The city and the country
I lived in Prague for a while in the 90s, back when it was a favorite spot for American college grads dreaming of Bohemian greatness. Once or twice I even attended their open mic nights, at which Henry Miller wannabes would read aloud rancid poetry to similarly minded aesthetes bankrolled by daddy. Years later I still remember my pain, if not the content of what I heard- except for the first line of one mediocre song:
Texas is like Russia- big and hopeless.
At the time I’d never been to Texas, but even so the comparison seemed ridiculous. What could J.R. Ewing and V.I. Lenin have in common?
Since then however I have travelled widely in both places and I find that when I am roaming around Texas I am often reminded of Russia- and not simply because out west there is an Odessa, while near Houston there’s a little Moscow.
No, I get this sense of Russia when I am in tiny places that have no obvious connection to the birthplace of the great Dima Bilan. This past weekend for instance I was walking around a place called Bertram, a tiny town divided in two by train tracks and the freeway. I’ve no idea what people do in Bertram, although farming probably has something to do with it. Some of the buildings date back to the Old West; most of the time it’s very hot. And yet, there it was: the whiff of Russia…
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