Bailey Alexander

St. Gabriel satisfies my fetish for flowers.

Living in Prague gives great value. Far better than our last address. Rent is half as much and our place is twice as nice with a gorgeous view. The food selection provides good quality produce and the restaurants are both affordable and consistently good. Yesterday I had to buy more electronics for a current project and was pleased at the price, similar to when buying household sundries which I find to be surprisingly cheap. 

The fact I have a fetish for flowers allows me to save a little less but until I have a garden to call my own, Gabriel gives me a good deal. 

She's a gorgeous gal and owns a store in my hood called St. Gabriel Flowers. I took a foto of her today, always the sweetest smile on her face, funny and very cool. I made sure to 'like' her on facebook.

 

 

 

Gabriel runs a great business and last week I bought a lovely new petunia plant which allows me to pinch off the little flowers, making room for twice as many the following day.

I love Bohemia...

Modern Zeitgeists; parasitic spirit of our time.

“What I say today everybody will say tomorrow, though they will not remember who put it into their heads. Indeed they will be right for I never remember who puts things into my head : it is the Zeitgeist.” –George Bernard Shaw

Modern zeitgeists come in so many forms. Spirits of our time.

Few would argue Matt Drudge is the on-line media king of the muckrakers. Arianna Huffington proved brilliantly you could aggregate everyone else's content and take sole credit. Navigating effortlessly from the right side of politics to the left; the l-r paradigm was made for types like Arianna. 

Warhol's Elvis, Lichtenstein's Sleeping Girl: Whatever the market will bear...

Guardian:

"Andy Warhol's Double Elvis sold for $37m (£23m, while works by Roy Lichtenstein and the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei broke their own records at Sotheby's contemporary art sale.

Lichtenstein's Sleeping Girl, depicting a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair, fetched $44.9m on Wednesday. Weiwei's one-tonne, handmade porcelain Sunflower Seeds brought $782,500.

Happiness and expectations

Heard a great talk on TED today on the ever elusive pursuit of Happiness. I agree with the notion its much ado about perspective and the amount of expectations we apply. The talk was served on a full tray of cliche's and yet the cliche's concerning expectations and choice appealed to me. Along my nomadic lifestyle I've often found my expectations decrease just as my level of contentment tends to increase, as if in complete unison. Such are the cycles of my life, so far. 

Its been interesting to meet so many fellow expats in so many countries but more oft than not its depressing. I'm not talking about the ones that live abroad part of the time or have their stuff in storage or teach English to stretch out the experience. I get that and I get they will eventually go back home. I'm talking about the ones that don't, that have lived abroad for a long, long time.

Reading Anaïs Nin is an awfully romantic exercise...

...what with this 'war on women'. As if it began this past year, newsflash; it was always there.  

Persevere and keep the blinders on ladies, if not, you won't last long in this patriarchal world.

Anaïs Nin; a potent combo of French and Cuban DNA. Living in constant fantasy, in flight yet relied on human reality to get her work published, to get through the day. Relaying a literary style so authentic, discussing her 'bohemian' union with Henry Miller:

I dread going to Spain with Henry because it will mean cafes, streets, whores, streets, cafes and movies. No real enormous or fantastic adventures. Cafes. Just as I am sitting here with Eduardo, drinking vin d'Alsace and watching his minor June-oh, so much smaller-collecting clients.

I want to become a whore but I don't know how it is done. Shall I sit at the Cafe Marignan and let a man with a yellow roadster and a Scotch terrier drive me away? Banal. He, the one I am expecting, must have ears. He may be in Spain.

Adrienne Rich on making people disappear...

Adrienne Rich passed away last month, what a precise mind, it resonates, more than ever. Her words vital what with all kinds of people disappearing; blacks, muslims, hispanics across the borders. So much strife and racism and divisive behavior, even less solidarity on some continents than before.

Since moving to Prague I've met more often with Russians, Czechs and Ukrainian expats, the further East I move the more real their political realities appear to surface in the West, as they always did but now each of us, too many of us, as vulnerable as the other.

Adrienne Rich; 1929-2012. Poet, essayist, feminist.

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

 

George Clooney; another Kony 2012 or selective moral outrage

Guardian article and Sudanese people wonder why these well intentioned types never work with internal sources and native tribes :

Prague; by Sunday its serene...

The Czech's call their Friday 'short Saturday's, if their lucky. On Saturday most shops are closed by 1, latest 2; so by the time Sunday arrives Bohemia's about as calm as can be...

Justice is but one bohemian ideal; Revenge is best served cold

As I obtain my bohemian ideals living in Prague; I'm inspired by today's drama.

(From French novel Mathilde by Marie Joseph Eugène Sue: la vengeance se mange très-bien froide.)

Megaupload boss: Site popular among US government users. May be tempted to name names in Justice, Senate. By Iain Thomson in San Francisco 

 Posted in Law, 12th March 2012 19:25 GMT

The boss of the recently shut-down Megaupload file-sharing site claims that his records show plenty of US government users, including members of the Senate and the Department of Justice.

"Guess what – we found a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the US Senate," Kim Dotcom (formerly Schmitz), the portly potentate of Megaupload, told the Torrentfreak blog. "I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files."

Maureen Down on Manskirts, manscara and guyliner, oh my!

Maureen Dowd does go on about Manskirts, manscara, guyliner and guylashes in her inimitable Irish-American girl fashion. Alas, before Priscilla Queen of the Desert dragged our collective conscious in that direction I was producing and directing my very own fabulous Drag Shows 2 decades back. Such articles and items fail to raise a well tended eye-brow. And, I'm terrifically happy to report a few of my recruits have gone on to wonderful careers in Vegas and stay connected and update me via Facebook, this gives joy.

However I'm with Gore Vidal per usual; forget Hetero or Homo there's just sexual acts.

Cycling around Prague on electric bikes.

Rented a coupla bikes and cycled around, found some of the famous clocks and sun dials withinn this city; daylight savings must create some havoc.   

Cold but such stunning weather for the past month, its rained but twice, the place continues to feel so wide and inviting.

Cobblestones a bit bumpy yet only seems to lull the kids into further bliss, as if being in the basket a massage, comfortably ensconced, secure, part of the action. 

Many people taking pics of everything including the kids,  5 Italians aimed at us, or rather thuh muffins...a paparazzi kind of moment, such fun to live vicariously.

Godot's so relaxed he appears almost bored but that's perhaps because he's already arrived. 

Halcyon days in Prague

We've managed to land in an awfully elegant neighborhood, with a large park called Havlickovy which boasts a vineyard surrounding the grandest gazebo I've ever seen. Full of long paths that swirl this way and that, overlapping; a lovely space to walk the dogs, enjoy the environs and have some cognac with ice-cream in the gazebo. Why not. 

Lady Chatterly's Lover and Beckett: Bless Barney Rosset's heart.

Guardian:

Barney Rosset, who has died aged 89, was the most influential avant-garde publisher of the 20th century. He was also one of the boldest, in his willingness to question the laws governing censorship. His decision, as head of Grove Press, to challenge the ban on DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1959 led to the novel being published legally in the US for the first time, a year before the British edition. Having won the battle, Rosset immediately set about bringing Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer to American bookbuyers. Another trial involved William Burroughs's Naked Lunch.

Among the first authors to be signed by Grove was Samuel Beckett, in 1953.

Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunic really put the cha cha cha in Prague

Caught some fun pics of the "Dancing Building", or the "Ginger and Fred building. This city, this state of mind, certainly does perform magic on the mind...

So nice to come home and see the sunset and some Klimt, crisp and yet soft...fantastic ambiance...

Greg Proops; Smartest man in the world podcast, ctd.

My day is always a bit better when the Greg Proops app announces a new proopcast, this one's called Magnets.

Greg Proops references are gettin' wider, raunchier and wittier  than ever...that voice ringing and slinging just about every item skidding from the 60's into yesterday.

Divinely inspired Pop and then some; John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Moving from Amsterdam to Prague allows past treasures in the form of books and photographs to re-surface and inspire attention.

Not unlike long term relationships, like emotions, items get lost, then found and this one made me particularly happy,  David Sheff's book called "All we are saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono."

A book about the miracle of a man; the mystic prince and the Oriental princess. When I say Oriental, I write the term in the deeply respectful manner of Edward Said. 

Back then, Yoko Ono was reviled, not only regarded as a manipulative bitch, the press crucified her. She was Lucifer and his minister Mephistopheles combined. It's insane in hindsight. She was just a completely independent soul, uniquely Yoko Ono.

Absinth; my lips begin to dance and my pencil got really, really big.

End of day and errands, happened to pass the oldest Absinthe bar...asked for the classic, she suggested I take a seat, sip it slowly and enjoy, so I did. 

Prague; back to some serious cafe culture.

This place is just amazing. Everyone talks of the Bohemian glass and crystal and yet I'm far more blown away by the cafe culture; more Viennese than Parisienne, so specifically pretty; the chairs, the lighting.

And those pastries...

Arrivederci Amsterdam; Ahoj Prague...

Opportunity knocked, good thing we were listening... 

Amsterdam was fine, a fun and young mentality, it certainly did provide the chance to get back on track, so we did. 

Holland being a practical place, we gave and got but Prague is located closer to our life, our heart, not to mention Northern Italy, which is part of our life and heart.