tuckova

May, she will stay

In no particular order.

 

I strongly object to children being used in any kind of competition. I don't like it in fierce competitions and I don't even like it when it's like "this cute kid dancing on Ellen". I think it messes with their heads. I think we can't understand how it affects them in long-term ways, to have that much attention. I moderately object to children being taken to protests etc.; on the one hand I think it's nice that we share our values with our children and that's a good parenting thing; on the other hand, when I see pictures of children holding signs, I feel a little queasy and the Hart family contributes to that feeling. 

 

I find myself having issues with commemorative statues. Maybe not even individually, maybe I don't like them at all conceptually. Like, maybe nobody's good enough to have a statue commemorating them as a human being. There's a statue going up in Brno in honor of a man who was an architect but was also a child molester, an issue that came up at a trial while he was still alive and for which he was found guilty. And like all heroes are problematic or whatever but why does he get a statue, particularly. 

 

A car changed lanes for the purpose of hitting me as I was mostly across a crosswalk a couple days ago; I had to jump back to avoid him as he sped up to the next stop light. I guess it was the kind of really great traffic signal that you need to spend maximum time revving at; anyway that was what he did after he didn't kill me. I think cars make you a worse person because you think you are isolated, invisible, you can entertain ideas of being better than others when you are separated from them. The other day on the tram it was my stop and I wanted to get off and it seemed like nobody was moving, and I pushed a bit and said "excuse me, but I need to get off here" and the woman in front of me slightly impatiently said "Yes, a lot of us need to get off here" and when I had moved forward a bit saw it was one person standing in the doorway blocking us all; when that person was finally persuaded to move we all got off at normal human speed. And I laughed I'd say ruefully and apologized to the woman for pushing her and she laughed too and said she was also afraid she would miss her stop. We can't do this in cars; we spend all day being pissed off at people we might have laughed with in empathy. Or trying to run down pedestrians. 

 

I got invited to the open mic show that I organize and host by someone who is planning to perform there and I found this hilarious, like being invited to a really killer party at your own house or something. 

 

I saw a play earlier this week with some really uncomfortable themes for me -- domestic violence, workplace harassment, the things we do and the people we hurt in pursuit of power. And I KNOW that sure there were some things I missed because of language. And I KNOW that the person who did bad things and experienced unpleasant consequences... well, they weren't supposed to be the "good guy". But the audience laughed so much (hahaha, his girlfriend provoked him and he punched her!) that I almost wanted to walk out. Who finds this funny? I have had this feeling often with the standup comic circuit, that the hahaha Catholic priest jokes* are going to drive me out, but maybe comedy is lowbrow, what do I know, but the theater! WTF. 

*Catholic priest jokes particularly upset me because it pretends like it's making fun of the Catholic priest but I can pretty much guarantee you that there is not a Catholic priest in your standup audience, so you are actually more likely to be heard by a victim who might actually be in your audience and haha it's not so funny now is it, asshole?

 

I voted today. I love voting. I'm super bummed I'll probably never get to serve jury duty but at least I get to vote. DEMOCRACY! such as it is.

a unified body

Oh, haaaai. Remember when we used to blog like at least once a week? Stupid Facebook which gives me a tiny grazy snack of connection and takes away my appetite for digging a bit deeper into things that actually interest me. It's easy to say "I did this or that" "I thought about this or that" but ... motivations, reasonings, responses, feelings, it takes too long. And my own attention is more and more like a hummingbird, so why shouldn't yours be? What right do I have to hold it? Nevertheless, here's what I've done in the last six weeks that I thought about (and failed to write about). Clearing the cache, so to speak. 

The Brno Expat Centre held a fair so that foreigners in the city could find out about services that are available to them and Czechs in the city could learn about what foreigners do. So there were English-friendly businesses run by Czechs and Czech-friendly businesses run by non-Czechs, and it was mostly pretty fun. It was interesting to me that some people who hadn't been here very long complained about the absence of services they simply didn't know existed and other people who had been here for rather longer resented the existence of services that they hadn't been lucky enough to have. Like one side of the room complaining that there are no vaccines when there are, and the other side of the room saying there shouldn't be vaccines since we didn't have them back in our day. Back in our day we all died of the plague and I don't see why it should be different for these tenderfooted fools. Still no vaccine for ignorance and arrogance, I guess. Most of the exhibitors had a bowl of candy out and I enjoyed going around and seeing who had the best sweets. 

It was my birthday and my friends took me out to dinner but I was so tired I almost fell asleep in my sushi. Still, aren't friends the best? I've been doing the "review and measure of my life by decades" and I think in my 20s I worked on developing myself professionally, and in my 30s I focused on being a mother, in my 40s I focused on how to be a good friend, and in my 50s it seems to be (so far) how to build a sense of community. Not like I've completely sorted myself professionally, but while I love my work, thinking about its meaning is no longer my primary focus and I feel like I've got a pretty good grasp of my skill set. Similarly I think I did okay at being a mother, and my friends are clearly the bomber type of people who love you even when your head lolls to the side before you've finished your nigiri. So here's hoping I figure out what community means in the next 8 years.

One of my oldest and dearest friends got married in New York and Squire and I went to the wedding as if we were proper jetsetters who will hop across the pond for a weekend. But it was so magical! My sister came from California and having the three of us together seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation for enduring a four-hour delay in the Philadelphia airport. Also the wedding included gorgeous weather, Adironack chairs, fireworks, and the most intensive test of "waterproof mascara" I've been put to in recent years. I don't know how I feel about weddings or marriage -- it depends on the wedding or marriage itself -- but two people deeply in love and surrounded by people who love them is a pure good. I was glad to be there.

Next week I'm going to do standup in an actual venue, rather than in a corner of a bar, in Vienna and I'm extremely pleased and honored and terrified.

The play we've rehearsed for two months with the theater group is happening now and makes me think about honesty, art, creativity, stress, process vs. product, and how much sleep I'm not getting. That's about all I can say about that. 

blessed is the man who loves the lard

I went to a musical/opera thing last night. It was the Czech version of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass", performed in the DRFG arena. Here are my thoughts:

Good:

• The curtain speech was short, clear, and to the point. Some shows I've seen, these speeches last long enough for me to do my taxes, and are about as interesting, so this was nice. Like a good introduction at a party: Audience, meet play. Here's an interesting detail. I'm sure you two will hit it off. 
• The songs were all in English. The subtitles were presented on screens behind the stage (functionally the backdrop) and the presentation of some of the subtitles was really fitting to the music -- like watching a good sign language interpreter for music. I saw a presentation of "West Side Story" that projected the translation of song lyrics very creatively, and I'm happy to see this becoming a part of how English-language production is done here. 
• I liked the simplicity of the costumes and the set.
• I liked, although I found it weird, that people seemed to wander off and back on the stage. It felt super casual and I liked that in some ways although I felt like where do they keep going, anyway? bathroom breaks? 
• Gratuitous male nudity! I'm sorry no it was totally intrinsic to the story.
• The acapella songs were lovely. 
• Some of the film clips projected on the screens were nice and seemed to complement/further the story, especially the ones that interlaid footage of the actors.
• The dialogue parts, which were in Czech, were mostly well-enunciated enough that I could understand them and follow along for those parts of the story.

Not Good:

• If there was a narrative to the pictures and film clips on the screen, they could have slowed it down so that uncultured people like me could understand it. It was incredibly fast and distracting from the action on the stage and it made me feel jumpy. They slowed it down for one whole song to focus on a woman's chest, with a crucifix. Sure.
• The orchestra was louder than the singers; as a person who cares about the words much more than the music, this was not ideal for me.
• The doors to the stadium don't close, so I got to watch the well-lit doorway across the way with ushers milling about, plus people walking out of the performance (sometimes in groups; sometimes I think these were just bathroom runs). 
• The pronunciation on some songs was ... poor. 
• The number of things that were distracting to me were over the top, and left me thinking snarky Anne-narrative thoughts, like:
  
  • I have issues with children performing in any high-pressure situation (school groups on stage for concerts is fine, but "carry your country to the Olympics" is, in my opinion, a form of evil) and I felt.. problematic about how much of the turn of this story rested on a child under 10. 
  • This is a hockey stadium. Hockey players are well paid. I wonder if these performers are as well paid? Oh, are we doing sports vs. arts now? That always ends well.
  • Uhm so all the characters were unhappy when they were wearing gray sweaters, and all they had to do was take the gray sweaters off and then they were happy? Seems like they could have thought of that a lot sooner. Those sweaters are pretty cool, though, I wonder if I could get one.

 

Summary:

I personally felt like, between the rapid jumps on screen and the incredible loudness of the orchestra, that my eyes and ears were screamed at for 2.5 hours and I did not like that. I thought it was a bit expensive for what it was. I think it's cool that so many people went to see it. I loved seeing one of my friends on stage, and I felt so proud of her and I liked trying to single out her voice. I was glad to go with my friends and talk with them about it after. 

brought to you by the letter b

My friend is visiting and we are having adventures all over Europe. Bus from Berlin to Prague, its relentless beauty and complications. The exquisite detail in the stained glass window in St. Vitus representing the biblical disasters for which insurance can be purchased, turn of the century corporate sponsorship.

Train to the ghost town of Brno, stumbling over stepping stones and stopping at stumblestones. I love my town more than I've loved any place and it's a weird possessive feeling when I'm showing people around, but we spin in the square with our arms out and drink cocktails named Liza Doolittle, Mary Poppins, Alex Owens, and I think my love does not make mistakes.

In Budapest, I walk across Liberty Bridge and am unstuck in time. I am 26 after a night of hitchhiking and I am in my 30s, 40s, different visitors and reasons for coming to this diacritical city, but this is the first time I visit the thermal baths so it is new again, different, like every time you step in a river. Or walk over one.

And today, the view from an airplane window of clouds, fluffy and white, the blue horizon snapping in the distance. I experience the same irritations as anyone I guess, the man in line behind me kicking at my bag when the line moves forward, the rush and halt of travel. But here I am on a plane, going from one country to another, the beauty of waking up in Budapest, a cigarette on the balcony at sunrise overlooking the city, and knowing I will sleep in Berlin.

this town

It rained last night, the kind of deafening, soul-clearing rain that I love the best. We watched the storm coming in from our bench outside the wine bar, the faraway blue sky gradually replaced by low gray clouds that grumbled at us and took flash photos. The waitress came out and set up an umbrella so we could continue drinking outside when the storm hit. Then the rain the rain the rain. When it stopped, it was past closing time and I wanted one more so we hopped across the street to the bar with more expensive wine and a later closing hour. The wine tasted like pear juice and after I spilled the first glass all over I felt like I could get pretty used to sweet wine after all.

I left the bread I bought for breakfast this morning in the first bar, apparently. Rice for breakfast, oh asagohan, how've you been.

Sometimes it takes a while to figure out how unpleasant someone is. It would be neat if I could spray people who come aggressively close to me, the way skunks can. Then other people would only need to be downwind of them and say, "Oh hey, this person gets aggressively into other people's spaces." Saves time. Once, I warned a woman when I saw her on a date with a skin-covered bag of excruciating boredom, and I have thought about getting cards printed that say RUN to hand to people on obviously toxic dates, but now what I really want is the ability to mark somehow, as a courtesy to the next passenger, the people who should be avoided.

Although of course then I want to code it, what kind of bad they are. Like my spray paint for cars -- one color for people who get too close to bikes, one color for bad parking, one color for the ones who drive through crosswalks, my upcoming and certain demise. 

It's summertime officially now. One friend gone, another friend gone, and one more to go next week. Ghost town. I'm going to get my closet so organized. I might even learn to play The Specials on the ukulele. 

starý dobrý časy

I'm remembering the feeling of Sunday mornings at the end of a long weekend at the cottage, anybody's cottage, the comfortable stupor of a three-day weekend of eating and drinking and eating and drinking, playing cards or watching old Czech movies until late at night. How as the slivovice bottle got emptier the jokes got funnier; the warmth of shared laughter. Or in other places, waiting for the children to go to bed, the hushed conversations in the dim light, secrets. How in the morning we would start making gestures towards packing up, going back to city life, and the inevitable scrap of paper with the train and bus schedules would emerge, or one of the teenagers or more overly energetic kids would be sent down to the station to write down the upcoming connections, always different on Sundays, sometimes extra different on the long weekends. Stealing a few cold potato wedges from the pot, still on the stove from last night's dinner. The sway of the bus on the ride home, the feeling of having been away for years. 

O Me! O Life!

There are many plates spinning in the air which is sort of my usual except a little more than that. The cat died, we sold the cottage, I got dual citizenship. None of these things are bad but all of these things take extra time and attention.

My parents are coming for the party to celebrate my new Czech citizenship, and one of my oldest and dearest friends is here from California, too, which is great. Also people coming from Vienna, Prague, Berlin. And of course a lot of the people I love here in Brno. I've never thrown myself a party (I've thrown plenty of parties but never in honor of my own personal awesomeness) and it feels weird. A few days ago, I tried out the idea that this is not a party to celebrate my 22 years of living here, raising a child in a language I was just learning to speak, memorizing important facts like the birthplace of Mr. Cimrman, and generally just rocking the Czech life. I mean it IS but also this makes me feel wayyyy too self conscious. So actually this is a party to thank all the people, old and new, who have made my life here the amazing thing that it is, and that makes sense and felt better. People have been incredible to me and I am so ridiculously lucky it makes my head spin, so this is a good place to mark my gratitude. And buy the first round or so.

Sometimes I get really bogged in feeling sad because there is ugliness in the world, casual ugliness like selfishness all the way to downright brutality. Last week I was crying about it, about how hard it is to live in a world where we open ourselves every damn day to indifference, to egotism, to cruelty. Sitting in your little kitchen at night smoking down another cigarette, tears streaming down my face, because how can we go on in a world with so much horror, how can we tolerate it and push past it and keep our faces and hearts open to beauty and love, and if I, so honestly blessed and lucky, can barely do it, how can anyone who truly suffers manage? How can we keep going? 

The answer I remembered then is the same as it's ever been: Friendship. Good food. And poetry. Over and over again.

good old Uncle Walt

the end of the cotthut

Eleven years ago I bought a cottage here, it's kind of part of the Czech lifestyle and I was married to a Czech so it seemed appropriate. I liked the idea of being outside without running water or electricity on the weekends, just to re-set and to forcibly relax. In about 2010 it stopped being fun to go there, and the marriage fell apart shortly afterwards for the same reasons, and so I hadn't been there in over five years. Friar recently realized that he wasn't having fun there either, and last week he handed me back the keys. I went out and while WOW a lot can break and tumble down in five years, it's still a pretty magical place. I was really excited about starting fresh -- new walks in the forest, barbeque, sitting in the sun reading a book or cozying up in the winter at the stove, reading by candlelight. Very sweet picture.

And then the neighbors pulled up. And they are toxic like ... it's a very specific kind of poison, to which I am particularly vulnerable: the bully. I am immune to iocane powder and most forms of stupid but my life will never be long enough to spend time with a condescending know-it-all bully. And this particular bully feels that since he would like to have the property, he should have it. Like: it just should be his. Why? Because you're stupid.

So there are lots of details, including that there had been a certain amount of vandalism on the property that was probably him, but the bottom line is this: I'm not keeping the cottage. Selling it to the neighbors and getting the hell out of there before he takes it into his head to burn it down or whatever. I'm really sad, because I hate it when my fantasies die before I can even fully breathe life into them. But I know I'm right. And I know that there are so many things in life, horrible things, that you can't walk away from, but when you can, you really really should. 

The earth is my body; my head is in the stars.

There's this old woman who lives in my neighborhood, across the street. She has to be in her eighties, maybe older. I see her almost every day, usually doing the shopping. She is tiny and frail and a sharp dresser, often with heels. Sometimes she doesn't wear make up, and some days she wears more than I do in a year; I get the feeling that she's doing her best but going blind, so to her the giant clown circles of rouge and the smear of bright red in the general area of her mouth probably look just about right. Her hair is a crazy mop of gray, usually styled up quite deliberately in the front and then basically like a windstorm hit it in the back. What you can't see can't hurt you.

We often see her with a man, I assume her husband, even more frail than she is. They hobble around the block together. Lately he's been using a walker. When they get to the door, he opens it for her, but he's so weak it takes a really long time, because he has trouble holding the weight of the door and moving forward at the same time. Sometimes Squire wants to run across the street and help; sometimes we just stare out the window and admire them. The determination, the eventual success. It's hard to not think about aging.

I do not want to be old and frail, though as long as I can still toddle down the hill to the store and back, I won't feel frail. Or even if I am frail, I expect as long as my mind keeps working I won't be too bothered. I don't imagine I'll make it as far as these two, anyway. Into my eighties? It seems unlikely. The thought of thirtyplus more years seems kind of exhausting. I mean, I like my life very much now, but what would I do with thirty more years of it? Would I, in thirty years, finally master the art of applying lipstick? Or would I finally have given up? Would I still suck at the ukulele? Would it make a difference if there were somebody to hold the door open for me? Would the teenage boy across the street come running, if I baked him cookies? Should I learn how to bake, sometime in the next thirty years? 

everything was beautiful at the ballet

I went to the ballet last night. One of my dearest friends here had been gone for a month, and I wanted to celebrate his return, and another of my dearest friends has put up with a disproportionate amount of my chaos lately, and I wanted to celebrate her sweetness, and also I will not miss an excuse for what looks like a good ballet, which it did. So we went.

The first piece was Serenade, by George Balanchine. Bunch of pretty girls fluttering their arms about, with some guys trying to look like the goblin king in the pants department wandering around. One can like it, but it was: meh. I hate to say that. I mean, here I'm looking at a stage full of athletes and all I can think is: let's do math with Balanchine, because it really looked like illustrations of math problems or something. Not word problems, either. So mostly I sat there thinking about WHY I didn't like it, which is not really the feeling you want in the theater.

The second piece was Sofa, by Olivier Wevers, and that was totally different. There was a purple velvet sofa, and everybody danced on and under and around it, and it was awesome. It made me think of high school and how I couldn't have boys in my room but we could be in the living room, and how the sofa was like a way station to where we wanted to go, and the center of slumber parties, and where we watched TV, and it is still all those things, the sofa is so central, and these dancers were fighting and kicking and kissing and teasing all on a sofa, just like us, except of course way more elegantly and their feet probably hurt a lot more. And in this I felt fully engaged and delighted.

The third piece was Lunar Sea, by Moses Pendleton, danced by MOMIX, a sort of black light madness and chaos. Like the first one, it didn't have a story, but it was so busy and stimulating visually that it didn't need one. And so we watched people split open, creatures with four legs dancing across the stage, absolutely a hundred things to look at. 

We ran across the street in the rain, ducked into a clean well-lighted place for tapas and wine, and talked and talked, the beauty of this, three generations of ballet in one evening, and how the first one made sense because we could see now how that non-narrative mathematical beauty made the other two possible, and how the third one called back to it, and how amazing it is to be able to see this when it is presented like that. It was delightful. I was delighted.