I just got home from my poetry reading, the Alchemy series, which has changed leaders once again, but a step back may be a step forward, as Ken is doing it again. It was a pretty good night. The featured speaker was someone who used to be a regular, like 15 or so years ago, and it was real nice to see her again. There was a girl who played guitar and sang, a British guy, white haired, beer-bellied, who read a couple of funny poems, one just about the church across the street from his house (there seemed to be a couple of themes for the evening. Catholicism was one and Lucky Strike cigarettes the other. Honestly, two separate poets referenced that specific brand. What are the chances?
It was the end to a lovely day. Like yesterday, today was a holiday lightly observed. No, it’s not Labor Day, that’s an American thing (and certainly not “Loyalty Day,” that sounds like something they’d do in North Korea. Of course, it’s also the old communist worker’s day holiday, but there just aren’t that many old communists around any more, so nobody pays any attention to that.
No, there is an older Czech custom, that if you get a kiss underneath a cherry tree in Petřin park, your love life will be fine for the rest of the year. If not, not so much.
Well, first, Helena said O.K. but we really don’t need to go to Petřin, that’s not a requirement, so we went for a bicycle ride. Isabel came along.
It was quite a pleasant bike ride, although it taught me that I am well out of shape and need to do things like that more often, and we had a real hard time finding a cherry tree. They’re all over the damned place in Prague until you’re looking for one. So, she said ‘It doesn’t really have to be a cherry tree, any flowering tree will do, so we kissed by a lilac bush, and on a bench under some other tree, don’t know what it was. Then, on the way back, we finally found a cherry tree. It was behind a chain link fence, inside a school yard, so we stood as close as we could, near the rubbish bins, and consummated the holiday. I felt quite relieved about that.
www.gurukalehuru.com 