Brandenberg & Aliki's FRESH CIDER AND PIE

FRESH CIDER AND PIE portrays the story of a sinister fly whom outwits a spider -a sneaky arachnid whose plans were to gobble up the fly whole. Now, the fly himself was just going about his day, innocently soaring through the open window of a tiny cottage home. Upon being caught by Miss Spider, the fly is granted one last wish -so, he requests his favorite dish...a slice of apple pie with a glass of cider. With unforgettable illustrations by the infamous Aliki (A Weed Is a Flower, My Visit to the Zoo), author Franz Brandenberg whisks us away with a tale so very delightful.

The four-color illustrations were prepared as pen-and-ink line drawings, with halftone overlays for yellow, blue, and red. I have a special place in my heart for this children's book, as it was one of the first that my parents had bought for me as a wee-one. This is true -the book I hold in my hands has been with me since 1984! Which entails that this one is not exactly for sale. 

Brandenberg & Aliki's FRESH CIDER AND PIE was released in 1973 -the very same year as quite a few other happenings took shape; the U.S. launched space station Skylab, the fourth Arab-Israeli war had taken shape, and Roe v. Wade was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. It's sad to think that we haven't advanced much, politically  -in fact, we have de-evolved. But that's whole other discussion we'll save for later...

Risdon's Foreign Birds & Acoustic Signaling Resources

Acoustic signaling provides key mechanisms for how songbirds build multi-level societies. From the Indigo Bunting, to the Peach-faced Lovebird, or the Magpie Mannikin  -yet the male song of the Zebra Finch happens to be much more complex, and responsible for our understanding of ecological conditions within the trajectories of birdlife. 

Most of us recall a kooky older Aunt housing a dozen or so in her boudoir, but for the most part they are quite popular at your average hole-in-the-wall pet shop. Why so? They breed opportunistically -their gonadal maturity and spermatogenesis are disassociated from seasonal cues. The Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia castanotis) adapted in this sense, mainly from their survival of the arid Australian outback and utterly unpredictable conditions of the Indonesian climate they also hail from.

This keen creature from the Avicultural realm is sure to make you gasp & giggle at first sight..often grey and undoubtably white! Sporting of course, a bright red beak. Cocks have orange cheek-patches and orange flanks spotted with white. Most Finches like to sleep in nest boxes rather than on perches. Their call is rather like the sound made by a small toy trumpet...

To read more check out D.H.S. Risdon's Foreign Birds for Beginners, circa 1953.

You can also read The Royal Society's article (click here) by Loning, Griffith, and Naguib, published in 2024. The also has a nice article on Neurogenomic insights, for all you more studious ornithologists.

Compass by Mathias Énard, Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, 2015

Compass – Mathias Énard – A cerebral socio-economic tragedy about obsession -one capricious hallucination after another. Take the tram past the cathedral, through the gateway of Istanbul & into the subconscious of an opium addicted musicologist; plagued by his curiosity for Syrian tombs, Viennese operas, the Arabic language, and his post-doctorate muse, Sarah —a woman whom for some reason he cannot keep, not even in the same country. Although in standard novel form, Compass reads more so as a lucid thesis; as Énard’s discoveries in literature, music, and art become etched into our own subconscious. That being said, we recommend to the reader two essential components to sitting down with this book: prepare a notebook dedicated to Compass, and be sure to have reference materials at your disposal.

Énard’s novel takes as much effort to read, as we might imagine it took to write; a disorientating narrative on aging, desire, and the anachronistic ideologies of Orientalism —e.g. the colonialist attitude toward Eastern culture. Yet through this shared realization between our narrator and his muse, it is concluded that it may be possible to address these global challenges by deconstructing stereotypes of Eastern culture, and embracing instead the influences they so justly offer.

Compass is also a love story, yet we are introduced to the struggles of an unrequited intimacy: of a man who surrenders to his habitual passions, and the woman who denies such irrational folly. Although Franz and Sarah stir up numerous interludes of sexual tension, as the reader we find ourself addressing the loneliness of disappointment. Most specifically alongside Franz’s emotional perspective on the trials of love, and of archaeology – a playground for coincidence. Do we pity our pathetic Franz? Or do we find ourselves to sympathize instead, concerning his hopeless attempts to uncover the origins of his many crises?

Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell, New Directions. 2015

Nabarun Bhattacharya’s HARBART - Translated by Sunandini Banerjee - 1993

As I lay contemplating HARBART, a shadow betwixt the jaws of my dreams emerge. Despite the gruesome influence that pervades me -a rhythm bares its formless and lazy banter. I hoard each of Bhattacharya’s words as they burst in front of my eyes. Though while also disheartened by a tale as somber as this, it is one of sublime nature. Just as consciousness, like death, is mandatory. Our anti-hero, Harbart, receives a divine message in a dream from his closest friend Binu, one of the recently deceased. Binu who came to Calcutta to study Geology Honors at Asutosh College. Binu, who taught Harbart his first rhyme: “Chop-sticks, broom-sticks, nothing scares the Communists.” Harbart follows the instructions from the dead to reveal the truth about Communism. Thus an implausible rumor spreads across Calcutta. Neighbors, from the broke to the notoriously well-off, are knocking down his door, hungry for their turn to converse with the dead. A yellow signboard above Harbart’s office in the house is nailed up, and painted onto a sheet of wood-framed tin— in red letters, “Conversations with the Dead: Prop: Harbart Sakur.”

Harbart Sakur. The unwanted. Trapped in a world he never made, and born September 16, 1949. Father Lalitkumar. Mother Shobharani; both whom were killed shortly after his first birthday. Harbart Sakur is known to attract death, or rather, death seems to follow him. The conscious fascination started when he was only fourteen, when he had unearthed a tin trunk which contained a human skull, as well as other bone fragments. He kept the remains for a while, and told no one of his findings. Eventually though, he felt ill from keeping such a seceret, and decided to dump the remains into the river behind Keoratala Crematorium. Soon after, a close friend, Khororobi, commits suicide.

Despite all of these occurrences, Harbart manages to find sanctuary. He slept outside on the veranda, lush with foliage, thick with the remnants of his nightmarish life. Atop the veranda, which often survived the monsoons, served as his bedroom. He would read and write his poetry from here. Most importantly though, from his veranda he would watch the object of his affection, Buki, returning home from her studies. I guess things were kinda sleepy in the small suburb where Harbart was raised. Although, a one Ghutiari Sharif once kept wild tigers in the seventeenth century there — later a drought pervasively took over, and the town was left famished. Out of nowhere appeared a man named Pir Ghazi Mubarak Ali Sahab, who meditated until the rains finally came.

But Harbart didn’t care much for these facts, he was too busy living in fear of the torment from his family. Harbarts only escape, were his books, and Buki. He would watch her —and she would watch him —both from their terrace. The cranes fly in, the two fall asleep. These shy lovers first spoke at the local library, which was also the very last time they would ever see one another; as Buki is leaving town. Harbart asks her if she would write him, and it’s the question she’d always wanted him to ask.Although what Harbart quickly realizes is that the address he gave her was to the school he had recently dropped out from. Now Harbart himself was responsible for this lost affair. For a while he stayed away from his top terrace. He imagined Buki still there, waving to him.

Harbart was sixteen. Five feet six inches tall. Fair. Deemed a sleeping beauty, especially by his Jyathaima. He would often visit the cinema with his Krishna-dada, to view The Fall of Berlin, and other Communist Party flicks. Yet all that Harbart felt he had left were the evenings where he would crawl into the Ganga-water tank on the top of the terrace, and collect small creatures. Slugs, shrimp. When the tank dried out he watched the rainwater collect, and listened to the swarms of locusts fly into the empty water tank. There were elections, but Harbart never bothered to vote. This is Bhattacharya’s Calcutta.

“At the base of a golden mountain, vast cave from whose ceiling hang slivers of stone…Slime on the face of the moon…by the video shop—Gyanobaan and Buddhimaan had been the first to take the revolutionary step of setting it up…crow shit slowly smear-soil the glass.”

Our unlikely hero spent most of his time living in fear, and he would have inherited many precious things from his deceased parents — color photographs in an album which featured the idols we still to this day worship: Lillian Gish, Bogart, Garbo, and even Valentino. Nonetheless, Harbart idolized this pictorial museum of dead ‘revolutionaries’. But these items would be forbidden for him to enjoy, as would the family fortune. It was spent frivolously on the cinema by his father, before Harbart’s own birth. Any leftover inheritance was stolen by young Sakur’s uncle, Dhanna; “a bundle of bastardy, greedy as hell”, who was a thief, and a slave to the mother of his two loafer children. Despite all of this, Harbart’s new business of conversing with the dead is going quite well. Yet as soon as he finds his courage, and in turn finally obtains an income, a broker named Marik and an actress called Tina turn him in. Shortly after, our Harbart receives a letter from the West Bengal Rationalist Association, who deems his work as a medium, a sham. Harbart is now considered a criminal, a threat to the Bengali community.

At the crux of his demise, Harbart had always dreamed of being able to afford a portable television. A lizard crawls across his chest, and red ants fill his nostrils. Harbart was dead. Yet not from the dengue fever he, “full of filth”, had recently suffered. Now, almost middle-aged, his body is whisked away to the crematorium. His only belongings; umbrella and Ulster, notes, and the books from his grandfather—sold for scraps and given away to the beggars who cleaned up Harbart Sakur’s remains. There were two books that our Harbart cherished: Accounts of the Afterlife by Mrinal Kanti Ghosh Bhaktibhushan, second edition; and, Mysteries of the Afterlife by Kalibar Bedantabagish. There were other books as well, left behind by Biharilal Sarkur to his grandson-such as Haldar’s A History of the Philosophy of Grammar, Volume One. Yet that one, Harbart had not ever opened. He simply had no interest in such studies. In conclusion, the closest Harbart ever got to real love was a fairy imagined at his window…a lady doctor who flashes a longing glance, and then there was Buki. The only one who actually loved him.

Jamaica Kincaid’s Brutal Coming of Age Tale - The Autobiography Of My Mother - 1996

"I would never become a mother, but that would not be the same as never bearing children. I would bear children, but I would never be a mother to them. I would bear them in abundance; they would emerge from my head, my armpits, from between my legs...they would hang from me like fruit from a vine, but I would destroy them with the carelessness of a god...I would bathe them at noon in a water that came from myself, and I would eat them at night, swallowing them whole, all at once."  States our narrator; Xuela courageously raises herself - growing up on the island of Dominica and living under colonial rule. We follow her closely as she moves from one traumatic job, and  complex love affair, to the next.

It is Xuela's realization of certain power shifts and social paradigms which creates an increasingly dark, winding prose that propels off each and every page, invading the reader's own psyche. Kincaid is one of our most subversive writers, and The Autobiography of My Mother gets under your skin as it explores the unspeakable traumas in the black community which are still to this day globally ignored.

Cruel, poetic, and revealing —a deeply candid coming of age tale which reveals the profound, yet equally chilling, life of Xuela Claudette Richardson; who never had the chance to come to know her own mother —as she had died upon giving birth.

Our anti-hero’s entire life philosophy is shaped by the indifference she suffers from this incalculable loss. Xuela not only learns all of the skills she needs to survive on her own, at one point in time she organizes her own abortion. But the question comes to fester inside of us as well -how essential is the family dynamic, and how can a woman find herself outside of these traumas? 

RECOMMENDATIONS: Hungarian Desperation, Genet, and the Linguistic Roots of a Whirlwind

We like to keep close the trembling fictional works of Jean Genet, namely OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS (1951), one of our most treasured paperbacks from the archive.

Genet was playwright, activist, poet, thief, and novelist, who didn’t start writing until the age of thirty two. But during his earlier years, he was arrested multiple times for riding trains without fare, stealing notebooks, and embezzling money to attend the carnival. He was always one of my heroes as a teenager, but it was something I kept to myself for many years. My grandmother would often state, “…take your hat off to the thief.” And I found myself believing in this concept as well.

Genet was most famous for his association with the Theatre of Cruelty and the plays The Balcony, and The Maids. But we prefer Our Lady of the Flowers—an erotic, queer whirlwind. Genet writes in a state of dreams...

"The drunken grave diggers, where ghosts are composed of neither smoke nor opaque or translucent fluid. Squatting, probably on a rug, they sought the number and found it after entangling themselves as they cut the wire from the watchmen's quarters. 

Our Lady of Flowers plucks off his adventure. And the door of the cabinet opened. They pocketed 300,000 francs and a treasure, and fake jewels, we're the ones who are mopey, and lousy and tough.

I believe in the world of prisons, its reprehended practices, but the diversion must feed on dreams. Must not be dandyish and bedeck myself with new adornments, smoking ten to a butt, seven sailors carrying a message to god, holding between his teeth the flame of which as it reddened his face, so pure a marvel that he was. 

Swallows nests beneath his arms. Snuff colored velvet caterpillars mingle with the curls of his hair. Beneath his feet a hive of bees..."

For a recent extensive review on the life and works of Genet, we enjoyed Sarah Schulman’s article, here.

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We've recently discovered the work of Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros, and featured a behind the scenes look at her feelings on the film industry for our latest episode. We chose her lonely masterpiece from 1975,  ‘Adoption’, which caught our attention out of all her work —I took it in, twice in one day, like how I used to watch Tarkovsky in the 90’s. 

As we've come to observe recently, there seems to have been far too many decades of bad filmmaking, which allow for films such as ‘Adoption’ to truly shine, nothing short of a miracle. Women produced many of these essential filmic treasures. Kata, the main character in ‘Adoption’, is a middle aged factory worker, who comes to the conclusion that her lifelong relationship with a married man no longer deserves her attention. Unless they were to bear a child together. When he refuses, she tells him she'll raise the child without him. Although with such a proposal at hand, this man becomes much too nervous to continue their entanglement. Is it because he imagines she's going to purposely get pregnant? Or does he secretly desire to have a child with Kata as well?

As this part of Kata’s life begins to fall apart, she befriends a young woman, who at first appears tender yet also a bit wild-eyed, as if embodied by Natasha Kinski. Kata’s new friend was searching for a home herself, outside of the shelters for abandoned children she'd been frequenting. And so two strangers provide for one another what the other desperately seeks. But the relationship between these two women becomes just as complicated as the one Kata was seeking to dismantle.

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We've also fallen for Lyall Watson’s essential nonfiction release, Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind -with a focus on Chapter 8 ‘The Perception of the Wind’, which we love particularly because of Watson’s playful method of examining the linguistic roots of a whirlwind/vapour/breath et alia.

“Languages themselves become windblown…there are few things as steady or as changeable, as fierce or gentle, as unstable…as balmy, or as protean as wind -Sanskrit’s Nirvana incidentally means ‘to be extinguished altogether’.

And in all languages there is the same blurring of boundaries, roots and meaning between the words for wind, spirit, breath and soul —as though each felt they clustered about the same essential mystery, and were loth to get too close for fear of startling or trampling on it.”

BOOK REVIEW - The Literary Musings of 大江 健三郎 (Kenzaburō Ōe)

The literary musings of 大江 健三郎 (Kenzaburō Ōe) —one of our most adored Japanese writers, whose work tends to be much more vulnerable and disconcerting than many modern writers. Born in January of 1935 in a village on the crest of the Shikoku forest, Ōe was only six years of age when WWII erupted; a witness to the unfortunate extension of militaristic education, which veiled the sacred lands of his youth, and the grounds of his forefathers; the Emperor served “as both monarch and deity reigning over its politics and culture.”

Kenzaburō’s desire for democracy reigned true over the course of his younger years, and he left his village at the age of eighteen   —leaving behind his life tending to the Shikoku forest, departing for Tokyo by train. It is here where he would study the grotesque methodologies of France’s Rabelais  —a renaissance writer, monk, and satirist. He would also come to study the critical works of Russia’s Mikhail Bakhtin, whose works on the Carnivalesque (subverting and liberating a mode of writing through chaos and the absurd) led to his discourses on the philosophy of language; our young Kenzaburō was very fortunate indeed, especially to study such concepts under the guidance of Professor Kazuo Watanabe at Tokyo University

Ōe’s grandmother was a unique and ever defiant storyteller, whose tales of anti-nationalism and humour clearly influenced her grandson’s life. It is no wonder that Kenzaburō was so talented at expressing the human condition through his short stories, novels, and essays, in a way which many writers do not possess to date. In 1994 our humanist of Japanese literature won the Nobel Prize, around the time that his trilogy The Flaming Green Tree was released  —All Hail Kenzaburō Ōe.

Antiquarian Eclipse + LGBTQ Gems

ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS

HAREMLIK: Pages from the Life of Turkish Women

by Demetra Vaka, 1909

Vaka reveals her observations of polygamous happenings in Turkish households, revealing both the tragedies these women survived, and their struggle to gain the independence that only men were permitted access to. Unfortunately, these documents also illustrate how the author herself is bewildered by the fact that women should desire for a life outside of their constraints.

An excerpt:

"I was fourteen years old, she wanted to free me and give me as a wife to a man. Why should I be given to a man when I want to stay here? I pleaded and pleaded, and she said that I might stay two years more. 'Young Hanoum, have you ever watched the clouds on Allah's blue rug?' Those years granted to me, faded from my unhappy eyes and for days now she will not speak to me because I will not go.

The mist was slowly lifting-so slowly that one could imagine an invisible hand to be reluctantly drawing aside veils from the face of nature. As the air became clearer, the slender minarets were seen first above the other buildings; and then, little by little, Constantinople, Queen of Cities, revealed herself to our hungry eyes."

About the author: Demetra Vaka belonged to the cosmopolitan middle class of Istanbul and was one of the first Greek immigrant women who joined American mainstream culture and society. After her wedding to author Kenneth Brown, she worked for the American Press and was eventually considered an authority on the subjects of oriental women and also on the Eastern Question. She worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent in the U.S.A. and the Balkans, especially in Ottoman Turkey. Her 14 books were in print until the 1930’s and were translated into several European languages. Unfortunately, Vaka’s books are today out of print however her entire written corpus is held by the Princeton University Library.

Sixteen Homeopathic Medicines

Compiled by the Homeopathic chemists Jahr, Hull, Hempel, Bryant, and Hale

Published in 1889

We often dream of antiquarian finds like this one. Not exactly for sale, but part of our unique collection here at Hey Venus Radio. An endearing guide with copious accounts of specific diseases & symptoms cured by Homeopathic medicine. Previously owned by a one E.B. Hood, on September 12th of 1915.

"...avoid mixing one medicine with another; as regards a spoon, nothing but porcelain, earthenware, or glass should be allowed. The necessary repetition of the does must depend on the nature of the disease..."

For every 10 pages I’d read, I would then jump ahead to other chapters -when working with reference materials I often take this approach. It’s on page 103 where we explore all the principal treatments for Menstruation; Delay of, Suppression of, Profuse, Moral Emotions, Delirium, Nausea etc. Section I includes: Aconite nappellus, Arnica montana, Arsenicum album, Belladonna, Bryonia alba, Calcanea carbonica, Camomilla, China officials, Ipecacuanha, Mercurios solubilus, Nux vomica, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Rhus toxicodendron, Sulphur, Veratram album.

LGBTQ LITERATURE

Written in Invisible Ink

Selected Stories by Herve Guibert

Released in 2020 through Semiotext(e) & Native Agents.

Hervé Guibert published twenty-five books before dying of AIDS in 1991 at age 36. An originator of French "autofiction" of the 1990s, Guibert wrote with aggressive candor, detachment, and passion, mixing diary writing, memoir, and fiction. Best known for the series of books he wrote during the last years of his life, chronicling his coexistence with illness, he has been a powerful influence on many contemporary writers.

Written in Invisible Ink maps the writer's artistic development, from his earliest texts—fragmented stories of queer desire—to the unnervingly photorealistic descriptions in Vice and the autobiographical sojourns of Singular Adventures. Propaganda Death, his harsh, visceral debut, is included in its entirety. The volume concludes with a series of short, jewel-like stories composed at the end of his life. These anarchic and lyrical pieces are translated into English for the first time by Jeffrey Zuckerman.

From midnight encounters with strangers to tormented relationships with friends, from a blistering sequence written for Roland Barthes to a tender summoning of Michel Foucault upon his death, these texts lay bare Guibert's relentless obsessions in miniature.

PARTNERS

by Steven Housewright

Released in 1995

Jerry Hunt (1943–93) was among the most eccentric figures in the world of new music. A frenetic orator, occultist, and engineering consultant, his works from the 1970s through the early ’90s made use of readymade sculptures, medical technology, arcane talismans and all manner of homemade electronic implements to form confrontational recordings and enigmatic, powerful performances.

Tracing Hunt’s life across his home state’s major cities to a self-built house in rural Van Zandt County, this memoir-cum-biography by Stephen Housewright, Hunt’s partner of thirty-five years, offers illuminating depictions of Hunt’s important installations and performances across North America and Europe. Housewright narrates a lifetime spent together, beginning in high school as a closeted couple in East Texas and ending with Hunt’s battle with cancer and his eventual suicide, the subject of one of his most harrowing works of video art. This highly readable narrative contains many private correspondences with, and thrilling anecdotes about, Hunt’s friends, family and collaborators, including Joseph Celli, Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Galbreth, Karen Finley, James and Mary Fulkerson, Guy Klucevsek, Pauline Oliveros, Paul Panhuysen, Annea Lockwood and the S.E.M. Ensemble. This publication accompanies reissues of seven albums from Hunt’s record label, Irida.

COMING SOON: Screening of Jan Nemec’s Démanty noci/Diamonds Of The Night

Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night). A lyrical filmic treasure —a truly disheartening masterpiece. Although such a tale of disparity didn't exactly start with the film itself.  Arnošt Lustig's Children of the Holocaust series, Darkness Casts No Shadow, was the publication which inspired Jan Němec’s cinematic debut. Démanty noci, which redefined storytelling methodologies, was released in 1964. Deemed an “artificial documentary” by a handful of critics, the story depicts hyper-realistic imagery of the brutal struggles shared between two young men who escape a Nazi prison train; one transporting them to their next concentration camp. I had the opportunity to experience Démanty noci on the big screen years back  -a happening that will never escape me. 

Although these were fictitious reconstructions of Lustig’s personal traumas in concentrations camps, as the audience we are nonetheless haunted by still. What we come to witness seems unimaginable. Distraught and malnourished, our two main characters hold us hostage and garner an attention that the majority of us have never experienced in a film. We are right alongside them —snot, blood, desperate palms and weary pupils. 

If you happen to view Nemec’s film before reading Lustig's lucid account (Darkness Casts No Shadow), this choice will not exactly ruin your experience, in fact it only creates a more sympathetic understanding of such a history. A line that stands out from Lustig’s book is as follows:  “Is everything lost in the darkness?…there had been no peace in the sky since the plane appeared. The flat car tossed from side to side and the wind lashed them, blowing soot into their eyes…his mouth dropped as he looked up at the plane then at his companion -Will you jump after me? Or do you want to go first?”

SCREENING DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED

SUMMER ADDITIONS TO THE BOOK ARCHIVE

THE MERMAID AND THE MINOTAUR - DOROTHY DINNERSTEIN

A complex & provocative bedside favorite, especially for when you’re tossing and turning. This seminal radical text playfully integrates feminist theory with Kleinian psychoanalytical theory, yet at times may read as slightly out of date in terms of the authors references. Nonetheless, a poetic, raunchy, and in-your-face nonfiction classic, for any serious readers collection.

KALMUS MINIATURE ORCHESTRA SCORES

A tiny catalogue in decent shape, but won’t make a comparably impressive object to rest ones head. Featuring two unforgettable pieces, Heart-Wounds + The Last Spring (Edvard Grieg, Op34). Includes parts for Violinino, Viola, Basso, und Violoncello.

A girl on the verge of womanhood finds herself in a sensual fantasyland of vampires, witchcraft, and other threats in this eerie and mystical movie daydream. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders serves up an endlessly looping, nonlinear fairy tale, set in a quasi-medieval landscape. Ravishingly shot, enchantingly scored (featured on our previous episode), and spilling over with surreal fancies, this enticing phantasmagoria from director Jaromil Jireš is among the most beautiful oddities of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

3 Tragedies of Federico García Lorca; 1941 -New Directions Paperback. Ninth printing. Three powerful plays on motherhood, ritual, and a tale of five repressed daughters. Contains: Blood Wedding; Yerma; Bernarda Alba. Lorca's sympathy with women is notable; a connection within his own existence as a gay man in a time influenced heavily by Catholic conservatism. Prologue by the poets brother, Francisco García Lorca.

Goethe's Faust: Part One & Part Two - The absurd tale of Faust first revealed itself to Goethe in his younger years, and became his life's work -completed by the time he was 51. He was a ripe 81 years when he finished Part Two. And as Goethe once stated about his Faustian works; they form an integrated whole which "permanently preserves the period of development of a human soul." Penguin classics paperbacks.

I CHING: THE BOOK OF CHANGE

A beginner’s guide, featuring poetic explanations of each Hexagram -The Book of Change is a common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy, and one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe.

TONE DEAF & ALL THUMBS - FRANK R. WILSON

An invitation to music-making for procrastinators, late bloomers and non-prodigies. This blend of anecdote and scientific analysis is an absorbing study of our innate musical abilities.

Kinship & Gender - Cyclical Damages Far Beyond Repair: On Linda Stone's Case Studies

Linda Stone –Kinship and Gender – Welcome to the evolution of the patriarchy, and all that stinks about the farce of male dominance, domestic violence, and other fallacies across the globe. Stone’s extensive collection of 15 ethnographic case studies introduces the reader to an inherent conflict that even our own obsession with pronouns cannot repair. Kinship and Gender dives into the history of women’s subordination to men, father and son tensions, marital consummation rites, and the rejection of biology as a determining gender factor. Fertility ideologies are nonetheless intertwined within relationship constructs; divorce and marriage, polygamy, etcetera. But do Stone’s observations allow for us to make a stand in our own relationships (as to what it is WE truly desire), or do these case studies further our anxieties, when we’re already more than weary?

I wonder what Stone might have said if she’d written this book after June of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, reversing five decades of equality. Five decades. How can we take a deeper look at our past, knowing that surrounding us are the remnants of that very sickness we’ve fought so hard to resist?

As such, the pathetic rise of power against women is continually taking shape, and through Linda Stone’s research, from a pre-pandemic timeframe, still reflects how far we have come, and where our mistakes can be properly mapped out.

A Short History of Sex Worship - H. Cutner - 1940

“The homage rendered to Venus (says Montesquieu) was rather a profanation than a religion. He had temples where the women of the town prostituted themselves in her honor, from which they often saved for themselves a dowry...”

A Short History of Sex Worship, H. Cutner, published in 1940. This edition is the third impression circa 1953. If you haven't yet checked out our episode from January, stream or download episode #15 -it's here we read from Cutner's lucid account on ancient sex worship.

Spring Reading List

That time has arrived, once again —it’s Spring and you’re eager for some new literature to dive into.

Because we tend to read a few books at a time, it’s only natural that we give you a peek at what’s been at our bedside. We also have these books for sale, but these items go fast and may be sold-out by the time you get here. Let us know if you have interest!

Until then, we present to you a few of our top recommendations straight from our bookshelves.

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY

By Thornton Wilder

Wilder's second novel, tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. 1927

THE INVISIBLE PYRAMID: A Naturalist Analyses the Rocket Century

By Loren Eiseley

Eiseley conveys his sense of wonder at the depth of time and the vastness of the universe. 1946

"It came to me in the night, in the midst of a bad dream, that perhaps man, like the blight descending on a fruit, is by nature a parasite, a spore beater, a world eater...there are aspects of the world and its inhabitants that are eternal, like the ripples marked in stone on fossil beaches. There is a biological preordination that no one can change."

THE CURVES OF LIFE

By Theodore Andrea Cook

A fascinating and comprehensive investigation into the perfect geometry of the natural world. 1914

THE KIRLIAN AURA: Photographing the Galaxies of Life

Edited by Stanley Krippner & Daniel Rubin

A document of the Western Hemisphere Conference on Kirlian Photography, Acupuncture, and the Human Aura. 1974

SANAPIA: Comanche Medicine Woman

By David E. Jones, University of Oklahoma

An intimate portrait of the last surviving Comanche Eagle doctor. 1972

FILM REVIEW - Capricious Summer, 1968, Dir. Jiri Menzel

Jiri Menzel’s Capricious Summer is a film which portrays the beauty of impermanence, yet at the same time, Rozmarne Leto has remained one of the directors most unrecognized films. The charming philosophy-heavy sex-comedy (adaptation of Vladislav Vančura’s lyrical Summer of Caprice) departs a front a sleepy sun-deprived bath house, alongside it’s master, Antonin -middle aged and overflowing with uncertainty. Luckily our slovenly protagonist has his equally as bitter companions; the Major -a retired artillery officer; the Canon -a priest who spouts religious banter; and Antonin’s wife,  Katherine -who is as vocal as the Canon yet mainly on her regrets of ever wedding Antonin. 

In particular, this group of forlorn 50 something characters are avoiding the conversations they are truly facing; the fact that they have all aged, lost interest in their significant others, and now have nothing better to do than drink stale wine during a very dreary summer, at Antonin’s increasingly unpopular bath house.

Then appears Ernie the Conjuror, a penniless tightrope walker of “modest skill”. Ernie (played by Jiri Menzel himself) makes his acquaintance with his new bath house friends. Yet his horse-drawn caravan begins to garner attention, as inside resides the faithful, quiet, and dreamy Anna -our Conjuror’s promiscuous adopted daughter. Yet when Antonin gets a taste of Anna, so does the Canon…and then the Major. 

Antonin’s wife Katherine begins to fantasize about the Conjurer, and may be plotting to seduce him. Somehow. She packs up her things and heads over to where Ernie resides, in his lonely caravan where Anna no longer returns home to at night. Although eventually the caravan must “pull out” of this lonely little town, leaving it’s listless inhabitants spiritually transformed. Or at least, as the viewer we can only come to hope that this would be the case. 

But if we really pay attention to the film itself with another set of eyes and ears, it’s not only the majestic soundtrack that makes our heart flutter, or the idea that our own lost youth lies ahead of us —you’ll come to observe the rhetorical dialogue between the  characters (very much  Vladislav Vančura’s trademark). 

Conversations between each character feels like poetry, and political heavy statements (similar to Menzel’s Larks on a String) set the tone to the cadence of this post-war era narrative; a period where for the first time, Czechoslovakia had been a free country, but only very briefly. We come to think about what our great-grandparents might have experienced while viewing this film in 1968, the year that changed everything.

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization, as mass protests took shape in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. De-Stalinization had just taken shape, but only a decade prior to this happening. Yet still, citizens were making a (slow) progression for breaking free of the Stalinist-era period. Dubček eventually granted additional rights to the people of Czechoslovakia, in an act of partially decentralizing the economy -the first taste of democracy had arrived.The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on speech and travel- but the majority of ‘taboo’ films, literature, and music were still black-boxed. 

It all began in 1963, where Marxist intellectuals had come to organize Liblice Conference -challenging the regime while at the same time creating opportunities for relaxing the impotent hold that censorship had on the country’s citizens. By 1967 the Czechoslovakia economic downturn sluggishly kept it’s head above water, with the Writer’s Congress being formed -a unionized group of writers who wanted sympathy and reform alongside radical socialists (such as Milan Kundera), so that their literature could be independent of Party doctrine.

As for the cast of Capricious Summer, some of us may recognize Antonin, as he was Czechoslovakia’s most adored actor on stage, and on the screen. Rudolf Hrušinský (previous stage name: Otomar Otovalský) was born in Nová Včelnice, quite literally, back stage during a showing of the play Taneček panny Marinky. His parents were known to be nomads, as they only ever landed wherever his father was able to find a paying gig. Rudolf Hrušinský’s first appearance on screen was in Martin Fric’s Cesta do hlubin študákovy duše, which was released in 1939. One of our other favorites featuring Rudolf is the 1958 Czech-Yugoslavian musical comedy by Oldrich Lipský titled Hvězda jede na jih.

Jana Preissová , who played the infamous Anna, was also an actress on stage, and won the Czech Lion for Best Supporting Actress as her role as a soft spoken yet rambunctious Nun, in the TV series  Řád (1994). After she played Anna in Capricious Summer, we never saw her in another feature film again. There was another film that Jiri directed shortly after Capricious Summer, which was Crime in the Night Club, where we have to admit; it’s a shame that Jana hadn’t portrayed the enchanting Lili, although Eva Pilarová was an equally as fit actress to play the role. Preissová appeared in over 90 different roles on screen, fluctuating between Czech TV series’ and TV movies. 

Of course, Jiri Menzel made appearances in his other films, which reminds us of another gem he had directed -starring the Czech folk-pop sensation Vaclav Neckar, who plays the delicate and captivating Miloš Hrma, a young virgin from a family of failed hypnotists & train drivers. Closely Watched Trains -an adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel (of the same name) features a cast of lovable characters. Miloš is a newly-hired train dispatcher who is coming of age amongst an unhappily married pigeon-breeder and stationmaster, as well as a few other misfits; Máša -the train conductor, who happens to be his age [Miloš is completely smitten by her advances]. They have a “relationship”, yet it is always eclipsed by Miloš being too shy to…go all the way. As when he does, he appears to suffer from ejaculatio praecox.  Menzel defies these norms, and portrays Miloš as the opposite of the examples we’ve been given, in the media, of maleness. Sensitive, indecisive, and in love. Everything that has absolutely nothing to do with prescribed maleness. Jiri only makes a small appearance in this feature -the young doctor who tells Miloš that in order to get over his sexual dysfunction, he must find an older woman to teach him the ways. But, let’s return to Capricious Summer.

Aforementioned, Jiri’s role as Ernie the Conjurer was actually a complete coincidence. Originally there had been an extra playing the part, when suddenly the actor left in the middle of shooting. This was around the holidays, which made it impossible for the young Menzel to find a replacement for Ernie. Jiri decided that he would try on the conjurer’s clothes, and discovered that he may as well play the part. You’re wondering whether or not Jiri already knew how to walk the tightrope. I had this questions stuck in my head for years. As we may have imagined, Menzel had to teach himself how to walk the line, which  adds an additional charm as to why we come to adore his clumsy acrobatics. Capricious Summer may just be my most adored filmic piece, as for some reason I just can’t get the characters out of my head. Even after the last 20 years of enjoying the film, it remains the one I always go to, no matter what life has thrown in my direction. Sadly, Jiri Menzel passed away in September of 2020 -just a few months shy of our interview with him. Rest in everlasting peace our dearest Jiri.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS - Pocket Paperback Extravaganza

Non-Flowering Plants: Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, Mushrooms, and other Fungi by F.S. Shuttleworth + Herbert S. Zim

In a study conducted last June, aquarium researchers gathered seaweed pressings in order to learn more about the ocean conditions in the bay from the 19th century. By analyzing these algae tissues, researchers were able to determine their protein compositions and nitrogen levels (such as from the Gelidium, a red algae), to figure what exactly may have taken place from 1878-1946…an oceanic phenomenon of “upwelling”; “when wind moves warm surface water away from the coast, driving cold, nutrient-rich water up from the deep.” For more information, check out this article from the Smithsonian.

So which algae is your favorite ocean dweller? We really love finding those old pocket paperbacks, especially these little Golden Nature Guides for kids -they have the most vibrant illustrations. Featured book: Non-Flowering Plants: Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, Mushrooms, and other Fungi by F.S. Shuttleworth + Herbert S. Zim; we found this one during our latest journey rummaging through the shelves at our most adored local bookstore, The Iliad Bookshop -in our opinion, LA’s best used book emporium. Their prices are reasonable, and the selection is out of this world. The Iliad is located on the corner of Cahuenga Blvd and West Chandler, in the sleepy little town of North Hollywood, California. Until you make that trek out for a visit, here are some more details from Non-Flowering Plants, as well as a few other captivating titles we came across.

Detail from an excerpt on Lichens; Non-Flowering Plants: Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, Mushrooms, and other Fungi by F.S. Shuttleworth + Herbert S. Zim

Detail from an excerpt on Embryophytes; Non-Flowering Plants: Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, Mushrooms, and other Fungi by F.S. Shuttleworth + Herbert S. Zim; Embrophytes are plants that form embryos during one stage of their reproduction process. Both the sex organs are always many-celled in Embryophytes.

Little Sermons on SIN: The Archpriest of Talavera, by Alfonso Martinez de Toledo. Translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1959.

The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt, copyrighted 1956. Cover is worn, and there is little to no foxing on the pages.

Persian Phrase Book, Washington 1944. Complete with pronunciations -Bilingual Edition. Pages are separated from the spine, no foxing on pages.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas. Published by Bantam New Age Books, 1979.

Chapter sixteen: Men are thus made weak in four ways…love, lechery, an empty stomach, and the disturbance of man and woman’s senses from love & lechery.

During the spring in 1948, rocket-shaped sightings were reported concerning “highly erratic flight paths”…the next chapter covers hallucinations.

Bilingual details from Chapter 6. Communications: Recieved, Go Ahead, Wait, Acknowledge, Erase or Cancel...page 91 has some lovely translations on time, size, and weight.

Page 16 departs from explanations on bodily fluids, psychosomatic diseases, and the duty of the Shaman; On Magic In Medicine.

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AN EXCERPT - The Aeronauts: A Dramatic History of the Great Age of Ballooning

Years ago I came across a bulky hardcover book with a colorful cover, while scouring the shelves in a damp antiquarian library. I had heard once about the Aeronauts from a forgotten time, although I’d never really given the subject much attention. Ballooning. An aerial extravaganza that once took the world by surprise. Join me as we explore the history of a balloon of strangely eccentric shape (circa 1783) which measured 74 feet and weighed in at 1,000 pounds. It’s these wondrous little discoveries which give our hearts their wings.

An Excerpt from L.T.C. Rolt’s The Aeronauts: A Dramatic History of the Great Age of Ballooning

"In 1783 THE UPPER AIR was believed to hold unknown perils for the foolhardy enough to venture into it. This awe of the air was akin to the twentieth century attitude towards outer space before man invaded that realm also. The sheep, duck and the cock of Versailles played the same 'guinea pig' role as the dogs and monkeys that became the first space travelers. Yet when we recall the  modest heights attained by the balloons described in the previous chapter this parallel between aeronaut and cosmonaut breaks down. For whereas the first cosmonaut ventured into realm never penetrated, on mountains men had climbed to high altitudes long before balloons were thought of.

Mt. Aiguille was climbed by order of Charles VIII of France in 1492; Leonardo da Vinci climbed to the snowfields near the Val Sesia to make scientific observations and Titlis, the first true snow-mountain, was conquered in 1744. Although the historic first ascent of Mont Blanc by Dr Michel Paccard and Jaques Balmat was not made until 1786, high mountaineering by the aid of axes and ropes was already an established art in Switzerland when Joseph Montgolfier began his experiments. 

History provided no explanation for this curious inconsistency. It can only be assumed that, notwithstanding the scientific evidence which already existed to the contrary, men harbored the belief that the atmosphere followed the contours of the earth with the effect that an aeronaut ascending to 10,000 feet in a balloon might encounter conditions very different for those experienced by a mountaineer at the same altitude. Whether this be true or not, it is a fact that the prejudice against a manned balloon ascent was not easily overcome."

If you’re convinced to take your studies further, pick up a copy here! 

Stop by to listen to our latest episode, where we read from THE AERONAUTS.

MUSICAL COMPANIONS FOR STUDYING

Listen: Dani - As Erhouson Gia Ligo

Watch: Cherry Wainer - Oh Wait For It Baby!

THE OVARIAN TROLLY ARRIVAL - A Lost Edition of Henry Miller's TROPIC Series

Most recently we'd come across a collection of antiquarian books, and found ourselves up to our elbows in rare & ratty paperbacks.

Here lies the restless erotica of Henry Miller. Each delicate page from this Obelisk Press release feels sacred. Nervously we photographed a few pages of interest, worried that our very breath might further decay this literary relic. Both Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer were initially banned in the 1930’s —smuggled into the States, and usually seized upon arrival. And, if it weren’t for the women in his life, we imagine this series may have not been published until after his death.

“Last night Boris discovered that he was lousy. I had to shave his armpits and even then the itching did not stop. How can one get lousy in a beautiful place like this? But no matter. We might never have known each other so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for the lice.”

Henry’s wife, Romanian borne June Mansfield, supported his career by working as a taxi driver in Paris. Yet as time passed, June became hungry for a new companion. Henry absolutely despised his wife's new lover, Jean Kronski (Martha Andrews). But it would also come to pass that Anaïs Nin would ultimately steal June away from Henry, as well. Anaïs once wrote,

“Years ago, when I tried to imagine a pure beauty, I had created an image in my mind of just that woman. I had even imagined she would be Jewish. I knew long ago the color of her skin, her profile, her teeth. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything she asked of me. Henry faded, she was color, brilliance, strangeness.”

BOOK REVIEW - On Efik Tone Poems and Bataille: What We're Reading as the World Opens Back Up

It’s difficult to say who we turn to in times of great transition, but we found ourselves moved by two recent findings from our archives, and thought you might be on the search for similar voices to help guide you back into a new world of wonder…at first, we came across some Bataille —"But when,  on the road, the magic of panoramic landscapes began to work on me, I forgot about  my decision; I wanted to live again and, on the contrary, it seemed to me that I would never get tired of horizons like those; open to the promises of a storm or the subtle variations of the light that indicate the time of day in passing  from one moment to that which follows. It was, in my fever, an instant of fortuitous felicity, but it didn't mean a thing, and I abruptly returned from the pleasure of living to a state of boredom..." An excerpt from Georges Bataille's first published novella, L'Abbé C - an emotional and disruptive telling of the triumphs and perils of two brothers; one a libertine, and the other a Catholic parish priest. 

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And after a long day out at used bookshops around the Valley, we came across an essential compendium, for all of you out there with linguistic yearnings —"An old woman swallows mashed yam and her vagina squeaks; he who plants a cocoyam wants an edible root...a cricket on the main road digs and bends his shell..." This 150 page guidebook into the forgotten language, Efik, is one of our latest finds. Efik, is a tone language  -classifiable in the Benue-Congo, and affiliated with Ibibio, Enyong, Andoni-Ibeno, Anang, Eket, and Oron. We were excited to come across this copy of  Extralinguistic Usages of Tonality in Efik Folklore - and couldn't resist to share it with you. Truly a rare find. -Research gathered by Donald C. Simmons, published 1967, and includes research  obtained in Calabar Province, Nigeria, from 1952-1953. 

"Tone Poems...in Efik, (which) were reportably employed to commemorate such special events as death, killing of a leopard, display of superb swordsmanship, honoring of a lover, or some dire personal or societal calamity. When officially mourning, women lament for approximately one hour at dawn, and during this lamentation they speak these poems to honor the deceased and to express their grief. Authorship of many poems is attributed to women, who possibly possess greater facility than men in their composition." —This book is going to take a lot longer to read through than the Bataille, which is why we felt that these two documents were necessary companions as we move swiftly into the Summer of 2021. We hope you enjoy our recommendations, and wish you the best on your journey during the next few weeks, as the world around us slowly begins to open back up, for some countries that is. We are not sure what to expect, but are hopeful…and eager to embrace what’s to come. Yours— Gina, Maxi, and Becki

Franz Kafka's Letter to the Father

If you're estranged from a parent, you'll want to read Kafka's Letter to the Father. In the span of forty-five typewritten pages, totaling 121 pages in Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins's bilingual edition, Kafka manages to replicate and capture the anxiety that so persistently befell and defined his relationship with his father, an uncomplicated and self-satisfied man from the looks of his black and white photo. Kafka, 36, begins the letter pensively, admitting from the outset that the project of reconciliation, for which the letter in part represents, is likely impossible, as even the fundamental causes of the rift can't be formulated or fully understood.

“Dearest Father, You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, [. . . .] And if I now try to give you an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete, because even in writing, this fear and its consequences hamper me in relation to you and because the magnitude of the subject goes far beyond the scope of my memory and power of reasoning”

Kafka's inkling or notion here that the subject matter itself is too big and amorphous, that it somehow goes beyond anyone's "power of reasoning" will be somewhat of a running theme, a charitable theme too as it's seemingly Kafka's first gesture at an olive branch. The logic: "Hell, we're both 'guiltless' in the dissolution; neither the son nor the father is at fault for their mutual growing apart." Had this been Franz's principal thesis or sole message to his father, the terse letter would've undoubtedly been read by Hermann. But as it stood, Kafka's initial handwritten missive totaling a staggering 103 pages, the letter never reached his father; instead, his mother, Julie, likely after a sober read through, returned it to her son. The letter, after all, didn't resemble anything like a fig leaf. Rather, it was more akin to a rite of exorcism or psychic purging, an attempted expulsion of all the guilt Kafka had accrued over the years.

“It looked to you more or less as follows: you have worked hard all your life, have sacrificed everything for your children, above all for me, consequently I have lived high and handsome, have been completely at liberty to learn whatever I wanted, and have had no cause for material worries, which means worries of any kind at all. You have not expected any gratitude for this knowing what ‘children’s gratitude’ is like, but have expected at least some sort of obligingness, some sign of sympathy. Instead I have always hidden from you, in my room, among my books, with crazy friends, or with extravagant ideas.”

Nowhere else has Kafka been more relatable. So much so, in fact, that I'd recommend the text even to those who are not particularly a fan of Kafka's, especially to those who perhaps had to read The Metamorphosis as part of their high school required reading and to those with a liberal arts degree who may have been goaded into using "Kafkaesque" as a synonym for the bureacratic and oppressive. Whatever preconceptions you may have about Franz Kafka, Letter to the Father will unsettle you in its familiarity. Not a member of the literati? Not to worry. As literary and "meta" as the prose is, Kafka's chief aim here doesn't concern the circumscriptions of aesthetic beauty. Rather, he's after something else, something entirely more enigmatic and familial.

In sprawling fashion, Kafka sought and succeeded in articulating that which refused articulation. So immediate and intimate is the century old document that one will reflexively find oneself asking how in the world the disjunction between him and his father will ever be bridged and repaired. And, in turn, without even registering it, one will mirror the text, asking oneself, "Will the gulf between my father and myself always remain a gulf? A chasm? A vast ocean with no visible land in sight?" Kafka's blistering conclusion: Yes, the gap will remain. A growing rapprochement or detente simply isn't in the cards. Not if the patriarch resembles hot-tempered Hermann, "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, [and] worldly dominance[.]"

A review by Hey Venus Radio volunteer Maxi Kim —the author of One Break, A Thousand Blows.

Mowimy Po Polsku by W. Bisko, S. Karolak, D. Wasilewska, S. Krynski

Mowimy Po Polsku  – A Beginners Guide to the Polish Language by W. Bisko, S. Karolak, D. Wasilewska, S. Krynski. A practical textbook which opens with pronunciation and spelling, and is followed by twenty-six basic lessons in Polish. This specific edition was released in Warsaw, Poland, circa 1966. That being said, the cheapest version you can find online ranges between $50-$200. We recommend that you search for something slightly more affordable. I was lucky to have found this edition for under $5 at my local second bookstore, The Iliad Bookshop. Mowimy Po Polsku  is a difficult manual, yet with determination one finds that the discussions of the different parts of speech and verb tenses are easy enough to navigate through.

Each lesson departs with an illustrated scene and matching dialogues, which are accompanied by its English translation (placed side by side). Each lesson also focuses extensively on (but not limited to) conjugation, imperative moods, and enclitic forms of personal pronouns. Detailed (and quite comical) illustrations and charts are included! These are the essentials:  “…but Captain, we don’t need any luggage. After all, our journey is only a make-believe one!”  [… ale kapitanie, nie potrzebujemy bagażu. W końcu nasza podróż jest tylko udana!]

Comprehension at the departure of any language study project is going to be confusing, so be sure to set aside the right amount of time and secure a space that allows you to truly focus. Turn off your device(s), put on a record, and be sure to stock your reading area with the following items: Chocolate, decaffeinated tea, a spread of berries + cheeses, and alkaline water. I always recommend that 1-2 hours each day will allow you to master the material gradually.

“Dialogues are based on scenes recorded by actors of the Warsaw stage: “Splendid. Fetch the fruit, and I’ll give Gapa some water. The dog is also hot.”  [Wspaniały. Przynieś owoc, a ja dam Gapę trochę wody. Pies też jest gorący.] ”

If you’re like me, the best part about learning a new language is adapting to how we form a different relationship with the, at first, quite foreign combination of letters and how they are pronounced. I like to write out, by hand, all of the contents as I go through each and every lesson. It is essential to this process that we activate our brains intentionally — when writing by hand your brain becomes more active, than if one was simply typing on any number of devices. Press the pen onto paper, witness the letters you write out, and speak them while you write. This activity activates the sensorimotor parts of the brain.

I also find that if I am not exactly feeling that my attention can be focused on a lesson, I turn to the pages where there are plentiful definitions to sort through. There is no right way to study, all that matters is that you remain consistent with your sessions. I will also note, that in this book there is a very small vocabulary at the back of the book (pgs285- 326), so be sure to pick up a full Polish dictionary.

Here are some definitions I enjoyed working through: tylko [tilko] only, merely; na razie [na razhye] for the time being, for the present, as yet, just now; awantura [avantoora] fuss, row, brawl; babcia [bapchya] granny; życiowy [zhichyovi] of, pertaining to) life: vital; kwiatowy [kfyatovil] pertaining to flowers, floral; trombi [trombee] he trumpets ; chetnie [khentnye] willingly; wróćmy [vroochmi] let us return.

My studies in language departed from my love for foreign films. Back in the early 2000's I got lucky and landed a job working as a product appraiser for a record store in Studio City (CA), which led me to spend the majority of my time there managing the foreign film section. It's true, Amoeba Records wasn't the only place that excelled with their diverse inventory of obscure music and other-worldly films. So from then on, I'd lock myself in my bedroom and watch films out of Poland, Germany, Tokyo, Brazil, and other far away places that I knew I'd never have enough money to explore in person. What better way to get a know a culture, then to understand their language.

Because Mowimy Po Polsku , our featured textbook, is over fifty years old, I recommend you pair it with a more recent study guide, and stop by the Mówić po polsku platform —a site where you can learn Polish, and for free. Co za uczta (What a treat)!

“After the sentences and a discussion of their component parts, isolated or relatively rare linguistic phenomena are described, such as the syntax characteristic of individual words, including verbs, the formation of word forms which exhibit certain peculiarities, and, finally, idiomatic expressions.”

— An excerpt from the introduction

During your studies be sure to also take note of certain enclitic personal pronouns which are also featured, such as the following: (/ˈklɪtɪk/ from Greek κλιτικός klitikos, “inflexional”) a morpheme in morphology and syntax that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. Latin had three enclitics that appeared in second or third position of a clause: denim ‘indeed, for’, autumn ‘but, moreover’, vero ‘however’… etcetera.

MUSICAL COMPANIONS FOR STUDYING

LISTEN: Czech Contemporary Clarinet Music

LISTEN: Kikagaku Moyo - House in the Tall Grass