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Sunday, 20 March 2005
Ok, so let’s talk about this a little bit? How exactly am I supposed to be presenting myself here? I mean, am I
1. Asking for sympathy?
2. Looking for a job?
3. Looking for a handout?
4. Trying to get a lot of money in reparations for what happened to me?
5. Look for some satisfaction from Poland for their crimes?
6. Raising consciousness about what life is really like here in eastern Europe? And maybe even a little about what it was…
7. Raising consciousness about our world (my opinions only of course) and how things are developing from my vantage point her at the geographical center of Europe?
8. Trying to make sense of my own life and my current situation? Or, for that matter…
9. Trying to make sense of how exactly people live around here. I mean, I have been in and around the place for three years and to be honest, I am still not sure I understand how it is possible.
10. Trying yet again to save a face so lost Lewis and Clark couldn’t even find it.

I am sure there is more, but I think that this is a pretty good start. But in the end I think that the answer is simply that I am needing to make a change in my life because my current situation is simply impossible. I suppose I could illustrate why:

Let’s see… I basically have no money. That’s a good start. And I have no job, this is also a winning point here. I have no prospects or for that matter, it is not even legal for me to ask for work here. I have a rather huge debt outstanding, accumulated over the course of the last three years and have no particular way to pay it. And as far as that goes, I have lost… God, how could I begin to count…Let’s just say several friends because I don’t really feel like I could use the word many; several friends because of my deteriorating financial situation inevitably created a deteriorating social situation as well. There is nothing like poverty to make a pariah out of any of us I suppose.
So what I am saying is that really, I am fucked here. But at the same time there are still many people for whom I am desperate to help and this includes a new two-and-a-half-month-old daughter. So what the hell am I supposed to do about any of this?
Well, the first thing I had thought of course was to write that book. Have you ever tried to write a book? Did you know that it is damned hard work? I mean, I have tossed off plays, that being my creative outlet for a while, but books are another world entirely. Even writing prose for that matter is an animal that doesn’t want to be tamed. And do you know how many months I sat at the internet cafe, making notes, writing, re-writing, checking facts, rechecking facts, editing my checked and re-checked facts and re-writing them… It was ridiculous. And then they lost the damned thing on me. I mean, they tried to lose my shit several times but they actually did find a way to disappear 80,000 words at one point.
But all of that I guess has to be in the second book. What? What is that I have said? That’s right, I want to write another book.
Well there it is. I said it. That is what I really want to do. I want to write a follow up book to a book that no one would even take seriously. No, no, no: I am not crazy nor am I sarcastically jaundiced. Well, perhaps I am just a little verbose and have something in me that is probably masochism but I think of it as a comic sense of the ridiculous. But regardless, there it is. I want to write another book and I want to write about what life has been life for me since Poland…
Do you think that this is an interesting subject? I mean, living in modern Belarus without money, face, social position… crazy, yea? Who would want to read this? I mean, is this an avant guard life I am living? Is this art? I mean, is this all about simply admitting I am a fool for believing in certain things?
Well I guess that goes without saying…

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