Prague is multiple cities. There is Prague—a city of cobblestone streets and stunning, ornate buildings; this Prague is the city of trams and traffic, of commerce, and everything else that comprises day-to-day life in the twenty-first century. There is a second city, also known as Prague; it exists within a jumble of passages, hidden courtyards, and impossibly-connected cellars of truly ancient pedigree. Prague and Prague are not the same city, though the inhabitants of one may cross to the other for whatever reasons may inspire such journeys. It was sunny on the day that I walked with my friend Svetlana, in search of a museum. I was sure that it was in Prague, but uncertain of which Prague. She’d described it to me, and it was one I did not recognize. It was a small museum, just within Staroměstské náměstí. Though uncertain, I thought that it had some connection with Franz Kafka. It didn’t, and because I didn’t recognize it, I learned that it stood within Prague rather than in Prague. (There are ways to tell the difference when you hear each name…one, no matter how loudly you speak its single syllable, it always sounds, vaguely, like a whisper.) It was a small museum—a gallery, actually—dedicated to Czech painters (and a few grudgingly-accepted Germans.) The paintings on display were quite old, quite Classical in style, though I’m sure that Classical means different things to different people. There were brooding landscapes, more brooding landscapes, and other rich, dark images that seem so intimate a part of the collective Czech psyche. Toward the end of our visit, I heard a sound. A low, rolling, thunderous sound. It was rain on the roof. One of the museum employees—a woman charged with making sure that no one touches the paintings, or photographs them with a flash—called me over to a curtain. I approached her as she opened the thick, draping fabric, to reveal the source of the noise. Rain. Lots and lots of rain…to call it a torrential downpour would be the grandfather of all understatements. This was Noah’s flood, Czech-style. And it served as a multi-lingual conversation piece between me, the museum matron, and Svetlana. The rain was amazing, the talk was interesting as well, though I remember only its vague details. We stayed until closing time. It rained for a while after that. As Svetlana and I left the gallery, we were forced to take shelter in that strange space that exists between Prague and Prague. It is in this space, that I discovered a third country. I didn’t know its name at the time, and it would be weeks before the word Agara slipped, cat-like, into my mind. A year later, the city of Pekkur would name itself. Both Agara as a whole, and its capital city of Pekkur came to define themselves, softly at first, by a quartet of German students, and a lone Czech local on his cell phone. They were as stranded as we were: cat-like in a shared reluctance to get wet. We shared an odd space between cities—between Prague, Prague, and Pekkur, between the Czech Republic, something that might once have been Czechoslovakia, and another place, unrelated to each of them. I took a picture, not knowing that it was one of the very last I’d take with the camera I had. I found that picture, and that day with Svetlana came rolling back, as if it was just yesterday. Perhaps in Pekkur, only a day has passed since then. Perhaps not. But as it stands, this image is an important one to me, because it is a marker of the exact moment that my writer’s mind began to see a connection between three complex, symbiotic cities. *** My old camera died approximately 2 shots after this one, and so this is one of the very last images I captured while in Prague. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you're having a great week.