Sylva Lauerova
The biography of an extravagant writer?
My friend suggested the story of a girl growing up in the depressing environment of an alcoholic family, running away from home, living on the street, almost ending up as a prostitute, with a slowly-emerging prepubescent drug addiction; then a fateful encounter with a Buddhist monk - preferably at the train station :) - leading to a stay in a monastery, rebirth and purification, followed by travels around the world and volunteer work in Africa; then returning to modern civilisation, going through at least three failed marriages and five miscarriages, smoking two packs of cigarettes and drinking three bottles of wine a day … above all, no mentioning a happy and harmonious childhood, loving parents, success wherever you look, a peaceful family life and good, loyal friends - nobody would fancy that.
So let’s try it another way. Who really am I? A Tiger according to the Chinese horoscope, a Gemini according to the western one, a Deer in the Native American one and a Hawthorn in the Celtic one. According to the occult, I’m a Dragon floating in the air and my shadow is a Satyr. I was born in Brno, on a Sunday afternoon (just in time for a cup of coffee and cake) – I know how to pick the right time :) A storm was approaching which means a witch is born (… my Mom used to say).
A list of my Pleasures
- baroque music- I have lost myself in it completely
- making love - no further comment needed
- music in general, except for brass bands - which I no longer understand - and experimental jazz - which I have yet to understand
- meditation - no further comment needed
- colours - flowers, trees, green, turquoise, orange, the Sun, the ocean…
- sounds - birds, birds above all… and frogs quite a bit too
- animals - almost all of them, with a predominant weakness for giraffes, hippos, turtles and English bulldogs
- men - intelligent, witty, charismatic, with a predominant weakness for those with amazingly well-built bodies
- intellectual conversations with my friends, and friends in general, but just a few of them- carefully chosen, intelligent and broad-minded - and having coffee with them, ideally in a functionalist-style café or a harbour café somewhere by the Mediterranean
- ‘Miňonky’ -cream-filled chocolate-covered wafer biscuits- also no comments needed
A list of my Fears
- aggressive idiots - no comment
- the manipulated masses - there are enough examples in both the past and the present
- unknown diseases - an outbreak of any disease we can’t deal with would bring enormous chaos to our world. Our clean, well-constructed high-tech world is very, very fragile. I realised just how vulnerable it is on 11th September 2001
- war - no comment
- Death - face to face, I understand it as the complete transience of a tangible substance - our bodies. We are ridiculous and childish in that we spend our short life collecting, treasuring, keeping and hoarding things - love letters, photos of our loved ones, beer mats, money and real estate - and then one day we just kick the bucket. The End. Finito. And someone else throws all our memories into the dustbin. Or, in the best case scenario, they get to enjoy our money wisely; that is, if they don’t end up dying in a shootout with the rest of the family. That’s why in our western civilisation we all pretend that Death won’t touch us; we don’t want to hear about it and we fear it as something ugly. It’s monstrous, evasive and incorruptible. When somebody we love dies all of a sudden, we just stand there, staring, like a stuffed puppet, unable to understand that he or she is irrevocably gone. Our philosophy really doesn’t provide us with any acceptable explanation. We are modern and sophisticated, we have developed our social and ecological awareness, we explore, invent, we have subjugated the world, we influence what was once insusceptible to influence… We are proud of how we go about making decisions regarding birth but in the face of death, we are just poor little things. I have to laugh - these days, we do business with almost anybody but death is a rotter, it doesn’t believe in negotiating. And if one day we do succeed in trading with death, will we be closer to something… or will we be hopelessly further away?
