Day 13: airports & other liminal spaces.
Simply writing the title of this post sent me off on a mini-journey across cyberspace, as I realized that I wasn’t exactly sure what the word “liminal” meant, and yet I was going to use it in my subject line. I thought I was pretty sure what it meant, but not entirely, so I looked it up.
The first entry for the word on Dictionary.com told me, not very helpfully (but intriguingly), that “liminal” was an adjective meaning “of, pertaining to, or situated at the limen”; leading me to find (belatedly in life, since I don’t know why I didn’t already know this) that the word “limen” means “threshold.”
And, interestingly enough, Prague/Praha also means “threshold.”
So. I am writing from the airport in Prague, a liminal space in a liminal space. It’s a crazy hall of mirrors or something!
Anyway, the entry is intriguing, and I could wax rhapsodic & poetical & shit about how pregnant with meaning the metaphor of a threshold is, and how it’s so terribly relevant to my Meaningful Life (hey–My Meaningful Life would be a great band name. seriously. I want cash for coming up with that), but I won’t do that, here; there are other places for that, like journals and bar napkins.
I will say that I love liminal spaces–and I can now confidently use that word, assured that I am fully aware of its meaning and etymology–and that the prospect of traveling for another full day is something I rather look forward to, just in terms of having the time to let my brain breathe a bit. Also, I need to work on revising a draft of a script that was due yesterday (which I sent! but it needs work), so after getting this post done, I will turn to that.
Now I want to rewrite the entire thing and make it about liminal spaces. But that can be another script.
Anyway: clearly I missed several days of Underread Bloggery, but sometimes it’s okay, I think, not to document every moment, constantly. I mean, I was documenting in my head, and penning brilliant posts in my mind, for later writing&uploading-to-site, so in some ways I was documenting every moment. Just not publicly. That’s okay; now I don’t feel horribly overexposed.
Here are three random things I have loved about Prague, because three is always a good number, and I should put a limit to this, for this particular post:
1. becoming somewhat familiarized with the Czech language, and learning (in a supremely basic, caveman-level sort of way) how letters operate differently in terms of pronunciation, creating the sounds that are characteristic of the Czech language. for instance, š is pronounced “sh”, so the word Vyšehrad is pronounced “Vish-ey-rod” (roughly; there’s a lot more going on there, of course); and c’s (without any diacritical marks) are pronounced “tz”, so hruškovice is pronounced “HROOSHkoVITZay” (again, horribly roughly). I love that, and I love learning about it, and reading language in a new way, and speaking in a new way. Not that I could speak much, but still; reading language and letters in new ways with new rules is very awesome (Vyšehrad and hruškovice will come up in #2 and #3).
2. the bells of Vyšehrad – holy shit, I have never, ever heard church bells that have moved me like the bells at Vyšehrad, the original royal palace/castle in Prague (and the site where, legend has it, Princess Libuše prophesied that a great city [ahem: praha] would rise one day. she also scorned other royal suitors and married a lowly ploughman, or something, and together around 500 A.D. or so they started the P?emsyl dynasty that would rule Bohemia for 400 years, or so) – there’s a lovely cemetery in Vyšehrad, and to be in that place as the bells ring (the bells ring out as part of Smetana’s Vysehrad symphony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trgCZrgL4Ws)
I went to Vyšehrad with my friend and her sister the first day I was in Prague; my friend and I returned yesterday, to catch the noon bells. Fucking amazing. Google that shit and find a recording of the bells. Or I will be uploading a crappy audio track once my friend sends it to me.
3. The quiet of Prague at bars, even though the bars are full (and at restaurants). It’s not like silence, but people just speak more intensely and softly here; there’s no loud shouting and speaking as is customary in the states. Again, people are very alive and involved and engaged, but the volume level is turned way down, without at all compromising the life and energy of the place. In fact, the lower levels of speaking in general somehow contribute to a greater intensity. But that’s just me fetishizing & exotifying Prague, again. At bars, I appreciate the Czech spirits like Hrusovice, a spirit from pears. I have some in my luggage; hopefully it survives the plane
which I must now go to board. more on this later, I imagine. But I always say that.
