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.

I'm realizing that although I am by most standards extremely privileged by accident I find myself more and more not consciously but almost instinctively disliking people who are… I guess MORE privileged. It's not ENVY, I don't think, or not exactly — I don't generally envy people their success or even luck; when a friend wins the lottery my first genuine thought will be: Wait, you play the lottery?! and then I can't imagine anything other than to be happy for them. Same with people buying nice houses, getting raises, meeting someone and falling in love — I'm seriously genuinely pleased in all these situations. I've read but not really understood books about envy and jealousy (notably Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton — beautiful book, didn't get it at all), I've talked to extremely articulate friends about these feelings, but I haven't consciously experienced them. Imagine my surprise, then, to have noted in the past year or so some pretty stunning examples of how it must feel, this wave of bile. I'm wondering what's new: the experience itself, or just noticing the experience. I hope it's a new thing altogether and that I can figure out how to make it go away. It's not nice to be in your forties and stamping your feet over how the world is unfair like that's any kind of news. 

The holiday was nice, mostly. Mellow. Lots of reading, lots of sitting around and staring at things, which is one of my favorite things to do with my free time. If I called it meditating it would sound better but it's really just sitting around staring, more marinating than meditating. "You're soaking in it." Hosted two parties, a small dinner party and a larger new year's party. Sometimes I felt deeply sad and lonely, and sometimes I felt overwhelmed by humanity, but most of the time was mainly feeling well rested, so plus good on balance. 

Over the weekend (Twelfth Night! Three Kings! Epiphany!) I transferred all my 2012 calendar into my 2013 calendar. It was tricksy because I was going from a Czech calendar to a US one, and I kept getting my weeks misaligned. This year I also transferred stuff like "it's been 6 months so make a dentist appointment this week."  There is somebody reading this who is nodding approvingly at my sagacity and somebody else who can't believe I don't have this all plugged in to my smart phone like every other extraorganized person on the planet. I know, I know, but calendars and books still need to be held in my sweet hands or they don't seem REAL. 

Today I applied the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and did the first edit of a 22 page paper. I haven't edited that hard in a while; my standard has been about 10 pages a day or 20 pages if I'm doing stunts like getting up at 4. So look at me: I STILL GOTS IT. We'll see if the second edit is as easy as I think it will be or if I'm going to have my brains in traction tomorrow from the unaccustomed strain, but I feel pretty confident at the moment. 

With the recent holiday movie viewing, I've been thinking of children's books and films in terms of two particular themes: the child who escapes familiarity and has strange adventures (The Snowman) and the child who finds familiarity outside of an environment where he never felt he belonged (Elf). 

I tend to find the latter category problematic. I grew up also feeling like I didn't particularly belong – I made friends rarely, and even my best friend and I little in common (her: athletic, brave, lovely; me: well, yeah). I loved my family but I wouldn't have been surprised to hear I was adopted, either. So it's possible that to a certain degree my problem with those books is one of jealousy — I accepted the life I was dealt, and so should everybody else. Also, especially when the stories concern someone who realizes they "actually" belong somewhere else, and they take off without a backwards glance, I feel like they're sort of rotten. Even in Narnia, they're convinced they don't have to go back to England because they're dead, but what if they aren't? Their poor parents. 

My recent attempts to assert my own preferences have been going pretty well. I'd prefer not to eat pork, thanks; I'd prefer not to sign your silly contract for the work I'm doing for you for free; I'd prefer not to leave the house. Thanks, but no thanks. It turns out that if you're not emotionally invested in telling people no, you can get a pretty fun anthropological kick out of watching how they take it. 

I feel bad about saying no because I've spent a lot of time trying so hard to be accommodating of the inexplicable preferences of others, and I still feel like it's rude to inconvenience people when your preference is equal to theirs, but I have picked olives out of enough dishes after having them sneered at, and dammit, I get to say I don't care for brussels sprouts. Because I don't, I never have, and I have eaten enough of them to be sure. I'd prefer not to have more, thanks. Imma leave that right here on the side of my plate in a tidy pile, okay, thanks. 

**

I'm still wondering why so many of the foods frequently served at parties give one bad breath. Any ideas? Hey, I'm about to talk to you really close for a while, how's my stinky cheese breath? Do you like these cocktail onions exhaled upon you? Mmm, spicy sausage with garlic on a little toothpick breath. 

Here's a fun exercise: tell people that you have heard of a super [scary thing — virus, bacteria, crocodile, whatever] and ask them where it came from. I have been researching SUPER LICE and the sources are, variously, Asian immigrants, people from the Middle East, the over-prescription of antibiotics, and the fact that people don't follow directions so the lice just come back because it's their nature. I was persuaded by the third, because I think that's the cause of most health-related problems, until I read the fourth one because — well, when in doubt, bet on stupid. But it is interesting how many sites seemed to slant blame toward minorities in general and immigrants in particular. I know that other living things migrate just like people do, and often hitch rides with humans, but it's not necessarily on immigrants unless they're bringing in smallpox on a blanket. I mean, it could be wealthy people traveling, or food or other goods, not necessarily immigrants. And yet that is a narrative that people believe. If you have reasons beyond the obvious, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Maintaining a tilt that is hard alee with the forms of my vanity, I got my eyelids tattooed with permanent eyeliner. I may be a periodic weepy emotional mess but that doesn't mean I want eyeliner streaked all over my face. I am no Tammy Faye. I realize that the logical solution would be to stop wearing make up but as you may know I like the pain, and besides it was on sale, so it was basically a double score. It hurt like crazy. On a pain scale of things I have experienced it is really up there, and I just ripped a toenail out of my foot this morning by dragging a cabinet over it, and I barely cursed. So eyelid tattoos hurt, and if I had it to do over I'd be too scared to. On the plus side, I now roll out of bed looking ridiculously awake and ready to start the day, so there's that.