Finding the Form with Nikita Eaton-Luisgnan
I think it was February 2021, deep into the pandemic, and I had to write something for my fiction workshop. I was living in Parc Extension then, and the dépanneur nearby didn’t have a great beer selection, so every time I’d brave the cold to do groceries, I’d pick up a craft beer for myself and my partner as a treat. This time, it was Bon Baiser de Prague from Vagabond, a Czech pilsner. I don’t usually go for a pilsner, but the artwork on the can depicted the sunset behind Prague castle, and it looked exactly like the sunset behind Prague castle seen from Lipanska tram stop, which was my tram stop back when I lived there.
“I cracked the beer open in front of a fresh Word document and started describing the tram ride from the airport to my old apartment. Except I wasn’t the one on the tram. Liana’s voice came out loud in my head, and I kept writing so I could figure out what she was doing in Prague.”
I knew she was to be running from something. She was visiting her brother, because I wanted to write about a sibling relationship. And she had to want a drink, because how else would she make it to Sunday night karaoke? I could see her staring out my window at the drunken chaos below, as I had, but for an entirely different reason. And I guess this whole story was an experiment in slipping a new character into a familiar setting, and watching her respond to a world I was longing to revisit.
Nikita Eaton-Lusignan is a writer, teacher, workshop leader, farm labourer and parent currently residing in Montréal. She has taught English in both Czechia and Taiwan, and has a BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Sustainability from Concordia University. Her work had been published by Soliloquies Anthology.
Photo by Bostan Florin Catalin on Unsplash