Bloodline

My last couple of posts have been less about detailing the minutia of my travels and more trying to capture the raw feeling of being abroad. To me, this is the truly interesting thing. I can go on and on and on about what I saw and what it was like, which anyone can do, or I can describe my personal experiences and how I feel about them, which only I can do.

This latest experience, however, captures both aspects.

Yesterday, we traveled three hours from Prague to Český Krumlov, a town known for it's artistic temperament. On a brief tour we saw several woodworkers, photography and art studios, and jewelers utilizing Moldavite, a semi-precious stone found almost exclusively in the Bohemian and Moravian regions of the Czech Republic. Moldavite was formed by meteoric impact, and there is estimated to be only 275 tons of it in the world. It is not one uniform color, and most unrefined pieces of it have a gradient of light to dark green. In the Czech culture, at least according to the admittedly obvious salesman, it has a "protective" quality. I like that idea, like a meteor, millions of years old, spinning through space before colliding explosively with the Earth, came here to protect human beings with whatever spiritual properties it was infused with.

It's fitting that I should be drawn to this substance. Something that found its place so very far away from where it began. Where either it understood something about our substance or we understood something about its. Almost like the Earth had been missing a part of itself and had been reunited with it nearly impossibly through the emptiness of space. And I think of how long that rock journeyed, alone and cold and searching until it found the place where it belonged.

That's sort of how I felt walking into Český Krumlov for the first, and probably not the last, time. I've had brushes with this before, arriving somewhere and feeling a sense of belonging: Sedona, Denver, Washington DC. I've also had the complete opposite experience, where I am utterly repelled by the place I find myself in: Omaha, San Diego, Flagstaff. But I have never felt anything nearly as strong as this. At least, in a place.

I had nearly identical experience about two years ago. I was in San Francisco with my parents, for a long weekend. My dad had a business trip there and we decided to make it a family getaway. I took a few days off work and flew out to meet them. When I got there, we went for a walk, meandering aimlessly with the intent of finding a place that we would be undeniably drawn to for lunch. And I'll never forget that walk.

We turned right out of the hotel, and took another right. We walked about halfway down the block. There was a low, brick church which seemed out of place among all the tall buildings of the financial district. Sitting on it's steps was a woman. She was wearing a short, flowing, and lightly patterned white-on-white dress. She had short, straight hair that looked impossibly soft. She had bright hazel eyes with crows feet at their corners and a slice of freckles across her cheekbones and nose like stars bursting through the darkness in the night sky. We looked at each other and smiled.

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It wasn't a polite smile, or an "I think you're cute" smile. It was a smile that I did not consciously put on. It was a smile of recognition. Deep, spiritual recognition. I knew this woman in an inexplicable way. There was a calming hum emanating out from my gut. I couldn't pull my eyes away from her. It was like seeing an old friend walk into a party, and watching them get caught up talking with other people, and sharing a look that said: "I know you're there. We'll get our chance to talk." I'll never forget her face or the calmness I felt when we saw each other and I'd bet anything that she's said the same thing. I can't really explain how much of an impact this event had on my world view. It utterly changed and even introduced entirely new spiritual beliefs which I adamantly believe in now. The best explanation I have for this feeling of recognition is that, in some past universe or past life, this woman and I shared one soul. This is probably getting into some spiritual mumbo-jumbo shit that's not everyone's cup of tea, but that was how deeply I felt this short glance. I believe that when anyone experiences something like this, it's like seeing the secret truth of the universe. That all souls and life comes from the same universal source, that everything has and will be one entity. We're split up and put in different bodies, but we have some memory I think, which is so profound that we can only guess at its meaning, when we experience something this powerful. It wasn't like a love at first sight sort of thing. It was just like a "You! I know you! I remember you." kind of thing. If that makes sense.

That's how I felt about Český Krumlov. Like I was drawn to this place as if coming home after

years of travel. As soon as my foot hit the cobblestone, I said to my friend: "I want to live here." And I couldn't stop saying it to people. "I could spend my life here." "I never want to leave." Etc. The whole town thrums with a knowledge of itself. Like it knows what it is and is perfectly comfortable with itself. Tucked away in the hills and threaded through by the Vltava, the river that connects it to Prague. The river ties them together but they are not the same. They are connected, and they share an ancestry, a commonality, but they've chosen different paths for themselves.

We ate dinner on a balcony hanging over the water. To my left I could look up and see the castle, and to my right I could see people crossing over wood and cobblestone bridges. You can't help but feel ageless in a place such as this. Where people have done virtually the same thing for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and here you are doing it too.

The whole town feels like a well-kept memory. Sustained by its relative importance to everyone who stakes a claim on its beauty. The streets wind around ancient buildings and cool wind rips through the alleys like the city is breathing. Lush stretches of green reach up towards the sun, blending purely with the white-plaster-walled and red-tiled buildings. There is a color and sporadicity here that reminds me of my own journey to master myself. People float gently down the Vltava on rowboats and canoes.

I feel like I could lose myself in Prague. But I feel like I could find myself in Českzý Krumlov. Like I could give myself no more and no less than the life I want, a target harder to hit than it sounds. Where I can be creative and at peace and afford to live without needing to sell a million copies of a book and be beholden only to myself and be free of needing to be accepted or praised or whatever the hell it is and just be who I was born to be.

Much like that woman's smile, I feel like I've found something that will never let me be the same. I don't know how or why, but I know its there. I've had two of these experiences now. Is that more than most people have? I suppose I don't care. It feels like enough to me.

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