BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for October, 2008
October 31, 2008 at 8:01 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
The Czechs have taken to Halloween pretty well. People throw parties, dress in ghoulish costumes, and kids have celebrations at school. What you won’t find are packs of kids walking from house to house asking for “tricks” or “treats”. The more celebrated day of this October-November arc is All Soul’s Day, which is very important to Czech citizens.
During Communist years, religion was, at best, discouraged, and active demoninations were outlawed. Oddly, the Commies decided that making religion illegal was doable, but destroying churches, convents, cathedrals, etc, was a recipe for popular revolt. So basically they turned their heads to the people’s celebration of Saints’ Days and whatnot. (sidenote: most Czech’s I’ve asked are non-religious, or outright atheistic and a bit hostile to organized religions, which they generally say fool people into believing superstitious mumbo jumbo. Those are some righteous thoughts.)
All Soul’s Day is of course a Christian celebration of remembrance—remembering family and friends who have died. There is definitely an irony between the celebration’s importance and the basic disconnect b/w most people and religion in CzechRep, but yet holding onto the idea of spiritual identity. It reminds me of the secularization of Xmas by many, if not most, Americans.
From my observations, and there have been many and they have been thorough, there is a new religion in the Czech Republic — and most of the former Commie satellite countries — that trumps all that have come before and will come hence: MONEY.
I myself prefer the old days of Halloween, going out with big brother Matt and big sister Jennifer, dressed as ghosts or devils or ballerinas or all the imaginative (and traditional ghoulish) costumes, walking up and down Sunset Lane, Sarah Street, and all the way down Addison to Al & Joe’s for their yearly “trick or treat” 1/2 pint of chocolate milk. We came home after dark, with pumpkin-themed bags stretched to outrageous proportions, filled to bursting with bubble gum, sweet-tarts, red hots, hersheys chococate, Good ‘n Plenty, Snickers, Space Food Sticks, Dots, Ju-Ju Bees, Indian Corn (in the small cellophane packets), Sugar Babies, Snaps, Starburst, LemonHeads, Sugar Daddy, Hot Dog gum (I can taste that exact flavor RIGHT NOW!), Pumpkins Seeds, Bit ‘O Honey, M&Ms, Tootsie Roll, and Life Savers.
October 27, 2008 at 8:48 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I’m back onto Led Zeppelin after too many days without their sound. I think I leave them aside on purpose, though unconsciously so, somehow knowing that when I return I feel that I have missed something, have been missing something, from my existential connection to the world. This reunion of the missing becomes a profound act, or association, with what was known and what is heard now (thought, read, felt, smelled, touched …), that diabolical bond that makes living worth doing again tomorrow. Sometimes that’s tough, otherwise.
I know how this must sound to some people, but what the hell do I care about that. We all have our Linus blanket, still, now, and forever, no matter if mom or dad or sister or brother tore it from our clutching hands and burned it before our eyes (in my case, I remember willingly giving it up; but I cried).
The Zeppelin were influential to my maturing sensibilities of the possible in life. I was not a musician, and can’t hold a true note (though if you want to hear dogs hide their snouts under their paws, let me sing), but I was always imaginative and creative, and discovering in my teens that four musicians had in their late teens and early 20s created something that made sense, and not be repetitive, was encouraging. The creative notion is in all of us, but comes out in different ways. I’ll never play the guitar, but I can listen to as good as anyone.
I do, however, gi-normously miss Guitar Hero.
October 26, 2008 at 8:53 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
I listen to a lot of different music while I write, but I don’t like to hear lyrics. So that means a lot of classical, groove stuff, trip-hop, Jazz, and “ambient sounds” music (another name for New Age, giving it a cooler sound than the flakiness associated—and well deserved—of the Kalifornia Kulture Krowd … which brings me to the subject of “Spinning”: this exercise routine that is no different but for the name than stationary bicycling. I mean, give me a fucking break with the euphemistic bullshit. Call an afternoon bike ride what it is, not a spinning adventure in God’s creation on a star-lit post meridian).
So I opened iTunes this morning at 6.45, wanting something soothing, a little weird, with no words, to carry me into the text and then pull me along. Music has powerful mood affectations. Under the “ambient” category in iTunes radio, you’ll find station titles like Ambient Popsicle, which sounds lewd; Beach House Radio; Chill Out Lounge; Drone Zone; Entranced; Groove Salad; and Birdsong Radio, which i’m almost afraid to open. All of these sound a bit odd, but mostly they are soothing electronica that are simply, as the name correctly defines, ambient sounds. Not white noise, exactly, but something that carries on behind your thinking, rarely interrupting a train of thought. This music is excellent for the creative mind; it masks those intrusive house settling cracks and groans, street noise, the creaking chair on which I sit, flouresent light white noise, and for all you old-time rock’n'rollers with tinnitus because you listened to jams cranked up to 11, ambient sounds cover up the buzz of your own mind.
I also came across this station: Doomed. This is the creepiest music. Think of Death coming for you, slowly; or, The Exorcist meets your frazzled imagination on a dark night, walking home hearing only your footsteps then others and echos and voices and movement and shadows. Yeah, that kind of creepy.
Doomed radio’s raisson d’etre is the Halloween Season. Listening to it this morning, before the light of day had come up, with fog hanging in the street outside my window, I felt as if demons stood breathing heavily at the door, that gargoyles hung from the cornices above the windows, waiting for me to appear, that Lucifer waited far below down a dark well, his mouth open wide to catch me as I fell through a hole in the floor made real by my imagination, my past, and all those evil thoughts we have lurking behind bright-colored curtains.
I turned that shit off quickly. If you have the time, try to listen to that stuff for more than 10 minutes without the bugs starting to crawl under your skin: “Doomed on SomaFM” in iTunes Radio, category “ambient.”
October 24, 2008 at 5:50 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
… and this is funny. At least it’s funny to me; I’m not sure how this’ll translate to y’all readers (I write-speak in West-Texan suddenly — a nod to my teacher and friend, Wade Roberts of Columbia College. So, anyway … [as the French Jazz plays in the background]) … :
I have a desktop folder on my MAC titled “New Essay Downloads” filled with of course essays I’ve found discovered on the Web that have-&-had-&-even-now interest me. I’ve named each essay according to a simple name-phrase that I think will “pull” me into the article if I just open the file. Here’s the list, in alpha order, as the title & spelling appears on each file:
Alasdair Grey; Archeologist; Architect Piece; bibleBelter; BookReviewsGone; Books Never Read; borges_boswell; CharcterWoods; Chomsky_IntellectualResponsibility; coffee houses; Critical Thinking Terms; GrahamGreene; Henry James in Paris; history men; INtelligence; JamesWood; jmCoetze; LauraWarholic; Mansfield_1; Mansfield_2; MartineauLetters; ModernGoddess; Naipaul; NatlConscience; on being european; On Biography; On Wit; pompei; reader manifesto; reagan diaries; skeptic’s argument; Skeptic’s Questions; Storms Over the Novel; verbal doodles; Web a threat; whips.
An inexhaustive list, naturally, but some intriguing stuff. Ironically, the most recent article save is dated March 11, 2008, and earliest Jan 7, 2007 (which is all kinds of fucked up, even without wine flowing through your veinds). I believe-remember reading maybe perhaps 2-6 of these, but which of them and what they disseminated I have no recollection – although if I have read them, some fact odd tidbit lurks in the grey-matter shadows. Others seem incredibly inviting for the omnivorous mind. So, onward into the breach once more lads, no? I’ve got a 4-day weekend in front of me (the Czech Nat’l holiday commemorating its first formation – 1918 – takes place on Tuesday), so there’s reading to be had. I’m particularly intrigued with the titles “coffee houses” “Books Never Read” “verbal doodles” and “history men”: I’ve no idea what they will offer, but I’ve got an inkling from the titles of all those “mights.”
[BTW:Â if you are intrigued enough to want a taste, let me know and I'll send the file. 
]
October 22, 2008 at 8:34 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Boys. They (we me included) never change. The subtle differences in scope come with age – physical “age” of the person and institutional “age” of the time in which we live. Language is the device for which boys perhaps best can rage against the machine. We hear it in songs, scrawled onto concrete alley walls and bathroom stalls.
As an English teacher to non-native speakers, I stress speech intonation – how what we say can change meaning depending on the stress put on a given word within a sentence. For example, “Michelle is your girlfriend” can mean many things depending on the stress given to any of those four words. To wit, listen to the difference in meaning when strees is changed from “MICHELLE is your girlfriend” and “Michelle IS your girlfriend” and “Michelle is YOUR girlfriend.”
I think of the religious when I think of stress (read that in all ways, if you please, and then come back to language and word stress). “JESUS is coming!” “The second coming is neigh!” “Jesus will come again.”
At the Café U Budovce, where I stopped for a pizza and a glass of wine after learning that two classes had been cancelled (late cancellations = I get paid), I sat at a table looking onto the street, watching the tourists walk by Tyn Church in their tour groups. Most looked hungrily into the café, as it was nearly lunchtime; their tour leaders chattered away, likely to lead them into a ready-made restaurant in which they get a kickback.
Then about 10 teenage boys came into the café. They were well groomed kids, about 16, chattering away and quick to order pizzas and Coca Colas. Czech teens at school lunch. A few spoke English back and forth, though I’m not sure why. They seemed to be trying out expressions, probably learned or heard online – in a chat room or through Skype talks, whatever. Suddenly, amid all the Czech, this volley came across the tables:
“Jesus is coming!”
“Jesus is coming, open your mouth.”
Laughter.
October 20, 2008 at 7:12 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
First month’s pay for teaching English to The Czechs: 15,700Kc. Sounds like a lot. It would be if that figure were dollars. It’s not, and it ain’t. But that was the month to jostle schedules and weather the cancellations that came from companies who are cutting back in the face of the WORLDWIDE DEPRESSION.
The krona will keep me alive. Let’s just say that I’m glad I don’t eat a lot anymore.
October 19, 2008 at 8:15 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
This is the House of Horrors bar. The entrance is down a narrow lane (too easy to call an alley, but then most of the streets are no wider than this one). You have to use your shoulder to open the thick wooden door, then you walk slowly down ten stone steps leading steeply into the bowels of the building. The walls are curved, arched ceilings overhead, rough-hewn stone, like a dungeon. The floor is stone, hand sized pieces set in cement. This space looks like it was once a root cellar, or a beer cellar, or a wine cellar. Or a dungeon.
Most of the seats are church pews, remnants of the pious turned into café kitsch. The bar is stuffed into the far end of the room. A Christian cross is nailed to its facade. Candles light the room; candles are everywhere, on the tables, on the floors, in wall sconces; all diffuse red light from their votive holders. Fake skeletons and hatted skulls hang from the ceiling.
I want to leave, frankly. This is pure cheese, I think. But good blues comes on: Eric Clapton jamming with BB King. I’m thirsty for a coffee, and want to write in my journal. And then I want a drink. It’s early evening, it’s cold outside; I don’t want to go back to the pension or walk aimlessly. The place is empty except for the bartender. I like the look of this cellar, and decide I’ll overlook the decor element.
The bartender walks over, sees me with my open journal. He takes a taper from a nearby table and sets by my journal, lights the candle and there is much better light by which to write. This is Michael. He runs the bar and has learned English over the years by talking with people in the bar. I order a coffee and ask to see the CD cover of the disc he’s got playing. He brings the disc case over with my capuccino. I order a brandy on the side and when Michael brings that I ask him about the CD and his other music. He tells me Clapton is coming to Prague in February ’09.
I have to ask Michael about the cheesy decor – the skeletons and the skulls and the cobwebs; I notice a hangman’s noose further down – but I don’t use those words. Michael has a story to tell. The house has been here since the early 1600s, which fits with my knowledge of Cesky Krumlov: the local beer, Eggenberg, has been brewed along the Vltava River since 1564. Michael explains that this house was the town crematorium. This main bar room was used as a prayer room. The side room, its entranceway lit by candles on the ground, led to a smaller room that Michael said was the crematorium.
Why not? I think. Every other business in Cesky Krumlov that was once a thriving workshop is now a bar or restaurant. Just then a couple comes down the stairs, they look around and go into the crematorium room. Twenty seconds later they walk out of there, the woman holding a strange look on her face. They take a pew near the bar.
[quality pics of beautiful Cesky Krumlov are at my Flickr page]
October 18, 2008 at 3:10 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Prague is well connected to all parts of its country via train & bus. It amazes me sometimes to see how much people DO NOT need cars to get to all their favorite holiday spots.
Cesky Krumlov is four hours by train, south of Prague; but by bus it’s just 2.45 away, and you get to see a beautiful section of the countryside. I took the Student Agency bus service (the name has no education connection), a massive yellow vehicle. SA has stewardess on the bus. She passes out headphones and magazines, starts the DVD movie, and serves coffee-tea-capuccino-or-hotchocolate. I’d never seen a stew on a bus before. I doubt if Greyhound has a smiling stew with happy feet on board.
The Pension Feston is high on a hill overlooking this 600-year-old rivertown. I had skylights and a mountain view, with the sun streaming in to light the airy room. The bus got into Krumlov near dark, so I dropped my bags in the room, grabbed a warm coat and walked down into the town. This place is so small you aren’t more than 10-12 minutes walk from anything.
But there’s lots to see as you walk the cobblestone streets, night and day. The castle is lit up, the cafés are open, cellar bars beckon with warm amber light peaking out diamond-shaped speak-easy windows. But this was Monday, and the castle is closed on Monday, so the town seemed especially deserted for only 7 pm.
I walked into the main square of Old Town, a small area surrounded by hotels and galleries (and this week well under reconstruction). A few lights shown, but I heard music off the square, down a narrow side street. A small café, nothing special, drew me in from the cold. The food offered was simple: cold ham with cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers, dark bread. This is traditional Czech food.
After a coffee, I walked the streets just a bit more, fascinated with the age of the buildings, and how every single lane is cobblestoned, the thick walls either side of me in these anorexic lanes. In daylight, I thought, this is going to be a really neat place.
But teaching would be the work for the next four days: 6-hrs each day, bookwork and listening exercises, conversation and grammar. Radka Sebkova wanted an intensive study course, with lots of conversation practice. In the following days, I would make her dizzy with questions, correction, and hearing her mind squeak with effort.
October 18, 2008 at 7:52 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Cesky Krumlov is an intriguing town of a few thousand people, many of which you can see – in their eyes and faces and gestures – that they have not been out of the valley for centuries, or so it seems.
I’ve many stories to tell, and will do so this week, beginning later today. The Web connection at the pension sucked, but now, a few hours before I leave, it works just fine. Go figure.
October 12, 2008 at 11:33 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Last weekend I found myself hard at work on the novel, unable to get out of the apartment. All a good way to spend time, I say, but that kind of weekend makes living in Prague like living anywhere else. “But you’re in Prague!” I said Friday night. So I planned to get to Prague Centrum and Old Town Square to walk through all those connecting alleyways on Saturday afternoon.
I wrote tons in the morning: bits and pieces of 18 scenes I’m adding to VW novel, then out of the house by 1 o’clock. Locking the gate behind me, I had no idea that I wouldn’t unlock it for more than twelve hours.
The sky was half-sunny with haze, but blue slivers touched the horizon. I wanted to have a late lunch at a little Czech café far off Wenceslaus Square — far enough to ensure Czech’s filled the tables, not tourists. (and, No, I don’t count myself as a tourist anymore). The Titanic serves traditional Czech dishes: meat & potatoes, veggies, and cold beer. In the window is a bronze replica of the Titanic as it is sinking; actually, this art piece depicts half the ship, the stern, ass-end skyward as the other half is quickly submerging–reminiscent of the scene in that silly movie (but perhaps its best scene) when people are hanging onto the railings, dropping off and splashing into the frigid water).
I had the hunter’s skewer with chunks of beef, lamb and deer. I gorged myself, not being used to eating that much food, and not used to restaurant portions. That’s okay; I’ve gotten my protein for the week. Besides, I’m in Cesky Krumlov next week on the school’s dime, and a meal taken out in the world is good for me.
The advantage of living in a city – and a city like Prague – is that you can walk off a heavy meal and not feel that you’re walking just to walk. There’s always things to see, people to watch, street music to stop for a moment’s serenade.
This is Saturday, and the shoppers are out, the afternoon diners, the the café crowd. I walked the side streets, ones I’m unfamiliar with so I might find an interesting shop to catalogue in my mind. I found a few antique stores in a side arcade, the café Trilobite, and a tea shop stacked to the ceiling with pigeonholes containing a cornucopia of teas. But I walked on.
I had a mission: used books. There’s a good bookshop in The Palladium, an enormous shopping center in a pink building on Namesti Republiki. The place has 200 shops, restaurants, and entertainment. On the way I listened to a Czech playing Simon & Garfunkle on stage at the foot of Wenceslaus Square, and watched dozens of couples floating through the street in various orders of color coordination. At the bookstore I eyed a complete works of Shakespeare for a mere 500Kc, but decided reading the plays on the computer was just as good, as I already have 3 copies of complete works lying in three cities around the world.
[SideNote: Italian gelato stands are everywhere, and for a little more than $1 you can have a taste explosion. Today I had CherryChocolateCrunch]
[SideNoteTwo: the Czech's have a great sense of humor, and they use this well in their designs. In the men's room at the Palladium, you'll find an interesting wall to look at so that you don't make eye contact with other men while standing at the urinal (not that you would want to anyway) ... and this pic shows that the joke might just be on you, Well-Hung-Man: one woman holds a ruler and is smiling; another has pair of binoculars; a pair look downward at your Johnson with Mona Lisa smiles).
Namesti Republiki is in Old Town, and has stunning Baroque architecture, as well as Art Deco buildings that, seemingly, you see mostly in Prague because in other European cities that utilized this design, those buildings were lost during WWII.
Beside the Baroque and Art Deco you’ll also find the odd Gothic structure that speaks to Prague’s 900-year history. Mostly towers once used to protect the city around its outer walls, these brutish stubs stick up into the sky like powerful phalluses, remnant edifices to the mighty warriors housed inside who watched closely for the Vandal hordes that eventually did collect the city.
Onward I strolled toward Anagram Books, tucked into a sunken space just behind the Tyn Church. Anagram has two entrances, and the second – I think it’s the front door – looks onto a small cobblestone courtyard that has benches, trees, a handsome raised arcade walkway, and restaurant/cafés surrounding an old well. This was once the heart of the heart of the city, and the atmosphere exudes history.
I deliberated between several books: the best buy was Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night” at 70Kc, a book I began to read years ago but found I wasn’t in the mood to finish it; and I wanted a Saul Bellow novel, “Humboldt’s Gift”, because I haven’t read much Bellow, and think we should all read Nobel Prize winners. While browsing, I also found the elusive “Alexandria Quartet” by Laurence Durrell. I need books, and these were good finds. I listened to a Czech tourist talk with the English proprietor, asking about Czech photography books. He wasn’t buying; just looking. After looking for five minutes, he had the temerity to ask if the proprietor knew of any other bookstores that had a “better” selection of photography books. He received a better answer than I might have given.
Outside, the air had turned cool, the sun was low in the sky. I watched a woman pose in the sunlight, one thick beam cutting down the passage between the Tyn Church and another Gothic building (Prague’s oldest structure, dating back to near Roman times). The woman raised her arms, her husband caught in the light and shadow, clicking away at her silhouetted figure. I wanted to shoot them in the act of shooting, but couldn’t get my camera out in time before they had had their fun and walked on.
Feeling my stomach was now ready for a sweet dessert, I looked into a café, U Budovce. It showed that terribly rustic, arched- ceiling-meets- 1920′s-café-style. I checked the menu and saw two of my favorites chalked at reasoble rates. So I wandered in a sat at a side table in the middle room of this old tavern. The U Budovce advertises live music every night, beginning at eight. While I’d have to wait 2hrs this night to catch some Jazz (THE widest of the live music selections in Prague), I now have a place to take visitors to town, whenever they decide to drop into Central Europe.
While the U Budovce sells itself as a pizza joint, they’ve got a wicked bar & coffee menu, with a few pastries to keep the tummy sated. I ordered the preferred Saturday-evening-at-the-café drink—a cointreau coffee with warmed apple strudel. Café hopping is a lifestyle in Europe, and no less so in Prague. People hang closely over the little round tables, talking on subjects for hours, and not getting the evil eye from waitresses because they aren’t pouring the coffees one after another down their throats.
While the night was young and few people occupied tables, I got into the spirit and order another cointreau, sans coffee. This gave me time to outline two travel books I’ve been thinking of writing: Kafka’s Kobblestones, and a “living easy in Europe” book whose title I want to keep a secret because it’s so fucking good (got it from my mate Andy, actually. thanks lad).
I left the sweet sounds of stereo jazz and walked into Old Town Square as the night sky was purpling behind the Tyn Church. Hundreds of tourists spat numerous languages from left, right, forward and behind. I hefted my bag of books through the crowd, feeling in the warmish air that a long walk from here to Malostrana, across Karlov Most (charles bridge) for a quick duck into Shakespeare & Son’s books before finally catching the metro back to Suchdol.
At Charles Bridge, the view across the Vltava and up to Hradcany was shrouded in a growing mist that would turn foggy late. The castle lights created a gold nimbus around St Vitus’s spires. My simple point & shoot camera could not get a quality shot, so my memory will have to take that scene to the grave (no wait! I want to be cremated and have the ashes scattered in every country that I’ve visited … something some of you might consider for a future vacation. thank you).
Inside Shakespeare & Sons, my eyes flickered across the name Leonardo Da Vinci. I’d thrice found Da Vinci’s name in my sights over the last week – referenced in an article, another in a photograph, something else about Renaissance scientists – so I saw this as a sign that I should do the splurge and get one more book. Meanwhile, I heard the sales girl speak flawless American English. She was talking with some other American, who wanted the skinny on Skype. Naturally I slipped myself into the conversation, and we talked about the debacled American economy, why it’s so nice NOT to be there, and Oh Yeah, we don’t have to pay taxes as ex-pats.
A friend of theirs comes into the store to exchange books. He and I get to talking, and I learn he’s a poet. Lucien Zell comes from California, but has lived in Europe for about a dozen years. He invited me to a poetry reading come Wednesday, but I told him about my teaching gig in Cesky Krumlov. After a while, we seemed to be getting into all kinds of subjects, and Lucien suggested we take the conversation to a bar across the street.
In another little café (called Kafkisque or something like that) with white walls, brown stools, and a friendly barrista, Lucien and I traded stories of literary influences, what we were working on, why we were doing it in Prague, and all the many more subjects that come up in literature well read people come across. Off to get more drinks, Lucien returned with a friend of his, Anna, a Czech woman studying psychology. We got onto the psych & psyche highways, touched Religion’s fallacies, and wondered what happens during near death experiences and after “death cometh for me.”
The Kafka-house was closing up, but we three weren’t yet through talking till our throats were raw. We walked around the corner to the Blue-somethingorother and order more wine. Anna divulged some interesting views on astrology and each of the Zodiac signs and their influence on people’s personalities. The bar was crowded, smokey, loud, and me & Lucien spoke slowly so Anna could catch all our words, even though she is well fluent.
It was midnight, and we walked to the nearest tram stop. I looked at the schedule and found that I had pretty much missed the last “regular” tram. We three went our separate ways, and I walked to another stop that would take me up to at least the castle. I ran into two other American’s at the stop, Californians, and we talked while waiting for a what-was-to-be a packed 12.30am tram. I walked down the hill to Dejvicka, saw that there were no more buses going up the hill to Suchdol, so I nonchallantly started to hoof it on the deserted street.
The thing about Prague-After-Midnight is this: like cockroaches in the night, when the trams-metro-buses stop, the taxis come out. Often you hear that most cabs are rip-offs, and you’ll “get taken for a ride” and I’m sure that’s the case if you’re in Prague Centrum. But out here, I flagged a cab, found an old man behind the wheel who spoke a bit of English. He stepped on the gas when I said “Suchdol, prosim” and I was flung into the seat. A few minutes later, and my pocket change not so much lighter, I slipped the key into the gate as the fog settle on the crown of northeastern Prague.
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