The world and universe

I feel like I've been walking through a tunnel that's lit with strangely orange lighting and I've forgotten what time of day it is outside.  I have not been sleeping at all well and the weirdness of this current point in my life is very disconcerting.  I have flashbacks of times in London in my room in a dark and gloomy West London house, watching ER on Monday nights with a glass of red wine in a shapely green wine glass I got from a charity shop somewhere.  I used to watch ER for the stories that unfolded about the character who started out as a nurse and then became a doctor.  I don't know why I was drawn to that character so much.  She just had a sort of inner strength but also total inability to open up to people that I related to at the time and I found myself routing for her as her stories developed.

I don't know quite how my story is developing at the moment, but I'm having strange incidences of not recognising myself in a situation.  I used to be super-cynical and razor-sharp at throwing out the worst of my frustrations in crystal clear prose or rebellious ranting, but I seem to be being drawn away from all that now.  (Bloody hell, you go to California once, and look what happens..!)  I have found myself listening to Marianne Williamson and Tony Robbins, trying to learn and re-train my brain to stop criticising myself and to try to be more focussed about the things I love and want to have more time for.

I made two videos at the beginning of this week, in order to enter two similar competitions for business training.  I wonder if either will yield anything?  I at least learnt a fair amount about filming and editing on iMovie, which I'm quite pleased about, as that's a useful little string to my bow.  I need to tackle Wordpress.org tomorrow.  I also have to go on a Treasure Hunt tomorrow, can you believe it?!

There's a firm that make these treasure hunt trails for 'team-building' projects for companies, and I'm getting paid tomorrow to go and check that all the things on the list of clues are intact and still visible and so on.  Weird, right?  If only I had enough cash to actually enjoy wandering around Prague for three hours by stopping for coffee and cake at Kavárna Slavia for example.  Unfortunately, as things stand right now, I'm down to 300Kč for food for next week and that might have to include travel for this work tomorrow, until I get paid for it.  But I will at least make the rent that way.

In the meantime, I'm really stressed about a publishing contract that's come my way as part of a (now geographically distant) pool of musicians I know and is subject to a 4-branch 'tree' of collectors/publishers that makes things so complicated and so divided up that I can't even see how much money I would get from it in theory.  I had the reply from the MU solicitor today with my free hour's worth of suggested amendments and advice and the whole thing was brilliant work but totally filled my head with stress and questioning and fear and irreconcilable confusion.  

I had to laugh though, because the solicitor brilliantly and simply crossed out all the bits of language where the contract-writer had sought to appear 'clever' by adding in unnecessary and confusing terms.  I love it when people do this.  Or when people try to use a saying that they think will make them sound grander, but then they screw it up and look like a total prat.  Such as, "it always ceases to amaze me when.." when they meant "never ceases" or a casual misuse of 'literally' for emphasis that just isn't possible.  Or an overzealous attempt at pomp and circumstance that fails when they get to the end of their sentence and can't finish on a flourish for want of a perfect synonym for something they said right before.  (Boris Johnson does this a lot and he allegedly received the best education money can buy, so he's got no excuse!) 

Maybe I've just become impatient with Britishness.  Or I'm finding it irritating unless demonstrated in the finest form of years of tireless, self-motivated education.  Or maybe I'm just wound-up that a company like Sony are trying to rip people off by getting them to sign 20 year deals that can't be negotiated down to less than 10 with no obligation on their part to guarantee any payment during that period whatsoever (and you can forget about an advance..!) while retaining the right to the copyrighted material whether they make any money out of it for you or not.  By god, they put some weird nonsense in those contracts.  I notice the MU appointed solicitor has crossed out the definition of the 'territory' of the jurisdiction of the contract from "the world and universe" to just "the world".  Seriously, who writes these contracts?  Would they like to outline the exact boundaries of the universe, just to clarify?  Perhaps I should ask for that. 

I feel so tired from all these rapid thoughts and corrections of those thoughts.  I can't take the constant sleepless nights.  You'd think I were on drugs or something.  (I'm not.  More's the pity...)  The last two nights I've been ready for bed and about to go to sleep when I burst into tears uncontrollably.  And then that's me occupied for the next hour until I can pull myself together to make a milky drink and try to go to sleep again.  It's been torturous actually.  My head is full of flashbacks and visions of myself as being alone and small and almost invisible forever.  All that utterly calamitous stuff.  It feels like there's some kind of monster within me being exorcised.  And I don't even know when it'll end, or what the world will look like when I come out of all this.  And the really hilarious thing is, I don't even have enough money to buy a bottle of wine to have a glass before bed as some kind of last ditch attempt at a sedative.  But I guess that's probably a good thing.

Cookies and Cookie Monster plasters

I cut my finger while cutting open a mango today.  (What a "cadillac problem".)  A mango?  Oh poor me!  Yes, I had mango and blueberries for breakfast.   But the cut was enough to need a plaster, so I delighted in being able to get out my "first aid kit" which was left over from going 'on the road' which consists in its entirety of a box of Sesame Street plasters. 

I know it's pathetic but they cheer me up.  And lo and behold, the first one I picked out turned out to be Cookie Monster!

I consoled myself further by having one of my favourite biscuits in all the world - Benton's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.  

I love them.  I'm so glad I still have two left.  I would set up an ordering system of those for myself if I were a millionaire because you can't even get them in the UK, let alone the Czech Republic.  But currently I have to put in orders for them to anyone who goes out to Illinois and can pick some up from Aldi.  Or at least, I think that was the particular supermarket that stocked them.

Anyway, it must have done me good to have both the mango and cookies because I had a rather productive day and even tackled a vicious circle-like bureaucratic problem that I had been putting off for ages because it's so hard to work out which aspect applies to my situation.  And it involves listing all my addresses for the last ten years, which is not only time-consuming because there are 7 addresses to list, but also painful because I remembered just how often I only just got settled somewhere only to have to move again and contrastingly got stuck in places I hated and felt trapped in for longer periods of time.

It made me think of the summer back in 2006 when it was really hot and all the grass in Kensington Gardens went a lifeless beige colour and I spent lots of time in the park, knowing I'd soon have to move house and wondering where on earth I'd end up and if I'd still be able to get to the park within half an hour or not.  The park became my home that summer.  Which sounds terrible.  But it sort of did.  The general routine was to walk along to the nearest coffee place and get some kind of terribly calorific frappuccino thing and then find myself a nice spot under a tree in my favourite part of the park and put out some kind of blanket and sit and listen to Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Summertime" on my old and chunky iPod.

It's tragic what completing a bit of useless form-filling does to you.  I suppose I can blame the insomnia too, which is becoming a theme of my life at the moment.  Still, I can revel in the fact that 1) I have an evening to myself now, 2) one of my meetees bought me red roses this week 

and 3) I made lots of progress with working towards important goals of mine today.  So it's not all bad.  And I still have salt water taffy leftover from San Francisco so I can munch on that and reminisce a bit when it all gets too much.

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.

I'm back!

The routine has fallen out of this blog - of that I am acutely aware - but I am going through a whole host of changes and hope to bring that to this blog in due course, so for now, please accept my apologies and see this site as a 'site under re-construction' deal in the meantime.  It is not that I have lost interest in writing, rather that other interests and necessities (such as earning money) have been tugging at my shirt hem like a three year old needing urgent attention.  

First and foremost, I've been adjusting to being back in Prague, then had a flying visit to London which threw me in terms of climate and didn't help get me back to a sensible sleep pattern.  (Not to mention all this airport stress getting too much.  Though I got a rather nice kind of over-clothes-massage from the security woman in San Francisco.  She said I'd been randomly selected for it and it was, "My lucky day".  The architect stared at this potentially arousing intimate pat-down as she reached around my back to check I wasn't storing a bomb under my bra fastener and, when finished asked me, "did you enjoy that?!"  But most people are finding all these airport checks and restrictions less than amusing: see this )

And now Prague time beckons because all my meet-ees who didn't want to start back immediately due to a couple of Bank Holiday days here that meant everyone took time off, are now booked in and I am down to my last 500 crowns in all Christendom until I get paid and have thus taken to eating sweet corn out of a tin mixed with mayonnaise as my evening meal.  And I'm worn out from the trying to squeeze in an important couple of meetings while in London and slept longer this morning as a result.  So I'm still thrown as to what time zone I'm on and will somehow have to manage to get up and leave the house at 7.30am tomorrow for my first meeting!  Phew!

The good news is, there are positive things afoot, from the spectre of a bit of freelance writing (that will materialise, won't it?) to a possible music publishing deal which is waiting to be assessed by the MU that I've had to re-join in order to access their free "Contract advisory service" which could threaten to send me overdrawn if I don't get some Skype meet-ees in London or a substantial article payment in £s soon.  So I'm on the edge of the platform again financially, but the memory of San Francisco sunshine and palm trees is keeping me optimistic.  For now.

In the meantime, I hope to make the necessary changes to this blog in due course, as well as fill you in on the rest of the road trip experience as and when I can.  And when I get my new website page up and running, you'll be the first to know!  Just for now, I'll introduce the first change:  henceforth the architect shall be known as my cowboy, purely because of the acquisition of this hat:

I can't prove to you how brilliantly it suits him with a photo of him in the hat because it would break his anonymity, but take it from me, all who've seen him in it attest to the fact that he was surely born to be a cowboy!

Road Trip Part 2: Downtown Chicago

Having spent some time checking out the supermarkets, shoe shops and fast food places in suburban Illinois, we had a day to leave the 'burbs and head out into Chicago on the Northwest train that takes you into Oglivie Station.  We were really lucky that it was such a sunny day.  The city was at its best that way.

We headed for Willis tower (formerly Sears tower) first, 

hoping to do the tourist thing of going up to the top and taking some photos but there was a super-long queue and right next to us serious construction work was going on and making a LOT of noise, which the architect felt he just couldn't bear, so we decided to head off to Millennium park instead.

I've been here before, but I still marvel at the skyscrapers, overhead 'L' tracks and the crazy reflective 'bean' in Millennium park.  

The architect, with his brand new and groovy camera also marvelled at anything and everything around us.  It's his first time in the States, so he was lapping it all up and finding it all rather a lot to take in. 

While walking around Millennium park we got a taste of American parenting as a little kid who could not have been more than 4 years old, kept running ahead when his parents and older sister told him to wait.  The little tyke even stopped, turned to face his parents and said, "I can do whatever I want."  To which his parents just giggled and tried to persuade him to be more careful.  I would have given him hell.  What an ego!  If the kid thinks that at 4, what will he be like at 18?  God help that family.  The architect said he would have been yelled at and pulled into line bigtime if he'd said that to his parents when he was a kid.  

We continued on our way through the park and decided to aim for Navy Pier, 

and in resolute, totally un-American style, we walked all the way.  And it was a long way, believe me, and not paved with easy access either, but we got there and rewarded ourselves with huge Haagen Dazs ice creams.  Something called 'Rocky Road' had bits of Oreo cookies in it and chocolate ice cream with caramel topping.  Mmmm.

And that was our day, because then we had to walk all the way back (and on the walk back we saw this...)

(and this...)

(and this...)

(and this...)

(and this...)

to catch the 6.30pm train, because there isn't a 7.30pm one (for some unfathomable reason) so we would have had to wait until 8.30pm otherwise and that would have got us back to the suburb of Crystal Lake at about 10pm.  That just felt too late somehow.  I still think it's amazing how long it takes to get from Crystal Lake to downtown Chicago.  It's like travelling from Bath to London in the UK except the Illinois train stops at loads of places on the way (hence why it takes so long) and therefore goes comparatively slowly.  There's something about that slow progress that frustrates me and makes me feel like the suburbs are a nasty trap in the middle of nowhere.  But I must admit, it's easier for travelling west, which is what we did next of course.

Road Trip Part 1. The departure and the quirks and quickness of time

Who was it who said that if you've got time to write a diary, you probably haven't got anything interesting to write in it?  Maybe that was just a general comment that came from anyone who felt they couldn't really be bothered to write one.  Whatever the case, I'm certainly facing the difficulty of sitting down to write about what's been happening, when the general timetable since leaving Illinois has been to drive all day, find somewhere to eat at about 6ish and then get into a motel at 8 and battle with the quirks of that particular motel's internet connection to plan and organise where we're going to go the next day before dropping dead at about 11pm.    However, we have stayed in our current location for a couple of days in a row now, though not in the same motel, and that's given me a teensy bit of time to sit and write something now.

Back at the start of our journey, we had all sorts of airport delights to deal with.  Not least being in the nondescript surroundings of Prague airport at 5am.  5am is truly a miserable time to be awake and trying to function.  And Prague airport isn't exactly entertaining or comfortable.  

But when we got to Schipol in Amsterdam it was a little easier to cope, being that there were several eccentric little shops

 and more comfortable seating and even a library!  Woohoo!

The flight to Chicago was a battle of the mind.  I decided to cope with being boxed in in tightly packed seats for the 8.5 hour flight by sleeping for as much of the beginning of it as possible, to help me get on Chicago time.  This meant missing the main meal but was probably better for my tummy that way.  I watched the latest Muppet movie and was rather disappointed with it, but it helped to divide up the time and eventually we were on our descent and we got in a tiny bit ahead of schedule.

Getting through security was ok in the end, though we did have to wait in the long queue of 'scum', i.e. non-residents, for about 40 minutes.  And they've got all our fingerprints now.  So they can track us down.  Which is a bit of a worry considering we almost got ourselves arrested when we took photos in a supermarket in the suburbs of Illinois the next day.  

Two security guards (yes, two!) came over to us and said that some customers had been a bit concerned about why we were taking photos in a supermarket.  So my Mum jumped in before either of us could say anything, to reply, "Oh it's just that they're from the Czech Republic and they were amazed at how big everything is here and how much there is!  They were really surprised at how big the watermelons are and the rows and rows of chocolates."  To which the security guards, stunned by compliments about the abundance of America, said, "oh ok Ma'am" like little puppies lapping up praise and apologising for almost missing out on it.  I just stood there and smiled and inwardly thought how incredible it was that they had automatically taken everything my Mum had said at face-value.

So there you have it.  Paranoia and a failure to recognise irony is alive and well in the State of Illinois.  God bless America.

Prague-life

So time has been getting the better of me and not allowing me a moment to do anything creative and instead I've been caught up with learning, researching, adapting and implementing things online as well as dullidy-dull stuff like washing and, today's joy of joys - defrosting the fridge.  There is of course, never a good time to defrost the fridge, but if you're planning on taking almost a month off to go travelling in the US and you've run your supplies of food down to a bare minimum (not just due to trying not to have too much food leftover, but also due to running out of money) I guess, now's as good a time as any.

And so it is that I am purposely taking a moment to recall the little things I've been able to get up to over the last few weeks, because I felt a pang of homesickness as I walked back from Tesco today that I'll be leaving my little Prague life behind for quite a while.

Let's see...

There was the weekend I had tonnes of stuff to do but the architect and I managed to nip out into the centre for a couple of hours on a gloomy Saturday so we walked and walked and took in these sights:

And he laughed at me for taking photos because it was such a tourist thing to do.  But when there's this kind of weird stuff around, how can you NOT take a photo?

Then we had a couple of weeks of it starting to look like spring and there was this distinct change in the light in my kitchen that I had to just capture:

And that summer-yness carried on for a little while, just long enough to remind me how hard it'll be to conduct meetings in my hot little flat, and that at 4pm it's necessary to put the blinds down or the sun on my back will surely burn my skin.  And the Russian Countess came to visit and she took photos of me with my parasol and then we went out for dinner in the evening and sat in the company of a fish, because that was part of the décor:

(That is a fish in there - honest!)

And then, there were the lost days of periodness I mentioned in a previous post, with my emotional turmoil over watching 'Outnumbered' and feeling a bit nostalgic, followed by the last week or so of frantic organising.  Plus, there was the day I had my last stupid o'clock meeting on Vaclávské náměstí  so I took a photo of the big Europa Hotel as I left the building and headed to the street:

And then there was all the present-buying to do at the Easter market:

And now I'm into the 'packing and wrapping up presents' endgame that seems endless and far too much effort for the calibre of Easter presents bought.  

I received my own Easter present ahead of time in the post today and I must say I am enormously blessed:

What elegance!  What extravagance!  What yumminess....

And the other day I got a present of lovely yellow tulips, which brought the thought of spring that helped with the fact that the temperatures had gone back down to normal for spring and the clouds had come to hide the sun.

So all that remains now is to do aerobics, (to keep me fit and strong to cope with the stress of the long day of flying and hanging around in airports that awaits) finish my packing and attempt to make the most of my keyboard while I'm still here.  I actually got out the old Tori Amos sheet music last night and for the first time in my life got quite involved (and quite good at, I might, brazenly add) playing "Silent All These Years".  Which I suppose is quite appropriate seeing as I haven't written a proper full song in about two years now.  But I haven't exactly been 'silent' though, have I?