April, 1998

I dunno, it's different for everyone and I lay no claim to moral high ground, quite the opposite I am an offender. Cuff me officer, stop me before I offend again. I admit to having owned a pesky streak of arrogance my whole life long and this not speaking the language of my adopted country makes me uneasy because it is in some ways a resurgence of that darker side. As I move closer to having lived six years in Prague, some defense of my stubbornness seems to need the clarity of getting it down on paper. Court is in session, the accused stands before you.

Let me say at the outset that I have mastered such necessaries as dobre den, dekuji, prosim and nashledanou and yet in most instances the phrase that leaps most quickly from my lips is "pardon, nemluvim cesky, anglicky prosim," excuse me, I don't speak Czech, English please.

It keeps me somewhat outside the culture, although I read a good deal about Czech culture and history, in English of course. I've gotten used to the thin smiles of salespeople and they cut me a bit of extra slack, no doubt due to my age. Trust me, there are a lot of good things in getting older. I persist in ignorance, hold out in the face of more than enough reasons to give in, beg the difficulty of seven cases, but it's a sham. I make no claim to speaking French, Spanish or Italian either, but I speak more of each of them than Czech.

I come from a culture that threatens to swamp itself in communication. America is in the process of so drowning itself in messages that I have left it in large part just to hear my mind work. When I go back to visit, there is a hypnotic pulse to the overlaid messages, a throbbing beat to get off my ass and join the Pepsi generation, a shininess and newness that begs success in the buoyant arms of Master Card. Immediately upon stepping from the plane, I become a man with strings attached, pulled to idling my way from floor to floor in The Gap, seduced by the endless colors and array of sweaters I could not begin to wear in a lifetime of sweater wearing.

I'm an addict there and it's too wonderful for my limited concentration, sixteen speakers in a two-door car, three hundred channels on cable. My ears and eyes are pulled into conversations on the street, jerked this way and that by every billboard, neon message and magazine stand. I haven't fled as much as I've quietly withdrawn to a place away from my language, where I can hear my own thoughts run. Prague is for me a haven of the solitude found away from messages and it brings together the energy of a thriving city with peace of mind, working my way through plotlines and poetry, watching dogs sniff one another in that international way they have.

I am more informed here and less addicted. America seems more clear from Prague and I write about America. Long directionless walks in the visual richness of this city pull me together and I find myself spinning yarns and allowing one thought to run headlong into another, hands in pockets, alone in my mind.

I've found a sense of focus here, protected by my willingness to stumble through with "nemluvim cesky, anglicky prosim."

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