"When I asked for a separate room it was late at night and we'd been driving since noon. But if I'd known how that would sound to you, I would have stayed in your bed for the rest of my life just to prove I was right that it's harder to be friends than lovers, and you shouldn't try to mix the two. 'Cause if you do it and you're still unhappy, then you know that the problem is you."
Liz Phair 'Divorce Song'
There's nothing worse than realising that your own unhappiness is your fault and yours alone. ('Cause if you get what you wanted and you're still unhappy, then you know that the problem is YOU.) However, there is rather a good remedy for this: decide to be happy just for now. Just for now, I'm living in my dream flat. Just for now, I don't have to do any work I hate, and I only have nice meet-ees. (That was not the case on Tuesday, but we needn't dwell on that.) Just for now, I have all the resources I need. Which is rather fabulous, is it not?
However, just as I think things are ok, I'm pulled out of my momentary serenity (or is it denial?) and I find myself yelling at the computer. Yesterday it was because it wouldn't let me order printer ink from a Czech online shop and pay with my British debit card. The other day I just snapped about something silly that the cowboy said. He forgave me and understood right away that it wasn't much to do with what he said and far more to do with having no money and no prospect of being able to move into a flat that is so right for me as this one is. But it was particularly unlike me to flip-out like that. I still don't know what's going to happen. It's possible I could make enough money to scrape by and pay the rent for this month and not dip into the funds I've been lent but that would still mean I only have enough to pay a month's rent in advance. I don't know where I'll find enough for a deposit.
And in the meantime, a lack of money is a big problem in this kind of situation, because I think I know better than most, having moved house so many times in my life it could almost be called a hobby of mine, that when you get down to the nitty gritty of sorting through stuff and packing boxes, you need to get out every so often and get a coffee somewhere (and preferably a piece of cake too) just to escape the bedlam and calm down. Not to mention needing to eat out because there isn't time to cook and wash up after meals. So how will I get through this process without that spare change? I just don't know at the moment. (I'm lusting over the idea of a trip to my old haunt the dept. store on národní and going into the Costa coffee place there and getting a chocolate muffin and a chai tea latte... I want that so much, I could write a love letter to it, "Dear chai latte and chocolate muffin, you have been elusive for so long but my heart cries out for you..." etc. But it's a friend's birthday soon, not to mention the cowboy's and my parents' and I will need money I don't really have to cover getting them all something. I need a miracle! A chocolate-and-chai miracle!)
The other day, I was at the cowboy's place and did some vacuuming just to help out and I distinctly felt that were I to have to move in with him, we'd be at each other's throats within a week because if I were told to do the vacuuming, I would resent it. Offering to do it is quite another thing. If I then took up all of his spare room with boxes of my stuff, he'd be pulling his hair out at the lack of space and no dedicated guitar practice room. It's so sweet that he keeps reiterating his offer to let me stay but the more he does so, the more I know he's got no idea of the impact it would have on his life. There's not enough room for the two of us! There isn't even a wardrobe. I'd be living out of a case.
And I'd be unhappy. Because I need space to think. Space to do silly creative things. Space to do ridiculous paintings, make silly cards from photos of pictures made from smarties (or 'Lentilky') as they call them here.
Space to read romantic and seemingly irredeemably stupid books. Or space to play the keyboard and sing loudly. And that's the thing I definitely wouldn't have space to do in his flat.
I nearly choked with fear after looking at the horrors of the flats available within my budget in a central area like the one I live in currently. From kitchens with a curtain right next to it with a shower cubicle tucked behind it (seriously, right next to the kitchen unit!) to tiny bathrooms that have a loo that you have to walk past to get to the tiny shower or bathrooms that also have a washing machine pushed into...I just collapsed. These are the images which may now fill my nightmares. And they want 10,000Kč or more for this?! It's just shocking. While the rest of the world is in recession, the world of renting is still doing ok for itself. Maybe rents haven't gone up as much as they might have done in the boom years, but they certainly haven't fallen.
All I can think of is that this is a time when art and being creative is the only remedy. Not for earning money but for trying to stay sane and see a reason for continuing to live. Making silly pictures out of smarties may well be the way forward. If not, little sketches in my notebook, painted copies of children's book illustrations,
scrawled poems thrown down on paper in anger and big cups of coffee
to keep me awake to do all this are the order of the day. Art will save the world! Hurrah! What a manifesto, eh?
(Failing that, wearing ridiculously glam shoes indoors works almost as well.)
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