WanderLost

Aug. 21, 2007

Prague and I, we know each other now, more than just acquaintances, though we still have secrets from each other. My practiced eye glances casually over the facaded bulidings as I walk down the street, the Czech money feels normal in my hands. Easily I wend my way through my neighborhood, walking the same streets the natives walk, in the same way. The bakery on the corner sells rolls at night, fresh from the oven, for two crowns each and they melt in your mouth, bread-fresh and salty. I run in the park or walk in it, greeting the statues like old friends, happily casually looking out over the splendor of the city– red roofs and dark spires, threaded through with golden sunlight, the sky blue with white puffy clouds, the river a shining ribbon below.

4-23-07

The Dancers exist in a circle near the center of Prague, only a block away from the school where I work teaching English to Czechs in small classrooms with big windows. My building is blue, and down the street from it stands a magnificent synagogue with rising columns, a rose-pink facade and trimmings of blue and gold. Farther down is a charming dark-stone church with tiny windows, an obliging spire and small surrounding park with grass, benches and a blooming cherry tree. The steeple echoes an even taller tower across the street. A brooding stone remnant of medieval times, it stands in somber perplexity as electric trams rumble past its base.

And down the street from this . . . are the Dancers.

Four of them encircle a small fountain, raised on individual stone pedestals. They are also musicians, each with their own instrument, each frozen in the motions of an intricate stone dance. Water casts scintillating reflections on the bases of the pedestals— the visualization of unheard notes in the air.

The Dancers are blindfolded. Cloth entwines their arms and legs, hangs off their shoulders, covers their faces. The Horn-blower’s head is completely covered, yet still raised, the mouthpiece pressed against clothed lips, raised to the sky. The Piper and Mandolin Player, too, have heads closely wrapped. The Violinist, however, tilts her head to the side, cheek lovingly pressed against her instrument. The cloth has fallen away from the bottom part of her face, revealing the tip of a nose, and the merest hint of a musician’s smile.

The fifth Dancer is not around the pool but far away at the other end of the square. This one is the True Dancer. No instrument, for his body is his instrument. Head down, arms up, one leg lifted— the most exquisitely entangled of all, in ropes of shining gold. The sun setting behind me streams through the four clustered Dancers and makes the gold glint. The others are wrapped in gray-green, the color of their own muscled bodies, but the Fifth is tangled in gold. Entrapped, entwined, captive to the gold.

The Dancers enchant me. Though they never move, I can’t stop watching. They seem to be dancing out of their bonds yet at the same time tangling themselves further— the impression of freedom and bondage simultaneously. Their bodies are bound but their minds are not, floating away with the music notes. They are blind, but they don’t need to see. The music is their ears, their sight, their rhythm of life. The Horn-blower raises his head high, chest puffed out with effort. The Piper bends low, leg lifted, fingers poised. Across the water the Violinist stands upright but cocked sideways, arm out with an invisible bow, face resting against her violin. The Mandolin Player’s back is to me- the only one not playing. She holds her instrument by the neck and behind her, gazing up at some point in the sky, arm upraised as though warding off a blow, or blocking out the light. Or perhaps she is beckoning to the Fifth Dancer, beckoning to come join in the Dance. Perhaps to come lead the Dance. The Fifth Dancer seems to be trying to step out of his bonds, yet one feels he’s not free completely, that there’s a danger he might trip on his golden bonds and fall . . . ~

1-18-07

On the tram I take the window seat, then turn to realize that the paper schedule covers most of the window on my side, except for a small corner. I look out anyways, watching the scenery to pass the time. As I sit there, I realize that this is the way I see Prague all the time— one eye open, one eye covered. I can only see what is on the surface, and what little distance I can scratch below the surface by living here for a few months. I will never see the deeper, inner Prague. I will never fully understand the country or its people. What I see is the castle, Wenceslas Square, the Czech Joe-schmoe on the streets. Consequently, they will never see me as anything but one eye and half a face from the corner of a tram window.

***

My tram stop approaches.
The car lurches, and
the homeless man sleeping in the nearby seat
rouses,
shakes his head like an old dog,
and hunkers down again.

A young man approaches me at the tram stop, cigarette dangling from his lips as he rambles at me in Czech. “Nemluvím cesky,” I say with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. He pauses. “Nemluvite cesky,” he says, not a question so much as a doutful statement. His raised eyebrow suggests he doesn’t believe me, but it’s true. An old lady approached me in the metro but I couldn’t help her, nor could I answer the grocer’s rapid-fire question. “Nemluvím cesky,” I’m always saying. “I don’t speak Czech. I don’t speak —” I dream in Czech, people with blurry faces spitting out mangled sentences as over and over I repeat “I don’t speak your language. Nemluvím cesky. No, I don’t speak, not at all.” They shake their heads at me, gesture impatiently, stride away. I want to run after them, to hear again and understand. It seems important somehow.

Everything’s modernized, the tram passes the church, but not so completely modernized, I realize, as the man beside me crosses himself as we pass by.

Get off the tram, walk by the church. The cool green-smelling air hits you from the small garden-park around the stone church walls. The chirping of little holy church birds.
My apartment, I stand before open window, the green and lilac glory of the park below, the church spires above, and the fly-by birds at eye level.

9:30 pm, walking from work to tram stop:
The church, the tower, the fingernail crescent moon overflowing with deep indigo sky, its aching silverness as sharp against the sky as the throbbing gold numbers of the tower clock are against the must stone bricks. Every time, the sign pierces my heart (as though by the sickle-blade moon), blood drips out and the whole of Prague-at-night rushes in, and I can’t hate it here; the times when I did are unsteady memories, appearing false. I can’t resist a good night air, I have a weakness for it. One touch and I turn over, belly up in surrender, caressed by breezes soaking up the stars, scenting the air. I allow myself to be folded in the night’s embrace, giddy from its intoxicating elements, inhibitions as vanished as the sunlight. Night, as a lover, is a sable panther, with yellow moon eyes and silver whiskers. The rumble in his throat vibrates my heart and I nearly choke on the beauty of it all.

The other tram speeds past my window, making me think of that poem by Someone Famous about watching people on a subway and how their faces were like wet petals plastered against a branch, and I think that guy was right and that there’s no way I could say it any better.

The first night it snowed I was standing outside at the tram stop ready to get in and go home. The flakes came down and spoke of snow and nature and I stared up into the sky at them. A wind gusted and they swirled around the church spire, powdering the window ledges, brushing the stained glass, blanketing the bushes and trees growing around the holy concrete walls and I decided that I could not ride the tram, not tonight, and I started walking home, continually looking up at the white snow falling from the dark sky and I smiled and could not stop smiling because it was winter in Prague and it was snowing.

A couple entered the tram today, and with them were two wolf-dogs. The dogs were muzzled and on leashes as thick as my wrist, but they still seemed dangerous, seemed wild. Their fur was tan, tipped with black. They were lean and narrow, their tails long and bushy. They hunched their heads like predators on the hunt, their pyramid ears pricked up at every sound. Their eyes were what thrilled me most— yellow, with a perfect black pupil in the center. The kind of eyes that would look out at you from behind a bush or the shadow of a tree. The kind of eyes that would be the last thing you’d ever see.

I bought water today, two large gallon jugs of it. Each jug is equipped with a handle for easy carrying. It felt strange, walking up the modern day streets, boarding a tram, while holding a water jug on either side of me. I felt like the provincial country girl returning from the well. In a way I was— strange juxtaposition of era and purpose. In the end we can’t escape from it— our humanity.

Wenceslas Square becomes very different at night. The darkness shrouds the fancy buildings, the ancient architecture, and all you can see are shadows in the lamplight, while along both sides of the square blaze the neon signs, creating worlds of their own. Bright and eye-popping they beckon, advertise. Whispers during the day they become shouting voices at night, stealing your attention, distracting your eyes with unnatural colors. They are not for the night but against it, cutting into it, waging war against the darkening of things, yet without which they would be nothing. The square is buildings and statue by day but restaurants and clubs and cabaret (pulsings of neon suggestion) by night. Some cities are completely owned by the neon signs at night. Prague is not yet, and therefore the signs stand out more in their awkward unnaturalness, filled with that in-your-face-attitude that comes from all such trashy man-made products. What are they really? The screaming of some poor pathetic inventor to be noticed in the face of the infinite starry sky.

How to explain it? The weirdness of living modernly in an ancient-times city. America’s past howls in the winds of the prairie but Europe immobilized itself in spire and stone.

Living here, you get to look beyond the city’s general image. At first you’re a tourist, and all you notice is the stone majesty of Charles Bridge, and the dazzle of lights from Wenceslas Square. But then you blink and look around and see so much more— like how the Praguians take their dogs with them everywhere, and how the bakery sells fresh rolls out the back at 2 am. You’ll find yourself picking up small phrases, wishing “dobry den” to the grocer and throwing out a casual “naschla” when leaving a group of friends.

Overall the Czech Republic, I like it. Once you get over the initialities— the Praguians’ gruff exteriors, the devil-may-care attitudes about official formalities— it can be quite nice. That is, you can come to a truce with it, and the two of you can get along quite well, and enjoy each other. Strange sights become familiar and welcome. Statues and marvelously facaded buildings become friends to greet on your daily trek to work. The hieroglyphic names of tram and metro stops transition from nonsense (Masarykovo Namesti, Bila Labut) to meanings utilitarian and beautiful (train station, white swan).

I like it best when I’m walking down the street, especially some non-central everyday street where people actually live and work because it’s where I most belong in that just looking at me I might be Czech or European or anybody instead of my confused non-tourist American self, citizen-in-limbo by choice but not really.

Walk around Old Town Prague. Walk around Prague, through the shadows of the tall buildings, the fancy buildings of color, brick and stone. Walk through the shadows cast by stone angels, smiling cherubs. Hear the Vltava river flowing by. See the seagulls rise and fall above it, their wings flashing in the light like sparkling confetti. Tourists walking by in expensive coats, snapping pictures. Watch them march across the bridge, endless procession of hands, feet, scarves, wallets. Baby strollers. Small poodle dogs on leashes. The crunch of sandy grit underfoot, the clatter of cobblestone. Sunlight glancing off surfaces into eyes. Grafitti on the park benches. Signs advertising ‘Souvenirs from Prague’ as though Prague were something you could buy and put in your pocket. Imagine the disappointment when, returning home, you unwrap it and find it’s just a thing, like all other things, and can’t capture the dark spires or sculpted facades or the motor of the boats going by, the call of the captains to the tourists, the flapping of 30 pigeons’ wings, the sound of a coin falling to the pavement. Prague at night is a lighted city. Small alleys turn into squares. Lampposts and sometimes neon signs. It’s like no matter where you are, or when, the city knows you’re looking at it.