1 hour empire

Who is in the MU library at 11:43 at night on a Friday? A girl eating some sort of hazelnut candy, a boy listening to music over headphones at such a volume that all I can hear is a vague but distracting din, a boy with a classic Czech mullet streaked platinum, and me, who is halfway done with a paper that I feel I've written at least three times before, which contains a hefty quote from Stalin.

What has been in my mind these past few weeks? Something that has taken form as post-nasal drip and congestion in my sinuses, or maybe that isn't from stale thoughts but actually thick pollen in the air from all the cherry trees and bushes. I have a whole writeup on the Czech controversy about American rockets (I'm not sure how much press this is getting back home, but it's in the papers nearly every day here and I'm asked about it by at least half of all the Czechs I meet) which I posted to this journal filtered under 'Private' with the idea that I might finish it some time, and then ran off to meet the boy who I met on MDŽ and wrote about in my last entry.

What am I doing? What am I doing? I'm not sure. I think, though, that I'm going to start yet another new blog, but this time a proper blog on my new website, which I've been working on for what seems like forever. It's going to be some sort of travel blog, or something of that nature, and not terribly personal, and under my actual name, because I'm becoming more interested in self-promotion. All I need to do is get another new plug so my American computer can fit into European walls.

I told my mother in an email that I was going to celebrate MDŽ by smashing patriarchy (after explaining to her what MDŽ actually is) but instead I went to a strange little performance at a pub and ended up making out with a very nice boy in Mendlovo náměstí at three in the morning. The performance was strange, with fleshy, pretty Slavic girls bellydancing with too much makeup on and fake flowers in their hair, and various stories and things which I didn't understand entirely because I was at the back of the room and because of my threadbare Czech, which that boy says is funny. I told him he was funny. Him: "Já su legrační?" Funny because too fast and too Moravian. And because he wears braces.

And we went to another bar, then, and drank and made fun of what was on television: muted videoclips interspersed by texted-in messages asking for sex. "Nice businessman looking for a skinny girlfriend. Ostrava." I stopped being able to say anything useful in Czech and I didn't feel like speaking English anymore.

And after we left it was too late to take the tram, and we walked to the main station with nobody around, and decided it would be stupid to wait for the bus, so he walked me home. Past Mendlovo and up our enormous hill, even though I kept telling him to go back and get the bus. Very, very, very nice normal Czech boy who is not older than me and wears braces, and paid for the beer because it was MDŽ.

And then I went to bed without brushing my teeth and had a very, very long dream, which involved us bringing a Christmas tree into the dormitory and going to an ice-cream parlor and Lena stealing my bookbag, and my father, and some other things.

***

How I'm learning Czech:

My Czech class involves an hour of phonetic drills every week, and we go around the room reading words and little rhymes off a sheet of paper in rapid Mitteleuropean succession: "Ada, Eda, Iva, Eva, tráva, sláva, mléko," and if anyone doesn't hold the long vowels long enough, or if one of the Poles forgets how to pronounce their H's, or if I say "sme" instead of "jsme", the little teacher rebukes us and we have to start over.

The potholes in my Czech vocabulary are frequent and random. I was in a cafe with my friend and tried to ask for a fork, but I'd forgotten how to say fork, and so I just pointed to one and asked the waiter if he had any more of those things. My regular Czech teacher's method of teaching us vocabulary is to write one word on the blackboard and free-associate, explaining all its possible meanings and variously related words, and then telling us that in Prague or in Silesia they don't use that word but rather something else. And I keep forgetting words like "fork", telling people I'm twelve years old instead of twenty, and mixing up the words for "this week" and "last week".

***

Today I went to (one of the parts of) the Moravian Gallery, where I was nearly the only one there, so the little women who work there all had to rush around to turn the lights on in the rooms in front of me and off in the ones behind me, and I saw all the greats of Czech cubism and et cetera, and Eva Kmentová's sculptures with paper nailed to boards, and pointing fingers sticking out of bronze.

Last night I think I broke my digital camera for the last time. I've had it since I was fifteen (in 2001). I dropped it on the ground; it bounced, and the little button at the top popped out. I don't know if I'll be able to find any more parts for it, since it's such a coelacanth.

I took some nice, but probably not terribly interesting pictures on it before it dropped; I'll upload them and that will be the little funeral for my digital camera. I suppose now that I can't take any pictures it will make the whole experience of living in a foreign country etc. etc. completely different, although I'm not sure how.

I'm back in the computer lab, reading American magazines and printing out syllabi for class, hungry, & thinking about what I'm going to buy at the grocery store when I go, as inevitably I'll have to. Now I have a pot, and pans, and forks and plates, and cooking has become lots of fun in my little room. We have a tiny refrigerator and two burners (and you can only use one of them at once, I'm not sure why) and I've been cooking all kinds of things on it: rice and lentils and couscous and eggs. And eating lots of fruit and vegetables. The funny thing about food in the Czech Republic is that it's inevitably much, much less expensive in comparison to anything else you might buy there. Books, for instance, are terribly expensive. Clothes, also. Food, though, is cheap and abundant and much better quality than similarly priced food at home. This is something my parents have found hard to understand when I emailed them (typical: "You bought kiwis there? And I didn't even think they had bananas.")

My roommate, though, either eats at restaurants or eats packaged yogurt or doesn't eat at all. She is an American and my age and from Ohio, and I'm sure she'd be horrified to find out how crazy she's making me, because she is one of those mild girls who tries to make herself as small and unobtrusive as possible to escape judgement, but that's exactly why I've started hating her so much; she's oppressively silent and unfriendly and absolutely unwilling to respond to any of my advances, and won't even eat with the forks or the dishes I've bought for both of us. I suppose I shouldn't take it as an affront that she's simply a dullish person, I should just live with it, but for god's sake, she's so omnipresent and so silent and always watching me.

I got an email from Daniel, who I met in Prague two summers ago; he lives in Ireland but right now he's traveling again. He sent me a nice email from Paris, & I agreed to try and find him somewhere to stay in Brno. I never answer emails quickly enough, though; Billy sent me one today asking me why I never write him and I should call him on the phone and why did I leave him and, also, more troublesomely, that Elif did something horrible to him and now he hates her. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about, but I can easily imagine. Bah, what an entanglement.

There's a cheese sandwich in my bag and I'm going off to eat it, to get a coffee and try to decipher the Czech newspaper and read the things I'm assigned for class.

( for future documentation )

I was really excited to come here, in fact, & for the first week thoroughly exhilarated with the hills, strange street signs, streetcars, generally enjoying everyone I met. I read in an email the study abroad office sent me recently, though, that my feelings about coming here have already been thoroughly predicted and systematized by a certain psychologist long ago, and apparently I was just experiencing the first, "honeymoon" phase of culture shock and have now entered the second, the "homesickness" period.

At one point I considered not reading the American news at all while I'm here and coming back to the US completely innocent of anything that had happened over the past few months, because maybe it would be enlightening, or somehow purifying, because politics is dirtying and I don't want to have anything to do with it. Somehow reading the American news is the only way I can get rid of my homesickness, though, which isn't really even homesickness (I certainly don't want to be anywhere else but here) but a feeling sort of being adrift. Cultural disconnect isn't about accommodating strange national habits but about having to set out, at the beginning of every important conversation, all your reasons for having the opinions and beliefs that you do; to talk about your childhood, your education, how you spend your money, absolutely everything.

And I don't want to go into the how exhausting it is to be an American in Europe thing again, because it's something I talked to death when I was traveling last year, but it really is; to come from a country that absolutely everyone has opinions about is quite a social burden, and usually end up with me having to explain to Czechs or French or Portuguese people something like the electoral college or the American media after two beers over roaring techno music in a crowded bar, and I'm pretty sure they don't facilitate a great deal of transatlantic understanding.

I'm not sure why poring through political blogs and online papers are so comforting to me right now, maybe because it reminds me of the thoroughly tiresome and predictable political world of the United States, of my worn old frustrations and irritations. It's comforting somehow to see that, for instance, the religious right is acting just as nuttily as they always have, that the bizarre story of one astronaut stalking another astronaut is inexplicably news, that conservatives are attempting to be funny and obviously failing, etc. Even if I didn't read any news in May or in October or whenever, I doubt that I'd be particularly surprised at whatever happened. It's nice to see that everyone at home is just as crazy as they've always been, it's something that I thoroughly understand.

My laptop battery is running out. I'm here in the computer lab because we don't have internet in the basement of my little Communist dormitory, although we do have an old rug, polyester curtains, and two funny couches that fold out to form beds.

I won't talk about getting in, about the airplane ride, the bus, or the hour I spent in Prague waiting for the bus. I was carrying a heavy suitcase and my laptop bag which I dropped down the metro escalator. I'm sure that Prague would have been lovely, as Prague tends to be, if I had been able to see anything other than the bus station. I meant to stay awake on the bus and watch the landscape, but I was only able to keep myself from falling asleep for a few minutes after leaving the city, so there was nothing I saw but clusters of orange-roofed houses and baffling European road signs. I fell asleep long before Bohemia turned into Moravia and only woke up when we were finally outside the station in Brno.

I won't talk about the last week, either, in travelogue or any other kind of style. The last few days have been taking the šalina back and forth from the dorm to classes, trying not to get lost, meeting people in awkward forced situations, trying not to antagonize my roommate by coming in too late or waking up too early or turning on music when she doesn't want to hear it, attempting to understand the visual language of the buildings, signs, faces, etc.

This is a funny place.









I appreciate this town's honesty. I like that its dominant historical building isn't a beautiful castle but a fortress and prison; we shouldn't have any illusions about the past. I like that the Baroque churches are next to Communist paneláky and hypermarkets. I like it, but I don't want to write too much right now in fear that I'll spoil everything; also, my laptop batteries are running out.

More tomorrow. I'm making an effort to describe, not summarize.

Billy has to work over Christmas Eve, of course, although he called me yesterday afternoon saying he left early feeling sick because he'd drank too much the previous night. We do drink too much, me and him, when we're together. He has something of a weakness for cheap prosecco. I smoked weed for the first time with him (indeed) last week, which made me cough and sputter and he yelled at me because the neighbors next door might hear; and then I got twitchy and started saying strange things and we lay on the bed weakly arguing. I don't know if this is or isn't good for me, but I like it, being with him, slightly addled and shaking from the mix of chemicals. Apparently I talk too much, though, in that state, and the next morning he wakes me up and I have a pain in my chest and he makes fun of everything that I said.

My mother keeps asking me whether I'll miss him after I leave, or whether he'll miss me. In my opinion it isn't much of an issue, since we always knew I was leaving, both of us, and it's clear I'm not getting anything done and have to leave Chicago and have to go back to school. I'm not sure whether he'll miss me, but it's a thing that seems useless to think about. It is true, though, that I don't want him to be lonely back there.

***

My little sister, Julia. She's fifteen, smart and well-tended; she reads good books and gets good grades. For Christmas I bought her 2 CDs (A Short History of the Twentieth Century from Gang of Four and Beat Happening, because, seminal 80's music!), a little pack of mints with a funny picture on the cover, and this toy from this lovely store. I want to get her all kinds of things.

I'm making Billy a sort of three-part collage. It will be a nice one, and I'll post it here after I'm through (which I should be at least tomorrow, since I'm seeing him the day after).

I had to get presents for my parents, not that I like to do that sort of thing under obligation; and it's difficult, anyhow, anything I get them will make them wonder how much money I spent and whether I shouldn't be putting such money to better use (like my education, or feeding myself while I'm abroad) and how much money I have in my bank account anyhow (very little). But it was fun, anyhow, I went to some bookstores and got my mother America: The Book and my father a book about explorers mapping the Louisiana Purchase (he likes great-man-theory-of-history books; portraits of an era through a biography of Roosevelt or John Adams or some member of the British monarchy. I actually can't stand this way of approaching history, but the book seemed interesting, and claims on the back cover to explain why America still uses the imperial system of measurement).

***

And it seems I've lost my sketchbook but, I've found my keys.

A list, for clarity, and because it's been awhile, and there are plots and subplots, and this is how we will address them.

1a. Billy lives across the street from a Christian Science temple built in neo-classical style. Its weekly sermons are posted on a board in front of the door; whenever I visit him, that's what I see. One week it was "Reality", the next "Unreality". Last week it was "Eternal Punishment", which I noticed as I left his house in the dark at two in the morning. I was leaving despite his protesting that it was stupid to take all the effort to leave his bed where I was already naked and warm, put on my clothes, put on my coat, and walk out into the cold and wait at a bus stop to go across town to a different bed.
1b. The back of the Christian Science church is threadbare and has a parking lot. The front has four thick Corinthian columns that homeless people sometimes sleep behind. This church has made a huge impression on me with its ugliness. This street that Billy lives on is leafy and in Lincoln Park, with nice short little old apartment buildings like his, and, by the park, tall midcentury high rises. And then this awful, awful church. As far as I can tell, the inside is full of marble and open spaces and low ceilings.
1c. His apartment is tiny, and the bathroom is in the kitchen, and he is always complaining about his landlord. I don't know why he's living in an awful place in Lincoln Park with a malfunctioning radiator and no real kitchen when he could live somewhere much nicer in a different neighborhood for the same amount of money. Although there is something to be said for small spaces, and for living alone like he does, in a hall and a building full of strangers. Before he lived in Lincoln Park, he lived in New Orleans in a house with lots of roommates which was blown apart by the hurricane.
1d. When we get together, he doesn't make a big fuss to entertain me. I like this. Sometimes he asks me if I'd like a beer or something to eat. Sometimes he messes around with music on his computer and lets me read his books, or draw or work on the Reader crossword puzzle.
1e. He isn't a talker. Not that he doesn't want to tell me about what he's done during the day, what he ate and things like that; and not that he is incapable of conversation, he simply isn't a talker. He spits out little fully-formed chunks of thought, without tangents. I try not to bore or confuse him with too much circular conversation. Or we sit in silence or exchange aphorisms.
1f. That is something easier to do when you're intoxicated. The silences fill themselves up.
1g. He likes me and I like him, and besides all that we have a lot in common, and would rather spend time with each other than alone. But I wish he wouldn't tell me he loves me, because I don't know what that means or implies, or how I can respond to that.
1h. He is always saying he wants to leave Chicago, he never meant to move here and he'd rather be in New York.
1i. I don't know why, I don't understand, but somehow I feel it's incompatible that he can love me and want to be in New York at the same time, and I keep wanting to point this out to him, but of course I'm the one leaving in February. And maybe I would feel differently if I were the one washed away by a hurricane.

2a. Daniel told me in an email last week that it's quite easy to set up a consulate: he knew a girl from Germany who wanted to live in some backwoods part of Ireland and was trying to find some way she could support herself there; so she wrote to the German government and asked if she could be her own consulate, and now that's what she does, in her little subsidized sinecure on a little Irish island. Who knows if it's true.
2b. But if it is true, it isn't so fortuitous, then, that the Czech consulate in Chicago was opened up just a few months before I needed it. And it certainly isn't useful at all that I was only able to get the documents for my visa two months before I needed it. And maybe it isn't at all useful to think that bureaucracy runs on nothing but fate. What can I do, then, I certainly hope the visa gets here in time.
2c. The ladies at the consulate told me it probably will, which is optimism I hardly expected from Central European bureaucrats. My parents think that it won't, for a reason clearly more potent than our traditional national sunniness.
2d. I sent an email to my advisor about all this, and his reply was: "Mira -- this sounds like a positive development!"

3. Right now my heart is beating too quickly because I had three cups of coffee this afternoon. Last night there was some sort of incident with police cars and flashing lights in front of the window. Everyone in this house is bothering me to clean up my collage papers and get to sleep earlier.

Samolot - statek powietrzny cięższy od powietrza (aerodyna), utrzymujący się w powietrzu dzięki wytwarzanej sile nośnej za pomocą nieruchomych, w danych warunkach względem statku, skrzydeł. Ciąg potrzebny do utrzymania prędkości wytwarzany jest przez jeden lub więcej silników; zasadniczo wyróżniamy dwa rodzaje napędu:

- śmigłowy, w którym moment obrotowy silnika zamieniany jest na ciąg za pomocą śmigła; do takiego napędu stosuje się silniki tłokowe lub turbinowe
- drzutowy, w którym ciąg wytwarzany jest bezpośrednio w silniku; zwykle stosuje się silniki turboodrzutowe, silniki rakietowe wykorzystywane są głównie w konstrukcjach eksperymentalnych lub jako napęd pomocniczy przy starcie

Pierwszym samolotem, który wykonał samodzielny lot był Wright Flyer, zbudowany przez braci Wright. Ten pierwszy lot miał miejsce 17 grudnia 1903 roku, trwał 12 sekund, a samolot przebył 36,5 m. Tego samego dnia, bracia dokonali kolejnych trzech przelotów, z których najdłuższy trwał 59 sekund, w ciągu których samolot przeleciał 260 m.

I'm not Polish, nor an airplane.