Medusa
It is an old building, held up and half-hidden by scaffolding. I’ve never been able to find it by day. It seems to rise up with the night, when Vinohrady shakes off the rest of Prague. The parks become forests; the soft slope streets turn into mountain paths. Then every detour leads to this house.
Above the door some memorial stone: a woman’s head - the Medusa, now herself turned stone. Her eyes speak of terrible deeds: priests in white robes, throwing howling babies into the wide-open maws of stone ovens; the knives that forever come down, the last tremble through cut flesh.
And yet, she is also of a terrible and awe-inspiring beauty. Around her, night and time itself are frozen; even the sky is now of stone. Flesh becomes ghost matter here. We, the present, are now visitors; stripped of the illusion of light. And it comes with echoes of revelation: that everything inside the night is an awakening.
Here is no love, no lust; no emotion that can be traced with language - but there is a waiting, a hunger. Something here looks at us and forces us to return. How many stood here like this and disappeared into the night? Under what lead-grey skies the Medusa now looks at them?
What last words, last thoughts came like mist, to die with a touch of first light? Was it madness or expectation that took hold of their shapes and sent them off like spring spores?
How many weeks or years did I lose myself, caught in the deep shadow, in the eyes of the Medusa? Where do these torn-off bits of my soul now roam? In what worlds am I now some half-seen ghost, caught inside mirrors, stumbling through the empty corridors of old mansions? Whose dreams do I disturb?
The building and the Medusa in the heart of Vinohrady wait. There are no answers and no questions here. This is stone night that calls us and reshapes us in its image.