Memories of Christmas

Christmas went by in a way that it was not too exuberant for me. Nice and homely though.  There were no Polish excesses of 12 dishes on my Christmas Eve table this year but my Aussie favourites – oysters, prawns and a blue swimmer crab. Even if I do not follow the lessons of my original catholic upbringing, I still follow the tradition of fasting on Christmas Eve. Fasting in the sense that no meat should be present on the table this special day. In this case, I am more catholic than the Pope. The Christmas Eve fast has been actually abolished some time ago by Vatican. But at my family home there was never any meat this evennig and for some reason it is important to me to keep the tradition.

Even if it was a non event Christmas, I got two presents that I enjoy very much and that have left a mark of Christmas 2014. I am a tea drinker and all accessories related to tea are very important to me. I have many tea pots and special tea cups but I still stop at tea shops and examine any possibilities to add to my collection. My friend recognising the weakness of mine, gave me for Christmas a lovely tea pot and matching mugs. I am enjoying my tea in the new mug while I am writing this post.

Another special gift from another dear friend was a book by John Baxter – The Most Beautiful Walk in the World. John Baxter is an Australian writer who lives in Paris. As it turns out we, John Baxter and I, have at least one thing in common. Love for Paris is the thing. For many years I have been fascinated by France and French and especially Paris. A promise of three years of life in Paris many years ago, made me leave my home country. It turned out to be only eleven moths and the Paris assignment continued, to my chagrin, in Dusseldorf but I had great time in this wonderful city even if at that time I was home sick crazy.

The book about Paris woke up my love and fascination with Paris. It also reminded me of flaneur-ing. I heard first the word flaneur from another friend of mine, who likes the word so much that he is going to camino flaneur-ing in Spain. This is taking the word flaneur to its extreme. So many kilometres of flaneur-ing! I think that this is a great plan, Hans, and I envy you.

So what does it mean to flaneur? It is to wonder the streets without an intent to get somewhere but just to observe what’s around. Diane Johnson, in her book Le Divorce, defines it as "mess[ing] around with no guilty sense of being unoccupied." So maybe Hans will  not  exactly flaneur in Spain as his intention is to get to Santiago de Compostela is clear.

Rain should not stop a real flaneur

After reading the book and under its influence, I took into flaneur-ing in Mosman. My observations include inspecting the neighbouring properties. Checking the architecture, gardens, size of the houses, local pets.... I am wondering if being a flaneur in Mosman does not carry a bit of danger of being misunderstood for a Peepping Tom. Paris is definitely the ideal place to flaneur, but for now Sydney suburbs will have to do for me.

Curiosity and need for detail in observations are important to a flaneur

Flaneur-ing in Mosman made me notice that gardens of the properties are shrinking and the houses expend their living space. This is not a happy observation. Green spaces are shrinking. Mosman Council pay attention!

What Winter Sleep and Serena have in common?

I have seen two films in the last weeks that made a big impression on me. Winter Sleep is one of them and Serena the other. My assessment of the length of the films was as it turned out subjective. Winter Sleep is 3 hours and 16 minutes and Serena 1 hour and 49 minutes. Yet, in the second half of Serena I had an impression that  I have been watching another veeery long film.

I consider Winter Sleep an outstanding film for many reasons, Serena seems to me to be an outstandingly silly film also for many reasons. Serena should not have been made at all in my opinion. My movie companion was wondering what made those relatively good and popular actors Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper take the roles. She also downgraded the rating given in Rotten Tomatoes (1.5) to -5. 

Beautiful people but a very silly story

                                

It is a really silly story which I fully realised trying to summarise it to my friend. There are a couple of interesting points related to the film though. Rhys Ifans known to me better as Spike from Notting Hill plays is the film. I have not noticed him playing in any other film so far but now he caught my attention. Not that he played well his pathetic role in Serena, he was not funny there at all. Sad role and sad story.

I preferred him as Spike

                                          

 I also found out that the film was made in Prague. This is a very beautiful city but there was no opportunity to show the town maybe except for some interiors.

Winter Sleep is not a film which I would easily recommend either, but I had a ball. No much fun but bringing many points worth thinking about. Human conditions type of questions concerning universal dilemmas:

•       To what extent are we able to look at ourselves objectively

•       How to help others without humiliating receivers of our benevolence

•       Gaps between intentions and results of related action

•       Human reactions or lack of it towards evil

Those are questions without answers really, even though we humans try again and again to answer them. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the director of the film does it in a way that I got some new insights to the life dilemmas. He made many films by now but this is the only one I have seen. I will try to fill in the obvious gap in my familiarity with Turkish cinematography. And Ceylan in particular.

Three names of world deep thinkers and writers are often mentioned in relation to the film : Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Shakespeare. Heavy weight, all of them and that includes Ceylan who is apparently a Chekhov’s fan.  

Dark interiors of the hotel create sense of intimacy and show the mood of  the film 

The film takes place in a beautiful and haunting Cappadocia. Watching the film I developed strong desire to go and visit the caves and stay in a cave hotel for few days.

Aydin, the hero of the film runs such a hotel. He has been a successful and famous actor and now is a man of considerable means who lives in his cave palace on top of the mountain and owns a village lower down. People who live there depend on his governance. They are like serfs at a mercy of a king. Is the king Aydin a good king? He wants to appear as such but his sporadic generosity only serves his own purpose. He is strangely uninvolved in matters of the village.

 His courtly remoteness often hides cruelty. He is like a schoolmaster ready to punish his villagers, his wife and his sister. Or at least sermon them in a patronising and belittling way. We observe him often through the eyes of his wife and his sister and we see a deeply lonely and cruel man who can watch suffering with indifference. Detached observer of pain and cruelty inflicted on others.

I was particularly moved by the scene of taming a wild horse. The drama of taking by force spirit, freedom and dignity of the animal through violence of the strongers is heart breaking. Symbolic horrifying scene.

On reflection I do recommend Winter Sleep as an important film.

Mr.Tusk - the President of European Union

My most popular post to date has been Why do I like and respect the Polish PrimeMinister Donald Tusk.  Obviously, when we blog about somebody or something popular it rubs off on the blogger. Thank you Mr. Tusk, no more the Prime Minister of Poland, for my undeserved popularity.

Mr. Tusk advanced to the President of the European Council. This is international recognition of his talents and I, his fan, am very happy about it. He took over his new post a couple of days ago and yesterday gave his first speech in English. 

 I have attached a link. It takes about eight minutes and shows Donald Tusk as I knew him from the past. Relaxed, even if he jokes about being nervous. If it is possible at all, I think he appears relaxed and at the same a bit nervous. Apparently, he has been criticised for not speaking English or French. I think he made a good progress in English. His German has been always fluent though, I hear. This is  not surprising for  a person with Kashubian  background. Kashubia is a northern part of Poland with its own language which uses many German words. So, from the linguistic point of view one should not criticise Mr. Tusk all that much. How he will manage in his new post we’ll see and I think he will make a positive mark on Europe. He is still my hero.

Kashubia

                                              

In my previous post I mentioned Jurata and its special location on a very narrow peninsula. The attached map of Kashubia shows it well. Jurata belongs to the Kashubian district. I first heard Kashubian language during my holidays in Jurata. I was surprised that in Poland people speak other languages or dialects than pure Polish, but they still do.

Mr Tusk comes from Gdansk. That is the place where I live during my visits in Poland. My Polish neighbour tells me that her son went to school with Donald Tusk who would have been called those days - Donek, diminutive of Donald. My neighbour is no gossip so I do not have any juicy stories to tell.

I was happy to see Mr. Tusk giving Mr. Van Rompuy, the previous President of European Council,  a piece of amber for luck. Polish like to offer presents and amber is a stone from Gdansk. Sometimes Gdansk is even called an amber city. I love it myself and each time I visit Gdansk I land up with a new piece of amber jewelry. The piece of raw amber I bought this year got chipped, I think I need to replace it during my next visit with a better looking and undamaged specimen. I will take care of it better than I did in the case of the current, sadly chipped one.

                                             

Under French spell

A simple Aussie girl, as one of my friends and myself would like to see me, is going through another period of foreign fascination. After Poland and Italy the time came for France and French.

Coincidentally two things happened at the same time. I went returned to reading the autobiography of Simone Signoret  and saw the film My Old Lady. The book and the film made me think fondly and warmly about France and my French memories flooded my feelings.  Finesse and sophistication of French ways of expressing themselves, dressing and thinking has been alluring to me in my years of youth. Looks that there is still some of the fondness left.

Polish people looked up to French ways for many years. I was brought up on French books and French films. English literature was not that widely read by comparison to French and Italian. Now I see how much France was oriented towards communism, most of French intellectuals were communists or at least charmed by it. Their thoughts and ideology supported official Polish believes and propaganda. I guess availability of French literature was one of very few benefits of being in the Soviet bloc.

My first film with Simone Signoret  was Casque d’Or – Golden Helmet. It made a very big impression on me and I remember many details of this remarkable movie evening. It was in the beautiful Jurata, small holiday place on a peninsula that narrow that in places one can see the Baltic sea and the Bay of Puck across. Memories are back and I feel dreamy. But today I am not writing about Jurata, it is about French influence. So ad rem (I am showing of my non existing Latin).

Once in a while a movable cinema came to show films in open air on a wall of one of the pensions.  Most of the holidaying people brought their collapsible chairs to place them in the forest facing the wall where the film magic was going to happen. Such happy times! Casque d’Or is a love story about a prostitute and two Apache gang leaders. A tragic story telling about love that lasted four days and finished with a guillotine execution of the hero. I was in tears for at least half of the film that did not seem appropriate for a fourteen years old girl, I was at the time. But if I was not allowed to see the film then, I wonder if it would move me that much today or leave such strong memories. Thank you my understanding and romantic mother for letting me to see the film!

                                                       

Simone Signoret was married to Yves Montand a famous French actor and a singer. While reading the bigraphy, I almost heard his voice singing romantically and sadly in the background. I selected for my potential readers the song and the clip of Autumn Leaves which symbolically shows the story of the love triangle Simone Signoret, Yves Montand and Marilyn Monroe.  It is a bit ambiguous who he sings about as his love who will stay in his memory for ever. The marriage and friendship between Signoret and Montand lasted to the end of her life. The love of Simone Signoret changed into a sad disappointment when she realised the romance between her husband and the most desirable woman of her times. This was very French, in my opinion, acceptance of infidelity. Something got broken in her though and changed their relationship for ever and that actually contradicts acceptance.

The My Old Lady is also about a ménage a trios which gave a start to the story. This has a happy end though. Ah, this French acceptance of superiority of romance over loyalty... The film has bad reviews and I agree that the plot is predictable and it is not played brilliantly, but quite well. How it cannot be if the main characters are played by Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott  Thomas and Kevin Klein?

"To good health" - she says  provocatively

 What I liked most about the film, as I did like it a lot, were disjointed scenes with French flavour and its very subtle, wicked  humour. I loved the brocanteur (flea market dealer) – most likely Polish origin as he mentions speaking Polish among other languages – avoiding buying antiques of older age in favour of more modern twenties century chairs. Better business, I guess. I loved the doctor who exchanges her skill for English lessons. And I loved the  real estate agent explaining the astonishing viager  system and saying that he himself lives in the blood of Paris. This turned out to be a bark on Seine. He cordially invites the hero for a drink at his place when he sees him passing. I love the scenes which those characters but my favourite is the aria La ci darem la mano form Don Giovanni so unexpected and out of context. I loved it and built my own context to fit it. 

Little Italy in Mosman

The last Saturday was a  good and fun day. It tasted especially well as it was my first outing after some difficult days of recuperating at home. I live in a suburb that I do not automatically identify with considering its style, interests and values. It is, still,  a convenient and beautiful place. I like living in Mosman for many reasons. However, I do not feel that I belong and this is my job and challenge to change. My new resolution is to start participating in some of the Mosman activities, find out more on how I could make a contribution and start participating in the life of the village I live in. I think I will start form the bridge club visit.

I have already written so much about my holidays in Florence that I may even have earned a label of a firm lover of Italy and things Italian. It shouldn't come as an surprise to those who know me that one of my favourite places in Mosman is the Fourth Village Providore. It is my favourite for food shopping and having lunch. The place is positively decadent and its rather high prices make it exclusive. This is turn does not allow for getting bored with it. Once savours the place and much as its food. 

One feels hungry looking the food selection

                                        

One of my friends and my, at times, companion in The Fourth Village lunches  moved recently to Melbourne. I have been missing our occasional lunches but this Saturday my friend was in Sydney and we again had lunch in our favourite place.  It is nice go back to the familiar place that one likes. We both were happy to order the same as  we knew and liked from the past experience : Calamari Fritti Zucchini Fiammifero e Mayonese al Limoncello, pizza Capricciosa and two glasses of Sangiovese.  

How wonderfully Italian!

                                      

 In Australia one often shares dishes and we did. It was a lot of food, perhaps too much but I decided to enjoy it to fully experience the great company and food. I decided that it was rather nice and effective therapy.  Sangiovese is one of my favourite wines as well. It was blissful indulgence!

Lately, I have heard so much about superiority of Melbourne over Sydney that maybe it is time to see for myself what is so special about the place. Architecture and food are supposed to be Melbourne particular strength. I have not been to the Melbourne Art Gallery yet and galleries are always places to visit, so I will put it on my list to see. It is not likely I will make a trip in time for the Polish Food Festival, but early next year should be a right time to make the trip.