You won't be needing the time where you're going.
When you drive down the lonely highway in Poland towards Radom, there’s a turn that’s incredibly easy to miss, which leads you to a town that may or may not exist. It appears on maps and road signs lead towards it if you peel your eyes wide enough but if you enter it might as well not be there. Zwoleń, a tiny pin-prick of a place in the south centre of Poland, is divorced from the reality that governs the rest of the world, which also happens to be the town where the love of my life grew up. It’s one of those liminal places where you drive through an invisible barrier, into the gulf of a different reality. Or it’s just plainly, mind paralyzingly boring. And that is the handle which makes this place so wonderful.
When your car pulls into the town limits, the very first thing that’ll happen, if you’ve got your radio tuned on, is that it will cut off. Something about the airwaves don’t want to get into this town. They’ll stick with you through the highway cutting through dense forests but the moment you drive into town, silence. The very first thing I noticed was the abundance of emptiness. Not a single person can be found walking around the streets and the cars that drive past are almost driverless. And the few people that you do see bear such terrifying expressions upon their faces, enough to strike a person dead. Where are all the people? Are there any people in those houses or are they just displays? These cold fronts must have warm interiors to account for the smoke rising from the chimneys. On my very first visit here, I encountered more dogs than people. These hounds, wild and domesticated alike, come together at night to howl and bark at the moon in an insane head splitting cacophony of canine wistfulness. Once you can tune out the terribly symphony of barking, or drown out the howls with the static of white noise, this becomes the perfect retreat for a misanthrope like me. With no people roaming around, the blissful sounds of nature take hold here; the bird song from the trees playing all throughout the day, the trees dancing seductively in the wind with the grass swaying to the tune of whatever music the wind is playing them, and the clouds rolling around in peaceful ecstasy. The only other thing I can compare this feeling to is when you plateau on acid, when the peak passes and the rising vibes even out into a clean flat-line of dissociated serenity.
Some places have a palpable vibration to them, you walk in and can feel the entire history of the place embedded within the movement of every molecule in the air. Zwoleń, meanwhile has no such thing. Maybe that’s to do with the fact that the entire town was reduced to a smouldering pile of ashes first by the Swedish in 1655 and then during the second World War by the bloodthirsty hands of the Nazis. Or maybe, it’s because of the absence of time. The sun rises and sets, clocks tick and calendars move here, but time seems to have gone on strike. One ever-lasting moment carries this town from one state to nothing. I have no idea since when this chrono-death took hold of the town. From what I can tell it’s different around the several areas of this place. But if I was to make an educated guess on the average, this town has been in the time limbo for fifty years.
There is positively nothing to do here. This is a place perfect for philosophers and thinkers, no distractions can get in the way of your contemplation. There’s small square right in the heart of the town with a park and a statue commemorating their treasured poet Jan Kochanowski, who knew that the silence and boredom of this town would suit his profession well and got to writing. He’s buried in the church right across the road. On the main drag there’s a grocery store, plenty of places to buy booze, very surprisingly an art house cinema which seems to be an anomaly around here as it’s the least likely establishment to exist in this town that forsook itself long ago, a road that will lead you to a small playground, an abundance of pharmacies and a place where you can get yourself some soft-serve ice-cream. Surrounding it is more open fields than you can shake a tractor at, all wrapped up nicely in a dense wall of trees that stand comfortingly against the horizon.
However, for those whose poison isn’t writing or contemplation, especially if you’re young, this town becomes a vortex of drunken partying and terrible life decisions. This was my girlfriend’s generation, a new breed of teenagers who have livers made of titanium and can drink elephants under the table. Alcohol here is a pound a penny and in incredibly vast supply. Among the many liqueur stores on the main strip is one that sells to everyone, indiscriminate of age. No one can trace a bottle back to them and with the astronomical profit they make by selling to such a thirsty bunch, whatever fine they may find themselves slapped with, they can pay it off with what amounts to them as small change. All of this is perfect ammunition for teenagers who have nothing else to do but to party through the night with a 100% blood-alcohol level until they throw up their internal organs, ready to crack open another bottle. All of this inevitably leads to everyone having sex with anyone. And so, this town turns into an echo chamber of malice. Everyone knows about you, everyone will gossip and bitch about you, and you’ll end up with a reputation that can eclipse Jupiter. How is one supposed to endure all this, particularly during their most formative years? It’s character development. You end up forming a hard exterior that is immune to the petty bullshit everyone has a voracious appetite for.
There’s currently a man paragliding through the skies above me. Imagine the spectacle if one random strong gust of wind knocking him off the precious equilibrium that’s keeping him alive, sending him careening down wrapped up in his parachute and hitting the ground with a hard cracking splash. That would probably make for the most interesting thing that’s happened here since the Nazi’s rolled into town with trigger happy fingers holding loading MP-40s. At least that’ll make the funeral process easier on account of the paste sauce-esque corpse already being wrapped up in something. Maybe they can bury him next to this town poetic treasure. Woah, what the fuck was that all about? Ignore this grim day-dream and stay focused.
Last year, Poland passed the draconian law to ban abortions. The government of this country is a living breathing monument to just how fucked up and repugnant the puritanical facets of Catholicism, nay, all religion can become. A very ascetic sort of people dominates the population of this country, it is one of the worst places imaginable on this planet to be if you’re gay or a woman. The outcry against this law manifested itself in the form of vehement and large protests in the streets. An ocean of people flowing across the city with passionate cries for progression and common-sense. Me and my girlfriend were here in Zwoleń when all of this craziness began picking up speed. We decided to do our part and get involved in the local protest that was happening here. I’ve never been one to protest or take part in any activism, my apathetic view towards politics renders me a pathetic activist who just sits on his ass and lets the people with true grit and courage do the work. But even the most useless activist such as myself can recognise the ceaseless wrong-doings of this world and know when it’s time to actually act. This was my first protest. My and girlfriend and I, knowing how this is the ghost town of ghost towns were expecting a pretty loose turn out. We were surprised however, to find what looked like almost a thousand people gathered in the streets waiting for the procession to begin. We had to drive around them to find a place to park. All manner of people; men and mostly women, carrying signs and shouting slogans that probably translate to “fuck the president”, walking in tight formation with a police escort down the main road, past the catholic church, whose very foundations cowered with fear at the sight of this angry mob heading its way and then back around again onto the main road. Passing motorists and even some of the police, honked their horns in solidarity for something which should be a common human right. It was an absolutely fervent display when this town slipped out of its perpetual stasis, got with the times and included its voice into the undulating cry against such a terrible state of affair.
Sadly, abortion is still illegal in Poland.
I was walking down a street just off the main road, with a pistachio ice-cream that didn’t taste all that amazing and I saw something very peculiar. A graffiti on a wall saying “AN AMERICAN PRAYER”. How did Jim Morrison’s final words manage to get to this remote and forgettable place in the world, I wondered? Maybe he’s still alive, hiding out here from the terrible realities that have come true out of his poetry. This scene has become too heavy for him and he’s hunkered down in one of these houses, leading a quite existence. Or maybe there’s something with pretty good taste around here and a can of spray paint lying around. Whatever the disputed reason might be, it points to one thing for sure, that this town, though divorced from the conventions of the rest of the world, isn’t completely severed from it. That invisible barrier that lays somewhere at the border of this place may be thick enough to stand the forces of time, but it certainly isn’t impermeable. I got in here, didn’t I? The scent from the outside world clings onto the people who enter here and it gets released into the low atmosphere. The sky is just as blue, the sun as bright, the birds as melodic and the dogs as loud, only thing that differs in Zwoleń is that blasting noise which comes from the collective existence of humanity is toned down to such a level that you can hear the planet whispering to you.
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