The film was fantastic. It is one I’ll see many times in my life, finding arousing details each subsequent watch. I’m not sure how far we have progressed on our flight. Static in a chair, I feel as if I never left Praha at all.

I am not sure how I’ll feel when I reach ground zero. I want to be in transit forever. Perhaps I am the happiest when I am on the move, when the ending is uncertain, or when the ending is so far away that I’ll never see it in my lifetime.

I am talking about a personal ending, of course, and not a universal one.

There is no difference between men and women. They are all the same - so long as they carry a light deep inside them.

I shall not begin the film yet, but instead watch the most recent episode of Lost, saving Wim Wenders for after the meal.

A glare threatens to wash out shittypie’s contrast.

I sit on an aeroplane bound for Atlanta from Praha, sweet Praha. When shall I see Praha again? Well, I am banished for two years, so the minimum sentence of exile is at least obvious. My only connection is this small shittypie which accompanies me. The Smaller One was left dry eyed at the aeroport, receding as my footsteps took me towards gate B8. She worried for me. I was locked up as a result of my last attempt to fly from the country to my dreaded “homeland”.

As I listen to the voices (mostly the accents) sneak in between two tunes by The Church, I cringe psychologically. I am going back.

I spoke to her on the telephone mere minutes before departure. I sat in this slowly warming seat. I am still displaced in space, however. I attempt not to think of her return to the flat in Hůrka and the disturbing presence of ghosts she will feel throughout the next weeks, possibly longer. It is remindful of the insanity of Melanie leaving me in Austin in a flat filled with items we routinely shared. I recall doing my best to uncork the blackness and let it flood over me with intention that doing so might quench it. I don’t recall my results and the journal which holds them is long lost in a basement near Muenchen.

She’ll stare at the empty space in front of the range, imagining wisps of me coalescing and then fragmenting into swirls of smoke from the pan slightly charring topinky. I’ll be in two places at once. She’ll reach in her sleep with her paw to the space warmed strangely by the continuousness of my presence over the months but cooling ever so slightly evening after evening. Whether she awakes with the lack of touch or not, there will be a penetrating sting.

She’ll awake with longing.

And wherever I am, I’ll do much the same, but to cold sheets holding a vanished phantasm from a dream.

If there is a greater force which occasionally tests me, I’m all for it to do so as often as possible. It’s good for me. It deletes lethargy. It drums up positive emotions. I’m up for the challenge. Let’s go for it.

A few days ago, I exited tram 25 at Letenske Namesti. I was on my way to Chris’s office because he was, as usual, running behind. The original plan was to synchronize a meeting at Vltavska (that is, I was to hop on a tram he was already on). It was scrapped. As I shuffled down the three steps and onto the pavement, I saw a shimmering reflection of light fall and clink sadly on the ground. A lady had dropped her keys. The keychain was a green bottle opener fastened to a ring. There were three keys on the ring. Another woman asked someone quickly if the keys were theirs, but got no reply. They lay stepped on and generally ignored during the following seconds. So I grabbed them. I walked to the crossing where I knew the lady to be - most who disembarked went that direction. I didn’t know exactly which person the keys belonged to and was readying myself to proclaim I’d found lost keys and were they any of yours… I was lucky. The first lady I spoke two claimed them. At my ‘prosim’, she looked at me, startled and actually a bit frightened, I believe. When she saw the keys, relief shown in her face, however.

I relate this because I thought about it several times in the ensuing hours. Had I done nothing, I believe I’d have been guilt ridden for much of the remaining day. Surely the feeling would have eventually passed (by evening, probably) but I’d have felt the pangs (like echoes strong but waning in power one after another). So, in the end, it was a selfish act. Is this what motivates the saint? The wish to wash away any possibility of negative feelings spawns the desire to aid others?

Meditation comes in a peculiar form for me. It often involves long walks alone, sometimes aimlessly, through the city streets and many twisting paths of its green areas. The sensation is calming and that is why I place it under what I see as the broad banner of ‘meditation’.

The rush of hours always brings a tightness to my chest, as if my heart and lungs were constricted. When I am pressed by outside influences into a schedule, I sweat. I shake and tremble. I am a wreck.

The solitary walks (at times with music singing in my ears and at times without) have no routine or schedule. There is nowhere I must be at any particular moment. I am not only with myself, but outside of myself, at one with my environment, if you will. This is true even if there is music singing in my ears.

I find that when that tightness comes, I am hurrying through the day not for me, not for the sensation of being alive as a whole, but always for someone else. Always. Perhaps it is a selfish sensation about which I write. It is the selfishness of wanting to be outside of oneself, methinks. For the press which others exert on one’s schedule destroys any beauty of the moments one passes throughout the day.

Solitary walks. Meditation.

Well, lucidity is running strong through all of my days. I concentrate on such things as Abstract Algebra and comprehend quickly as opposed to times when I fooled myself into believing I could learn and remember pretty much anything whilst my mind was muddied. That was very often throughout the last years, I am afraid.

Here is something I’d love to do: Go through “Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson” slowly and write comments about the text and pursue thoughts which it ignites in my mind. This is an aim I shall begin tomorrow. That’s Tuesday, baby! 18 November 2008: Another day of lucidity.

I wonder if Jenicek is reading this. Time is apparent. It slides rationally. I miss him. He was a direct stable point in my life. Now, all is insanity.

It is gone. Goodbye.

After careful consideration (years of research) I have come to the conclusion that Peter Gabriel’s third solo album is my favourite.

So now comes the best song by this band, the band I have loved for years and years. They should know it.

A joy comes. Truth. Love of song is immortal.

An infant with the voice of a crone
In Nebachanezar’s parking zone
Calls out my lord… your end is nigh
I didn’t mean to make you cry
In deserts where the dust storm blows
And lush black swamps where mandrake grows
We’re marching, laughing to the drum
Waiting for those kings to come
The circus sun in Nero eyes
The lions and the Christians rise
Software sings and hardware hears
We’re destined babe to live these years

Fucking excellent.