Enemy hands you Coca Cola

I sat down for a while on my balcony at sunset, tired after packing boxes and boxes of books, sipping a cold glass of Cuba Libre ( dark rum, orange mint, Coca-Cola), thinking of freedom and of Coca Cola and all those who fight for the first and long for a – symbolic – second.

And I remembered my first introduction to Coca-Cola… or rather a notion of it.

I was a little girl in then communist Poland, who just started to learn to read. I was playing in a park, accompanied by my grandpa (I lived with my grandma and grandpa then. My father was killed when I was only 8 months old – and he 21 and a partisan. My mother miraculously survived prison in which she gave birth to me – she was a partisan, too – and now was working full time and studying full time at a university some 300 kilometers away) when I spotted a large banner on a building on the other side of the park. It proclaimed “Wrog podaje ci Coca Cole!” = “An enemy hands you Coca-Cola!” Wow, I realized that I was able to read it! But I did not understand it.

‘Grandpa’ I asked ‘What’s Coca Cola?’
‘A beverage’ answered grandpa, who was reading a book.
‘What kind of beverage?’ I continued.
‘A beverage made from cola nuts…’ started grandpa absentmindedly, but then he stopped, probably thinking of the avalanche of questions such an answer could provoke, and finished ‘ a very, very tasty beverage. A symbol of America. A symbol of a good life’.

Now I was really confused. A very tasty beverage and a symbol of a good life? My, I wanted it, I wanted it badly! But I thought that “an enemy” was a bad person, a person who wanted you harm, who did horrible things to people. An enemy who would hand me a symbol of a good life??? No, something must have been wrong with my knowledge, so I decided to test it.

‘ But’ I started ‘grandpa, isn’t enemy a bad guy?’ Grandpa laughed, a bit sad, I thought, put his book away and looked at me seriously. ‘You are big enough already’ he said ‘ to be let in on a secret. But you have to promise to never, ever, repeat it to anybody else, or the commies would put your grandpa in prison, and God knows if he’d ever be able to come back.’

Now I was truly terrified. The thought of grandpa going to prison again (he already spent 5 years in Dachau during the war, and he told horror stories about it to his friends, when he thought I was not listening) made me almost not want to know that awful secret…. but my curiosity took over and I promised, both eagerly and solemnly.

‘You, see, little one’ started grandpa ‘ when the commies call someone an enemy, he is most likely a good guy, not a bad one’. And then he sighted: ‘but here they mean USA, and USA sold us out to the commies in Jalta and is not interested in knowing what’s happening to us, much less handing us any Coca-Cola.’

‘You can’t trust communist propaganda’ he smiled sarcastically. ‘If you want Coca-Cola, or freedom, or a good life, or anything else in the world you can’t wait for it to be handed to you, you have to fight for it yourself.’

‘ But yes, it would be so nice’ he added – ‘if some friends, some “enemies” came then to support you with a tall glass of Coke.’ He smiled again, but now there were tears in his eyes.
……..
And I thought of Darfur, and of Myanmar. They ARE fighting there. And where is Uncle Sam?
Who does he give his support to? Whom does he hand his Coca-Cola?

 

Crashes

Yesterday (9/11) my laptop crashed. For the second time in a month, and since last time I lost all data from it – and most of the programs, and busy with moving to Puerto Rico, I barely started uploading everything again, I think it might be time to buy a new one. (

But back to crashes. For most Americans 9/11 is about  crashes into World Trade Center Towers in New York, about crashes of  vastly different ideas of what a desirable civilization, a desirable society is or should be, and about  different ways of trying to impose your idea – and/or will - on everybody else. 

I had my own personal crash of  ideas and wills on September 11…. some 40 years ago.

I was 17 and in seventh heaven, since everything seemed to turn up roses for me that year.  At the beginning of June, even before  I  managed to take my final high school exam  ( In Poland, my home country,we called the final exam”matura” – a symbol of maturity? – and the high school – liceum), I  already went through a grueling week -long entry exam to Polish Film, TV and Theatre Academy in Lodz, Wajda’s, Polanski’s and Skolimowski’s alma mater – to name just a few famous Polish film directors.

Now I was accepted there,  to study film, to become a film director myself in the future. I hardly believed my good luck, since I was  one of only  22 accepted as students that year out of  over 240 candidates!  In addition,  I was  also the youngest (by three years) and the only female! 

No wonder I was proud as a peacock and had a feeling of floating over the earth….  .

I was so totally self-absorbed that I must have missed any and all signals from my boyfriend Jacek  (Jack) of how he felt about the situation.  I accepted as the most natural thing in the world that he proposed marriage ( a day after I got the acceptance letter),  despite the fact that we have only dated since February of that year, that I was only 17 ( he was 20), and about to leave town for at least four years (I lived and he studied in Poznan, while my school to be was in Lodz, 240 km away)  and we got officially engaged on the day of my high school graduation.

My mother let me spend summer vacations with him (after all we were engaged), and we spent one month at the seaside, and another in the Bieszczady mountains, where he was born and his parents lived.  I had a time of my life  and did not pay the slightest  attention  to the fact that all through the summer he made  frequent mentions of  our future marital bliss – hey, I liked him, I liked being with him,  being adored and  having all the sex I wanted without too much restrictions (Poland was a communist country, true, but also a staunchly, conservatively catholic one, and even in the era of  flower children in the West, in Poland premarital sex was not considered acceptable… unless you were engaged to be married, which made the society give you somewhat of a blind eye – and a pretty wide berth),  I loved spending a summer vacation with him and feeling aah, so grown up. But my dreamy next step was to study film directing, not being married, scrambling financially and having to do without a maid – because as students we would not be able to afford one, while  I had neither experience in – or the slightest inclination towards housekeeping, and the thought of possibly having a baby (brrr) caused me considerable nightmares.  So marriage – other than as a years away possibility – had no allure for me.

Yes, I would miss him, I answered his inquiries, but I would be busy learning, experiencing the world I so far only dreamt about, and, anyway, we could see each other  twice a months on weekends, alternating my trips to Poznan  and his to Lodz  (train tickets in Poland at that time were cheap and trains frequent), and he, too, could concentrate on his studies ( he studied engineering and his grades weren’t as stellar as in my opinion they should be, if he truly wanted to be worthy of me… well, yes, I already admitted that at 17 I was not yet a woman, but already  a peacock). He countered that he would try to transfer to a  technical university in Lodz, which was fine with me.  Alas, he did not get a permission to transfer.

September 11 was his namesday (for uninitiated: a birthday of his patron saint or el dia de su santo, which in the catholic Poland  – and not only Poland – was celebrated instead of the person’s own birthday. Please don’t ask me why you would get presents and a party on your poor patron saint’s birthday – I grew up in this culture and never gave it a thought at that time – only now it strikes me as ridiculous).

So Jacek had his namesday party on that September 11 and when he walked me home after the party ( it was communist Poland, we had no cars, nor dared to dream of them – but, influenced by Italian movies we dreamed of scooters, Lambrettas, when we dared to dream big) he suddenly gave me an ultimatum: either I stayed in Poznan (he “generously” offered that I could study visual arts, instead of film directing, since I was studying both visual  and performing arts during  the last three years of high school on a customized  gifted and talented program and did not even have to take entry exams to the Visual Arts Academy in Poznan) and we got married right away or the engagement was off – right there and then.  I was stunned, walked in silence not really believing that he said what he did and waiting for him to recant, to laugh and said it was a – bad – joke. He did not, so finally, in front of my house I asked him if he really meant what he said. He said yes. I took off my engagement ring and gave it to him – and he took it, turned around and left, without a word, a hug, a kiss.

I waited a week, thinking that surely he must come to his senses, he can’t expect me to forgo my exhilarating dream for the sake of something so bland and mundane as a premature marriage, but  he did not call, did not drop by. Nothing.  I was devastated and only the thought of  film school kept me going. So I packed my bags and left for Lodz two weeks before the school started in October.  My first  school ID picture shows not only how very young I was, but also how dreadfully sad.

(a picture to be uploaded)

Yet, with time, the school worked its magic and before I went home to Poznan for Christmas I once again was a happy-go-lucky myself and …. already  had a new boyfriend.  In Poznan, after holidays  I met Jacek when I was visiting my best friend. ( She later admitted that she arranged the meeting on his request). He offered to walk me home and I agreed.  He begged me to forgive him and take him back, offered to wait patiently until I was good and ready to marry him on my terms and  asked me to a New Year’s Eve ball, so that all our friends could see that we were back together again. I was tempted, but  decided  that it would not be fair to my new boyfriend and declined. Jacek called every day hoping he could persuade me, but when my new boyfriend ahowed up on New Year’s Eve and I went to a ball with him, Jacek – as I learned the next day – attempted to commit suicide. He was lucky, though -his roommate returned early from the celebration after a quarrel with his girlfriend, found Jacek and called an ambulance.  I decided not to visit him in the hospital and left  with my new boyfriend to visit his parents instead. 

There are large and tragic crashes - like New York’s 9/11 - and there are small,  tragicomically silly ones – like my personal one all those years ago. …. Yet I still remember it well….. and  a few years after that crash, when I heard about Jacek getting married – I cried all night. 

 

Stagflation??? Tsunami????

I happened to look up a  Puerto Rico Herald and  got goose bumps. Turns out there is a terrible stagflation  (rapidly rising cost of living with low pay and high unemployment) in Puerto Rico and scientists warn against a  very dangerous tsunami likely to hit  Puerto Rico as well.

Why, o why am I going there??????????????? 

On top of  everything   the PR government wants to introduce vacation and other benefits for part-timers!!!! Horror of horrors ……for a crude American style anti-employee-rights demagogue. But I am an enlightened European (warning! Sangrona speaking) and  despise heaping  benefits on the  rich and super-rich  and stealing  even the crumbs of prosperity – or semi prosperity - from the population at large.

And in the same breath that Herald grosses over benefits for part-timers it also suggest Finland - with its economy at the top of worldwide competitiveness - as a model for Puerto Rico’s salvation.

Herald apparently did not study Finlands economic model too comprehensively, since it pointed out Finland’s high outlays on R&D (3% of BNP versus Puerto Rico’s less than 1%), but forgot to mention about Finland’s extensive benefits for workers of all kind: blue and pink collar to professional and managerial, fulltimers and all kinds of parttimers. There is no mention either that in Finland (like generally in Europe) the pay scale is much, much flatter than in the USA. So may be paying attention to all kind of employees instead of  grossly overpaying CEO’s, hedge-fund managers and a few other privileged categories could be a model to follow for PR… in addition to increasing investment in R&D?

Oh, well, the news happened to be two years old, and I can’t wait until I can see the dangers of stagflation, tsunami and the benefits for part-timers with my own very eyes  in only about a month!