Maciej Modzelewski

a room full of books and a sky with books instead of a ceiling

Journal (Tsundoku)

Published on 18/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Why do we collect books? For reading, obviously, but sometimes also to compensate for a sense of intellectual inferiority. There is strength in numbers; quantity uplifts, at least until someone pops that balloon by asking how many of them you’ve actually read.

Back in Poland, as a journalist, I was around well-educated people, and although no one ever asked me about it, my HNC equivalent was no match for their masters and PhDs. It may sound silly, but it was a well-hidden thorn in my soul, especially since I could only blame myself—switching between universities, moving from one field of study to another to complete nothing in the end—pure me. Of course, not all of this madness was in vain. Like a true Renaissance man, I could hold a conversation with almost anyone, and this helped me a lot in my journalistic work. But despite this, I couldn’t shake the feeling of inferiority of a provincial boy that I was.

And this is where obsessive collecting came to the rescue. It took me many years, but I had acquired quite a large collection of books, and I was proud to see the admiration on the guests’ faces as they looked around the room that looked more like a library than a living room. It wasn’t like rich people bought entire collections of books just for decorative purposes. I actually read at least some of the books I had. Besides, a large part of my collection consisted of various dictionaries and encyclopaedias—there were no smartphones back then and the Internet was still a novelty—which I used for work and when writing poetry. However, I’d be lying if I denied that this show-up part had no significance.

The most tragic thing about all this was that I had to leave all these books in Poland. It would cost me a fortune to get them to Scotland. But after seventeen years here, I’m slowly building a new collection, although this time I try not to overdo it and, of course, to read them regularly, but the ratio of books read to unread is still not the best. It seems that the Japanese term tsundoku is still closer to the truth than not in my case.

Journal (Flies)

Published on 18/09/202318/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

It’s only a little after three in the morning, and I can’t sleep. I woke up to answer nature’s call and then went into the kitchen to take a sip of water, and that’s when I saw it—a big fat fly on the door of the wall cabinet. I immediately took the slipper off my foot and killed it. Except now I’m annoyed and can’t sleep because it looks like it’s a repeat of what happened five weeks ago. Back then, I had a huge infestation of flies for over a week. They entered my apartment through the ventilation system. It was a real nightmare. I was killing about twenty or thirty a day. I have no idea where they came from, but considering that the ground floor apartment looks like a garbage dump, which I saw several times when I passed by the wide open entrance door, maybe the source is there. And just as suddenly as they appeared, they also disappeared. I thought it was over, but yesterday they started appearing again. In a much smaller number, but still.

The biggest problem with flies is that I can’t prepare my flatbread, which needs to cool before I can put it in the fridge for storage. I normally make a whole stack in the evening and leave it on a plate on the table overnight, so in the morning I can wrap it all in cling film and put it in the fridge. With those bloody insects flying around, that’s impossible. Perhaps it’s time to consider moving. I’ve been living here for over a year, and I’ve had to deal with various things, but the fly infestation is just too much. However, the rent is relatively low, and it is one of the few areas in the city covered with high-speed fibre-optic broadband, which I need for my work. And I hate moving. It’s such a hassle.

Journal (Diary is my Bible)

Published on 17/09/202318/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I watched A Single Man this afternoon. I’ve seen this film so many times that I’ve lost count. I have a habit of watching films that make an exceptionally great impression on me over and over again, sometimes even several times a day if time allows. This was the case, for example, with Mr. Nobody, directed by Jaco Van Dormael, which, by the way, wasn’t the only film of his that I liked so much—The Brand New Testament also received its fair share of my time. Another one is Columbus, Kogonada’s directorial debut, a new discovery that I still relish. But this doesn’t just apply to relatively new films. For example, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is also on my list.

When I think about it, there is no denying that I am a film buff. However, I can’t think of many books to which I have returned often. While still a teenager, I had a period when I read Honoré de Balzac’s Father Goriot several times—by the way, one of only a few books that made me cry. Of course, I had my favourite authors, and I read almost everything they wrote—Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Saul Bellow, to name just two—but the book that is always at my fingertips is Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary. Strangely enough, apart from Diary, of all he wrote, I have only read Ferdydurke and Trans-Atlantyk, and neither of these two made any significant impression on me. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t bad; I just don’t feel like I would have missed out if I hadn’t read them, while Diary is my Bible.

oil portrait of a thoughtful man with a beard

Journal (My life is my story)

Published on 17/09/202318/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski3 Comments

As of today, I have decided to stop writing poetry. To tell the truth, I’ve been planning to do this for quite some time now. And no, I am not aping Rimbaud, whose level, by the way, I am not even remotely close to. I simply feel like a fraud with a fig leaf of a quote from Apology, where Socrates said that “not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.” And even if I manage to write something decent from time to time, most of my literary output is mediocre at best. It’s true that I had my moment when I was still writing in Polish and a series of my poems were published in one of the most important literary magazines in Poland, but this is ancient history now.

I stopped writing in Polish, and what’s more, I even stopped reading in my mother tongue. It was not a whim but a conscious decision to motivate myself to dive deeper into the language and culture of my new homeland instead of closing myself in a ghetto like many of my compatriots in emigration. By the way, I still feel a tinge of embarrassment when I remember the sight of satellite dishes mounted on kitchen walls near the wide open windows in the apartments of Polish emigrants to receive Polish TV because mounting satellite dishes on the outer walls of skyscrapers was prohibited for security reasons. If anything, it was the end of a bloody November, and believe me, that’s not fun on the Scottish coast. I can’t even imagine how cold it must have been in those apartments.

So, instead of waiting for another divine inspiration, I decided to start writing a journal, partly because my attempts at writing novels had failed since they were always nothing but a flash in the pan—I’m working on that—and also because of a lack of ideas for interesting stories. A journal definitely sorts the latter problem out—my life is my story. Moreover, the masterpiece of my favourite writer, Witold Gombrowicz, is his diary, which, by the way, I have in the original and in English translation, and I regularly return to both. So why not follow my master’s example, even if my chances of writing anything worth publishing are rather slim?

And just like that he came

Published on 16/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

I can’t remember the last time I tasted marzipan,
or anything as sweet, for that matter.
Sugar has become one of those guilty pleasures
I can’t afford anymore. I envy the time I could eat
whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted,
and everything burned off without a trace in my waist.
I guess that’s age for you. But it’s not all bad.
There are things that only came with age, like the fact
that the all-consuming greed for new is finally gone.
I’ve learned patience and appreciation for the moment.
And back then, I would never have understood the words
of Professor Falconer. Now I know—I’m a single man too.

a white van parked on the side of a country road with a mountainous landscape in the background

Taxonomy for beginners

Published on 16/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I can’t be a crazy cat lady since I’m a man,
and I don’t have even a single cat, but that’s a minor detail.
Living in the north of Scotland, if anything, excludes me
from the bon chic bon genre.

I could always have become a white-van man
if I had bothered to get my driving licence first.
And, of course, there is always the obvious choice—
a Polish plumber.

A word of advice if you are in a similar dilemma:
whatever label you choose, make sure it’s clear.
People forgive you anything but ambiguity.

A large black cat stares at a man in a suit and top hat practising yoga - oil painting in the style of René Magritte

All the trinkets of my day

Published on 16/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I like that brief pause at the dust jacket flaps
before the serpentine sentences call me
to follow their long stretches and sub-clauses
introduced with all the althoughs, therefores,
and whiles pulled out of the conjunction hat.
I like the cat’s morning yoga for atheist classes
before the obligatory glass of milk-and-water bliss.
I like a furtive one last sniff of the night’s remnants
hidden in my pyjamas before I wrap myself
in the armour of an everyday suit.
And there are a few other trinkets like that,
but the point is, if there is a silver lining to life,
these would be the closest.

A man standing on the bank of a parting river - an oil painting in the style of René Magritte

Like pebbles lying on a riverbank

Published on 15/09/202315/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

There is no point to life or value
beyond that of a pebble lying on a riverbank.
These could only be created between us, but only just,
since all we do is supply the necessary dose of meaning in life
to keep us going—not the meaning of life itself.
And by the way, let’s leave aside any notion of happiness
or morality as distinct concepts (have there been many lives
as meaningful as Judas’, to look no further than Christian mythology?).
So, asking about the meaning of life is, in itself, meaningless.
And as for meaning in life, just think of the paradox
of future individuals.

A man standing in the middle of a river - an oil painting in the style of René Magritte — Created using AI Bing Image Creator

people busy with their mobile phones, oil painting in the style of Paul Klee

Rhymester, read thyself

Published on 15/09/2023 by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

“You have lost your wits and have gone astray; and, like an unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease.”
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

With mobile phones, we have become accustomed to immediate responses,
so no one wants to wait for anything anymore. Add to that the quality
of our relationships—likely comparable to the nutritional value
of a plastic bowl of instant noodles—and it’s no wonder we are trapped
between the Scylla of solitude and the Charybdis of addiction to dating apps,
ending up lonely one way or another.

Dealing with people sooner or later brings disappointment. I get that.
But we all have our quirks and neglected issues, so maybe it’s time
to stop being harder on others than on yourself.
Give them a chance, and they may pleasantly surprise you,
said the one least likely to read his own words.