Nebulous Thought-Spittle

 English Caterpillar - Polish Butterfly?

I don't know if this is something that happens to everyone, but every now and then I see a little sign that living here as affected me a little. For example: 

• Yesterday I intended to write a note-to-self saying "check so and so website" but I ended up writing czech (which is how the English word "check" would be written if spelt phonetically in Polish) I also emailed someone t'other day saying "I am without credit" which reflects the Polish way of saying this (In English we'd say "I don't have any credit").
•  My friends tell me when I return to the UK that I'm much quieter than I used to be – I on the other hand feel the UK is much louder than it should be..
• I wear white socks and little shorts – well, I did this before but living in Poland it doesn’t feel unfashionable 
• I've started doing that curiously Polish mixture of the super polite and the super rude that categorises the average shop transaction.  
• I now stare at any and every person with wild abandon, whereas in the UK it's all so very furtive.

Something's bugging me

I've had a long standing ambition to write a faux self help book called The Confidence Bug: How to Catch it, Grow it and Keep it  based on a made-up-on-the-spot 'philosophy' that confidence acts like a bacteria, but with a very real belief that most self help books are written with a catchy title first and the rest filled in later.

However, I have recenty started teaching kids and it appears that childrens' literature may well be the best place to turn my desire for writing nonsensical piffle. Consider this opening paragraph from "The Legend of Spud Murphy" by Eoin Colfer:

I've got four brothers. Imagine that. Five boys under eleven all living in the same house. 

On wet summer days our house gets very crowed. If we all bring two friends home, then there could be fifteen of us crammed into the house. At least eight will be roaring like lunatics, and the rest will be dying to go to the toilet. The flusher in our toilet snaps off about once every three months. 

"The flusher in our toilet snaps off about once every three months." Would you credit it? I'm definitely in the wrong business. Can't wait to tell how the rest of the Spud Murphy story enfolds. There were the best of books, and the worst of books...

Flaszbakować and Sehnsucht

Speaking of literature, there are many very beautiful passages in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning but re-reading it this week one in particular stood out to me: 

[An] Intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritaual property of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones... his nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character..[the prisoner's] spirit reached out for them longingly. 

When I was about 12 I went on a two week camp in Godknowswhereshire. I was home-sick then and bitterly so but I never felt this peculiar emotional state as outlined by Frankl, which is best described in brief by the German word sehnsucht. Over the past few months I’ve had several experiences of this kind - often when I've been on public transport and absorbed in thought without any distractions - when I've remembered something, such a joke between friends or an intimate family moment, in such an alive, tangible and vivid manner that I’ve been unable to control my emotions and frequently laughed out loud – to much staring.

This has never happened to me before moving abroad and I am sure is a reflection of my brain processing its new and old environments. I wonder, does this happen to everyone?

Ps. I can't find a verb for “flashback” in Polish so hot off the PzU presses we have flaszbakować.

Life is Good.