Sunset, signs and sighing

I'm feeling a rather tired and somewhat despondent today.  I keep sighing.  I must remember, that in the same way that the cowboy has a choice, (he can focus on how old he feels this weekend and moan about it, or he can appreciate my being there to celebrate his birthday with him and the presents I've got him) I've got a choice about how I see this period of my life.  I can focus on how much I'm losing, or I can focus on the nice little moments I'm having because of being forced out of my flat to go and look at other flats or go and contemplate how to handle packing up all my things.  I have managed to enjoy some lovely walks lately, not least the walk to a flat in Žižkov yesterday.  The place didn't fill my heart with joy and I'm concerned it would be super-freezing cold in winter, but I suppose it's still an option.  Nonetheless, I got to see a part of Prague that at this time of year feels very mediterranean.

The sunset as I walked there was lovely.  The view of hlavní nádraží as I walked all the way past it was sort of bitter-sweet but beautiful against the pinky-orange sky.  The glass of wine I had when I got there and we got chatting about the flat (a friend's flat, as she's moving out in September) was also rather enjoyable.  And the walk back up Italská on my way back to the incredible area of Prague I live in, that I am most fortunate to still inhabit, was really soothingly wonderful too.  It just makes me all the sadder to have to leave here.  Perhaps though, the heat and my resulting tiredness is a way of anaesthetising me to the worst of this so that I can stay calm and still get on with things without truly losing the plot.

One minor problem is that I can't get a response from my landlady about the terms of leaving and I really need to establish this to know for sure what my remaining options are.  Maybe she's on holiday in blissful, remote peace and quiet while I stew about how I'm going to handle all of the stress that lies ahead.  Either way, I need to just try to hold tighter to the reins of self-care that I must take to get me through this and make the most of every opportunity to go for a walk in this area while I still can, as it gentrifies before my very eyes with the new Starbucks 

and a soon to be built Costa coffee 

and a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about the vibe of the area in these late summer balmy evenings.   What do I have to do to prove I'm cool enough to still live in this area?  I guess that's actually a no-brainer - obviously all I have to do is wave the right amount of money under a landlord's nose in cash and that would solve everything.  I just don't have that kind of money, though, unfortunately.  Who knew writing and singing and helping people to learn how to say things in English were not lucrative professions?  If only I'd been warned....

And to think I even went to an interview today, in a desperate attempt to see if there's any hope in being able to generate enough money to be able to eventually come back and live in this area.  What a fool I was.  They don't pay enough, want tonnes of proof that I'm super-good at what I do before they'd even begin to pay enough (minimum of a 3 month wait, she said) and they expect me to give a damn about them when they didn't even bother to click on the links in my email signature to find out more about me when I applied to have worked out that she was expecting a female candidate today, not a man?!  Sorry babe, you scratch my back; I'll scratch yours, that's how it works.  I was interviewing you as much as you were interviewing me and that not checking out my other work by clicking on a simple link means you just FAILED the test, babe.  Na shledanou!

Chai tea, cake and Wax

I nearly wilted in the heat walking out to the Costa coffee place at the department store on národní today but I was very grateful for the air conditioning when I got there.  I decided that, after a bad night of dreaming a dream that left me full of grief, and generally having been feeling hopeless and despondent lately that I should at least treat myself to that chai latte and chocolate muffin I'd been lusting after.  

It was as good as I had anticipated, though I found I couldn't eat the whole muffin, but I made a good stab at it by eating three quarters of it.  And I was glad of the freebie corporate/advertising newspaper in Czech that was sitting on the table as I sat down.  It made for an excellent fan when drinking a hot drink made me wish the air conditioning was stronger.

And this evening, as both the heat and the sense of grief continued, I consoled myself by watching a few old videos of Ruby Wax's interviews with people like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joan Collins and, the genius interview with Imelda Marcos on YouTube.  God bless Ruby Wax.

Art is the only answer

"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.)