Tag Archives: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia

I Need to Figure Out the Recycling First

Posted on by
2

I’ve been trying to get back into my writing. I just needed to acclimatize and stop scrolling so much. I’m in Poland now, which means there’s lots to figure out, including the recycling. They have different rules, different colors of bins and of course the language. I’ve been ignoring the accumulation of bottles and plastic even though I’ve seen the recycling machine at the supermarket. It looked easy enough, but I was intimidated and stayed in my funk.

Not quite this bad. But getting there.

It wasn’t just the recycling. I wasn’t going out to see anything either. I’d planned to visit the Tannenberg Memorial ruins where the Nazis had buried Hindenburg and made their speeches about getting East Prussia back. I’d reviewed it in the guidebooks, checked the train schedules and weather and planned to get there on Friday and then Monday. But I didn’t.

The Germans blew it up at the end of the war, but there’s apparently a few bricks left.

I can handle the food and laundry and distracted myself with the World Cup, even if was a dreadful bore. You’d think the Argentinians would try to be a tad more likable, given their Nazi-aligned past, but they’re so fully in with their racist taunts and hateful faces, it’s like Eichmann and Mengele are in the stands. Watching their questionable play doesn’t seem much different from the bombings in Kyiv and Iran, the Russian Invasion now longer than WWI, and Trump beetling on to WWIII. But I digress.

The Argentinains wouldn’t want try this nonsense against the Canadians.

I did work up the nerve to take in the cans – I’d run out of beer – and it was mostly a success, even if some were spat back and the cashier got irritated with me when I couldn’t explain to her why I had given her the receipt. I thought it was clear. And so now I have my beer, perogi too, and Spain has won. It’s true that I’m still scrolling, but Rage Against the Machine’s live Bulls on Parade might be my take-off point. I just need to watch it a few more times.

Numb and Weird: The Joys of Contentment

Posted on by

It’s a compelling thing to save a fat jolly cartoon king from a dragon. Or not save him and watch his disappointed expression. Or be crushed by molten lava. That was another one. All I had to do was match the little green clovers, yellow crowns, blue shields and red suitcases or blow them up with canons, bombs and spinning magic balls. It was just like Fishdom, the game I had played in the pandemic days.

I made it through thirty rounds and then deleted the app. My head felt weird and numb. I was unable to focus, and a headache was blooming. I turned on the TV and watched a decent enough film about the Fox women getting sexually harassed, although it was irritating in the end because there was no one really to root for. Megyn Kelly as a hero? Yeesh.

Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie in “Bombshell”

I reopened the app and flew through the levels, more than a hundred in four hours. I knew that it was just a silly thing and I would blog about it. And then I ran out of the bombs and magic spinning balls and the bonus time. I would have to either wait for more lives – a new one every thirty minutes – or pay.

I began a book about Poland and Prussian history, Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land, Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia. There was a lot going on here, Teutonic knights massacring the locals 700 years ago and then a constant bloody mess between the Germans and Russians. Not to mention the Poles themselves.

Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land, Journeys Along the Ghosts in East Prussia

I checked my phone. I had five new lives and got on roll, not just the Standard levels, but the Very Hard and Extremely Hard ones too. I planned to stop at Level 200, but I didn’t. I had to wait it out a couple of times, but I got up to 265, my phone occasionally slipping from my hands, my head lolling forward, but I made it, fmatching the little green clovers, yellow crowns, blue shields and red suitcases like a master, exploding boxes the piggy banks and getting the little red birdies and snuggly alligators out of the maze.

It was all about me doing nothing, being mindless, getting to one more level. The thing was that I could do stuff if I wanted to. I really could. But I prefered to adjust my pillow and see what was next. It almost felt something like happiness. Or death. And don’t get the wrong idea. I could stop whenever I wanted. I wasn’t addicted or anything. I was doing this for my blog, research on the idea of addiction. That was the difference. I would uninstall the app soon enough. After the next level.