Ken Layne's Blog, page 25
July 11, 2011
Case #117: Recurring dream of a place (Prague) years before going there
Many Czech emigres in Toronto say they had the same recurring dream in the 1980s as this Canadian writer, Paul Wilson. He describes walking the dark winding streets of Prague and meeting his old friends there, but always in fear of being found by the police.
He describes the semi-nightmares as intense, "hyper-realistic" nocturnal voyages through Prague, with a "powerful erotic undertow linked to a mounting sense of anxiety." Each version of the dream ended with a panicked and ultimately foiled attempt to leave town, whether by rail or air or just walking away. Wilson had lived there in the 1960s and 1970s, and had been forced to leave by the communist police like so many Czech writers and artists and activists.
It is, Wilson writes, the "émigré dream" — common to those forced to leave their homeland because of political events. His specific dream, though, is very familiar to me. I also began having this dream in the 1980s, toward the end of the decade. The thing was, I had never been to Prague and didn't know a soul there. In fact, I didn't know where the dreams took place until December of 1991, when I broke off from my traveling buddy to take a train to then-Czechoslovakia on my own.
It was my first European adventure, and I very much wanted to explore post-Iron Curtain Eastern Europe. And anybody following the news of that era wanted to see this place where Vaclav Havel had gone from political prisoner to president. But I knew nothing substantial about that part of the world and it was long before the era of Flickr and Google Mapping your journeys before they took place.
Still, as I walked Prague's old town that night, with everything I owned on my back, I was actually in this recurring dream. I'd probably had it a couple of dozen times, or at least I remembered it that many times. There were very specific qualities to the light spilling out from occasional windows, and the feel of the buildings, and the paths of slushy footprints over the cobblestones, the mysterious voices from the few people I heard talking — people still spoke very quietly to each other as they walked together.
It gets dark early, so close to winter solstice, but I still wandered around so long that there was only one accommodations kiosk open back at the train station when I finally returned in need of cheap lodging. (In exchange for $25 U.S., they sent me to some dusty panelak apartment in either Prague 9 or Prague 19, with a vast half-frozen mud parking lot between the last tram stop and the concrete apartment tower.)
I continued wandering the Staré Město those next few nights, looking for things I "recognized." And this led me into the third floor apartment shared by five or six random travelers and stragglers, with a weird angular chaise lounge/ottoman thing available for I don't know how much, a hundred dollars a month. The German landlords in Berlin were doing well with this fixed-rent place, I mean. It was my first flat in Prague, and the best neighborhood by far.
June 29, 2011
My new column about re-using America's unwanted buildings
In this strange new post-growth era, America has a vast oversupply of unwanted suburban houses and retail space. We can do interesting things with these charmless buildings. That's what my new twice-monthly column is about, over at the sustainable housing website FourStory.org.
In the first installment, I write about a stunning new nature center/community building created from a dreary 1990s exurban house in Nevada's Carson Valley. When we start looking at all these awful Real Estate Bubble surplus structures with fresh eyes, we can start re-making the Great Recession Wasteland into a humane environment.
June 26, 2011
Another reason not to have cable/satellite television
"Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems."— New York Times
June 24, 2011
"Wonkette editor Ken Layne has just published a novel. Related: Wonkette editor Ken Layne thinks the..."
- Thanks, Hamilton Nolan, for writing this a week or two ago. (One thing about not being on the Internet is you don't see things on the Internet.) Gawker.com
June 22, 2011
"Written in an epistolary style that references other such texts, such as the disciple Paul's..."
- "What is the ideal community" | Central Coast Foodie
VIDEO HORROR: "You are what you own." Oh for...
VIDEO HORROR: "You are what you own." Oh for god's sake.
I guess there's not a lot of marketing millions directed at "My deeds are my only possessions." [Via Doc Searls]
June 21, 2011
"I figured out that I wouldn't look back as an old man and wish I had spent more time on Facebook."
- CNN via Cryptogon.
June 9, 2011
Farmageddon Trailer (by Kristin Canty via Cryptogon).
This is...
Farmageddon Trailer (by Kristin Canty via Cryptogon).
This is for anyone who thinks SWAT teams raiding organic dairy farms is limited to dystopian fables.
June 7, 2011
Literary/Media Nepotism/Corruption Alert
Greer Mansfield, the book review guy at Wonkette, does a Q&A with me about my new book, here.
June 6, 2011
The most popular items in Metaphysical Fiction
Dignity is #30 on Amazon's Metaphysical Fiction bestseller list, whatever that might mean! (Metaphysical fiction apparently refers to Carlos Castaneda and wizard/vampire metaphysical fantasy, but not Twilight.)
