field below

the prague fringe festival started, and last night n. and i went to the jazz and blues club u malého glena in malá strana to see this scottish singer/songwriter, andi neate.  it was not really my cup of tea, but she did sing in scottish gaelic at the end, a capella.

there are poppies growing on letna hill!  i went for a walk today to clear my head, and there were a couple of old creeps on a park bench sitting around and being creepy.  i went home and now i am working again, with dry point, scratching away at some piece of white shiny plastic paper, so i can make prints tomorrow morning.  "time is a tease.  time is a tease - because everything has to happen in its own time."    

прихоть

that's the weather here in prague, and i have a mood to match. the rain makes it difficult to do anything outside of home and school, although n. and i did manage to go to a small exhibition of old european posters from the museum of decorative and applied arts. i have mostly been staying inside and working on my klauzura (final semestral work), and trying to not feel sad and abandoned, because even though i thought that after my fantastically successful attempt to become bffs with magical sweater czech everything would be easy as pie, i was very, very wrong. given that this is a rather hectic week, i will not begin to panic just yet, but so far i am under the impression that he has completely vanished. i seriously hope that he didn't frantically pack his bags and leave the country immediately after meeting me. if anyone thinks that this smacks of "he's just not that into you," i have already considered the possibilities and judged it impossible. so there.

мааамо! а ти ж менi казала: час як вода...

i am working on a set of postcards about prague for my final illustration project. i could barely hold back my tears yesterday when the master in the graphic techniques workshop refused to help me with etching, but i moved on to plan b, which means doing most of the work by drawing. but for variety i did two with linocut this morning. it's my own fault for being an idiot and going away for two weeks, but still, in let-down situations like yesterday's i can't help but feel rejected by an entire nation (stupid, i know). tomorrow the assistant will be there and maybe i will have time for one etching. tonight i am working well past two in the morning, and i am wondering how many people out there also have the song "mamo" painfully stuck in their heads.  primarily the first chorus, that's in ukrainian...

petersburg drawings: two

petersburg drawings: one

never seen by waking eyes

of all the cities i've had the chance to know, st. petersburg is very strange and haunting in a way i have a hard time describing in words (i did drawings).  i noticed that i am aesthetically and emotionally drawn to things of former glory, the decay of once-beautiful things.  the buildings are phantom-like. they all have a look of shining long long ago, but have since become dirty and the paint is chipping.  caving in on themselves, along with the ghosts inside.  the names of businesses on old signs sound fake, like part of the set design for a play.  there is some strange weight in the air that i sense but can't describe.  creepy in a beautiful way, beautiful in a creepy way.  i am incredibly frustrated by my inability to convey this, though i can see it right in front of me, flashing in pictures of peeling wallpaper, silent films of women with high collars and frilled white parasols, and horse-drawn trams.  political conspiracies, snuff boxes, and tragic characters. always looking for something somewhere else when there was so much right in front of me all along, i am sorry i only took notice of it now.  

only a northern song

we went to our summer cabin for a couple of days, but there wasn't much for me to do but read books and draw little crooked houses and fences.  i read three books during the two weeks.  back in the city, we took out the record player and listened to soviet bootleg beatles vinyls ("let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born, though she was born a long, long time ago, your mother should know...") until the needle fell out (or dissolved) and we couldn't find it anymore.  then there were two plays, a jazz concert, some dinner parties, an extremely disappointing "night of museums" (but we had a good laugh) and a random ballroom dancing competition.  it was quite cold and windy up there, in the north.

ну и чего ж ты ушла-то, рыба моя?

hello, i am again in prague.  i was happy when we landed, and happy on the bus, then happy on the metro, and on the bus again. i was so happy to be back, and everything around felt like home.  the last two weeks have been really exciting and filled with activity, but the price was losing two precious weeks from my time in prague.  now i am frantically working on catching up at school.  and everywhere else in my life!

time for a short intermission

i have a flight to saint petersburg this morning, and i will stay there for two and half weeks.  i may not have a chance to write about it while i am there, but i am mentally taking you with me, friends, and you will hear all about it when i come back, on 24th may.  also i am sure you are all dying to know what will happen next in the adventure of the magical sweater czech, as am i.  until then, na shledanou!  (s., see you very soon!)

yes yes yes yes yes

the visual arts masters program show opened today, but i did not really get to see it, because magical sweater czech walked into the school.  this was it, this was it.  i was so scared that the two glasses of wine i downed at the opening in record time did zero for my nerves, and after i spent 15 minutes hyperventilating like a 12 year old outside of the architecture studio, with i. and j. dragging me to the door and trying to convince me that i have nothing to lose, he walked out of the room and down the hall. 

inspired by the old communist saying: "we solve problems by marching ahead," i took the initiative and ran after him like some kind of demented troll.  he was gracious enough not to call the ambulance, but actually smiled as i made it perfectly clear that i have no speech prepared.  two hours later (!), i found out that he lived up perfectly to every notion i had about magical czechs - except maybe the pet bear - and now i am on cloud nine.  he speaks little english but enough for me to understand, and lo and behold, i can apparently speak a little czech!

mildly molested

today in drawing class my model was one old man, for whom my not speaking czech and his not speaking english is apparently not an obstacle to his incessant talking to me and asking me whether i understand, and occasionally flicking the tip of my nose with his index finger.  when i came in to the classroom after a break, he approached me, flicked me on the nose, and told me something along the lines of - here my lamentable understanding of czech and my careful observation of his gestures worked together - that next time, if i don't close the door behind me, he is going to spank me.  yes, that's right.  and if i had only known the czech word for "spank," i could have spared myself - and the rest of the class - the demonstration.

současný ruský film

the free russian film festival began tonight at kino světozor, and n. and i went to two films in a row.  both were the latest by karen shakhnazarov, who was present, along with some of the actors.  i was not so impressed with the first film, vanished empire, but i loved loved the second, the rider named death, about terrorism in pre-revolutionary russia (moscow, 1904).  the film is very rich in setting, costume, and music, giving it the aesthetic of moulin rouge! - a very theatrical and stylized depiction of something so dark that it draws you in.  although i feel slightly sheepish about using the word "romantic," - it is about terrorism, after all - for me that is exactly the feeling that the film evoked.  

berlin drawings

scenic drawings

bicycle, bicycle

n. got out her rollerblades and i borrowed a neighbor's bicycle, and we went riding through stromovka park in the sunshine.  oh, how i missed bike riding.  this one was a real cool retro one, that r. bought for 300 crowns at kolbenova.  in germany it felt like pedestrians are in the minority, because it seemed everyone - children, students, seniors, businessmen - are on bicycles.  in the czech republic, it seems that everyone is on rollerblades.

"у маленькой любви - коротенькие руки"

here is a spread from my newly aquired book; it's called "princ a malá princezna" ("the prince and the little princess").  i just looked at the back page, and noticed that the graphic design is done by milan grygar, whose name i remember from history of czech graphic design.  he did some film posters for the czech releases of "blow up" and "cool hand luke" in the 1960s.  double cool, then.

kolbenova

this morning we went to kolbenova flea market, where people with fanny packs and golden teeth sell all manner of junk: guitars without strings, one-eyed dolls,  forgotten soviet toys.  although after j. made a joke about the toys being from chernobyl, i got a little paranoid.  there was one small red elephant that i liked, but his ear was threadbare and disintegrating.  the vanishing elephant.  however, i did get very very lucky because i found a book illustrated by květa pacovská, about whom i wrote one of my first entries.  since i came to prague, i have not been able to find anything, anything with her illustrations, and here were two books!  i had to leave one behind, but the one i bought is lovely and i only paid 50 crowns ($2.50) for it.