I am almost finished with this one. Dominik's sweater for this winter. I hope I will show you the whole piece soon.
Taken on the 28th of October in the town where I was born. A parade with lampions (or Japanese lanterns as a dictionary says). On the 28th they celebrate a foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. However, for long years this holiday was covered by a different one, the Great October Revolution in Russia, which was supposed to ban a national feast in favor of a then more important one. A lampion parade was obligatory for school kids like me. (Have been talking a lot about living under communism lately, he..) And it is clearly visible what these two holidays absorbed - All Saints Day.
We went for a day trip out in Šumava, close to the border. Close to where my parents live. I know that the landscape pictures might be boring but there was a tremendous view over the mountains. And this beautiful blue cottage, just next to an abandoned and huge co-operative cow shed (that escaped my lens). Only later I realized that these had been the forbidden places, still twenty years ago, a so called border zone with the iron curtain on the edge of it. Back then we had no idea how close we were to the West! The border zone spread over a good half of these mountains and for me being a little kid it was like living over seven rivers and seven mountains, far far from the world that maybe didn't exist at all!
Domik apparently didn't like being out on our outing. He was totally scared the whole time. I remember having similar feelings of fear at certain places out in landscape myself. It was only few times in my life but repeatedly at the same places. Very strange and intensive. It disappeared when my school-mates from Prague were visiting and I had to find the most romantic places out here to show them. I started to look at it aesthetically and that was the end of a savage in me. The end of my genuine relation with the landscape. Now Domik has it and suffers.
Benátky nad Jizerou. My husband has been reading a book on Johann Kepler so we took a trip to to this small town to find out what it feels like to be there. Kepler was here. And Tycho Brahe, too. A chateau and a park have a nice genius loci but the town itself gives a kind of a sad feeling. We went to a museum in the chateau. I have to say I like these museums, sort of on the edge of everything, little neglected and dusty, fighting to survive culturally and economically. Mixture of natural and cultural history with a special room on astronomy. Fossilized snails, celtic oppidum and interactive panel with Brahe's solar system. Domik was putting together a big castle blocks and I could look and read in quiet. Coffee in the down town and ready to rush home.
Eva Švankmajerová, her paintings are very dreamy. For weaker characters, they are actually nightmarish. I like her a lot. She died few years ago. You might know her stuff from the film Otesánek. I have written about her previously. The upper pictures are illustration for folk tales, the second one are her paintings in an exhibition catalog.
My husband dug this one out in some "bazar" (that is what second hand stores are called here) along with two other ones that I will show eventually. It is a photograph, a snap like from a puppet show, animated film or whatsoever. The frame is nice old one, so is the pretty aged paper mount inside. A traveling couple staring at the wanders of exotic Japan. How Europeans imagine Japan. Getting close. The lady holds a handbag with letters KLM. It is a souvenir from a travel to Japan, handed to a surprised inhabitant of Domažlice (a town where we got the picture) at the airport in Tokyo. Back in the 60s.
I found this postcard in my drawer yesterday evening. It brought me back ten years or more when I was wandering through Prague exploring its hidden sides (romantic ones). I bought it in one artsy shop at Nový svět (locals know), kind of a deserted street at the time with a feeling of a small town where time stood still. Such is the awkward link between this picture, love and my town.
