I’ve been in Prague for three full days now and am just skimming the surface of the things to see. I have so much to say about the city (yes, it’s beautiful; yes, people are friendly; and yes, I’ve gotten lost about a hundred times), but so far the thing that has struck me the most is how textural the city is. Pressing your palm against the plaster, cobblestone underfoot, the lipped curves of rooftiles overhead. It’s all pretty amazing, and I’ll post pics soon. In the meantime, top textural moments from Prague:
- The fence of lovers’ locks. People come to a fence that hangs over a canal, carve their lovers’ names into the metal of a lock (or paint it in some cases), and hook them to the iron posts. Legend has it that if you carve the name of someone who you want to be your lover, your wish will come true. The colors of the collection are striking, as is the fact that so many people still believe in love.
- The John Lennon Peace Wall. Graffiti abounds in the city, but nowhere is it more powerful than the Peace Wall, a plastered exterior wall where John Lennon once protested. The wall has since been painted and repainted by visitors from all over the world as a symbol of freedom of expression and the undying desire of all humans to be heard.
- The rose garden. Because of the exceptionally cool weather Prague has experienced this spring, the roses bloomed late, and I stumbled upon them at their height. Visitors come here and sting their significant others with kisses (supposedly good luck to kiss here) among the bumblebees.
- The river. The Charles River flows through the center of the city, and while I wouldn’t want to bathe in it, I adore how it flows under and through bridges and buildings, and snakes through the main arteries of everything. Prague faced serious floods from the river, some of which destroyed a number of original statues from the St. Charles Bridge, but on a whole, the pros seem to outweigh the cons.
- Marionette windows. Anyone who knows me knows I’m terrified of puppets, especially the carved, creepy kind with little faces painted on them. Nevertheless, en masse, the marionettes here take on a kind of aesthetic value not found in solo puppetry.
Lovers’ Locked (by SPL)
Don’t delight in the sight of a lock unhinged and crooked. Hooked to a feral fence, a wish decrepit— a magic man, puff puff puffing the magic dragon on the spent end of a lit nicotine finger, watching her carve clandestine initials of her best friend’s man with the metal vee of her key, etch etch etching the purge into steel.
The Flood (by SPL)
Wash the unholy watermark, moonlit moss and overflow fungus feel like concrete clean. Foundations lift from their feet.
This is it! shouts a man sure the world will end. He’s in the street, his eyes opal and drunk on the future. Wash the unholy waterstain from the sides of the home, its pebbled plaster pilling, rubbed raw. A wall agape.
The flood takes two hundred years to brew, ten minutes to spill its steeped tea into the city. Percolation and a sneeze—bless you!—flooded homes and cracked trees. My husband always forgets to bless me, wash me clean, scrape the grit from my home and innermost mind.
theideallist 