Spaceman of Bohemia

by Jaroslav Kalfar

Existence runs on energy, a fluid movement forward, yet we never stop seeking the point of origin, the Big Bang that set us upon our inevitable course.

He isn’t fond of the animal-killing business. Barbaric, he would say, to harm animals just going about their existence on this earth.

Once you trap yourself into believing you can be your own company, you will cross the dangerous line between contentment and madness.

I should take Crusoe as the perfect example of a man who embraces solitude and turns its crippling tendencies into opportunities for self-improvement.

We didn’t have to work for happiness then. It simply existed.

“I wish I had the capacity to assist with your emotional distress, skinny human. I cannot offer you the solace of Nutella, for I have consumed it.”

the adults, those who get up in the morning and know exactly how their day will unravel, those who live on the exchange system of work, awaiting their grave with quiet politeness?

Burnt sausage, air-conditioned linen stench of clothing stores, police car exhaust, the rancid diapers of toddlers in designer strollers, street waffles with salmonella whipped cream, whiskey spilled between the cracks of ancient brick roads, coffee, newspapers just unpacked at tobacco stands, stray marijuana smoke seeping from one of the windows above a Gap, the sneakily abandoned waste from dogs, grease sizzling off the exposed bicycle chains, Windex dripping down the freshly washed office windows, a faint spring breeze barely penetrating the connected buildings lining the square—this chemical anarchy of scents placed in the cradle of every Prague child early on welcomes us home every time, and in this native knowledge we all simply refer to it as “Wenceslas.” It has been almost a year since I last visited, I realize, while the antibodies inside my olfactory system fight off the invasion of smog. I hold my breath. All around me lives the assurance of our sprint toward capitalism. Few things remain from the old days of the Soviet reign—the only significant remainder being the nineteenth-century statue of Saint Wenceslas, the postcard hero trudging above the masses, green and stone-faced on his trusty horse, the animal’s majestic thighs and ass generously caked with pigeon shit. French teenage tourists, unaware of any history around them, thumb through their phones and catcall women as they surround the statue’s base. Food vendors offer hot dogs and burgers and alcohol ill...

Loved how descriptive this segment was, truly immersive.

I feel like self-destructing today too.”

Daily

They couldn’t cope with a vastness that was so outside their established knowledge of existence, even if they had seen Space up close. They would project their desperations, fears, and looming insanities onto types of intelligence incomprehensible to them.

We are collectively doomed

“If what you love gets away from you, in the end you are only walking in a labyrinth with no exits.”

Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

I didn’t belong in her world anymore. With the universe ever expanding, we could never circle back around to each other.