lightness

there is really too much to be said, and i find it almost silly to attempt to say it all in a little post. but these are not meant to say everything, they are meant to give tiny glimpses of good and bad, sweet and sour, remarkable and ordinary.

or, if you would have it, lightness and weight. now about two weeks ago i fell into a pit of february depression, and the london landscape could do nothing to help me crawl out of it. everything was bleak, nothing could be fixed. i walked galore, drank galore, yet something was amiss. and then came vienna, and remarkably those days of dark were gone within an instant. and lucky me, the lightness that pervaded my travels has returned with me to london.

vienna. it began with bratislava, and a day in a post-communist city that was shockingly beautiful. well, at least the old city center. but once you exited the small walls of the fairy-tale town, you returned to the bare buildings with broken windows and sullen faces. but the food was cheap (ridiculous) and the slovaks were kind. but after a few hours, i was ready for the regal city of vienna. immediately after i arrived, dominik - a pure viennese that joyce met at some schmooze fest in shanghai - picked me up and brought me to his perfect home. a complete stranger, and he took me in for three days. remarkable. dominik is writing his thesis on free trade, he has already worked in singapore, bangkok and los angeles, and he is bound for america next year on a fulbright. he showed us the vienna that we would have never seen. on the last night, we happened to meet up with his old friend heinz, who is working for lomo. with him were the president and one of the founders of lomography. as i sat amongst these fascinating people, i felt out of place, like an observer who is not willing to expose anything about themselves, and therefore sits back, not part of that world but endlessly fascinated by it. and there was the language barrier - but it made it even more perfect. there was also the frightening bald middle age man, with the communist hat and the leopard scarf, who would have been fascinating if he hadn't been so terrifying. only interesting in retrospect, my stomach couldn't really handle his odd comments after drink five in the converted viennese brothel.

the next day we went to lomo headquarters. the office was laid back, filled with light, high ceilings, comfortable sofas, studios, and happy workers. heinz showed us the office, and made me understand more clearly the philosophy of the lomographers. there are these spectacular walls of photographs, or rather lomographs - just rows upon rows of photos, creating a collages that are impressive just because of their sheer magnitude. and the idea is that each little picture in these massive walls is taken by anyone, randomly, at the spur of any moment. natural. they have these four exposure cameras, that sort of allow for a bit of a cinematic effect through photography, with four images (obviously) that can catch a few movements etc. all i know, is the visit to "lomoland" and heinz and amira and all these people, made me want to know as much as humanly possible about this phenomemon of lomography. before we left they gave joyce and i a camera - i died of shock. it is a "fisheye" and it has a 170 degree high quality lens, but no real viewfinder. the idea is that you should not be looking at the viewfinder, but just taking what you see, spontaneously.

but even without the lomo experience, vienna was not the city of frightening nazis that my childhood fears expected it to be. oh silly american films. the highlight for me was first and foremost the coffee shops. in these shops, you sit all day reading and writing...they have newspapers on hand for customers, and comfortable chairs, and good lighting. there are modern ones and traditional ones -- all are the perfect place to read "the unbearable lightness of being," write postcards, or scribble in your travel journal. sort of dreamlike i must say. joyce and i sat in those cafes for hours, catching up on the past two months of our lives, furiously writing, occasionally taking the dramatically posed picture.

the other part of vienna that suprised me, were the museums. i was not quite aware of how much incredible art there is in that city. a mere english major, i cannot recite the specific wonders of the schieles and klimts that i saw, suffice it to say that i have still not quite recovered from such an inundation of great art. sadly, i was unable to attend the third man tour. this made me very upset, but i had a cafe at the cafe mozart. it was the most expensive double expresso of my life, and i cannot say it was worth it. but i sat there and dreamed of orson welles and harry lime. joyce and i also went to the opera, and again my movie fantasies were a bit hurt, as this viennese opera house was clearly not where amadeus was shot. and sadly we saw a highly salieri-esque opera, oh horrid.

i thought returning to london would be depressing, but instead i found that i had missed the city after my dreamlike week. i had truly snapped out of my melancholy state. as i walked the familiar road back to wren street and langton close i quickened my pace, excited to return to my familiar suite. london welcomed me with a bit of rain and a bit of fog, but this time such trivialities as weather would not drag me back to the february blues. today, as i walked home with groceries and other purchases in arm, i decided to go down a narrow mews instead of the industrial grays inn. the sun was setting, and all of the sudden nothing in london looked grey and old. it looked beautiful in its own way - no, not vienna - no, certainly not new york - but a subtle, brick beauty that i finally appreciated after weeks of bitterness.