When she resisted, they made her a subject. The revision, the threatening, the scar, the need, always the latter
What was she? A home for fish and other fascinating animals, a trend hiding historical treasures, a shipping lane, a tool of political propaganda, a brand. He was a muse who inspired artists. She made the inhabitants of Wrocław – “at home”, not “Lviv, Vilnius, Tarnopol”, they felt when they had to fight for their home during the flood. Who has she become? “Oder belongs to himself and to all of us, equally,” write petitioners appealing for legal personality. “This is a plea for recognition of reality: recognition of the living river Odra as worthy of the right to live”.
– But where is the river here? – I heard, a bit surprised, the writer Anna Siplak (among others, the author of “To be clean” and “Blow up”), who at that time worked at the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice. Cieplak held educational classes with young people and coordinated social and cultural programs in the city. It was June 2019. Siplak spent his days on the river and spoke passionately about how he fell in love with the Odra River. Born in Kostrygin on the Odra River, I was convinced that I knew the river very well. I was surprised that a writer from Zagłębie was suddenly interested in her. Cieplak was born and raised in Dąbrowa Górnicza. I never saw Oder with my own eyes there or in Katowice.
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