Midnight on the Charles Bridge. The hawkers, pickpockets, and beggars of Prague have all retired for the night. Only lovers and street cleaners remain. All of us caught under the dead gaze of a menagerie of saints. A soft presence of snowfall is caught in the columns of street lights. The Turkish gentleman at the pizzeria on Karlova Street told me it snowed last winter for only thirty minutes. "It was boring", he said. I stand around on the bridge for a few more minutes, readying myself for something to happen. But nothing does. “Because I had to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist. “Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.” — A Hunger Artist I once posted a review of Milan Kundera's “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on social media that pissed off a few people. The review simply said this: "As far as I can tell, the whole point of the novel is that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was great since it gave the intelligentsia of Prague lots of time to have sex with each other." I think I still stand by that review. “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” — Before the Law Shown above: the infamous window where the defenestration of Prague occurred. It was here in 1618 that two Catholic Imperial governors were tossed out a window by Bohemian Protestants (supposedly landing in a pile of horse manure, which broke their fall), triggering the start of the Thirty Year War, a brutal European conflict that led to the death of a third of the population of the Holy Roman Empire. While they amused themselves in this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs. Samsa almost at the same moment how their daughter, who was getting more animated all the time, had blossomed recently, in spite of all the troubles which had made her cheeks pale, into a beautiful and voluptuous young woman. Growing more silent and almost unconsciously understanding each other in their glances, they thought that the time was now at hand to seek out a good honest man for her. — The Metamorphosis But how? But how what? But how what why? But how what why who? But how what why who when? But how what why who when where? It was the waiter at Charles Bridge with a digital camera at 2 o'clock because there was a turgid, nippy love triangle under a nearby lamppost. Turgid (adj.): 1610s, from Latin turgidus meaning "swollen, inflated, distended", and from turgere "meaning to swell", of forgotten origin. Earliest use in prose appears to date back to 1725. “Giddy up,” he says and claps his hands. The carriage is torn away, like a piece of wood in a current. I still hear how the door of my house is breaking down and splitting apart under the groom’s onslaught, and then my eyes and ears are filled with a roaring sound which overwhelms all my senses at once. But only for a moment. — A Country Doctor "Oi Prague, Czech it out!" said the tired old lark. What all the others had found in the machine, the Officer had not. His lips were pressed firmly together, his eyes were open and looked as they had when he was alive, his gaze was calm and convinced. The tip of a large iron needle had gone through his forehead. — In the Penal Colony Oh dear, and here creaks the Prague Metronome, overlooking the Vltava River and the city herself. This grand pendulum, an artistic piece about the temporality of all things, has very aptly seen better days... And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes. — An Imperial Message (Strč prst skrz krk.) But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him. — The Trial
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AuthorMing is an economist, traveller, and creative writer from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a nebulous collection of particles on the lookout for a good corner to sit with a book and a cup of coffee. Archives
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