Sacher torte and other preoccupations

My birthday is looming and I'm in some kind of confusion as to how to cope with this.  Having watched 'A Single Man' and been astounded at just how clearly the muted colour, shut-down version of life was portrayed in contrast with the vibrant hopeful version, I'm comparing it to the version I see in front of my own eyes.  I think I'm in a year-old 35mm film roll that we all know isn't going to come out right anymore, but might still end up as a piece of art.  It's certainly a much more destabilising time than I think I can cope with.  Only time will tell.  I feel like I'm half trapped in an old way of life and half locked-out from a new one.

I have nevertheless had some sense of inclusion, some invitation to join in, in this fair republic that I now inhabit.  I may even be permitted to live instead of exist to some extent soon, but I've also got my eye on the possibility that that door may be shut on me at any time.  Even if it isn't, I have my work cut out for me to make myself understood and to understand what's required, and what is unnecessary and undesired.  I shall edit myself accordingly, as best I can.

In the meantime, the Faerie Godmother trainee, L-Star and the architect are out there somewhere, some nearer than others, and I know I can depend on them to think of me from time to time and wish me kind things and sparks of hope and suchlike.  I also think Saturday's Sacher torte from Cafe Louvre is still working its magic to keep me putting one foot in front of the other.  Some days, that's truly all you could possibly hope for.

La Solitude de Nos Jours

There's a quote at the beginning of a Marc Levy book, which sums up the question I keep pondering today:

"Seuls l' amour et l' amitié comblent la solitude de nos jours.  Le bonheur n'est pas le droit de chacun, c' est un combat de tous les jours.  Je crois qu' il faut savoir le vivre lorsqu' il se présente à nous."  [Orson Welles]

Roughly translated, this means: 'Only love and friendship make up for the isolation of our times.  Happiness isn't everyone's right, it's something we have to fight for every day.  I think that we have to know how to live it when it presents itself to us.'

Perhaps this refers to the need to accept that most people don't achieve happiness and if they do, it's rather fleeting.  Maybe it doesn't come on its own, but tags alongside sadness, side by side most of the time.  Afterall, don't people cry tears of joy?  Surely those tears are really the reflection of the loss that went before.  The pain that you had to endure until someone did something so kind that it was overwhelming to see how easily someone can take away that pain, that neglect, that deprivation.

Can there really be one side without the other?  I don't know if it's possible to know a true, deep sense of happiness unless it's in contrast with having known profound sorrow.  Maybe it is a result of loss and hardship that brought me to feeling both emotions simultaneously at certain moments yesterday.  Even after moments of sadness, I was amazed to find that there was some joy left over.  I was shocked that once I'd felt a tinge of sorrow, I could still be permitted to feel happy, warm, contented and safe.  

But it cannot be hung onto.  It must always live under threat of being lost or eroded or denied in the future, and that is a precarious path to have to walk.  But that's the only path there is.  Or at least, that's the only path I see ahead of me.

A New Feeling

Exhausted, but happy.

Architects and Path People

I've been thinking about Cookie Mueller and her writings.  She had a way of comforting me like no other with her vignettes about various people she came into contact with and how they shaped her life.  I'm thinking about the people in my life, most of whom are dotted about all over the place, and yet there are people emerging in my immediate surroundings who deserve due credit, as well as the ones I miss and long for overseas.

It's odd to compare people you've only shared a coffee or two with, or a desolate evening in too fake a setting to be able to still my restlessness, with those from years of combined paths.  I carry those 'path people' with me; the likes of L-Star, Faerie Godmother Trainee and my coffee and cake friends.  Even the Russian Countess, now exiled to Germany, comes along with me in my mind.  Particularly since my current connections to Russia are stronger than I'd envisaged being here in a country so detrimentally affected by that nation.  To all of these and the other path-walkers, I give you my utmost respect and gratitude.  And I miss you.

To those who are emerging in my present path, I must be more embracing.  I have so little background information to go on that it is childishly unfair to start to compare those who have shown themselves to be kind and thoughtful with the familiar 'knowns'.  I'm sorry for being so dismissive.  Sometimes I can't decipher the divide between a world that allowed what's happened and the one I inhabit.  There must be a border somewhere, a frontier I can cross and be safe from what went before.  I want to feel at home with the providers and architects even though I used to hang out with poets and painters.  Maybe the architect has a fine wine collection and a soothingly warm sofa and prints of buildings I really ought to see? 

I'll be bringing my peace offering tomorrow.  I hope it will suffice.  And I am, truly, sorry.

Bolero: A tale of the night of 18th January 2011

It's been over four months since I first got here and I've made, perhaps, one friend.  A fortnightly coffee friend.  But tonight I'm out at a concert, a first full orchestra concert in Prague, a first evening out in central Prague since moving here and a first social occasion with one of my "meet-ees".  

I'd known ahead of time about the Dvořák and the Mozart (I was looking forward to the former, not so much the latter) and we were sitting in our surprisingly positioned, dead-centre seats.  He handed me the programme, to read either in Czech or German. German still being the easier for me to understand, unfortunately.  But there's no linguistic skill required to read that the final piece in the programme is Ravel's 'Bolero'.  

It is a very ambivalent feeling, the like of which I'm not sure I've ever felt, to know that I am trapped here to listen to a live orchestra play a series of pieces, culminating in Bolero.  Why must it be Bolero and why here?  Why now?  Of all the pieces I've always wanted to hear live, Bolero has to be in my top 5.  And yet now is such a searingly painful time to inadvertently run into it.  Why must it be forced upon me like this?

I know I'm going to have to go through with it.  I also know there is no way I'll be able to get through it without crying.  A piece my former partner, the only partner of my whole life, used to collect numerous performances of on CD.  (I had helped him to acquire more.)  But having left my musician-life behind, having had to come here as my only means of living alone, having had to accept that he'd moved on to someone better suited to him and while the isolation and longing for a true friend is beginning to fully burn away at my insides, I am being expected to survive this?

My poor 'meet-ee'!  What is he to think?  What will he do if he sees the tears that will inevitably pour down my cheeks?

As the piece begins, I am already on the verge of tears due to my acute sense of entrapment in this.  I try to see it for the wonderful, extraordinary experience it is, and watch and listen like a conductor, while I tap my foot along with the tempo and look to see which beats the cellos are doing their pizzicati on.  I distract myself with trying to sense when the double basses will join in and I compare the beats they play, when they do, with the violins.  Some of these come in and out of playing over a number of permutations of the main motif.

But once the strings are all bowing their notes, I feel my life is being reflected in the unstoppable build-up to a finale I cannot escape.  It's like watching all the things I have lost over the last five years and seeing each and every bit in sharp, mocking detail, knowing the outcome of every precise turn of the dagger in my heart.  I feel like someone has purposely placed me here for some kind of Orwellian punishment.

However, as the final stage begins with the rupture of the main motif into the high note and following distorted melody, I feel almost delirious to hear it go through its mutations to its inevitable end, but wish I could end along with it.  Couldn't it simply make me expire with the last note?  It twists and turns to the conclusion I know so well and I count along with the beat how many bars it is until the final discordant notes and ultimate percussive full-stop.

And at that full-stop, the audience applauds and I begin my 'mopping-up and concealment act' with tissues and the back of my hand and hope that the pain of this will never be with me again.  Unless it is prepared to do a deal with me to promise that next time it will ensure my ultimate demise as certainly as the proud bow of the conductor and the orchestra's shuffling exit from the stage.

Am I Not Your Girl?

I'm currently in some sort of 'no-man's land'.  A letter from L-Star and cuttings from magazines litter my bed.  Reminiscent of a Nan Goldin photograph.  Clean lingerie.  Black.  My hair is getting too long.  I seem to be between the bitter and lonely end of the end and the beginning of a beginning.  I'm frightened it's a mirage and I'll be stuck in the end zone for longer than I think I can manage.

Oh little spark of hope, I don't know how long you will stay with me.  Are we on holiday?  Is this a beach we'll have to leave when the tide comes in or are we in a wood, where we could lose ourselves but keep walking forever? Will you leave me in the end for running away with words?  Will the words ever be enough?

Am I not your girl?

The Great Thinkers: Václav Havel, Adam Gopnik, Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog

Ok, so someone is going to find this somewhat sacrilegious, but I have to make my point.  I had a mini-obsession with Kermit the Frog today, or rather more accurately, Jim Henson.  

A friend wrote a post about getting back to New York, in that adamant kind of way, when things have been tough but you're determined to rise above them.  I had to respond with a comment, with one of the quotes from 'The Muppets Take Manhattan'.  Things have gone wrong for Kermit and the show he was trying to sell.  All his friends (and co-actors) have had to leave New York and he sits and thinks it all over.  As he talks it through with himself, he suddenly finds a new determination and he shouts out, 

"You hear me, New York?  We're gonna be on Broadway!  Because, because, I'm not giving up!  I'm still here and I'm stayin'!  You hear that New York? I'm stayin' here.  The frog is stayin'." 

Jim Henson was an optimist, a dreamer, an idealist.  Which is exactly what Václav Havel has been 'accused' of having been when he was in power.  Václav Klaus is now playing this 'let's get real, shall we?' card for all it's worth.  But not with any resolution along the lines of, 'let's knock some things into shape to provide some kind of balance, some justice', but rather by jumping on any convenient bandwagon that presents itself, fair or not.  

There are worse things to have been than an optimist, surely?  If the best you can do is criticise someone for trying and hoping, then there's something wrong.  Yes, I know, you've got to back up that determination with hard work, careful organisation and planning, and sadly, probably also a few considerable changes along the way, but as long as you've got time to think, somewhere to live and enough food to eat, it is worth being an optimist.  It is worth hoping.

A loss of those aforementioned things does prevent progress, admittedly.  Perhaps not permanently, but certainly for the time during which they have been removed, and that should never be ignored.  However, even Adam Gopnik asserts: no-one can live without hope.  I could almost disagree with that, because sometimes you have to simply carry on in a totally hopeless environment, and it does feel like simply existing with no reason to, but that's existing.  Living, really being alive, truly requires hope. 

I miss having that Jim Henson/Václav Havel-like hope and determination, because I now know just how much can be taken away from someone (ill-health, for one thing, negates EVERYTHING else) and how detrimental it is when that happens, but hope feels like home.  I suppose I must be homesick, for a home that I never had but that existed in the underlying message of programmes such as 'Sesame Street' and 'The Muppets'.

Jim Henson created a surrogate home for kids who didn't have one, by means of those programmes.  He didn't try and teach kids or explain to them, he showed them by the most entertaining examples of other characters working together and creating a kind atmosphere, where anyone could belong.  He was insightful and wise in equal measure:

"The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from more than what you tell them.  They don't remember what you try to teach them.  They remember what you are." 

Sleep on this one, as a reminder of the importance of silliness, which I simply couldn't live without during these testing times:

"Here's some simple advice: Always be yourself.  Never take yourself too seriously.  And beware of advice from experts, pigs and members of Parliament."  [Kermit the Frog]

A different perspective

Going through tough times occasionally gives rise to moments of transcendental silliness, and I think I've had a couple of those today.  Some things aren't silly at all until you look at them from a different angle.  Just sitting opposite one of my 'meet-ees' across the table instead of to the side suddenly seemed so odd.  One place out and I was shocked at the greater degree of eye-contact.  How ridiculous.  And yet deliciously different, amusing and almost inviting.  It wasn't my choice, but simply ended up that way and if the truth be told, the rebel kid in me really rather enjoyed it.

Then, later, while watching Ab Fab (I wasn't kidding when I put it on my list of things that 'get me through...') it occurred to me that I usually find the character 'Bo' (the religious maniac American woman) intensely irritating.  And yet, something about the flip-side of dark, despairing days made me think that maybe I could tolerate her.  Maybe I could even have done with having someone like her around today, just hanging about, talking to herself and bursting into some hymn or gospel song at will.  

When things can't seem to settle down, maybe it's a good remedy to just keep shaking them thoughtlessly and relentlessly till you get too tired and need to take a breath again.  And then, perhaps things will settle, without any further effort.  No drama, no histrionics, just an unexpected silence and it will come to a halt. 

Konečně.

10 Things To Get Me Through The Worst Week In January

It's already been a really teeth-pullingly tough week and it's only set to get harder.  A kind of 'searing earache and simultaneous bitterly-cold-blizzard' kind of harder.  So, to prepare myself, I thought I should make a list of things that have been and may continue to help me through:

1) The remaining chocolates from Christmas.

2) Sumptuous lavender bubble bath, shower gel and moisturiser.

3) The thought of Paris with the Faerie Godmother Trainee.

4) My 'bilingual' copy of 'The Michelin Man' by Gerald Durrell in Czech as well as the original English, which, ironically reminds me of trips to a little village in France called 'Herly'.

5) A rediscovered copy of 'When You Love You Must Depart' by Alina Reyes.

6) My Ab Fab DVDs.

7) My Anna Gavalda short stories book 'Je Voudrais Que Quelqu'un M'Attende Quelque Part' because the title and picture on the front express my current longing perfectly:

8) My naughty, budget-negating (or rather, failed 'Second-World-War-type-rationing-attempt', more like...) copy of American Elle magazine, because it's got such damned good writing in it.

9) This light tea that not only cheers me up with its Ceylon-style taste, but has a reassuringly elitist, 'intelligentsia' design and picture on the box:

10) Emails from kind people who are keeping in touch even though I no longer live in the same country as them.  It still seems strange that I can't meet up for tea and cake with these compassionate souls anymore, when once I could call up and plot to be at the corner of Westbourne Grove and Hereford Road for coffee at 6pm on a Wednesday.  (If anyone's free on Wednesday at 6pm near Václavské Náměstí though, I'm available for tea, coffee and any kind of cake, especially in one of those bookshop cafes...)

Confusing culture

I've not been particularly involved with many people for a while.  Isolation has prevailed somewhat.  However, I have had one or two meetings and the last two days has involved meeting two French speakers for two completely different purposes.  One, as a language exchange and the other as more of an interview situation.  I have to admit, it's been a bit disheartening to find that the fact that I've been learning Czech so avidly lately means it infiltrates my otherwise reasonable-ish French.  I've found myself saying some astonishing things.

The first was mixing up a number; 'vingt tisíc' instead of 'vingt-mille' or 'dvacet tisíc' (= 20,000).  Then I mixed up little linking words like 'mais' with 'ale' (= but) and 'et' / 'a' (= and) and 'ou' / 'nebo' (= or) and it was quite funny really, although pretty confusing and incomprehensible to someone who doesn't speak both languages.  Which would be me, in fact, because I really can't say I speak Czech yet.  I can 'get by', i.e. communicate, though it takes some considerable time and all of my case endings are wrong, but it is no doubt the clumsiest, pigeon-Czech imaginable.  Alas.

Whereas, with French, I've recently had a number of compliments.  It's been rather lovely.  Today it was, "your pronunciation is very good", and last week's language exchange was, "ton français, c'est vraiment top".  But then I discovered, I mispronounced something as simple as 'culture'.  I  was hesitant to pronounce the 'cul' (= bum) in 'culture' basically.  So it came out sounding like 'couture' ('sewing'), which, as you can imagine, was rather confusing.  So now every time I try to say 'culture' in French, I think, "dans ton CUL!", without meaning to, but as a way of remembering, yes, I really have to say it starting with the word for BUM.  Hmm.  How, erm, cultured.

Improvements

It got a bit warmer today.  But I felt colder.  I hope this isn't what I think it is.  I have had quite enough colds for one winter, thank you.

I managed to find a few minutes to work on the painting/drawings a bit more.  I made a few improvements.  Even discovered it looks a bit better when you photocopy them.  Better hue to the B&W.  (But you probably can't tell from the camera-phone pictures.  Well maybe.)  See what you think:

My trip to Industrial Land nearly killed me today, as I slipped on a pavement of compacted ice.  I had no idea that they hadn't cleared that side of the road.  How ridiculous.  It might be better to stay at home and do some more paintings tomorrow.  I mean, you can see I need the practice.

"La Chaleur c'est le premier confort."

I have some friends who have a second home in a village in France, where this message hangs above their kitchen door.  And it's true.  I remember once watching a natural history documentary about mammals, where a cluster of rodents snuggled up together to sleep, and the narrator suggested that this is what love is for animals.  Warmth.

'Topení', as the Czechs call 'heating', does make a huge difference when winters are this bitterly cold.  I'm so glad I've got it this year!  That's one of the main things that makes being in the Czech Republic a step up from the UK.  Any musician, artist, actor or other breadline earner will tell you: heating in the UK is at a premium.  Almost no-one can afford to have it on constantly.  It's shockingly expensive because it's appallingly inefficient and wastes money on gas or electricity bills designed to put even a reasonably paid professional into inescapable debt.

But here I am, in a country most consider to be a little stuck behind the times, due to its communist history, and yet, it is keeping me warm even though it's -9 degrees centigrade out there.  In London I would have been wearing 7 layers and still freezing, carrying a hot water bottle around with me to try to cope.  And don't even start on what the experience of having a shower at 6.30am was like....Dear god, I am so lucky I escaped that.  So little heating, such luke warm water...

Here, I have a bathroom that although distinctly devoid of natural light or modern fittings, is hot.  I mean, HOT.  It's like a sauna in there.  To the point that I can no longer rely on my previous method of seeing whether the water was definitely coming out hot, by looking for the steam coming off it.  No.  Here, the steam comes off me only when I venture out of the bath and into the corridor.

Nonetheless, it is a bathroom vastly enhanced to the higher echelons of luxury when equipped with a chilled glass of champagne (which I obviously have to drink rather rapidly, before it becomes warm champagne) a few chocolates and some books or magazines on the small wooden chair employed as a table beside it.  

However, right now, I think a finely grated 70% cocoa real hot chocolate drink is in order.

Unfinished things, spoils and debris

There are so many things I'm trying to get right, but can't.  Here's one of them:

I'm feeling the fear of the imminent return to form of a punishing routine.  I want to gather all of the Christmas and New Year debris and spoils and put them in a pile and hold them tightly, lest such comfort and I get parted and sent in different directions.

But I'll take a picture of them and put them here instead:

Ah, that's better.

Resistance is futile

That dread I used to have on Sunday nights before games lessons at school on a Monday has regenerated into the grown-up version.  Dread of the return to work.  The difference with work versus school is that with work, you know that there's no way out.  There's no ultimate deadline in sight.  No concrete guarantee that you won't always have to do this.  And if you want meaning in your life, this is a bitter, razor-sharp pill to swallow.

I haven't found an answer to this perpetual entrapment yet, and I do know that resistance is futile, but I am convinced there has to be some value even in the midst of that futility.  If the only way round this is to keep fighting, keep doing creative things in spite of it all, possibly to the detriment of doing my paid job to the best of my ability, then so be it.  Silliness and purposely flaunting my incompatibility with this system are my only weapons and I shall use them while I still have the strength.  Even though they may ultimately bring about my demise.

Vaclav Havel is quoted as having said: (I wish I had this in the original Czech - can anyone direct me to where it can be found ?)

"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning '...' the more energetically meaning is sought."

I might also add that the deeper the presence of despair, the more energetically hope is sought.  Indeed, at a time of the most profound sense of being a mere fly caught in a spider's web awaiting my inevitable fate, there is that last desperate trace of hope that fights for supremacy.  I almost wish it weren't there, but it doesn't come from a conviction that things will be fair, that there will be some righting of wrongs in the end, but just that this mustn't be the end of the story.

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world.  Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." 

I can only hope beyond hope that it is 'good enough'.

Black seemed appropriate. (Seeing in 2011)