-morning glories-

I knew I didn’t want to leave the bustling streets with so much history. I learned a lot and I learned to love a city so far from my home state. I waited so long for this opportunity to return to a place that brought me comfort what seemed so long ago. The months leading up felt so long and when I stepped foot on the cobblestone ground I knew I was back in a place of emotional freedom. Away from all my troubles back home my responsibilities were yesterday’s problem and now I was in another part of the world with other obligations like taking photos. Meeting new faces was refreshing and taught me that being vulnerable is not as big of a commitment as it had always seemed. I hope they don’t just stay memories but we carry on the friendships we built back home. Regardless I was able to detox from the pressure that was building on me in Austin, by being in the city of Prague. It’s cliche to say, but I am changed for forever, the lessons learned, pictures made, and history obtained will satisfy me for a lifetime. It’s the travel bug I’ve caught and now I don’t want to stop this journey. Now we’ve reached the end and I don’t know how to feel. I’m exhausted and grateful. I’ve looked forward to this for so long that a month trip did not feel long enough. Finding something new to look forward to will be a challenge when this experience has exceeded expectations. I know it’s not goodbye forever, so I’ll be back prague I promise. Until then this is my love letter to a place that will stay in my heart forever.

“Prague never lets you go… this dear little mother has sharp claws”

-Frank Kafka

-around here-

Put on your dancing shoes and hope you can walk in them. We’re going to stroll down the Charles Bridge and indulge in the music around us. The Bridge Band plays their old jazz songs and encourages those around to dance and have fun. With smiles on their faces they draw in a crowd of tourists with their cameras ready to record their sounds. Music is the heart of the city. With night clubs all around, concerts , and religious services all partaking, we need music to express what words cannot say. It makes you vulnerable and makes you get up and act like no other. No one dances to a person talking, but put on some music and their feet will be moving. It’s the joy and the atmosphere even in sorrow, that lifts a soul like a higher power. So strike up the band, whatever it may be; a speaker, your voice, or a guitar. Bring a little of your heart and home to a thing so powerful used all over the world. The sounds can be life changing, mood rearranging, or simply make your day. So let the band play, and say the things that are too important to just say.

“Love looks pretty on you. Makes you soft, tender, proud. Makes you sit up and take notice. Gives you a home to set down your things.

What a blessing it is, to have music and dancing and poetry. What a gift it is, to look at someone and say

I’m so happy to have found you- at last, at last, at long, long last- you’re here.”

-Lang Leav

-location notations-

Under the tree was the coolest spot in the garden. Reading a book and minding her own even though peacocks walked around. A peaceful place, I wish i also had a book to read but the melting heat distracted me. I was surprise to see such a garden in bloom. Where I’m from they’d burn to a crisp in a Texas heatwave. It’s what I’ll miss the most about this place, all the flowers and their beauty. Trees so green and flourishing they actually shade you from the sun. The past few days have been too warm compared to the first day we got here. I guess its the universe trying to prepare us for the return of the 100 degrees we haven’t seen in a while. It’s like a strange breakup that’s easing it’s way out. Soon I’ll be back to melting and walking next to burned out gardens. Until then I’ll soak up what’s left of my experience here; the cool breeze and beautiful plants all around me. The foliage is lush and in abundance, like my heart is for this city.

“She was born of a forest
And rests her heart  
Shallow in pooled dreams
Dripping further than her tears 
Falling to soft earth.
She eats rosed lilies 
And pickled cattails
All while 
Her footsteps leave no absence known
As her lithe nymph body melts into foliage.
And her arms permanently reach
Into the void of 
All unknowable things.
Grasping at gossamer threads,
Like thoughts that can’t be spun together.“

-Alice Wilde

-morning glories-

Coffee to go because my day begins before I want it to do so. It's hard to survive without it, it's just something I'm use to. Down them like it’s nothing and it’s still hard to wake up. Not even coffee at this point can catch me up on the sleep I’ve lost. Every excuse in the book has been made, to stay in bed and not get up, but coffee is one that allows me to suck it up and face the day. It’s my coping mechanism that relieves me of a headache. An anxiety disappearing serum that doesn’t work for all, but does for me. However, I’ll say, when you move places and your order doesn’t change you've hit the peak of being a grandpa about your coffee. Just black and nothing sweet please, extra hot, or extra cold never in between. Add an extra shot because I have lots to do today, but my work should never be reliant on the thing that I drink. Maybe a cup of coffee is overrated, an addiction I need to break. It stains my teeth and keeps me up, or sometimes doesn’t work. I always rely on it but it’s not a reliable ally to me. In conclusion I should cut back, but it’s hard to stop this fast moving train. Oh, and Europe is probably the worst place ever to try and cut off a relationship with coffee.

“three sips ahead
of sunrise and I 
spill it all,

see my coffee
splash wide across
the horizon,

hear the hiss
of daybreak 
extinguished,

and the brief sigh 
of another lost day.”

-nick usborne

-the nocturnalist-

Up all night just talking for hours. Walking around the city and exploring its wonders. Perfect strangers who met across the world when our home is practically in the same place. The magic of Prague brings the night owls out, whether it’s in the streets or in a flat for something more calming. There’s an essence in the air that makes me feel alive but as a different person, in a place full of history and mystery. Around every corner is a new place to discover so it’s easy just to wander and get lost in the company of another. That company is especially comforting when it feels like you’ve known them for years. Maybe I knew you in a past life and now we’re making up for lost time. So we stay up all night because if we sleep we miss out on all the fun. Time and space is limited, we may fall into oblivion, but then at least the memory will be there, of the late night hours spent together. I have just enough hope to be sad, not depressed becuase finally I’ll get to miss something great again. I’ll come back to the city, and if fate have it we’ll cross paths again. Until that day, my memory will store the time we were night owls in the city of Prague.

“Blowin’ all around us
I can hear you and I’m home
Voice sounds like autumn gray
Eyes look autumn gray
Lips taste autumn gray
Body feels autumn gray
Everything out of place
I don’t need space babe”

-boy willows

listen to Autumn Gray & more by Boy Willows

-noticed-

Face unknown but the silhouette grows as thousands pass by the window. A church full of bones but all I can focus on is the magic of the light and the window. Shadows protect the identity of my subjects but the mystery is what makes it worth shooting. I hide my face behind my camera and try to be conspicuous. I don’t want them to know I’m capturing the beauty of the moment. Unplanned they walk into my shot and involuntarily become my model for the moment. It’s just a glimpse that they show, a point in time where our paths cross for just a second. Perfect timing, as they say. It’s immaculate that fate would have it be that way. I don’t know you but I capture the essence revealed to me. You may never see it but know I sat there for minutes waiting and waiting. Even though its dark I see your silhouette gleam, and it’s picture perfect to me.

“Though darkness above might seem like a threat
shadows begone one would never know light-
do not dare allow yourself to forget
life is more than a simple silhouette.”

-unknown

-architecturally speaking-

Stone cold walls hold so much power for some people, but to me they are a grand art display just for gawking. The relics are a religious experience that I will never understand, yet to some they are godly and higher than them. I make sure to pay my respects, I’m in their home after all. However my eyes will always gaze up to the stained glass that are painted so tall. The stories they tell are more compelling than words in a book. I feel a spiritual surge from all the colors and gold. Material things that they put on display but its a common attraction for anyone- any religion. The art in the cathedrals will hold more value than the religion, it draws me as close as I’ll be to it. If the light of the world shone with color like a stained glass window then maybe I’d see him in the light that they do. It’s all controversial but these buildings and their art work are so peaceful. A place to pray but a past with destruction at bay and ill-intent. It’s easy to forget it all when all they reflect are God and the angels draped in gold and a thousand technicolor pieces. I look up to these masterful windows that express its culture to the world. But they are just beautiful, a spiritual artistic experience, not something greater than this world.

“Stained glass window,more true the words appear,

But where others fear

I can shatter my own

glass or heart or soul

and clean the tarnish

by leaving out every piece

you painted with twisted stroke

and amass myself together

until the colour of my light is whole.”

-Krystal Cochrane

-architecturally speaking-

The structure a home to something very old, an idea that has floundered with history. Made for the elite the doors now creek as everyone can walk through the door. Art connoisseurs and students alike come to see the czech artists and worldly paintings and designs. The walls that these million dollar pictures hang on hold next to no value, but without them they’d all be on the floor- or worse, ruined. The department store turned art gallery, is unique in its lineage. How many times do you intend for things to happen, but they take another course and become something equally or more amazing. That’s what I think of when I see the buildings of Prague. What once stood has been many things in its lifetime. Likewise I think on these structures when I have my own tribulations. Becoming boggled in the stress of a project you remember one day it’ll be better. On stormy days the sun eventually shines. It has to and the rain will dry, leaving a beautiful rainbow, even if it’s not what you planned. The architecture can speak magnitudes if you look past what it contains. The clean space will never be erased, just made better as time pushes on.

“Wrapped around like a vast blanket
Under, over, ever changing, ever moving
Shape shifting, ever present, always fluid, never set,
Arrogance dives for a sliver, jealously guards that bit
Like a potter at the wheel, dictating, defining,
Cruelly setting limits
A rush of power, surging through
Man made weapons fashion what charcoal drew
The prison comes up, the hostage is hid
Strong vertical fortress, horizontal bars and a lid
The triumphant laugh gives way to a gasp
The mother surrounds the prison, the child in her clasp
You may confine me to any degree
But I define you, bound yet free“

-Vidushie Shriya

-small wonder-

Wandering the galleries being dragged by your mother. They’re all just paintings on the wall but one day they’ll mean something. You come across something more interesting, a reflective thing staring back at me. How is this art? it’s just a mirror on the wall, but maybe it means more than what the eye can see. It’s like it’s saying I am the art piece on the walls. Surrounded by Van Gough, Pissarro, and Monet there is little ole me in this glass frame. Such a small wonder to end up in a museum but such a profound reminder. A reminder to look at yourself now and then. It may seem minuscule but look at the bigger picture. The image can swallow you if you don’t take it too seriously. Try studying it like a piece of art then it has more meaning. Thats whats interesting about a mirror. It reflect the world around like a photograph but ever changing and moving. The floors of the art museum have many depictions of Czech life, but here lies a picture that doesn’t lie, and showcases the changing world around us. Mirrors don’t forever capture that you were there, but for a moment in history you were on the walls of a museum.!It physically doesn’t move but has momentum in its perception. Peculiar because it doesn’t seem like art but your portrait is divine.

“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.”

-Sylvia Plath ‘Mirror’

-the nocturnalist-

Night has just begun but the stalking has already sprung. Seeking out the night goes in a predatorial like stance, pouncing with my camera clicks as they draw nearer. Moonlight is the best lighting for lovers to hide in cover. For friends to go on a stroll and wander. Or just to roam the streets alone for comfort. The sights you see during the day have a different glow at night, it’s worth returning to for an experience contrary from previous hours. Spooky skies send you away and make you feel like you’re in a different place. It’s beautiful like something from a fairytale, a page out of your history books. It’s all different when you see it with your eyes, so when you close them the image stays.

“The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful,
and I see that what
is not the earth is beautiful…
I stay awhile away O night,
but i return to you again,
and love you!”
– Walt Whitman ‘Night Poem’