A couple of weeks ago I re-read one of Nabokov’s early essays entitled, Good Readers and Good Writers, which can be found here.
I have become obsessed with this idea of not only wanting to improve my writing, but making it something, something tangible that you can mold and shape on your own. Alas, I have already committed the first sin of a writer, 'creating an expectation even before the writing begins'. I guess what I am curious about is inorder to be a good writer must we only write fiction? Or is their room for a reader to write a memoir of their experiences without the illusion of being on a mountaintop of moss covered lament (see 'But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep...')? For Nabokov can non-fiction be good writing?
Tangential segments ends.
Tak, we begin in Praha.
This past weekend I had the occasion to meet with some friends in Prague, Nové Město, where I was the final stop on binge drinking tour of Munich and, for some, greater Europe. Seeing friends was just what I need to pull through after what has been a long month of newness. My thoughts on Prague are this:
1. The Jazz Boat Canal Tour is the best place to take a lady if you want to impress her.
2. The Drunken Monkey might not want to be the place you follow it up with.
3. Crying on the street definitely makes you look American.
4. If you are out till 4 expect to be in bed till 4.
5. You are probably better off not ordering four liters of Banana beer unless more than three people are interested in drinking it.
6. Never sit down and just order beers around dinner time because your waiter is bound to hate you.
7. Always sit next to the gentleman with the Burger King t-shirt sporting traditional German garb.
8. The best tours are night walking tours when you are not quite sure where you are headed.
9. Women always get in free at the topless dancing bar.
10. Go to at least one Irish bar because, like anywhere else, they will always find you.
11. My gig here in Litomyšl is pretty great.
The trip was grand, but running into fellow English teachers in Prague who have to work industry jobs, on top of teaching, just to make ends meet, makes me me thankful for my job here. Admittedly, even though I have lived in a city for the past five years, the amount of people was a little overwhelming at first and I had a similar anxiety when I was in Bratislava as well. Perhaps I am just a bit more country than I thought.
Sorry, Nabokov, but this world I cannot create without showing pictures.
If only you could hear some of that Dixie Land that was playing downstairs on the boat... wait!
What happens when the Whirlaway, Chicago, meets Drunken Monkey, Prague.
Still smelling the rotting flesh of banana corpses with each belch-na zdraví.
Even from far away the castle is, well....
One of the main reasons I am excited to travel to Olomouc is to see the second astronomical clock in Czech Republic. This one is of course the famous one in Prague.
This was a beautiful sculpture in what I am assuming is Old Town. Guesses?
& this is what I was happy to come back to.
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