Don’t Close Your Heart

I am about to get mystical up in here…

Believe it or not Ripley, I don’t like being negative and complainy. Recently however, I have been putting out and experiencing negativity. I don’t mean my general playful jibes (is there such a thing as playful negativity?), you know the ones about how bitter Christmas Eve Mushroom Soup is. I am talking about deep, painful, stagnating negativity.

I am experiencing it especially in relation to where I live vs. where I want to live. What I want vs. what I have (not so much in the material sense).

I have been reading the Unthethered Soul, by Micheal Singer again, trying to regain some perspective. This time around it is a hard read, I can feel my tiredness allowing the words to sometimes wash over vs. penetrate. So my solution is to read small chunks at a time, write down what I am reading and create questions (which I answer), to try and help it penetrate better.

One of the chapters in this book talks about closing your heart, that once you decided what you don’t like (and what you want to cling on to), you start creating situations for your heart to close/open.

So I made a list of all the things I have decided will cause my heart to close, so I can be aware of them, and practice being open again

The Poland Things:

• “I want” Nice Weather
  • That means not stinking hot, and not icy cold. No street sludge, no rain. Yeah, I am serious.
• “I don’t want” to see poop in the “pooping range”
  • The strait of land outside our settlement
• “I don’t want” any trash in forest, street or pooping range
• “I don’t want to hear” the neighbour’s noise, or smells
• “I like” no mess in the elevator
  • i.e. people’s mess
• “I don’t like” people who don’t say thank you, or acknowledge when I assist them
• “I really don’t f-ing want to” meet that lady who always wants to sell me makeup, energy drinks, weight loss meals
• “I can’t find” good ripe (and affordable) avocados, mangoes, papayas, pineapples and spanspek all year round
• “I want” Borewors, Biltong, good South African meats
  • Even though I often struggle with the morality I associate with eating meat
• “I like” Nandos, but there is no Nandos here
• “I would like” more familial support from my Fiancé’s family
• “I don’t like” the issues that come with this additional family

The general things:

• Urgent ASAP work makes me angry/stress me out/makes me feel hopeless
• I hate meetings
• I can’t function if I don’t sleep long enough, always.
• My Fiancé should be happy/happier/less stressed/not sighing/ have joy for life/live for every day of the week and not just the weekend
• My dog must be good…WTF
• I hate working in a rushed fashion
• Speaking to my ‘bosses’, certain colleagues, certain family members
• My family always talking about soccer/football ANNOYS me
• I want to be in charge of how my time is spent all the time
• I don’t want to see racist, sexist, homophobic, fat-phobic – any phobic shit
• Jokes at someone elses expense, humour that is cheap and easy
• Adverts on social media – I mean stop trying to sell me ElToro shit!
• Not being the best version of myself, whoever the hell that is, because she doesn’t exist!?

I like how I progressively got angrier as I typed, and I think that shows

Now deep breath in, and hold…

continue holding…

hold…

hold…

hold…

hold.

Illustration by ahsheegrek. I do not own this image. I just like it.

https://ahsheegrek.com/post/186956845245/the-happiest-heart-is-a-closed-heart-by

I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me…

I have complained on here about my neighbours recently. Colourfully.

My neighbours are a weird bunch.

Like me they are immigrants, but unlike me they have a lot of need to express their joy by; singing loudly, talking loudly, slamming their front door, stinking up the elevator with alcohol and stomping the hall loudly after the hours of silence (between 10pm and 6am).

Lol I am not as petty as I sound!

I have interacted with them before, I have broken up some fight they were having. I gave them garlic one year, why not. We tried to explain what Halloween was to them. They are ok in those situations. It is just the constant noise which is driving me insane. The constant change of people they have staying with them that makes me feel unsafe. They just add to the feeling of the city being too much for me.

On Sunday at 4 am, after they sang till at least 2 am, they were for some reason in the hallway. Playing music loudly and speaking loudly. Finally I broke. I woke up from bed, hair wild, eyes red, opened the front door and hissed “GUYS IT IS LATE, PLEASE! SSSSSSH!”

I saw the shock on their faces, I smelt the alcohol in the air…I was too angry and tired to even feel fear that there were two new drunk men right outside our door. Feeling frustrated that I can’t speak to them in their language and they cannot speak mine (they are Ukrainians), I shut the door quietly and then let out a suppressed shout of rage.

My dog was now awake and would not sleep. So at 04:15 am, taking my dog for a wee-wee walk, avoiding shit everywhere, I realised I could not breathe out my anger. It just stayed attached to my chest, inside me, like some parasite. I was trying to find stillness inside, but cars kept driving past us, one after the other. My outside was sending turmoil to my inside. I tried to look at the full moon and connect to something bigger, but there was the drone of the city blocking out the experience, the smog already in the air.

Later that day I heard the Fall Out Boy song Golden. I haven’t heard it for years, and though the overall message is not about city living, the lyric “I knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me” hit hard.

I cried and I listened and then I decided to try and express it, and this image is what came out, a person feeling down and overwhelmed by the toxic but alluring lights of the city.

I know I need silence. I know I need peace. I know I need to get out.

WATAHA – The wolf pack

Disclaimer: I do not believe I have the necessary skills to rate TV shows, but I do what I want!

Having seen the big billboards in the inner city for Wataha, it was with a huge sigh that I started watching it when my partner turned it on.

I love the man, but he doesn’t have the best taste in TV shows… or partners…clearly 😀 Also I have this belief that anything advertised so strongly is usually shit.

2 episodes in and I was looking forward to completing the series.

There are 3 Seasons of Wataha. Which is a show about the border guards between Poland and Ukraine in the Bieszczady mountains. They deal with stopping illegal immigrants, smugglers and traffickers.

In order to not give away shit, I will now give a shit synopsis. Something happens to a bunch of them in season 1, and it’s 1 mans job to find out who the fuck did that thing. After finding the man who did that thing, he is accused of doing the thing that that man did. So he lives in isolation until he has a reason to come out and start doing his thing again, which, dun dun dun, the man who originally did the thing is behind. Then after what seems like a resolution and justice being met out, it seems that the man who did the thing was doing the thing for someone else.

I rate it as: S1 and S2 are Good – OK, S3 is hmm- meh.

The translator who did the subtitles for HBO took some damn chances, but usually on the swear words – which is easy to pick up. Sometimes it seemed that the writers were trying to down play racism in Poland in the episodes that dealt with it, or just used sexual assault, nudity or violence to shock. At times it feels a bit “soap operay”, where people don’t share the/their revelations or storm out before someone can give them a crucial piece of info, or behaves in a really unrealistic/dumb fashion. The story does lag at times, the main female character is fucking annoying, and it doesn’t change through the series. Even in season 3 where an attempt was made to build empathy around her backstory, my fucks for her went down even more. However the scenery, the other characters (the smugglers), the constant reminder that people are shit, exploit everything and everyone, saved the show.

Why watch?

If you want to change your imagined ideas of villages on the mountains, this is a good series to do that.

You like the action? This season is action packed; guns, fire, the big booms.

You like the naked bodies? Some boobies, but sadly no penis till season 3 #Meninsim .

There is a good story here, with some nice twists and turns, also the actors are really good in my opinion.

Shots of the landscape in Bieszczady which will make you question your city life and why you haven’t run away to the mountains yet!

BUT THE BEST PART?

Some really cool swear words !

Like if you walk into a room and it stinks you can say “Ale Jebie!” (It fucking stinks in here)

If someone makes you stop driving a car while you are investigating a disturbance say” Co Kurwa Wiktor!?” (Like wtf Victor)

Oh please note, the person who stops you needs to be called Wiktor 😀

If you get caught smuggling some contraband say “Nie moje!” (Not mine)

Extra points for doing it in a Ukrainian accent.

And when some says things are good (dobra), some rhyming comebacks: ‘Dobra to jest dupa z bobra’ (Good is the ass of a Beaver – my understanding…haha come on it’s awesome)

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZiRKecZ21s

Watched Wataha? Disagree with my professional take? Ale jebie much? Let me know.

Long Road To Pruszków

Since the optimistic year of 2015, I have always lived in Bemowo.

Based on the previous drafts of this post it seems I have a lot of things to say about Bemowo. All my sentiments seem judgy, snobbish and downright rude, and since I don’t post here often, I think it is ill advised for me to leave a post up where I straight up talk shit about people/a place and then disappear. 🙂

What makes me so snippy? Well one of the things are; “we” have a super little mini forest here, and it has more trash than rational thought can explain. I realised I kept going in it, to recharge, to remind myself of what matters…just to try and live better. BUT that can be hard to do after stepping in dog shit, looking at empty alcohol bottles, trash of every kind, and the constant non-stop drone of cars, airplanes and sometimes people.

The Mini Forest on A Good Day – Can you see why it hurts that you cannot find clean and calm in it?

The apartment we stay in also has issues. Our neighbours are super-noisy-banging-the-doors-having-fights-stinking-up-the-elevator-with-alcohol-mother-fuckers. There is a constant drone of noise outside. People CANNOT pick up their dog shit, they just cannot. Inside our apartment itself the space is ill-used and setout, and we cannot change it.

I swear there are loads of positives too – but I think we have reached the end of our welcome in Bemowo.

Towards the end of 2019 (toward the end of my mid-life crisis), I decided that the dream I wanted to pursue was quiet. My life is pretty uneventful now, and I want even more of that oh so good isolation. I want land that is my own, that I am the caretaker off. Where the sun is not blocked by high apartments, where people are not fighting to sit on a patch of grass, where I can actually have grass of my own. Not bodies stacked upon bodies in these concrete buildings, hearing each others sex, smelling each others frying cabbage and meat, tasting other peoples trash in the elevator, touching buttons that everyone has coughed on, seeing snot fresh on the elevator mirror. I want a life where my dog can run in peace, maybe some easy animals, definitely less; people, cars, noise, trash, pollution…just less city life.

However to get to the country side we would need money, and unlike the nouveau riche which seem to fill Bemowo (oooh there’s that shit talking again), I am unwilling to get into debt right now, and I don’t have the money I may need to start and build the life I want in the country side.

Enter Pruszków…in Pruszków my Fiance owns a flat. There are a lot of reasons why we didn’t go there sooner, but now we have decided we will go there. Deal with people a little bit longer, maybe have different levels of safety. However we will hopefully save a huge chunk of money on rent. Learn to live a little bit better (less order in, more stairs). Complete a project together (Renovate the flat). Just loads of nice things.

Thing is…this road feels super long, especially for me, Patience is not a quality I embody. We decided to “let’s do this thing!” in Oct 2019. After giving the tenants a looooong ass notice, I have finally seen the apartment in person. As always with these projects, it seems to need more work than I expected or imagine.

We are yet to find a contractor, or understand what can be changed/broken down inside. We are yet to have the actual costs of the renovation.

All I have are hand-drawn plans, idea’s for an apartment with no walls, renovation ideas formed from my time in South Africa…and impatience, because that is what you need in huge amounts when you undertake anything big/life changing. A huge amount of impatience.

I took this pretty shitty AKA poorly composed picture at the pond near the Pruszków apartment.