All quiet on the Central Eastern front

The sunshine has come back to Prague!  Hurrah!  I have felt all the better for it, after a confusing and challenging whistlestop London visit where the weather was predictably dull.  I am so grateful for sunshine and warm weather these days, as though my life depends on it, as there seems to be a very quiet 'calm before the storm' theme developing in my life now that I'm back from the epic road trip.

I'm deliberating many things and trying to work out where to start.  First and foremost, I need responses to my ads for offering Skype meetings for anyone with a music career that needs bolstering.  Secondly, I'm trying to pitch article ideas to magazines and am getting stuck in a chicken and egg situation as to who to approach first where an interview is involved.  Thirdly, I'm wondering if I should sign this momentous publishing deal that would last twelve years (that's why it's momentous, not because of the money they're offering of course!) because if they sit on it and do nothing for twelve years, that's my music career well and truly finished and nailed in its coffin with a Black and Decker power drill.

I am imploring the universe like never before because something has GOT TO CHANGE and significantly so, because I have done the work of researching new things, taking new actions, freeing up time for new and better work and now, comes that deafening silence of the wait to see if this time it will be different.  Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual guru type, but not as annoying as some of the usual crowd, said,

"Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and can afford to wait without anxiety."

So I shall not worry and fret.  I shall take the steps I need to take and then switch off my insistent brain and do something I enjoy instead.  I am watching my world get smaller around me here in Prague, as my realisation that I cannot live here forever finally dawns on me, coupled with the realisation that I cannot return to London either and I stand alone in my little waiting room because I don't know what else is left to do.  I felt that emptiness and pang of being "cut-off" here again today and was going to (dangerous though it was) flick through a few magazines in the bookshop I always go to just to maybe cheer myself up, only to find that the magazine section no longer exists and the magazine racks have been simplified and put right behind the cashier desks now.  

So there will be no more taking magazines up to the cafe to read and then put back because I can't afford them.  It's like a strict school mistress has decreed this terribly naughty behaviour a nasty habit that must be eradicated.  I know I want to move to the next level and stop wasting money on overpriced imported magazines or magazine subscriptions that never arrive because of my remote and foreign address and get myself an iPad and a subscription to the online versions of my favourite publications, but I'm waiting to see if that can even be possible within this year.  Have I risked too much by whittling my accounts down to nothing due to going on this road trip?  Have I been too trusting that new actions will yield new results?

I honestly don't know the answers.  I don't feel anxious because I am sure that I have done the best I could, and I wouldn't have done things any differently given a second chance on the last few months' activities, but there is a sadness, a loneliness, indeed a questioning of my relevance to the world while in this waiting room-type silence.  I can only keep going and feel that sadness (instead of frantically trying to do something about it) and hope that something better really is just around the corner.

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: