10:01pm Nottingham

I set the timer on my mobile phone and watch the seconds count down. I can still match the seconds to the memory of the song, but I wonder how long this will last. How much is left, and how much is left to change? 0:04 - beat. 1:27 - a syllable in a word I used to know. 3:13 - time is running out. Time is r u nn i n g ooo u t. .. What will come to fill that space, when time has run out? Will it be you? I propose the only certainty is that it won't be me. That it can't be Me.

I am at home. I'm leaving soon. This project somehow helps me to understand what I'm leaving behind, and the possibility of what I'm coming to.

I'll let you know when I get there.
Richard

6.29pm Prague

At 6.29pm, sitting by the banks of the Vltava, I played that piece of music. I don't have my headphones for my mobile with me, so I had to play it through the speaker. Just a few seats up a small stall holder was playing some disco on his tinnie ghetto blaster. It made for an interesting merge. In front of me, across the river the setting sun balanced above the Prague Castle and the shifting clouds kept creating that evening burst effect that you see in so many classical paintings, just waiting for some iconic symbol or valkerie to appear to the sounds of Wagner, or some such, but that is a little way off what I am listening to, possibly a minor thing.
I must admit I am a little emotional at this point having just stepped out of the Pinkus Synagogue, a memorial listing on its stark white walls, the 77 297 names of the Bohemian and Moravian jewish victims of the Nazis. Upstairs is an exhibition of drawings by the children that were held in Terezin a town/concentration camp, a "model" holding pen of sorts, north west of Prague. These drawings were encouraged as a way of self expression in response to the oppression around them. Most of these children did not survive, being transported east to Auschwitz. I know this history, I know the facts, and I know there are atrocities and genocides that continue to plague this world, however it never ceases to amaze me that when faced with the memorials and documents of this time, again and again it still leaves me gutted.
So then it is sun and a gentle river and an epic sunset and a crazy song and lyrics reminding me that yes, it is all transient. Transient, yes, but during that transience marks are made and excavations follow.
nazdravi
Julie