One day, during a conversation with my mother, she told me that as a child I said to her that one day I would visit Japan. For you to understand why that was strange at the time, you must understand my past and the background from which I came.
I grew up in communist Poland between the years 1975 and 1987
This is me with my mom, circa 1975-76, one of the very few remaining pictures from that time. Poland was a very different place during that time. Many people speak about communist Russia as that was the heart of communism, but not so much is said about the remainder of the nations that formed the communist block of the old Europe. I was still a kid then but the bits and pieces of memory that I have left are strong enough to help me understand the importance of what I have now, and allow me to appreiate the wealth and fortitude of worlds present predicaments.
I was a child in a time when food was rationed. Communism is said to be meant to provide equality for all but in reality what it does is provide equality for all who are not above all. Those in power get to decide what equality is and distribute it accordingly to the masses, just enough for all to have enough, but no one to have as much as those in power. The picture above is that of food stamps given out to families each month so that people could to line up in front of shops to purchase food that wasn't there. The top row of stamps is meat. Bottom is butter. Bottom left two stamps are meant for the purchase of beef with bone. There were also stamps for alcohol and basically anything else perishable. The only thing that we as children could purchase willy nilly, given that it was availabla and that we had money for it, were dairy products like youghurt. My parents brewed moonshine vodka in the house because vodka was the only means of excaping the shit reality of their adult lives and since vodka too was purchased on stamps, one litre of it per month simply didn't do the trick. That's how I learned that dropping charcol pills into the boiling pot of potatoes gets rid of the smell of alcohol fumes.
During these years as a child, I only remember eating 1 banana, brought by my cousins astranged father from only god knows where. The first kiwi I ever saw was in 1987, the year before we escaped Poland to Germany, but that is a story for another post.
During the 80s was when Poland was undergoing a social justice movement, Solidarnosc, which started with a simple strike at the Gdansk harbour, and cascaded across the nation like a flood mobilising people from all corners of the nation to finally say ENOUGH.
At the head of it all emerged one person, Lech Walesa, a man credited with the push for the abolishment of communism.
There was plenty done since to discredit his name and what he has done, but the fact remains that he was the leader of the movement that ended communism in Poland in the lade 1980's.
As a child I had very little exposure to television. There were only two channels on tv, and the content was either very polital or adult in nature. Children received a dose of cartoons once a day at 8pm for an entire 10 minutes, and on Saturday mornings, for about 30 minutes. The remainder of my childhood days were spent playing outside and getting into all sorts of trouble. We played with knives and fire. Threw stones at the windows of old abandoned buildings and climbed trees to collect fruit like apples and pears.
So it was a surprise to me when my mom told me in a recent conversation that as a child I had always wanted to visit Japan. Apparently I told her that "one day I would travel to Japan".
So I guess it was no surprise, that in 2004 I left Canada behind and headed to Japan, since it always had been my dream of sorts, and even more so during my uni years, when it seemed like every single person was moving away to Japan in pursuit of a teaching job. Some said it was a great way to pay off their student loans, but personally my intellect and organisational skills never carried me that far. I always thought of it as a "fun thing to do", an adventure to pursue. So in 2004 I set out to conquer the continent of Asia.
My life has carried me across over a dozen of nations and 3 continents, and while to some this may seem trivial, I'd like to see it as a life journey worth mentioning. I have memories, both mnemonic as well as written, which I think may be of interest to some. Maybe, in the tradition of the acclaimed author Andrzej Stasiuk, I will one day compile a masterpiece similar to his "On the road to Babadag" in which I describe the move of the Slavic people from the perspective of one, across years, generations and land masses. From Eastern Europe to Western Europe to South America to Asia.
Perhaps the world of crypto will bless me with insane gains which will grant me the time required to create such masterpiece.
HA!