I am asked frequently by friends and acquaintances why I chose Prague. The answer is twofold. The first fortuitous, by chance, a mystery of happenstance, and the second as old as mankind, a quest for knowledge.
In 1989, I remember watching the celebrations when Communist Russia collapsed. I remember watching on CSPAN U.S. Senators queuing on the senate floor, waiting to give their five-minute speech, wanting to plant their personal flag on the great historical day. They boast of the glorious democratic, capitalist victory. All the while, the U.S., the world, is in a deep recession.
And I wondered, what were we giving the world?
What would our democratic, capitalist system give to the Communist world? A world that had been behind the Iron Curtain for nearly seventy years. The concept of a book exploring the future of democracy in a world where capitalism and corporate control had plunged us into a recession had already been brewing in my mind. What exactly was our offer to the world?
Three years later, I was deep into researching my book and had in the meantime written a collection of short stories and was looking to place them in journals and magazines.
Sitting in the 7th street Coffeehouse in downtown San Diego, reading the Espresso Newspaper, the industry paper, I saw, near the bottom of the page, an advertisement from the Prague Review requesting short story submissions.
I didn’t know where Prague was located, nor anything about Czechoslovakia.
Sheer coincidences a few days later there was a big spread in the Los Angeles Times about Prague “the Paris of the 20s”. I submitted a story on Monday. A few weeks later, the editor Roger rejected it, but it began a correspondence between us (snail mail). I mentioned a book I had in mind that would take place in Lisbon or Paris, or London. He replied if you are a writer, “I had to come to Prague.”
My research on Czechoslovakia told me it had been the most democratic and capitalist country in central and eastern Europe between the Wars. Its constitution inspired by ours. Its first president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, inspired by our founding founders. That the western powers handed over this country to appease Hitler was appalling, a betrayal, the Czechs would call it. Then of course came Stalin. And forty years of communist rule and oppression. A great tragedy.
It fascinated me how a country, similar in terms of democracy and capitalism, would revive itself and reenter the capitalist world after forty years of communism. Rejoin a world in which the United States was emerging from the recession with a vengeance. A period of powerful economic resurgence to be known as Super-Capitalism.
Indeed, how would such a country enter this supersonic economic highway?
It took me four years and another twist of fate – which I will tell later- before I could travel to Prague. I arrived in April 1996 with a plan. I had enough money for a two-month stay. Long enough to write the first draft of my book (not the capitalism book, again to be explained another day) and to explore Prague and to do groundwork in my research for “my capitalist book.”
The plan was for the first month to write during the day and to explore the city at night. The second month, I would flip it. It worked. What I did not plan on was the city taking hold of me and never letting me go. As Kafka wrote, “the little mother has claws.” Which is ironic because my artier was near the Zelivskeho metro stop, near the cemetery, and I would pass by his grave every day.
The claws came out on the very first day. That day I quickly threw my luggage onto my bed in the artier, hurried past Kafka’s grave and boarded the metro tram to the Museum stop at Wenceslas Square.
As I ascended the stairs, the baroque buildings seemed to rise to greet me, and stepping onto the stone sidewalk that early morning into the empty square near Saint Wenceslas Statue, I had the eerie impression that I had been here before. And, as I walked down the quiet promenade and entered a small street toward the Old Town Square, the feeling intensified.
To this day, I have no opinion of re-incarnation. I leave that to others, but the sense that I had walked these streets before settled into my bones, and it has never left me.
Also, I can say that from the very beginning, from those first steps, beside Saint Wenceslas Statue, I felt a certain peacefulness. As if one had entered one’s home. I felt at home. In fact, it is the only time I have felt that way. I felt at home in Prague.
Two months passed and on my last night, midnight, I found myself alone in the empty quiet of Old Town Square. I stood at the Jan Hus Statue bidding a sentimental goodbye to Prague. The first draft of my novel nestled in my shoulder bag. I had no plans to return, nor the means to tempt me. As I grasped my bag tight to my shoulder to leave, music wafted across the square from the labyrinth depth of the old town streets.
Then the music rose in volume and pierced the night. I turned around and around, the baroque buildings spinning, as I tried to make out from which direction the music came. It was the Rolling Stones song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It echoed and carried, danced through passageways, bounced off the facades, and then dashed across the square, and rose to float above me. “It’s a gas, gas, gas.” The words and music filled the night sky, and like a siren’s song, it filled my ears and called me. Strange it was, just me, the night and the music.
I closed my eyes to focus. When I had a sense of direction, I slowly opened my eyes. There was nothing left to do but to seek the source. And with that first step, little did I know my life had changed forever.