These days it's filled with Jewish funerary objects and these bizarre descriptions of Jewish practices around death. What weirded me out about this was it was written entirely for a gentile audience. I've never seen a Jewish museum like it. It talked about the Jews like it might talk about the Ancient Egyptions, as if all the Jews are long gone and now we can marvel at what they may have intended with their curious behaviors. It was really eerie.
Then after some lunch (I have eaten SO MUCH these past 2 weeks. I need to hit the pavement when I get back to TLV in a serious way.) We went across the river to this hulking communist structure that houses the Slav Epic.
Like I mentioned yesterday, Mucha is known for his art nouveau posters, but he was also really dedicated to preserving and promoting Slavic culture, and to that end he considered his best work a series of 20 ENORMOUS paintings tracing Slavic history and mythology called the "Slav Epic." If you know me, then you know just seeing the words Slav + Epic back to back had me salivating. And it didn't disappoint. It was totally gorgeous and engrossing.
It was also interesting because I've been so neck deep in the Jewish Epic, it was a good reminder that all cultures have their long, torturous stories to brood over.
Here I am brooding over my favorite painting in the set, depicting some pagan rituals and the symbolic attack from the Germanic Tribes/Thor in the upper left. Never thought I'd feel anti-Thor, but Mucha made me.
Then Sam and I got first dinner (I'm really not kidding about how much I eat here...) and then I took myself to the ballet on my own!
It was at the state opera house.
Totally full house! I was glad I dressed up because people were very fancy.
Gorgeous building
Really gorgeous
I saw Swan Lake, which I'd actually never seen before, if you can believe it. I knew most of the music, but there were still songs that I hadn't realized were from Swan Lake, I just knew from listening to the radio with my mom, I guess <3.
It was such a beautiful performance. The dancing, the music, the sets, the costumes... really amazingly executed. And the story is so folkloric so of course I loved it. My favorite part was definitely the white pas de deux... here's a nice version of it I found on youtube, if you haven't seen it:
It was so emotional when I saw it tonight, I think even more than this clip. It had me choked up, if I'm honest. Soooo gorgeous. The dip at 2:35??? Breathtaking. (And 3:03 again...) I think everyone in my row held their breath.
And I just happened to see the version with the happy ending! So that was a pleasant surprise. I braced myself for them to die, and I was just waiting for it... and then they didn't! Nice.
Here's some more music I really liked other than the obvious choices...
So it was a nice cultural way to close out the Prague portion of our trip.
I have to say, I have really mixed feelings about returning to Israel tomorrow.
I feel excited to really dig in and get some work done. I feel excited for Mitch and Angel to visit. I feel excited to see Matat and Rivka again. I feel excited to eat vegetables again. I feel excited to be surrounded by actual live Jews again.
I feel anxious about being more disciplined about time management and goal setting. I feel anxious about being steeped in Israel's existential angst again (Which is rather heightened lately with the government dissolving and elections coming up. And the new rocket attacks. And Syria.) I feel anxious about the possibility that I'll fall into old patterns and lose the clarity that I've discovered in this cold weather.
But I keep thinking of this advice Angel gave me in this quote: "If you are the ocean, you don't need to fear the waves." Aka, don't fear your potential states of mind, they're yours, they're you. The ocean doesn't need to fear its own waves.
But I'm such a tumultuous sea! Here be dragons!
"The main thing is to have no fear at all." :)
No comments:
Post a Comment