So on April 18th I’ll be moving back to Michigan. It’s a decision I’ve been tossing around for a moment but especially since December I’ve been thinking about it more. Since my grandfather’s passing I’ve been slowly feeling more isolated here than before. I started a new job in Kraków that I quickly realized it wasn’t for me, and began to feel even more stuck. Although I made the decision on short notice, I think in the long term, it’ll be better for me and give me a greater sense of normalcy. But also the idea of returning to Poland at some point won’t leave my mind, and I’m not even on the plane back home yet. It’s like I’ve become hostage to both worlds, America and Poland. My world has been stretched thin between two different cities, which is quite the opposite of our “ever shrinking world” today. This phenomena often strikes immigrants and other people who have left home for such a long period of time, but I think I have a better, more elaborate way of explaining this feeling, especially in a Polish context.
Here’s a brief lesson in Polish grammar to explain my point.
In the Polish language and in many other Slavic languages the “verbs of motion” utilize far different grammatical mechanisms than in other languages such as English. In English the primary verb of motion is “to go”. Go by car, foot, horse, train, airplane, boat, etc. But in Polish it becomes far more elaborate, as the Polish language utilizes three different verb aspects, with two of those aspects under the umbrella of another, greater aspect, as well as two different “to go” verbs (each with three variants in regard to aspect) to denote the mode of transportation, totaling six different words to “to go”. “Iść, chodzić and pójść - meaning to go on foot” and “Jechać, jeździć and pojechać - meaning to go by vehicle”. To understand from the very beginning, we must grasp with the grammatical idea of an “aspect”. In linguistics, an aspect is the way in which a language treats a verb, event or thing, and how it is bounded to the idea of time. For instance English has twelve aspects such as “present perfect”, “past progressive”, and so on, which are all combined and utilized with different tenses and moods to create how we reference time. The issue with English is that we do not necessarily change the morphological aspects of the verb itself, as English utilizes a periphrasis model, in which the language tends to inherently use more words to describe something that another language would tend to express in a synthetically morphological fashion.
Now onto my ultimate point, in Polish, we have the two different types of verbs of motion, depending on how often the motion is carried out. Is it a one time action, or do you do it every week or every day? Is it habitual? For example “Idziemy do kino z moja przyjaciela.” - We are going to the movie theater with my friend. The action is current, and in one direction. As opposed to “Chodzimy do kino z moja przyjaciela.”, perhaps indicating that you do this on a consistent basis, or that it’s a circuitous route that one takes as opposed going in a singular direction with a singular goal.
The point of all of this mind-numbing jabber about Polish grammar aspects is that I believe it perfectly describes how I feel about leaving Kraków, and Poland as a whole. I left America in the perfective aspect, one direction, one time motion. “Pojechałem do krakowa.”. But it is in these absolutes I realize that perhaps the idea of such perfectiveness is slowly failing to apply to me. A human is not grammar, but we must utilize such grammar to make sense of ourselves and others in this world, although we will perhaps never fully understand one another, even among native speakers. But I believe that this grammatical system is of great metaphorical importance. As it seems that I have turned into being an “indeterminate”, which grammatically means to be habitual. I have consistently gone back to Michigan every year for a month or two, and I fear that I will end up habitually returning to Poland. “Olek bedzie jeździ do Polska.” The indeterminate lives in my future, and perhaps I know deeper down, that it will surly be a circuitous motion
Ultimately, my point is that I have allowed myself to be circuitous, between the United States and Poland. I intended to make this as permanent of a move to Europe as much as I possibly could, but it will definitely be indeterminate.