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19 june, frankfurt the last of all LOGs, for this trip only that is, is rounding up. i'm sat in frankfurt airport. in 24 hours i'll be back in australia. due to unforseen circumstances i've cut cut my trip back. its unfortunate. leaving prague was hard. i'd become accustomed to my lifestyle there. and i had only just started to make friends. despite the tourists i came close to the heart of prague. becoming more elusive i'd say its to be found amidst the humor of its artisans and the popular red, frankovka. i can vouch for its propencity for illuminosity. at 2 dollars a bottle i need not say just how much passed my lips. i only regret being unable to bring a crate of it back. a short LOG you'll find here, mostly impressions and prose. much of what had transpired for me could be encapsulated in the following text. both pieces inpsired me to film, photograph and gather as much imagery of stone as i had time and energy for. i hope to cut it all into a short film with the text as voice over. the imagery would be cut very hard and fast leaving the editing to create movement and the text and score to bring out the meloncholia. ëä something about the drama on prague's streets that intruiges me. the unsung stone heros and heroins labouring under their sandstone burdons, and those saints raising their fists to the world. its as if their world now goes largely unnoticed. i've found myself drawn to them, befriending and confiding in them. a few mornings i've got up quite early to spend time with them, to know and video tape them well before the tourists wake. the diff between the statues i'd seen here and those of cambodia is that in prague they're active and intergrated into the world around them. the cambodians were silent, engaged in a deeper, more far-away quest. the czech's reach out the world, greet it, take its weight effortlessly, do battle and offer beauty. the cambodians have left the struggle, seeking peace for an awakening a long time coming. god's tears europa june 4, 1994
I uphold the world
Take the weight, the weight
I uphold the world
Still the pain valentin cafe, prague. G o n e 2 S t o n e I came out of Wall. Perhaps off it. I don't know. It may have been any wall. Keeping something out, something in. Now I'm free of it. But was I meant to be kept in or out? Straddling the top I now see both sides of Wall and neither appears different. The people there look and act the same as the people here. But neither side sees me. I know I'm here because I feel the sun warm my skin as it must theirs. I climb down and touch the Wall. The stone is warm where I'd left it. I don't know why I'm now here nor why I was there. I remember rain, cold, snow and the touch of a thousand or more hands. Everyone must like the Wall. They like to feel the coarse stone. Perhaps they wish to remember when they too were of stone. Now as I look into those faces they indeed are from stone, but expressionless stone - no warmth, no cold, just stone. Perhaps they've gone back to it but remain doomed to flesh. And now that I'm off stone I must walk amongst these faces, these faces with eyes that don't see me. I leave the Wall and take cobble-stoned steps into the passages amongst the faces that don't see me. There are some who stand by and watch the passing faces I've joined. Theirs is a glance I do catch. They too must be off the Wall, I think. But I don't remember them. Perhaps they don't know me either. Yet we look each other through. The sun that warmed my skin is now gone. Stars have replaced it. The streets are lit. I'm still walking and stone is everywhere. Occasionally I'll touch it. When I do I remember everything. But only glimpses of everything in smells and wonder. Its enough. I go on for days like this, familiarising myself with this place. As come to know it more I find I'm walking the same streets. I can't get lost. In stone there are a thousand landmarks. I find the knowing of this place and that comforting. Everyday I feel more and more secure, more at home. Home? I stop. I've not been looking for home. But then I don't know what I've been looking for. Perhaps a world beyond the Wall. But now it seems there's no outer wall, no beyond. Just inside. I return to where I came. I touch the stone and its cold now. I feel it radiate through my hand. I press my body to it, but theres no warmth to be found. Touching, pressing, touching, pressing - cold through and through. I turn slowly to face my new world, to accept my new world and find I'm surrounded by the faces. They all see me now. I press my back into the Wall. I feel it give way to me. I press myself to it. It makes to break so I raise my arms to take its weight. The Wall drops to my shoulders. My muscles strain. I will not be crushed. I look up out from under my burden at the faces to find they've been replaced by another set of faces, then another, and another and so it goes. I take the weight knowing now we have all gone back to stone. globe cafe, prague. time and time again i thought of my family living and surviving here in europe. the following story was told to me by mother's partner. The second of world wars had begun. Europe became an old map. Martin was 16 and three months. He'd crossed the Yugoslavian border into Hungaria with nothing more than a pair of of slippers, a singlet, ski pants torn patched up with potato sacks. Having found safe passage he began running the border, taking those that could pay, barter in clothes, a ruble, or whatever out of Yugloslavia. In this way he got together a reasonable wardrobe and reputation. One of the people he had helped was a woman who, whilst being led to Hungaria, had been seperated from her daughter. All she knew was that Eva had been taken to a partisan camp somewhere in Yugoslavia. With a photo of the girl she interogated anyone. Eventually, two young men recognised eva and told the mother where she could be found. She approached Martin and asked whether he would find Eva and help her escape from Yugoslavia. He did. But not without some trouble. Back in Yugoslavia he located the girl and arranged for a horse drawn cart to collect them at night. It would take them to where Martin knew the border could be run from. The partisans had towers and soldiers just about everywhere. There was a curfew. Martin had found a hole in their balloon. The cart didn't arrive. As it was getting late, Martin started out to search for it. He left the girl with some of her relatives whom she was trying to convince to join her. They were uncertain of this 16 year old and not likely to trust him. Under a sky all bruised and heavy he took to the country on foot along roads flanked with hay cocks. Landmines had been buried beneath them to discourage burning. He was soon stopped by partisan soldiers. They asked where he was going. He said he was looking for his mother. They didn't believe him. They tied him up and beat him with their rifle butts. They beat him sensless then dragged him back to a camp. Their commander then got Martin to show him where he had been arrested. He did so bleeding all the while. They believed he was out to burn the hay. They asked why he broke the curfew. He replied that he worked during the day and couldn't afford to lose the job. They beat him again. A horse-drawn cart arrived with a strange man and Eva, upon it. They asked the partisan's whether they had seen a boy out looking for his mother. The man went then onto explain that the boy had a job and would spend his nights looking for his mother. Martin was held up to them, then all three were taken back to the camp. Martin was astounded. He'd never met the man nor had he told his cover story to anyone. In fact he'd made it up as he went. At first light Martin and Eva awoke. The man and his cart were gone. They fled and survived. Twenty-five years later Martin was reading Stern which reported on the anniversary of one Eva and her husband. They'd met in Germany after Eva had fled across Yugoslavian border. Martin wrote to her and it was indeed the one and the same Eva. In 1980 Martin visited her. It was quite a reunion. In 86 he went to visit her again. Unfortunatly, this time her husband was dying from MS. So it goes... every street corner, every stone, every face and every wall i took in as i would air. i immersed myself, my brain and all into this place. one evening i was to take some people to a jazz club. it was well into the Internet conference and people were going crazy not have had a good dose of fun. by the time everyone got themselves together i was leading over twenty people. well, sort of. i'd told them where to find the place so i became more or less the default tour guide shouls anyone get lost. as i'm not comfortable in large groups i left them on the tram and took another route. by chance i discovered another jazz club and hunkered downstairs led by the serpentine melodies of a sax. i went "splat" straight to the ceiling and stayed there for at least three hours. it was the hottest music i was to hear in prague. the sax player i'd seen with another outfit a couple of weeks ago and he wasn't anywhere near as good. here he could rage and rage he did. there was a disconcerting manner about him though. he'd solo mostly with his eyes open staring the audience through. when done he'd check us out for an applause. yet to bombard prague, to rape its space is wholesale advertising. the metro is best. you can wait for a train with only your thoughts and the cool air. your mind is your own, your thoughts are your own. the walls are free of someone elses hold on you. all too often we find language distorted by advertising (and i'm being general here). words take on an identity outside history, outside meaning where communication becomes marginalised.
you know what i mean? in some places you can't ask for lemonade cause they don't know what it is. but ask for sprite and your thirst is quenched. talkin bout messing things round i met a guy who works on the cartoon series, renn and stimpy. he'd said the creater of the series was seriously into messing with peoples heads. apparently the episode featuring "powdered toast-man" burning the american constitution was banned in the states. frank zappa was the voice of the pope who clung to powdered toast-man's buttocks as he was flown to safety. i believe it was zappa's last recorded word before he was whisked off into the unknown. so it goes...
dog barking savagely could be heard for blocks up that steep passageway a bird lands on a fence i swear it turns its head following me as i pass an insect rattles in its beak ahead of me a young woman carries a tiny dog in a plastic bag over the fence i see the barking a short stump nosed boxer a white hose thrashing in its mouth he snarls and barks at it. the bird cocks its head and clamps down on the insect the bagged dog leaps out with the woman running after it something reminds me of my childhood... a smell then its gone... flowers perhaps |
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