All you lovers of descents and entries, it took us a quarter of a century to come up with a collection of songs thematically connected to the locality so very close to us, which is the Kras. They say that under the sun is the darkest – and there is something to this saying. Amateur collective FS did many different things. We dealt with astral lives, deconstructed Chilean novels; we tried to find winter lands, travelled through the North of Africa and then Anatolia, paid tribute to night Brno and made hedonistically opulent feasts… but just now, as mature academics who know how to cope with life, we are ready for a deeper description and exploration of a region so close to us not only in terms of its location but also its meaning. Kras. Moravian Karst. It is a fairytale-like land, mysteriously bizarre. Dark and sunny, full of stories made of shadows. Rock massifs, fantastic channels, weird rock formations, never ending green slopes, tens of shutters, dark entries leading seemingly into nothing… all this creates the magical mosaic of the Kras. Whether you go though the valley of Holstejn, the Krtiny valley, the Josefov valley, or whether you travel by the Ricka, Kolibky, or Suchy zleb, your eyes wide shut will see mysterious signs on tree trunks and on stones. And it does not matter if you set out to an exploring and at the same time very dangerous path when the slopes are shamelessly green, or during the winter, when the bare trees summon destruction with their claws and countless holes open their sharp-teethed mouths. Not even the time of your expeditions can change the genius loci of these places. It is true that we started our explorations usually in the morning or during darkness…during times when the valleys and grooves belonged to us and there was a frightening silence everywhere. So forgotten… The lights of our torches slit through time, which was not night anymore, but not day yet. Our closest relative has always been Medved – The seven-stringed and with him we heroically added new notches to the stock of our ice axes. We used countless of pages of our notebooks with numbers and gathered countless pictures. The more we explored, the more confusion we encountered. But can you forget the triumphant moments of the descent into the lower levels of the Sacred steps, Eve’s cave, or the caves near Cihadla? Nothing compares to this. Our work is not over and it can never be over. And therefore: upwards! The human spirit is unlimited! We have so much to explore, because to paraphrase a classic: the bolt at Katerinska is not the end, but the beginning… It was extremely difficult to only choose six places, mysterious as hell itself. There are so many places we did not cover this time but they will remain deep in our hearts until our last breath. Maybe you know these places, and maybe you will want to get to know them. But if you go in our footsteps, please go quietly… Quietly and carefully, so that you do not become a rock or darkness yourself…

The cave is a dark place; the quiet place under my hair. The darkness is staring at me from darkness, it’s breathing and hesitating. It rains or even snows in the darkness when I want to. And the darkness spits up millions of stars, and I try to breathe quietly, as if I was not even here… The cave is a lonely place. What the eyes cannot see is important here. I see our silhouettes in the white puddles. The mirrored surfaces are like entrances into the world beyond the reflection, where everything is backwards, not the way it should be. Are we still going through the hall or are have we been standing still for years already? There is ice water going through our bodies. It drips into our bodies like a cave rain. Like the blows of the Master Architect that give birth to frail towers from within. Those frail needles are going through my ear, sending waves to me. Those frail needles, going in once from above, then from below. As the bare jaw of a long-rotten dog, thrown out by the road. It’s dark; completely dark, but not completely silent. The drops of water dripping to the ground are the only things you can hear. The sound of stars in the night sky; there’s only darkness and isolated, bright spots. It’s ideal for watching and it shows everything. I was there for a long time. I examined the sound of the drops dripping from the stalactites. You can read everything in them, even that what the stars are concealing. And I found out something more, I calculated it. Down there, in the cave it always happens. The drops are dripping to different places in different intervals. But they all synchronize at some point and they will hit the ground at the same time. And then something happens. But not down here, but up here on the surface. No one has seen the connection yet. But something bad happens. It’s dark in here. The darkness of a shelter closed for a hundred years, the humidity of the underground factory Richard I. Only here I know who I am and how come I can breathe in here. The stifling vitiated air. Breathe in, breathe out, gas… The cave is a dark place. It’s like the darkness of the cave is an antidote to the Sun itself. It’s as powerful as the Sun. The darkness is staring at me from darkness, breathing and hesitating. You can stop breathing here; you can tear down the skin on your head with a sharp stone and lose consciousness… What happens when I get back up? Are they going to kill me or are they going to run? And the deeper into the caves I go, the more halls I walk through, the more I throw up blames and judgments. I throw up with gusto, cleaning my tired mouth. The ropes of dense saliva are going down like climbers. He who saw the light of his own lamp sliding along the wet walls has to agree with me. To breathe the same air as you is like starting a masquerade with a crowd of ropedancers, clowns and fire-eaters in silence. It’s not right. On the other hand I have to admit that it’s somehow conspiratorially bizarre to open the still working heavy door and enter, from the warmth of civilization into the majesty of the Bear hall. I feel the genius loci eating me like bait! I am cut in half and blood is splashing from my mouth. German concrete is still hard after all those years. If you listen, you will still hear the strong commands and I want to ask why there are still exceptions from the established order… A thousand exceptions defy the order. To breathe the same air as you is as careless as to examine the abyss down there in tight deepness. It’s like looking for a mythical underground lake. It’s like hiding in the Witch abyss of the nearby cave with German concrete. It’s like stuffing your face with soil from the cave. I wish I lived in a different time. I wouldn’t have to detest the look of your back.

When I was a child, more than anything in the world I wished to discover a mysterious, cold black hole in the caves… a hole that will lead me to the centre of the mountain. I will take this pilgrimage without permission or a snack because I will have no idea how long it’s going to take. I just need to be careful so that the scary shadows lurking behind every bush, waiting for me to make a mistake, do not see me. I will crawl alone into the centre of the mountain. I will crawl through its guts. I will crawl for hours and hours. I will be crawling forever. I will be slipping in slimy mud and I will go through burls of white steam coming from my mouth. I will go past the bodies of all those who were searching before me but did not find anything. Gassy guts slowly decomposing. Then I will go through a narrow corridor to the furthest bottom, into a beautiful stalactite hall, full of impalpable phantoms. A drop of water will resonate for minutes, days and light years. There on the ground next to a pond will be a sparkling crystal bell. When I hit it, all my wishes will come true. All my wishes that are… On that autumn day I set out before sunrise because the triangular hole was calling my name. The way through the valley always passes by so quickly and reminds me of a weekly film that goes before the main movie. The first and second dome let the light slide down its smooth walls. I was amazed to see what lays just a few steps from the road. Would you think that? Would someone ever find a stiff body that lost its direction and its soul? Did anyone ever looked up in that direction? But I wanted to go down, down there into the darkness. I wanted to go down where the brook whispers. Water. Iron beam with water underneath. The bottom of the world. The bottom of the light. Crystal bell. Listen!

That damn place was passing me by and I unwillingly looked the other way. When you walk through the valley in the summer, you see nothing but the massive wall of leaves and tree trunks and the green walls of the impervious fortress. Who would think that just 18 meters from the soles of my boots there is an entrance to the shrine of the triple K. The opening in the rock is mystical; it’s so hungry that it swallows passers-by or bites into their uncovered bodies like an eager Empusa. The blood splatters like in a Coppola’s movies and the academy gives a standing ovation. It’s beautiful, it’s desirable, it’s hideous and cunning and it takes on the form of an ugly horse. The horse is walking silently behind you and when you turn around, it stops and looks deep into your eyes… Monday: all four of us are going from number 694, furiously looking for number 700. I know there’s the muzzle of the Earth here, named after horses. It’s here but I cannot see it. There’s nothing here. Tuesday: one and a half of the seekers go through the valley to the gate. We are passing numbers and numbers, going around abysses of the devil’s windows but the dreamed-of portal of “the entrance into nothingness” is not to be found. Wednesday: three and a half of the seekers go through the valley. There is darkness and I cannot see it. The void. We see nothing! Blindness! Thursday: today two explorers find our target. Today it must happen. We get up before 5am, feeling the autumn chills on our way from the gate. Before I die, I want to experience this journey. Go into the dark valley and let the fabricated phantoms scare me. Secretly, in the dark. When no one knows anything about me. In my head I hear Marduk and Arditi. The boot falls into the fallen leaves for the first time. Now I need to look closely and be careful. Is it up there? Or down? Black, or dark grey? How to get there if the entrance ends here? It is the wrong way again? The gate to the underground is finally showing, ridiculously low. Right here! Do you know what it’s like to be swallowed by a huge whale? To be swallowed and travel into a monstrous gut like saints from the old books? No one has ever seen such a huge, accessible, but at the same time denied space! You can experience total death, absolute silence, complete darkness just a few steps from the road… a shrine of space!

I usually get this feeling in the night. Oh how I hate falling asleep… I can feel the distant whispers of black holes. They are calling me over and over again, craftily teasing me… come, come! They wheeze poisonously. The cold bodies scratch the windows with their broken nails or tap away arrhythmic compositions onto the front door. There is nothing more bizarre than the father of the family starting the car in the garage after midnight, staring into the dashboard with his tired eyes. The tank is only half-full. Hunger. Turn right. Turn left. I drive like a machine. Hunger. I am dashing through the night road towards Suchý žleb. And I can hear the dark humming in my ears again. Those two low tones, alternating with a strange irregularity. I will die – if they want me to. I will jump under an invisible train and throw myself into an abyss. Two tones. One up, one down, and over again, playing according to the whims of the dissonance orchestra inside my head. The director is coming… plucks a spruce twig with his single deformed hand and sets the clock! The yellow path goes upwards, the light is wrapping itself around old roots and calm boulders and buries itself into old leaves. Higher and higher, we still have a long way to go. My hurting head would like to lie down onto a moss pillow. But when I get to the highest point of Ripka Warte out of breath, I can victoriously lean across the old railing and entwine my fingers with the iron. We can hear the howls of hundred years old dreads from the darkness beneath us, the children of the night. Hear them sing! The old bodies of pilots. They are moaning with desire. A long list of fallouts. Mr. Kala is pulling them out of the depths and I can hear his commands: “Higher, higher – so that the body gets more damaged!” … You are becoming the air and the wind, and the coldness coming from the centre of the Earth is filling up the pores of your arms. You want to become the bat of the autumn night? You want to become the crow of the místy dawn? Entwine your cold fingers with the iron, but try not to get hypnotized by the black. You are red, you are blue, you are green. Do you want to see even darker darkness of the throat of the abyss? Then go lower, where the Elders built the second view tower… where insecurity and planned accidents lie. You are red, you are blue, you are green and you are going down Salm’s path. Number 30 (or 170 or 263) is close!! Don’t run, go slowly and don’t leave the path. You can get some rest at the magical crossroads near the pit that swallows theatre actors. If you take the Northern road, you will pass numbers 17 and 18 high in the hills… they will attract you like a strong magnet, like a magnetic mountain from Verne’s books. An ice sphinx! In the night you will experience unforeseen things with unknown people. Strange meetings at the crossroads. Here you will be haunted by shadows and strange sounds that do not belong to the woods. After long conversations some remain lying still under the cover of autumn leaves and never get back up again. In the spring the palms of their hands get covered in moss and snowdrops grow out of their ears. They are nobly cold. And our group goes into the centre of the mountain earlier than we thought. The mountain gave out its secret where 6 meets 9. One after another we disappeared into the orifice of Amatérská Cave and darkness alternates with light. To be an underground snake, to be a cavefish… we are taking a 35 km long trip. We will pass fantastic buildings, snow-white churches, white citadels, helictite villages… this all created by Roger Dean. It is our honour to go where we’re not allowed to go. The longest cave systém!! Amatérská… 17 km! White Water and Sloup brook and the number is growing. 35! 35!

That semi-transparent shadow is following me! It is following me, sticking to my boots. It’s lurking from behind the bushes and stones. I enter the Northern valley, stepping on the grass and it is always two steps behind me. That grey, watercolour silhouette of a Japanese figure painted on teapots. It’s the same in the summer as well as in the winter. I have never been where I was supposed to be. My thoughts hold me back. And the shadow is still searching for me, like the text that follows my name in encyclopaedias. I hid in the shadow under the ruins of the castle. It’s cold; there is a narrow corridor and a sign from 1934. And ice silhouettes that don’t speak and glisten like the eggs of space lizards. Like the teapot man, breathing on my neck. Here I ran through the valley to the bridge that frames this perfectly Wagnerian prop. The Nibelung moan and cry from under tons of stones. Oh, just stop already! You cannot go that far in spring. The new cathedral is the church of secret societies of water gnomes. Two of the three doors will never let you in. You shall not pass. All you can feel is the smell of rotting water and the inflated bodies of old carcasses. I have never been where I was supposed to be. The hazy shadow shows me the way to the ancient rocks. There are four entrances, a bar and a sign with a girl’s name on it. I have to go down to the first water, where the bodies of cats and dogs ended… where there’s adventure, moving stones and stranger’s lights in the corridors. Where there’s no time and no shadow, because where there’s no light, there’s no shadow. You will lose your strength and you may fall down. When we crawl outside, we will walk soullessly through the land of shaft coverings. Me and my tea shadow. We will see bizarre spirals, old ladies and simple numbers. Just say, write and let the future ones know that on that day we breathed in behind the wall of the cold factory hall with mustard gas. This is the opening to a different place. There is cosmos behind the wall. It’s the entrance door into the treasury of imagination. Three rock spirits carry out the cave ritual and we will look into the near throat without a number! Eighty… eighty…

On this sunny day I decided to take you to Suchý žleb. I am taking my fantasies with me. I feel the autumn sun like it went up to the sky for the last time. It’s still very warm but I can feel the winter already, if I want to. The trees along both sides of the hills are covered with thousands of golden petals, shivering in the winds. And the slopes are so steep. Up there in the leaves no one is looking for anyone, never. Up there are white spots in maps. Up there are strange places. You will find the remains of seekers’ and passers’-by clothing. They are lying in the leaves like cluttered toys of a naughty kid. And the bodies – they belong these. They live there. Those dens have names. Those dens have numbers. People don’t take trips here. These are the dwellings of those who are lost… This place is the mythical Sea of Trees. The portal of the cave where little shepherds die, is behind us. Turn to the right and you will still not see the rock castle high in the hill. No exploration is going on there. No lights shine in the night, only sometimes. And those are night-lights. They say the tunnel is unpromising and meaningless. But blind eyes cannot see, just as you will probably hear the birds’ cries but not their arias. Now. Was that a human voice? Is someone near? Fall asleep forever in one of the numbered tunnels leading into the deepness of the mountain. The caves are all around us. The caves drive our minds and they get into our morning dreams. We become them and in our fantasies we grow into their walls. The black rider is still searching. The black rider is going through calm landscape. His arm has grown into the Devon limestone and his leg into the puddles in the muddy forest path. When he was watching the autumn sun through the veils of browning leaves, he shielded his eyes with his hand. The Japanese have a nice word for this. He sat still for hours, not breathing. Maybe there was a sad sickness budding inside of his body. It spread through the whole body, suffocating him. He was translucent and his veins were full of dirt. For the last time he looked back to Skalní mlýn and then he went on, breathing fast. He went up the hill, slowly and with respect. It looked like he was walking in whispers, turning back to make sure that the grass blades are straightening up again. He found his “way into the centre of the Earth”. This name and this number will be his end. Here they will find his remains, rotten by time and humidity. He went in, down and down. Then he curled up and threw away the light, just to be sure. He then closed his eyes and stopped breathing. Dying. Choking. Not enough air. Not enough saliva. He wants to stay here. And he saw the flashes of afternoon sun shining through the lampions of orange trees in the dreamy valley…he was falling asleep. He had a hallucinogenic dream full of unreal colours… Dreamy valley. We will meet another time…up there in the strange places!

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