Lost and confused

I seem to have lost my way with things entirely.  I've been posting photos here as though I've lost all sense of a discerning eye and have become a haphazard, touristy idiot who takes 'snaps' instead of photos.  I feel like I don't have any like-minded souls around me and even my visitor and the architect somehow only brought me back to a level of basic human contact that, though soothing and helpful and even fun, hasn't pulled me back from the edge to the essence of what I'm striving for.

All of that direction seems abandoned.  I've fallen foul of the scenes around me which are tangible and I no longer have time for the intangible.  And yet, the intangible used to be my realm.  That was where I lived.  All around me was chaos, but everyday I used to find at least a few minutes to escape it, even if that were only in my mind while musing on the kind of world Francis Bacon inhabited or while drawing something I later put on my wall to make my own kind of art studio in my room.

But here, at the moment, I appear to have lost my path.  I've not felt this alone in a long time.  The world of work is stealing the architect from me so we rarely get to see each other, and when we do, our thoughts, our lives are overshadowed by the banal and arduous demands of work and mere survival.

Paris awaits.  I only hope I'll have time to breathe and find a way back to where I feel at home.  Surely I only need a little bit of time on my own and everything will come back?  Failing that, some plan to leave my current routine before it kills me will become an urgent one at the top of my priority list.

Preparing for Paris

I am off to Paris on Thursday, due to an unfathomable stroke of luck and good fortune (and huge generosity) the like of which I don't normally believe in.  I realised today in the second of my two French lessons in preparation for going to Paris that a) my French isn't awful and b) my life has been eaten up by people who think I'm no good at languages.  How has this happened and how dare they suck the life out of me like this?  I am being told by native speakers of French that my French is really good and yet I feel less than competent.  I walk into that horror of a place next door and all I get is disdain and extra demands on my time for a close to criminal salary.

How ever have I let them steal my life like this?  I am on my knees with exhaustion and I feel like I've lost my direction altogether.  Why can I not find a viable way forward?  The life I lead on a day-to-day basis is somehow full of exactly the kind of dread I felt at school, only this time there's no guaranteed end to it all.  Unless I'm happy to become homeless, of course.

I wanted to get out to see things like this:

Or this:

Or views like this:

But it was raining today.  And I had 'stuff to do' which required concentration.  So it was a marvellous day for builders to arrive upstairs and start work on the flat above, scattering dust and making an almighty ,hluk' [noise] to beat the energy out of any otherwise calm and unsuspecting person.  I was choking from the dust, in fact, so I'm not looking forward to their return tomorrow.  But on Thursday I shall thwart them by abandoning this country altogether and going somewhere where I can actually converse with people in their native language to some degree of competence.  I think.  Peut-être.

Střelecký Ostrov and other shiny things

Marching around Prague, tram, metro and more walking.  New earrings, simple, shiny but black.  Meet-ees, sunshine, sweet-smelling sun cream.   Střelecký Ostrov and the 'deal going down' spot from ,,Bad Company" [starring Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins] as well as streams of seemingly giant diamonds reflected on the water. 

Greek restaurant.  Lots of food, eaten as though in time of famine.  Red wine and an eccentric Czech girl who swore I spoke Czech as well as she does, after my six months here. 

No energy left.  Eyes wanting to close.  No alternative - půjdu spát.

A Day Off

Ah, the joys of a day off.  I actually got to try out my Czech, and I even got complimented on it.  Out of 5 encounters with people, I got compliments on my Czech from 3 of them.  The first was the woman at the transport office, the second a surprise bumping into a meet-ee and the third, the guy in the cafe.  So my visitor was pleased for me.  

However, I subsequently had the audacity not to give my seat up to a woman on the tram (I hadn't seen her closely enough to see if she were old enough to merit it and I always think I'd be really offended if one day someone offered me a seat just because I looked a bit old and because I'm female) but the transport inspectors got on and while checking my ticket, duly told me to be polite and give 'the lady' a seat.  I would have found that somewhat repulsive if I were her, as she really didn't look very old when I actually caught a proper glimpse of her.  But this is the Czech Republic.  No-one is offended by the polite offering of a seat to one's elders. Oops. My mistake.

My visitor and I did a mammoth amount of walking around today and it was so sunny we actually had to buy some sun cream.  It was that hot.  So we did the usual things, and enjoyed a rather yummy Magnum ice-cream each on the way to the castle.  We took some photos, of course, but I was too tired and too hot under the stronger-than-expected rays of the sun, so I didn't come up with anything particularly creative.  (Sorry.)

Having done all that, we stopped off at Kavárna Slavia and had something to eat before going and doing the food shopping and coming home.  Because, as everyone knows, there's no greater mistake than to go food shopping on an empty stomach.

P.S.  As a complete aside, did anyone actually notice that the title 'L'homme au bouquet de fleurs' in a previous post was actually a link?  It doesn't seem to have come up highlighted.  I had to watch it again this morning for a bit of encouragement to remember I was free for a day to do engaging, soothing, delightful things.  But I ended up not using the inspiration particularly well.  It dawned on me towards the end of the day that my advice on how much money my visitor should bring was somewhat inaccurate.  I was quoting for four-day survival, not four-day holiday/having a good time.  I had forgotten that in order to enjoy wandering around, you need money (or a packed lunch) because I have had neither the time nor the money to even consider such frivolities as eating in a cafe and buying an ice-cream since moving here.  But buying presents and bits and bobs of meaningless delight, are normal fare for holidays.  Speaking of meaningless delight, I got these ,berušky' earrings:

So, inspite of our rapidly acquired poverty, we did have an interesting day and I suppose I must take comfort in the fact that at least it didn't rain.  It is still April afterall, and one should be grateful for precipitation-free days.  Not to mention downright sunny ones.

Trips, toil and traffic jams

I found out that the Czech expression for 'traffic jam' involves the use of the word 'constipation'.  So Czechs say ,,dopravní zácpa" [transport constipation].  How delightful.

I went on a rather marvellous little trip at the weekend, to a ruined castle of sorts.  The kind of small-scale place I used to have pointless fantasies about owning one day.  I would of course have to put a piano in it.  I figured it would look good in this 'room' with the view to die for out of the windows, as well as a view in on where the piano should be:

The view:

I went with the architect of course, knowing that next weekend, all semblance of normal life would have changed, due to a visitor.  In the meantime, I have unfortunately been caught up in a skewed, work-filled time-space continuum whereby no matter how much extra work I do instead of sleep, I still have about three more hours of work to do than I think when I start again the next day. 

Hence the absence over the last few days.  Still, I might actually get to wander around Prague and remind myself I'm here and not in some factory workhouse, riding the conveyor belt of tedium and toil, for once, now that I have to show someone else around the place.

Nic moc

Isn't it sad when the only real success of the day is having sent off a census form?  I got the expected blank kind of look and no words other than 'you know you have to post it today, right?' (in Czech of course) as I was handed the envelope to send the damned forms off in.  But the point is, it's done.

Everything else was rather ,nic moc' (nothing much).  I'd been mostly dreading things that hadn't been proved, some of which turned out ok, then there was one non-census related bureaucratic irritation and a bit of exercise to round-off the day.

There's nothing like leaping around to Limp Bizkit, singing/saying '...cause your mouth's writing cheques that your ass can't cash.'  (One of my favourite lines. I wish I could find a way to slip that into a conversation one day.  Preferably with a person of authority who keeps going back on her word rather a lot.)  I even managed all my high kick moves to the full-on bits in the "Rollin' (Air raid vehicle)" track.  My fitness level must be slowly creeping back.  [Minor success.]

And then I read an article in a French magazine while having a relaxing bath, and watched a music video of Maxime le Forestier's song 'L'homme au bouquet de fleurs'.  One of my favourites.  Not least because it's a really intriguing song with Daniel Auteuil in the video.  I have to come back to French things from time to time because it's somehow where my heart lies, more than England.  My soon-to-be temporary French teacher told me I should have been French after I told him about my penchant for red wine and dinners with friends.  Maybe he's right.  He also said, "it's never too late to change your nationality!"  It's a tempting thought.  But my Dad, and now the architect too, would never forgive me.

Sčítání lidu

Why does the word for 'census' [sčítání lidu = census of people] have to be so unpronounceable?  (Almost.)  Why did the woman bringing round the forms, who could clearly hear I was English, agree to letting me fill it in online when it won't accept me due to the first question, which requires me to have a 'native number' I cannot possibly have, seeing as I wasn't born in this country?  And why must I be punished for being good at being polite in Czech, by having Jehovah's Witnesses (or similarly evangelising tribe) keep me hanging on the end of my intercom line, who I only responded to because I thought it might be the census woman again?

I need some sleep or I will have absolutely no patience left for when I have to face the 'kind and welcoming' people at the post office, to whom I will now have to hand in my census form tomorrow.  Previous levels of kindness and delight in my custom involved telling me in no uncertain terms, when I deigned to approach the counter after the previous person had finished, "I'll call you when I'm ready.  Go back to the line!".  (In Czech, of course.)  Ah, Czech customer service.  You can't beat it.

Perfectionism and other diseases

The architect made an excellent point over the phone to me today.  I hadn't really considered it much, because I've been so busy trying to keep my head above water, but I can see that it's true.  If you strive for excellence and your expertise is something you value, then you will always be doubting it and trying to improve on it, knowing that whatever standard you've achieved, it still isn't enough.  If, on the other hand, you pander to the masses, don't have any compulsion to know your subject well and don't really mind if the work you do isn't perfect, you'll be freed from the burden of the additional work that goes into eradicating doubt. Thus, you'll have far more time to make money instead of wasting it considering how to raise your standards.

Oh how I wish I weren't a perfectionist.  What joy would be mine if I was blissfully unaware of my failings and the gaping holes in my knowledge of things I should be expert at by now.  What sleep-filled nights I would have.  What sumptuously carefree days would be mine.  Instead, I toil over minute corrections in order to be consistent and reliable and safe in the knowledge that what I have written is true.  If I cannot find truth in a sea of doubt, I will admit to it.  (A fatal flaw if you want to make money, or do well in politics.)  

I would be mortified, for example, if I had let someone on a fraction of my salary correct something for me that I should have known.  Something along the lines of: if you're head of the Geography department, you'd do well to know that Alaska may be next to Canada, but it's not in Canada.  (Ah, Jamie Theakston, your interview with Jewel, walking alongside a pond of Canadian geese, telling her how she must feel at home with them, seeing as she's from Alaska...is a classic in the depths of my memory.  If only you'd done your Geography as well as your pop/rock music homework...)

So, I must get off my high-horse and attempt to sleep after realising that I keep proving this point time, and time again, but it still hasn't altered my level of diligence.  If you want an enjoyable life, don't be someone who values expertise over output; quality over quantity.  You'll always end up poorer, more overworked and always trying to survive on less sleep than those who aren't aware of their shortcomings and couldn't care less if they were.

Zoo

There's something so soothing and rewarding about going to the Zoo.  This wasn't the one in Prague, but in Dvůr Králové:

There were other serene and/or entertaining animals, such as a baby orangutan, which was particularly sweet, and some amazing monsters, namely a vulture and a pelican chick which had grown to huge proportions in the space of just a couple of months.  And of course, some suitably scary pythons of epic width, a few lethal-looking big cats, and some rather odd but colourful birds who took to watching us, as if annoyed that we spent too much time watching the baby orangutan.  Not all of us can be cute, let's face it, so I understand the birds' outrage and determination to catch our attention by making strange noises instead.

But the ,,miminko" [word for "baby" in Czech, not her name] orangutan was being so captivating, with her mad scientist-type hairstyle and her fascination with the end of a round, metal bolt, that looked for all the world like a nipple to her, but somehow wasn't providing anything like the usual reward for sucking on it.  She had us entranced.  Unfortunately, this was the best photo I could get of her:

And then we came home and watched ring-tailed lemurs and tiny, slow-moving leaf-litter chameleons on the 'Madagascar' series DVD, narrated of course, by the consistently blue-shirted and disarmingly down-to-earth but expert David Attenborough.

Sore eyes and early mornings

My meet-ee this morning said "you're a sight for sore eyes."  He was trying out his English without being 100% sure of its meaning, obviously.  I was the one with the sore eyes, as it happened.  I never seem to be able to get to bed earlier when I have to be up extra early the next day.  Hence the surviving on 5-6 hours' sleep so regularly.  Anyway, he must have noticed his mistake and observed me properly later, because he went on to say, "I know you're not much of a morning person, so if you want to change our meeting times..."  Ah, yes.  Not much of a morning person.  Mm-hmm.  You got that right.

However, it does make a difference if I can get up at the same time as the sun (or fractionally later, so I wake up to the full force of sunlight) and it's a clear day, instead of the stable dreary, grey clouds of days of old in London.  Here, I can at least feel it was mostly worth my while getting up early, as it's already looking like a glorious day.  And I noticed, having actually got out and gone somewhere (ok, to the big supermarket to do food-shopping...nothing exciting) that there are trees with lime green leaves 'out there' now!  That luscious, slightly deliriously fresh green colour is so weird.  It shocks me every Spring.  It was the trees which were a sight for sore eyes, not me.

Concorde and other marvels

I put up my old poster of Concorde flying past Manhattan in my bedroom today and somehow I've cheered right up.  It's probably superimposed and it's certainly a bit of a cliché, but there is something pure about the idea behind Concorde, however capitalist a symbol it is to have a picture of it flying over a very 80s-looking Manhattan.  The innovation that was Concorde shouldn't be forgotten.  Who'd have predicted a step backwards in aviation such as losing the possibility of getting from London to New York in 5 hours?  Progress is never constant.

Not that I would ever have been able to afford to fly in it though.  It was horrifically elitist, but I'm still glad that it existed; that some people were able to use it.  I wouldn't begrudge anyone that privilege.  It was just reassuring to know that it was something you could do, travel from London to New York so quickly.  You wouldn't lose anytime at all, flying in that direction.  New York is five hours behind London, so you'd get there at the same time that you left.  That must've felt like a kind of space-age time-travel in itself.

The fuel consumption was pretty astronomical though and I suppose one or two people in high places realised that there were more efficient ways of making money.  A Boeing 747 to name just one.  Get a few people to fly first class on that, and you're making a killing, surely?  This doesn't seem right in this day and age of climate change and global warming, but I've got a soft spot for aeroplanes.  They are undoubtedly extraordinary feats of engineering and harmony with the laws of physics.  Of which I know absolutely nothing, but that doesn't stop me from marvelling at them.  (And reminiscing fondly of the time I once got to fly a small one.  Not for long, and only at a safe height when the plane was virtually flying itself, but that's the point, really.  Get a plane to the right altitude and speed and it really is quite happy to fly itself.  That's what it's built to do.)

Keys, doors and House

Watching the deterioration of my writing is a little disheartening.  I used to enjoy language and take great care over its use.  But now I am reduced to 'write something in half an hour before your brain shuts down in protest at this continual sleep-deprivation you keep inflicting on it.'  And all because I want, no need, to do something creative, to keep proving that you cannot make me give up on the notion that life for me at least, must contain some sort of higher purpose, some vocation.  Even if I never get paid a cent for it. 

I am deeply sorry, however, that I cannot be more like a 'normal person' (whatever they are) and accept relationships (boyfriend, children, good friends) as 'enough'.  This has a detrimental impact on almost anyone who comes into contact with me, because I'm always striving for something that I probably won't ever reach.  All the things preventing me from having a hope in hell of achieving something meaningful affect me more, indeed, depress me greatly.  And that's not fair on people who don't have as great demands or hopes.  (I honestly don't know how they do it.  I wish I had the key to that door.)

As for children, I think everyone knows my feelings on the matter by now, but if I hadn't made it clear enough, I caught myself saying, 'I'd rather die than have children' the other day.  I mean, really, that's how I see it.  Getting pregnant for me, would be like a date for execution.

I brought this up with the architect, again, because one of my meet-ees is pregnant. It terrifies me to think of this sweet, thin, tiny woman having her body taken over by a parasite that will stretch her out of all proportion and make her go through unimaginable pain just to have the 'privilege' of being responsible for another human being besides herself for the rest of her life.  Why does this not terrify other people?  All I can see is how small a frame she has and what pain she will have to go through while her body takes on this little alien.  It's absolutely horrific to even think about it. 

But, apparently, only the miserable Dr. House and I seem to see it that way.

Apocalyptic weather and other irritations

"Sometimes the trouble with life, I find, it gets you in a corner with no way out, fills your head with doubt. Somehow the good things in life, I find, they seem to be beyond the far horizon, just the other side. Struck down with a heavy load, getting heavier day by day, now a real go-getter wouldn't talk like that, he would get up, get up and say, 'don't turn back, now you've got this far' "  [Bucks Fizz]

This morning was so apocalyptically bad weather, the kind you know is 'out there' being imposing before you've even got up, the kind that forces you to keep the lights on all day, that I resorted to listening to Buck's Fizz.  Not necessarily to cheer me up, but just to have a sense of finding an old-fashioned sort of comfort that used to hold some hope, even though it's since been overridden by reality.

[Buck's Fizz.  Yes, I know.  How could I admit to this?  Oh well, sod it.  It was comforting.  And it helped me retrieve some degree of energy that I had been struggling to find.]

I got through my worst meeting today without losing face.  I love it when people make it easy for me to look competent, by showing up unprepared and clueless, even when my reluctance to prepare something so dull threatens to uncover my greatest weakness: i.e. if I'm not interested in it, you can tell straight away.  If I find something completely tedious and without the slightest merit, I will indeed be quite literally 'bored to tears' by it.  (Filling in tax-returns and doing my accounts or looking at anything in 'Excel' [spit, spit, spit]  does this to me for example.)  My idiot meet-ee seemed to think I was there as some sort of Jeeves to his rather more arrogant Wooster, and would simply supply him with everything he required so that any work on his part would be rendered unnecessary.  He seemed absolutely astounded when I suggested he would do well to actually write a few sentences down.

Sometimes the sheer incompetence and ignorance of others is my saving grace.  There I am being the typical perfectionist, seeing all the flaws in my side of the bargain, and I'm wandering around trying to get down to work when the weather and the work itself are making me want to either slit my wrists or eat inordinate amounts of chocolate cake, and it turns out I needn't have worried all that much afterall.  The person sitting in front of me when I arrive is in fact still a newcomer to the concept that sometimes you actually have to do some work yourself in order to get a skill.  And it doesn't matter how much money you have, my dear little meet-ee, you won't acquire skills and qualities by sitting and waiting for a proverbial plate to be handed to you with a silver spoon to help you swallow the capabilities you wish to acquire.

But, hey, if you're happy to waste your money on hiring me to sit and watch while you discover this, that's fine by me.  It's like they always say, "an idiot and his money [and surely it's almost always his, not hers] are soon parted."

Jakžtakž

I have had my arm twisted into doing something I know I'll hate every minute of, but this seems to be the way of things at the moment.  It's just a case of "shut up and do as you're told".  This attitude will get you into trouble if you inflict it on people.  The lesson said inflicter must learn is: 'never get me to do this EVER again'.  [And no, Russian Countess, I do not mean you and your request this week.  I have no problem with that.  In fact, I'm quite looking forward to it.]  

And for god's sake don't tell me 'what good experience' this'll be.  It's sheer drudgery and, I might add, deceit.  You know it; I know it.  And if you're hoping it won't show, you're an idiot.  Seriously, she said, "don't let on that you're doing this for the first time."  I'm sorry, but I think that'll become self-evident.

As for yesterday's disappointment, I'm still feeling rather ambivalent about it.  How much is my fault for wanting to be open and honest about painful things is hard to tell, seeing as my gauge is always 'how much would I be prepared to handle?'  And somehow, it's always more than most people.  It's the difference between going the extra mile, and going the extra 50, I suppose.

So I have to try to survive the evening, feeling rather worn-out, indeed, wrung-out and even my newly altered jeans, the first in my life that actually don't drag on the ground, are failing to cheer me up.  So, if someone were to ask me today, how things are going in the Czech Republic, I'd have to reply, 'jakžtakž'.  Except, I fear it's already a little bit worse than just 'so-so'.  I'd even go as far as to say (and I hate to admit this) that I could quite happily leave for a night and go and get fish 'n' chips in England instead, just to cheer me up.  It's been a tough week.  (Can you tell?)