WanderLost

11-29-07

cold nights
walking close to the side of the sidewalk where the restaurants have put out heat lamps to shield their diners
responding to a directions question in rapid-fire spanish
walking past the old stone church
feet sliding on smooth cobblestones
footballers playing in the park, shouts, punt-sound of kicked soccer balls
graffiti
waiting for the light to turn
splash of fountains
squares of yellow lamplight, auras
tiny dogs on leashes
home

7-31-07

The sweetness of returning to Spain– remembering the palm trees, understanding the foreign speech around me. The moment I exited the subway station and came outside, I knew I liked this city. It all embraced me suddenly– the heat, the sun glancing off the Spanish-style buildings, dusty orange trees, that special feeling in the air one can only find in the south of Spain. I took pictures of the cathedral in the Plaza de la Reina but none of them can capture the warmth of the air, or the sweet smell of white geraniums on the breeze, or the ringing church bells. I easily imagined myself wandering around, going to the beach, writing, reading. Working, living. Prague had been new, all new, but Spain is an enticing mixture of familiar and new– adventures recalling fond memories. A good choice.

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.

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.

Arriving in Prague was a whirlwind much like the taxi drive, long and lots of time to think yet it was all over so jumblequick, with only a few soft moments to myself to think and to admire the foreign consonant tangle of billboard words above old and cracked buildings announcing that I’m here in Eastern Europe and can’t escape and mostly don’t want to but am gaping like a tourist fish, the kind that migrates to places it’s never been before, drawn on by some strange urge having to do with winds or tides, wild crazy quickcolor dreams from childhood, or possibly the magnetic poles. Hip hop tip top up the stairs with my suitcase lumbering then back down and rush through the entire TEFL class course in one giant blur of bright lights and grammatical phrases, my new mantras that I chant to myself before going to sleep and dream of like giant white lilies of peace and wholeness, blending together harmoniously in streams of golden light. Migrate to the city next, downtown heart of the city, through the screaming metro tunnels of exposed cement, wires and artificial lights, crowds pressed in tight trying not to see each other while peering from the edges of their eyes. Snag a job and now I’m teaching, running up and down tram metro tram bus and heading into buildings with unfriendly secretaries who squint at my foreign words and call clients to come down for English lessons all the while eyeing me like I’m a genie who, misunderstood, might vaporize back into whatever exotic burnished lamp I crawled from — or sometimes they’re friendly the younger ones usually and they’ll talk and talk and tell me all about their boyfriends and school exams and cars and lives and hopes and dreams, they’ll bring me tea and show me pictures and always wave goodbye. Student faces in rows before me, whiteboard behind, and the panic the they’re-all-looking-at-me panic and realizing that they’re waiting now it’s quiet and everyone is waiting for someone to talk and realizing that it’s me. The power there is in ordering the classroom and the silly book lessons the absurd conversations and stilted topics to discuss over and over again, first in room 102 and then 109 210 415 etc. etc. row following row of students staring, wondering why I can’t get their hobscrabble consonant somewhat familiar yet entirely foreign names right, whispering to each other in their slick brumble tongue like I can’t hear it or don’t see it or won’t recognize the lickle trickle of syllables that surrounds me daily in the streets and separates me from the thought of the crowd like twisting strands of barbed wire. Close the books and run along home, dispersing into the night like shards of shattered glass, hop the tram and zombie-stare through dark windows until the fourth stop, run across the road play chicken with the traffic and make it (each time a triumph) to the fateful curb and over I go into the apartment, rattling red elevator pulling me up the levels one by painful slowly one until clang I’m here rattle keys and in through the door I go and the day is over, or at least it’s mine now, and that’s a comfort but is it really? Simmering stove pasta in its little bowl, same as every night, meanwhile waitreading Walden or Kerouac, admiring former’s simplistic lifestyle and latter’s hypnotic globetrotting, dreaming up halfway decent partway interesting tidbits about my own day and maybe writing them down or forgetting them in the softening of the pasta on the simmering stove strained from the pot with the spoon handle holding the noodles back as the boiled water rushes down the drain, then mix in some sauce and sit down at table book still held in one hand, immersing in soft saucy noodles and sweetdelicious words altogether combined with the spires-and-stone of Prague that makes this life bearable and in small bursts exquisitely wonderful.

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.