#chmury is a wonderful word

[dostoyevsky-official]

i think for january ill try to memorise 'koniec i początek' (The End and the Beginning) by wisława szymborska! shes one of my all time fav poets

After every war someone has to clean up. Things won't straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble to the sides of the road, so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.

Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder to prop up a wall, Someone must glaze a window, rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war.

Again we'll need bridges and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand, still recalls how it was. Someone listens and nods with unsevered head. Yet others milling about already find it dull.

From behind the bush sometimes someone still unearths rust-eaten arguments and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew what was going on here must give way to those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown reasons and causes, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds.

transl. Joanna Trzeciak

///

Po każdej wojnie ktoś musi posprzątać. Jaki taki porządek sam się przecież nie zrobi.

Ktoś musi zepchnąć gruzy na pobocza dróg, żeby mogły przejechać wozy pełne trupów.

Ktoś musi grzęznąc w szlamie i popiele, sprężynach kanap, drzazgach szkła i krwawych szmatach.

Ktoś musi przywlec belkę do podparcia ściany, ktoś oszklić okno i osadzić drzwi na zawiasach.

Fotogeniczne to nie jest i wymaga lat. Wszystkie kamery wyjechały już na inną wojnę.

Mosty trzeba z powrotem i dworce na nowo. W strzępach będą rękawy od zakasywania.

Ktoś z miotłą w rękach wspomina jeszcze jak było. Ktoś słucha przytakując nie urwaną głową. Ale już w ich pobliżu zaczną kręcić się tacy, których to będzie nudzić.

Ktoś czasem jeszcze wykopie spod krzaka przeżarte rdzą argumenty i poprzenosi je na stos odpadków.

Ci, co wiedzieli o co tutaj szło, muszą ustąpić miejsca tym, co wiedzą mało. I mniej niż mało. I wreszcie tyle co nic.

W trawie, która porosła przyczyny i skutki, musi ktoś sobie leżeć z kłosem w zębach i gapić się na chmury.

#dziękuję! #i was reading the two side by side #beautiful language i've long wanted to learn it #2024 poetry challenge #chmury is a wonderful word

[thelostjournals]

Today we watched the storm.

We moored in a forgotten pier after a few hours of sailing. The island was still visible, the tiny stick that was the lighthouse and a silver light on its end, pointing up. We slept for the remaining of the night, but at dawn, the wind woke us. There was no sunrise, just a thinning of the darkness, enough to let us see dark clouds, rushed by the wind, swirling beasts with hands of lightning and teeth of raindrops,

Maria znała słowa na takie widoki, czarne chmury gnane wiatrem, kłębiące się bestie, ciemnogranatowa kipiel, posiniaczone niebo. Szum deszczu, porywy wiatru, tak głośne, że inne dźwięki tracą prawo bytu. Być może myślała je, zamknięta w krabim truchle pomiędzy zwierciadłami, kiedy całe to piekło pędziło w jej stronę. A być może była zbyt zajęta przeklinaniem mnie.

The island that was my home for the past few years was being devoured. There is no way the herb garden survived this. Mint and chamomille will regrow, but what made this garden a garden, and what made it mine, is surely gone. I left the boat on the shore when the fog came when Maria was my beacon for the first time, and I'm sure it is gone too, broken into splinters along with the pier. And with the tree on the cliff. It was sturdy, but not sturdy enough I don't think.

I bet the birch grove is fine though. Some fallen specimens for sure, but the colony always survives.

The storm got to the town too, and from what we've seen the port didn't survive.

There is no easy way to get to the lighthouse now. But the light stays on, pulsing, like a heartbeat.

Storms are one of my favorite things in the world. Like, top ten. Being alive during the climate catastrophe really rules for me, because there's been a lot of them in past few years.

They are also one of my favorite things to describe and DOES POLISH HAVE WORDS FOR STORMS. I tried to stick to English, but it doesn't have the right sounds, sorry. I suffered enough when I couldn't write about Nathaniels boat "bezszelestnie dobijająca do brzegu". "Noiselessly" is not "bezszelestnie", it lacks the elegance.

Luckily Maria was Polish from the beginning (I'm still on the fence when it comes to the Keeper, I imagined her as a classic London urchin, but on the other hand she did sing an Belarusian song at one point), so I could write a stormy paragraph that sounds as it should. It was also a surprisingly intense, emotional moment roleplaying-wise. Having two languages, one for saying more raw, true things, and the other for normal stuff is a cool concept, I'm going to play with it a bit more I think.

And writing-wise I feel like there's something interesting to tap into here. I wonder if the shape of the words conveys something for the reader, it is the same alphabet after all, if you look at it, you have the rough estimate of the sounds the text would made. Also I feel that a text that reader doesn't understand also relays something, and I'm curious what it is and what it does to my writing.

And of course my friends who are Polish also read this blog, so this is a whole other chapter of meanings and feelings and ways to connect with text.

So overall, even though the story ended in the previous entry, this one is very exciting to me, creatively. I have some interesting questions and no answers and this is all I can ask of a text that I've written half an hour ago.

"You are a beacon" was a great journey. I loved the evocative prompts and the way the game is lyrical, magical and rooted in everyday life, asking me about Keeper's work, making me imagine the island, and while doing that making me feel at home. It's been a while since I imagined a home for myself, I thought I lost the ability to do it, and this game gave it back to me. Once again, check it out, buy it or grab a community copy, play it, imagine a home on an island for yourself. https://radiantfracture.itch.io/you-are-a-beacon

Imaginary homes are a whole other topic though and these notes are already longer than the entry. So just a word about the photo, because it's teasing the next game I'm going to play here: The Flicker and the Fade which you can find here: https://nyessa.itch.io/the-flicker-and-the-fade

I was planning to do something else to be honest, but I had a hard time saying goodbye to Keeper, Nathaniel and Maria and the strange world that I started to imagine, so I thought hey, maybe I can play other solo games to keep building this world? The Flicker and the Fade seems great for that, especially since Keeper and Nathaniel already did a bit of research about constellations.

#solorpg #journaling games #you are a beacon #the flicker and the fade