Vermiculite is the mineralogical name given to hydrated laminar magnesium-aluminum-iron silicate.
When subjected to heat, vermiculite has the unusual property of exfoliating, or expanding into wormlike pieces. It is used to make fire protection materials, insulation, ovens, brake pads, acoustic finishes, sound-deadening compounds, seedling wedge mixes, fertilizer, and animal feed.
[Expanding animal feed. Hmmm. Maybe that’s how Mrs O’Leary’s cow got so fat and klutzy.]
Vermiculite is one of the safest, most unique minerals in the world.
[A vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana was closed in 1990, after it was discovered to be contaminated with asbestos. While in operation, it supplied most of the vermiculite used in the construction of thirty-five million homes across America, in the form of the supposedly fireproof Zonolite Masonry Insulation. Cough, cough. Cancer’s in the attic. And in those cookies you baked.]
It is lightweight and non-combustible.
[Big lie. Vermiculite can most certainly burn. It can only withstand temperatures of up to 1,100°C—far cooler than a natural gas flame (1,250°C), a blowtorch flame (1,300°C), or an oxyhydrogen inferno (2,000°C). You want your house to incinerate? Build it with “fireproof” material. Drizzle vermiculite around your bedposts and say a hex. I invite skeptical scientists out there to spend an educational afternoon with me.]
Our objective is to promote wider use and increased consumption of vermiculite-based products.
[Wish us all luck.]
CHOCOLATE MILK
I would’ve been a likelier candidate as a janitor or football mascot than as a visiting speaker at Universytet Jagielloski, one of the world’s most revered educational facilities. I’ve learned, however, to accept life’s injustices with a smattering of grace.
By the way, when I say “football,” I mean “soccer.”
There was no way to turn down Dorota’s invitation to present to her fellow art history students without pissing her off. Besides, the gig paid 100 złotych, rent was due any day, and I didn’t want to get into another tiff with the administracja.
For that price, I came with black nail polish.
“What do you want me to talk about?” I asked Dorota. We had arrived in class ahead of the other students. I knew nothing about art history.
“Don’t worry, they’ll ask lots of questions,” she said with a wink. “They’re an inquisitive bunch. This is a remedial class, so there are clueless students from all disciplines.”
“Literature, too?”
“You’re looking at her.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said, embarrassed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you ... are you writing poetry, or just studying it?”
“Is there a difference?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“Radeki, don’t let me be an asshole to you,” she said, laughing. “I’m experimenting right now, and I’m not ready to show you anything yet.”
“I just want you to remember that I’m terrible at judging poetry. I’ll love even what you hate.”
Once the class had filled in and everyone had taken their seats, the professor gave Dorota a piece of chalk, the cue to introduce me.
“I want you to remember this name,” she said to the class, scrawling S. MOK WAWELSKI on the blackboard. Whiteboards were not Ivy League enough for Jagielloski. “Please give him a warm welcome.” She gave me the chalk.
After lukewarm applause, I sat on the corner of the professor’s desk but tried not to give too much of a ball show; my overalls had shrunk in the dryer the night before.
“What do you know about me?” I asked, casting my line into a room I felt knew too much.
“You keep the fire department busy,” a student said, getting a rise from the class. He was a redhead, arms covered with strawberry down. “Can you tell us about your influences?”
“Pink Floyd.”
The professor shot Dorota a warning look worth 100 złotych and maybe more.
“I meant what miniaturists do you admire?”
“Uh, none,” I said, taking advantage of the resulting silence to take a sip from my one-litre carton of chocolate milk.
“So you’ve never heard of the Beckonscot model village, the one with the burning house?” pressed the redhead, wrinkling the freckles on his nose. “I find it weird you don’t acknowledge precedents for your work.”
“The Wall is a great album, and if you listen carefully, it’ll teach you all you need to know about building and tearing down.”
Of course I studied precedents, but he was thinking miniature, and I tend to go oversize. For me, art history is about Christo and Jeanne-Claude unleashing their epic whims on the earth, visible from outer space. It’s about having the gumption to hang a 14,000 m2 orange curtain across the Rifle Gap Valley in the Rocky Mountains, to change the planet’s very topografia at your vernissage. You can’t think small without thinking large, but that wasn’t a very academic thought, so I kept it to myself.
Another student raised her hand.
“What concerns does your practice raise regarding safety and personal space?”
“I don’t know ... I mean, you can prepare for a fire your whole life, but it will always get you, because you can never think of everything. You know? At least once a year, you’ll leave Kleenex near a heater, and you’ll forget to turn off a stove burner. You can never protect your valuables, because you won’t know what’s important to you until you see its edges curling in a house fire.”
I found it surprising that nobody, in this room full of pretentiati in training, asked me about my artist name.
Dorota winked at me.
I suddenly realized that my invitation to this class was an act of sabotage on the school. I winked back. It was time to have a bit of fun.
But first, you need to know more about Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
Husband and wife, environmental artists. They were both born on June 13, 1935, at the same hour. As part of their 1961 honeymoon (which, you might say, lasted decades), they created one of their first Low Art monuments by barricading the docks of Cologne, Germany with an oil-drum simulation of the Berlin Wall, to the bemusement of police and the horror of the art establishment.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude never flew together, so that if one died in a plane crash, the other could carry on with their work.
They remodelled Germany more than once. In 1995, they petitioned the 662 parliamentary delegates who had offices in the Berlin Reichstag, writing personalized letters and making phone calls asking for permission to wrap the building in “fireproof” polypropylene fabric. The delegates acquiesced after a seventy-minute debate on the parliament floor, and then Christo and Jeanne-Claude, with the help of hundreds of workers, threw a giant condom over them.
The German parliamentarians had reason to be nervous. The Reichstag had burned in 1933, and an enraged Hitler, convinced it was an act of arson by the Communist Party, manoeuvred to erase them from government. The Nazis then achieved a majority in the Reichstag, and eventually, single-party rule.
Maybe those 662 delegates knew that a fire could happen again, at any time.
All this. These two artists. But why would I reveal my true heroes to this class? I could just whisper their names into Dorota’s ear some other time.
Dorota raised her hand, drawing a second stern glance from the professor. High Art, it was clear, was under assault.
“Young lady,” I said.
“Is your art sexual?”
“Please explain,” I said, blowing bubbles in my chocolate milk through the extendable straw.
“Czesław Miłosz once said in an interview that in his poems, ‘You will find a very erotic attitude towards reality, towards simple things: amazement, for instance, for the innumerable and boundless substance of the earth—the scent of pine, the hue of fire, the white frost, the dance of cranes.’ I was wondering if you feel the same way about your art.”
“Art does not use the language of departm
ent-store perfume,” I said. “But seriously, has it never bothered you that Miłosz put history and politics ahead of literary merit?”
“He had no choice,” Dorota volleyed back. “Do you know what country this is?”
“The artist always has a choice.”
“Not when his best friends are being imprisoned and assassinated.”
“Okay. Good point.”
The professor took the piece of chalk away from me and was about to call off the class, but strawberry boy raised his hand.
“Where did you graduate, Mr Wawelski?” he asked sarcastically.
“Funny you should ask,” I said. “Jagielloski kicked me out a few years ago for a conversation almost exactly like this.” I turned to the professor. “Do you pay cash, or will you be mailing me a cheque?”
Too bad they’ll never hear my real artist statement, a bone that Christo tossed to a journalist over continental breakfast: “I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.”
Dorota and I left together. She cut her remaining classes for the day.
“You’re not angry at me, are you?” I asked. “For the Miłosz stuff.”
“No, not really. I’m too preoccupied by what you said about Kleenex and stoves. I’m afraid to ask you about your life and what happened to you. What you know.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll come out one day.”
“In the meantime, I’ll try not to interrogate.” She took my hand. Her wrist was covered in goosebumps.
“Why did you do it?” I asked her. “Why did you want me to fuck with them? Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing, but how did you know I would catch on?”
“I didn’t. But I need somebody in my life who doesn’t have to be told what to do, and I need them to see that none of this matters.” She gestured to the walls I routinely scaled in fits of parkour. I wondered if she had ever seen my sneakers rapping on the glass. “Or maybe I’m the one who needs to see that. But you were more than amazing today. You were ekstra.”
“And if I had failed? What if I had impressed them with shit about the intersection of urban planning, miniature cities, and world art?”
“Then I would have dropped you and found another friend,” she said with no trace of jest. “Anyway, you don’t know about that stuff, so what does it matter?”
GEMELLI HOSPITAL
[The Holy Father, Pope Giovanni Paolo II, was taken to Gemelli Hospital this Thursday, February 24, for a routine tracheotomy to ease his breathing. The operation proceeded according to schedule and was a success, and he sends his well-wishes to all of Rome.]
Dr Krzysztof Mazurkiewicz, emergency surgeon:
4:26 pm
After ensuring the patient’s comfort, we identified the Jackson’s triangle near the suprasternal notch, and injected a solution of lingocaine and adrenaline to minimize potential bleeding. We disinfected the area from the mandible to the sternum, and pre-lubricated the tracheal tube. A tapered and curved Cook model was chosen, to reduce the risk of damage to the tracheal wall. The Cook model is shaped like a rhino horn.
[His Eminence is evidently in jovial spirits, and was making jokes shortly after 8 pm. He directed that no general anaesthesia be used, and his wishes were respected.]
4:30 pm
Pay close attention, in case you have to do this yourself one day. We made an incision between the suprasternal notch and the cricoid cartilage, and dissected the tissue with a cat’s paw retractor. You cannot imagine the pressure of performing these tasks on such an important patient.
[It is not unusual for the Pope to visit the hospital more than once a month for health monitoring. He catches colds, as all Romans do. We are praying for his full recovery, and by all accounts, His Holiness has bounced back rather quickly.]
4:55 pm
Once the tracheal rings were visible, and after cauterizing the bleeding, we made a second incision between the second and third rings. Upon reaching this stage, it is ridiculously easy to “make a mistake.” It is common knowledge that the price of making a medical mistake on this patient is instant removal from the premises. And execution.
[We might remind the media that the Holy Father has been an avid athlete all of his life, and that he has built up a natural resilience to “hiccups” of the body. He sends his love to the faithful in Poland, and says energetically that he “will see you all very soon.”]
5:12 pm
Unfortunately, the patient continued to bleed in the epidermis from the first incision, with blood leaking into the trachea. This is common in older patients, but there was a man in the operating room known to conceal a pistol, so I cauterized again, even though over-cauterization could have led to complications ...
[Doctors report that never has a patient made such a quick recovery.]
5:14 pm
The bleeding stopped, but my staff was still nervous. I knew they had all rehearsed suicide routines in case anything went wrong. We injected a two percent silocaine solution into the tracheal incision to prevent cough. I hadn’t performed a tracheotomy in a while, but the pistol brought back much of my medical training, as I knew it would. For example, I remembered that tracheotomies are actually called tracheostomies. When did we start forgetting the s? A Vatican doctor in the room reminded us that the patient’s breathing still sounded difficult and that we needed to hurry up.
[What better time to buy His Eminence’s latest book, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, released this past Wednesday in hardcover by Rizzoli Press?]
5:17 pm
We inserted the tracheostomy tube and confirmed its position by holding a piece of gauze in front of the nozzle; it fluttered with every inhale and exhale, indicating that the patient’s breathing had become more regular with the device in place. I pressed my thumb on the hole to feel the alternating blow and suction, just to be sure. I blocked the Holy Father’s breathing for a few eternal seconds, and couldn’t help but feel supernatural. His jugular was so, so close. We inflated the balloon cuff with air.
[From the critics: “The world will remember Pope John Paul II for espousing many of the convictions he expresses here: that good is ultimately victorious, life conquers death, and love triumphs over hate.” —Amazon.com]
5:28pm
We performed two sutures to secure the tracheal tube to the Pope’s skin, and then taped the free ends of the suture wire to his chest.
His Holiness has a preference for Polish doctors, which is why I was chosen. But if the man with the pistol had discovered I was homosexual, would he have shot me right there, or would he have taken the time to drag me outside into the piazza?
[Once his Holiness makes a full recovery, if he has not done so already by the grace of God and the Holy Virgin Mary, he will give Mass in Piazza San Pietro. We look forward to hearing the warmth and vigour in his voice once again.]
[“He says of pro-choice and gay marriage advocacy that ‘it is ... necessary to ask whether this is not the work of another ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family.’” —Village Voice]
5:30 pm
I did it.
It is known that someone who saves the life of the Pope on the operating table is guaranteed an early retirement with a casa signorile in the Alps, paid for by the state. In the span of an hour, I rose to the top of my profession and secured comfort for the rest of my life.
But I do not want it. This is what I want: a traditional Polish wedding with hundreds of friends and family, a giant cake made of serek, and “sto lat” and “na zdrowie” toasts with Žubrówka vodka, and bigos at midnight. I want to observe the old tradition of my husband and me getting our hands tied with a white scarf, and I want a mazurka dance that ends when we fall down from exhaustion.
This might never happen in my lifetime.
The Holy Father, on the other hand, will speak again. The vocal cords were very close
to the incisions I made. I definitely thought about making a few fateful snips too many. He almost lost his voice for good.
I confess this to you, but there is nobody who can forgive me, especially not the patient.
He is not my Holy Father.
SEA SALT
She put me on a train, this crazy girl. And she was sitting in the seat beside me.
“I want you to know exactly why we’re doing this,” Dorota said, wiping the can opener clean on her sleeve.
“Because you want to see me naked again?”
“Yes, but that’s beside the point. It’s because freedom fighters can’t be inhibited.”
“I can whip it out now, if you like.”
When I had told Doktor Dorota about my sex and nudity issues, she prescribed a trip to the Baltic Sea. I wasn’t sure about the exact details, though I knew we were going to get naked. A lot of old folks go there to dance panty-free in the freezing water for its healing properties, to cure eczema and rosacea with salt. Slough off their malaise with freshly dead sponge.
I just hoped her plans didn’t include something idiotic like seeing the solo concert that David Gilmour was scheduled to play in the seaport city of Gdask: one guitarist does not a Pink Floyd reunion make. Besides, everyone knows that Roger Waters was the heart of Pink Floyd, or rather, the germ.
Dorota and I hollowed out our bread rolls and laced them with led from a tin, dripping with tomato sauce and lemon juice. A stink bomb, quite literally; eating marinated herring on a train is the international sign for “don’t sit in our cabin.” So is yanking shut the orange polyester blinds on the cabin door window. In a country as densely populated as Poland, you must protect leg-room to the death. We stretched our legs and ate, ate, ate, washing it down with herbatka from a thermos. This was our pocig pospieszny to paradise.
The Polskie Koleje Pastwowe (PKP) is a notoriously ancient institution that uses maps and timetables corresponding to towns no longer serviced and rail lines long buried in weeds. Trains are never late, because they always come unexpectedly. The irritable clerks are happy to remind you, as they throw your change through the slot under the bulletproof “customer service” window, that there is no alternative. The PKP would choose steam locomotives for their pospieszna express trains, given the choice, just to make you late.
Krakow Melt Page 4