“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”
Franz Kafka
Monday
I sleep in until 8.00 am and it feels like I have not slept at all.
Breakfast and then a walk through the village.
Another cool day with a blue sky.
Šumperk is lively on a Monday but I don’t think it is a tourist town.
“That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.”
D. H. Lawrence
Apricots are my least favourite stone fruit.
Shell agrees, although she does recall eating one from a tree with fond memories.
There is a young man selling apricots and blueberries in a wooden stall. They both have a fresh picked look to them. Imperfect, various stages of ripeness, the occasional bruise.
I have never tasted apricots like these. Tart and sweet, you bite into them and the juice drips down your hand. The flesh seems both firm and soft.
Apricots. Under rated.
We sit and read in the park.
Go back to the apartment and read.
A cool day with a nice breeze and nothing to do but do nothing.
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
Oscar Wilde
And suddenly it is 3.30 pm.
We open a bottle of wine and start thinking about a late lunch or an early dinner.
The problem of having nowhere to stay tomorrow night also needs addressing.
The wine reduces the immediate anxiety of homelessness and hunger.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard
With the help of the wine, we take the path of least resistance and book another night in Šumperk.
The idea of another day of doing nothing in this apartment sounds too good to pass.
Or at least too much effort to do something else.
We head down to the local pizza place for dinner and a beer.
Not bad. Not great.
The ice cream is excellent. We take it home and eat it on the terrace.
We pen another bottle of wine and chat until we fall asleep.
I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I’d get up to shit. I’d eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I’d put on my clothes and I’d walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there.”
Charles Bukowski
Tonight’s wine –
2023 Weingut Jäger Smaragd Achleiten Grüner Veltliner (Wachau, Austria)
2022 Sesei Chianti Classico (Chianti, Italy)
