Prague Fog
Transient, insightful mornings from a post-war life abroad.
While studying abroad in Prague, there were plenty of moments where I had the misfortune of navigating daily life amid shady figures and loud American students. Much of the ennui was alleviated by intimate moments walking alone through Prague.
Early in the morning as a light fog lifts from the city, I could be alone with my thoughts. Some cities seduce and charm their way into our hearts with their beauty, elegance, quiet calm amid the storms in life. Others may repulse us with vulgarity or anemia, a lifeless, plastic façade covering up lesions of inadequacy, which may send us reeling or running for cover.
Prague was a beautiful woman dressed in cumbersome Medieval armor. She was a fallen Šarka, a woman warrior, filled with doubts over her own power, but filled with judgment and contempt - a natural, yet immature defense mechanism. Prague was exceptional, but she never felt that way about herself.
You could tell Prague, "You are perfect as you are," and she will tell you, "No, I am still not enough. Sure, I have so much within my reach, but I'm still so, so sad."
Prague nursed your melancholy, linked arms with you as you walked alone, and opened up a bottle of tears that you drank together as the sun set over the dark, glimmering Vltava.
"Life is hard. Life is unbearable. What's the point of being?" she would bellow through her rugged cobblestone streets like the lonesome golem she was at the core of her city soul.
While I often felt misunderstood by Prague's inhabitants, I felt that through my quiet strolls through the city, that Prague somehow understood me. While I took solace in the quiet morning hours, I felt there was nowhere to turn where I could relax the rest of the day.
Running, running, running through a maze of a city in a rat race for my own sanity. Home wasn't here, but it wasn’t back anywhere I've traveled from Florida to Massachusetts. My last real concept of a home existed in the desert sands of Iraq, in my mind's eye. A wave of saudade swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.
While I ran through renaissance, baroque, and gothic architecture in this jewel box of a metropolis, my mind built columns and walls of what a foundation for a new home could be. No one was going to tell me where home is; I knew I had to build it, I had to redefine it.
As I stopped to catch my breath on a bridge heading back to the Kolej, I looked out over the river and toward the city and sighed. Closing my eyes, I imagined my freezing wind-chapped skin was warmly kissed by the sun and that the sky was clear turquoise instead of the lonesome gray clouds above. I imagined that I was happy as I longed for the desert.
It was difficult to conceive what “home” could look like post-war, but it took wandering the streets of a foreign city to truly challenge my imagination. It took stepping out of a familiar comfort zone to truly trigger uncomfortable yet necessary conversations. While living in Prague provided its challenges, it also provided an opportunity to think critically and seriously about what it truly means to be happy.
If there has been a gift this lonely, foggy city has granted me, it’s the gift of creating my own path forward. And for that, I shall be eternally grateful.
