Tag Archives: Poland

Back to The Vanishing Pill

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As I’ve previously blogged, my move to Poland has distracted me from writing. I have more excuses too! I was in a work situation that was particularly draining. I’ve had to deal with being cancelled by family members. Not only that, I’ve had to settle the cats.

While I have been regularly submitting to literary agents – The Sacred Whore, Em & Baller – I’ve just as regularly been receiving the same auto-replies.

It’s time to get back to The Vanishing Pill, a book I’ve been working on for three years now. Or is it four? I’m some 3 3/8’s drafts in and still don’t know what’s to happen to Davis as he faces his private little wasteland. Is there a way to salvage his promise? Or is it just going to be all sad and pathetic?

Compelling and real, funny too, darkly so, all of that. But I have to get it it done! Words on the page. There’s nowhere to start but the opening: Davis twisted off the cap from his Paddy’s Old Irish Whiskey shooter and considered the prompt on the whiteboard. “What does it mean to be human?“

I Need to Figure Out the Recycling First

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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.