It’s not like I needed another trigger to go straight into my Eat Pray Love/Under the Tuscan Sun, onset middle-aged privileged white person who needs to become an ex-pat right away; finding themselves by folding themselves into a strange new culture which isn’t really strange or new, but just different to them; the use the old endless line of credit to infect other parts of the world with various ridiculous needs phase—but I got one this week anyway.
It came in the form of a form letter from the county probation department, which automatically caused me to have to roll through my severely damaged in the ongoing smooth-brain internet fire of 2015-present as to whether I’d done anything that would put me in the crosshairs of the local Gestapo. I came up with nothing but decided to open the letter anyway (previous me used to do smart things like throw stuff like that away, it doesn’t exist, lalalala.)
What it was was an (optional) summons to appear in court to testify against this man who tried to light my car on fire this summer while I played at the park with my kid. It sounds more dramatic than it is. Nobody really tried to Ace Rothstein me while we were swatting a tennis ball around—not on purpose anyway.
The community park and tennis courts where I live are across from the library, and adjacent to the community center, the first little old schoolhouse (still standing!), a playground for younger kids to play in during the day and older kids to drink in at night, a skate park, and some open space/trails.
During the early days of COVID—when things started to go haywire and prior to the non-eviction mandates or any kind of stimulus—the area served as the defacto place to set up shop for folks who found themselves temporarily or permanently without shelter.
By July or August of 2020, I’d say there were probably around 150 individual vehicles, tents, or tiny encampments up and down the block, enough so that the county put up port-a-showers in the parking lot of the closed library and so that the Catholic Church across the way hired 24-hour security and roped off its parking area and installed No Trespassing signs, because, you know, that’s the mission of the church: KEEP OUT THE NEEDY!!!
Anyway, since I’m in that lucky subset of the safe-for-now class, an individual who couldn’t afford the rent on his own home were he to have to pay such amounts and working odd jobs in order to make those very frayed ends meet.
I had a tremendous amount of—I don’t know what to call it, it’s not empathy because that word gets thrown around too much and is in too-short supply anyway ...maybe it was just The Fear.
…Seeing that life up close every day and getting that feeling when you’re running a long race, like a marathon, when someone has been on your shoulder for miles and miles. And you sort of get into the same rhythm as them, same pace, same breathing; you can smell their scent as it approaches. And you make a decision, you can either ease up and let them pass, or you can dig in just a little bit more and try to snuff them out, break THEIR spirit instead.
And that’s what we’ve come to in this end-of-whatever-this-American-experiment-was version of misery and death by capitalism. Keep going or get run over.
Go to the park to throw the Frisbee around and pretend everything’s OK while subsidizing your own meager existence by helping a guy who’s going through a divorce tear down and rebuild his shed, taking three couches and some rattan lawn furniture which used to be quite lovely before it turned to black mold mush to the dump, and getting a two-week asthma attack from spreading mulch over an acre lot. And then have your car lit on fire.
…Or stay at home and cower in the dark.
I contacted the probation officer from the number on the paper and explained to him that I didn’t think the guy who tried to light me up had anything against me, and even so, even if he did, I don’t believe in incarceration and—though I don’t know his situation or his background, he probably needs mental health services, food, shelter, and money—and would any of that kind of testimony help?
There was a staticky pause on the other end of the line, a muted sigh, and then he said, “No. None of that will help,” and politely but quickly asked me if there were any other questions I had.
I said no and hung up and threw the paperwork away.
Split-Level Smichov District Flat Prague, Czech Republic
I know Prague is a cliche in the west, “Oh, I’ve been to Prague,” but I can’t help but feel that wearing a wool coat around for nine months out of the year and walking around with my head down while my very important inner thoughts will lead me to kind of a Diane Lane-type renaissance but on grayscale.
Also, this video basically told me in 1988 at a very impressionable young age that this is where I’d have to live.
Thirdly, after he died in 1997, Michael Hutchence’s coffin was carried out of St Andrews Cathedral by the remaining members of INXS and younger brother Rhett as “Never Tear Us Apart” played. Like holy hell, if that wasn’t a fucking scene of terribly sad young Aussies…. Like, I just can’t bear it.
BTW, in 2014, that song charted AGAIN in Australia, reaching number 11 (surpassing its original place of #14 which confirms the notion that things just keep getting shittier and also, Australia, I beg of you please tell me what 13 songs in the winter of ‘88 were better than this one? No song is better than this one!)
I guess it’s possible to naturalize for Czech citizenship after about ten years of living there, and five years of living there constantly, which used to sound daunting to me, but I can knock out a decade—especially one not in this failed state jabroni rapescape—like it’s the lunch line at Panera. I’ll just bury my head in my phone and pretend I’m not even there.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I WILL go for walks around and sit at cafes and pretend to watch the world go by while I swim in the deep end of my own thoughts, and I’ll vaguely pay attention to the Czech version of the news from here and enjoy the results of America’s final two elections from afar and all the diseased people who believe in the rapture, and horse GI meds, and beating children will eat whatever’s left of the rest of this place alive in their shitty landfill-ready fascist flag shirts, as the mandarins retreat for the coasts, and it all just goes to fossil fuels hell—and I won’t even own a fucking car, ha! So there.
Or maybe I’ll start a gofundme. I just need under a million five to get me there and set up in this joint. I mean, look at all the cops and clergy who donated to help a kid who went on a murder spree during a protest pay for his defense fund. Surely these pillars of their communities would willfully open their wallets again to escort me out of this constantly refreshed evangelical hell—for good.
Anyway, I feel like my Prague origin story that I saw it in a pre-wall-fall video when I was 12, and I liked the lead singer’s who aesthetic down to his curly hair in his face in the cold, and it never left me, so now I want to live in this late-19th century building that his been “recently converted into a contemporary urban residence” whatever that means (I’m sure the original in Czech was better pre google translate. Like it said something about the kid’s room is the bed where Gregor grew his gross wings.)
Exposed brick, big old industrial support beams, parquet floors, a cold-tile shower sex bench, and a fireplace—I think it’s the only place within 200 kilometers (see, I can adapt!) with double ovens.
There’s storage there too, which I bet—because I was raised in America—is like everything, and views of the Prague Castle from the common balcony where my imaginary other ex-pat friends will tell their stories like they moved there for a job (weak) or for love (weaker) or to find love (OK, I’m listening!)
Walking distance to all the spots from “Never Tear Us Apart”: (Whoever Google mapped this out, I thank you; also, this is the ONLY reason for the internet to exist.) As you can see, this place is right in the middle of it, including the sax solo graveyard, the Vltava River, and the Charles Bridge.
‘Cause we all have wings, but some of us don’t know whyyyyyy.