Tuesday, 11 November 2003

Prague, day 3 ::

Is there public art like this in America?

Monday (today; it’s just after midnight) I dropped off my laundry, had coffee, and began wandering again. I’d made a list of museums and discovered that the two that seemed most interesting were both closed on Monday. I’d also gone through the “Things to See” portion of the Lonely Planet guide and marked a few things. So I took what must have been at least half a dozen metro rides from one part of the city to the other, and still managed to do a lot of walking, at least 5 miles and maybe 8. It was a gray day, not bad for photos around midday, but after 4 pm it got tough.

Porta-studio

Around 6:30 I went back at my room to rest and plot the locations of a couple jazz clubs, but after the only meal of the day and a pint of Czech beer (a tart with morning coffee and a chocolate bar in mid-afternoon don’t quite count), all I felt like doing was staying there. I wrote postcards, set up Logic so that the Radium is controlling some of the more twistable of the ES2's knobs, and made my own music.

Walking so much today, I found a different quality in it. It seemed that the more my body wanted to complain about how I kept making it move and not giving it much food, the more I found myself amused, as if to say to my body, “well, how do you think you’re supposed to feel?” Around every corner, there were new sights and sounds. I wondered for a moment why I was forcing myself to march around so long, following some combination of whims, maps, and random chance. Was I such a glutton for new experience? Or just wanting to be more aware that “wherever you go, there you are?”

References:
Surprising myself ( 8 April 2004)