love (3)

"My darling, please learn to be happy, for God's sake. That's all I wish for you, and apart from your love you can't give me anything more beautiful than your happiness."
Karel Čapek

couve checa

à espera das mal-fadadas caraway seeds que ainda terão de vir do ebay, tal a premência, chamadas alcaravias. mas por enquanto já se vão tomando notas para o tal bloco de receitas. esta a braised Czech (check the czech :)) green cabbage. de chorar... e da família da sauerkraut, um essencial germânico e eslavo. a ver se não adultero muito.

Couve Checa

o quê: banha ou gordura de bacon, 1 chávena cebola picada, meia chávena de bacon em cubos, 1 couve lombarda, cortada em tiras, caraway seeds uma colher de sobremesa, um quarto de chávena de vinagre de maçã ou de vinho, 1 chávena de água, sal, açúcar e pimenta preta.

como: aquecer a gordura, acrescentar a cebola e dourar. Juntar o bacon e deixar 5 minutos, depois as sementes e finalmente juntar a couve misturando bem. Cozinhar cerca de 5 minutos. Juntar o vinagre e temperar, deixar levantar fervura, tapar e deixar cozinhar mais meia hora. Se necessário ir juntando um pouco de água.

outra versão e um site extraordinaire, Stephen Cooks. glossário !
para comer em Praga, restaurante Kolkovna. nhamm

cromo (4)

immigrate, decision, choice

"... with varying degrees of urgency they asked me to explain what on earth possessed me to want to leave their free and wealthy country to return home, to a poor and unfree country, where they'd probably lock me up or send me to Siberia. I tried to be equally pleasant. I conjured up some kind of patriotism, some kind of mission, until I hit on a convincing explanation. I said that back home people knew me. Even if I had to sweep up garbage in the street I would be for them what I was, what I wanted to be to the exclusion of anything else, a writer, whereas here, even if I could drive around in my little Ford, I would always be just one of those immigrants on whom a great country had taken pity. These were my boastful words. In reality I wanted to return home, to the place where there were people I was fond of, where I was able to speak fluently, to listen to my native language.
Now I knew that if i was a street-sweeper I would, for the majority of the people, be simply a person who swept the streets, a person hardly noticed."

Ivan Klíma
in Love and Garbage

Laura Ford

Gostei de "a" ver e os seus Armour Boys.



Espaliered Woman III (2007)


Stump Girl (1996)


Headthinker (2003)


Sleepwalkers

e os "meus" Armour Boys, encontrados em Praga. and elsewhere.









"When I have seen a good film, one of David Lynch’s for example, what I like about it is that I don’t necessarily understand it or take it in completely. That happens over days, months, or years. Then things about the film will reemerge and I can bring them into my understanding of the world and my experience of the world bit by bit. You can continue recalling visual details, very intensely visual, and hold them so that when you have an experience you think it’s just like that moment when Bob comes in Twin Peaks…I think that is when things are useful and that is what I would like people to take away with them from my sculptures. You might not necessarily like them but maybe they work on you over time." (Laura Ford) From here.

cromo (1)

"As my friend Lucie says, you even miss tyranny once you're used to it. And that doesn't only apply to private life.

I don't miss tyranny. I killed my ex-husband with a dental drill last night even though I feel no hatred towards him. I'm sorry for him more than anything else. He's lonelier than I am and his body is riddled with a fatal disease. But then, aren't we all being gnawed at inside? Life is sad apart from the odd moments whenlove turns up.

I always used to ask why I was alive. Mum and Dad would never give me a straight answer. I expect they didn't know themselves. But who does?"

Ivan Klima
No Saints or Angels
o próximo

in the dark

com Ivan Klíma e pouco mais.

novo para mim: Samizdat.

"Yes. How on earth did you keep writing? What made you write when you knew that as far as you knew you might never be published?

For me the writing was the most important, not the publishing. I was always surprised when I was published, and I was used even from the '60s that many books were refused because of the content and I was one of the people who really started the samizdat, so we very, very soon we, we started to public in this poor way, it means only on typewritten, on typewriter produce books but...

Fifteen copies I think on carbons wasn't it, fifteen pages?

Yes fifteen, fifteen it was the maximum and it was done three times, four times, maybe sometimes ten times, so it, it, it got about one hundred copies, but it had thousands of readers because it circulated and then it was sent outside and Skvorecky in '68 published and Tomsky in London they publish it in form the books and it was smuggled back to the country and it was again it circulated so we had maybe more readers in that time when we were entirely banned than we have today when we are entirely free, and our books appeared in the, my books still in about five thousand copies, which is above the norm, or normality. Anyway we have maybe five, six thousand, maybe ten thousands but in, in that time my books were broadcasted by BBC, the Czech broadcast by Radio Free Europe, the Dutch ........ nearly the whole year each."
(daqui)
Ivan Klima

"Samizdat was the illegal publication of magazines or books that were not sanctioned by the Communist government. My guess is that the meaning comes from the word sam (self) and dát (to give, make), so probably it literally means to produce or issue by oneself. Samizdat was the greatest tool of the Czech underground for freely expressing opinions back when freedom of the press did not exist. It was in samizdat publications that one could find out who in the underground had been arrested or imprisoned, what was really happening in the country, or you could get information about such things as the Chernobyl accident (which initially could not be found in any of the public newspapers since they were strictly controlled by the Communist government, and the Communist government had decided it would be best if Chernobyl did not happen). Also, all of the banned books of dissident writers could be obtained in samizdat form. Samizdat was a societal truth that opposed the lies that were called truth by the mainstream Communist media. These self publications were passed from one person to the next, so that one samizdat magazine or book might eventually be read by several hundred people." (daqui)

departing

prague9

wax

50

a heart of wax
heated by a flame
dripping
on paper

Pavel Z.
in Time is a Mid-Night Scream

pedalling

prague7

43

in each chamber a different world
in each situation
momentary cathedrals
cathedrals of illusion

Pavel Z.

far edge of the words

I Come From There
Mahmoud Darwish

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland.....

- - -

Under Siege
Mahmoud Darwish

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.

***
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory:
No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
In the darkness of cellars.

***
Here there is no "I".
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

***
On the verge of death, he says:
I have no trace left to lose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.
Soon I shall penetrate my life,
I shall be born free and parentless,
And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

***
You who stand in the doorway, come in,
Drink Arabic coffee with us
And you will sense that you are men like us
You who stand in the doorways of houses
Come out of our morningtimes,
We shall feel reassured to be
Men like you!

***
When the planes disappear, the white, white doves
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

***
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel
Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

***
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again.

***
The siege is a waiting period
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.

***
Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

***
We have brothers behind this expanse.
Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep.
Then, in secret, they tell each other:
"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence:
"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us."

***
Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day.
And ten wounded.
And twenty homes.
And fifty olive trees...
Added to this the structural flaw that
Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas.

***
A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved
For my clothing is drenched with his blood.

***
If you are not rain, my love
Be tree
Sated with fertility, be tree
If you are not tree, my love
Be stone
Saturated with humidity, be stone
If you are not stone, my love
Be moon
In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon
[So spoke a woman
to her son at his funeral]

***
Oh watchmen! Are you not weary
Of lying in wait for the light in our salt
And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound
Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

***

A little of this absolute and blue infinity
Would be enough
To lighten the burden of these times
And to cleanse the mire of this place.

***
It is up to the soul to come down from its mount
And on its silken feet walk
By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime
Friends who share the ancient bread
And the antique glass of wine
May we walk this road together
And then our days will take different directions:
I, beyond nature, which in turn
Will choose to squat on a high-up rock.

***
On my rubble the shadow grows green,
And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat
He dreams as I do, as the angel does
That life is here...not over there.

***
In the state of siege, time becomes space
Transfixed in its eternity
In the state of siege, space becomes time
That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow.

***
The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day
And questions me: Where were you? Take every word
You have given me back to the dictionaries
And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz.

***
The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse
I did not look
For the virgins of immortality for I love life
On earth, amid fig trees and pines,
But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it
With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure.

***
The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations
Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph
How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me.
I first, I the first one!

***
The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed.
I put a gazelle on my bed,
And a crescent of moon on my finger
To appease my sorrow.

***
The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!

***
Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,
The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:
The disease of hope.

***
And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior
And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me.

***
Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to
The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the
Blackness of this tunnel!

***
Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me
In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:
Greetings to my apparition.

***
My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And always I anticipate them at the funeral:
Who then has died...who?

***
Writing is a puppy biting nothingness
Writing wounds without a trace of blood.

***
Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall
To another like a gazelle
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,
And that we are the guests of eternity.

Petrin Tower

Prague6

mais compras em Praga

Prague5

prague shopping

wenceslau square and adjacent streets, no doubt. misfit.cz. House of Sparkys. and above all, i found my house at the The Globe. even when I leave, I will stay there forever. The Globe. best coffee house in the planet. bookstore. internet.

Here, all true and not enough. And I'm staying one street from it. :)

"A gem."
- Washington Post travel

"A great place…"
- In Your Pocket Guide

"A superb used bookstore."
- Conde Nast traveler

"The expat bookshop par excellence: both a social center and a superbly well-stocked ramshackle bookstore ..."
- The Rough Guide

"This late-night, American-run literary cafe and bookshop is a hub of Prague's literary scene, hosting regular public readings and book launches...stacked from floor to ceiling with Prague's best collection of English-language books."
- Time Out Guide

"An excellent place to pick up Czech literature in translation ... a relaxed atmosphere with reading lamps and comfy chairs, and the clerks pulling Cappucinos in the next room will happily offer tips on cool Prague activities ..."
- The Berkeley Guides, Eastern Europe

"The intimate, cozy bookstore and coffeehouse serves cafe lattes in tall glasses, yet offers much more than just caffeine...the Globe boasts the best English-language bookstore in town for discovering new and innovative authors. It also pays more than lip-service to carrying books by Central and Eastern European authors."
- Lori Shafton, The Coffeehouses of Prague

"Wondering where to get a large green salad? Where to pick up a good novel? While the Globe is no longer the only bookstore-cafe in town, it has successfully taken on all comers and remains a cultural and culinary champion. It's still hard to find a chair at lunch, when semester-abroad students and American English teachers are chomping on well-made salads, sandwiches and vegetable soups."
- Avant Guide, Prague



Emerging writers and poets (as well as those more established) have rubbed shoulders here at the Globe. William Styron, Jachym Topol, Richard Ford, Ivan Klima, Amy Tam, Ludvik Vaculik, Richard Ford, Julian Barns, P.J. O’Rourke, Gore Vidal have all been here over the years. Even Allen Ginsberg came to visit, although he bashed our poetry section for its “lack of edge”. It is great that the Globe has become a natural venue for interesting cultural events, as we’ve always enjoyed hosting a good reading, discussion, art show, or an evening of live music. Even lingering chess games are fine, as long as someone is ordering coffee.

thanks adri ! :)

czech street wear. more. shopping day.

Jae Eun Choi

Gostei embora seja pouco a sério, eu, não ela. Sentei-me e olhei por um bom bocado no escuro.

Pleasure, Anger, Sorrow, Comfort
Jae Eun Choi
2007
Video installation







Here, a bit more about this Korean artist.

Beef Goulash

ainda em estudo...

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons cooking oil3-4 medium sized onions, chopped1 1/4 pounds of good quality beef, cut into one-inch cubes2 tablespoons of sweet paprika (more if desired)2 teaspoons of ground caraway seed1/2 teaspoon of marjoram4 cups of cold water

Directions:
Warm the oil in a large pot on medium heat. Add the onion and cook until wilted. Add the beef cubes and allow them to brown. Then add the paprika, but don’t let it cook too long or it will turn bitter—ten seconds is fine. Add the water and caraway, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for a couple of hours. The sauce will gradually thicken. Just before finishing, add the marjoram. When serving, add some chopped raw onion on top.

serves 2 to 4

e outra, from small bohemian steps to world domination :)
Lista de compras: caraway seed.

Veletržní Palace

Prague4

Veletržní Palace, Prague 2008.

Dziekuje

é o que me sai quando tento dizer obrigado. falta-me só um pouco para melhor entrar neste espírito estranho que diz no para dizer sim com a cabeça. trabalhadores e determinados, mas divertidos e idiotas, diz-me ela. depois de muito procurar no non sense e nas vielas burocráticas, chego ao Valente Soldado Švejk, herói nacional, um livro tão antigo da Europa-América e que era costume ler na geração dos meus pais. Talvez seja esse o espírito, o mais antigo pelo menos, sobrevivente, pessimista, humorista e culto. A revolução foi recente e suave, mas os novos não querem ideologias.

"Take that idiotic expression off your face." "I can't help it," Švejk replied solemnly. "I was discharged from the army for idiocy and officially certified by a special commission as an idiot. I'm an official idiot."


de Josef Lada. Many more here.

continuando o meu caminho. num sítio onde ninguém me vai dizer por onde ir.
nas ruas de Praga ou noutras quaiquer.

black light... golden light

"Prague, the legendary city, with over 1000 years of history and home to the
original Budweiser. It's the city of golden light and spires"...
"This name was given to the city during the reign of Czech King and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, when the towers of Prague Castle were covered in gold. Another theory is that Prague was called ‘Golden’ during the reign of Rudolf II who employed alchemists to turn ordinary metals into gold."