The Tunnel of Light
In the early 2000s a teacher called Jason Walker came over from Florida to live in Białystok and became a member of Global Village team for a couple of years. We would go jogging together in Zwierzyniec first thing in the morning. Such a natural choice when you live a five-minute walk from this runners’ paradise. In a big city, like London, you need to be in Richmond or Hampstead to have instant access to similar expanses of parkland.
In Zwierzyniec, at the point where the main lane reaches the boulder commemorating the first flight over the Atlantic by a Pole, four other paths, like dials of a giant clock, branch off in different directions. One of them cuts diagonally to ulica 11 listopada as a long, straight, well-beaten passage, surrounded on both sides with a dense wood, like an aisle of the gothic church. The other end of it, just discernible, seems like a tiny whitish point dropped on the all-embracing green.
The moment Jason the Runner entered that impressive path, he coined a name for it, ‘We’re in the tunnel of light.’
It’s time The Tunnel had its due place in the archive of Global Village ideas, we’ve just added a special, out of the woods, category to this blog. To find out why The Tunnel of Light is a magic space and how it stimulates the mind and body, try the following: start running, frequently go to the woods, or visit both GV blogs.
Into the woods
Of plants and people
Dear All,
the spring is coming. Where would you rather be? Just look around the garden. Does it seem barren and hostile? Why not bring some life to it?
Most garden plants are highly adaptable, thriving in most soils and situations where they get a good deal of sun. They can be planted directly where they are to flower. They require the minimum of care – weeding, removing dead flowers, watering in dry spells and stalking of the tallest specimens is all the attention they ask for. They are often outstanding value for money; a packet of seed will cheer up any garden from spring until autumn frosts, and can provide an inexpensive supply of cut flowers.
Life is wonderful.
yours
Chance the Gardener
PS There are few plants, however, that need to be taken special care of. They …
Life is a state of mind.
Looking awry
Last year, when a colleague teacher who was using Coffee and Cigarettes at a lesson, tentatively flashed the dvd disc, the title got penciled in and patiently awaited its turn. Until a few months ago, when we discovered what a jewel it was! In this real curio, shot in black and white, about two dozens of distinct characters, coupled separately in eleven short episodes, chat over coffee (or occasionally tea) puffing away clouds of smoke.
You can hardly call the episodes cinema, they are very theatrical in form. The camera is more than restricted, it just shifts sideways, capturing the talkers’ busy faces, and every now and then goes overhead to capture tables laden with cups of coffee and cigarette stubs.
The beauty of Coffee and Cigarettes, however, is the stories they bring to the tables. Stories within stories. Actors mostly play themselves – a pair of British luvvies, cocaine-demented rockers, sleep-deprived rappers, whingeing and cursing Italians, ageing New York bohemians … they all drag their their own lives and careers with them, and as they are getting high on caffeine and nicotine, they unfold most peculiar, at times idiotic, stories to share onscreen. In between thin coffee-table dialogues and silences they gaze or cast glances at each other. Once absent-minded, intoxicated, or mysterious, at other times curiously checking the opponent’s reaction, pensive or crafty, adding more, getting deeper, revealing some momentary truth.
And there is always a story that happened before they appear sitting round the table, and a story to be continued, when their figures fade into black at the end of each episode.
Earth Hour 2008
Global against global warming
(Maciek Żytowiecki, fat_fish group)
They come in clusters
by wojtek_t on March 16, 2008
in misc, weird words
Soft fruit, like grapes and blackcurrants. Flowers, like lilac. Trees, shrubs and smaller plants in a well-kept English country garden. Stars, galaxies and multiverses, something that few of us ever have a chance to inspect. Music comes in clusters, when a mad composer hits several keys of the piano with the palm of his hand to produce a mass of sound. Clubbers, when seized by hunger they flock to Bar Italia at five in the morning.
But for language learners and teachers more important are the mind-blowing facts, continually delivered these days through corpus linguistics – a language can be seen a universe of word clusters. These are 2 to 6-word units that we repeatedly stumble across in speech and writing. Clusters evidently escape simple grammar categorization and often pull down the barrier created between vocabulary and grammar. When naturally retrieved from memory, they define the boundaries of the speaker’s fluency.
The beauty of commonest English clusters is that they can be listed as ever changing charts, and like songs, are instantly recognizable.
A selection of spoken English clusters, ranging between 2 and 5 words: you know; I mean; sort of; and then; if you; you can; a lot of; you know what; I think it’s; a couple of; and it was; I thought it was; I don’t know if; I was going to; have a look at; you don’t have to; in the middle of; you know what I mean; the end of the day; this that and the other; to be honest with you; and all that sort of; an hour and a half; it’s a bit of a;
Star cluster
Wierszalin
One evening, while visiting my family in Poland, I was taken on a surprise visit to the theatre. I’d not been to a theatre in Poland and was slightly apprehensive to begin with, as I’d been told the play we were going to see had caused controversy, particularly within the Church and definitely wasn’t for the faint-hearted.
We arrived in the small town where the theatre was supposed to be, but with no typical theatre in sight, only a small hut with crowds of people surrounding it. Seeing the only building in the vicinity with people around it, we went towards it and found that what we thought was just a small hut, was in fact the world renowned “Theatre Wierszalin”, our destination for the night.
(Martax)
Kozyra at Arsenal Gallery
We went to see Katarzyna ‘The Scandalist’ Kozyra’s set of latest video art pieces at Arsenal Gallery. Gender bender, or post-feminist vomit? It’s hard to tell, perhaps both, but which is which? Go and judge for yourself. (until 20 January 2008, 6 PLN, concessions 3 PLN)
Shopping for Sunday lunch
The air is crisp and smells of smoke. It makes us realise we haven’t cooked for a long, long time and it seems a sin to rely on canteen food when the local market stalls are groaning with late autumn goodness – fat roots, purple cabbage, new apples and Conference pears. Oh, those pears are hard enough to hurt the gums, but when placed in a brown paper bag and left there for a two-day retreat, they undergo a miraculous transformation. On the first bite they turn into a fountain of juice in your mouth, trickling down the neck and ruining your just ironed white shirt.
It is the pumpkins that steal the market show. We go for a smaller, football sized fruit, deeply orangey inside, small enough to roast within an hour. Few vegetables offer greater rewards in return for the simplest possible treatment. A rescue for a cold day.
Pat the pumpkin and babble gently while giving it a good wash. Cut it into 4-6 wedges and scoop the fibre and seeds from the centre. Do not peel the skin. Lay the pieces cut-side up on a cast iron pan or griddle. Cut about 50g of butter into thin slices and put them inside each wedge. Pour some olive oil over the flesh, together with a good pinch of fresh thyme leaves, lots of sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Roast in the oven pre-heated to 180°C for an hour, checking the wedges occasionally to see how they are doing. They are done when the kitchen fills with sweet caramelised flavours. The flesh has to be utterly tender when you pierce it with a knife.
Serve with brown rice as a vegetarian meal. For a meaty variation, place some good quality sausage in the pan with pumpkin halfway through roasting.
For All Souls’ Day
Affogato al café
If the misery of recent weather puts you on the brink of a coma, a simple remedy is within reach:
- On another wet afternoon, when you seem to be mentally and physically at your lowest ebb, head straight for the Wedel place next to Akcent bookshop.
- You don’t want to have any of those fancy desserts laced with chocolate.
- Pick a knowledgeably looking member of staff to speak to (the tall girl with glasses is really professional) and explain in plain Polish what you need.
- Ask her to place a scoop of vanilla ice-cream into a coffee cup, then pour two cups of strongest, freshly made espresso coffee over the ice, and serve it immediately. If not sooner.
- Sip your coffee slowly and spoon the melting ice-cream. From your seat by the window watch the building/excavation site in Rynek, waiting for the caffeine to enter your system.
- When you feel power run back into your limbs, leave the table and go singing in the rain.
