Your Title, Here

I was on the sidewalk when it happened. Standing by the curb, a breeze came sweeping through the avenue, and I closed my eyes, tasting its sweet smell. It smelled of a flower, perhaps a tree – I did not know. But the smell had a taste to it, and I opened my nostrils and ran the tip of my tongue around the rims of my mouth. Then, with its taste within me, I opened my eyes, moving them lethargically around the buildings on both sides, as if I was – at that point, being born for the first time.

The buildings stood happy and not too tall. Perhaps they were sitting – lounging under the white cotton of the clouds. Their paint, once bright, was now chipped. But they smiled at me nonetheless, and I smiled back. Several people, waiting for the tram on a small strip of asphalt in the middle of the avenue, saw me and smiled as well.


The ambulance did not yet turn its sirens on when it turned the corner. Having gone into the corner with excessive speed, its tires screeched over the cobblestones and bounced over the tram rails. But that’s not when it happened.

Racing down the avenue, the ambulance headed straight for the tram stop. Not to the left, where trams passed it, and not to the right, where cars where to go. It headed for the middle, over gassing and heaving like an out-of-breath horse. That’s almost when it happened.


The ambulance swerved to the right, then to the left, and then back to the right, as if unsure where to go. Catching the curb, its right tire screamed against the pavement and suddenly sideways, the ambulance began its descent towards me. But I simply stood. You do not think in these moments. You just stand, still tasting the sweet smells that were there just a moment ago. And so I stood.

But the ambulance did not come over me. It flopped as soon as it took off, sliding on its side, shaving the painted marks off the street, screaming and heaving. Its back doors suddenly popped open and bodies flew out over the street like toys from a crowded closet. They bounced around and became still. Close to me lay the ambulance. A thin stream of smoke began to rise from its hood. Its taste filled my nostrils with a metallic aftertaste.

For a moment the street was completely silent. Or perhaps I could not hear anything. The lights on the roof of the ambulance suddenly lit up, and began to circle around without a sound. I heard nothing.


On the sidewalk lay the bodies. They were bent out of shape and dirty and beaten. I wanted to pick them up and clean them. I wanted to play with them. I would return them to the closet, I promised myself then. Moving closer to the bodies, I began to feel the heat of glances behind me. People again regained their movement, and began to crowd around the wreck. They looked at the young man sitting at the curb with his toys. They shook their head, passed their hand over their mouths in thought, and scratched the back of their necks. But the young men did not see them. He had now lain down next to the bodies, feeling their last warmth. It was then that he finally knew.

It was then that it happened.

А помнишь, друг, команду с нашего двора?

Prelude: Apologies

To my English speaking readers: this post could not be written in the English language.

To my Russian speaking readers: this post could not be written in the Russian font.

....

Sevodnya ya stoyu vozle okna. Eto okno novoye. Eto okno viglydivaet na dvor. Vnizu pesochnitsi. Tuda viglyadivayut okna okruzhayushih domov. Sevodnya Subotta, i vo dvore igrayut deti. Skoro nastupet vremya obeda, i mami viglyanuv v okna pozovut detei krikom na obed.
No moye okno pustoye. Vozle nevo rostet kashtan. Vchera bil dozhd i smil beliye lepestki. Teper ostalis odni listya. Pochasto duyet veter, i oni zaglyadivayut ko mne v okno. Oni sprashivayut esli vse normalno. Vse tak i normalno.

V naushnikah zvuchit Vizbor. V naushnikah, Vizbor poyet o proshlom. O proshlom katorovo bolshe net.
No v moye okno eto proshlo zaglyadivayet teper kazhdii den. To zhe proshloye kotoroye ya sto let nazad pohoronil. No v etom dvore ono vstalo iz zemli. Ono roskrilo krilya, smilo listya s derevyev i podnyalos ko mne. A shto mne? Ya evo uzhe ne pomnyu.
No vihodyav na ulitsu ya ne mogu evo ne vspomnit. Ono pokrivayet menya do golovi, ya tonyu v nem. Ya plivu ot nevo, no po vsem ulitsam navodneniye. V aleye parka, stoit krasnii tramvai. Roditili gulyayut s detmi. Patcani butsuyut futbol vokrug polyani. I ya bolshe ne znayu – idu ya cherez park is proshlovo, ili po nasoyashemu zdes.
A voobshe, shto takoye “zdes”? Ved kogda vsplivayet starii mir, kogdato poharonii navsegda, to togda novii mir pokrit starim – noviye ulitsi zamiti vodoi do krish, i mi vse plivem, yeli yeli pitayemsya ne zadohnutsya v nostolgiye.

"Да, вот это наше поколениe," poyet Vizbor, "Рудиментом в нынешних мирах..."

Mozhet zhe eto bit nashem pokoleniyem? V takom ne lovkom meste, kak budto na tonuvshem ostrave mezhdu proshlom i budushem? Kak pel Vizbor, mozhet kak raz "Вот наша Эльба"?

Otvetov u menya net. Da i sil plit u menya poroi chuvstvuyetsya ostalos ne tak mnogo. Zemli po storonam ne ostalos. Iz morya vidno - kazhdii nashel svoi ostrov, "каждый выбрал веру и житьё,".
Edinstvenii vopros - a gde moye?

"Вот это жаль, вот это, правда, очень жаль..."

Obeshat budusheh posts ya ne mogu. Poka, budu prosto pitatsya viplit na bereg. Kak ni bud, do plivu. Vi uvidete ot menya signal.



"Отставить крики, тихо, Сретенка, не плачь,
Мы стали все твоею общею судьбой -
Те, кто был втянут в этот несерьезный матч
И кто повязан стал верёвкой бельевой."

Bonjourno

"Italians, my friend, are the only people I have known who think both with their heads - and their hearts."

The wheels of the plane touched the tarmac, and these words of Jan Weiner echoed the descent. I remembered Jan now - a 70 year old fighter who told me of his time in Italy during the Czech holocaust. He fled there at the time, and was in hiding. There was a family who took him in and saved his life. Naturally, there was a young woman in the story as well. But that will have to wait next time.

Florence.

It met me with its bridges that stood still in a very uncharacteristic fog. Had it been a bit colder, I would have thought I was in St. Petersburg. But the city would not let me go as far. The evening flooded the narrowed streets with people, and I began to swim through them. American, English, French - students lounged on steps and by fountains, their hands warming the cool night air with constant motion. Under the silver coat of the moon, the city stretched and danced as a melodic, and welcoming playground.

Into the night, the flood of the evening kept rising.

And I kept swimming, holding pen and paper close, keeping the eyes open in the water.

More to come.

Lou

Lou was a three-hundred pound black man in the heart of Prague.

How he got there, I did not know, nor did I ask. I have learned not to ask such questions. Abroad, people are usually somewhere because they do not want to be somewhere else. This makes for a intriguing back story, but also a tiresome conversation. And Lou was not into tiresome conversations. He stuck the clapper into an empty beer glass and let it rip. A young Czech student tried to keep up on the piano.

"You know I love you baby," his voice cried over the piano. "But. But but butbut buuut... not like that!" he wailed the last notes, his circular face cringing, eyes closed tight like it was an oversized orange being squeezed for the last drops of its juice.
Then he started again.

I was having my first frozen margarita in months. People around me were eating steaks and fries and tortilla chips. I no longer knew where I was. Prague? Missouri? I have never been to Missouri. Only in the Missouri within myself.
Have I been to Prague?

Over the garden, the half-eaten piece of the moon hung indifferently. It has seen this before. It will see it again.

Over the piano, Lou wailed and cried and laughed. Lou was a black man in the heart of Prague with a heart weighing three-hundred pounds. It is not easy trotting the world with a heart like that. I would cry as well.

After the show, Lou was all smiles at the bar. Perched on a bar stool, he was tapping the bar to a blues track coming from the overhead stereo. The drinks were shaking at the other end, and a few Scandinavian tourists readjusted themselves uneasily in their bar stools.

"Good show, man" I said, looking over at him.

Lou nodded and hit the bar twice as hard in response. "Where you from?" He asked after a moment.

I no longer know how to answer this question. Most often I randomly choose from a number of places, picking the one that best suits the topic. But with Lou, I was at a loss.

"Russia, then America..." said, stumbling over the words. I lived in Ukraine, which now only exists within my memories. In America I lived in New York, which houses anybody and everybody except those born on the continent.
Have I ever been to Russia? To America?

I should have made up a better reply.

"I used to play with a Russian," Lou replied. "Vladimir. Ain't ever seen a man beat a bass like that."

"Was this here?"

"Naw man. New Orleans. Heard of a city like that?"

"Of course," I laughed, and then instantly retraced my smile. "It's a shame what happened," I said, referring to the flood.

Lou's smile also waned for a moment. He nodded.

"It's like with Russia," I said, attempting to lift his spirits. "It sank too. The old world is buried under as well."

"Ain't no problem, man," he replied instantly with a shrug. "Cities are sinking all over. It's a new world we livin' in."

"So what's there to do?" I asked.

"What else is there to do?" Lou said matter-of-fact, his round face growing even rounder in a smile.
"Sing, man. Sing."


And so I sing. And with each song, the lightweight heart throws on an extra pound or two.
I just hope I could continue to carry it.

Verbal Photography

He puts the mug to his mouth and takes a sip of his beer. Placing it back, his lips grow thin in a smile. They sit somewhere there, lost between his outward chin and the long shadow of his nose. His eyes move slowly and indifferently about the room. It is filled with smoke and chatter and quiet static of an overhead radio. The radio is playing something of an 80s flavor. His glance continues its stroll about the room. Coming around it settles on me. I look into his eyes. They are fixed in a perpetual squint, and so I look down. I look over at the waitress, who is sitting across the room on three crates stacked up. "One more?" her glance asks me. I nod.

In my hands I have the collected photos of Victor Kolar. Born and raised in Ottava, Cz he had spent the first half of his life photographing its people. His people.
I sit and remember my days within this pub in mid-January. I had just arrived here then. I sat then too, and attempted to peer inside the people. But I was peering from the outside then.

I realize more and more the paradoxes of travel. We tell ourselves we have seen the world. But what have we really seen? Monuments, sculptures, beggars. How silly must we all look to the monuments and people at whom we peer incessantly through our lenses. Always looking outward, never within.
Friends of friends come, eager to go everywhere, see everything. But glancing around on the tram, they see only the architecture of the faces. It makes for tough tour guiding.

For those of you from the big apple, think of showing an out-of-towner the empire state building, while having yourself worked within it. It's something like that.

And so I look at his face. Lines cut across it like runways over the airport field. For months I have been attempting to peer inside the terminal, but alas in vain. I do not have the proper papers.

But I keep looking, keep clicking the shutter. The waitress brings me my beer. She is blonde and voluptuous, perhaps a bit too much on both counts. Few younger men send their glances in her direction from across the room. They then huddle together. They crack up. She continues moving around the tables. Effortlessly and graciously.

I lower my eyes into the book.

"In fact," Kolar writes in his brief introduction, "even when you are capturing something, it stores itself in you, you remember the moments... they mature and remain as latent material somewhere within, prepared for the moment when you press the shutter release elsewhere..."

I look up, catching the glance of the old man. Seeing that I had not started my beer, he raises his glass to me. I nod, and raise mine as well. We smile.

Kolar better be right.

Eyes open blind

See also: Inspiration No. 528

In the park, children race around the trees. Their fathers wear beards of solitude. Their legs are tired from racing.
The city sleeps. The city wakes. The children race.

Across the city, anti-Communist rallies cover soccer fields. People walk with banners. Their screams fill the quiet streets like a lost concert.

Today I shaved my solitude. My legs are no longer tired.
And so I open my eyes.

In the park, the children race. The city sleeps. The city wakes.

I do not join the concert across the city. I do not understand its music.
The children continue running. Watching them makes me happy.
But I cannot join them. I ran my races already.

And so I sit. I do not move. No longer because I do not want to, but because I no longer know where.

When one shaves off the mask of solitude, when one rips off the lids of loneliness
where is he to go?