“Be careful.” Her whisper reaches me before the glass does.
Condensation gathers around my fingers, time dripping slowly into the waiting glass. My heartbeat matches every drop. La fée verte awaits—the green goddess of absinthe, glowing in the stillness of the night.
All trepidation dissolves.
She hovers above, slowly trickling into my glass, into me. I wish to offer a thank-you, “Děkuji, jste krásná,” but I’m unable to form the words. Her green eyes widen with silent laughter, and she pours herself into me.
The lightness she offers promises forever—a lie that only postpones the return of heaviness. Adrift in daydreams, this tension between lightness and heaviness is my being.
I push myself up, held together by the gravity of a few places and people. Softly she touches me, “Lightness. Heaviness… do we really have a choice between the two?”
A trace of history passes underneath my hand as I run it over the ancient stone. Below, my friend, the Vltava River flows into the mysterious heart of Český Krumlov, and the past wraps itself around me, adding another layer to life, another weight.
My mind wanders, eyes locked into hers, heartbeats speaking on our behalf: If I stay here—no plans, no thoughts, just breath and river and absinthe—will you stay with me and let the rest of the world carry on without us?
It’s as if the night sky plucked me from my seat, my spirit floating away like a feather—this medieval town melting below me, unmet expectations flittering behind. Unbothered, immersed in dreams, this place becomes a touchstone for anyone willing to forget the world—if only for a split second—and experience bliss.
Inevitably, the lightest touch of heaviness returns, and the spirit of flight ends—the free-fall of burdens quickening the crash back into reality, diving deeper than before. Never could I have asked for a better place to land than in the heart of Bohemia.
La fée verte finds her voice, rekindling the words stuck in my soul.
“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.”
– The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part 1, Milan Kundera
My fingers rake along the walls; their cold wetness brings the past to life as I sit along the Vltava, watching it flow. How I wish I could do the same.
“The Vltava holds a perfection I’ve never understood until now—a certain ambiguity: it appears to flow forward, yet here I watch it bend, constantly circling the land it loves…”
The serenity breaks under her sensuous voice. “Much like you—flowing east and then west, ambiguous and indifferent to any meaning forced upon you… unwilling to commit.”
The words awaken me. I nod.
“You’re a walking contradiction…” she sighs. It’s not a compliment.
The words churn in my head, and I close my eyes. Late-night village smoke settles in, as I imagine the lightness of the world. I revel in the thought of giving up, giving in—releasing all burdens: my work, writing, photography, pieces of my past—and simply floating away.
Calmed by the river and the sleepy town, with a peaceful certainty beating within me that all will lead to the sublime—I let myself slip free, shrug off La fée verte, and turn away.
As I fade into the enchantment of dreams, her hand reaches for me, a touch that leaves me shivering. There’s a wildness to her; her eyes tempt, yet carry a chill and a sorrow deep enough to break a heart.
She releases shards of ice shaped into words, cutting through to my soul: “There’s a fine line between the courage of inspiration and the cowardice of indifference to everything but yourself… and you’re treading dangerously close.”
She fills my mouth again, a harshness sharper than before: “I loathe cowards who fail to see that the sublime is right here, right now—waiting for the courage to care. Don’t you dare waste my time…”
In panic, I sit up. The icy fire still burns in her eyes; behind it, the faintest hint of relief. Leaning against a small boulder, the rippling echo of the Vltava comforts. I exhale. Her point is well taken. Clarity reigns.
These periods of heaviness, of struggle—the meat of life. To sink your teeth into something solid, something worth pain: the sensation of being alive. The heavier the burden, the heavier the spirit; the closer we come to feeling the dirt between our toes, our hands touching the earth itself—something honest, something we can trust.
The Bohemian air silences the whispering winds, inviting me to reflect on my family, my work, my friends—anchors that keep me grounded. Without them, I’d be lost. The gravity of love, duty, place, and fate: it’s the price of meaning.
The wet cobblestones glimmer in the streetlights, the strength and weight of history mirroring my hometown of Pendleton—a weight that made me who I am, and one I’ll carry in gratitude.
The relentless chase for meaning. How do they put up with it—how do they put up with me?
She arches away from me, her silent question lingering within her gaze, as if to say, “How do you put up with yourself?”
“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”
– The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part 2, Milan Kundera
The chill of the night accentuates the loneliness of lightness—rare is the moment when I feel an absolute absence of pressure. Could it be that this tiny, ever-present weight within allows me to soar ever higher above the madness? Even tonight, wrapped in the essence of Český Krumlov, nothing seems real.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
A small kiss ignites my soul. Redeemed, we float above it all. My insignificance is freedom—a hollow bliss, intoxicating as it is dangerous.
This sensation is the never-ending push and pull between the lightness of spirit and the heaviness of meaning.
The return to reality comes as dawn opens her eyes. This experience, this oscillation between fantasy and being, is the driver in life—the force that moves me towards others, as well as away from them.
Another whisper, “You belong here, you belong there… why, is this wrong?” Her tone softens the blow to my heart. “Life does not wait for you or anyone—continually shifting between these extremes.”
Part of me wants to break out in laughter; another part wants to hold her forever. Hoping to tame these vacillating moods that keep me out of sync—a slice of melancholy as I slip away toward the brightness of the houses below, clinging to hope.
The early morning glow reflects off the windows, traces of rain crying out, opening another world to me. The discovery of what’s possible. Of taking another step beyond what I had envisioned… a never-ending cycle.
Her words reach me, “This is the thrill, walking the tightrope between what’s real and what’s imaginable…” Feeling her hand in mine, we cross the road to a café. “You may be powerless at times, but aren’t those moments curiously calming as well?” The soft melody of her voice makes me laugh.
This path I travel, these authentic scenes of the village, bring a sense of recreating my life—grace taking over me, this feeling of being limitless, unbound. Does it leave my soul strangely empty… and meaningless?
La fée verte strokes my hair, and I drift once more into dream… what a place to sit and have a mini-existential crisis—within this medieval town, its culture seeps into me.
I’ll stay here—no plans, no thoughts, just breath and river and you—
will you stay with me and let the rest of the world carry on without us?
What falls on me is not the burden of life, but the unbearable lightness of being. I laugh at those words, the very title of a novel by the Czech writer Milan Kundera.
Between Kundera on the page and La fée verte by my side, I’ve been circling the same question for years: how much lightness can a life bear, and how much heaviness does it need to feel real?
The smell of a bakery breaks through our fog, and without thought, we wander to a cobbled courtyard café, the steam rising from freshly poured coffee. A couple of fresh apple strudels call to me, and the Czech words flow from her to me, as I say, “Prosím, dva jablečné štrúdly…” A simple exhilaration of lightness washes over me, made better by being tethered to the meaning of heaviness—the friction that holds my life together.
Friction. And the fear that comes with it—that my threads of ambition begin to wear thin, that my life will leave no trace or enduring value. Yet it’s not from too many obligations, but rather from a subtle existential suffering in being so free and unbound.
I fool myself by asking, “Is this such a bad thing?”
Where does this freedom begin to unravel? When the search for meaning itself starts tearing at the seams.
She breaks her silence and lays a soft hand on my head, offering a truth I needed to hear:
“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
– The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part 1, Milan Kundera
Lightness is a lie about how easy life can be—a lie compassion makes harder and harder to believe.
Compassion is the most beautiful weight in the world.
Perhaps this is all I’ve ever asked of life, here with La fée verte and the Vltava below, and someone beside me who understands: a quiet moment to lie here and let all plans and obligations fall away, to forget the world long enough and feel both the impossible lightness and the consoling heaviness of being at once.
I stare out over the city, alone one more time before departing—winding toward whatever untold destination lies ahead. This time, though, it feels as if this place will not let me go—the quiet pull of Bohemia.
My spirit trails with the water below, passing through these alleyways, pieces of me clinging to the sanctity of this place. The Vltava, faithful to the land she loves, never to leave—the one weight I’ve never quite been able to bear. The honesty of my exhale tells me whether here or halfway across the globe, I’m finally home.
Within me, La fée verte blissfully lies, letting the rest of the world carry on without us.
This twinge of bittersweet nostalgia is the fuel for the road.
“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”
– The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part 6, Milan Kundera
Global Sojourns: Photography & Philosophy 
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