Although my area wasn’t at the disgraceful top of the most polluted cities in Poland, in my private ranking it was to be awarded the honorable title of the stinkiest city I had ever lived in. It was located in the south of the country, where it was not uncommon to exceed two thousand percent of the harmless level of pollution.
Throughout the week, when everybody raced to their jobs and on errands, the pollution could be seen with the naked eye. In contrast to the muddy, gray sky, which tried to suppress the smog and stop it from contaminating the clouds.
The noticeable signs of pollution varied from day to day. Some days, the air was thick, hard to breathe and fog-like in appearance. On others, you could catch a breath easily, but the snow was stained with unnerving black dots imprinted on the piles like dirty, shapeless, unsymmetrical snowflakes that did not blend in.
I was not afraid of them, though, thanks to the anti-smog mask I bought some time ago. I was more climate-conscious than the old babcias will ever be. I could tell it by the judgmental looks they gave me while I was wearing my protective facial gear. Instead of just accepting the reality and the fact that they would be better protecting their own lungs too, they preferred to pretend it was not that bad. The problem of unbreathable air was not for them in the first place, but the generations that were yet to come. It was easier that way: to let the next generation fix the problems of your own, as you did with your predecessors. It was easier than facing the consequences of your own actions.
In order to prepare kids for the task of solving the pollution problem, the government installed electronic billboards at schools and offices throughout the country. They were connected to the pollution measurement devices supplying up-to-date data for the applicable area. Their main purpose was to inform everyone about the air conditions daily and rate them on an easy and understandable scale of three icons reassembling human faces or emojis. One of them was happy and green, as the pollution not exceeding the norms was the most important thing in the world. The red one was sad or maybe angry. But the true meaning of the neutral one was incomprehensible. At least to me. With a not-so-telling yellow skin and a straight, thin line in the place of the mouth, was it a sign that the air could damage my lungs or – quite the contrary – was it safe to go around without a mask? I never knew.
Before the three-face system was introduced, they had just put numbers describing the pollution in the center of the screen. Next to it, you could find the percentage by which the pollution had exceeded the norm. But when the weekly summary had been displayed, at the end of the thirty-second long informative cycle, it had looked like a cynical high-score table in some kind of a death race. So they replaced it with funny and informative faces, concealing the real number of carcinogenic particles in the air.
Despite the pollution and marks it left – such as bleak black streaks of smog-induced rain pouring from the windowsills and running across the blok’s walls or white houses built recently nearby and already turning dark gray – the cityscape was really nice. I kind of liked it. But not all the locals were as content with their everyday lives as I was.
They tended to cause a ruckus with their random heated arguments at the building’s entryway. I tried putting on my headphones and turning the volume up to a bearable maximum to block it out. And it helped, so I did not complain. The fights could be heard in every flat on every floor in the blok. They were harder to deal with in the summer since you had to have your windows open all the time, so the heat did not kill you.
But, quite contrary to the windows, the walls were thick enough to block out any noise coming from the neighbors. All except for one. The upstairs neighbor was the only resident of the blok who could be heard even outside of it, even throughout the parking lot.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 5 – Of Flowing Vicissitudes
January: The Night the Stars Stopped Shining – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)
February: Three Sides to Every Story – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
March: Rain Trap – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
April: Priorities – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
May: The Night in Heaven – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
June: Witches Don’t Burn – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
July: A Regular Flat – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
August: Many Happy Returns – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
September: And Now, It Will All Go Downhill – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
October: Planet Qirim – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
November: You Are Her, Aren’t You? – Seyit Ali Dastan (Turkey)
December: Culture Shock – Veronika Groke (Austria)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Background image: Poland – Residential building of communist era – uslatar (Shutterstock)
Top row (from left to right): 1. Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland – Commuting – WrS.tm.pl (Unsplash); 2. Warsaw, Poland – On the street – Grand Warszawski (Shutterstock); 3. Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland – Residential bloks 2 – WrS.tm.pl (Unsplash)
Center image: Warsaw, Poland – The intersection – Grand Warszawski (Shutterstock)
Bottom row (from left to right): 1. Warsaw, Poland – Residential bloks – Tomek Baginski (Unsplash); 2. Ustronie Morskie, Poland – Residential buildings – Marekusz (Shutterstock); 3. Warsaw, Poland – On the street – Grand Warszawski (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed