Single Person Behaviour (Part Deux)

I'm so thrilled at having this time to myself I can't get over how wonderful it is!  I therefore had to create a second part to my previous post. I had a somewhat unfortunate start to the day in that I was woken up by period pain, even though that shouldn't be happening for at least another 5 days so I had to take some painkillers right away but that kind of gave me a good excuse to have a longer lie-in as compensation. Snuggling up with a hot water bottle always feels cosy even when the reason for making a hot water bottle was the pain that came unexpectedly. I am so lucky that I kept a good lot of magazines out and in bags instead of boxes because that means I've been able to plaster the bed with them and browse, read and lounge about looking at pictures avidly. I'm feeling a bit mournful about all the lovely old copies of Vogue I had to get rid of before I even moved to this country though because I had some great ones, mostly bought for half-price at the second-hand exchange bookshop on Notting Hill on Pembridge Road. Oh how I miss that shop...But I did keep a whole bunch of pages from my favourite editions including a few Paris Vogues, and I'm glad I've had a chance to look through those. Nothing like covering the bed with fashion pictures and mini-articles (zoom in on the middle left of the photo) on people like Daniel Auteuil.

I have also continued my practising of new make-up techniques after educating myself that it's not entirely about the make-up you buy but how you use it, thanks to this Lisa Eldridge video in particular. But I amazingly found that I already had one of the lipsticks she mentioned - the 'New Black' no17 one! Which is exactly the dark shade I most wanted - yay! I vainly took a few pictures of myself (how shameful is that?) using PhotoBooth on my Mac (Macs are just so brilliantly full of useful and totally free software!) sporting that very dark red/mauve lipstick. This is where it gets tricky to remain anonymous and show the fruits of my labour...

(Well, it wasn't exactly labour. There are tonnes of other things I've done that are far more creative and took wayyy more work but that I really can't share here as it would indeed be too much of a giveaway. Though I'm pretty sure at this stage the only people reading this are people who know me anyway. (Leave a comment and prove me wrong if that's not the case!) 

I enjoyed my lie-in today and I made a terribly unhealthy cooked breakfast (but not exactly a totally English cooked breakfast) of eggs, baked beans, mushrooms and Czech spicy sausages, with a mug of coffee. It was rather yummy. And I can't tell you how delightful it was to realise there's so much less washing up to do even after making something as messy as a cooked breakfast when there's only one person's washing up to do! Wow - it only took about 15 minutes!

The other thing I have been doing is trying for the life of me to come up with a good present for my sister's birthday. It's the big 'three - oh' and I want to get her something special, but anything good and something I'd feel pleased as punch to get her is out of my price range and is something I've failed to get for myself and yet have always wanted. Such as a proper silk camisole or chemise like this or a sumptuously sparkly handbag like this. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be able to a) make her proud of me that I can actually afford to buy her something really special for once and b) if I'll ever be able to have any of these things myself. I suppose while even copies of Vogue are out of my price range, I have an amazon wishlist that I still can't even afford to get any of, and I've declined to buy ice-cream this weekend because I couldn't afford that as well as a bottle of wine and salmon, I can safely assume the answer may well be 'no'. I really want to turn this around. My sister deserves some luxury for once.

She is the epitome of the brilliant bargain-hunter where I aspire to be more Parisian and spend a lot on something that will truly last and do me well for being better quality (but usually I can only manage this by buying it when it's already 10 years old from a charity shop) so she has a revolving list of items in her wardrobe that she gets rid of on a regular basis because she buys from Primark, H&M and Kohls. She's got it down to a fine art to get my Mum or Dad to buy things for her while she's seen that they're on sale and has built up a remarkable range of clothes on this basis. I just wish I could treat her to something she would never want to replace.

Heigh-ho. Time for some more old pages from Vogue perusing (and in this pile is one of the pages of photos that inspired my main music pic for social media and google use for my music work at the moment. I had such fun working with the Russian Countess on that shoot - I wonder if you can guess which one...)

and a huge amount of denial about the fact that tomorrow the Cowboy is coming back and tonight I have to deal with a meet-ee on Skype and that that damned expensive festivity - Christmas - is not far off and I'm possibly more broke than when I first started out as a student. I'll find a way to get through it somehow but I just wish I could at least be doing it all on my own, in a flat of my own, with my keyboard set-up in a space befitting it and enough money to buy myself at least one treat, if nothing else, as a means of celebrating getting so much done on my websites all by myself from working out stuff from free training videos.

Letting go

As I was picking up the inner bits of my cafetière from where they were drying on the washing up draining thing this morning, a glass that one bit had been drying on got stuck and then rapidly unstuck again and broke.  This was one of my favourite glasses originally bought as a pair from a second hand bric-a-brac shop on Pembridge Road in Notting Hill.  I remember buying them and washing them because they were in a bargain bin left on the street outside and they were only a pound or 50p or something like that, but I knew they'd be gorgeous after being washed up.

The loss of this glass today was like an omen.  I'm probably going to have to let go of a lot of things that hold precious stories from my past and discard them to help with moving out.  I still don't know where I'm going to go, but if the worst comes to the worst and I end up having to move in with the cowboy, I know it will mean discarding even more than I otherwise would, which for me is like letting go of my identity.  Books and diaries, scrapbooks and magazines all form a kind of 'family-and-friends' community for me in the absence of geographically close ones of the human kind.  

How I will live with the idea of throwing books into the recycling bin is quite another story.  I used to give them to charity shops in the UK of course, but there aren't any second hand book shops here, except antique ones and those would be books in Czech, of which I have a more limited supply than English ones.

That glass was also a symbol of reward.  A nice little glass of wine in it was like a little acknowledgement that I had worked hard and survived and deserved a soldier's recognition for fighting through the loss and hardship.  Now both that glass, the champagne glass pictured in my profile pic and all the other nice glasses and mugs and things I had to leave behind in London are gone.  Along with my piano, several beautiful photography books and more.  Will I have to get rid of all my diaries and letters from ex-partner and photos from my life too?  Where will I draw the line?  How will I draw the line?

Someone (probably some great leader or guru or someone that I should really know) once said that all pain comes from attachment.  Maybe I have to learn that getting so attached to things is silly.  Or that cherishing things is the root of all evil.  Or something.  I always thought that being attached to things, especially things no-one else would like to steal, but that mean a lot to me, was a better strategy for life than attachment to people.  Because people can up and leave of their own free will and 'there ain't nothin' you can do about it'.  Maybe I got it all wrong.

That glass breaking was like the very beginning of my heart breaking.  It symbolised all that I've lost over the last few years and all that I have yet to be forced to relinquish.  So I burst into tears.  (I hadn't yet had my coffee of course, so that's my excuse.)  Because I'm not entirely sure that this is 'no more than you can handle' as people say about life when it gets tough.  You're not supposed to be sent 'more than you can handle' but I think I'm going to need a helluva lot of help to get through this because the last time I moved I had lots of help.  And then some.  And I bloody well needed it because I had to give up my piano, my country, my relationship and my work all at once.  Not to mention a good few friends too.

This time it feels like giving up the last thing I had going for me: my privacy.  My space in which to do all the things I need to do to keep me going: aerobics, writing without distractions, listening to music, peace and quiet when I need it, being able to sleep in my own bed, having a bath with a chair piled with books and magazines next to me, doing singing practice and even recording.  These are my strategies for survival when there's no money or when there's no-one out there who gives a damn or when hope seems to be beyond the reaches of the planet's atmosphere.  Are there any flats available on a planet in Andromeda by any chance?  I mean, San Francisco would be wonderful, but beggars can't be choosers...

Homesickness and attempts to run away

I never thought I'd actually feel homesick, but lately I've been ashamed to notice that I miss my Sunday lunchtime option of being able to pop to Portobello Road or a handful of charity shops and second hand places in and around Notting Hill.  I miss the overcrowded cafe I sometimes used to go to for scrambled eggs on toast or a pain au chocolat, and the bookshop around the corner where I found big Moomin books and other delights.

Of course, I also miss the company I used to have when I went on those little trips, although I sometimes went on my own too.  Maybe it's because of the enormous invasion of privacy I'm having to withstand at the moment due to builders marching in and out of my flat at will, to do more ,rekonstrukce' [renovation] but it feels more like 'deconstruction' to me.  It's been over two weeks now (the time they said it would take to finish was two weeks, so I can take comfort in the fact that my cynicism that this estimate would turn out to be a total lie was well-founded) and I'm fraying at the edges in every conceivable way.

I have no washing machine, no cooker, no sink (so I'm washing dishes in the washbasin in the bathroom) and I even had to clear my desk the other day so they could get to the holes they made in the walls to fill them in again.  Clear my desk?!  Are you mad?  There's stuff that hasn't seen the light of day since I moved in well over a year ago and you want me to clear it all up?!  Consequently it's not only my rooms that are in disarray.  My brain is probably starting to resemble the same walls that surround me now.  Momentarily it holds together, until the next unexpected quiet trickle of wall dust comes tumbling down onto the floor to remind me that all is not well...

So, I have endeavoured in this time of turmoil, to escape to cafes wherever possible.  First it was the old haunt of Palac Knih Luxor, full this time of Czech intellectuals and arty reminders of London suddenly and unannounced-ly on the wall:

Their hot chocolate is the best and cheapest in all Prague-dom though:

Then there was the resorting to a coffee chain place for the sake of free internet, but I was lucky to get the best spot to sit in with a good view out onto Vaclavák and the candles around the statue that are still commemorating Havel:

And then, today, I really had had enough of no hot food, constant drilling and dust everywhere as well as general lack of nice surroundings, so I hot-footed it to a tip-off of a bookshop cafe in Prague 1, which looked rather lovely on their website but was rather smaller and in the case of the bookshop, less well-stocked than I had hoped.  The cafe was good, however, and I was so grateful for a hot bowl of chilli and a safe place to sit and write on my laptop:

But I felt so tired and so low, I couldn't even face speaking to anyone, even though the people around me were all Americans or speakers of English no matter what their nationality and one very loud and confident Australian.  I somehow didn't feel any more at home there than in the Czech bookshop.  Perhaps even less so.  Infact, when it came to paying the bill, I was so confused by being able to speak in English again, I sometimes slipped back into Czech when it was totally unnecessary and I even tried to follow Czech conventions for paying the bill, which made the waitress think I was mad.  I felt like a lost lamb.

You see, this is what happens when you make a concerted effort to integrate yourself into a new society, a new culture, a new language.  If you try really hard, you can get used to all the right conventions and the right kinds of expressions for certain situations, but then, when you go somewhere that's a bit 'in-between' culturally (either an American bookshop or indeed somewhere like the French Institute) you can end up feeling utterly lost.  Nothing is quite right, things don't quite fit in and the thing that fits in the least is YOU.

So that's how I came home, in the uncharacteristically drizzly Prague rain, feeling utterly alone and without even a physical place to call home, as I got in and found the builders still finishing up, having done only a bit of painting and patching up, none of the hard work stuff, which they strongly assured me will all be finished tomorrow.  Somehow, I think this may be another lie and another opportunity for me to feel pleased that I am a total cynic and no matter what language you lie to me optimistically in, I'm not going to fall for it.  At least something's still intact, eh?

Unlike my flat:

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.