Crazy Jane:

Dear Sarah: The First in a Series of Posts Where I Eat Crow

Hey Dude.

So, I almost completely forgot your birthday for the second year in a row. That's why I rule... or not.

Seriously, don't think it's because I don't love you. I totally do, and this whole lousiness at remembering birthdays thing is something that should be blamed, I think, on our father's genetic legacy. Right?

Having said that, he totally e-mailed me ON MY BIRTHDAY this year; a feat I entirely failed to achieve where your birthday is concerned, despite having absolutely thought of you on the day, and having thought to myself: "e-mail Sarah some birthday wishes!!"

Anyway, clearly I never did. Sorry. I love you. Happy very late birthday. I hope it was awesome, and that that nimrod Ken treated you right. If he didn't tell him to get his head out of his ass, because he's lucky you give him the time of day.

Love,
Jaime

The Single Most Frustrating Thing About My Life In Prague

I'm at the end of my rope with the way I can't speak Czech.

Yesterday, I went out shopping for nabytek (furniture) with my friend Leona, and she refused to do any of the talking in shops or restaurants, so I had to order for us, ask the ladies at the hoisery store to get me my size, etc. Leona was my first Czech teacher, and is a good friend, so if I sound retarded in front of her, I don't mind much, and I felt happy, because I successfully communicated my needs to people in Czech several times over the course of the day. It's a good feeling to speak sentences usefully in what I can only describe as a uniquely impenetrable and mystifying foreign language. I'm great!

Then, last night, I went out with this man I teach English to. It was a lovely, cool, windy, Autumn evening. We climbed up to the top of Petrin Hill, to the sweet little Eiffel Tower of Prague. The trees were rustling in the wind, leaves and acorns were falling, and the view over the darkening city was beautiful and romantic (I feel I can safely say that, because it was my friend who came up with that analysis of the situation, not me). I like him a lot, so it was an unmitigated pleasure to see him outside of the conference room in which we usually meet for our lesson. Again: great! I was delighted!

Then, there's the part -- inevitable! -- when he says, "So, what can you say in Czech," and the answer, just as inevitably, despite my fairly extensive Czech vocabulary, ability to count to 300, and total mastery of the language needed to read menus, is a whole load of stupid, useless things like: "I like hairy legs," or "where is the toilet?" In other words, I can say NOTHING. Not great! I suck!

In fairness, I am capable of dozens of sentences that begin with "it is..." and end with an adjective. Likewise, if the sentence begins with "I like...", "I want...", "I need..." or "I have..." and ends with a noun, or even an adjective/noun combo, I can accomplish it with reasonable accuracy. I can even accomplish those feats when the subject of the sentence is the familiar or formal "you"! I can conjugate the verb "to be," and I know personal and possessive pronouns! Still, if someone says "the moon is shining in the sky" to me, I am stumped after the word "moon", which I do know. Again: not so great.

And, JESUS, people, THE PRESSURE! On the one hand, trying to learn Czech is an invaluable experience for me as an English teacher, because it makes me respect my students enormously for their very impressive ability to communicate so clearly in languages other than their own. It also gives me a more immediate sense of what they're up against. However, I am beginning to think that every one of them is WAY cleverer than I am, because every time a Czech sentence has to come out of my mouth, even if I totally know what I want to say, and how to say it; even if have rehearsed it in my mind a hundred times before I come out with it; I still feel like a TOTAL IDIOT when I do say it.

There is nothing that has the power to make you feel like a bigger tool than not knowing how to say something extremely simple in a foreign language, especially when you really, really want to, and when, after someone says it to you, you realize that you DID know it, but you could not dredge up that information from the thick sludge of your sluggish, stupid brain. I absolutely despair of myself in those moments, and sometimes I think I'm about as likely to ever learn Czech as I am to become a billionnaire, or grow to be 6 feet tall and have the body of a swimsuit model.

To make matters worse, Czech people are lovely! Many of them speak good English, and are very proud of it, so if they see that you speak English, they are all too happy to switch. Now, I can often understand what people are saying if I'm not all tensed-up about it, and am given the leisure to listen to several sentences, letting context and expression reveal the meanings of words I don't know. What happens though, is that people say one sentence to you, and then look at you expectantly. If you ask them to repeat it, even if you ask in Czech, they translate. That's very nice of them, but I need them to keep speaking to me in Czech.

Sometimes, too, they try to teach you the words they are speaking -- also, completely lovely of them -- but Czech words are so incredibly foreign to my mind that remembering them, with all their little diacritical marks and unpronounceable combinations of consonants, is really impossible without, at the very least, seeing them written. At best, I also need something memorable to tie them to; some situation, need, or desire that will make them stay in my sieve-like brain. The situation in which you've just totally failed to understand something very simple, something you might have understood with more context, or a slower, more clearly enunciated repetition, is often one that makes you feel like a jackass to whom a deep and intractible insufficency has been revealed, and after which one desires nothing so much as forgetfulness.

As I mentioned previously, I went out with this man I teach English to last night. He's an intelligent person who has definite thoughts and strong opinions about many, many topics that are of great interest to me. Everytime I talk to him, I enjoy it more than I did the last time, and it would be my dearest wish to be able to understand more than what I can't help feeling is the bare sense and shape of his thoughts. So much of what we communicate is conveyed by subtleties of word choice and nuances of language, and the result of my inability to field Czech is that my student/friend remains a complete mystery to me, despite the literal HOURS I have spent talking to him. Frustrating!

On top of that, there's something very uncomfortable, for me, about the balance of power of a situation in which someone, most particularly a man that I genuinely like, has to speak to me all the time in MY language, instead of ever being able to tell me his thoughts in his own. I don't like it, and at that point, I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK CZECH. I swear, if I thought I could have Czech installed into my brain like they installed Kung Fu in Keanu Reeves's brain in The Matrix, I would fully have myself fitted with a goddamned jack in my goddamned head.

I have a lot of lovely friends here, and even more people I would really like to know better than I do. So many of my students are such interesting people. I want to understand them with the fullness that can only be achieved when listening to them in their mother tongue. I want to be able to hear the subtlties of what they are saying, and not just the broad strokes. Because of that, learning Czech is at the top of my list of priorities, but sometimes I'm afraid that I NEVER WILL, because I am clearly mentally deficient.

In conclusion, ARGH!!!

Of course, the second most frustrating thing is my absolute inability to speak Man-Language. Seriously, gentlemen, what are you all about? What does it all mean?! If only my interlocutors would see fit to TRANSLATE THAT.

Aye Me, What To Blog?

I don't mind telling you that I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what to do with this space, lately.

I mean, sometimes I think: "I'm gonna tell stories about my life as an EXPAT in PRAGUE!" But, halfway through writing those tales of life abroad up, I've totally bored myself. So, nevermind. Then I think: "The hell with it! I'm going to just write about whatever I'm thinking about!" Then, halfway through a long treatise on the tension between authenticity and artifice as revealed by the latest breath taken by Trent Reznor, I realize that even though I'm totally not bored, the rest of the world is ready to freaking KILL ME. Best to CLAM IT.

So, I think, well, maybe everyone would like to read some excerpts from the Kierkegaard I've been reading...

That's actually a good idea. Here's one:

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if eternal oblivion lurked hungerly for its prey, and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches -- how empty and devoid of comfort would life be?

Crushing question, yes, but is that a freaking beautiful passage of writing, or what? Jesus. I love Kierkegaard. Religious anxiety never made better reading.

On a similar tip, I could tell you all about the trouble I got into with this English guy I work with last Friday night, but MY DAD reads this website, you know? I don't think he wants to hear all about it, frankly. But, let's pretend you all already know about the trouble I got into. I could tell you about how weird it is to have felt bored by the whole thing before it was even over, and how all I can really say is that I sure hope he doesn't want me to be his girlfriend, or something, because seriously, I want something so much more undeniable, which I'm sure never to find because it's romantic bullshit that doesn't really exist. But, then again, my romantic angst and the latest evidence that I am going to die alone and be eaten by wild dogs is pretty boring, really. I think I'll spare you.

Here's the story, my friends: I live in Prague. It's beautiful here. Yesterday I spent a beautiful, wintery day in cafes with my dear friend, and walked through gorgeous, frigid cobbled streets. I bought a honeypot for my kitchen, and I'm growing hyacinths in a window box in my flat. At night I drink tea and eat chocolate in my PJ's and slippers. I have a cat who won't shut the hell up, and I live in a lovely, clean, peaceful place. I teach English, and it has it's ups and downs.  I'm generally happy, though I miss my friends and family.

Lately, I just don't have much to say. I'm sorry to be so quiet. I love you all, though.

Telling Stories: In Which I Ramble Aimlessly Towards The Absent Locus of My Lack of Conclusion

Lately, and as usual, I've been thinking a lot about narrative and its utility, and if you don't know by now that I am an overwrought geek, then you just haven't been paying attention. ok? Ok.

One of the most illuminating things I've ever read on the topic of narrative is in an article by dear Dr. Oliver Sacks in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, about his patient William Thompson, who suffers from an inability to create new memories. A difficult loss to cope with, says Dr. Sacks, but it is the special power of narrative that Mr. Thompson's mind turns to in the effort to right itself: "...abysses of amnesia continually opened beneath him, but he would bridge them nimbly, with fluent confabulations and fictions of all kinds," he says, going on to talk about the human mind as a sort of a narrative production machine that ultimately manufactures the self: "We have, each of us, an inner narrative - whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a 'narrative,' and that narrative is us, our identities."

I love the poetry of his notion that our constant recollection of ourselves is constructing the continuous inner narrative that makes us who we are. Dr. Sacks goes on to say that for all of us, our stories are the necessary "bridges of meaning" thrown over "abysses of meaninglessness" and suggests that this power of the human mind accounts for childrens' universal love of storytelling, and their ability to understand extremely complex matters within a narrative context: because narrative has a symbolic power that gives sense to the world.

As much as I've been considering the creative power of constructing narrative, I've also been thinking about what it means to interrupt a narrative, and transplant it, to, say, a foreign land; as well as the notion of dismantling narratives that aren't satisfactory. While we're on the topic, too, there's the all-out destruction of narratives, which (of course) leads me to the the reason I've always loved Trent Reznor so. The first time I gave his work it's full day in court, it was a time when structures I had always thought were meaningful were dismantling themselves at an alarming rate in my mind. His headlong fury and the way he'd growl "I'm going all the way down, I'm leaving today" made me feel better about it all, for some reason - less nuts. At his best, Reznor's got a laser eye for structures that house diseased meaning, a rage for what's real and worthy, and the sheer force of will to break everything that isn't strong enough to withstand him. I admire that. It's dangerous work, and it takes it's toll in the end, but he gave me the best soundtrack I could have hoped for at a time when serious work had to be done.

In an incredible feat of engineering that will now include all of my listed obsessions in ONE POST, I want to mention that I have also long been siezed up over the many gorgeous pictures I have seen of deserted Icelandic farms, or lonely occupied ones, small and insignificant against impossibly forbidding backdrops. Iceland has a poetic landscape - an island with a frozen desert at its center, warmed by the gulfstream around the edges, and subject to transformative geologic and atmospheric forces too strong to withstand. If you've ever read the staggering Independent People, by Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness, any number of the incredibly compelling medieval Icelandic sagas, or heard the trenchantly angelic music of Sigur Rós that feels like traveling through light, then perhaps you can see what so romances me in that landscape, narratively speaking. To be rootless and isolated in that kind of landscape is a narrative that appeals to me tremendously.

There's no conclusion, here. Sometimes it takes a long time to think about shit.

T. S. Eliot, put it best, and more neatly than I am capable of, in East Coker, the second of his Four Quartets, which is officially the most beautiful work of literature I have ever read:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate, but there is no competition
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love T. S. Eliot? Well, I do. A lot.

My Little Rages: A Word of Warning

Anyone who knows me, knows I have these little rages. I am constantly becoming totally obsessed with something or other, in an absolutely unhinged fashion, such that no other idea or bit of information could possibly violate my mind, which has become like a steel trap, complete with a positively terrifying capacity for archiving and endlessly examining minutia, on the the topic of that one particular thing that has siezed me.

It would be awesome if, when the rages took hold, they were for something useful, like cleaning my house, organizing my total disaster of an office, or writing the great American novel; or at least something that would make me seem cool, like an all-consuming dedication to indie rock, but no luck. On the less embarrassing end of the specturm, it's the function and dysfunction of the Human Brain, T. S. Eliot, Iyengar Yoga, or the Knights Templar; but on the other end, lie the mortifyingly arresting specters of the likes of Trent Reznor, The X-Files, and Adrien Brody's apparent total lack of sense. The only link worth clicking in that last sentence is the last one, FYI.

All I'm saying to you, people, is that you're lucky I started blogging after the worst of the Reznor and X-Files rages were over. I've mentioned that my one-time, passionate, true love for Trent was fully like heroin, right? Well, Trent Reznor and his poorly disguised solo art project, Nine Inch Nails, inspired me, at one time, to operatic postmodern reveries on masochism, feminism's greatest sins, the nature of duality and the struggle for truth in the face of the hive. Yeah. That bad. Moreover, rest assured that I have seen every single episode of the X-Files to examine it for evidence of Fox and Dana's fated love with a fine-toothed comb, and that, in the throes of my X-Files mania, I had developed a huge and detailed Jungian perspective on the significance of every, last, single, solitary detail of the byzantine world of the FBI's most unwanted.

When Mulder's attempt to finally kiss Dr. Scully in the X-Files feature film was thwarted by one of those alien virus-having bees, my heart was fully in my throat. It hit me hard, and Fox's heroic rescue of his beloved from the alien space craft in Antarctica did little to ameliorate the crushing disappointment I felt when it became obvious that he wasn't going to have the opportunity to give her every inch of his love on the floor of his seedy D.C. apartment hallway. I wanted payoff, goddammit.

As for Trent, he's had a vacation from being my favorite tortured, angst-peddling fetish doll, but you know what? I'm always in the market for some angst. Recent events that have taken place in my brain indicate that unless his new record totally blows (and I can't imagine why that would be, since he's a genius), he may very well be back in the hotseat. I've got a bad feeling.

I mention this, my friends, as a word of warning. The rages are epileptic, I've suffered them since I was a girl, I can't seem to call a halt to their freakery, and I wouldn't want to, because they are delicious. I'm not sure you, my gentle readers, will savor them as I do, however. It's been awhile since a full-blown siezure of passionate interest in some random thing took over every function of my brain, but I feel like I can hear the thunder rolling. Possible targets include: mental illness and its treatment, the aformentioned threat of Reznor redux, Prague, Prague, Prague, English Grammar, installation art, and the unparalleled state of evolutionary perfection achieved by Christian motherfucking Bale.

You are warned, and I apologize in advance.

Exactly The Kind Of Post That Will Later Make Me Realize EVEN MORE How Totally Lame I Am

So, lately, I've been reading this very interesting book, Touched With Fire, about the apparently ample shared ground between Manic-Depressive illness, and the artistic temperament. It contains a long and riveting chapter detailing the vagaries of being George Gordon, Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, and officially, the first person ever to be called "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." It's also chock loaded with details about what is lost to a person in depression, and what is gained and lost in mania, from the standpoint of actual mental function, and at the risk of putting myself in far too illustrious company, I am FLOORED by how much of myself I recognize in her descriptions of those states of mind.

Of course I don't compare myself with Lord Byron, I'm obviously not such an extreme case of anything (though I've often longed for a greater appetite for destruction, I've never really had the stomach for that kind of unseemly behavior); but in terms of seeing in myself a sort of cycle of down and up times accompanied by a loss and gain in fluidity of thought, generalized taste for engagement and productivity, it's fairly revelatory. Now, having said that, I do think it's a big mistake to pathologize oneself unnecessarily. The interesting thing about extreme cases is the way they can shed a little light on more balanced temperaments that nevertheless LEAN a certain direction, and I do have to admit that I've never been the world's most sanguine citizen. I do experience deep, dark funks, as well as periods of revved-up activity and inspiration. Lately, it's been a long funk, and despite the fact that I do have so many totally excellent adventures, I feel a little bit like the murk lurks, and my time in the sun is borrowed. Grim, I know. Still, it's a comforting book. It gives me hope that at some time my productivity may return. Ok, now go ahead and make fun of me, Rian.

In tangentally related news, I do have something bitchin' to report. Although I finished attending college 10 years ago,complications arose having to do with my being a transfer student, and as it turned out, I ended my college career 4 elective credits short of actually earning my degree. Nice work, me! In order to actually have my diploma sent to me in the mail, I was required to take 4 credits of frickin' anything, for instance: BASKETWEAVING, but until then, I would remain a person who had failed to complete her actual degree. Life has been busy since then, and I've never really SEEN TO IT, but last week, I convinced the powers that be at my University to accept my CELTA course as the four final credits in my degree. Once they process all that through their byzantine beaurocracy, I will have officially graduated from college, with honors from my department, and Magna Cum Laude from the University.

Now, that's awesome, because, for all these years, the fact that I couldn't even finish my degree, for which I was in debt for thousands of big dollars, was the NUMBER ONE item on my extensive list of reasons why I am so lame, and can't manage to finish anything. I guess now I'll have to actually get to work on one of my many unfinished art projects... you know, if I can manage.

People, aren't you glad I finally posted something? Geezus.

Note To Self: There Are Good Times And There Are Bad Times

So, I complained a lot yesterday, but today, lots of good things happened:

• My car survived another day, and with only a minimum of driving 45mph on the highway because it won't shift above third gear. In fact, on the way home on its final run o' the day, it SHIFTED NORMALLY on the highway! Reason for celebration indeed! Tomorrow, it goes into the shop for one last ditch effort on affordable repair. If this fails, I'm toast, so if you're the prayin' type, throw one up there for me. If not, cross your fingers ALL DAY TOMORROW.
• I had a good interview. I think that as soon as any kind of work opens up at that school, I will have some of it, and that is awesome, because I need to cram some experience up into my teaching CV, and the good lord knows I NEED A JOB!
• My interview happened to be right next door to my favorite girly costume shop, and I also just happened to have some store credit left over from some Christmas returns, so I bought a new pretty skirt, despite the fact that I am flat freaking broke! That's always good, right girls?
• My little monkey got 100% plus 5 bonus points on a Physiology test, which is now displayed on our refrigerator for all to see. Go, Monkey! (He's so clever. He's really the cleverest and most handsome monkeyboy in the world.)
• I cooked the best roasted chicken EVER, using the awesome new cookbook my brother gave me for Christmas. Seriously people, it was some world champion roasted chicken. I was very proud of it.
• The gas serviceman came over and fixed our heater, which hasn't been working for almost a week, causing us to freeze our tahooties off at night. My monkey and I have been cozied up with every blanket in the house, all of our clothing and HATS on at night, because we are thin-blooded California sissies, and it's been cold. No more. The heater is going like gang-busters.
• I found out that my beloved uncle is coming down from Seattle for a guitar show, and I will see him as soon as I return from Salt Lake City, where, sources tell me, the par-tay is on! Yeah!

Not bad. Of course, I'm sure that I'll find more shit to cry about soon, but I have to admit that today was a pretty good day. I didn't even have to use my AK.

Good Bye, 2004

I've tried to start a "year in review"-type post several times now, but there's nothing peppy and funny coming my way, because mostly, at this particular juncture, I am panicking about the impending doom of my car, and the fact that I haven't managed to find a job, which makes the possibility of living downtown under a freeway overpass in a cardboard box loom large. Additionally, generally speaking, I'm not the happiest person in the world, and even though, looking back over my year, I can see that my life is richly packed with beautiful friends, cool adventures, and the cutest monkeyboy and dog ever, I still haven't managed to heft myself out of the funk I've been enjoying for years. In those terms, 2004 is like other years: lots of cool stuff, still pretty sad, though; which probably means I'm hopeless. Another thing Bono was right about: nothing changes on New Year's Day. Meh.

There was an island of immense pleasure in the midst of this year in which I mostly worked in a hateful job or freaked out about unemployment and drove around in my f#%king car listening to it make noises that mean the end is nigh while losing my rag over a possible complete breakdown of cashflow. It's really been years since I've felt as happy as I did heading out of my communist apartment and walking through the little park in front of my building to catch the tram that took me along the Vltava River and into glorious wintery Prague. On the bright side, 2004 marks the year in which I finally took steps to do the thing I've dreamed of doing since forever: moving to Europe. If all goes according to plan, I will somehow survive here in Los Angeles (without ever seeing George W. Bush on the news) until the end of my son's school year, at which point I will go to the Tour de France in person, and then return to Prague to find a job and apartment, and have my son, my dog, and hopefully, most of my books, shipped on over by September. Having made the decision to leap, the struggling on that I must do between now and then, here in the land of the endless highway, is particularly difficult to cheer up over. I told you all that I would be bringing some of that "Meh! I want to move to Prague NOW!" noise, so don't be surprised. More to come, no doubt.

Still, (and not because I'm really in the habit of quoting him, but...) I feel like Dave Matthews was right when he said that the future's no place to place my better days, so I must buck up. Luckily, I have some punk-ass Hollywood hipster friends, and I'm going to be tagging along with just about the coolest crew in the world to see Mr. Johnso kick all kinds of butt at the Sundance Film Festival with a competently made little film called Brick that has a brilliant soundtrack. Maybe you've heard of it? That should be fun. And, I bet it's WINTER in Utah, which will give me a perfect opportunity to rock the fabulous cashmere lined black leather murdering gloves my monkey gave me for Christmas! Yesh!

In the meantime, I have an interview at a local language school tomorrow, where I may get an opportunity to ply my craft as a teacher of English, so let's all pray that my car makes it through another day, and wish me luck, because lately I can't get arrested, and I'm really feeling sorry for myself about it.

And the theme of this post is: Meh!

It's Like Having A Real Bad Hangover

Obviously, my last night in Prague was, as my Irish hippy classmate would say, a cracker. After dancing all night with my darling friends, I got back to their flat (and my luggage) in time for a 15 minute nap and a mad dash to the airport. My flight was boarding when I checked in, so not a moment too soon... or, definitely a moment too soon, depending on how you want to look at it; I can see good arguments on either side. The inevitable headache mounted through all 11+ hours of my flight from Zurich to Los Angeles, and by the time I got home, I can't say I had really slept for about two days, unless you include that precious 15 minutes, and a few brief interludes of fitful neck-wrenching on the plane. Sure, I felt a bit rough, but I'd never have traded a minute of my fun for a more pleasant flight, so I bucked-up and didn't feel sorry for myself, mostly because I was saving my energy to REALLY feel sorry for myself when the reality of being back in Los "Salt Mines" Angeles really came home to roost.

Waking up in Hollywood was a bit sad, as predicted. I love my peeps, and it's especially nice to be back in the company of my little monkey, whom I love to absolute pieces. My filthy little beast of a dog is awesome, and the Bourgeois Pig is still right where I left it, with almost everyone assembled just as I left them: on their barstools, plotting the revolution. There's comfort in it all, but I must say that I'm not really sure that comfort is what I'm after at this point. Looking up and down Franklin Avenue the other morning, I felt a sudden attack of that little prickling threat of tears behind my eyes and had to shake it off a bit.

While I was in Prague, I really saw, for the first time, how truly I'd been living as a progressively disengaged automaton, here in Los Angeles. It's going to sound pathetic to y'all, I'm sure, but over the past few years, I think I've just been sort of staggering lower and lower under the weight of all the logistics of my daily grind and it's attendant (my fucking car) horrors. While I was away, I realized that, contrary to what my never-good-enough, boot-strapping ethos keeps telling me, there's no real reason why I SHOULD be happy under the present circumstances, and, that being the case, why should I continue to endure them?

So, to sum it up, Hollywood has a lot in common with the headache I had on the plane, and Prague is calling, baby. I've got some hope for the future, but the now is kind of a bummer. Those of you who were sick of my Prague-enduced euphoria can settle down for some Los Angeles belly-aching, because I am pretty darned certain that I will be bringing some of that noise in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile At The Dentist: One Down

As my readers may be aware, I hate the dentist. Up until today, I had never had anything more serious than a filling at the hands of a dental professional, but today, all that changed, because I had one of my wisdom teeth PULLED OUT WITH PLIERS!

To properly tell you about this, I need to go back to last week, though, to the time when I had a dental appointment scheduled, but seriously, I chickened out. I got up in the morning, remembered that I had to drive myself to my dentist's office, and then let him pull out one of my teeth, and then I just said, "Yeah. Not so much," and cancelled that appointment. I should also note, for the sake of full disclosure, that I lied to get out of it: I told them I had car trouble, but... not so much. This hits again on the theme of LYING and GUILT that goes hand in hand with DENTISTRY.

Unfortunately, the removal of that grody, cavitied-up, broken, nasty-ass wisdom tooth was essential, and moreover, I have been repeatedly warned of the dangers of letting potential dental emergencies fester, only to have them flare up in, say, PRAGUE, or some shit; and then having to face the mysterious frontier of Czech Dentistry... Which, I'm sure is fine, but just for the hell of it, maybe I should make every effort to avert the possibility of having to communicate any dental concerns in what I'm told is a uniquely impenetrable language, and probably won't be improved by the potential agony of a dental emergency and my deep-seated terror of any proceedure that involves pointy metal instruments in my mouth. My friends, I realized two things: first, that the tooth had to go, and soon, and secondly, that there was NO WAY that I was going to be able to drive myself to the dentist, park my car, walk into the building and say, "Hello. Please PULL OUT MY TOOTH WITH PLIERS, would you?" I was going to need some moral support. Lucky for me, I have Steve. Steve wonderful Steve, the best friend a girl could ever have, who agreed to take me to the dentist as if I were a FIVE YEAR OLD. Because, that's the kind of help I needed, people.

So, yeah. This morning, I had no choice, with Steve at the wheel, follow-through on my dental mission was inevitable, and my stomach was churning. After the nurse-lady talked me into the chair, and I made sure she knew the details of my fragile mental state, the dentist came in and shot me full of local anaesthetic, and then told me that he would be back when I was all numbed up. I sat there for ten minutes panicking about how I could still feel my gums on the inside, with my tongue, and was pretty sure that I was going to die of agony. Then he came back:

Dentist: Are you ok?
Me, totally hysterical: Um, yeah, but I can still totally feel my gums on the inside, and I think I can still feel my tooth! Meh!
Dentist, with some exasperation: That's because I haven't numbed the inside yet.
Me, not buying it: Oh.

This is turning into a long story about my tooth extraction, but it was really like lightening. About 2 minutes later, after a somewhat harrowing deep shot into my tooth's roots, and then a shocking procedure in which the dentist leaned over me with a variety of sharp pointy objects and then THE DREADED PLIERS. He applied a good deal of elbow grease, produced a lot of gross sounds, and then plinked my sick, bloody, disgusting tooth onto the instrument tray. I tried to pick it up, but reacted to it the same way I would when trying to pick up a gross insect, dropped it, and barely restrained a girly shriek.

It didn't hurt a bit, but don't think that'll help next time.