There She Goes, My Beautiful World
4 months until the publication!
Time flies when you have fun are busy overlooking copy-edits and compiling lists of people to send proof copies of your debut book to. It’s exactly 4 months to a day before TSGMB is out in the world and in the hands of readers and weird thoughts are starting to emerge each night just before I fall asleep.
Speaking of sleeping, please enjoy the first two pages of the manuscript, where I break the rules (who would’ve thought) and introduce you to my hometown as it comes to me sometimes in the dreams.
If you like what you read, and want to read more, please consider preordering (aff link).
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Sometimes, when I fall asleep in my home in south Wales, I end up dreaming about Poznań, the city where I was born and went to high school – the one I consider my true hometown.
In my dreams, the city is gorgeous, just like it is in real life, but somehow more spacious and with even more light and trees. It looks perfectly clear, as if it was under a magic spell.
I travel on foot, taking one of the routes I’d normally take on a tram. The muscles of my legs feel strong in my dreamscape and I move, without needing to pause or slow down, between the parks and buildings that hold so much of my personal history within their walls. It feels a lot like flying, actually.
The Old Market Square is always devoid of people in my dreams and in the centre of it, instead of the Old Town Hall with its medieval goats butting each other each day to mark midday, stands a milk bar restaurant that serves my favourite dishes – pierogi, żurek and breaded pork chops and potatoes sprinkled with fresh dill. The food is always free and bottomless.
As I leave the milk bar, I become aware that my bus is departing soon and, in my dream, I know I must catch it. But, all at once, the sun is now setting above all of the architecture. Everything is sparkling, clean, and each colour is vibrant and breathtaking. I’m not sure I want to ever leave this place.
I light up a cigarette, certain it won’t harm me. With a slowly creeping sense of dread, I stop by one of the advertising pillars and imagine being able to attend some of the opera performances promoted on the posters. I try to envisage the dresses and shoes I’d wear to each one of them, and if I would come on my own or with company. I know exactly the shade of lipstick I’d wear. The dates look all blurry. There is no way I could make it to any of these on time.
Sometimes my skin-and-bone self becomes aware of the fact that I’m dreaming, and I attempt to stir my nighttime projection of myself in a different direction, to see more and more of the cobblestones and intricate details on the buildings, but it doesn’t always work.
Other times, I meet a friend that doesn’t belong to that place and time, someone I have met since emigrating, and we make plans to go for lunch later with her and her family. Later in my dream, the three of them are there, waiting. I try to show them around, thinking they have never seen this city in their lives, but they seem to be frustrated with me role-playing as a tourist guide, as if they belong there more than I do and everything I have to tell them is old news.
When I wake, I’m sad. There is something in my stomach that won’t settle until the next sleep cycle. I check the health app on my phone, but the step count still shows yesterday’s data.
