It's All Too Much

I know I was supposed to post pictures, but guess what? Brno is like a high school girl - pretty up close, but not very photogenic. Building after building with crisscrossing, electrified trolley lines marking up the sky like black crayon over a priceless painting. I love the uneven pavement and pastel buildings with their hidden faces and stained glass - but like many things here - it just doesn't seem to translate. Perhaps on another sunny day....

Plus this week was full of nightmares. I was late, lost an earring, skipped meals, constantly felt like an idiot...the normal annoyances of life compounded with the uncertainty of new people and places. It's not all that bad, but it's not that great either. I need a smoke and a starry night - things understood in every language.

I've been trying to think of things to say for the benefit of you - whoever you are - reading this. You want to hear about this place you may have never been to. You want to know what's different, and what's the same. You want to know what you're missing, or feel justified for choosing to stay just where you are. You don't care much about the writer beyond my style and level of ability. Maybe a joke or two would impress you, and a feeling of voyeuristic intimacy will keep you coming back.

So know this: Brno is the place where you were born. It is the place where you learned to ride a bike and where you went to high school. It is your first love and your first heartbreak. Brno is the sun that rises and the moon that streams through an open window at 4am when you can't sleep. It is the breathy silence of a library. The McDonald's downtown and the second hand shop you always pass on your way to work but never enter. The electronic music people sing along to in the mall or the car because they know the words and the beat and don't want to think about too much right at that moment. The warmth of another's body next to yours under covers only to return to cold and empty space by morning. Brno is where you are right now, and where you will be tomorrow. Why? Because no matter where you are, you are always within you. You might be in Michigan or Milan, but first and foremost you are in you - the body and soul and head of you - and that is a place from which you can never escape.

You can make changes to this place - this place where you always are. You can decorate it. Make it bigger or smaller. You can drown it in booze or fill it with smoke. You can alter your perception of it. Force happiness or dwell in sadness. But those eyes and that mind...those hands and skin and tongue...those are the landmarks you too often overlook. Those are the true hidden gems of the city of yourself - not a place for tourists or even locals - but the most exclusive and wonderful destinations anyone can ever know.

Traveling is great. Seeing new places: important places, obscure places. Laughing at silly little differences, buying pretty handmade things, wishing we lived this way or being grateful we don't. The physical movement of the world outside an airplane window - tiny dots and smears of color. Watching the ticking of trees from trams and buses and cabs passing by like old cinema film. Then there's the task of wrapping one's mind around the arbitrary nature of language. How a sound has a meaning, and a meaning has a feeling, and what a comfort it is when we can feel the meaning of a sound.

Not everyone is compelled to see and experience the world in such a way as I do. It just never crosses their mind to talk to strangers, to respond to simple and beautiful things, to still hold close the imaginings of their childhood - some people just want to grow up. To be responsible adults with important things to do and important places to be at important times and to get married and raise a family and give to charity because that's what responsible adult-like people do. They have no patience for pretty words.

But I was born responsible. I have always cared for myself. I know about integrity and leadership. I know about maturity and sacrifice. I know about authority, elitism, and power.

I already know what kind of life I don't want to live - and perhaps my dreams and expectations and pretty words are too much - but I'd still prefer being all too much than much too little.

I'd rather be an explosion of mismatching colors.
I'd rather be the curling black iron on a balcony.
I'd rather be a twisting labyrinth of secret streets.
A bold statue observing the strangers who wonder among paths lined with trees.
A curved window on the top floor with a sill large enough for me and my book.
Golden halos around archaic faces high on a steeple-top.
Smokey rooms full of cheap beer and rich laughter.
Commuting trams shrieking on the rails while bursts of electricity pop and sparkle along the wires crisscrossing the sky.

This is Brno. My Brno. Me.