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.

Musings on belonging

 We all need to belong. The first link we experience is belonging to our family. While this may be problematic at times and not always a happy dependency, nevertheless our family is our first tribe. The subject of belonging came to my mind whith the book I am reading – The Art of Belonging by Hugh Mackay an Australian social researcher and an author of many books with a psychological slant. The second trigger was a recent post on Personal Reflections concerning internet community, the author refers to as an internet village. Nice label, I like it.

Belonging is obviously important to all of us and I have been reflecting on it for quite some time.  Hugh Mackay subtitled his book – It’s not important where you live, it’s how you live. It  indicates to me that we have at least some influence on belonging or not belonging to a tribe. When I was a small girl, I did not have any siblings and my mother kept away from me children who did not behave up to her standards. As the result I did not have mates to play with exception for the times with my grandparents. The frequent time in solitude made me an avid reader rather early, my friendships were imaginary ones.  I developed a bad habit of being somewhat reserved and a loner until later on when I went to school. I must have been rather popular then as I found some pictures from my school years showing me being engaged in school group activities like folk dancing. I even performed in the school play at my grammar school times. It was not all that bad with me after all, I am glad to realise.

I belonged to this group of young people for four years - my high school class. I still remember some names. 

Personal Reflections praise the value of internet belonging telling the readers that at times blogging may lead to a friendship. Jim Belshaw calls the group of regular readers who exchange blog comments on mutually interesting subjects – his village. I find the concept very attractive and I like to visit the Jim's village. With familiarity of covered subjects and personalities of the regular readers, one develops a nice feeling of understanding the village and even belonging.   I can see that such blogs may lead to “real” friendships.

If one wants to be philosophical and complicate the issue a bit one could ask what makes a friendship or belonging to a group of people with common interests “real”. Is it that they meet in person at some stage? Or is it that they are genuine in expressing their views? What makes such belonging real?

Hugh Mackay in the chapter Online Communities sees some advantages of online friendships and believes that they may lead to having a comfortable feeling of belonging. He is critical of mobiles used as a “life line” that takes priority over life situations, even intimate ones. I agree with this view but I have not found  in the book convincingly strong arguments against internet communities like blogging or FaceBook friends. They obviously have their merits. I have formed friendships via internet, participatd in activities of support groups and studied online. For me internet plays an important role in my “real” life. If I ask myself a question – is this enough to stop at internet friendships, communities and villages forgetting about physical contact with people, the answer is of course NO. I would miss smiles, tone of voice, touch... 

We know about verbal and nonverbal messages and the rule 7%-38%-55%. It has been taught in public speaking courses for many years. Only 7% of the message we send when speaking is verbal. 38% - is tone of voice and 55% - body language. Sure we could use video. Still, this would not be  enough for a full message.

Considering these points I could not live without internet and my internet friendships but they cannot replace my “real” friendships and “real” belonging.

Re-discovering pleasure of reading

I have been home bound for some days. This temporarily changed my lifestyle and I re-discovered reading for pleasure. Being an achievement oriented person I typically read books not that much for fun but to get new skills, learn more. This has been fine but reading for pleasure of reading is great. In my earlier years I loved reading, it may have been some form of escape for me. Maybe reading is usually a form of escape from our everyday lives? It also stimulates our imagination, brings new observations, new wisdom.

As for ten years I was the only child and I was not allowed to play with kids in a communistic, industrial, small town yard, I was finding my friends in books.  I started to read early and my favourite were stories about boarding schools for girls. My mother must have bought them for me in a second hand book shop as my childhood years were communistic times in Poland. The literature of the times had to glorify the working class not boarding schools for girls from higher social classes.   

No wonder that reading recently Charlotte Bronte’s - Villette I re-discovered moods of my childhood and that gave me additional pleasure in reading the book.

          

Villette is about life in pennsionat – boarding school of Madam Beck. I was lucky to be able to buy a beautiful edition of all the novels of  the three Bronte sisters with great wood engravings by Peter Reddick. I am making my way though the set of the seven novels and Villette is my favourite so far. Boarding schools were a favourite location of the novels of Charlotte Bronte, so it is not surprising that I particularly like writing of this sister.

Charlotte Bronte

The story is about Lucy Snowe, an orphan who does not have any family and for a short while has to go through life with help of her godmother but soon she is left to her own devices.  She is a determined teenage girl when the story starts who has little money but enough to help her to get to Villette – Brussels where the main story takes place. The plot is not very convincing or realistic, but this does not matter much. There are compensations! The story is an excuse to write about subjects that must have been important and close to the heart of Charlotte, and perhaps the other sisters as well – working women in the XIXth century, their independence,  loneliness, spirituality and life styles of England and Europe. The currency of the issues discussed at length by Charlotte Bronte is amazing. She writes about issues that are still important, need attention and hopefully improvement. Or maybe they are just issues that are not resolvable and this is the reason why the book is so relevant also in the current times.

Some of my friends describe me as European. I am not sure if this is a plus or a minus but the fact is that some of my behaviours and reactions are not of an Anglo-Saxon nature. I call myself an Aussie with a strange accent but there must be a lot of European left in me that I am not aware of. Charlotte Bronte who for some time lived in Brussels was aware of the differences in behaviours of English and Belgian or generally European people.  The differences, in her experience, were not in plus for Europe. She sees Europeans as skimming, not trustworthy, fickle, flirty, generally without much substance. She noticed that there are exceptions, thanks God.

The subject of religion is a strong point of the novel. Bronte is a spiritual person but she  declares that “God is not with Rome”. I may agree with this statement but it is a subject for another post.  

About my grandfather

I have enjoyed going back in my thoughts to my childhood. I started to remember more and more. When I stop and travel in time, I remember smells, colours, temperature of the air. This is a really nice feeling. Typically for most of us some childhood events turned into psychological hang-ups and complexes. Thinking back helps me to understand myself better and some of the memories are really nice to think about. I particularly like to think about my grandfather. I was once asked when did I first feel loved. My grandpa came to mind immediately. He was a very special man. At least I think so. I need to find out from the only surviving person, who may know about it, what actually was the war he fought in and was declared a hero. For now I believe that it must have been Polish Soviet war of 1919-1921. My grandfather came out of the war in one piece but with very impaired hearing. He met my grandmother at a ball organised by one of the most known and prominent Lithuanian- Polish families Radziwill. My grandmother ran the school for children of people working for the Radziwill family.  She was at the Radziwill ball where my grandfather noticed her as a very attractive young woman. He tried to dance with her but she hesitated to accept him as a dance partner because of his problems with hearing. Not very noble of her. The countess Radziwill noticed the situation and called my grandma to tell the silly girl that she had refused to dance with a war hero who had been fighting for Poland  and had lost his hearing protecting the country and that everybody owes him respect and admiration. It must have been a convincing speech and a memorable dance that followed the rebuke as they married soon after the ball. 

The war pictures of the times do not shake of scare us much. Have we gone too far in sophistication and science of wars?

                                

I am not sure if my grandma always treated her hero with due respect as she was a bossy person and this is how I remember her. She bossed my grandpa around and he never protested or argued with her. This does not mean he was a push over. Not at all. He did what he wanted to do, maybe covertly, maybe in secret but he usually had his way.

My grandparents did not have natural children, my mother was their adopted daughter and they loved her dearly. The affection was then transferred to me and I felt very much loved by my grandfather. He was a kind man, a softy, while my grandma was very energetic, no-nonsense person who ruled the family.

As a child I did not like to eat. I am sorry it belongs to the past now.  My grandmother challenge was to make me put on a couple of kilos during my stay in Sadowne, to show that she takes care of me well. I remember times when I was given  a bowl of cottage cheese with chives and liberal amount of sour cream. All organic! The instruction was : You will not leave the table until you finish.   Boy, it was a torture. The cottage cheese was growing in my mouth rather than moving in the direction of the stomach. And I wanted to go to play! My kind grandfather in such situations circulated between the room he worked in and the backyard, passing the table where the little girl was having a fight with the cottage cheese. He stopped at the table for a moment, stole a little of the offensive cottage cheese from the bowl to help me out. I thought he was an angel of mercy. Together we managed to present and empty bowl as a passport to the yard, fields and play.

One had to love such a grandpa and feel loved. 

Childhood revisited

The most happy memories of my childhood come from the times I spent with my grandparents in a Polish village in the eastern part of Poland. This part of the country is now called Poland B and that means representing lower standards than the prosperous districts. Place a bit behind the times.  My memories go to the times that are really far behind today. Sometimes I think that I have been living in three centuries. When I first visited my grandparents it was like going back in time to the XIXth century. There was no electricity there, water was drawn in buckets from a concrete well and I was taken from the station home to my grandparents by a horse and a buggy. No rubber wheels, just metal bands around the wooden wheels! It was a bumpy ride.

But the air was not polluted then. There were many pluses in those days at least in the eyes of the four-five years old girl. I was sent to my grandparents for many reasons, I presume. My mother was a really young woman, nineteen years older than myself. The grandmother performed the role of my carer perhaps better than my mother, she had more common sense and experience. My Beautiful Mother was also a working woman and she was away from home for most of the day. My parents were building a small business in the communistic Poland. They were considered to be enemies of the system and, at times, I felt guilty seeing that we were better off than most of the people around. I felt like I did not quite belong in the communistic world.

The official reason to send me away was – fresh air in Sadowne. Sadowne is the name of the village which has a big church and a big school. Much too big for the locals only. It also had its “upper class”. My grandmother was a kindergarten/school teacher in her unmarried times and my grandfather was a Polish-Soviet war hero and a tailor.  They were respectable people. I say it with tongue in cheek. Of course they were respectable but so were the others as well. Anyhow I was not supposed to be familiar with some of the neighbours. Some  were even considered to be a bad influence.

The neighbours on the right side did not meet with approval of my grandmother. There were many children there who were not clean and ran around bare foot. Not proper people according to my grandma. The father of the family used to drink too much and when under influence loudly disciplined his wife and children. One could hear shouts and screams coming from their house.  With time the boys of the family became strong enough to stop excesses of their father. The dramas became less frequent.

People who lived in the main street were not farmers, they were teachers, shop keepers, tailors. The right side neighbours were farmers. During harvest I could observe strange and fascinating activities like threshing wheat and haymaking. I was transfixed to the fence dividing the two houses looking at the magic of what was happening on the other side. It was all new to me. This was the only time I saw harvest work except for later on in movies about life in the nineteenth century.
   
                                   

One day I sneaked in to the neighbours through the gate in the dividing fence. The gate was not used often as there were no friendly visits between the two families.  However I can imagine that my naughty grandpa when he wanted to smoke a forbidden cigarette, he would cross the gate to go to the neighbour for a smoko.

Once I ventured into the forbidden territory to be warmly welcome and given a treat – big slice of dark bread, covered with glistening lard spiked with cracklings and sugar sprinkled on top. Revolting? Perhaps. But not too my taste at the time. It was heavenly good, a completely new, exciting taste. And a forbidden fruit! The bliss did not last long. I was not clever enough to hide my tressure and eat it in private. With my original sandwich in hand, I marched in to the kitchen of my grandma who seized it immediately and threw it to the rubbish bin with disgust. Oh, what a disappointment to the little girl! Such a fantastic food and so rudely taken away! Perhaps I will not ever be able to taste anything as good as that! Of course I have tasted many fantastic food after this event, like the oysters in Paris, I wrote about earlier. Or bread dunked in fragrant olive oil at Santo Spirito. This black bread with lard belongs however to the list of best food I tasted in my life. Actually some form of that specialty is now served in Polish folk restaurants, only the bread is not dark enough and there is no sugar served with it.

This was served while waiting for lunch with my Aussie friend when she visited Gdansk this year.

 In my dreamy plans I see myself someday visiting Sadowne again. This most likely will remain only a dream. But who knows?