for a cheap and awesome hole in the wall cafe where our asses can spend a lot of time.  Prior experience indicates that such a place does not exist.

We will be walking around the city and standing in places that are historically relevant.  For example, a few weeks ago, around the corner of the museum apartment, Jerzy stopped us and said, „Oh, and this is where the uprising began.”  Problem is, I’m not sure which one he was talking about.

We will be studying Polish to sharpen our eavesdropping skills.

We will be running in the park in Żoliborz where Jacek’s love rock lies.  It was his wish to have a simple grave and no monuments, but a special stone from Lvov, his hometown, where lovers might tryst.  You can see his apartment, where Danuta still lives, from the stone; there’s a plaque under their kitchen window that recounts his historical significance, courtesy of The City.  Danuta said that he would’ve preferred the plaque to say „Now here was a man who knew how to make jam.”