More Love for Poznań

Because they made another video.

Poznań

In spite of all, my favorite city in the world.

Poznań Balloon Story

Sunday morning in June: I was sitting in the first floor* room of Cacao Republika with my childhood friend Iwona, when we saw this:



In the house opposite a window opened onto a room full of balloons and an elderly man trying to navigate between them. He started collecting them and put the first set outside...

... where a lady suddenly appeared to pick them up.

* * *

Part of me still lives on in Poznań, but only in the summer. As soon as the sun disappears, it hibernates.

*second floor in the US

Poznań: in Front of the Opera

... this is where M. and I met eight years ago. But it was in the middle of summer, so no snow and no sleigh rides.

I miss Poznań.

So sitzen Sie richtig

Sigmar Polke, This Is How You Sit Correctly (After Goya)

This is one of my favorite paintings (and poems). Back in the day, before April turned from Poetry Month into tax month, I would linger over my favorite art and read poems waiting for something (or nothing) to happen.

Not to make it sound too idyllic, I was often bored.

There is a picture of me, though, leafing through an Egon Schiele album, some seven years ago. It was taken in a darkish pub on a hot August day, one of the most surprisingly surprising days when my sandals fell apart and I walked barefoot through the main streets of Poznań.

For years I remembered that a couple of pictures were taken on that occasion but had never seen them. Until Gryzmak dug them up in a box last Christmas. Between the summer we first met and our meeting six years later they had been waiting among other photographs and papers. Objects can be patient like I never can.

I envy that kind of poise as I fill out my forms and wait for magnolias to kick into full bloom. Now they are teasing me, on the verge of opening but still keeping to themselves.

What's admitted by the door can be kept
by the mind. Can be trapped
in a list. Can be lifted

by the tail and tenderly placed
where it will no longer be
in the way. It was never easy.

(from Mary Jo Bang, "This Is How You Sit Correctly (After Goya)")

Sometimes it's hard to make connections and the concluding sentence chooses to imitate the spring.