kohoco

It's quite possible that, for the next ten years, I will not have to set foot inside the foreigner's police station. I stood in line for about two hours this morning, (for the last time?!) and walked out triumphantly with my trvale pobyt or long-term residency permit, or green card, or whatever. It all boils down to not having to worry about paperwork, legality, lines, surly women behind desks, adventures in crime and conspiracy, bribes, stamps, koleks, leaving the country, entering the country, insurance this, social that. What cracks me up, though, is the soppy irony in the voice of every Czech I tell: "well then, congratulations, and welcome!"

I don’t really know about the rest of the Poetry Festival, but my and Martin’s reading went about as well as could be expected. Shakespeare’s has two main rooms, connected by a short hallway that’s done up in a funky mosaic and broken glass motif. The reading took place in the back room among all the books and their shelves. The room was packed. A camera on a tripod projected the scene onto one wall in the other room, which serves as the café and hangout part of the joint.

I wore a suit and orange sweater, which I thought would help me read loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, not something I’m good at. During the reading I felt as if I were shouting the lines, projecting them out the door and into the street, where cats leaned out the window straining to hear every twist and turn between adjective and adverb. However Alice informed me afterward that it sounded like I was whispering through a hole in my throat.

Of course Martin charmed the pants off the audience, as it were. First he dragged his camping backpack up in front of the audience and began pulling out books, one after another, whole packages of books saying, “I practically have a personal library.” Then he read in a soft, subdued voice that everyone could hear all the way to Poland. Poems from his treks through the Himalayas and the Middle East, poems about direct experiences from his life. He was humble and real. Then he took out his new revolutionary texts, the ones about how he lives on Marxova street, and about the color red, the color of revolution, and I thought to myself, now here it comes, now Martin’s going to work. I expected him to begin shouting and putting on a big show. But it didn’t happen like that. He just read the text in a very simple way:


"WHERE DOES THE WORD REVOLUTION COME FROM?

It is said that the word 'revolution' was first used in the region where I live. Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), the inventor of this word, while on a weekend trip out of Prague was suddenly struck by the glorious Libusin night sky and he whispered the word: REVOLUTION! He used this word not in the sense of making a definitive change, but in relation to the movements of stars, in the sense of an endlessly repeating chain of changes (M.Z.’s interpretation). He meant a kind of Re-Evolution, and this meaning is maybe still the most provocative one.
But because Johannes Kepler shortened his vowels somewhat, the Libusin people heard: 'Revolution' and just like that it stayed embedded in their/our hearts.

WHAT IS THE COLOUR OF REVOLUTION?

I cannot imagine an answer other than: Red

WHAT DOES THE WORD REVOLUTION MEAN TODAY?

It’s even more interesting when you realise that the word itself is used to make changes of a different, sometimes opposite character. Generally, it is used as a label for desirable change. When he was Czech president in exile in Great Britain during World War II, Dr. Edvard Benes used the word revolution for the possible final success of the home resistance movement. Sometimes even a step back to the previous political system — the change from socialism back to capitalism — is called a revolution (the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia, 1989, for example). What is the colour of the capitalist revolution, then?

I had personally better stay with the colour red and with the explicit dreams of the classical communist leaders. Revolution spreading over the world: WORLD REVOLUTION."

Then Martin pulled a black beret out of his backpack, a beret with an old communist star on it and began showing his flags, his new revolutionary flags. The European Union, all in red with just the twelve stars in a circle, other countries, all of the flags red and just the patterns there to tell you which country they come from. The US flag, all red.

At this point Martin had the floor, as they all sat wondering what was going to happen next. It was break time, but people wanted more, so we went into the front room and watched his videos: In one there is just a close-up of his face as he slowly paints his face red with lipstick. In another, he waves the red flags from a tree as his family implores him to stop. Martin asks the question: what happened to the revolution, what happened to challenging the systems we live under, who are those lonely artists shouting their lungs out, down there on the periphery and why is it that nobody hears what they have to say anymore. Martin called out, softly:

AS LONG AS THERE IS DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THE CURRENT SITUATION,
AS LONG AS THERE IS A DESIRE TO CHANGE SOMETHING,
THE IDEA OF REVOLUTION IS ALIVE!

The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq

This is the kind of thing that I can't stop thinking about. You can see through this article how people are manipulated and opinions swayed. This is the science of creating a myth, the myth that there was ever any reason to go into Iraq like we did.

We had the second ultrasound last week. The first clear image of the heart beating. That was a miracle. Then he/she opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue at us. I swear to god, at least that's what the doctor said. At first all I could see were rolling gray and black tones, like the sky this weekend. Suddenly the spine would come in clean, and I could see the ribs, haunting white fingers. It was frustrating, trying to make out the image as the doctor and Alice laughed and talked about all the body parts they were seeing. Me, nodding me head. Yeah, yeah, heh he. Black rolling clouds and little else. Near the end I finally got the hang of it. It was like one of those 3-D posters you have to stare at and when you finally get the trick, the image jumps out at you. In one sudden moment, through Alice's belly, I saw the child's face, and I could swear it was grinning. Or maybe that was me.

This is what caught my eye. Anyway, no one even bothered to enter the contest, except Theo, who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a can of spam. This ol' boy tasted pretty good with a glass of Czech suds. 

One student wrote ... "I think everybody in this world have a little fantastic destiny. For ones it is always only dream ,for others it is sometime reality. There are many facts for examples, one of the big and important peaples in our planet was the greek millioner Aristoteles Onasis, who started his way to his destiny from a small wage job in telephone comunication servis. Or the important gay whoos mind we are using now, it is maker of Microsoft, Bill Gates , he started his dreams in his liitle old house somewere in USA., when he wrote Microsoft. I think that thise peaples and many others like them are very good examples for many young peaples that everything in world is imossible . I am one of them, i understood that we are only one time in this world and i must do everything what i can to leve this live whith all his interestings. And my little dream is maybe to be , minimum , manager in some hotel or casino."

The New Yorker: Fact: "If you even give a hint that you're aware of a black program that you're not read into, you lose your clearances," the former official said. "Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended, the poor kids at the end of the food chain."

Last night I used my mouse to move through dreams. Maybe I should take a break, and see some waves. A red crotchrocket slid and spun like a top in the street, and the trams rattled by unperturbed. The man's foot was bandaged before the ambulance arrived. Pickled cheese aches in the stomach for one hour after ingestion. A blimp hangs high over the city as jobs and people and faces wash along the streets with the yearly tide. Scott is in Africa, an article is forthcoming. The Four Seasons staff will not touch you if you fall and have a seizure in their lobby. It's in the manual. The communist party is sick and old and lives on in the dank closed off rooms of terrified old party members, who flash their idealism where there was none. Babicka has new sunglasses and looks fantastic in her trench coat, beret and sheer scarf. Summer swallows the spring chill and rain as we ride over the hill, sun tops down, hands waving at the screen, trying to see who's looking.

You have three tries to guess what I'm looking at.  

Last night, as I was writing on the computer, I could hear Alice, who is now over five months' pregnant, splashing around in the tub, talking out loud in a singsong voice. A few minutes later she burst out of the bathroom, exclaiming, "I've just thought of a poem!"

Here it is:

Zeny v tehotenstvi
Rady do vody se nori
Do hlubokych jezer
Do bezednych mori
Do olejove vany
Kdyz se blizi vecer
Do smutku a sneni
Kdyz nevi, co se tvori.

A rough translation might be:

Women in pregnancy
Love to plunge into water
Into the deepest lakes
To the bottom of the sea
Into the oils of the bathtub
When evening draws near
Into sadness and dreams
When they don't know
What it is they are creating.

Of course the Czech is better because it rhymes, and all of that. Speaking of poetry, I'll be reading on Tuesday at Shakespeare and Sons for the Prague Poetry Festival with Martin Zet. For some reason I'm not nervous yet.

This is my last day at Anglo-American College. My students are downstairs writing their final exam. So this is what all those teachers were doing when they left us alone in class. They were blogging and reading about Ukrainian giants on CNN. I think I'll peek in the and see if they're talking to each other.

I'm addicted to going to the Hare Krishna restaurant in Zizkov. I'm even beginning to whisper "Hare Krishna!" under my breath as I walk in the door, before sounding out my confident "Dobry den!" The people dishing up the Sabji behind the bar keep switching. The first man was short, cocky and tattooed and once asked my friend Ondre what we would do if they ever ran out of the small portion (we never get anything else). He said we would stop coming.

Then there was the girl, about twenty years old, homely, with a crooked nose and straight intense expression. When she worked she wore a flowing patterned dress (a sari?) and paint smear on the forehead. Once I was coming out of the metro at Jiriho z podebrad and we saw each other and had one of those moments where you're not sure how, but you know that you know the other person.

She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and wore white running shoes. A backpack flopped on her back and music streamed from her CD walkman. We smiled and waved to each other.

Now when I walk in the door and bolt down the steps to check out which kolac is on the tray (thereby identifying the day of the week, otherwise I would never know) a mild-mannered middle-aged man with a shaved head and thin pony tail heaps the food on my plate, without me even telling him what I want. He speaks quietly and works hard, and today, as I watched him lug the silver buckets from the kitchen to the bar where he humbly served a line of hungry customers all pretending to be peaceful and patient, I had the urge to give the guy a huge Krishna hug. Then I did.

Liz was in town for the weekend, and a couple of things she said struck me. Like the fact that Prague and this country is so different from where she lives now, London.

She lived in Prague for many years, so like others who have spent a great deal of time outside their native land, she has the ability to see the world through a different set of eyes, a different mind. The shock of seeing that new perspective again can stun you, and bring up a candy-colored assortment of feelings.

It's also on the level of the visual. Lately I have been hounded by sharp images from Wisconsin forests. They creep up as I teeter into sleep or ride a quiet tram. Sometimes the thought of thick green moss on a rock will stop me. Somehow it's different there than it is here. Or the curl of birch bark still on the tree. This country also has birches , but not to my liking. They are thin and sparse.

When I am home in the States, the mental smell of brown coal will almost double me over with the feeling and texture of this place, or the thought of the chestnut trees lining the streets and parks, blooming grandly in the spring, and dying from rampant disease in late summer.

Publishing site meter...

The New York Times reported today on the life and background of Private England, one of the prominent faces in the torture scenes coming out of Iraq. If you remember, she was the one holding the leash with an Iraqi prisoner on the end curled up on the floor. Of course her hometown is in a state of shock about how it could have happened. Her family friend is quoted in the newspaper as saying, "She is straight in your face, tells you how it is. That's why it shocked me. It's so not her. It's not in her nature to do something like that. There's not a malicious bone in her body."

Read this case in point:

"The prison was a living hell. Hidden behind their mirrored sunglasses, the guards asserted their total authority and power over the prisoners. The guards' permission was required to do virtually anything, including going to the toilet.

It wasn't long before the prisoners rebelled. The disturbance was quickly and efficiently put down by the guards. Cruelty now became the order of the day. The guards began to do roll calls in the middle of the night to disrupt the prisoners' sleep and to assert their power. Prisoners were forced to do push-ups, sometimes with a guard's foot pushing down on the prisoner’s back. The guards stretched routine 10-minute lineups into hour-long ordeals filled with verbal abuse. They refused to allow the prisoners bathroom privileges during the night and forced them to use containers in their cells.

For their past, the prisoners became increasingly passive, helpless and depressed. They hated the guards, but they were powerless against them. After a few days, one of the prisoners cracked emotionally. Soon afterward, another broke down. Before long, the smelly, demoralized prisoners became what the guards imagined them to be—objects of scorn and abuse.

This prison was not in some Central American country. It was not in Iraq, in the Gulag, or on Devil's Island. The prisoners were not hardened criminals, nor were the guards sadistic psychopaths. Instead, this prison was in the basement of the Psychology Building at Stanford University, and the guards and prisoners were intelligent well-adjusted college students who had been carefully screened beforehand. The warden of the Stanford County Prison was Philip G. Zimbardo, a prominent social psychologist, who watched in disbelief and horror as scenes of callous inhumanity unfolded before him.

What had begun as a 2-week simulation study of prison life had to be stopped after only 6 days. So powerful was the experience for both the prisoners and the guards that Zimbardo and his associates held several sessions with the participants to help them work through their emotional reactions, and they maintained contact with each student over the following years to ensure that the negative effects og the prison simulation did not persist.

What happened to trasform these normal college students into people they themselves would not have recoginized a week earlier? What goes on in a social setting that can transform the typical behavior of college peers so dramatically that they become dehumanized enemies? Before the disbelieving eyes of the researchers, a simulation in which two groups of people had been asked to take on temporary roles as prisoners and guards became a nightmarish social reality that called forth extreme and uncharacteristic behaviors. As one of the guards later recalled, "I was surprised at myself… I made them call each other names and clean out the toilets with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle, and I kept thinking: 'I have to watch out for them in case they try something'"

Zimbardo recalls, "In the end, I called off the experiment not only because of the horror I saw out there in the yard, but because of the horror of realizing that I could have easily traded places with the most brutal guard or become the weakest prisoner, full of hatred at being so powerless that I could not eat, sleep, or go to the toilet without the permission of the authorities." (Psychology, Ronald E. Smith)

Alice and I had two lunches in a row with her parents, a world record in our microcosm here. We live in an apartment one floor up and directly over her parents and her Babicka lives in an apartment across the hall from them. Periodically we have dinner in her Babicka’s apartment, in one of the crowded rooms in the back. The walls are covered with paintings, some family made, other from rummage sales and others by professional painters from Czech society, all collected in her life and carefully hung to fill every bit of space in every room.

I have discovered in my time with the family that they are mortally afraid of space. Any space whatsoever. This includes everything from collecting things to blocking out white walls to arguing to cover over pauses in the conversation. In general our lunches are drawn out affairs, not without humor and antics, full of good food and predictable in their unpredictability. This time it’s father who is offended by something Babicka said. This time the beagle Brixy is let in the room, as he gleefully pounces on table, food, feet, laps, ignoring all reproaches, happily bounding through the room in the glory of human company. This time Jeff is asked a question and he struggles to find his place in the language, fails, and is once again swept up in the pokes prods and gentle teases. Now that I think about it, it’s just like having dinner with any other family.

Last weekend we had two together, in celebration of dear Babicka’s 80th birthday. On Friday, the day before the series of lunches, I ran to the flower shop and bought her a potted budding plant with red blossoms. I have no idea what it’s called, but I was attracted to its tangled green parts, and fresh dignified look. It reminded me of Babicka. I knocked on her door and went in. She was so happy we sat down and chatted for some time, going into the past, about the Germans again, about the war and the suffering of that time. The communists and how she was fired because she wouldn’t join the party. She then tells me how she’s not going to be around for too long, and says it in such a matter-of-fact way. That she’s already lived through too much. My first reaction was to cover up the pain of it, the space, but she didn’t seem to need it. She pooh-poohed my look of distress, smiled and forced me to eat more cake.

The next day she made two glorious golden chickens, which father complained were too dry.

My brother Denny stomping in the newspapers.

So we made it. The Czech Republic is officially a part of the EU, whatever that means, and it's still not clear to me, despite some effort in the past few months to get to know the history, terms, people involved and their opinions.

Yesterday Vladan and I took a bus to a small town on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. Bilina. It lies in a valley among the many tall stone outcrops that jut out of the earth there, between the wrecked forests and polluted streams of the past. The area shows signs of new life these days.

We took a bus there to see an exhibition by Redas Dirzys, friend and collaborator of Martin Zet. Meanwhile in Prague, people were filling the streets, concerts on the islands, fireworks being set up, an atmosphere of anticipation.

There were a handful of people at the show, which took place in the center of the town, in a tall white clock tower that looked like a lighthouse. His images of dictators Pol Pot and Lukashenko had been carefully clipped from newspapers, and blown up to wall size before the artist drilled all the white spots. The results were huge black and white newspaper-type images of these monstrous people, circling the metal staircase to the top of the tower. It was a powerful show.

The title of the exhibition "Let's be part of the system!" says a lot about the ambiguous feelings of vulnerability, power and arrogance that haunt the various systems that have plagued the world and created so much suffering. The word that keeps cropping up in relation to the European Union is fear. Fear of what? Klaus says it's the fear of dissolving like a sugar cube in water. This seems paranoid to me. On the other hand, I do understand the fear, as well as the courage that it takes to give up a piece of your identity, for what?

We ended up taking the wrong train back to Prague and met up with Scott and Theo. We carried a bucket of ice and two bottles of champagne to the bank of the river and watched the fireworks over Letna. A spectacular show, that they say may even have knocked the birds out of their springtime nests.