BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for May, 2010
May 31, 2010 at 11:11 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
This place is like a palace apartment. The space amazes both Asia and me. City views from the bay window. Jacuzzi bathtub. Twelve-foot ceilings and large windows. Fireplace and cozy living/office room. Quiet street + quiet building = peaceful life.
We’ve still got lots to organize, but already we feel at home on Chodska Street. Here are some action photos to give you a sense of the place:
 Asia finding focus at her new desk
Mark coming home for lunch
Asia with her beloved tea
Mark at the desk post-IKEA put-together party
Asia zeroed-in on class prep
Mark in the bedroom
 
Ready to cook for Asia
May 26, 2010 at 7:08 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
I’d given up hope that America’s network television could yet put together a quality show. Pap had become the norm, and thus the expected dish. I’m not now going to say LOST was some neo-seminal program. It wasn’t. It was, however, a well-told story with fairly complicated characters (read: deep). LOST ended its 6-year run this week, a pre-planned end two years in the making.
Of course, the story is pretty simple, as all good stories are: people survive a plane crash over a Pacific island, disover the island has magical/sinister powers, and spend months getting off the island, years trying to return to the island, then helping to save the island, and finally … the end.
And here’s where things get gummy: the people had actually died on that plane crash; their “lives” as we viewers saw the story, were a view into what the writers’ idea of Purgatory might look like. And all the clues were there from the very beginning:
1. Planes that fall out of the sky, statistically speaking, leave no survivors
2. Each character had led a flawed and tortured life (mostly at their own hands)
3. “Redemption” was the story’s continuous theme
4. Philo-psycho-socio-religispiritual motifs infiltrated character names (Christian Shepard, John Locke, etc), dialogue, settings, sub-plots, architecture, etcetera ad rem
5. The title itself has psycho-religio connections and connotations
6. The audience is lead down the primrose path the last half hour (albeit a nice culmination after 6 years of story)
“I once was LOST, but now I am found” goes the lyric. At the end of the story, Christian Shepard (the father of a main character, whose body was lost on the island — actually, disappeared from its coffin) pulls it together for the audience: he says of the people and the story, “Remember, and let go.”
If you want to analyze the LOST story over 6 years, you find that the story simply doesn’t make sense, when viewed from reality (as is the failure of religion). As a death allegory, LOST performed perfectly, and the tenents life-death-afterlife-purgatory-heaven-hell were all there.
May 24, 2010 at 12:32 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
On Saturday, Asia and I lit out to the south Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov. We left at seven from the Andel bus station (actually, the bus was 45min late … the driver was prolly sleeping off Friday’s pub visit) and cruised through the countryside, gliding and turning and dipping on a two-lane highway due south of Prague.
Cesky Krumlov is a medieval castle town, built around 1300 on the Vltava River. It’s actually the second largest castle in CR, next to Prazky Hrad. The House of Eggenberg owned the castle in the 1600s, from which the Eggenberg beer brand originates. The Schwarzenberg’s via the Hapsburg empire owned the castle for two hundred years. Today, UNESCO protects the town, its beauty lying within the ancient walls that basically surround an oxbow in the river.
Asia looks amazed at all the beautiful architecture surrounding her.
CK is a walkable town, and you can see everything in town within a day. The best of Krumlov is the castle & grounds: bears in the moat, tower overlooking town & river, gardens with beauty, peace and color. An old mill on the river hosts a fab restaurant with views of the bridge between castle and gardens.
 
What I liked most was the medieval feel of the town. As I explained to Asia: “I always wanted to live in a castle town, and love the stone streets and architecture of Europe.” And she answered: “So you moved to Europe for its cobblestoned streets?”
Well, if you put it that way….
A gorgeous river park has views of bluff-hugging buildings now the homes of B&Bs, restaurants & pubs. Street-side cafés bubble with great crossroad architecture. And a branch of Shakespeare & Son English books has lots of yummy titles.
We spent the day tramping around town, up and down hills, over cobbles, stepping into the St Vitus cathedral, and sitting for a spell deep in the castle gardens. A streamside picnic just before the bus home picked us up really finished the day for us. I fell asleep on the bus, and evidently my head swayed to the motion of the bus. Ha-ha, Little Fox.
By the time we made it home, we were both wiped out. Bedtime couldn’t come soon enough, but not before a nice cup of tea set us up for dreamland.
Asia dreamed of being a palace-bound princess awaiting her knight in shining armor.
[more pics at my Flickr page]
May 23, 2010 at 5:16 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Within whispering distance of the yoga center doorway, we pulled an “about face” and spirited away before someone could catch us. Our legs felt like lead from yesterday’s tramping around Cesky Krumlov, up and down the castle hill, negotiating the heart-stone cobbles. So today, after a salmon-over-salad lunch, an ”afternoon nap” — and then tea – we still put ourselves into gear to make it to yoga class.
I felt tired, but didn’t want to disappoint Asia, miss yogi-master-crafter. So surprise-surprise when, thirty yards from the entrance, Asia says “You know, we can go home and have iced coffee. Maybe take a walk later in the sunshine.” It took me all of three seconds to agree. And then we laughed and walked back to the tram.
Suddenly, we both had a spring in our step. I guess sometimes you have to let yourself be free.
May 19, 2010 at 12:01 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I think my lexicon is fairly extensive, but I’m always on the lookout for new words to fill out the internal synonym & antonym collection, cuz, you know, like I don’t have enough hours filled in the day already.
Of course, the best way to find new words, and learn their meanings, is to read (books, magazines—even web stuff might toss out a rough diamond every once in a while). I’ve sort of always done this, but lately I’ve not found all that many new-new words that I couldn’t already define. English has 800,000+ words, and you can bet I don’t know them all.
With this idea/plan/scheme in mind, I began anew while reading “Mating” because, well, I kept finding unique words, newly used words, or just plain made up words (or so I thought). My method is thus: I underline the said unknown word, put a small check in the margin next to the line in which the word appears, and then return to the book to copy the word into a notebook: a vocab notebook.
Last night I made a list of all the words found in the novel. The tally: 112
Question: is it counterproductive to keep a Vocabulary Notebook while sipping a nightly whiskey?
All of you who are thinking “What a DORK!” you can just keep on thinking that, as I don’t resort to mordacious philipics.
May 19, 2010 at 7:14 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Written in 1981:
“What is becoming sovereign in the world is not the people but the limited liability corporation, that particular invention: that’s what’s concentrating sovereign power to rape the world and overenrich the top minions who run these entities. The perfect medium for the corporation is an electoral democracy where nobody—in the mature systems—bothers to vote, parties disaggregate, labor unions decompose, corporations control who gets into parliament, accountability disappears.” (Norman Rush, in a novel)
Work the memory:
Reagan, Thatcher, deregulation, 1980′s S&L bailout, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, Enron, Haliburtan, ConAgra & ArcherDanielsMidland, Pfizer, Bayer and Lilly, the mortgage loan scandal, the mortgage loan bailout of Big Banking, British Petroleum’s worldwide criminal malfeasance.
No wonder people today simply say, “Where’s mine?” and go on to take it. Bear in mind, the EU is as corrupt or more so than what’s happening in the USA. Can anyone say “A Marxist Solution is needed” ? 
May 18, 2010 at 6:42 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Mating, by Norman Rush … If you want to read a story about how a man and a woman come together, learn who the other is, fall in love, and reach forward as a couple, this is the book. Bring a dictionary. A BIG dictionary.
The Revolution Trilogy (Doctor Copernicus; Kepler; The Newton Letter) by John Banville … Banville is one of the best narrative storytellers I’ve ever read. This trilogy captures the lives of the three mathematical/astronomical/phyics geniuses that changes the way humans see their world and their existence on it. And in all of that, they were pretty much ordinary human beings caught in the maelstrom of their eras.
The Biography of Desire, by Mary Dorcey … A married woman falls in love with a woman, and all that desire between the sexes, the people, the lives in between, is counted on the table like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle.
May 16, 2010 at 8:51 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Last night, at the movies, Asia and I saw Woody Allen’s new film “Whatever Works” at Andel cinemas. It wasn’t a packed house, but there were enough people to call it a group cinematic experience. That’s fine, and almost always interesting, seeing where the audience laughs or groans, comparing it to yourself.
Woody’s latest conceit has Larry David playing an old curmudgeon who has basic disdain for the world around him, mostly aimed at people. In some ways its a typical Woody-roll and frankly I’d've liked to see him play the character Boris Yellnikov. A movie about an old crank (or a young one) can get old. This one sort of did: some of the jokes were crass (there is every imagineable kind of summer camp for kids, but none of them do any good for development: how about “concentration camp” to see how humans really act toward each other?” Crass, but actually, in my world view, probably useful, these days).
What makes Boris palatable, not a complete crank, is that he’s a genius who had almost won a Nobel prize in physics. So he’s got pedigree, I guess. But the story is not just a harangue against the world. Woody gives us a nice bunch of characters who turn themselves around, overturning convention and society “norms”.
I thought I’d laugh more, but I was never bored, either.
May 15, 2010 at 2:28 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
The answer is an echo: NO No nO nO no no ooo
October 2009: Prague got cold early.
May 2010: Prague is still cold!!
We’re talking 45-50 degrees. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.
Get the picture? If not:
May 14, 2010 at 10:04 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
And why not?
The weekend approacheth; classes suspendeth; Asia cometh.
I’m planning home-made pizza (special tomato sauce, tee-hee) for one night, and tacos for another. I got hard-shell corn tacos this time, which should make a bit of difference from the mr softie roll-ups. The seasoning packets sold in CR are actually quite good: piquant without being too salty; flavorful that goes far deeper than mere chili powder.
The pizza I like to think of as unique cuz my sauce is designed from tomato paste, spices, and wine. It’s deep texture is a great base for the toppings (perhaps a four-square medly of veggies, Hungarian sausage, chicken, and fresh herbs & two cheeses).
White wine chills in the fridge; red wine screams from the cupboard for a corkscrew rescue.
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