Wed.January 26, 2011,

Dear Friends:

As you know from some of my previous messages I've had a more difficult time than I thought I would to re-adjust to living back here after my last three years of living in Plzen. Somehow I felt like a man who was being held under water by some force and could not breathe. But by that I mean breathe in a mental sense.

Getting on an airplane and in a matter of hours being transported from one world to another world so different from the previous one is in itself destabilizing. For it creates the illusion within the mind of the person being transported that what he or she is doing is a natural process when in fact it is the complete opposite.
The physical world is divided by time zones and each zone represents so much physical space on the globe. Within that space there are worlds within worlds. Just a few hours after leaving a runway in Northern Europe a plane flying to Seattle flies over the frozen north where there is virtually no human life because there is no land that will support growing crops. But the passenger never sees it.
Over the frozen north of Canada there are massive mountains but if the passenger ever sees them they appear almost flat. But for almost the whole existence of man's life on earth these vast spaces and world's within world had to be conquered for man to travel. No man ever set out to cross these worlds unless there was an almost desperate need because the conditions were so harsh he might not survive them. Only within the last 100 years could man travel in relative safety to be sure of surviving, although the Titanic proved that nature can still be mightier than technology.

So men had a great respect and even fear of the unconquered world around him. Not so anymore. Today people travel from one world to another world seem annoyed if when they arrive in a new world it doesn't provide the same comforts as the world they left, by that I mean the comforts within an airport. Travel is supposed to be so effortless that even a small discomfort is frowned on and thought to be unworldly. International has come not to mean something different but everything uniform and interchangeable. Everything must be reduced down to what is convenient so airports are naturally full of Starbucks and McDonalds.

But yesterday I had an experience that for the first time since I arrived back here put me in touch with something that I felt instinctively bigger and more important than myself. I had to visit some second-hand shops to search for another writing table. There are three such stores in Kennewick and while in each of them it made sense to also make a quick inspection of the used book sections. At each store I found books to buy to add to the library in Plzen.

IN the morning as I had to move the new table into my bedroom I decided it was long past time to log into the computer library list all the new books and films I'd neglected to do since last summer. Altogether there were only 25 books and 10 films. (Find list of books at the end of text.) There is an old saying we have, There is magic in books. Something about the physical touching of books along with the visual stimulation of seeing their often colorful and pleasing covers remind one on how each book is a living thing.

For example, there is the book about Sherlock Holmes I am now reading. It is what I call a luxury edition. It is hard bound with a kind of soft vinyl cover that is supposed to imitate a leather bound cover and the title on the front and on the spine is embossed in gold. These are classic books published by Reader's Digest. I have perhaps 20 of them in Plzen by Cather, Twain, Steinbeck, Pasternak, Kipling, Dickens. Inside the paper is that soft ivory color and thicker to the feel than regular paper. The headers are always ornate. They are exactly the kind of book you want to give to someone who is special to you or you admire.

The new book I found by Kazantzakis I've never heard of. I'd thought I'd read all his books. But knowing how he always probes and then uncovers some great spiritual revelation I am particularly looking forward to reading his book as one looks forward to meeting a distant and dear friend. (Especially since all the books I've borrowed from the local library have been among the worst books I've ever read in my life.)

Seeing this small collection in a group brought to life an old buried feeling: the feeling that somehow someway I'll return to Plzen with another shipment of books and somehow some way the library will become a reality.

None of the films except the 1946 classic Notorious staring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains is exceptional. Notorious has been one of those films I have from the beginning always hoped to acquire. I found it last summer but have put off sitting down to watch it as one saves a special bottle of wine for when their mood needs some inspiration. I also found a film I'd never seen but always wanted to, the 1961 films Two Women with Sophia Loren when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. But I think it has lost some of its punch translated into English. I felt let down after waiting so many years to see it.

But the books brought to life other memories from others years, such as 1996, when I think I was at the lowest point and felt Project Plzen would never come into fruition and then during the summer of that year I found myself in a steady stream of acquiring books so that by the end of the summer I believed the library would become real.

I suppose leaving Plzen with the books of Project Plzen stored in three different places, it seemed to me I was not merely leaving temporarily but leaving the scene of a battlefield where my side had lost the last battle. In a word I felt after almost 20 years of work I had lost the last battle.

I must add I found one book yesterday, Eastern Europe, a travel book and they have 3 pages on Plzen, 273-277. I quickly read them seeing if they might mention the American Center. They did not.

Holding those beautiful books in my hands reminded me how there have been other times when it seemed the idea of a library and my book shop was too far beyond my grasp and I was defeated. Somehow the physical act of holding those books in my hands reminded me of who I am. It reminded me that I have a destiny and I can claim it unless I give in to the idea that I must surrender to the world before the battle is over. I think that is the main problem most people have in claiming their own destiny: they overestimate the size of the physical world in comparison to the size of the spiritual world inside them. So when the world slaps them a time or two it seems only logical to them they ought to do the sensible thing and surrender before the world gets really angry at them and does something worse.

Then that spiritual world within begins to collapse and wither. To build anything of value in this world I think a man or woman has to start with the idea it is worth dying for. If not they ought to find another calling. For unless they are willing to die for something the world will always bluff them out of seeing it through to the end.

That's what I was reminded of yesterday. See it through. Play it out all the way to the end. Don't let the world bluff you and make you fold your cards.

Roger