Prague and provinciality

I don't know why it is that I keep hitting my head against the same brick wall, but there's no doubt about it:  I'm stuck.  Counsellors call this habit of constantly pondering the same thing (willingly or by way of a kind of "mean-thoughts-invasion") 'ruminating'.  Which is suitably evil-sounding, enough to make you feel ashamed and humiliated, which makes their job easier - more stuff to do for them!  Maybe it's my own fault for watching SATC re-runs.  Maybe it's just that I cannot accept that life will always have to be this dull and meaningless (though I know, Francis Bacon did try to warn me) and I am desperate and determined to fight that inevitability until I get it in some kind of 'lock-down' on the floor, begging for mercy.  Maybe it's just that I need a lobotomy because humans weren't meant to get clever enough to realise the futility of their own lives and the trap of poverty they are most likely to get caught in, because it only leads to self-destruction.  

I was thinking about erasing that last line, but this is something I was discussing today, how women are not allowed to accept and acknowledge a strong quality in themselves because it comes across as aggressive.  It is not acceptable for me as a woman to say, "I'm clever."  However, I feel it's all gone too far, when you've suffered the bullying, the ostracism, the perpetual 'not fitting in' of being intelligent, that you aren't allowed to say, "damn, I'm clever and I know I am".  It's outrageously boastful and uncouth.  Is this just a British trait, or do we all suffer from this necessity for self-deprecation and is it only women who are subjected to it?

I feel compelled to explain that I'm not suggesting I'm extra clever, or remarkably intelligent, just clever enough to notice and analyse the injustices in life, as well as know I've screwed things up and blown all my chances (what few I have had) due to bad timing, ill-health and a lack of awareness equalled only by my lack of support, about how to go about pursuing the kind of career I wanted.  And now, it's too late.  I've got myself caught so far in the pit of failure, there really does appear to be no way out.  I didn't adapt fast enough, I didn't recognise the possibilities that were really there soon enough and I didn't have enough money after moving my piano (which I'd wanted all my life but only got when I was 21, so it was hard to part with) from house to house to be able to afford to do frequent recording or gigs as well.

So, I shall always envy the fictional world of SATC, where even in the bad old early days, when no-one had so much as a decent pair of earrings, let alone shoes, they had their high paying jobs, one of which allowed her to write her opinions in a creative way for a living, and their apartments in Manhattan and their highlighted hair and copies of Vogue and The New Yorker.  I read the New Yorker online today, or at least a couple of articles from it, and looked at the lovely and inspiring illustrations, but I can't afford a regular copy, or subscription.  And I can't afford their delightful desk diaries or book of paintings or drawings of New York which have graced their front covers over the years.  And I don't live anywhere near such a vibrant city.  I know Prague is a regional-seeming little place.  It's not rough around the edges, just dog-earred with neglect (in places).  

What I fear the most, right now, is that Prague and I are almost the same and always will be:  A good idea with lots of potential for inspiration, but too beaten down by the past and a prolonged case of underfunding to ever escape its provincial roots.

Scenes from September

It's been a tough month.  No doubt about it.  And it all started with the end of August being a tough time to go through, what with returning to London and the anniversary of my moving to the Czech Republic.  Somehow everything decided to come back at me and haunt me over and over and expose me to all my flaws and all my failures in stark contrast to the successes and happiness of others.  It's an atrociously cruel world when you're alone and unsupported and all around you are people being given support and care and attention, even love.

I can look at things two ways, of course.  I could lament the fact that I'm still doing the same job a year on, one that demands my time and energy and attention to support other people but barely pays me enough to support myself.  And all the while I'm in a relationship where hearing the words, "I love you" are a scarcity, and match the rarity of those words during the very endgame of my previous relationship.  And that's, sadly, no exaggeration.  It feels as though no-one will ever say, "I'm proud of you", or, "you've done really well" in the same way I so readily say it to others, including friends, and even meet-ees.  I have no such rallying words to accompany my walk through life.  But I suppose that is par for the course if you are a non-conformist of some kind.

The other way of looking at it, is that I have left employment, now work only for myself and can dictate (as finances allow) when I want to take time off, as well as decide my asking fee (within reason) and that's a whole lot better than the pittance I started on, being at people's beck and call right across town at 7.30 in the morning.  And I do have someone who cares enough about me to want me to accompany him to his new holiday home flat to help with the painting and cleaning of it.  And when he felt low, it was me he turned to for support.  And when I had period pain, it was him who drove, while I had a much needed nap on the back seat.  So we have worked as a team, to some degree, and that feels comforting.  But I know it's nothing in comparison to what I had, nor what I am capable of giving and there should be an equality there, but there isn't.

So here are a few snippets of my life over the last month or so, as an apology for my absence and an indication of the ups and downs I've been going through, if it matters at all to anyone.  And if it doesn't matter, then maybe we should all be sitting snuggled up in bed with a cup of cocoa and a good book instead, and I want to be first in line for that queue.

Pre-September:

In a cafe in Notting Hill, on sampling their gazpacho:

"...rather disappointing to say the least, though the waitress has tried her best to be as helpful as possible. Which is probably more effort than you would ever get out of a Czech equivalent.  It still doesn't justify not getting much change from a £10 note though.  And I can't stay long.  Apart from anything else, the downside of "dining" alone is that once you have to get up to go to the loo, you have to leave...."

The delights of reading German newspapers:

"...in ,,Die Zeit" there is a very interesting article by Wolfgang Tillmans about how he views London, now his home, compared to other major cities.  He makes the point that London is such a multicultural society, which is far more integrated than most.  "Even New York is more segregated", he says.  He goes on to say that, as such, London is a success story and he interestingly uses a mixed language word - "Erfolgsstory".  So it's not just us British who feel steal from other languages right, left and centre then..."

My last full day in London, when it was cold and drizzly 

and I spent all day 'out-and-about', meeting up with friends and comparing their lives to mine:

Friday 26th August:

Pet Shop Boys' 'King's Cross':  "[...] I've been hurt and we've been had.  You leave home and you don't go back [...]  So I went looking out today for the one who got away.  But I'm walking round the block, ending up in King's Cross.  Good luck, bad luck, waiting in a line.  It takes more than a matter of time.  Someone told me Monday, someone told me Saturday, wait until tomorrow and there's still no way.  Read it in a book. or write it in a letter, wait until the morning and there's still no guarantee. [...] Only last night I found myself lost at the station called King's Cross..."

I have managed to survive a last full day here, catching up with a couple of old friends and one relatively new friend.  I nonetheless feel bereft.  I don't live here.  This is not my home.  Nor am I staying somewhere on my own.  And as such, I feel homeless.  I'm sitting in an old 'thinking spot' in King's Cross, with my back to an electronic notice board of train times to places near where ex-partner used to live and it all just hurts.  It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

How did things 'work out in the end' for other people?  Was it because they never lost absolutely everything (home, job, relationship) at the same time?  Or lost the remaining good things (relationship) when the other things weren't even in place anyway?  Is there no rescue, no hope for a future for those who got knocked right off the edge?  Will I ever fully recover or will I always be stuck on the edge of the platform, knowing there is no 'home' destination awaiting me?  Will London always taunt me by reminding me I failed to make a viable, bearable, non-painful life for myself there?  Is Neil Tennant right when he sings, "it takes more than a matter of time"?  And if he is, what exactly DOES it take for this searing sadness and desperate sense of being a perpetual 'outsider' to go away?

September:

"...Early mornings are a killer and today wasn't even that early a start!  I just didn't sleep well due to the noise (that's what you get for living on a main road leading to a motorway) and the heat."

"Every meet-ee has come to my flat and said, "you live here?" Or, "do you like living here?" because of the traffic noise outside.  Most Czechs think somewhere so lacking in "nature" as they put it, must be a kind of hell.  To me however, this flat was close to a dream scenario: "Hurrah!  Somewhere vibrant!  Not residential!"  After the posh and polite suburbs of Harrow and Balham respectively, both of which I kind of hated, especially Harrow, this was a godsend."

On the finer details of my life:

"...the delicately positioned, up-turned spoon perched on my table, left over from this morning's meet-ee..."

And back to today, sitting in my old haunt, the bookshop cafe, having perused a couple of magazines and some art and fashion books I can't afford:

Thursday 29th September:

I hope I'm coming out of the torture period now.  I feel haunted by what happened over a year ago and I'm still not sure if I'm free of all the teasing and mocking dreams I've been having.  I feel bereft, but slowly regaining some strength since having a week-long break from the day job.  I don't know if I'll be able to sustain it, but I want to try to cut down on the meet-ees and planning and all the academic stuff I do.  I'm so tired of supporting other people and having no support myself.

I've been soothed and wooed into wanting to do music again by listening to "Support Lesbiens" (listen to one of their best tracks, though the lyrics are slightly dodgy, as in, non-native English, HERE) even though they often make me laugh.  Hats off to them for being brave enough to write lyrics in English.  I am quite enamoured with their little misuses of English (check out the pronunciation of 'oasis') and how their lead singer seems to oscillate between fine English pronunciation and standard American 'rock god' fare...  Their music is so good and, across their albums so varied, that I must admit I've been won over.  (And the lead singer's voice is so seductive though I can't for the life of me pinpoint why...)  And yet, at the same time, they feel a little bit provincial, as does Prague, really.

Prague is strangely cocooned from the harsh realities of civilised living, though the cynicism and pessimism out-do even my own, and it's been a revelation to find myself having to put forward the optimist's view.  Who would have predicted that?  So as I stare down the bleak outlook and taunting thoughts of the past that have plagued me over the last month, I can only find a way forward in the frivolity of dressing strangely and using colours and patterns that don't go together to help me be more ME somehow.  It makes me stand out more as a foreigner, but then, that happens wherever I go.  Sex and the City's Carrie sometimes used to inspire me or reflect the kind of nonsensical array of clothes I would wear to feel more at home, but the films have taken everything to a kind of 'grown up' otherworldliness that is so far removed from the original characters and their first intentions, that I feel saddened that everyone seems to lose their principles in the end.  Or people move on to the next logical stage of life and I somehow cannot find a place for myself there.  

I don't belong in the grown-up world of dressing sensibly or looking like I've finally 'made it', so much so that I can afford a stylist (god forbid) and a family.  I never wanted that stuff, I always knew I'd be contented with the creative work and flat of my own in a capital city (I'd be on cloud nine if it were in Manhattan, but we all know only movie stars can afford to live there these days) and that would thrill me.  To have three great friends who backed me up would be the icing on the cake.  To have a relationship as well?  An unnecessary extra, but wonderful bonus nonetheless.  But I am the prime example of what happens when you don't have any of those.  Friends have moved on, achieved at least some degree of success (i.e. don't have to do the shitty day job anymore), are having or contemplating having a family and therefore cannot imagine what it feels like to have ticked none of the boxes they had hoped to tick by their mid-thirties.  Though music still feels like where I belong, at the same time, I feel like I was never allowed more than a visitor's pass into the 'house of music' and I still don't quite know why.  I must find a way back in.  Or maybe a way in, that I never had.  Perhaps there simply is no way forward, except the 'road less travelled' and that's a lovely road, I'm sure, but it's a deserted and painfully lonely one.  The only way to carry on is to try to enjoy the beautiful sunsets and the gorgeous autumnal coloured leaves on the trees and survey the mountainous area and breathe in the beauty on this perpetually difficult, painful and deserted road that no-one else I know has ever seen, because they all made it to the end and could come home.  I suppose I just have to get used to (and better at) being a nomad.