Oxygen v. Heat

 

It’s the middle of the night, or thereabouts, and I’m torn between oxygen and heat. My intellect argues for the former and my body whines for the latter. And just to think: autumn, according to me, is supposed to be the thinking man’s season… *

Which reminds me of another night, a winter’s one, in a tiny flat somewhere in a suburb of Varsovia. I had just realised that the place was stuffy with hundreds of thoughts mercilessly coming out of my mind, compounded by whatever was coming out of my lungs.

I put my sheepskin coat on, pushed a huge ground-floor window wide open and stood in front of it for an hour or so. It was  –20° C and I kept taking in the reviving Masovian air and the moon-lit whiteness of the snow, not quite sure if I was managing to introduce some order into my thoughts, and life, or if they, along with my life, were simply freezing into ever slower motions.

(Little did I know that my landlady was observing me, which resulted in her assessing me as mad**, which resulted in her trying, a few days later, to win me over to her assessment, which resulted in a bit of a verbal fight, which resulted in me kicking her out of my place, which resulted in her kicking me out of hers…)

 

 (definitely not my ex-landlady)

 

P.S. She may well have been spot on, but my point - which I just couldn't get across to her - was that you don't establish that kind of fact by seeing me standing for one hour dressed in a sheepskin coat in front of a wide open window in the middle of a -20° C Masovian night.

 

 

*well, I must admit I had complained a couple of days earlier about the heating not working properly.
**another low in my blogging history: referencing myself. Shame. (But that other post is not that bad, mind you).