on the side

My writing is becoming more of a daunting feat than a sigh of relief and expression.

five: the sum of my parts equals the terms by which they are defined

I walk away from time today. I leave it as an unsolved mystery that will forever be a space in an otherwise solid mass but it seems my life is filled with hollows. As I distance my self from one I am only becomming closer to another. On a nice day, one of no more and no less importnace than any other I stretch my bones and all that binds them together within my glass encased space of a room. I peel one lid from it´s other half and wake myself to great the day. Sometime is is still dark out, the Czech´s start their days early, but this day is of my own design and the sun has risen. "My body is a temple". I whisper the words that were passed on by my mother and drink a cold glass of water to rush and fill the riverbeds within me. I remind my unloved parts of themselves and through some sort of exercise whether it be dancing wildly into the day or lying on the floor lifting my limbs redundently until I feel some warming sensation I give my mass of being life and a reason to keep pumping. I walk through the day with a confident grace. I am aware of myself in my surroundings and I make sure to nourish both and pay mind. An equally healing relationship to be shared; my two selves giving and providing for each other both mind and shell alike. Someday of equal improtance, no less, no more, my body is an ashtray. It consumes all that I feed it and rejects my ways only at times of great distress. The bellows breath in deeply as the smoke inhales and exhales and it thrives off of the ability to be reckless just as it rejoices in the ability to be pristine. Each day passes as its own.

Addiction is something that I have never had much sympathy for mainly because I have always believed in my ability to not be addicted to something. Well, we learn as we go. I am addicted to the days and how I may abuse them and live by them. I am addicted to the ability to live as I choose and wake up the next day and choose some new form of living.

four: another day done

I go back and forth as to whether or not I enjoyed the supposed celebration of the life that was given to me twenty-one years ago and which I now carry out each day. It may be that I am not far enough removed and can’t draw upon loftier perspectives but if that is the case it will be a long time before this country let's me remove myself. Celebrating my birthday in the Czech Republic has brought on various thoughts, most too disturbing for insightful reflection. After witnessing multiple people age, and therefore celebrate birthdays, over here it finally struck me like a rush to the back of the head that I was going to have to experience full fledged what I had been perfectly content watching from a distance the length of a 10 meter pole. Never poke at something too much no matter how long the pole is, at some point you will know more than you originally intended or wanted. I found myself, right about the time the rush to the back of the head came, standing in some circle with a group of girls (or women, or teenagers, they are all the same). It was a classic case of reliving a moment that was relived at various periods in my life so it doesn't really matter who the girls were. Once it may have been a cold case of one girl kindly egging on another to stop dieting because it was "ridiculous" but in reality she only hated the idea of her friend becoming skinnier than her. Another time it may have been one girl giving away her "delicious cookies" from her lunchbox because she wasn't hungry. It is like hitting two birds with one stone, getting slim and making others around you fat. Or discouraging exercise because you are too ashamed that you yourself are too lazy to do it and hate the idea of having someone else being healthier than you. It all sounds unimaginable and childish but even the old birds do it and I am not so ashamed to say that I have gone through that thought process many a times. It doesn't have to be about food and weight and it is not to say that it is only about woman (although food and weight and woman seem to complement each other in most comparisons). It is the same as pushing someone else to do something that you can secretly make fun of later.

So, on the one hand Czech birthdays are like manipulating a situation to feel better about yourself (and I should emphasize that it really does come from that ugly voice on the inside but comes out angelic, happy, and kindhearted) and other hand it is like that thing you really, really don't want to do when you are a kid but have virtually no way of getting out of. I am not talking about doing the dishes or having to do homework. I am talking about things that carry some amount of weight (for whatever reason) that you must abide by and suffer through. It is similar to having to get vaccinations; they must be done and there is no way you can squeeze through life with out them. Once the rush brought me back to reality I found myself fronting up an unreasonably long line of people, good friends and familiars alike, all waiting to do the same thing that they do to everyone. It starts with a never-ending handshake that is shaking the duration of a long speech coming from a smirk; sometimes fake, and often times behind starry, batting eyelashes. May all your hopes and dreams come true, may everything be better, blah blah blah, and then it is all topped off by an unavoidable kiss on the lips. There is no turning the cheek on this one; they will just go in for another. You smack faces with everyone in that line, which tends to form itself days before and after your birthday, and then you are handed a very nice gift; a bar of chocolate or a bottle of wine, and more often than not, both. In reality I can't imagine that people who have birthdays really do eat all that chocolate, I mean it would show... I was fortunate enough, due to my obsession and unending cravings for tuna, to receive many cans for the upcoming weeks. There was also a lone can of strawberries to complement the one bottle of sparkling white wine I got.

Although I would rather hide under a rock than endure such oddities for a second time I must admit that the previous weekend in Prague, which also served as a mock birthday party, was in no way superior. I spent the weekend in a cloudy state that caused me to walk flightily and empty-headed for days after. I may or may not have been in a bar fight to cause an unusual lump around my eye and I will never eat home made cookies on the backstage buffet table again. It was of course nice to get out all of that reckless energy but the effort that goes into living each moment there after is catastrophically measured.

I now find myself humbly bowing down towards my keyboard wishing that the depths of my bed could swallow me. I joke with myself often about taking a vacation from my vacation but my time here will come to a close soon enough so I am not going to rush it. I spent my birthday proper at Dáša's making cheesecake and drinking wine. It was nice to feel as though I was having a birthday with the closest thing I have to family here but in reality I don't think that I would have been severely dissapointed if I spent it in my room reading and listening to the rat tap its toes across my ceiling. I am in an industrious mood these days, thinking about efficiency and drafting new plans. While I slip into emotional boughts over missed walks and talks I mechanically push all of those loose wires back into place and breeze through the days. I am looking forward to the weekend and having my first opportunity to nourish my body on days spent behind closed curtains and blankets all a mess.

three: must it come down to lyrics?

Time has become so unfamiliar to me. I feel removed from the past two weeks and I think it comes down to the sole fact that I have forgotten about minutes, and hours, and all that precedes them. It seems as though when you are aware of the amount of time you have you are able to define that time by what you did. It also works in the opposite affect; you tend to remember some "time" if you have something to attach to it. We age everyday, all day long, but when we have a birthday we somehow feel etched a little bit more, somehow making us feel older (presumably, but it is possible to feel younger I imagine). We are actively living everday of every year but we tend to only reflect upon the past one and the one to come at the strike of an insignificant hand on face. I guess the point of the above rambling is that my birthday is coming up and I can't help but be sucked into evaluating my life, my person, my goals, so on, and so forth.

A year ago, on my birthday, I was snuggled up between white poka-dotted, green sheets content to never move from the one I loved. Ignoring any existance of an endless numbered amount of moments that may or may not happen. I was escorted by a nicely dressed and sturdy arm down the schoolhouse stairs into a glowing room filled with friendly faces and smelling of something delicious. I can remember those moments so well and it makes it all the more unbelievable that it has already been a year since that time. Since that time I have been weathered by a new year and it is an incredible thing to think about how much can happen in a year. It makes one anxious and uneasy. I am tired thinking about all of the living I have done, which is overwhelming within itself because I still have so much more to do. Last night I was left snuggled between newly colored and textured sheets surrounded by walls of windows seperating me from the below freezing degree weather outside. I was listening too the new rodent (who I assume is a rat that defeated the mouse that was there before.... his little claws just have a new and heavier weight to them against the metal rafters) crawl overhead. I was thinking about all of the things that I wish I could make myself feel differently and of all of the things I wished I had never done. Then I got over it because that is what time is for; it exists so that we may exist and within that existance we may choose to do and change whatever we want.

In contrast, I am still the same old me. I am still figuring out what I am doing before/as/after I do it. I am still letting the idea of a good story get the best of me. Maybe I feel so ancient in these days because I have so many stories but I do not think that I will have truly aged until I stop living to unvail and live out the perfect story. In the past few months I have played out a very amusing story. It has been told before and the only reason it is being told again is because I saw the story before hand and thought I might give it a shot. Now that I am further into it and see all of the possibilities that may unfold I am admitting to the thing I should have or very well might have known before I started to live it; that I don't want to be the girl in that story. It is so discouraging and freeing at the same time to be so in control of who you are and the parts that you choose to play. I made a great mistress but I know that one day I will make an even better love. Although, I am convinced that I could be happy with anyone, I don't think that gives me the right to choose who, when, and where.

As a footnote, I am uncontrolably affected by songs and their stupid melodies and lyrics. I can choose to hate a song just as I can choose to love it for the strangest of reasons.

two: a continuation

Towards the tenth day in Royan I felt ten pounds heavier, mildly stressed about not having my own private corner in the cocoon of a house we had all been nestled into, and increasingly upset about having to start making my own choices again. In the course of the time we spent there it felt very nice to be surrounded by people with their own stories and to blend into a crowd that didn't insist that I was out of the ordinary. For the first time it felt as though travel was normal, travel was natural, seeking was an obvious thing to pursue. Although I did manage to bring my own flare to certain dynamics of travel it didn't seem so outlandish because I had an equal amount to draw from their experiences as they did from mine. I took solace in the kitchen. Mama Marcela and I seemed to complement the kitchen in a less obliged and more inspired sort of way. I think secretly we had both longed for a space to cook in and people to cook for. It felt freeing to lavish in my own ability to nest and I tried not to freak myself out too much about my keen desire to be there for other people in such a "motherly hen" sort of way. My sanity was saved by the raw fact that they were not my children and I had no desire to be their mother. I think I have just been dying to give people attention and affection and to get a little bit as well.

The band of hooligans that we had become migrated north towards the city. We somehow managed to pull together all of the remnants of our existence in that small house. We had pushed socks into the woodwork, made footprints from living room to kitchen, left stains of laughter and smears of music on every wall, but as we shut the big glass doors behind us one would have to open up snooped through drawers to recover any misplaced items. The eight of us that remained not so gracefully shoved ourselves into Eric's van, along with all of the baggage that we burdened ourselves with, all of the drums, all of the extra food, all of the....... basically everything. A long time later we were navigating our way back to the small dorm room apartment that Marcela and Leticia had been living in. When they had mentioned that it was small and that it was going to be a tight squeeze I absolutely believed them but when we opened the door to a small room resembling the size of a toilet stall that in fact was the entrance/kitchen I can't deny that the pupil of my eyes went through I brief relapse due to an unknown exposure of an unidentifiable difference in light or sighting. You walked straight into a corner that was created by the joining of two doors, each one leading to the two rooms we were going to be living in. Four of us camped out in Leticia's room and four in Marcela's but after having spent so much time with each other we seemed to sift through the space effortlessly and with little frustration.

That same evening we got there I rushed to get my agenda sorted for the upcoming move back to the Czech Republic. After not having had internet I came to find that the ride I had found back to Prague was leaving two days later and that Neil, my old time family friend, was somewhere in Paris. Patrick, Antonio, and I went to find him. We met Neil and his new love interest Paloma from Spain, and another French couple that they were visiting at some expensive little cafe that sold 8 euro beers (which apparently is normal and acceptable in those parts). Needless to say the three of us ordered coffee and water. Seeing Neil was great for me and blatantly horrible for Paloma. The entire time she had a scowl that was so unashamedly present on her face that it was comical. Lips pursed, eyebrows furrowed, and arms crossed I couldn't help but think it was possibly a joke because no one in my entire life had ever bared such a face so publicly. Luckily no one seemed to be bothered by it and I certainly wasn't because Neil was still the same and treated me no less than he had since I was four. Walking with the boys back to the metro I felt an excitement about talks of going to Spain to visit Neil and partook in open laughter with them about the strange woman at the end of the table that seemed to be so hilariously upset about something.

Patrick, Eric, Sophie, and I woke up early the next morning because it just so happened to be the first Sunday of the month and all of the museums in Paris were free to the public. The four of us went to the Louvre (because society as jammed into our heads that you are an idiot to be in Paris and not see and I had already made that mistake once)and spent several hours following the color coordinated maps that we received upon entering. Eric and Sophie went one way and Patrick and I went the other. I was so happy to be in smaller company because I felt less likely to burst into insanity after having spoiled myself with nine months of traveling without having to refer to anyone elses opinion. The two of us pushed ourselves like pieces moved on a board game. When we finally met back up with Eric and Sophie and picked the next gallery to see we decided that the Louvre is worth seeing because it is the Louvre. As far as the art goes, it is hard to pick it all apart and appreciate it amidst the thousands of other people and flashes that you have to swat through like flies to see anything. If in doubt, always look up. The rooms are pretty freaking incredible.

The four of us were just heading down the long plot of landscape in front of the Louvre being goofs, taking pictures of the Eiffle Tower protruding from Patrick's groin as he spread out on some laid out naked sculpture, and laughing at something or others. Eric was stacking a chair on top of a frozen over fountain and right about the time that Patrick was being a bad influence to little French kids and pissing off their mothers who were trying to pry them from stepping out on the ice Sophie would have been taking a picture if she hadn't found that she left it inside the Louvre. Despite my stomachs painful objections of going back in to hunt for it the group made the decision to give it a shot. It wasn't worth the turn around because of course the camera was lost forever but it was totally worth it because of all of the food we walked out of the Louvre cafeteria with. Patrick can almost say that he stole art from the Louvre, but he regrettably left "Le Pink" (a ridiculously decorated hot pink pastry with gold flecks) behind in fear that someone may question his pallet's desire for an 8 euro little cake on the way out. We were more than content with the bread, pizza, orange, chocolate brownie, and orange juice that he did manage to get away with. After feeling thoroughly nourished we once again stepped into the tangling world of metros and found ourselves where the real art dwelled; The Guimet Museum. We spent hours of giving effortless attention and awe to their incredible representation of Asian art. We left feeling humbled by a world of stone and wood carved into kind and inspiring faces and forms. We capped off our city adventures with a coffee and creme brulee. Through out the entire day we realized that we had been brought to such laughter and happiness that our cheeks hurt and we felt as though we were in some sort of unreal blissful state. We were forced to ask ourselves on many occasions whether or not we had shared a square of acid together.

The following day was mildly uneventful but ended with in a great bar down some Parisian street that had the cheapest beers in the city and a Ms.Pacman. After Patrick was applauded for beating the only true challenger in the place (the owner of the bar) we mingled our ways back to our beds. I said my goodbyes to the boys who all slept in and the girls and I enjoyed a true French breakfast of bread, pastries, and hot chocolates down the street. I found my way to the apartment that I was meeting my ride home at and I will some up the entire journey home like this:

Small, old, Russian Vada, made for the UK. Pulled over at the French/German border (poor Callam, the driver, smuggling across two illegal American Girls) body searched and car sniffed over by a drug dog and let go with laughs. We drove all night and got into Prague at six in the morning. I stayed with my new found future great friend Michelle who rode with us and somehow stumbled my way back into my little room in Uničov.

I now stare at a computer in one direction and negative twenty degrees in the other.

one: a blend of years

We walked into the mist. We stepped into the darkness. Crawling into a haze created by some atmospheric happening that I don't have the diction to describe. I will call it "the entrance of the womb of the sea". Darkness illuminated by a mist and a dull rusted glow. Patrick became blurry in front of me and the sensations he was describing about the disorientation he was experiencing as we approached the ocean's edge was exact but all the more tangling in my mind because I was feeling the same thing before he verbalized it. We had run down the street as the moments chased us into the new year. A fast embrace held still and an unforced kiss in all its simplicity marked a year trailing behind the next. Firework matches were tossed purposefully towards the water extinguishing themselves but not before our imaginations let them explode before our eyes and above our heads. We turned our backs on the orange glow and haze. Our rebirth was about to begin. We made our way back to the house we had been hibernating in for the past week and a stream of hot water traced the curvature of my cold cheeks silently whispering and reminding me of all that had happened in the past year. "I made it" was all that my lungs could release with a sigh.


Two weeks ago I would describe myself as squirming uncomfortably but convincing myself of stability. In a short period of time all terms that define futurizing dwindled to a thick reduction of basing decisions off of disappointment and disillusion. I was hours away from spending two weeks in a forced environment of self containment. Hours away from doing nothing but thinking and dwelling and making my my mind make decisions. I would have waited for a love to visit me behind closed doors and sealed windows. I was about to close the year off with a wallow that should only be known between the bindings of books, in between the lines, so as to have the option to call it unrealistic and too tragic to be so. Hours before that two weeks was about to begin a small echo from some unknown place within my bellows reached just the right place in my mind and flicked it with all its might. Hours later I was meeting with some Brit name Ben in Prague who had posted a ride share to Paris. It was all too simple which made it easy to once again pack my bag and relentlessly slam the door behind me. I enjoyed my last Czech beers in a little corner pub in Prague with a handful of local drunks. It was the perfect "final" Czech conversation.... one with people that actually wanted to speak Czech and couldn't speak anything else. I waited for Ben to close up his apartment and as the rain began to fall I hopped into his Land Rover as he kissed his Czech affair goodbye. We spent the duration of the ride exploding with conversation about nothing in particular. Driven by the beat of good music and the drive to escape the grasp of whatever was trying to hold onto us. I payed for my second nights sleep since the nine months of nights I have slept since leaving home but swallowed it down without a chaser. We enjoyed a nice meal on the German/French border and woke up early to greet France wide-eyed. Unfortunately, it was blanketed by a cloudy haze but the ride was still enjoyable.

All I knew was that I was heading to a small town on the other side of France and that Patrick would pick me up at the train station. Ben dropped me off in Reins after a nice meandering around the center and I spent the rest of the day navigating my way across the country by hopping perfectly timed trains along with all the other people trying to get somewhere for the holidays. Far into the darkness of the day I stepped off my last train and made my way towards an old friend and his friendly face and another smile that was held up by some body dressed in what looked like an ethnic nightgown (which happened to be Eric's body). Then the details of the next ten days began to reveal themselves. Patrick and I were to be staying in a house with six Brazilians along with an ongoing flow of stragglers that would come in and out over the course of our stay.

The history of what was is all so entangled but in short: Ebert and Antonio are connected to Patrick through New Orleans and The Music Box which is a band that made it to the Plummer School House. They were in France because Marcela was in France. Marcela and Ebert have loved each other for oh so many years and Leticia is a friend of Marcela's from Brazil who moved with her to France to study and work. Eric is Ebert's brother who had been traveling in a Rasta-hippy camper van up from Portugal and around and about Europe who picked up Patrick in Granada, Spain, where he is living and on to Royan, France, where we were staying. Thales is Ebert and Eric's cousin who has been studying in Germany and the fluid community of our little winter beach house includes another gang of Brazilians who were met in France, an Austrian girl, Sophie, who was wooed by the fruit of Eric's loins at some music festival a few months back, and a French-American named Tiffany who worked with Leticia in a little shop in Paris.

We have lived on a basis of no time. We wake up at some point during the day and make breakfast. We spend the day cleaning up from the night before or for the meal ahead. We make music and build fires. We laugh, we drink, we do nothing in particular but the day seems to pass easily. Conversations lead into the night and are egged on by trumpets, and drums, guitars, flutes, and any other sort of sound evoking objects. We watch South Park by the dregs of the day and we laugh when past episodes carry on into the next through imitations and situations. We hug often, massage backs, and make food. We eat food and complement the cooks. We clean all day just as much as we make messes all day. We roll cigarettes and let them get sucked up by the fire at each exhalation into the chimney. We drink bottles and bottles and bottles of the cheapest French wine and willing watch our lips redden and cheeks rosey. We snuggle and cuddle and make love up against walls in the thick of winter air. We lost our sense self and relish in the core of a group. We love unexpectedly and never think of the outside. We chase down sunsets and set tables food first. We enjoy the belly of a house embracing. We go to bed long after our eyelids can't hold up their own weight.

As always there are so many moments to be shared but not enough mental space in this moment to write them out. I will one day choose to learn to write better and more complete or except my inability to tell a story in its entirety from start to end and let the fullness of its insides be leaked out over the years to come through small windows of opportunity for short stories or moments to be told.


Last night I thought to myself that I spent the bulk of my year running away. After running with all that I had to make it to the water before some insignificant time just to be trapped in an abyss of foggy but beautiful mental cloudiness at the strike of a new year I felt somehow weightless and refreshed which seems to be a good way to shed time and gain it. This year I am going to attempt to run as fast as ever but towards something.

My journey continues and I am still lost in it but I have gained a new sense of strength to capture it under a new light.