May 4, Prague

Saturday, May 4. Prague. 

Dear trail friends,

My friend Nancy picked up on the phrase “on the other side of security,” which I used to describe the feeling of relief I felt - after we passed through the security line at the airport - realizing that we could relax and enjoy the feeling of being on vacation. When Nancy used the phrase “the other side of security,” it made me think of the other side of the moon - a male belief magical place on the other side of a distant and mostly mythical place called “security.”

I was about to write “maybe if I really could give up fault finding and worry - even for a day - I would find my way to the other side of the security-moon.” But then I gently reminded myself that I was finding fault with my giving up of fault finding, so I pictured the butterfly flying off my finger and letting the fault finding go. But sometimes - especially when I’m tired or stressed - as I suppose I am now that the group tour has started, I can’t figure out how to keep my mind busy exploring the world around me or observing my inner world, when all it wants to do is go into default mode which seems to be fault finding and worry. 

I suspect that I have not had enough solitary time today to recharge my batteries. I know I need sleep now and to get up early tomorrow (our bus leaves at 8am because there is a marathon tomorrow and we won’t make it out of the city if we try to leave later). But writing the blog feels like badly needed solitude. Funny how on the trail writing the blog gave me a sense of connection with you reading and balanced the solitude of the trail. But now your attention feels like a shelter into which I can withdraw and indulge my longing to focus completely on myself and my own experience, and not need to concentrate on others and our interaction. As I write that I feel myself relax and sigh. As if I just arrived at “the other side of security.”

This morning I did go on a solitary adventure to see a David Cerny sculpture of good king Wenceslas riding a dead horse. For me, the image evokes the idiom “beating a dead horse.” I am struck by how the mythical good king (though the internet tells me that he was actually a duke) in the sculpture looks calm and composed - not unlike Freud in the hanging out sculpture. As if to say “alright, so my horse is dead. But it’s still my job to act as if he and I were marching proudly to victory.” As if riding a dead horse might be a metaphor for living a dead or outmoded dream. But that makes me think of the swan sitting on the egg that may never hatch, and the Jewish adults of Teresin struggling to create normalcy and education and the possibility of a better future for their children. And I find myself loving and admiring the good king who maintains his calm and composure even while riding a dead horse. Photo 1 shows the sculpture, which I believe the sculptor titled ‘Horse.’ (This also makes me want to explore horse metaphors embedded in language: get off your high horse, quit horsing around, that’s a horse of another color.)

By the way, the first time I walked by the sculpture I failed to look up and see it. I thought my gps had misled me and went for a long detour switching between gps programs and directions from trip advisor until I returned to the same place and looked up and saw it. 

In the afternoon we made our way to the Vitava River and across the Charles bridge (famously lovely but way too crowded with tourists for me to enjoy it) to the Kafka museum to see Cerny’s sculpture of two men pissing into a pool the shape of the Czech Republic. I understand that if you send texts to a certain address the men will spell out your text with their pee, but once I arrived I thought I lacked the ability to read the pee so no point in sending the message. I would have probably sent “You never piss on the same country twice.” One of my tour-mates said that clearly the sculpture was about nationalism and expressing contempt for it. I liked that idea. 

Photo 2 shows the piss sculpture. 

These sculptures seem to have a Rorschach quality, and other people’s responses really add to my interest in them.  My friend Lou wrote (about the hanging Freud sculpture) “I think you totally understand the Hanging Freud sculpture and that it means just what it is — he’s very casual & nonchalant while barely hanging on, dangling by one hand above the precipice. The “message” is You Can’t Deny the Void Below, But Don’t Lose Your Grip & Just Hang On.” My sister Judy, on the other hand, spoke of how Freud’s theories and influence hover above us even when we don’t look up and notice him there. 

On our way to the piss sculpture, just as it started to rain, Judy looked up and saw a man holding an umbrella hanging in the air. Nearby there was a woman, and then we noticed a large yellow caterpillar on a building and then dozens of baby blue caterpillars crawling up the building. The large mushrooms seemed related to the caterpillars at least if we were associating to Alice in Wonderland. Photo 3 is a collage of all this public art. (Sorry the baby caterpillars are hard to see, but you get the idea I hope). 

Coming home from the piss sculpture (which is in the small plaza in front of the Kafka museum) we were looking for a path near the river and accidentally found Cerny’s baby sculptures. But I forgot to tell you about my response to the piss sculpture. What really impacted me was the robotic swiveling of the hips and aiming of the penises. These body parts which I usually think of as the most instinctual and least conscious in their movement were totally programmed and mechanical. It occurs to me now to think of the sculpture depicting how a culture taken over by technology (and the robotic drive to create more technology) pisses on the place and the people who first gave rise to it. 

But back to the babies. Cerny had as I understand it been commissioned to decorate a huge antenna/tower from the Communist era which was very unpopular. He created a large number of baby sculptures crawling up the tower. These delighted people and made the tower much more accepted, again if I have understood the story accurately. So as we were walking home we came across the place where three of his babies were installed on the ground (not on the tower). In the photos I have seen the babies look very cute on the tower as if they are crawling up to the sky or thelight or  heaven. But down on the ground where you can see their faces they are very disturbing. Photo 4 and 5 are of the babies - their very cute bare butts and feet, and their high tech inhuman faces. 

Our group gathered this afternoon for the first time in the restaurant of the hotel where we are staying. Judy and I also did our contemplative drawing there, at a high counter looking out on the courtyard where Cerny’s sculpture of Kafka’s Head is installed. My drawing was inspired by a sculpture I saw earlier of three women dancing who made me think of the three fates. But when I drew them I chose to use color so they became more spirits if air or water and I titled the drawing “you never breathe in the same moment twice.” Judy’s drawing was inspired by two women we saw (and she photographed) jumping into the air with their umbrellas, they in turn having been inspired by the sculptures hanging in the air from their umbrellas. I didn’t take photos of our drawings yet but I may post them later. 

Chris gave an introduction to the tour, and Toni our organizer and Angela our tour guide also spoke, along with Ben and Renee who plan to film the lectures during the tour, and eventually combine them with dance and puppetry (in ways we can’t yet begin to imagine) to create an online master class on Freud that more people can have access to. 

Chris mentioned the challenge of reorganizing her Freud lectures (that she tended to organize chronologically in the past) so that they related to the places we would be in. She also spoke of the ways we would be exploring Freud’s world - not only the world of his ideas but the actual physical world he lived in. But she also spoke of how, by beginning the tour tomorrow with our trip to Terezin (through which so many Jews including four of Freud’s sisters passed on their way to their deaths), we were also encountering the fact that much of the world Freud knew - his social and cultural world - no longer existed, was destroyed by the Shoah. She spoke too of her longing (over all these years in which Freud has been such an important intellectual father to her) to visit the small village in which he was born. She joked that we would make the long drive - more than three hours - to Pribor just to fulfill her desire. She spoke of her longing to see the small house, the ground floor which had once been a blacksmith’s shop, and the two upstairs rooms, one of which the Freud family had lived in. She mentioned her first trip to Prague and how poignant it had been to see that most of the children’s’ drawings from Terezin had been done by children born in 1931 or 1930 or  1932, within a year of her age. And how it had struck her too that the house in Pribor had first been made a museum in 1931. 

There is so much here isn’t there, reader and trail friend ? I can’t imagine how it might all come together. I wonder if there will be connections between these strange provocative public sculptures by David Cerny and the ideas and experiences that emerge as we explore Freud’s worlds - those that remain and those that have been lost. 

In any case I so appreciate your presence and letting me slip, as it were, under your protective wing to hang out with these solitary reflections and questions. Thanks for helping me spend this time “on the other side of security.”

Tomorrow we will visit Terezin. It’s going to be a difficult place to visit I think so I hope we all get a good night’s sleep. 

See you on the trail, (even when it’s difficult, right?)