Stupid Stupid, stupid (Dobranoc.)

My concentration requires either an internship while enrolled or studying abroad. I didn't know how much time I would have in the next year, so I decided to go abroad. I am a student of the globe, so why not see the globe, rather than just theorize it?

I'm alone in the hotel lobby right now. It's next to a forested park with a big fountain that does water displays that move to music. I thought I was going mad in my room when Also Sprach Zarathustra danced outside our windows. Vitaly thought that the Poles were reenacting the war when the fireworks came.

Turns out it's just a normal Friday night in Southeastern Wrocław.

I'm one of the only students in this program without a Bachelor's. Most of them are working on their dissertation and are including their coursework in their projects. How many Polish intellectuals does it take to upset your vision of stupid Poland?

Just one, just one intellectual. There are none here with toothless, happy grins, old world charm, there are none. These people are wearing better shoes than I am and many speak English. Honestly, whatever stupid image I had of the Slavic countries East of Germany... I will tell you, there are more scags on public transportation in Portland than there are here. I'm not even in the largest city in Poland. I'm in the fourth largest. People aren't rich here.

I managed to upset one of the Polish students who are also part of the program. I said I disliked the mass-mediated discourse surrounding the failure of the socialist experiment that was the USSR. He was aghast. "You actually think that we should have another try at Marxist socialism?"

Well, I guess not, when you say it that way. I believed in the decency of humanity and that the bourgeois were replaced with totalitarians that enacted and reinforced boundaries that already existed, but now I don't believe that. I can't believe that.

I didn't live under socialism. I know nothing. Americans know nothing. Why does The New School discuss Marxism in so many contexts if it is not worth discussing? Maybe because it's great sociological critique, my UN table was able to agree on that, but Joel, the time for socialism is dead.

I had to remind them that my name is Joel. You can't remember both names and polemics.

That's a joke. I've only been here two days.

I got into an argument with one of my closest friends before I left. I presented a radical leftist perspective unabashedly (and unprovoked). I was not received well. To fight complacency, I was reactionary and that did little in the way of conversation.

I find this shit terribly interesting and righteous, but I don't have even reason to bring it up in social situations. I don't want to be a zealot. I don't want to not speak and go on like I have in the past, or like I am here, too embarrassed to mutter in Polish to go anywhere, but I don't need to be so virulent or violent.

And hell, even these international academics are less radical than I think I am. Maybe I should keep reading and absorb more everything. A crisis is like a sponge, and so will I be. I don't want to be wrong anymore.