tuckova

Good morning! (it is morning). The garbage trucks doing their stately roll down the street here at 7:30 a.m. Yesterday it was people mowing the little strips of grass in front of the building at 6 a.m. In both cases I was already awake, as the cat has not yet gotten the memo that SCHOOL'S OUT and we can all sleep late. No, she sees the sun come up and it is time to let her out on the balcony so she can watch all the world walking by like the old lady she is. I too enjoy watching the world from the balcony though I usually pretend I'm doing something other than swish my tail from side to side in an odd combination of hunger and detachment. The marigolds need to be deadheaded, for example, and the delicious-smelling tomato flowers are finally producing little green bursts of wonder. 

Summer in the city means, alternately, cleavage cleavage cleavage (Regina Spektor) and the back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty (Lovin' Spoonful); sometimes both at once. This is my favorite season here. The girls in their summer dresses. The living is easy. etc. June was nearly continuous rain, I was wearing a leather jacket and boots and carrying an umbrella most days, and some days I stood on the balcony staring at gray skies, the water filling the gray gutters with gray sludge and I actually wept to be here, the air pressure so low I could feel my blood all: Oh, why bother even pumping at all. In the middle of the month there was a week when it was near 100 every day and we all wilted like overheated petunias, and if somebody had pulled my head off I would have been only mildly surprised. But now it seems to be hitting the Actual Summer.

Brno is a university town (a quarter of the population are students) and it clears out in the summer like whoa. The theaters close down, the beer gardens are half full at best, even on hot days when all you want is a shade umbrella and a frosted glass. The main square is like the scene before a gunfight (quiet. toooo quiet!), unless there's a busload of Japanese tourists coming through for their 3 hour tour (cheesy tourist "dragon", cabbage market, beer at the first brew pub in town with some overpriced fried cheese to trigger their lactose intolerance, and then back on the bus, sayonara gaijin). Maybe one girl loosely wrapped in gauzy bits of fabric running to the train station in sandals, graceful as Atalanta despite the incongrous backpack, doubtless filled with instant soups, Czech rum, a good book, and of course some golden apples. 

Anyway. Here all glorious summer, for the first time in a long while — no California, no Greece, no Croatia, no cottage for us this year. Weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.