Prague Diaries

People get up to weird crap in Prague.

Don’t believe me? Feast yourself on the following bits taken from various incidents, some noted in the journal I used to keep while waiting for the tram to work pre-Covid:

We’re only in a 3D simulation

In the park, a guy walking in the opposite direction started telling me how to run, which descended into him telling me fear is just a concept and none of us can really die because we’re just in a 3D simulation [except for Joe Biden, who is apparently ‘umela hmota’ (plastic)], and…

Drunk dude floundering in the plant bed insults my shoes

I’m running in the park again, and this Czech dude drunk off his behonkey topples into a plant bed in front of me.

Being not a d*ck, I stop and ask if he’s alright.

He’s like… “ooof!”… struggling up onto the curb… “No…”

I try asking if there’s anything I can do to help.

Him, making a goblin face: “Your shoes–I’ve never seen such ugly shoes in my life.”

The dude is barefoot and can’t even get himself out of the plant bed, and he’s judging my sneakers.

I forge onward. He finds out I’m from Texas and, after insulting my tennis shoes, says, “Texas? That’s the insanest state of them all! Like other states, you know, only have like four to five years for rape, but Texas, it has like 20 years. I mean, not that that’s bad–it’s good that it’s that long, but…”

Me: *thinking: “Dude, you can barely speak, slurring your butt off, and you’re spieling out facts about rape sentences in a country that isn’t even yours? Alright, so color me a LITTLE impressed.”*

It turns out he says some Polish dude stole his bag and could I please pretty please check that tree–that second tree, no, that third–fourth tree there–if his phone is in the grass?

I’m game. I meander through the park toward the appointed spot and… there actually IS a phone, right next to his keys. So I bring them both to him and he’s like, “You’re joking. They were still there?”

Yup.

“Why are you running so late?” he asks, since it’s either nearing or past 11pm.

Me: I have too many things to do during the day.

Cue skepticism from the slurring drunk, and I continued running. At some point, he vanished, so someone must have helped him stand up and get home. Or else he was an alien plant sent to prod me.

I bought new running shoes a few days later.

Girl & Guy

While running in the park another day, I overheard a girl telling the guy she was walking with: “A person committing suicide is someone trying to kill the person trying to kill them.”

Guy: Wut?

The girl bounced up on her heels, beaming radiantly.

She seemed inordinately pleased with herself, and I ran on, wondering what point she was making. As in: suicide is self-defense? That might fit for those who actually do it, since they’re defending themselves from something they can’t endure, something that is killing them from the inside anyway, slowly and painfully.

Okay, so that’s quite dark even for me. But I’ve heard it is true that people who commit suicide are often doing so as their last resort, not undestanding how they can go on, because there’s nothing worth what they’re suffering that can persuade them to live. They just need to set themselves free.

Better veer away from that topic.

Here are excerpts from my Prague journal:

Faking drunk in rainbow sunglasses

This dude in rainbow sunglasses was walking along the tram tracks weaving and listening to music, maybe high or drunk or faking it, because he moved off the tracks plenty early before the tram came.

Now he’s dancing in the tram, lifting his rainbow sunglasses to swipe his phone screen.

A girl looking like Little Bo Peep just got on, too, wearing a lavender knee-length hoop skirt with ruffles, her hair dyed silver. Am I in some sort of simulation?

Headless plushy

A woman just dashed up to a trash can and hauled out a headless plush dog the size of a human torso with four legs and a scimitar-shaped tail – like a stuffed dog, only completely seamless where the animal’s head should be, as if no head were there ever.

That plush doesn’t feel right at all.

My neighbor in his skivvies

Yesterday I got home and the neighbor had his door open and was in his skivvies.

I pretended he was fully dressed and asked if he’d just gotten home from work.

He pretended he was fully dressed and smiled back.

My pearls of wisdom

Here is the random type sh*t I spiel out in my journal:

• Good intentions have a way of getting flushed down the toilet. The last ecological detergent I tried just got herbs all over my clothes. It didn’t feel right.
• I’m chronically sleep-deprived. Which probably means both my brain and my gut are eating themselves.
• The writers’ group said Quentyn couldn’t be redeemed any other way but by dying. I think it’s just because people are sh*t at forgiving.
• I need a get-rich-quick scheme. Then I’ll pay people to put my life in order.

Fun stuff can happen, too!

Last week at the swing dance party, this Lady Gaga song came on.

I asked a dude to dance, which is unusual for me because slow songs are HARD to dance westcoast swing to, but I was feeling brave and he apparently wasn’t because he was like ‘I don’t know if I can’ (because as just mentioned, slow songs are hard to dance to!), and I cajoled ‘Let’s try’.

So we did, and he seemed to actually get into it, and I felt pretty good, too, which felt amazing, and then my ex-husband, feeling playful and grinning (he also dances swing), came and stole me from my partner in the middle of the dance looool.

They do that sometimes – steal partners back and forth as a game – but never with me, so I was super-happy.

Ms. Little Introvert 😀

There’s A LOT weirder stuff I’ve experienced in Prague, like walking into the middle of the knife fight, and the goat living in the ruins across the park above where I used to live, but these here are just the recent things.

Anyone want to share anything weird from where you’re from?

And if you’re still here and feel like you want more of my words, here’s my shamelessly copied weekly info for new Sonya addicts: feel free to join the newsletter I haven’t been writing (but intend to), join the patreon I’ve been seriously neglecting (but want to resume), or check out my books I don’t want anyone to buy (for realz cuz it’s my old writing and I’m like nooo, don’t read it…) before I unpublish even more (like I unpublished my dystopians).