Perceptions
Kae: I cleaned the bathtub today! That's how I found I'm low on the cleaning product.
Neighbour: **looks at me for a bit** I presume there's a story there. It's not like you just wanted a cleaner bathtub.
Kae: Actually, it is just that, I just wanted a clean bathtub.
Neighbour: Oh. I thought you had showered one of your plants, or did something messy and chaotic again in the bathroom.
Kae: Nop, not this time!
This is more of a casual battle than sound
One thing that I keep coming back to in my mind during the past week, is the thought about how much I love working on concepts. Hands on, head first, dive in.
And when the concept is done, it has become a Real Thing, in a lot of situations I will immediately lose interest. This applies to my interest in technology, and a few other subjects I would generally refer to as things I like.
It is not the case with my writing. But it does explain in part why poetry, hehe. Poems, especially mine, can be seen as concepts of life situations with the "I" and the "you" as stand in examples of any humans. However, I never lose interest to keep working on them, writing new ones, stealing my own ideas from old shit poems to be turned into a shiny new poem (hopefully a better one).
As it happens, this week I have fallen ill. Which I find extremely frustrating, btw. And this time around, for reasons (yet) unknown to me, I can't seem to be able to sleep much. For reasons that are pretty clear, I am also not able to do much. This leads me to a lot of awake time I wasn't entirely sure what to do with.
Until, in between the moments when kitto has decided to be Helpful To Hooman by demanding my full attention, I went on a weird quest: Browsing Music Theory Videos on youtube.
My today's favourite is Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap.
The 'Interesting Only Whilst Concept' thing seems to not apply to my fascination with music either. Even if I am not really going the music producer route, but instead focusing on playing my MIDI keyboard as a piano. Not too bothered about perfecting my ability to play other people's music, rather than trying out chords, melodies, progression, etc., all whilst mostly sticking to the instrument that Bitwig calls Grand Piano.
I don't know if I will ever want to produce whatever I might compose eventually (or not). All I know now, is that I can do my hobby lying down on the sofa, struggling with the health hazards of my flesh prison, and finding music more fascinating by each fact.
(If anyone out there reads my blog and for some reason happens to know good music theory youtube educators, please let me know in comments. I'm definitely interested.)
Battles indeed
There's a new cat in the building. How do I know this?
The new beast has very loud cold wars with the older cats at odd hours in the morning.
Upd.: also during the day.
A timeline of a restaurant
At some point in the past (facebook implies November 2017) a restaurant gets opened, and for some reason gets named Cik Cak.
October 2018 I move in a flat in the same building.
Later on I try out the restaurant and find that it serves Únětické pivo 10,7°.
And quite nice food.
The restaurant becomes a place where I would go quite often. It's a nice change after the local pizzeria. I'd even have dates there. Invite friends to meet up there.
I over time learn the menu by heart and have a strong set of favourite dishes. Their vegan dish choices are nicer than a lot of other non specialised Prague restaurants.
They change their ribs recipe to a less nice one.
I'm not too sure now, but I remember it being closed only on Mondays.
They move the creepy painting from the wall just by one of the tables, to hanging in the corridor to the bathrooms.
After a while, they change the ribs recipe back to the previous one.
A rather stalker-ey woman who fancies me waits for me at Cik Cak, hoping to catch me when I exit of the building. As it happened, by some coincidence I was down by the river by that time already.
The opening hours change, and the restaurant is now closed on Sundays and Mondays. As a consequence, I happen to go there a bit less. Turns out, I prefer to dine out on Sundays.
During the lockdowns, the restaurant operates as a take away.
I find out that they make marvellous kebabs.
When possible, the restaurant gets reopened as a dine in again.
The rib recipe is still good.
But the restaurant now is open only Tuesday - Friday.
I still some times go to dine there, but more often I would just get a takeaway.
They serve kebabs only during certain weeks and solely as a part of lunch menu. You can't get them at dinner time any more. Which I strongly disapprove of.
If there are additional public holidays during the week, I come to expect that the restaurant will be closed until the next week.
A friend from the UK visits Prague and I make him go all the way here. We share a meal, some quesadillas and beers, and he tells me how surprised he is to discover that I do actually live on a hill. I am surprised in return, as I have mentioned this a few times. He says he never imagined it to be an actual hill.
They have a TV and are showing the ice hockey championship. The place gets very busy on those days.
Summer comes and they put seating outside.
A sign appears that they are looking for a new chef.
When some friends from abroad come to visit, that day the chef is not there. Only certain basic dishes are available. However I was absolutely starving. The list includes quesadillas. Those are still good.
They are still looking for a new chef.
The Euro 2024 football hype comes. They now show those games.
Still looking for a new chef.
One Thursday night I'm passing by the restaurant on my way home. It's late, but there are some people inside still. Why not have a party on a Thursday, I nod approvingly.
The sign about looking for a new chef is still there.
Friday, the 28th of June 2024: there's a sign in the restaurant door that it is permanently closed, thank you for understanding.
At least that's over for now
This afternoon I stood up and finally cut my hair. No more of this growing it out nonsense. At least not today.
I lasted about 17 days.
Cometh and goeth
I keep forgetting to update this blog with very sad news: the birb has moved on.
In other news I could share that I have started making the marinated tomatoes again.
Trivial hair things
I went to see The Smile at Forum Karlin the other week with a couple of friends. It was wonderful, but this is not about that.
In the moment when the band walked off stage (for the first time), I turned to my friends and said:
"I want to grow out my hair!"
To which my friend responded with:
"Even Thom Yorke is doing it, and he's older than me!"
This whole situation has now lead me to buying bobby pins, and then realising that I never learnt to use them. Operate them efficiently.
I'm not entirely sure if this experiment will last, as I might just find myself standing in front of a mirror, with hairdresser scissors in hand, cutting off the ear tickling hair first. And then the rest, of course.
We did later discuss that Thom Yorke might have actually cut his hair to be this length, that he had longer hair before. We also agreed that cutting my hair to shoulder-ish length is not something I could do at the moment.
Local nature news
At the end of my balcony, there is a thick matte glass screen in a metal frame screwed on to the wall as a balcony divider between me and my next door neighbours.
Recently there is a little birb sleeping on the top of that screen. The little buddy seems too fluffy to be an adult yet, and usually sleeps there whilst also leaned against the wall.
It's adorable AF!
As it is summer, the kitten has started sleeping more on the bedside shelf. At times leaning a bit against the same wall, but on the other side.
Nature all around. Good.
People's names
I was listening to the new single by Archive titled 'My Last'.
At some point I turned to my Neighbour to ask:
"Is this Dave?"
Neighbour: "I hope so. Otherwise it would be something by that.. that other guy whatshisname, the one before Dave."
We listen for a bit longer.
Me: "This is not Dave."
Neighbour: "Yep, now when I pay more attention to it, this doesn't sound like Dave."
Me: "Definitely not Pollard either. This must be the previous dude. What was his name? Steve, I think he was called something like Steve."
We continue listening to the song. I decide to check the song credits.
Me: "Craig! His name's Craig. Of course. Well. Craig is like Steve, but.."
Neighbour: "...but with different letters in the name?"
Me: "Yes! Exactly."
Empirical sciences
Neighbour just named my cat as Decision Making Machine.
The list [of cat's names] keeps growing.
Civil War (2024)
I went to see Civil War in IMAX. Talking about mesmerising existential crisis.
Let me start by stating two things:
- I like Kirsten Dunst, oh I like Kirsten Dunst.
- I would not have liked this movie if I had watched it at home.
The second one is probably more important than the first, but this is my blog and I can order things as I please :)
When I started watching it, I was thinking to myself that being a war reporter is insane. The whole concept is insane. Everything about it is just absolutely nuts.
At the end of the movie I was pretty much convinced that if a reporter wants to report on real and raw human nature, being a war reporter is the way to go. Every other reporting can't be this real.
This movie is one of those that makes the viewer angry, glad, frustrated, uncomfortable, in denial, rethinking the character choices, re-evaluating their own choices, and by the end walking out of the cinema a different person. Reaching some sort of acceptance and at the same time - angry.
This paragraph above also explains the statement of why I wouldn't have enjoyed it at home. The beauty of all of it is that in the darkness of the cinema, limited to my chair, I was forced to live through all that. I didn't have anything to distract myself with, to look away from the discomfort and the rest. I had to be In It.
I walked out feeling livid. And with absolute understanding of which parts of my life are worthless, and which ones are the ones I need to hold on to tight. Tighter than before. Not that I didn't know any of this, but after this screening I was forced to see all of it way too clearly. I also was filled with certain and weird inner calm about being this furious. Strangest shit.
It's been a day now, and I still think about them. The characters in the movie. I think I know what Jessie's doing. But I keep wondering about Joel. And all of them. The choices they were brave enough to make, and how much those cost them. And how these decisions kept and kept impacting the next ones.
And most of all, I keep asking myself - Why does this actual reality that I live in, feel less real than the fictional one they were a part of?
And the answer is extremely simple: because my survival depends not on dodging bullets chasing down the story of my life, but on navigating the corridors of corporations. The latter implying a much slower death, and subsequently experiencing much less adrenaline.
Would I want to live in Lee's, Jessie's, Joel's, Sammy's (and the rest) world chasing down my dreams, feeling more alive than ever on daily basis? I don't think so, but I must admit that I haven't tried.
Do I still think of them and wonder about the meaning of my day-to-day? Definitely.
What do poets dream?
The answer is simple - about see-through monsters they adopt and then take on adventures.
As things go
Just like quite a few people, during lockdowns I started cutting my own hair. I got kind of not bad at it, so a friend of mine gifted me a pair of cheap hair scissors to see if that's something I'm going to stick with. That was a couple of years ago.
Well. Yesterday I finally ordered myself a half decent beginner hair scissor set.
Interruptions and such alarms
I'm going to interrupt the Frankfurt and Underworld memory series by noting down a piece of local news.
I had to pop out to the shop for some cat food. It was raining. I passed by the restaurant in my building. It was very inviting, looking all not too busy, with nice food and delicious beer. But cat food always takes priority, as anyone would tell you.
Coming back from the shop, as I got closer to my building, the louder a sound of alarm became. I got a bit worried about the whole situation. Until I saw that it's the alarm for the restaurant and restaurant only. Looking all dark and making very unpleasant sounds.
As I continued towards my side of the building, I was watching the restaurant owner impatiently waiting for the building security guy to run in their offices to grab something and then they rushed towards the restaurant.
I came home and put all the shopping away, in peace and quiet. Oh, and it's almost not raining any more either.
More dancing with Karl and Rick
My memories of this gig I attended are somewhat a bit too euphoric to coherently retell. To emphasise the amazingness of this performance, I will point out that I was stone cold sober all this time.
I had wanted to see Underworld live for so long. During the lockdowns, I used to watch youtube videos of their gigs. Both old and new. Karl's trademark dance is in all of them. It made me truly all warm and fuzzy inside seeing it with my own eyes, in person.
Me and my Neighbour talked about the dance during the half an hour long intermission after the first hour of the gig. I was wondering, if the Karl's Dance TM is written in his contract by now. Neighbour said, it probably would be pointless, as the dance is not only popular, but also he doesn't need to go through the pain of coming up with any new choreography. I had to agree.
Then came the second part of the show.
