I know where the longest light in Prague is. It's at Dukelských hrdinů and Veletržní.
Bring some home-made sandwiches and a sesame street juice box, because you might as well as plop down and picnic there while you wait for the little green man to remember you depend on him. But maybe don't, because Stromovka park is near enough that perhaps you'd make better time planning which grassy corridor of sunshine would be best suited for whichever sandwiches you happen to have in your basket. In that case, then, do bring the sandwiches.
It's my last night in this magical city and I'm camping out to watch bright red streaks dance over the Charles Bridge. Because you have to beat the laughable tourist trap that makes you wonder if they give out free souvenirs on Vltava River. And because you might as well do it in fashion, no? Bring a camera.
And if you're headed to a terrace atop a Velehradská apartment, then maybe bring a sweater. It gets chilly. But the breeze is different here—it's non-intrusive and understanding. It's communicative, friendly. The kind that sends goosebumps diving into your arms and lights a fire in your heart. That envelops you in a blanket of tranquility and calls your attention to the numerous, dazzling stars.
I went searching for Kafka's grave. I was convinced it was close to Žižek, but I was mistaken. Maps lie. And sometimes they're really just silly—like they’ll indicate a cross-section with a road that's fifty feet above ground without accounting for topographic change. Wait a minute, where did that street go?
The best are the Czech people with just enough English to understand that you're lost, but way too much Czech to actually help you find your way. They respond to you in their native tongue as if, from the time you asked them for directions, some supernatural force has endowed you with a capacity that would render asking to begin with a little bit ridiculous and kind of a waste of their time.
Smiles get you the farthest, but more on that later. I have to run now. I’m chasing after dawn.
Praha, I'll be back.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Europe's Little Secrets
Like a dream. Like running through open space under a knowing Sky. Like silence—after a really loud life. Like a trance that enchants you. Europe. Like finding a corner of shade in a battlefield of blistering sun. Like sitting in it.
Spellbound.
If Neverland exists and Peter Pan still lives, then Switzerland must be on the way to Wendy Darling and the Lost Boys. Or maybe it's humanity's version of a land J.M. Barrie dared to imagine and to which we can only aspire. Maybe it's just the best version of it that we have. But it'll do, I'm sure.
There's a peace in Zurich that I have not felt anywhere.
We boarded the train to Landeck on a clear afternoon. Boys fiddled with phones and reflections in mirrors as I readied the camera for what was to come. Moving forward and sitting backward. Looking sideways while thinking straight. English before me and German behind me. Swiss German. Schweizer Deutsch. The kind that makes you stop in your tracks. Have I heard that before? Berlin, 2010—where the rubber meets the road and where a young Jew meets a young German.
Preconceptions. Like what about the past? And, should I really be talking to this guy? Or that girl. The one that turned me upside down and inside out, at a memorial somewhere.
Noises. Like the one we heard at the Barracks in Sachsenhausen that were barely audible. Spaces. Like the visible ones which weren't there. Well, where are they if not here? Stephan told us: the history of mass murder is the history of things you can no longer see. Oh.
But that stupid history. That stupid, stupid, stupid history. Who are you, anyway? And what have you done with half the world? Berlin, where it's blurry. Where Walls becomes Art after War becomes Peace, and where images flash before your eyes without asking permission.
Like a train bound for the mountains on the way to Neverland. Postcard mountains. The kind that make your eyes glisten in disbelief. That make you incredulous, but not enough to keep you from documenting the journey. Evidence. Do people really live up there? I asked. Green pastures. Steep hills. Remote cottages. But all the way up there? How do they get up there? Hold on to your children and belongings up there, please. And for a moment I wondered, who are their children? What are their belongings? And when the firewood depletes and the cool of the lake sneaks up from below? What then?
Europe carries little secrets on her back. They're too much for one generation to carry, and so we whisper them to each other in dark, brushed alleyways so that we won't forget what the cobblestones know. The cobblestones are shy and won't tell us much. But not the Stolpersteine—they're telling. Sometimes more than we want them to be. They're screaming. They're memory. And they'll be here to remind us when we forget. When our children become curious and we become tired.
Now? Now I’m in Austria. Where the sunlight breaks and chases. Where the mountains play a game with it and loop around the clouds they just fall short of. Forty German teenagers are currently on their way here from Munich. I hope they're as excited as I am. I hope we'll grow together and tell secrets to one another. About our identities, and about the future. About our fears and about our hopes. About the mountains, and about the clouds. And about who beat who when the sun came chasing after them with secrets from the past.
Spellbound.
If Neverland exists and Peter Pan still lives, then Switzerland must be on the way to Wendy Darling and the Lost Boys. Or maybe it's humanity's version of a land J.M. Barrie dared to imagine and to which we can only aspire. Maybe it's just the best version of it that we have. But it'll do, I'm sure.
There's a peace in Zurich that I have not felt anywhere.
We boarded the train to Landeck on a clear afternoon. Boys fiddled with phones and reflections in mirrors as I readied the camera for what was to come. Moving forward and sitting backward. Looking sideways while thinking straight. English before me and German behind me. Swiss German. Schweizer Deutsch. The kind that makes you stop in your tracks. Have I heard that before? Berlin, 2010—where the rubber meets the road and where a young Jew meets a young German.
Preconceptions. Like what about the past? And, should I really be talking to this guy? Or that girl. The one that turned me upside down and inside out, at a memorial somewhere.
Noises. Like the one we heard at the Barracks in Sachsenhausen that were barely audible. Spaces. Like the visible ones which weren't there. Well, where are they if not here? Stephan told us: the history of mass murder is the history of things you can no longer see. Oh.
But that stupid history. That stupid, stupid, stupid history. Who are you, anyway? And what have you done with half the world? Berlin, where it's blurry. Where Walls becomes Art after War becomes Peace, and where images flash before your eyes without asking permission.
Like a train bound for the mountains on the way to Neverland. Postcard mountains. The kind that make your eyes glisten in disbelief. That make you incredulous, but not enough to keep you from documenting the journey. Evidence. Do people really live up there? I asked. Green pastures. Steep hills. Remote cottages. But all the way up there? How do they get up there? Hold on to your children and belongings up there, please. And for a moment I wondered, who are their children? What are their belongings? And when the firewood depletes and the cool of the lake sneaks up from below? What then?
Europe carries little secrets on her back. They're too much for one generation to carry, and so we whisper them to each other in dark, brushed alleyways so that we won't forget what the cobblestones know. The cobblestones are shy and won't tell us much. But not the Stolpersteine—they're telling. Sometimes more than we want them to be. They're screaming. They're memory. And they'll be here to remind us when we forget. When our children become curious and we become tired.
Now? Now I’m in Austria. Where the sunlight breaks and chases. Where the mountains play a game with it and loop around the clouds they just fall short of. Forty German teenagers are currently on their way here from Munich. I hope they're as excited as I am. I hope we'll grow together and tell secrets to one another. About our identities, and about the future. About our fears and about our hopes. About the mountains, and about the clouds. And about who beat who when the sun came chasing after them with secrets from the past.
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