November 8, 2006 - Wednesday

November 8, 2006 - Wednesday
Swan Song
A friend tells me this story; periodically the 'Baroque' Circus sets up it's big-top and caravans on the Letna plains. It's a meager arrangement of tents surrounded by trucks at one end and another big tent on the other. Apparently one of the attractions is a motorcycle-riding black bear which they've trained to drive a bike around the inside of the main ring in front of grinning adults and cheering children. No telling how many times a day, and how many days a year, this beleaguered animal is forced to perform the trick –riding around, and around, and around, and, well…you get the picture.

One day, recently, there was a fairly well known journalist in the audience who the ringmaster tried to convince to ride shotgun with the bear. Naturally the journalist was apprehensive about this. The bear probably was too, at least more than usual. However, after much pleading and cajoling from the circus-types and audience alike the journalist warily got on the back of the bike.

Maybe it was the ringmaster tweaking the moment for the benefit of the audience. Maybe it was the unfamiliar presence of the journalist; his smell or the sudden re-distribution of weight on the bike. Maybe it was the mood of the bear; underfed, overfed, or just fed up. Who can say what a bear is thinking at any given moment? Whatever it was, the bear revved the engine and made a bee-line out of the tent and roared across the Letna plain – the journalist clinging to the back of the bike experiencing various degrees of horror and shock.

A hell of a thing to see if you were, say, standing at Sparta tram stop, or taking the dog for a walk in the nearby wooded area.

This sort of thing doesn't happen anywhere else. It's one of the great things about Prague; the endless pool of amazing and weird stories, odd happenings, and weirder people.

I've met a lot of interesting types in Prague – policy makers, two PMs, two Presidents, actors, musicians, business leaders, diplomats, and academics – all of them fascinating and wholly remarkable.

But fuck all that.

They don't shine – don't count as much as the incredible and wonderful friends i've made in the strange town. Some of these friends fit into the above categories, some of them are engaged in business or the arts; from upper-management to filmmakers. Some are doing absolutely nothing.

Right up to the point of my departure I was meeting, associating and creating strong bonds with creative and lovely-lunatic spirits. People so stimulating and attractive it made it very tricky to extricate myself from the place.

I've also dealt with a lot of twats, fools, degenerates, and assholes, but forget them – they'll get theirs in due time. I'm just sorry I won't be around to see it.

I'm reminded of Mos Eisley's Cantina in Star Wars (A New Hope). The kind of place with odd music and stranger brews. A place chock full of random languages and haphazard nationalities; all thrown together and associating in a new kind of cross-cultural understanding. Where else can you work in an office with an Aussie, a Scotsman, an Irishman, an English woman, a Russian, and an American (my best to all of you) all of which working towards…well…whatever they're working towards…?

I've developed indelible and close ties with certain Australians, certain Kiwis, some Northern Irish, a plethora of Britons, a few Americans, and the very rare Canadian during my time in 'The Golden City'. People from Guatemala, Russia, The Ukraine, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Israel (not that one, the other one – the smart one) and France have all marked a positive notch on my psyche during my formative years in Prague. And also, importantly, those Czechs who have been abroad (and a few who haven't) and are willing to do the wacky-tango within it's smallish expatriate village.

It's a special breed of people that choose to live long-term in the place. Particularly the ex-pats. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to identify them outside of the Czech Republic when I see them, as easily as I can identify varying nationalities across a bar – one of the particular tricks you pick up living in Prague seven years or more (or less, but not much). There are psychological symptoms attributed to the expat that has been in the city for a long while: unbalanced, creative, slightly askew, prone to calmness in the face of weird happenstance, hedonistic tendencies, relaxed demeanor, ironic commentary, crazy thoughts…grammatical hiccups like the unnecessary use of articles ('the nature') or dropping them entirely from speech. Completely losing touch with standard fiscal calculations like 'The Dollar' and 'The Euro'… Shortness of breath, dizzy spells, and the sort of narcolepsy that causes one to end up at the final stanice early on a Sunday morning…

I could go on, but this sort of thing could read like a psychiatric intern's wet dream. You could find yourselves swarmed.

So why leave?

Two reasons really:

1) The utter lack of fiscal transparency in the Czech business world. Tired of barely keeping my head above the water financially. Tired of the management shamelessly making Big Money off of the salty sweat of their employees – working them the most for the least. The kind of freak Scrooges who have set up shop knowing they can blithely skirt fundamental employment laws and fire their workers without rhyme or reason after paying them in rabbit turds. All without the benefit of a watchdog organization to beat three colours of snot out of these rat-bastards. This sort of thing is rampant and makes one think they should go into business for themselves. Except… probably not, unless you like dealing with backwards and convoluted business laws, and Goliath amounts of twisted beaurocracy

2) The place can wear you down. The same things that make the place wonderful; being able to walk down a street and be guaranteed to run into someone you know, or sitting quietly in a public place and watching large groups of tiny Spanish tourists jabber by. There always being something to do; someone celebrating something, the parties, the drinking, the art galleries and Kino Aero. The real and seeming opportunities. The pace; always too fast, or too slow – never boring. Supermarkets at 5pm filled with old people armed with bumper-car shopping carts. Smazeny Syr. It's close proximity to throwback Eastern locales. Being the hub for seedy mafia-driven drug trades. Those beautiful and strange women (or men, if you're not me) you would be, could be, or are romantically associated with – Czech and other. All this can wring out the last drop of energy, drive and direction you've got in reserve.

(Friends, by way of deterring me from leaving, have told me I simply need a vacation. This may be so…but it still leaves me poor. And I'm frankly sick of it. Being poor and doing something I love for a little money is tricky but more desirable than doing something I hate and still being poor – which would be my situation in Prague.)

Well, whatever.

I'm happy I could leave on a high, when I love the place. At a time when, although I appreciate it's physical and social beauty, i also appreciate the black, sordid and dirty thread that runs amok throughout Prague's fairy-tale veneer. The deep, dark, timeless holes you can find yourself in emotionally – and in the flesh – which rise and fall like the wild roller-coaster ride that The Main Czechville really is.

So what does it all mean?

This: Prague is a wonderful city, full of opportunity and interest. It's as stunning and strange as any in the world. It's filled with the most amazing, odd and gorgeous souls. Some of these talk, follow through, and find their place. Others just talk. There are stories in the place so confusing it would have writer-blocked novelists giggling excessively. It's dynamic, thoughtful, belligerent and cool. It's old in façade, but young in development. It's halfway done and almost there. It's the carrot dangling on the end of the string. It's suddenly, without warning, swallowing the carrot, the string and the stick suspending them. It's gothic and sexy. It's vacant stares and crazy eyes. It's wild parties and civil dinners, heavy yoga and sketchy cocaine. It's sex, hugs, and rub'n pole.

But mainly, once you understand it, it is genuine.

It's all of these things and even more. But this Grinning Lemur –doing fast endless laps on his motorbike – thinks it's time to make a bee-line out of the circus tent.Until, of course, he get's tagged by a tranquilizer dart named Boredom and staggers back again. This, I look forward to.

That is all.