Little Rock 15.2.2005: Smudge of Dawn, Magic in the Everyday

As I watched the dawn today--that first, indeterminate maybe-you're-imagining-it smudge of light across the eastern horizon, I thought: no one will ever be able to take this experience from me.  It's now inside me, a snapshot enshrined in my heart.  It's mine.  The dawn has become Bill.  Morning becomes a human heart.  That old corny verse of Sara Teasdale about slipping a coin into the heart's treasury turns out to be true: time cannot take nor a thief purloin the safe-kept memory of a lovely thing.

And as I write this, I look up to see under the skylight a little sepia postcard of Charles Bridge I bought in Prague, on the bridge.  It was a glorious summer morning before the throngs of (other) tourists were there, the city mystical from the water. 

The postcard is framed in a square metal frame.  Normally, the surface of the metal is flat, uninteresting.  Today, some trick of light throws it into flame.  It turns out to have a circle embedded in it, a perfectly round set of concentric ridges now turned silver-yellow in the light.  Such magic in the everyday, all too often hidden from us.  Soon the flame will recede to normalcy and become plebian tin.

Salzburg, 16.7.03: Duck Strength and High Summer Drought

Entekraft: that’s the word that popped into my mind as I awoke this morning. Why on earth? I do seem to recall that I thought I heard a duck flying overhead, but why Duck Strength? The games the mind plays when unfettered. If I could only harness some of that capriciousness and creativity for “everyday.”

Olomouc, 30.6.03: Schnitzels, Wine, and Coffee in Old Moravia

Olomouc, breakfast. Lots of bizarre uses of English here, as on the dinner menu last night: “for the sweet tooth,” followed by a list of steaks, veal, etc. And a sign I saw as we walked near the university, advertising a shop that sold skating and snow-sport supplies, called Titty Twister. Why on earth? Very hot in the evening as we walked, and all along in the train journey from Prague, much drought, with gardens wilted to the ground.

Prague, 29.6.03: At the Sign of the Big Boot

Forgot to say the trip to Josefov was a total washout. We hadn’t thought how everything would be closed on the Sabbath—the synagogue, the cemetery, all.

Sitting now in the window looking more carefully at the green ridge behind the German embassy. It extends all the way behind, on both sides, a bit of countryside in the city. I had no idea this was so close, and regret we haven’t had (and won’t) a chance to walk there.

Prague, 28.6.03: At the Sign of King Charles

Sitting now on a terrace beside Loreto church, a beautiful site away from the Hradcany and cathedral tourists. Hordes at both places, making it all seem so pointless. We didn’t even go to the castle.

These official governmental buildings—and I include cathedrals in that category—do little for me. Every cathedral I’ve been in seems dead. The purpose for which they were built—awing the masses, sacralizing the rulers—is gone, in the post-medieval world.

Prague, 27.6.03: At the Sign of the Red Lion

An expression sticks in my head from yesterday: Tomas, son of the proprietors of our b and b, Jan and Charlotta Rippl, says to us, explaining the danger of pickpockets in Old Town, “Here, you’re as safe as in your mother’s belly”—meaning here in the b and b.

I also now realize that the bistro in which we had beer yesterday was at the Carolinum, and a faded mural on the wall in the courtyard outside was the astronomical clock, in some mystical stylized fashion.

Prague, 26.6.03: At the Sign of the Donkey in the Cradle

A pretty summer day in Prague. Cumulus clouds scudding high above church towers. We’re in a quiet little bistro in the old town just past Charles bridge, St. Francis and St. Salvator churches. We discovered a walk-through away from tourists and are drinking beer overlooking a green square with lilacs (not in bloom), another verdigris church dome outside the window.

All is a bit disorganized and dirty in a way Germans wouldn’t tolerate—peeling paint, fly specks all along the wall by the radiator. I’m very tired, jet-lagged, mentally foggy.