The Travel Logs: Prague

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People keep asking me, "Are you writing about your travels?" The answer is no. I haven't been writing it all down, sealing it into the vault of memory and leaving a record for posterity. The truth is, I suck at disciplined writing. When asked what my inspiration is for poetry, what style I am imitating, or what diction I am seeking to reproduce, I have no answer. The answer is only, "I write whatever comes out." This is not a good answer for anyone who has writerly aspirations, for the professional author knows that good writing takes discipline and practice.

I suppose that is mostly what this blog is about for me: a discipline, a pattern of creative recording that will hopefully yield some fruit. So I am enacting "The Travel Logs," a category of essays on trips I take to other places besides Germany. This past week I had the privilege, nay, LUXURY, of traveling to Prague, Czech Republic with three other women. No children involved (for which I gratefully raise a glass to my brother-in-law, Thomas, long-suffering and selfless: PROST!). One of the girls was my middle sister, which gave us the chance to catch up and just be girls together once more, a talent largely forgotten in the chaos of marriage and child-rearing. One of the girls was a Czech national, which made travel a breeze, as she shepherded us around and fielded all the Czech questions from the locals. We really did not have to think at all, it was fantastic being led around and translated for; I probably said "Betka, where do we go now?" too many times (sorry Beti!).

As to Prague: It's fabulous, People. I just can't find words to describe it; Pristine, Intact, Old-world, Ornate, are a few that come to mind. It is truly one of the most, if not THE MOST beautiful cities in Europe, filled with spires, amazing architecture and opulent relics of the past. It's so untouched because it was not bombed during the World Wars. The city is also quite hilly, creating layer upon layer of buildings, which lit at night create something I can only describe as "magic" for the tourist. The Charles Bridge is the perfect vantage point on top of the river at night. Make sure to visit Prague Castle and St. Vitus' Cathedral which are also fabulous. See the Jewish quarter and marvel at the pathetic heap of tombstones, a reminder of the injustice of anti-Semitism. Eat lunch at the Slavia Cafe and enjoy the best view of the old town in the city (sitting under photos of the famous who've enjoyed it too...we were under a picture of Hillary Clinton during her visit). Enjoy Bohemian Dumplings, they are scrumptious, as are the uber cheap micro-brews available in the city. Seriously, I paid about 1.25 euro for a half liter of beer...that's cheap as dirt over here, you can't even buy still water for that price.

I think the thing that impressed me most, and I mean by "impressed" that it affected me most, was the post-Soviet harshness that still rears its head. There is the sense that people have had it tougher; there is no Western European luxury to be seen. Though Prague is far more beautiful than many cities in the West, even more than Paris, there is this patina of crumminess that keeps it from being modern or flashy. I have to say, I like it all the better for this. It is real. You feel it. There is nothing sanitized or suburban about this place; you feel closer to the way humanity has lived for centuries. This quality of genuineness is beautiful.

When we were on a bus, traveling from Vienna to Prague (we took the train back, and I have to say I really preferred the train), a blind couple boarded and sat in front of my sister and I. We cringed; they smelled badly and were unkempt. They were not the first obviously physically deformed people I would see that day, there were more examples of this type of suffering (more than I am accustomed to seeing). They talked loudly and had their seeing-eye dog stuffed under their seats. When we exited the bus at our destination, I watched them make their way down the stairs, arm in arm. They reached the ground and got their bearings, mostly by putting hands on each other and making sure of each other. The man's unfocused eyeballs glared oddly at the sky and he grinned the widest grin. His girl was caressing his face. I promise you, there isn't a man on this planet more happy or more loved than this man without a clean hair on is head or an intact tooth in his mouth. In this world of darkness, these two had reached out a hand and found each other. It was enough.

O, the exquisite crumminess!

The Travel Logs: Prague-The Swell Season

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Every once in awhile, Art follows Life follows Art. For the poetic soul, I'm afraid there's such a fine line between the two that they become rather confused. I saw this played out on a live stage this week at The Swell Season concert in Prague. If you haven't yet seen the film "Once" then stop reading now, go rent the movie and watch it, and come back and finish this post. It won't make any sense to you without that context. The two main characters/actors are Markéta and Glen, who are also the heart of the group The Swell Season. I call them character/actors because they were not professionals when they made the movie and the love story that happens on-screen was also happening in real life. At the time, Glen was age 37 and Markéta 19, making their love story improbable, yet somehow an irresistible product of their musical collaboration. Glen said of that time, "There was definitely the feeling we were documenting something precious and private" (Entertainment Weekly, June 2007).

If the movie "Once" and the accompanying soundtrack were documentation of the couple's love story, their follow-up album "Strict Joy" is the painful documentation of their falling out of love. Going to see them in concert is like watching a broken heart get swept all over a stage and stomped on a few more times for theatrical purposes. Glen is, as ever, passionate and heart-rending in his delivery, and Markéta is, as in the film, restrained and ruminative. He parades his bruised heart for the crowd's entertainment, and she quietly gives pathos a melody on the piano. They are really stunning live performers, not just for their incredible musical gifting, but because they give voice to both delight and pain. Glen does an amazing job adapting his own songs so that they lead into covers familiar to the crowd; a couple of gorgeous examples were "Falling Slowly" devolving into U2's "With or Without You," and his whimsical "Star Star" leading into a violin solo of "Pure Imagination." These are the moments in the live concert experience that one is transported by. One of the incredibly gorgeous moments in this performance was the violin solo by former Frames now Swell Season member, Colm Mac Con Iomaire. He took me back to the cliffs of Ireland in my mind's eye.

Back to the train-wreck aspect of this concert: some moments made me wince with the freshness of the ache. Glen would give his trademark yelling/singing performance to the crowd, emphasizing lyrics such as "Your heart's not in it!" or "Her last words were 'I was only thinking of you, Babe.'" Markéta remained remarkably calm during these moments, though her expression seemed pained when he turned to her and belted out over and over, "I can't live, with or without you." It's amazing to me that the collaboration continues, and yet they are riding high on the success borne out of this pain.

Because somehow this heartbreak is beautiful. My friend, Sara, turned to me at the end of the concert, and sighed, "Music is so cathartic!" I agreed, because she is correct, giving voice to the painful things transforms them into Art, and then they have a life of their own. Glen says it this way in the song "Go with Happiness": "Because a love has grown, I had to leave it alone / And if you're gonna go / Go with happiness." Maybe Glen and Marketa have learned the fine art of releasing the pain. Or maybe they've gotten really good at acting.

Cremation: Day Seven

If I burn my own heart to ash,
No one will attend the ceremony.

No one helped me cut the twigs,
Form the tepee, cradle the flame,
Blow 'till it caused the organ
To leak blood and expand to explosion.
No one heard the sound it made.

I scoop up the ash obediently
And revel in the feel of so fine a dust.
Even divided, it pulses the same sound.

I stand alone, swaying cliff-side
and blow those ashes to ocean winds.

Happy. Said the Girl

What are you chasing? Asked the Girl.
A Bird. Said the Boy. I will catch her
And then tie a string around her neck
and carry her home.
Why? Asked the Girl. Couldn't you let her live?
No. Said the Boy. This is how my Father taught me to hunt.

What are you chasing? Asked the Boy.
Happiness. Said the Girl.
It looks more like a butterfly. Remarked the Boy.
You'd think that wouldn't you? But She is Happiness. Said the Girl.
How do you know? Asked the Boy.
Because I catch her, let her wings kiss my cheek,
And then I release her to the wind again. Said the Girl.

Oh. Said the Boy. Like chasing birds.
Yes. Said the Girl. Only not really.
No, not really. Agreed the Boy.
But it's something like my father's smile.
Yes. Said the Girl with her grin. Something like.

Blood Red Clay

The heat soaked into his bones and then seeped out his skin in fat droplets as he hauled the feed in, bag by bag the loathesome load. He paused to remove his hat and wipe his forehead with his kerchief, and he saw a rider on the horizon. The horse seemed driven, his purpose fuled by an anxious master. He stopped and dropped his hand to his wagon's gate, waiting for the trouble he saw riding with the horseman. The stranger pulled up, sharp on his reins and met McDonald with coldness in his eyes. Dan met the stranger's gaze, "Can I help you?," he asked in his courteous storekeep's tone, the one that let brusque customers know he was unfazed.
"You Dan McDonald?"
"Yeah, that's me. I keep this store and this is my farm back behind. What do you want with me?"
"They told me you was a fool," the rider sneered, "but I didn't know you was so fool to speak to me so careless."
"And who might you be?"
"I'm a Campbell, and that's all you need know. Yours and mine been fightin' all the way back to the homeland. You best show me some respect, boy."
"I'm no boy. This is my place your standin' on, so I think you ought show me respect." Dan's voice tightened as he felt the old swells of anger rising in him. "I don't take kindly to strangers comin' on my place and pickin' a fight with me!" He knew he was yelling and couldn't stop it. He felt the brawls of his youth rising up in him and urging him on.
"I ain't pickin'!" In one swift lift of his leg, Campbell had dismounted and stepped up to Dan. He thought to step back, but too late, and he felt lightening stinging through his chest, like when it strikes you in a wet field. He stared into Campbell's cold grey eyes, so close and locked into his for a moment. Dan felt the blade as it was jerked from his stomach, felt the tearing of skin and muscle as blood roared in his ears. He staggered and felt the land tip sideways. He was on the ground when he woke again, red clay was in his nostrils and he saw across the flatness of the ground, hooves far off, hitting the ground in a rapid cadence, beating out a retreat. Then the screams assaulted his ears.
"Murder! MURDERER! O my God, O Jesus help us, Dan's been killed! That man is a murderer!" Mary Blanche's shrieks reached a dangerously high pitch. He looked up to see his Blanche, her blue sleeves flapping from the second-story window as she proclaimed to anyone who would listen that he was dying.
Death felt slow. There were many people about, he felt arms grabbing him and hauling him onto something wooden. Customers and neighbors were putting him on a door they'd scrounged, taken off its hinges to bear his body. He passed out again.
Blanche wept as the men awkwardly scooped up Dan's intestines and laid them on his body. They loaded the door into the back of his wagon and made the harsh trip from North Carrolton to the hospital in Greenwood. It was all jumbled in Dan's mind, the passage to a clean-sheeted hospital bed; there had been dreams more vivid than any he could remember. He saw Blanche floating above him in white, holding a baby and crying, the baby she'd lost to tuberculosis in her first marriage. He dreamed with a terrible sense of loss of the babies he would not give her, the family he would not raise, the land he would not cultivate.
The surgeon and his nurses cut Dan's clothes from his body and placed them in a box. They gently raised his intestines and bathed them clean, tucking them back in the gaping hole that was his abdomen. The doctor stitched up Dan's wounds as he slept, giving him back his dreams. Blanche took the box of bloody clothes and placed it in their attic; they were the best evidence she had against the man who had surely murdered her husband. She had fitful dreams at night about revenge, but the box lay dormant, and three months later Dan came home. The authorities never found Campbell.
As he stocked his store and harvested his crops, as he bedded his wife and raised his children, he would think of Campbell's reasoning, "Yours and mine have always been fightin'." He would shrug his shoulders and think with a sad Irish sigh that it was as good a reason as any other.

Eve of the New Year

I don't know much for sure
The only constant is change

Outside, the wind whips birch trees
And the clouds remain for another day.
Ask me about winter,
And I will tell you about war.

That year was the longest winter of my life
Filled with days that never counted
Months erased by their monotony and solitude.

Outside, the snow comes for another day
We are trapped inside by our fears and doubts
Ask me about loss,
And I will tell you about a year

When I chased the moth that grew in my brain
It was a shadowy thing not meant to be pinned
Beauty is such a live thing, not dead or framed.

That year was the second longest winter of my life.

I don't know anything.
I'm only grateful
for the constancy of change.

3:55 AM

I am not A, B, and C,
Can't follow steps 1, 2 and 3.
I wish I was so simple and I could
Squash people into holes, make them good.
We are slippery things, we humans are,
And if I could categorize,
I love lists, I would.
But we are all demonfire and angel eyes
Born from eager coupling or unlawful knowing
And especially from the rote spousal meeting.

A new year is dawning
And if I could reach my goals by following rules,
I'm tired now, I would.
But I'm getting older and finally see
Through the stack of self-help on my shelf.
Some days I wake up and I'm kind, love my kids,
Say the thing I should. And some nights I wake,
Find I'm vampire, murderer and whore.
Does that make you shudder? What for?
You are not so simple either
And I'm glad of it; I'd be bored.