Messages from Ski Camp in Liberec

And sometimes things just fall into your lap. You never asked for them. You never fought for them. They just happen to you. And maybe some people think that these are the important things- the ones we have no control over. But what they fail to understand is that with everything you get handed to you (or that seems to be handed to you) there is also an implicit decision. Because there comes a time when you must choose this thing. You must choose it even though it has been given to you. There comes a time when it stands before you and demands “you’ve had me. do you still want me?” And all you have to do is make the choice. Do I really want this? And from then on, it is fully yours.



And so it is that on the eve of exodus from this place, I am confronted with powerful incentive to stay. My plane is leaving February 25. I have given up my job. I have given up my flat. Everything is neatly in order. One suitcase is already packed. I don't buy a lot of groceries anymore. But four days ago I got an email from The Prague Post offering me a job in their copy editing department. I applied for a listings writer position in October and they emailed me back to let me know the position had been filled, but they would keep my resume on file. And I hadn’t given it much thought since.



I got the email Wednesday night and it had been a tumultuous day to begin with. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. to travel to Dresden to apply for a superfluous visa. There was no need for me to have a visa at this point. I would be leaving in a month. But my work needed me to go essentially to cover their asses. I had been working there since October and they had barely lifted a finger in filing the proper documentation for me to be legally employed. Thus, my belated, expensive bureaucratic shlep. In order to apply for a long-term Visa, you need mounds of paperwork: handfuls of tiny passport pictures, notarizations of birth certificates, tefl certificates, diplomas, Czech translations of these documents, forms signed by doctors, forms signed by your landlord, criminal record checks, forms in Czech I couldnt even guess the function of. Then you carry all of these things to the Czech embassy in Dresden or Vienna, pay 154 euros, and then you return in a week to pick up your short-term visa. After that, it takes four months for your long-term visa to clear. Read “The Castle” and you’ll get an idea of what it feels like.


So my co-worker-Matt- and I arrive at the Czech embassy at 9:00 a.m., discover our work “gave” (took out of our paycheck and converted to euros)the wrong amount of money-95 euros. So we went back to the train station with the intention of using a Bankomat (ATM) to get the rest of the money. Neither of Matt’s cards were working, so I had to use my debit card, which I’m astounded had the necessary cash on it. This drained my debit card, which means I am no longer capable of booking anything for a trip I’m planning with my boyfriend in mid-February. Frustration is mounting. But we return to the embassy, pay the correct amount, and go eat a doner kebab. As much as I'm boring myself even relaying this story, its is necessary to convey my mindset. So we return to the train station and run into some girls who work at the pre-school affiliated with our elementary school. I explain to the girls my situation (leaving in Feb. and having to pay for this useless visa) and one of them tells me I should have just applied for a short-term visa, which is only 60 euros. Unfortunately the embassy closes at 11:00 a.m. (they’re open three fucking hours) and it is currently 11:04 a.m. The embassy is a four minute-walk from the train station, so I get a gleam in my eye and decide to go for it. Matt goes with me and when I buzz the clearly closed embassy’s door, the woman informs me they are closed and to come back another time. Deflated, Matt and I head back to the train station. He wants to go for a beer, go for a walk, anything-but I feel like crying. He finally convinces me to go for a walk around the dilapidated back streets of outer Dresden. We consider whether squatters live in any of the buildings, a lifestyle I imagine myself becoming rather familiar with in the next month if I have to pay 154 euros for nothing-and I decide to try again at the embassy. They’re still there-I’m sure; they’re just sitting upstairs eating Lean Cuisines most likely-or schnitzel-or whatever German ladies eat for lunch. So I speed walk back, buzz the door, and explain to them I just need to change one thing on my form-that my train is leaving-please, please-two minutes. And they oblige!-albeit unhappily. I get my 95 euros back. We catch a train back at 12:45 p.m. and get into Prague around 3:30 p.m.

A few hours later I'm sitting at home on my cot bed miraculously getting the internet and I get the email from the Prague Post. After everything that happened that day, and little sleep, getting the news made me disproportionately upset. I tried to talk to Jen about it and she kind of dismissed it on account of my plans to leave and told me I should send them her resume and went to bed. So I went outside and walked around my neighborhood for about an hour listening to Joni Mitchell and calming myself down.

I went to an interview on Friday, which may have gone well. The “interview” portion was relaxed and I got along well with the editor who hailed from Cleveland. Then I took an editing test, where I proofread an unedited front page.

I left a little giddy- i kept thinking how cool it would be to work for this paper, despite the measly salary. I would be making what works out to be less than $800 a month. But this is what I want to do, work for a paper or magazine. If I got the job and I took the job, I would want to stay for a while-give myself the time to learn it well. Yet I’m sapped-of resources, of money, and of energy. There would be difficulty in finding a place to sublet at an affordable price and coming up with the money to put down a security deposit. It would probably cost a lot to delay my flight. My heart was set on leaving and other’s hearts were set to that timetable too.

I’ve always been enamored with the beauty of being alone- that feeling that surprises you on a Saturday late-morning early afternoon, when you decide on a whim to take a walk in the park or peek into a 1,000 year-old church and a calm comes upon you, a self-sufficiency and the ungraspable feeling that you possess the time and potential to go where you want. It surprised me on the train to Dresden in the 6:00 a.m dark in a private compartment and it surprised me because I wasn't even alone. My co-worker was asleep on the opposite three seats. But then I thought about it and I understood why: I like disappearing. It's why I'm here. It's why I go on walks unannounced, why I used to get drunk and disappear from parties finding myself on unlit Bloomfield alleys, why this rush usually only happens when I'm somewhere noone knows I am. I made these plans and despite who came with me or who I met here, this was always my time to be alone. But balancing the part of me that wants to get away is the part that wants to go back.

I’m young and as such, I am still in love with the beauty of being alone. Yet, I have someone who is willing to do anything reasonable to stay with me-someone who would never have left- and who never would. So the unbeautiful thing about being alone is hurting others, when they want to know where you are and maybe they want to go with you. And I want so much to understand the beauty of considering others. Of not making every decision for myself. Because that is what makes the world go round, right? At some point, we all have to awake to the knowledge that there is a different kind of happiness. A happiness in making others happy. And despite the romanticized gritty lifestyle that I envision, the "break" I may get by staying, the opportunity (by being in Prague) to easily conjure up that feeling I am still so in love with-despite all of these things there are things in Pittsburgh which make me the level of happy that is simply unattainable here.

And now-secluded in the mountains of Jizerske for a week with basic amenities, lots of time on my hands, and the rapid onset of a cold (I'm sitting here sipping on whiskey and tea that the proprieter of the Hotel Maxov made me as he told about being in the Czech Army in '68,) I should feel that lovely tinge of being that accompanies disappearing into the unknown, but instead all I want is to reassure someone he is wanted. I want to be true and honorable and that is sometimes at odds with the beauty of being alone.

Maybe none of this made sense. I may have a fever. But I have a choice to make. And I'll leave it at that for tonight.