afternoon on a hill

yesterday i went to bílá hora, the last stop for tram no. 22, and a two minute walk from the yellow field, but you have to know where to go, because it is hidden from view.  i was just drinking kefir and watching the sun set over the landscape.  not to get all "walden pond" on you, but i think it helps to put the world in perspective at times.  i don't know why it is so interesting to sit in high places and look carefully down at the miniature life below, but it gives me an enormous feeling of being wide awake and also very very small in the middle of the giant scheme of things.  i wonder what people that have reached the top of mount everest feel like, or the first cosmonauts in space, and especially those that reached the moon.  "up there? it's beautiful up there, but very far from home."

divoká šárka

more about divoká šárka: i was feeling enthusiastic all week about going somewhere green, with a backpack (it was a very simple dream), and we went to this big beautiful valley.  just twenty minutes by tram away from home, there are streams, wide fields, tall forests, and steep cliffs, and grass so green it hurts your eyes to look at it.  the name of the park means "wild šárka," the name of a beautiful amazon from czech mythology, who was the right-hand woman of vlasta, the ruler of a matriarchal society.  when war broke out between the women and the men, who lived on the opposite side of the river, vlasta sent šárka to destroy ctirad, the men's general.  šárka managed to lure ctirad to his death, but the men won the war anyway.  and whether she had fallen in love with him, or because death was a preferable alternative to surrender, in the end she committed suicide by jumping from one of the cliffs.