How the Revolution robbed me of rebelious youth

The Velvet Revolution of 1989 was undoubtedly a turning point for Czechoslovakia. After more than four decades the Communist regime finally fell, without any bloodshed or violence. Grand. But what did I know. I was a decade and three years old and if you ask me, the Revolution was the greatest injustice perpetrated on my young life.

I was a sheltered child. My parents had all the time in the world for me and my sister. I never wondered why, that's just how things were. Every day we spent hours in the garden that my parents built on a former dumping site. Every weekend we went on a trip, hike, or a mushroom hunt to the nearby Carpathian range forests. I knew that my parents don't work in what they studied for. I knew my dad was a 'political writer', a 'dissident' - words that I was forbidden to utter at school. I only told my favorite teacher, Mrs. Tomíková, because I saw her in the church around the corner from my house. Teachers were not allowed to go to church. Thus we had a shared secret. It had a taste of adventure to me, for that is all I knew.

My mother went out of her way to make things easy and exciting for us. When the police would stop us on the road while we were trying to go see their underground friends in Prague or Brno, she often had to spend hours with us in front of a police station in the middle of nowhere. While my dad would be interrogated, we sang songs and recited poems under the policemen's windows, so that they let dad go already. Same we did at home once we discovered bugs in the wall and telephone. I would bring a friend over, and we'd stand on the washing machine, singing school songs for the green men on the other end. It was fun. House checks were just pure excitement. Police would come at the break of dawn or earlier, and start searching every inch of floors, walls, furniture for manuscripts. By the time I was ten or so, I knew what to hide. I would run around with a laundry basket smuggling videotapes from London to the areas they already searched. They found one, but I saved the others. What adventure! I also asked the policeman to confiscate my math and physics textbook as I didn't like them one bit. He didn't find it funny at all, but I sure had a blast.

At the same time I was trying to be the best Pioneer of the school. For some reason it did not seem to be at odds with my family's life at all. I was the only fool to voluntarily recite in the Room of Revolutionary Traditions (all the other students were there for punishment), I was in every last silly school activity (collecting old paper from people's houses and recycling it, helping to clean up parks, singing in choirs at the Communist Party meetings, standing in uniform during apparatchik functions...you name it, I was there)... I was dying to go to Artek - an international Pioneer summer camp in the Soviet Union. For the best of the best. I could however not go. My parents didn't have the right 'cadre profile'. They were sacked from the Party and I was doomed.

In 1981 my father's best friend, Milan Šimečka, was taken to Ruzyň prison. He and others were busted for smuggling samizdats out of the country and forbidden books in. He was in prison for some 15 months, without even a trial. My father, in order to preserve some sanity, started digging a hole in the backyard. We didn't know what it will be and I thought it was all hillarious. It took him almost the whole 15 months, as it grew and grew... it was to become a swimming pool, but eventually turned into a wine cellar. When uncle Milan was released, we spent every fall in the Vineyards picking grape, pressing, making wine. Nothing but good times in my memory.

I was not blind forever. When I was about twelve, I joined my father at a two week gathering on a horse farm near Prague. They filmed a movie about revolutionary France, with a parallel story from their lives. Vaclav Havel played some famous revolutionary who fought against Cardinal Mazarin (played by Milan Simečka), Karel Pecka got executed by Zdeněk Urbánek. Or was that Petr Pithart? I played what I was - a clueless child. My role was to observe the execution with fascination and hold the chopped off head, asking what it was, and also to accompany the postman played by Ludvík Vaculík. When we weren't filming, my role included feeding horses and cutting grass at 5am, pulling drunk and singing Václav Havel out of thorn bushes at about the same time, and then some riding, cleaning, and such. Who'd imagine all these people would be Presidents, Prime Ministers, University Presidents and such less than a year from then.

Shortly afterwards we had the last house check. It was on the anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, thus to be expected. But from the looks on my father's face I knew that this is not fun anymore. When they were taking him, it was one of the only two times in my entire life that I saw tears in his eyes. The other time was his best friend's funeral one year later. He said :"I love you, take good care of yourself," which frightened me to death. He doesn't say those things. Later I learned (mom concluded I'm old enough to be in the picture) that the trial they are preparing for him was seeking to sentence him to ten years or more in prison, for 'subversion of the Republic', libel and whatnot. Now I knew that house checks, and police stations were terrifying. I got quite familiar with the Primatial Palace in the back of which the detention cells were. We were allowed to visit him once a month. He's lost a lot of weight, but still tried to convince us that he's generally happy. Has time to exercise, read, write... what more could one wish for. Somehow that wasn't all that convincing any more. I looked up to his friends with much greater awe, trying to understand their murky philosophical talk.

That's when things started moving. Poland and Hungary already denounced the monopoly of the Communist Party. Polish representatives of Solidarnosc, former dissidents, visited us while father was still in prison. It pissed off the state security, parked in three or four cars in front of our house, to no end. And brought tremendous joy to Adam Michnik and others. Alexander Dubček brought roses for my mother. I finally knew who is who, even if just barely so. Amnesty International from Vienna, led by Duke Schwarzenberg and International Helsinki Federation, organized protests in front of the Primatial Palace when the trial was about to start. It didn't. They released my father just two weeks before the Revolution, as the case would not stand even in front of the Communist court at that point in time. Now that was bloody exciting. I realized how lucky I was to be surrounded by all those people this entire time. There they were, under my nose, and all I knew was that these funny uncles who talk all the time and get drunk quite a bit.

The Revolution whisked all of them, along with my father, away. They were on the public squares, holding roundtable talks with the Communist Party government about the handover of the power. Havel became the President. My father the federal minister of information. I knew this was the end of that era. An era that I just got a sniff off. I knew they will be so busy that even if they do manage to meet in one spot ever again, it will all be state talk, and money issues, and all the charm will just be gone. Sure it was. And it was for the best for everybody, of course, except for me. (And the apparatchiks, I suppose). I felt it could have easily waited some five years, while I get just a wee bit older and am able to actually take part in some of that action. Or understand a little more. What would that be in the grand scheme of things? Forty or forty five years, what is the big difference? I could have been one of those young rebels, just like Placák who led the environmental platform flooded by teenagers. I was robbed. As my father was busting his back in the high politics in Prague, I vowed to never be interested in politics. I was bitter and angry about my fate. Then I got a masters in political science... but that of course, is quite another story. The Revolution robbed me, and robbed me good.

Love is in the air

It's May and it's raining. Love is in the air and everything is breeding, about to breed, or wanting to breed. The bluejay is back on our dogwood tree, singing his lungs out, dogs are tearing off of leashes. Revolting couples are cooeing everywhere around Harvard square, not minding the grumpy rest of us, literally asking to be mowed down with a Kalashnikov...but I digress...Love is in the air. Even where the air is damp and musty.
Like in our basement. That's right. Love is in the air in our basement. It lured all the centipedes out of the dark slimy crevices. They chase each other across our boxes and spare furniture. It gives me and Kris an extra thrill, since we are moving in two weeks. We imagine what's breeding, hatching and crawling in the boxes and call friends around, trying to get them come help us move 'just a few boxes' across the street. Especially since our new addition to the creepy crawly family. Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present:

The Hacklemesh Weaver:

Yay! He's a few inches long across the diameter. Fuzzy, brown, with menacing "palpal organs" (eek!). That's how we know our friend here is a guy. Strutting his stuff, looking for some of that luurving. If he found it, we'll have spiderlings soon. They hatch in May, of course.
I found some fascinating stuff on our spider. It all screams LOVE:

"Amaurobius ferox, a half-inch-long spider (up to 2 inches with legs) common in European woodlands, practices matriphagy. Within a week after the young hatch, according to entomologists Kil-Won Kim and Andre Horel, at Universite Henri Poincare in Nancy, France, the mother spider actively solicits them to kill and devour her. For three weeks in late spring and early summer, the mother spider sits in close contact with her egg sac until eighty to a hundred spiderlings emerge. She then lays a second batch of eggs, on which the young immediately feed. Three to four days later, the spiderlings molt. The next day, the mother increases her activity, drumming with her legs, jumping around, and pressing intermittently against the clustered brood. Within half an hour, they swarm over her body and begin to feed. Mothers never attempt to escape or fend off the fatal attacks. ("Matriphagy in the spider Amaurobius ferox: an example of mother-offspring interactions," Ethology 104, 1998)"

See? That's what you get back for all that love. I'd say close your windows, lock the door. Do not pick up the phone. May is dangerous. They're all out to get you. May May be cursed to the deepest hell!

Memoirs of a hoofer

My eyelids are irreversibly closing. My stomach still hurts. For the past three days I felt as if I was going into labor. That is highly unlikely, unless I was approached by the Holy Spirit that informed me I'll bear the next prophet, just like Mary did (or told Joseph that's how it happened and he bought it... aaanyway). In case that happened, I must have been drunk. If it did not happen, I presume I have some sort of a virus or bacteria. Simply, I'm sick, because I finally have time. I have spent weeks, hours and hours every day, in a dark dungeon, sewing, painting, rehearsing for the soon-to-be-famous musical Cleopatra! (hey, we just opened. Give us a benefit of the doubt, and some time). I keep staring at the walls of my beautiful office, picturing the tired looks on Scott and Oliver's faces, who slaved in the dungeon for some six weeks non-stop day and night. Ollie would break into singing some cheesy non-descript radio songs - he would spontaneaously combust into singing, rather. Scott would jokingly bicker with Roger or Mark who cannot sew for the devil, but to his credit kept trying every single day. Or he would curse at and pray to the sewing machine that authored all the costumes for the show.
I miss seeing exhausted Nana (Ryan) stumble around with his skeptical look and appearance that awoke every last inch of motherly instincts in me and made me go fetch vitamins, beer, or cigarettes - whatever keeps Nana alive. He'd come alive at 7 pm alright, when he'd start guilting and harassing us into better performance, or throwing chairs when he deemed it necessary...

I love my job, mind you. But there is simply not enough purple glitter, not enough earpiercing wood saw noise, not enough cursing, in fact there is not enough alive-ness at all. It is the computer and I. The daily quest to resist the calling of the mop to clean the floor although it's thoroughly unnecessary, the calling of the peacefully sleeping dog to be taken outside again, almost against her will, or the calling of the rubber band ball to add more rubber bands to it...

If life is nasty, brutish, solitary, and short, just like Hobbes suggested, then the Machine club environs are perfect for living it to the fullest. See for yourself when you come to see Cleopatra!

I'm sure I'll be restored to full health by Friday, in time for another show, and then start feeling lousy on Sunday again, hit with a severe Machine withdrawal syndrome. First week off I had a bad sinusitis, second week I had the stomach inferno, I can't wait to see what my organism has in store for me next week. Wish we still had rehearsals every night. It was much healthier, I swear.

hell-on-wheels

I emerge from a coma-like deep sleep. Something is huffing into my ear, nibbling on it and slobbering all over my face. I glance at the alarm clock. 4:51am. That would be Tory, the hell-on-wheels puppy. Time to go play with the soccer ball. My eyes are almost sealed shut. I feel fatally exhausted after the last two weeks of nightly rehearsals and the premiere and matinee of Cleopatra! on Friday and Saturday. Plus I'm sick, I think.
I feel my way out of the room, it's still dark. Birds are starting to sing. On the way I locate my jacket. This time nobody peed on it, hurrah. I hold on tight to the railing as I go down the steps. The two German shorthaired pointers compete in who'll trip and kill me first. Being outside at 5am is very peaceful and somewhat refreshing. We kick the ball around for half an hour, Tory gets some food and water and a chewing bone. I'm hoping it will keep her busy enough to let me sleep some more. Wish I thought of that earlier. When I come back to the room I'm staying in, I note the odd shape of the curtains. Chunk is missing. Some hell-on-wheels has swallowed it. Just as I resign and am about to crawl under the blankets I smell something familiar. The hell-on-wheels peed and pooped on my comforter. After spending half an hour outside. <@#$!!!@#$!>. Whoever invented puppies should be put in the public cage of shame, just like they had in the Middle Ages. I saw it during the "Know Your Town" excursion in Bratislava. I go get a new comforter, bring this one downstairs. I fall asleep to the sounds of Tory chewing on a plastic bottle and attempting to bite Mia's head off. When they wake me up at 8am, I am far more tired. Everybody peed and pooped everywhere again. This will be a loooong week. Why did I volunteer to housesit again? Ah yes, serenity I thought. Alone in a big house. Damned fool!
After another soccer ball session the hell-on-wheels demands to get on my lap in the kitchen. She curls up, and falls asleep like a little snuggle bunny. You don't fool me, little one. If only I could freeze her like this. Hmmm, there's an idea....

On hold

"Thank you for holding, your call is very important to us...."

If I hear that one more time, I swear I will explode. On the other hand, I really shouldn't grumble. I am the creator of my misery.

How easy one forgets where one comes from. There was a time when I needed visa literally everywhere. They were to keep those pesky Eastern Europeans out of the civilized world. Now that we're fully fledged Europeans, I don't need them. Almost. There's but a handful of countries that still hold their noses up high. One of them is Canada. Canada! Who'd remember. Canada seems so friendly and welcoming and all...

"One of our customer service representatives will assist you shortly..."

It is the most expensive mistake I've made so far. $1,500 mistake. My flight to Canada is just taking off. I had to buy another ticket to go to a conference I don't have time to go to in the first place. I didn't even finish writing my paper for it. Everybody will be smarter there. Everybody will have fancy presentations and will know tedious details about minorities in countries most people cannot even pronounce.

"We apologize for inconvenience. All of our representatives are assisting other customers..."

I am clearly being punished by the Gods for my carelessness. I get everything served on a plate in my life. Everything works out miraculously, even when I least deserve it. Now I pulled an all-nighter, my nerves are shot, and the Powers that be seated two gossipy women just across the coffee table from me. The one facing me is the most repulsive eater I have ever encountered. She chews with her mouth open, talking loudly, spitting pieces of her roastbeef sandwich on the table. And I cannot detangle the darn earphones.

There. I finally hear from the Cheapseats.com representative. Too bad, she says. No refund. My return ticket may not be valid either, since I didn't board the flight to Toronto. She says to give it a try anyway and wishes me good luck.

Thank you very bloody much. As one hundred and thirty seven times before I swear I will think about what I'm doing when I'm doing. I will come on time. I will wash my hands before meal and I will not sleep with anyone on first date.

At least now that I'm off the phone I can listen to the soundtrack for Cleopatra!, rehearsal of which I am missing. If I was on this new flight to begin with, I could have made it to the rehearsal, and could have been in another dance number. Plus I bet it's a little more fun than watching these two whales spit food at each other. Ryan probably runs around the stage like a madman and tells everybody to "gay it up". They might be putting Cleopatra's throne on the hydraulic lift in the middle of the stage and trying out the dance number I helped to choreograph just yesterday. And I have an all-nighter to loo forward to on the plane. Lucky me, I have brought six books and some articles about the sorry bastards that lead the Eastern European countries in 1950s. Gomulka, Gottwald, Kadar. Nagy is not a sorry bastard, but I'd rather sing anyway. Piasecki is outright interesting - he was a cunning viscious slithery slimy thing. I'll start with Piasecki then. And hum "Everything is Whiter in Rome" along.

When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend
I'll get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations
I see the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening, by the morning looks like shit

And I'm not sure what the trouble was, that started all of this
The reasons all have run away, but the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is

Dagmaster

Kris was trying out the whole online dating thing. She set up a profile on The Onion (a good pre-screening to eliminate all those with no sense of humor) and was sifting through her emails daily.
I was also single at the time and although I would love to say she had to put a knife to my neck and twist my arm, it wasn't quite so. I was curious and willing to try. What harm can it be. It's anonymous, it's online, I don't even have to talk to anyone if I don't want to.
So I set up a profile, plastered my photo onto it, and sifted through emails daily as well. Exchanged a few emails, but never liked anyone enough to meet in person. I mean, it was difficult to choose between a guy with a full sleeve tattoo, a doctor who likes hours of sensuous kissing and soft whispering (I would have to smack him with a rolling pin to get away from me) or a pilot who'd like to have a pretty maiden in every harbor.... It got old pretty quick and my ad was soon abandoned and forgotten. Besides, my boomerang boyfriend started showing up every weekend again and things were moving rapidly towards re-bonding, and eventually, months later, moving in together.
We had a perfect little house. I played the homemaker. An emancipated homemaker. I painted walls, chopped some trees down with a chainsaw, hauled many rocks away from the garden that was abandoned for ten years, that sort of a thing.
The garden. My garden. Inch by inch I turned it from a dump to a nice piece of landscape. I put some primroses out by the everything-invading forsythia, along with narcisses and snow whites to have a little spring garden. Then I put in some shrubs, a double flowering japanese rose, trimmed rose bushes that were already in there, sowed in seeds of marygolds, tossed some violets that invaded every empty space and crevice like a horde of Attila's Huns...
That particular morning, I was raking the devil out of periwinkles. They were covering most of the backyard and I wanted to get rid of them, put d0wn a nice lawn on which I could put a blanket and read in the sun. Phone call. E was calling from work.

- Hey, how are you?

- Good good, I'm raking the lawn and and I want to...

- Is everything okay?

- Uhhhh, yeah.

- Have you seen the Boston Globe today?

- No.

- Check out the online edition, Dagmaster.

Dag..what? Wait, how did he...? I mean that was my.... did we ever talk about....where the hell is this coming from....?.... I run to the computer, rake in hand, splattering mud all over and load up the Boston globe. Scroll down, pearls of cold sweat on my forehead in anticipation of some disaster. International news...nothing outrageous, Domestic....whatever.....Sports...not even looking....Personals........ Wham! There I am, my photo and all, on the front page of the bloody Boston Globe. "Dagmaster.....About me: I am the best Slovak this vicinity has to offer, if perhaps the only one...." I fold my head on the table and beat it against the teak wood that I polished that morning a few times. Why did I ever post a profile up? Why did I not delete it as soon as I was bored of it? Why did nobody ask me if I agree to have it plastered on a front page of newspaper that everybody in this whole damn town reads...why ,why, why?
That day was not a pleasant day. I had to drive to school to first stop by at the Registrar's Office, and then teach my International Relations class. At the registrar's, the student at the desk grinned and asked: "So, you're a Taurus?"
Basomazapat azandelat, just give me my stupid paper and don't meddle into what's none of your business. Grrrrrrr.
I asked my students to read international news section of the Globe at the very first class. It's easy, I told them. You just go online and subscribe to receive international news via email. Or at least browse through the headlines online before class. Apparently they were good students. For they all did peruse the online edition of the Globe that day.
"Miss Kusa, can we go through the news from the Boston Globe now?"...chuckle... "You are from Slovakia, professor? What is the number of Slovaks in this vicinity?"...hee hee hee, ho ho ho... "Miss Kusa, have you found anyone yet?".....
Little bastards. I need to be much more stern with these wisecrackers. No more Mr. Niceguy. No more jokes, no more games, no more debate teams. I've had it with you, you lousy little shitheads....
So I had to teach a bunch of cackling gremlins, but somehow I survived to the end, with a bit of self-deprecating humor and a lot of feigned composure.
I got home completely drained. Boomerang boy was, however, beaming with energy and good humour. At least he wasn't pissed off. He liked the ad. He said it said the right things in the music and interests department. He would have called me himself if I wasn't already living in his house. Wiseass. Well, musn't grumble. The Best Slovak this vicinity has to offer, was taken out to a nice dinner. And learned an invaluable lesson about anonymity and safety of personal data out there in the online universe.

What the crones are for

Nora turned 30 last week. Now that doesn't seem a big deal when one is, say, 50, but from the twenty-something side of things, it is a cause for a pause, if not outright for gloominess. One is expected to be a mature responsible individual and there's nothing glorious and exciting sounding in that. She reserved a whole restaurant, where she had just about 30 friends. Some of us were a high school gang reuniting after years.
I was de-seated from the goody-goody first row of seats in high school in my senior year for disturbing. To the back I went, where the troublemakers sat. Nora was my immediate neighbor. We barely spoke the first two weeks. I was too good for her, she was too bad for me. Over time I found out that this scoundrel does have a remarkable sense of humor, as does Diana and Marina behind us. They taught me how to smoke, how to network white lies and back each other in order to get out into town behind parents' back, how to generate documentation in order to skip school without punishment. I had my first C on the grade report that semester, and 3 or 4 C's the second semester. It was naturally the best year ever.

And now Nora has her own apartment and her own dentist's office. She comes home exhausted after ten hour days at work and rarely ever goes out. We chatter on the phone, grumbling about significant others or a lack thereof. Diana is a representative for a large construction company and is saving up money for a house that she'll buy with her man. They go everywhere together. Without Richard, there is no Diana.
Sandra had her second child on 1st of January, she now has a full house, what with four of them squeezed in a one bedroom apartment.
Only Mira and I remain afloat, shooting out into various parts of the globe without much planning, doing this and that. But she, too, is planning a traitorous escape from spinsterhood and afloatism. Mira is looking to settle down with her old time boyfriend, to whom I introduced her. Silly me. Luckily she tasted the freedom this lifestyle brings and she won't last long in one place. At least she's a fellow globetrotter.

But when Nora turned 30 last week, we all had a grand ole time. Drinks were for free. Many a gin met many a tonic and there was dancing on chairs and tables. Houses, jobs, significant others, all was forgotten and we were the high school troublemakers again. We decided to open a bar in Bratislava when we retire, the Olde Crone Bar, which we shall bartend in person. Among five or six of us, that should be no problem, even if we'll be tied down to wheelchairs. I wish to retire already, don't want to wait another 40 years to be a silly old lady that can get away with just about anything.

gloomy monday

Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that paintin' in a cave
And there's a word I can't remember
and a feeling I cannot escape
And now my ashtray's overflowing
I'm still staring at a clean white page
Oh and morning's at my window
she is sending me to bed again

So I will find my fears and face them
or I will cower like a dog
I will kick and scream or kneel and plead
I will fight like hell to hide that I am giving up