Cosmic girl

Michael Moran - an Australian; writer, pianist, and traveler, member of the Royal Geographical Society. He lives... in Warsaw - how did it come about?

In 1968, he narrowly avoided being forced to participate in the Vietnam War - the Australian government conducted a specific recruitment of "volunteers" - a specially constructed machine for the occasion, the "birthday lottery", targeted birth cohorts required to enlist.

Shortly after this drastic experience, Moran decides to head to Europe to visit his uncle Eddie - a retired pianist. He stays on the Old Continent; works as a teacher in London, learns to play the piano, and often meets with his uncle who was living in France at the time. At the end of his life, his uncle insists on Moran promising to travel to Poland and visit all the places associated with Fryderyk Chopin; he claims it will have an impact on the young musician's style of playing. He also asks that his ashes be scattered in Żelazowa Wola after his death. Because Moran travels a lot and writes (including "Beyond the Coral Sea"), keeping his promise to his uncle takes him some time - he only appears at Okęcie in 1992...

In 2008, a book about Poland comes out under his pen, which The Spectator calls a three-star feast. Moran uses a phrase as a motto for it, uttered in 1793 in the British Parliament by Edmund Burke. The speech concerns Poland, which was disappearing from the world map at that time... The speaker is not accidental; Burke has a broad understanding of issues related to the history of Poland. His speech begins with the words: "In relation to us, Poland could indeed be considered a country on the Moon"... However, before you react with outrage, let me hasten to report that the speech concludes with such a summary: "No wise or honest man can approve of this division or look at it without anticipating the great calamities it will bring to all countries in the future"...

This conclusion suggests that the lunar metaphor is rather an ironic jab at the shortsightedness of politicians than distancing and washing hands from the events of that time... Two centuries later, Moran will refer to this phrase, making it the title of his book: "A country in the moon. Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland".

And if we are already on cosmic scales... The movie "Contact" starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey provides, alongside a beautiful storyline, two important pointers - one is deposited in the disappointment that the viewer experiences when he sees that the silhouette of the alien walking along the beach in Pensacola ultimately only takes on the form of the father... The other is amazement... "They live..." - Ellie says, partly to the recorder, partly to herself, having seen a city on one of the planets, to which she was briefly taken by a system of space-time corridors... She knew the aliens existed - after all, she had previously recognized their signal, decoded it, and built a capsule according to their instructions... All this took years... But to know is not the same as to see with one's own eyes, to experience...

Returning to the pocket version of Paderewski - as Moran called his uncle Edward; he also told his nephew about the concerts he gave in Switzerland to soldiers interned during World War II - he recalled that when he played Chopin, he often saw Polish officers burying their heads in their tear-shaken arms...

I am a girl from the moon...

Allow me, however, to hope that with the words written above, I have shortened the distance...