Oh, geez, I know! It just flies sometimes, and then there you are looking at the same blog post for two weeks, wondering if it's about you, and there's been nothing to distract you. Poor duck.

The sun is shining today, so even though it is brutally cold I am disinclined to kill anybody. SO FAR. 

I've been getting a massage at least once a month this year, trying to find the best massage in Brno. Mostly I book them through slevomat, which is like groupon, figuring that even if it's not great at least it's cheap. And sometimes that means it's not great — I've had some lame skin massages (like: nice? but… it's not my skin that hurts). I've listened to a lot of plinky-plunky music, including the Benedictine monks singing Metalica (or something like that) and Hawaiian Christian music. It's always the fusion music that has me in giggles, and the massage person is all, "Does it tickle?" and I'm "No, no, not at all, huffle snort." Some people are pretty strict about their time but not mine (one woman who didn't know I was in the waiting room so started about 10 min late but finished on time, welcome to non-repeating business). I've had some good ones that I went back to who were… not as good, which is weird because I'd expect your work to be better for somebody paying full price, but my experience hasn't supported that.

Today I had a guy who was mostly blind, and I think he may have been an actual sadist, because WHOA it hurt. It hurt so much that I, Anne, lover of moderate pain, was nearly off the board twice, and not by conscious movement, but by an instinctive need to get away from YEOUCH. To add to the comedy potential of flipping over a massage table, my response to pain is often to laugh, and so there we were, naked American on a table alternately laughing and mewling, and blind man in a white suit, laughing maniacally as he drove his thumb straight through my iliotibial band and into my thigh bone, and I would have said to stop except I couldn't stop clenching my teeth and finally the pain melted and my foot went to sleep for about 10 seconds and then everything felt fine. Four hours later and I'm still figuring out what he did, exactly — everything feels sore and quite fabulous. $15 massage, my friends. 

Anyway so that's how I've been. And super busy with work. See if I'd had more time I might have written something about laughing at pain, but today is not that day.

Thou shalt not read before you any comment, or any likeness of a comment that is on YouTube with the thumbs up, or that is to any news story beneath, or that is in boxes under the entertainment websites, even though they be Salon and thinkest thou that it is a fine idea. Thou shalt not suffer to cast thine eyes upon them, nor reply to them: for I AM YOUR PLAIN COMMON SENSE, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that waste their time on such stupid, stupid pursuits.

Ten minutes and then I have to go. I've had my shower, eaten, broken a glass and cut my leg and foot with shards, swept up most of it. Still need to dress, find pens and paper. I'm going to a quiz tonight. I used to really like going to quizzes but some of the social aspects ceased to be fun and I had to quit because life is too short to do things that aren't fun. I'm still not sure if it's good for me to be in crowds, even when we are organized to a purpose which sometimes makes it easier for me. It's just too many faces, smells, ideas, people I have to think about and think about being. 

I spent a great deal of my life creating it in such a way that it makes me happy and comfortable. Making the house nice, throwing out things I don't like, collecting things that please me. Only pursuing friendships that make me happy and letting the others drift. Finding jobs that have purpose and turning down work that feels pointless or wrong. It's hard to walk away from things that I CAN do but it is harder to curl in a ball of exhaustion at the end of the day, and ugly spaces and mean people and stupid work exhaust me, even when I can manage them all. 

So now I feel like: Ok, I know what I need to avoid. And I am right that one should not do things that are not fun. But I still have maybe another 20 years to go and is this it? It is unlikely that I have found all the things that I DO like. So I try, stretch, reflect whether I've drawn my categories too broadly, like is it true that I don't like crowds or maybe I just don't like THAT crowd. I want to challenge myself to keep trying to be better at the game of being me. 

****

I went. There were dogs, yappy and fighting with each other, barking and echoing off the walls, and people walking around slamming the back of my chair, and a person with a microphone calling out thirty seconds, fifteen seconds, ten seconds, and I couldn't speak or even hear my own thoughts clearly. I think maybe I need to give up on being a quiz person. Sniff.

I am tired of "trigger warning" and "spoiler alert". I understand that they're meant to function as a courtesy and I generally applaud all such efforts, but I think they're massively overused AND this week I saw some people reprimanded for NOT using them, and I think we have officially landed on ridiculous. Let me explain.

A trigger warning is a warning that a text you are about to read may create upsetting feelings, particularly if you have experienced something similar to the upsetting thing that the text is about. For example, a trigger warning on a text about rape helps people know that the text might upset them, especially if they were raped.  And while I get the courtesy that is intended by that warning, I also feel like: guess what? Women get raped so often, so brutally, and so casually that what is remarkable is not when it makes the news (trigger warning! woman raped!) but that it still makes the news at all. Trigger warning! Patriarchy! News at 11! Understand that I don't think that the sort of violence that we put these warning tags on is acceptable; it's just that I think we live in a world where this is endemic and my concern is more the idea that some people require a warning and the rest of us are okay, or that the text is more upsetting than the event it describes. Everyone should find it horrible; it IS horrible. You know who didn't get a trigger warning? The people in the story. More importantly, the implication that victims of violence and terror are somehow going to be protected from the knowledge of a fact they lived through by a little red flag at the beginning is ridiculous. If you do not want to live in a world where the news is upsetting to you, then try avoiding the news and links to news stories, or you might try channeling that horror into working to change things, instead of getting angry at people who have failed to warn you.

A spoiler alert is a warning that you are about to read key plot points from a work of fiction that will change the way you interpret it. If you are a person who consumes fiction purely for the what of the plot, I guess I can see how you might want to avoid knowing what will happen ahead of time, but… who does that? Do we not usually enjoy fiction for the how, the who, and the why? One of the highest grossing films of all time was set on the Titanic (spoiler alert! it sinks!). I GET that it is a pleasurable jolt when there is a plot twist you hadn't expected, or after the shock of seeing a main character killed off unexpectedly, but since the way we communicate now guarantees that there are fewer such surprises (like interviews with actors who are leaving a show being broadcast before their character disappears), most good artists have compensated by making how you get to those plot twists more interesting. If you are unwilling to live in a world where the plot points of television shows and popular novels may be revealed to you before you see them yourself, and this will ruin the pleasure of the show for you, then you need to either get off the internet or consume better media. I'll be over here re-reading the Chronicles of Prydain and re-watching The Princess Bride. 

OKAY 10 MINUTES GO.

I went to see a show last night (singer-songwriter cafe type of thing). The singer is a friend, I guess we're friends at this point. He helped me through a particularly bad patch in my life, gave me some personal insight and clarity over two cups of coffee, and I think it was not a big deal to him but it was to me. So I go to his shows, clap till my hands hurt, sing along when he asks for it, dance. Try to bring new people. He's good, a showman, funny. And last night he had a drummer, box drum, which was great.

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. 

A family of four Brno citizens was murdered about 10 days ago. The funeral was on Saturday. Brno is a small town, so while I didn't know any of the victims personally, I know their neighbors and friends. A kid who played in the ukulele band with the father and son used to attend drama class with my son. The mother taught at a school with one of my friends. Their neighbors have been to my house.  

It's not certain who killed them, but the primary suspect is a US citizen, a young man who is a cousin of the family. He came in April and was advertising for work as an English teacher. Like any small community, we took him in. Had a beer with him, tried to help him find a job, opened doors and homes. I didn't meet him, but I could have. I didn't have him in my home, but I could have. This is how we live, here. This could have happened to someone I know; this could have happened to my family.  

Less than a month after he came, the family — a father, a mother, two sons — was dead, and their American guest was on a plane back to the US, having left abruptly, before the police could question him. Maybe he did it; maybe he just knows something. Maybe not. As long as he's in the US, though, nobody is going to find out.

As a person living in Brno, I feel frightened and violated. This is my community. As a person from the same town where this young man is from, I feel responsible and guilty. That was my home. 

Now he is in custody in Virginia. The Czech government has about a month to put together a request for extradition, and then the US Department of Justice and the State Department decide whether to send him back here. It could take years, and some cases never get resolved — the suspects go free in cases that the OIA says "fell through the cracks" as if they just had a badly installed floor. The US has never extradited a citizen to the Czech Republic, and it doesn't try people for crimes committed abroad, so if they don't send him back, he will go free in the US, this man who may have killed a family that welcomed him into their home. Meanwhile my town weeps and the ukulele band is silent, mourning. 

I think that having people aware of this and pressuring the US government to send him back would be useful. I created a petition to raise awareness and to hopefully ensure that if and when the Czech government has a reason to ask him to return, the US government will extradite him. Please, if you could take two minutes to sign this, I would be so grateful. 

CHANGE.ORG: Petition for the extradition of Kevin Dahlgren

On Wednesday it felt like a really truly spring day and I decided to resume walking, which I used to do in great gulps and enjoy, but I like it much less when the streets are icy, which they have been for about a year now I think. But now it is sunny again, and it is fun to prowl the streets watching things and listening to podcasts. I walked down my street where a young couple stood in the middle of the sidewalk kissing while people walked around them, her arm extended behind her to hold the leash of her unwatched dog and his hand resting on her breast. Spring oblivion.

I went to Cejl, the Poor Part of Town, where a family stood on opposite sides of the street shouting at each other, one finally darting across the traffic to shout more effectively close up and then they hugged, with the conciliatory rubbing of shoulders and laughing. I got a massage as part of my quest to find the best reasonably priced massage in town (at least one a month until I find it; this is the best grail hunt I have set myself since the quest for the perfect martini). This was good but not great, a chalice but not the grail.

Then I went to the post office to pick up the only kinds of package they let me get now without complication, which is books. Yay for books, I know everybody loves a Kindle but I am too old for that specific technology. When there are teleportation devices I swear I will figure them out, yea though I am seventy, but I need books with pages or I don't feel like I'm reading. The line was longish, though it moved surprisingly briskly for a Czech line, and the couple in front of me with his chin resting atop her head, arms entwined, were able to maintain a steady elephant walk sway as they moved towards the window.

Walked up the hill through downtown and had an ice cream. I saw one couple making out on the new park benches on the main square. One homeless type with his hands down his pants. An older and much younger man, jaunty as if from a boat, apparently a couple, circling a billboard, reading all the upcoming events, not talking but standing too close to be strangers. I saw children chasing pigeons and the fountain hasn't been turned on yet so there were students sitting on the rings inside, backpacks flung aside, heliotropic faces tilted to the sun.

Stopped in at the new pub to say hi but not to eat, and then walked home, and part of me was all YEAH FOR ME AND MY LEGS and the other part was like ow ow ow ow ow. 

People you should talk to about how your wife is not nice to you any more:

I made a mental note to myself to write about… something today. It started with the letter W but I do not remember what it was. Not wisdom, weirdness, wallowing. Nor pussy willows, though I got a bouquet of them a few weeks ago and they sat on the end of the counter, mysterious and soft buds. Winter? I have had so much more than enough of winter that I cannot fathom wanting to write about it; winter is my unwelcome guest, longer than three days, longer even than three months, the foul smell lingering like it will never go. Yesterday the sun was shining and I thought perhaps it would be nice enough to start walking again next week and checked the weather forecast and it predicted 25 degrees which felt AMAZING, just to think about what 25 degrees would feel like, I mean I do not even REMEMBER 25 degrees in this country it was so long ago, but then I realized that it was 25 Fahrenheit. Ohrightwinter. As you were.

I do realize it was ridiculous to have thought it could go from the snowstormy 6 below to 25 in a week, but such is my longing for any other weather that I was misled. It was like when you're in a bar and you're sure someone is just looking at you all the time but then you realize that there's a clock above your head. Or when Jackie O is waving at you and you wave back and then realize she's just hailing a cab. Neither of these things have happened to me but I believed a weather forecast and it is just as awkward.