Greetings and welcome to a low-calorie entry (entree?) for Street Prophets-- and indeed anyone else who wants to wander in. There are no doors to lock when you set up your soapbox litterbox on the corner of Prophecy Street and yowl at the neighborhood. Care to join me in a yowl? It'll do ya a world of good.
Today, as luck would have it, is Friday the 13th. I'm not the superstitious sort, but I do believe in beautiful coincidences. I'd like to share a wee slice of my week with you if you'll bravely step over the elegantly whorled, ginger hairball I'll get to yowling...
Do re mi, mi, mi, mi ,mi...
Last night I went to an exhibit opening party at a little gallery in downtown Prague. The exhibit was set up in celebration of the 100th birthday of a man who died about a year before I moved to this fair city of a thousand spires. I never met him. Several years after he died I became friends with his wife and later met his son and daughter-in-law and their children. He was a famous man who was the son of an even more famous man-- interesting, complicated, convoluted, famous people who I never met. But I was invited to this exhibition by the family, and I went.
On the tram, on my way to the exhibition, I thought about a friend of mine who had actually met the man being honored. My route would take me past the street where this friend lives. He's a very old man himself, although he enjoys good health. I thought about calling him and inviting him to come with me to the opening. It started at the unusually early time of six o'clock in the evening. The gallery is only a couple of blocks away from his apartment, but I was running late so I didn't stop to hop up the street to ring his doorbell. So I hopped off the tram and stepped over to the crosswalk and there, arm-in-arm and laden with bags full of groceries, was my old friend and his wife crossing the street in front of me. After we'd all safely crossed the street I greeted them and we talked a bit before I told them where I was headed and asked if they'd care to join me. Turns out they're on the mailing list and knew about the exhibition, but were already exhausted and politely declined my offer. If I have half their energy at that age I shall consider myself to be blessed. We agreed to meet soon for coffee and I offered to help move a couch down some stairs for them. Then I hurried on to the exhibit.
It was a wonderful evening-- and a strange one. I knew several people there, but ended up spending most of the evening talking with people I had never met before: an old Czech photographer, a young Moravian film producer, the honored man's nephews. My best friend here was at the exhibition and we barely spoke the whole time. Toward the end of the evening I found myself talking with one of the grandkids and then discovered that practically everyone except the family had left. So they, being the good people that they are, insisted that I join them for a late dinner at a restaurant a couple blocks away. I was teased for attempting to decline an offer to stuff my belly. I guess the restaurant is rather well known, although I'd never been to it before. A night dedicated to a famous man I'd never met could only end in a famous restaurant that I'd never heard of-- right?
At any rate, I declined liquor and coffee after the meal knowing that I had to drive across town early in the morning to take my mother-in-law to a doctor's appointment back over on this side of town. I'm not much of a fan of driving in Prague although at 6:00 in the morning the traffic was light and I showed up early. The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful. I managed to not take any wrong turns on my four trips across Prague and we didn't have any long waits to see any doctors. On my way home I noticed something which made me smile and fumble at a traffic light for my camera. At one intersection I brought it up and snapped a quick photo of the van that had been in front of me for about a fourth of my final journey across town:
The van belongs to a butcher's shop called "U Rysů"-- which means (At) The Lynx. Like a slightly spattered, pale spirit guiding me home.
This evening I enjoyed another beautiful coincidence. My little family and I have been watching an old Czech television series from the 1970's on DVD. We borrowed it from friends of ours. Mrs. the Werelynx recalled watching a few of the episodes when they first came out. These days it's mostly seen as a fawning example of communist era propaganda. The concept of the series is that the main character returns home after World War Two to find that his father has been murdered. He joins forces with the local police and solves the crime and then the following 29 episodes follow him as he moves up in the ranks of the police force and moves to Prague. It follows his life and career with each episode (with one exception) taking place during the year after the previous episode. Well, we drag out these DVDs on the odd evening when we're in the mood for a good detective story wrapped in blood red propaganda and tonight it was suggested that we continue on our way through the series. Tonight's episode just happened to take place during the year I was born and the whole plot revolved around one fairly famous restaurant in Prague, a place I'd never been to before last night.