As we cross the border and descend into Oravská Polhora, it feels like rolling into a hush that belongs to another century. The mountains behind us fade into blue layers, their silence trailing into the valley. Here, the land flattens into gentle, green pastures, edged with those distinctive low, flat back stones—some pressed into fence-lines,…
Tag: Romance
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Babia Góra
“Where the Strawberries grow under Fir” The van rattles along the narrow pass beneath Babia Góra. My notebook trembles on my knees as the forest smears into stone ridges, sky low and restless overhead. My thoughts spill out before I can tame them. “Elusive men like Tarmo don’t stumble into trouble,” I murmur, more to…
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Bielsko-Biala
“Between Vodka, Weed, Heat and Warning” It’s only after we’ve ditched the snarled avenues of Katowice—streets shivered with suspicion, every window a blind witness—that I let myself breathe. My reflections haze behind the car window: haunted tenement facades collapsing into their own shadows, the twilight river clutching secrets, and that peculiar, slanted lake like a…
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Katowice
“Forgery and Framework” Yet as mentioned before, rest is for the wicked. There’s barely time for the river’s pink hush to fade from my mind before the world crashes back in. My encrypted phone vibrates—three quick pulses, Mrs H’s signature. One last echo of river-light before everything snaps electric. I step away from the window…
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Warsaw 3
“Rites, Rituals and Backlash” Warsaw wakes restless and silvered under an early rain. Markets fill, trams jostle, and from my hotel window, the city’s rooftops shimmer like scales in a river’s dawn. I linger at the glass, recalling the story of Wars and Sawa—the fisherman and the mermaid who, in the city’s soft heart, shaped…
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Warsaw 2
“Brewing burying the Bear” They talk: delicate jabs, laughter too quick for a funereal setting. I watch Sandi glow and falter; she glances back every few seconds, tracking Kalevi among the SUPO delegation. Bartek’s touch on her arm, mid-story, lingers, unclaimed, and somewhere between promise and warning. I slip between power circles—women who run continents,…
The Chronicles of a Memory Cartographer: Warsaw 1
“On the Road & Mission anew” Spring tumbles alongside the car window as Poland balances gorgeously between thaw and riot. Green fields ripple from Gdańsk to Warsaw—birch trees shaking off winter, ditches foaming with white blossom—remind me of a Szymborska stanza: “Even a passing moment has its fertile past.” The poet knew that beneath every…
The C.O.M.C. Files 