April 15th, 2010

O.K., finally, after a long delay due to technical factors beyond our control, because we are not really computer people, the April book of the month is in.  Give it a read, I think you’ll like it.

One thing I love about Prague is the parks.  I don’t just mean the big parks, with their beer gardens, their spectacular views and their lawns dotted with beautiful, beautiful bodies basking in the sun.

I mean the little places nobody knows about, and they’re all over the place.

Today, I took Sam to football practice.  Now, I enjoy watching my son play football, it warms the heart and all that, but this is twice a week for two hours.  It gets old.

So, I went for a walk.  Now, there is the park right behind the sports complex and we’ve known about that for about a year now.  There’s a playground for the kids at the bottom, which is the only part any people go at all.

The thing is, this park is not accessible by any major road.  It’s tucked in between an uninspired neighborhood of shops, Prague 8 town hall, a medical clinic and the sports complex around its outer edges, and the river, although it’s actually a backwater of the river, at its base.

But there is a path I had never taken, and since my sister-in-law was babysitting Isabel I was not required to go directly to the playground, so I followed it.  It was a beautiful point in space and time.  The path went over the crest of a hill and leveled out on the other side, with a wall of slantwise flat rocks to the left and a view over the backwater and one of those little brick lined streams which are really sewers, but still, it’s running water and running water is a beautiful and fascinating image to meditate on, like flames. And there was nobody there at all, nobody in sight.

There was a bench and I sat down, which changed my point of view.  The hill below me was steep, so as I looked out I could not see down, but was looking right into the tops of the trees.  I watched a blue bird flitting around.  I deliberately did not write that as one word because I am not an actual birdwatcher and I don’t know if it was a bluebird.  Just that it was a blue bird.

It was a nice afternoon.