13 July 2015
About ‘Tamed’
Having observed a small commuting community of 65 Dublin bus, I tried to find out how my childhood relates to my present whereabouts. The 65 bus is the only mean of public transport to inhabitants of Blessington and its surrounding areas. It runs from Poolberg Street in the City Centre to Blessington or, in irregular intervals, Ballyknockan and Balymoore Eustace.
Situations in the bus incited my current artistic investigations in miscellaneous fields, including photographical project.
Tamed
It is a warm autumn day, one of which people call Indian summer. Taking sharp bends, the bus is roaring and stubbornly climbing uphill. While commuting to Dublin, I sink into memories of other time and place.
Years ago, somewhere in North Eastern Poland, I was travelling to secondary school. My town was small, shabby and depressing, and I was very glad to be given a chance to change this for a half-day dwelling in a city of Olsztyn. I loved to observe fellow commuters, or rather backs of their heads sticking out from bus seats; these irregular balls sited as neatly as cabbages on well-kept bedding. Here and there within tufts of hair were crumbles of dandruff, tallow, and bald patches which revealed skin of various complexions. All heads were set in motion by irregular ruts on the road and, believe me or not, observing it was amusing.
Now the busscape has changed. It is constituted by rows of busts which face different directions, thus feature different fragments of human faces: en-face, three quarters, profile, profile-perdou, and, finally – the back side of a head. Haircuts represent miscellaneous styles ranging from office chic to neglectful urbanity. Mangy old woman are scattered at the front of the ground deck. Some people are beautiful. Others attempt to make themselves more attractive by rubbing in sleepy faces foundations, painting lashes, applying rouge on cracked lips. The bus is stuffed with collective exhalation. This miasma consists of multi-layered aromas, lower and upper scents, and fetors. To avoid inhalation of too complex mixture, you can open narrow windows and force air circulation, but only to some extent. Eventually, you will be able to take a sniff of freshness at the expense of keeping yourself warm.
I couldn’t call my old town a place at the end of the world. We had Russians and Germans there. The region of Warmia, where I used to live, formerly was a German territory called Prussia. After World War II it had become a part of my country, and Deutsche people have been deported to Deutschland. Not each of them left. Similarly, Polish borders were shifted west which incited a massive exodus of Poles who inhabited the eastern regions. They readily took infrastructure left behind by the Germans. In turn, their belongings were confiscated by the Russians. Each summer tours of German pensioners were lazily rambling around my area. It was easy to recognise them for a specific way men wore their trousers; they were belted so high, almost right under their arms. Then, there was skin - clean and well nourished - and thin gold frames of eyeglasses. Their radiant faces never ceased to amaze me. Russians, for the short distance from Kaliningrad, drove to Poland to get their food cheaper. On this occasion, they tried also to trade strange goods for as little as a penny. Kacaps* and their heavily packed check bags smelled of strange soap. We called this odour a Russian smell.
‘It is not nice to leave your banana peel like that!’ The old fella suddenly shifts his weight towards me and points at the skin that I placed on the window seal.
‘I am not leaving yet. Just mind your business please.’
We are driving through misty fields with distant mock-up of Wicklow Mountains. The windows are wet and steamy. It is getting cold, much colder every morning. When I meditate, it is hard to feel warmness of a rainbow light. I shift beads of a mala while repeating the mantra. Nobody is talking to me. People who accidentally join my bench retreat happily if only other free place is yielded. Although the community here is totally multicultural, people feel uneasy in an unknown environment. For their unwillingness to learn, they gave me a label that is not true but satisfies them. Discernment of my person has been reduced to the Easterner and, in some cases, people tend to assume that I am Russian. Now they peep at me. If I tried to guess what others may have in their minds, I would say they probably thing me mad since I am smiling and mumbling strange words with the lowest possible voice. Slowly, I also take a look around the bus. I know by sight a majority of people here. A blonde with yellow hair and even yellower teeth is a mum of my daughter’s friend. Until this day I can picture her floppy butt with a big enough tattoo in gothic fonts: ‘I am yours’. I have seen her in our local swimming pool a couple of times. Her waist has no shape and legs are very thin. Her back is freckled all over. I know she likes to drink and keeps a big drinking glass at home with an inscription on it: 'Well done, buddy'. Some women here have become acquainted with me and are telling me stories of their lives, all over the same. When I manage to escape them and hide, their voices still can be heard, broken by rare questions of their victims who usually ask about long forgotten but continuously referred to lives in Malaysia, Malta, or California.
In every second precinct Dubliners differ from each other to the extent that they look like distinct species. It is not about immigrants or cultural diversity, it is a phenomenon incited by people’s upbringing; education and life style. I am lazily staring through the window. Georgian Dublin it is, with some Palladian and Victorian accents. No trace of every present on the mainland Renaissance and Baroque, or Art-Nouveau characteristic for Poland. How different these Georgian houses are from their Polish counterparts! Closer towards the City Centre, I stare at the patches of contemporary architecture, glassy and minimalistic. All buildings are equally lichened in the moist and bleak with the same smudges in long unwashed windows. I believe that the Irish have a similar number of words for rain as Eskimo do for snow. Here and there Polish shops, halal food, Thai massage, Chinese take away, and Indian cuisine with agencies of Western Union all together crouch in ground floors of old Georgian houses; a thick layer of colourful paint on their fronts protects the buildings from crumbling down. Ciapaty* on crouches crosses the street on red light, and then disappears in the Late Night Tandoori. Tired of to-well-known cityscape outside, I resume my lecture of ‘A Bleak House’, even though now it feels like Paddington and porridge, and culture portmanteau. Soon I detect that the bus is on halt for too long, and an enormous crowd of people stirs inside. I watch them for a moment until a man in his 70s catches me on looking him in the eye. I am not surprised when he seats next to me. His appearance is strange - woolly and colourful. He looks like a giant among dwarfs on the bus.
‘What are you reading?’ His question breaks into my carefully built cube of intimacy in the rear corner of the bus.
‘A Bleak House’, I answer with a hope that this may discourage him from keeping up a conversation.
‘Really?! Have you seen it on TV? There is an amazing BBS series…’
‘No, I’m not a big enthusiast of TV. But I may google it out and watch online if I’m lucky.’
Suddenly I want to explain myself and my peculiar reading choice, ’ …And I like this book because I can learn some English words.’
‘Why don’t we know any Polish writers? We know Czech literature but why not Polish?’
I notice that people have turned their ears on.
‘The same is with Romanian writers’, he continues, ‘we don’t know any. People now are constantly attached to their phones’, he motions the crowd, ‘They do not read books at all!’
Indeed, there is conversation any more in the throng, people just move their trained fingers around keyboards roped in by mischievous user interfaces. I decide to demonstrate my clever contraption, basic model of e-reader along with some surnames of Polish authors.
‘Well’, I begin with, ‘I think it is not entirely true. We do have some well-known authors, even though our culture is minor and so is our language. You have to have a particular interest to find out more about Polish writers.’
‘So, any of your writers can be Polish equivalent of Dickens?’ He straightens a ridiculous woollen hat and then pulls it up to make an eye contact easier.
I ponder so as to come up with a couple of good examples. ’Żeromski, Sienkiewicz, Prus, Konopnicka. We have also a few Nobel Prize laureates.’
I am almost to remind him that we were an emporium once, taken Moscow, and stopped Turkish from flooding the western world. I am proud of my origin, at least of the fact that somebody feels that this is important.
The same day on my way home I notice Niamh somewhere between Aungier Street and Camden; she is texting somebody and keeps her head low. People are boarding but she simply has no clue that her bus is leaving. I feel that I cannot just seat and let her miss a lift home. I crack the window open as wide as possible.
‘Niamh, Niamh…NIAMH!!!!!!!!!’ I cry after her.
She looks around and suddenly notice that the bus is leaving. Hopeless as it is, she sets her body into laborious trotting. In spite of that, a driver shuts the door, and then drives away.
‘ The older lady didn’t get in!’ I shout out loud.
People are oblivious to the situation and continue their trip as if noting has happened, but the driver pulls over to the next bay at the traffic lights. He lets Niamh in.
‘ Afternoon Niamh’, he says.
‘ How do you know my name?’ Niamh disturbs the bus driver with her usual banter.
Then, she is coming right to me. I am not hiding nor calling her since I have been already exposed.
‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Olga. You are so beautiful and nice, and you have such a good figure. You are really so good.’
‘ Oh, Niamh…’ I am laughing a bit awkwardly.
‘Why shouldn’t I tell you that when it’s true. People should tell each other nice things so that they feel better.’
I have nowhere to escape…but do I intend?
***
It has been 2 months of commuting when I breach my journey routine and take the first morning bus. Passengers are scarce. Again, the city has altered its presence. The streets are empty, not to count scattered refuse bags and seagulls desperate to dig through their content. Litter is omnipresent, and the spots of urine are still wet. I do not recognise people on the bus. I am a stranger to them and nobody cares to talk to me.
*Kacap (Ukrainian: кацап) – a pejorative or waggish term for the Russian national used in Polish and other languages of Central and Eastern Europe.
*Ciapaty is a Polish scornful term which refers to the Indian and Pakistani national.
Having observed a small commuting community of 65 Dublin bus, I tried to find out how my childhood relates to my present whereabouts. The 65 bus is the only mean of public transport to inhabitants of Blessington and its surrounding areas. It runs from Poolberg Street in the City Centre to Blessington or, in irregular intervals, Ballyknockan and Balymoore Eustace.
Situations in the bus incited my current artistic investigations in miscellaneous fields, including photographical project.
Tamed
It is a warm autumn day, one of which people call Indian summer. Taking sharp bends, the bus is roaring and stubbornly climbing uphill. While commuting to Dublin, I sink into memories of other time and place.
Years ago, somewhere in North Eastern Poland, I was travelling to secondary school. My town was small, shabby and depressing, and I was very glad to be given a chance to change this for a half-day dwelling in a city of Olsztyn. I loved to observe fellow commuters, or rather backs of their heads sticking out from bus seats; these irregular balls sited as neatly as cabbages on well-kept bedding. Here and there within tufts of hair were crumbles of dandruff, tallow, and bald patches which revealed skin of various complexions. All heads were set in motion by irregular ruts on the road and, believe me or not, observing it was amusing.
Now the busscape has changed. It is constituted by rows of busts which face different directions, thus feature different fragments of human faces: en-face, three quarters, profile, profile-perdou, and, finally – the back side of a head. Haircuts represent miscellaneous styles ranging from office chic to neglectful urbanity. Mangy old woman are scattered at the front of the ground deck. Some people are beautiful. Others attempt to make themselves more attractive by rubbing in sleepy faces foundations, painting lashes, applying rouge on cracked lips. The bus is stuffed with collective exhalation. This miasma consists of multi-layered aromas, lower and upper scents, and fetors. To avoid inhalation of too complex mixture, you can open narrow windows and force air circulation, but only to some extent. Eventually, you will be able to take a sniff of freshness at the expense of keeping yourself warm.
I couldn’t call my old town a place at the end of the world. We had Russians and Germans there. The region of Warmia, where I used to live, formerly was a German territory called Prussia. After World War II it had become a part of my country, and Deutsche people have been deported to Deutschland. Not each of them left. Similarly, Polish borders were shifted west which incited a massive exodus of Poles who inhabited the eastern regions. They readily took infrastructure left behind by the Germans. In turn, their belongings were confiscated by the Russians. Each summer tours of German pensioners were lazily rambling around my area. It was easy to recognise them for a specific way men wore their trousers; they were belted so high, almost right under their arms. Then, there was skin - clean and well nourished - and thin gold frames of eyeglasses. Their radiant faces never ceased to amaze me. Russians, for the short distance from Kaliningrad, drove to Poland to get their food cheaper. On this occasion, they tried also to trade strange goods for as little as a penny. Kacaps* and their heavily packed check bags smelled of strange soap. We called this odour a Russian smell.
‘It is not nice to leave your banana peel like that!’ The old fella suddenly shifts his weight towards me and points at the skin that I placed on the window seal.
‘I am not leaving yet. Just mind your business please.’
We are driving through misty fields with distant mock-up of Wicklow Mountains. The windows are wet and steamy. It is getting cold, much colder every morning. When I meditate, it is hard to feel warmness of a rainbow light. I shift beads of a mala while repeating the mantra. Nobody is talking to me. People who accidentally join my bench retreat happily if only other free place is yielded. Although the community here is totally multicultural, people feel uneasy in an unknown environment. For their unwillingness to learn, they gave me a label that is not true but satisfies them. Discernment of my person has been reduced to the Easterner and, in some cases, people tend to assume that I am Russian. Now they peep at me. If I tried to guess what others may have in their minds, I would say they probably thing me mad since I am smiling and mumbling strange words with the lowest possible voice. Slowly, I also take a look around the bus. I know by sight a majority of people here. A blonde with yellow hair and even yellower teeth is a mum of my daughter’s friend. Until this day I can picture her floppy butt with a big enough tattoo in gothic fonts: ‘I am yours’. I have seen her in our local swimming pool a couple of times. Her waist has no shape and legs are very thin. Her back is freckled all over. I know she likes to drink and keeps a big drinking glass at home with an inscription on it: 'Well done, buddy'. Some women here have become acquainted with me and are telling me stories of their lives, all over the same. When I manage to escape them and hide, their voices still can be heard, broken by rare questions of their victims who usually ask about long forgotten but continuously referred to lives in Malaysia, Malta, or California.
In every second precinct Dubliners differ from each other to the extent that they look like distinct species. It is not about immigrants or cultural diversity, it is a phenomenon incited by people’s upbringing; education and life style. I am lazily staring through the window. Georgian Dublin it is, with some Palladian and Victorian accents. No trace of every present on the mainland Renaissance and Baroque, or Art-Nouveau characteristic for Poland. How different these Georgian houses are from their Polish counterparts! Closer towards the City Centre, I stare at the patches of contemporary architecture, glassy and minimalistic. All buildings are equally lichened in the moist and bleak with the same smudges in long unwashed windows. I believe that the Irish have a similar number of words for rain as Eskimo do for snow. Here and there Polish shops, halal food, Thai massage, Chinese take away, and Indian cuisine with agencies of Western Union all together crouch in ground floors of old Georgian houses; a thick layer of colourful paint on their fronts protects the buildings from crumbling down. Ciapaty* on crouches crosses the street on red light, and then disappears in the Late Night Tandoori. Tired of to-well-known cityscape outside, I resume my lecture of ‘A Bleak House’, even though now it feels like Paddington and porridge, and culture portmanteau. Soon I detect that the bus is on halt for too long, and an enormous crowd of people stirs inside. I watch them for a moment until a man in his 70s catches me on looking him in the eye. I am not surprised when he seats next to me. His appearance is strange - woolly and colourful. He looks like a giant among dwarfs on the bus.
‘What are you reading?’ His question breaks into my carefully built cube of intimacy in the rear corner of the bus.
‘A Bleak House’, I answer with a hope that this may discourage him from keeping up a conversation.
‘Really?! Have you seen it on TV? There is an amazing BBS series…’
‘No, I’m not a big enthusiast of TV. But I may google it out and watch online if I’m lucky.’
Suddenly I want to explain myself and my peculiar reading choice, ’ …And I like this book because I can learn some English words.’
‘Why don’t we know any Polish writers? We know Czech literature but why not Polish?’
I notice that people have turned their ears on.
‘The same is with Romanian writers’, he continues, ‘we don’t know any. People now are constantly attached to their phones’, he motions the crowd, ‘They do not read books at all!’
Indeed, there is conversation any more in the throng, people just move their trained fingers around keyboards roped in by mischievous user interfaces. I decide to demonstrate my clever contraption, basic model of e-reader along with some surnames of Polish authors.
‘Well’, I begin with, ‘I think it is not entirely true. We do have some well-known authors, even though our culture is minor and so is our language. You have to have a particular interest to find out more about Polish writers.’
‘So, any of your writers can be Polish equivalent of Dickens?’ He straightens a ridiculous woollen hat and then pulls it up to make an eye contact easier.
I ponder so as to come up with a couple of good examples. ’Żeromski, Sienkiewicz, Prus, Konopnicka. We have also a few Nobel Prize laureates.’
I am almost to remind him that we were an emporium once, taken Moscow, and stopped Turkish from flooding the western world. I am proud of my origin, at least of the fact that somebody feels that this is important.
The same day on my way home I notice Niamh somewhere between Aungier Street and Camden; she is texting somebody and keeps her head low. People are boarding but she simply has no clue that her bus is leaving. I feel that I cannot just seat and let her miss a lift home. I crack the window open as wide as possible.
‘Niamh, Niamh…NIAMH!!!!!!!!!’ I cry after her.
She looks around and suddenly notice that the bus is leaving. Hopeless as it is, she sets her body into laborious trotting. In spite of that, a driver shuts the door, and then drives away.
‘ The older lady didn’t get in!’ I shout out loud.
People are oblivious to the situation and continue their trip as if noting has happened, but the driver pulls over to the next bay at the traffic lights. He lets Niamh in.
‘ Afternoon Niamh’, he says.
‘ How do you know my name?’ Niamh disturbs the bus driver with her usual banter.
Then, she is coming right to me. I am not hiding nor calling her since I have been already exposed.
‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Olga. You are so beautiful and nice, and you have such a good figure. You are really so good.’
‘ Oh, Niamh…’ I am laughing a bit awkwardly.
‘Why shouldn’t I tell you that when it’s true. People should tell each other nice things so that they feel better.’
I have nowhere to escape…but do I intend?
***
It has been 2 months of commuting when I breach my journey routine and take the first morning bus. Passengers are scarce. Again, the city has altered its presence. The streets are empty, not to count scattered refuse bags and seagulls desperate to dig through their content. Litter is omnipresent, and the spots of urine are still wet. I do not recognise people on the bus. I am a stranger to them and nobody cares to talk to me.
*Kacap (Ukrainian: кацап) – a pejorative or waggish term for the Russian national used in Polish and other languages of Central and Eastern Europe.
*Ciapaty is a Polish scornful term which refers to the Indian and Pakistani national.
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