Catching up, thoughts and "hard alcohol"

Thoughts on a day when I ran out of time to post this (26/09/12):

Voluntary ban? Pah! We've got the real deal here.

Having just read this article on the Guardian site this morning, I was quite surprised that it was about shops being asked to voluntarily stop selling the stronger alcoholic drinks mentioned. I myself, have failed to mention that here in the Czech Republic, (that's right - right here, right now in the 21st Century) there is an actual ban on all alcoholic drinks of 20% alcohol or higher (referred to as "hard alcohol" in Czech).  Some people died from the sale of alcohol that had metallic alcohol not the digestible type (I still don't know exactly what this means, not being a scientist myself and not having the advantage of being able to read this news story in English and I suspect the actual difference itself, when relayed in English, wouldn't mean a whole lot more to me anyway) so they've banned it from being sold in shops and supermarkets.  Though the ban is already lifting now, for any drinks manufacturers who can produce a certificate to confirm the date and method of production.  Or something.

So just as I finally have time to write about this (I'm sort of pleased to say that paid writing work has taken priority this week, though also disappointed to say that it really isn't paying more than half the minimum wage for how long it actually takes to write the articles I have to write and subtly include the links they want, ho-hum) it's a story that's almost over. Mind you, that doesn't stop the news here talking about it all the time. Still. After a grand total of about 21 people died. The fear is that more will follow from people who bought vodka or rum or that sort of drink months ago and might not open it to drink until a birthday or other celebration comes up, by which time they'll have forgotten the time they bought it and the ban that followed because it will then have slipped off the news agenda.

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After re-watching the film 'Stranger than Fiction' on Saturday night (while away with no internet access):

I think I would have loved an old style typewriter to write on, just like the novelist in 'Stranger Than Fiction'. The light of the room she writes in. The peace and quiet. I wish I could have that peace right now. It's beginning to get to me. To settle into my brain. The background noise of a constantly on TV spewing out Czech exclamations incessantly. Offering sometimes a welcome variety of vocabulary and a delicately accented Czech that I don't hear here in Prague. The gorgeously bristling sound of the 'ř', the carefully placed emphasis on the first syllable of a word or preposition that precedes it. But sometimes the TV merely replicates what I hear at what is for now my 'home'. A series of exclamations of disgust, despair and disappointment that become reduced to expetives and casual language that can sound even lazier and weighed down in apathy when given the right, Prague-style dull intonation.

I know I will need an exit strategy, no matter how grateful I am for the lessons I have learned here.

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I don't seem to be making much progress lately. After a wrangling with Barclays on the phone yesterday which ended when they put me on hold so long my £10 credit ran out, and a battle with a form I just cannot fill-in in Czech without help, losing meet-ees again and barely earning enough money to keep me fed and able to travel (and top-up my phone after talking to the people at Barclays) I'm in the heart of the recession I think. Just like everyone else. I really, really miss my flat now more than ever and the thought of going into the thick of autumn, possibly even winter without my own space to work and put up pictures and fairy lights and generally feel snuggly and at home, is just upsetting. I've got to find a way to be ok with the way things are though, because we all know - "what you resist, persists". I should know that one by now.

I must make, "it's ok, everything's fine, this is exactly what I want right now", my inner mantra and see if that shifts anything. It's worth a try. Everything else failed, so why not try a totally insane kind of 'self-help' practice and see if it works? Failing that , I'm simply going to get out the big Sesame Street book again and resort to singing the Cookie Monster version of 'Call Me Maybe' over and over: "Me just met you and this is crazy, but you got cookie, so share it maybe..."

Incompatibility, fantasy and time travel - (two days for the price of one!)

There was a hint of autumn in the air on Friday.  Not in the temperature, like the chill in the air that came about a couple of weekends ago, but in the appearance of the landscape.  The sky was cloudy but it was still warm.  Hot infact, despite Thursday night's storm.  

As I walked back up the hill from Václavske náměstí I noticed the yellow leaves all across the path of the little park by the museum and they were still being blown off the tree as a gust of wind pushed them right towards me.  

It was strange to see that without the accompanying cold feeling.

There's something about the onset of autumn that kind of scares me even though I am a winter baby and I have better winter and autumn clothes than summer ones.   I think it must be to do with both the sense of horror of that 'back to school' feeling that has somehow never left me and also that dread of the dark mornings that are worse here because everyone starts work at 8am and getting up at 6am is distinctly worse than getting up at 7am.  Particularly when the nature of my type of work usually dictates working evenings too, so there is no corresponding end of the working day at 4pm to compensate for the early starts.  Which I hate.  I really don't do well on 6 hours' sleep.

Maybe it's also the reality of the fact that September, October and November don't bring anything to look forward to.  Funds are so low that I can't plan a really sumptuous evening meal out somewhere I can dress up for.  Maybe it's partly because the cowboy doesn't know how to savour anything.  When I do make an effort to buy a nice bottle of wine for us and a good film to watch, for example, he gulps down the wine in a bid to finish it because it's Saturday night and the next evening we'd be driving back to Prague.  (And on Friday nights we're just too tired from all that 'only 6 hours' sleep a night' problem.)   He somehow doesn't think it's safe to put the cork back in and bring the rest of the bottle back with us.  So he always wants to finish it off, whereas I'd rather savour it and enjoy sitting on the sofa with him, relishing a quiet moment of peace and a bit of a romantic atmosphere.

But maybe it's been my fault that I haven't managed to find good enough films to watch that suit his taste.  Or maybe it's because the flat is missing the black shiny piano and soft woollen throw for the sofa that would make me feel truly welcome.  Maybe I just want too much.  Or we're just too different.  For example, he never listens to music except in the car, is always (almost constantly in fact) watching TV and he likes to wear super-casual clothes for walking in, while I like dressing up a bit.  Except, even when I do have an opportunity where he would want me to dress up, he always finds something that's not posh enough about me.  Like my shoes are a bit too scuffed or I haven't had my hair cut in over 6 months because I can't afford it.  Or the posh dress I'm in is the same one he's seen me in before because I never have enough money to spend on clothes and certainly never on a really good dress.

I think it's really the lack of piano that makes all the difference.  Then I'd put on a posh dress and heels and drink red wine and play my heart out all night.  Until the cowboy realises that the heels are damaging the wood floor as I'm pedalling at the piano and orders me to take them off.

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Saturday:

The thing about the homogenisation of shopping areas, cafe chains and department stores is that you now can't tell where you are at first glance.  Everywhere looks the same.  I could be in London, Prague or even Chicago.  (But for the missing American flags that would be the one main difference in the latter.) And in some cases, you can't tell when  you are.  In the Czech Republic, for example, the clothes store C&A never went bankrupt, so I can sit in a generic coffee chain cafe and look across at the C&A shop front in this shopping mall and this could even be London, circa 1998.  Somehow there are things my brain is willing to take on as true, when logically they cannot be.  This cannot be 1998.  And no matter how many times my brain half-sees it, ex-partner cannot be the next older guy coming around the corner.  He's not here.  He doesn't even live in Prague.  He doesn't love me anymore.  He doesn't even look like him anymore.  Not the him I knew.  That version of him has gone and been replaced by a body double with a few more years behind him, an earring and a bunch of tattoos I'm not convinced make him look edgy and rock 'n' roll, but rather more 'sailor dude'.

So why does my mind trick me like this and imagine him being about to pop in and find me after he's just been to get something in another shop? It's as though my brain is capable of erasing the last 4 or so years and can just take me back to the beginning of 2008 when things still had a chance for improvement.  A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.  I must confess, I still try to buy bottles of wine from 2008, as though doing that might supplant me into a better, more optimistic time and space.  And yet I know, deep down, that our relationship could never be absolutely right.  Even one that caused me to feel, as Alina Reyes puts it in her book, 'When You Love, You Must Depart', "I know that I love him because with him I have fun.  A simple walk in town becomes a real party, the world is a universe overflowing with dreams to be realised, with people and places that are either extraordinary or infamous, but never unimportant, with him everything is funnier and larger than life, with him, everything, everything is better", wasn't enough.  It was a relationship that cut me off from some quite important things.  And towards the end, it did not make me feel the above scenario at all.

But neither does being with the cowboy.  I don't normally feel that places are transformed when I am with him.  They are simply the same.  Sometimes they even feel more restricted because of him.  Sometimes however, on a rare special occasion that no-one planned, we find in the midst of a totally uninspiring location, that we can have a good laugh about something within our experience that takes us away from the drudgery, that transports us from the mundane world surrounding us and reminds us that we are not trapped here.  That we can go home and have a laugh or get on a plane and hire a car and drive across a foreign country and muddle through together pretty well and at least still be alive by the end of it.  He and I haven't had a lot of laughs lately, that's true, and I have been having a prolonged bout of homesickness for London as well as, strangely, for New York and Chicago, but there was that one redeeming moment last night when I felt like the place we were in was better and less damning because of our being together and I would never have wanted to be there alone.  And that's got to count for something.

November tears and autumn colours

"I think pessimism is completely out of date.  I think that's a romantic indulgence. I don't think anybody can afford to be pessimistic anymore.  I mean, there's so much that can go wrong, optimism is the only thing possible[...] I've always thought that an optimist was a person who knew exactly how sad a place the world could be and a pessimist is a man who finds out anew every morning. That's the real difference.  I'm obviously optimistic because you simply have to be.  It's an obligation to be optimistic."  Peter Ustinov

I'm sitting at my desk, in a black dress and black cardigan and I'm on a second glass of champagne and my fourth chocolate, surrounded by three fashion magazines.  This scene pretty much sums up my state of mind, if you are discerning enough to read between the lines.  (Yes, I'm hormonal too.  Why must it be that obvious?)

I ruined a friend's birthday this morning by bursting into tears almost the minute she walked through the door.  It was ex-partner's birthday yesterday (a very significant one) and I somehow failed to mention this in my explanation of why I was in floods of tears.  It's all a mess of various different feelings and situations anyway.  (As it always is.)  It got worse because of not being able to buy my friend a better birthday present.  I really wanted to make an effort for her, because I would want the same if it were me, but she seemed genuinely happy with what I'd already got her and didn't mind that I'd run out of time to wrap it up.

[Czechs appear to have low expectations and even lower hope of any surprises that prove their low expectations to be a little pessimistic.  This is one of the things currently bothering me.  Most of all because when I purposely try to exceed their expectations, just to surprise and delight them, my efforts are met with a look of bewilderment or, worse still, disdain that this is wholly unnecessary and over the top.  Since when has being extraordinary been such a bore? And, for heaven's sake, WHY?]

I suppose my desperate mood all stemmed from the difficult weekend I'd had of feeling snuffly and panicking about losing money for being ill (thankfully, my cold hasn't so far gone beyond headaches, the occasional sniffle and a sore throat) but my Tuesday was a 'task-and-a-half' and nearly wiped me out.  Not least because I had to get through so many meetings, so many questions, so little appreciation and all of it on ex-partner's birthday.  Needless to say, I couldn't face calling him.  I just couldn't.  I knew I'd only burst into tears.

I should have had a lovely weekend.  A list of delightful things were in place:

1) Thanks to IKEA's genius in economical flat-packing, the huge bed and even the sofa (yes!) made it through the door. (And thankfully, we made it through the night of assembling both bed and sofa, still a couple.  Which is some sort of miracle, surely?)

2) There was indeed some sunshine over the weekend, despite a few gloomy, or misty hours

3) The autumnal colours of the trees were stunning

4) The IKEA "Hemnes" bed was even more stunning.  It's HUGE!

5) The flat-screen TV that got delivered on Saturday was pretty damned sizeable too

But there were thoughts in my head that gnawed away at me.  And there were things in the architect's mind that were gnawing away at him too.  He needs to feel proud of having achieved something so urgently, that even the tiniest detail of whether the furniture ordered fitted the size of the room absolutely proportionally, or if the colours worked together, or if the flat-screen TV was at the right height from the floor were huge setbacks if deemed 'not quite right'.  I tried to tell him what a great achievement it was to have this flat in the first place, to have put up with a job that doesn't appreciate him enough and treats him like dirt at times, in order to be able to afford this stuff, but he was hell-bent on focussing on all the possible ways of looking at things negatively and of seeing himself as a loser.  Somehow nothing I said or did was enough to override that for him.

And he sensed that my thoughts were elsewhere too.  The funny thing is, they wouldn't have been, if he could have trusted, believed and appreciated my words of encouragement.  If he hadn't teased me when we went for a walk that I'm so spoilt for mentioning there not being any hot water by the afternoon because the boiler, which only heats up water overnight to save on energy costs, had run out of it, or hadn't teased me about how long a walk it would be if I carried on walking so slowly as it was getting dark, and instead had at least equalled the teasing with a proportionate amount of affection or words of support, I might have been more focussed on him and not on my sense of loss.

But there's something funny about how your perception changes when you don't have someone backing you up and supporting you as much as you support them.  When you've lost someone who used to, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, think the world of you and appreciated your efforts both in your work and within the relationship, that sense of loss is reflected in your surroundings.  In those days, I used to go for walks in the woods with this someone and feel 100% safe and cared for.  I would look at the beautiful colours of autumn leaves and see the trees as friendly beings, just flaring up a last bit of colour before settling down for their winter nap.  Now, in the light of losing ex-partner to someone who fits his life better than he could ever have imagined (and I stupidly believed that no-one, but no-one finds this, but I realise now that good fortune breeds good fortune ad infinitum just as the reverse, sadly, also appears to be the rule of thumb), all I see is the pain of the loss of the trees' leaves and the sadness that they emit in a 'last shout' of colour before they are robbed of their strength and have to 'shut down' for winter. 

I did try to tell myself, that this is my perception, my choice, so I can change it.  But it is remarkably hard.  It's sort of like asking myself to retain the kindly notion of a rickety old bus, in the way that it is portrayed in Mr. Men books, when regularly having to get on the real thing, all damp, leaky and full of miserable commuters at 8am, on your way to school.  It somehow isn't possible.

And I don't feel safe and cared for.  I feel like the isolated foreigner I am.  (Though isolation is not a concept limited to my time abroad, by any means.)  And that foreign-ness was never more acute than today.  I never thought, in a million years, that I could go somewhere and become the optimist of the crowd.  In London I was the pessimist.  In New York, I was the downright suicidal [not to mention far too socialist] pessimist.  In Prague I am the optimist who is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

Autumnal chills

I have realised, now that things in my flat actually work the way they are supposed to, that there is one remaining thing in my flat that does not work:  Me.  I used to be adept at getting work done even when the weather was bloody awful and I may have struggled but I still managed things.  The last few days of this miserable, cold and drizzly weather have sent me into a kind of semi-sleep.  I am tired and achy and my eyes are sore all the time.  It doesn't help that I have tried to retain some of my early morning meet-ees this week, while also packing in some boring work that had to be done.  So it's not entirely 'my' time and my time alone, as it was meant to have been.

In a desperate attempt to stay awake this afternoon, I took myself off to the bookshop cafe, in hope of writing something interesting fuelled by coffee and a bit of inspiration, but there was some kind of book launch on and it was incredibly busy and distracting as a result.  I did have a chance to wander around longingly, looking for a novel that might catch my eye, though in some ways I'm glad nothing did, because I do not have the budget for it.  I wish I could have a reading allowance from a rich aristocrat who would pay for my literary whims and would think it a noble thing to do, supporting a working class girl with middle class tastes to read more.  Wouldn't that be simply fantastic?!

Ah the idle dreams of the lone foreigner, who has just passed the one year mark of living abroad...I must be losing my mind.  (Or is it just waaayyyy too late for that?)  Yes, it has been over a year, and this time the transition from summer to autumn has hit harder (maybe because last year I was coming from a UK summer, which means of course, no sun or warmth at all to differentiate it from autumn or spring).  The distinct chill in the air today was a bit of a shock.  I woke up and had to force myself to get up quickly, and as I got out of bed to go and make some tea, I shivered, even though I had a long sleeved top on.  I had thought the pyjamas-like get-up would be enough, but no.  Woe betide the person who underestimates the chill of the 6 am October morning air.

Having said that, I am nonetheless basking in the glow of being liked, indeed loved, by the architect, since we hadn't seen each other for about two weeks and he had missed me.  He seemed full of affection all of a sudden, where normally the TV holds about equal, if not greater interest.  I would almost conclude that I should make myself unavailable more often.  But that would seem to be defeating the object, surely...

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.