There are nights,
restless, leaden hours
of dripping thoughts
when words miss the mark,
a metaphor doesn’t land well,
the trash bin overflows,
yet you keep scribbling,
revising the revised
as a habitual alternative
to sheep-counting.
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When I think of a lingua franca, the first thing that comes to mind is Latin, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, if only for the centuries of dashing strides of Roman legionaries across the Mediterranean world, much of Western Europe, the Balkans, Crimea, and vast regions of the Middle East, including Anatolia, the Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia and Arabia. But Latin held strong even after the fall of the Roman Empire, although its status as the official language of the Croatian parliament as late as the mid-nineteenth century is more of a curiosity than the norm. Nevertheless, the first truly global lingua franca was French—to think that it all began with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts—and its undivided reign in courts and salons, universities and military headquarters, received its first blow only when the Treaty of Versailles was also drawn up in English. And so here we are—with the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and Orwell—producing literature, scholarly works and manuals by the mile and wondering what will come next—Chinese perhaps? But I have a hunch that the next truly global lingua franca will be 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001, but that is going to be as relevant to us as the invention of the washing machine was to the dinosaurs.
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Have you ever heard of Le Bauriver? You must have, if at any point you’ve discovered that you are the vampire of your own heart and that if you believe that you were in hell, then indeed you were there, only to proclaim: I am the Empire at the end of the decadence. But even if it passed you by, the unholy trinity of modernité was part of my state-sanctioned curriculum of adolescence. Hmm. Le Bauriver—an asylum turned a classroom.
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Dear Strachey, while sharing, at least in spirit, some of the paraphernalia of cultivation—you had Baudelaire; I have T.S. Eliot—if only I had known you then and shared your outlook on marriage to begin with, and if my admiration for your intellectual finesse had passed beyond the tantamount to witnessing polyorchidism under an ultrasound examination, I might not have stepped into that sanctimonious staple just to regret it dearly afterwards. But I met you late in my aimless peregrinations, so everything turned out the way it did, and all that remains is to share one piece of wisdom—don’t trust vows without a prenup.
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‘Travelling is a fraud,’ said Lytton Strachey, and all I can say to that is, ‘What a wonderful sentiment!’ For I would rather cultivate the apathy of prolonged departing in my study than placate the ever-ardent fellow sightseers. But that’s just me, so feel free to elevate your carbon footprint at every opportunity so that we can all enjoy the peak of the Anthropocene. As the French proverb goes, Les voyages forment la jeunesse—and so does your local library.
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‘War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’
Carl von Clausewitz, On War
We need children after war—
lots of them—
and so we need mothers and fathers.
…mothers and fathers…
Who would have thought: war—
a dating app,
available on all platforms.
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I like the name Paul. There is a strong but warm ring to it, and the way you shape your lips to say it, as if you were about to kiss, sends shivers down my spine. If I had a boyfriend, I’d love it if that was his name. On the other hand, I’ve never liked mine. Every time I say it, I feel like I have a large dumpling in my mouth, and I picture a klutz and a bit of a plodder. Oh well, one cannot have everything in life.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
I don’t like weddings;
I much prefer funerals, if anything.
But I guess that’s the result of being born—
everyone carries at least one curse
in the end. That’s mine.
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I lost sight of my neighbours
as their nest drowned in the linden leaves—
which is nothing unexpected with spring in full swing—
so for now I have to find some other source of entertainment,
or better yet, draw the curtains
so that I don’t become the target of snoopers:
all those flies bouncing off my window.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 