FIRST WEEK, OCTOBER 2000
 

Monday morning at 9, students back at school after a week freed for the anti IMF and World Bank demonstrations. Some left to go the countryside, some stayed to watch foreigners throw stones at police. All the most dangerous on both sides wore black.

I have three girls to teach today- from 8 years to 13, Czech and Serbian. This week, I intend with vague courage to take no alcohol until Friday night as a test to see how normal it has become for me to be drunk. I already know this answer.

I have been stoned on booze for the best part of four years. Thought I had cracked it last summer, when the inner voice guided me to a new wood and said, 'You don't need to drink tonight'. This calm truth won for a while and I started filling my time with excursions and exercises. (Trying to rewire my brain-anything I love becomes an addiction) Of course the river of alcohol slowly flowed back. The tide returned, now I must either part it or walk across.

Bus to my ex's house to do my washing, no longer strange to see my collages and gifts in rooms where I no longer live. This took two years. The girl I miss but not my reactions to her. I never sit down here, due to my black work clothes and Mia's fur. Mia always likes to spend five minutes being carried on my shoulder. After the first lesson, I am invited to a 'country house' to test a homemade bed in two weekends’ time.

On the bus to the next lesson, one beautiful late teen and another facing out of the window weeping, arouse all that is male, desires of lust and protection combined.

It is more likely I would go to the latter girl out of concern, than make an approach to the first. Who would misinterpret me more?

Both Serbian girls are tired from a 12 hour sleepless bus journey from Belgrade, but are fine

for the lesson. The elder wants to stay in London and France, the younger thinks she is an alien and makes fantastic pretend thinking faces when I ask her the names of things.

I am invited to dinner afterwards by their artist father and pianist mother. They are so generous with hospitality of spirit that I feel both welcomed and guilty-they are only just living comfortably. I break my pledge by accepting two glasses of Serbian brandy and punish myself by breaking a D string on the husband's Spanish guitar.

At home, three letters waiting, Dad, Aunt and a friendly woman, who tells me I am getting confused, due to alcohol. This comes from one who was an alcoholic and has thrice been

in a mental hospital. I agree, but my old teenage way of refusing any advice immediately makes me want to ignore this. In defence I will reply later that my memory is immaculate in detail, but only in the long term.

Broken sleep and the second grey morning. (Although yesterday sunlight blossomed eventually) Opposite the kitchen windows, the annual fun fair has returned to the monastery grounds. This always seems incongruous but I look forward to the fireworks.

Four lessons today. Witnessing the way one family is run, always brings shivers. Mother from hell, denies the elder son his freedom and spoils the sister with a mobile phone for her 12th birthday. Too hard for me to be diplomatic, he is becoming his father and she, her mother. He will love and hate women in equal measure but only respect through fear at their power, which he will also partly despise. She, (The sister whom I also teach) will grow to expect men to provide her wishes, merely because she wishes it. It is all deeper than this.

It takes years to understand all parents can only do what they know for their children.

Mistakes are made, very few have a good balance. No guidebook is ever a substitute for experience in the field. Trouble is, that ego resents and remembers....

I always enjoy most of the lessons with all students, why work doing what you don't like-if you have the choice? Freedom of choice is a perception, like everything else, so get the work you want. Very simplified and childish for my age but it keeps me young.

One boy is peaceful and polite and the other is not, but both are good at being real boys, fascinating watching the long term students change. Some I would be happy to have as offspring especially, but all are deeply liked. Sometimes the combinations don't work, that's all. Two girls, one Bulgarian, the other Czech and 18. The older the student, the less paperwork they get. I am the same with them as I am with all, perhaps a little more professional, but I don't hold back on my various mad ideas, just explain them in different ways. The first girl is getting used to my insanities, so I use them sparingly when she starts to lose energy. The Czech can fly gliders but doesn't want to again and feels awkward speaking in front of the class in English. She can FLY! If I could do this, I would look them in the eye, laugh, and speak in any way I chose.

I like her face and mind. She is the friend of a girl I fell for and almost bruised myself.

I love that expression, as if love/sexual/spiritual interest is an accident. It was this girl who told me you didn't have to hurt yourself when you fell, you could bounce, or roll, like a parachutist. I took this, mistakenly, as a hint. The flying girl has a bedroom of multishaded blue, and is dressed in black today. The conversations are good, I can always find something to ramble on into the flow with-as you can tell from these pages, and she is happy to express herself with me, if not her classmates. Topics discussed in one and half hours; The Demonstration, Governments, Violence, Working in Supermarkets For Money To Go To America, Serious Exams, The Flute, Drugs in School and Parents/Families.

Back home in drizzle to eat the last of my food and type this down onto the screen and improve the language. Half past 10, news, Israel is turning into a promised wasteland again. Milosovic seems unwilling to commit suicide, which is a shame for 'his' people.

The killer of Lennon has been refused parole for two years. Now some interviews with those on the street in Belgrade, demonstrating students. Waiting for the bullets and beatings. Thrill of possible victory and terror suppressed.

And so the grey continues into the third day. Breakfast, only a magpie in a tall conifer to report. Some housecleaning, a shower and out into the fray, starting with Tescos. This is the first supermarket I remember from my childhood, they were small then. Tram rides almost never see me reading, I can do that at home, or longer journeys. I want to look at people, girls mainly, but it is always valuable to examine the other humans. Try and get their story in a second. Stop for a portion of pizza and apple pie and eat a bananna on the way to the main post office. A third of this street is permanently lined with money changing criminals-who fade into open doorways and seep back according to the feeble police patrols. I settle for looking them in the eye as I stride with purpose to post Dad’s 10th letter this year. Outside another metro station, the usual clique of pushers, in front of one of the many exits, whores with a greased weasel pimp. One lesson today, a new student, 25 and owner of a cafe./pub. He has a lovely baby daughter from a previous relationship and plays american football. His handshake has as much strength as the whole of my body. His English is at the same level as my Czech though-ignorance is a great leveller. Shame about the baby pee smell in his office.

I make a brief stop at the Cafe Net, to hear what the Yugoslavian owner says about the situation in Belgrade. She has the calm fear ‘that there will be a short hard war’. (Evening TV will show the police starting the violence on striking miners)

Another stop off to friends who own a graphic design office. They give me 26 computer disks to use for my Great Work, and it occurs to me at last to send these as letters instead of printing out. I cannot imagine having an E Mail address, using a computer for writing and the occasional Miro-like drawing is enough for this millenium. Back home to a tiny bit of weight lifting to Rollins Band, seems to make sense to this music. Been sleeping badly, perhaps the body is adjusting to the extra energy which booze subdued-but because I don’t eat consistently well, my health scheme fails. Sad because the bright gold and power green is going, but October is the month for magic.

I am writing this as a discipline, I promised myself to keep writing all week, in the hope something good would appear. This isn’t as amusing or even poetic as my letters-it isn’t making me laugh and I am too aware of wanting to live up to the lost ‘Five Days at School and Home’. This was prose from 81, written at the age of 15 in December (I think) during exams and snow, great descriptions of everything. Simple and mystical without trying. That writing is one of the very few lost pieces that I will always regret not being able to read. If I can make writing an addiction instead of anything debilitating, I will hit gold. (One thousand writers howl with desperate laughter at the nonsense in that sentence)

Doing this on computer allows me the chance to re -read and annihilate, but I refuse to wipe that from the record-it is the first time I have laughed with myself during this. To return to the discipline of work, I will listen to the 10 ‘o’ clock news from the BBC. Different reports, sides, perspectives and opinions, then time for suspended animation for the night.

Lesson with the teacher psychologist insurance fashionable woman this morning. Always an interesting one, debate and humour. She has promised to buy a copy of this book and I wonder if she will cancel all lessons after she has read it. (Hello, Mrs Marková) The fun fair starts blasting its noise, boy nextdoor still not going to work and irritating me more and more with his alleged song writing. Saw a tiny baby today and could not look for longer than five seconds without my eyes getting wet. Like most people I have heard the worst stories possible in connection with babies, and like most people (with any feminine side) I want one. Hard to make one alone. At some point today, gold came through the fog, smog and heavy mist over Prague for about an hour, then was overtaken by night. Clear enough for a perfect half moon, then even that was covered. I want a drink. I am certain to booze during the weekend-perhaps that is how I have survived so far, because I know I have some on the horizon. I was wrong about the perfect crescent, the moon is more than that now, as she reappears and vanishes again. How long have I been sitting here? Perhaps six hours on the comp today, waiting for the headache. I am drinking tapwater which is making my mouth drier and now listening to a Chopin concerto, here comes the news...Half a million take to the streets and Milosovic’s end must be near. I don’t want to be here, I want to be at the Cafe Net with the Serbs, in the middle of the best party imaginable. How can I sleep or go to work tomorrow? Love of routine?

October and I chose the wrong time to start doing anything. Another dark grey gloom, but this time it has the added bonus of raining all day. I call Nenad Vitas the artist, to congratulate him on the fall of the president. His voice is thick with hangover. The Slavs had a party in front of the embassy (no one from inside would talk to them) I decide to celebrate tonight by not drinking any alcohol. All courageous in our own ways, eh?

The fun fair disco thump starts at midday on the dot, I leave the house soon after. Four lessons, the first with the computer genius who is worried about his future call up in Bulgaria. I have been teaching him and his sister for five years and have loved watching them change. I remember his voice breaking during lessons, and starting with her by teaching colours, animals, various nouns and verbs. She is also a genius and has not grown up into an arrogant princess, in fact it has taken her five years to seem to grow at all. Her English became so good, so fast, that I thought it was due to me. The Teacher lives and learns... I should mention her Scottish accent and hiccups too.

I have been using all those free disks to print a call to self freedom and leaving them on trams, buses, trains, shops and streets. This is in memory of the mad poet in 81.

The other lesson today is with Stefan, as mentioned on Tuesday. He is one of the few who will start a conversation and continue it, asking questions.

I am fond of him and hope he avoids following the patterns he sees at home. I hope all my students do, for the sake of evolution. I try to give all of them the Strange points of view, everything that they are unlikely to get from parents, media and friends. I have just realised that there is just one only child among them. Her parents are in different countries and are also divorced, I dreamed about her last night. She is 16, so the dream might count as a type of perversion, depending on which side the psychological grass is more analysed.

On the bus home, the same bespectacled girl in black, pretty with a bob and her friends as in previous weeks. We are looking at each other more and more. Opening lines are limited when not fluent in the language of the country of the flirtee. (Or that of your own) I will smile more deeply next time.

Back home, dinner, finish letter to mum, write out today, back to the Great Work, old and new, corrections and commentaries/afterwords/explanations etc. Honing the jewels springs to mind as a description and then flops out again as too dubious. The telephone rings, I half expect/hope Lucie, but it is Stepanka from Charles Bridge, the seller of her father’s slate and silver jewellery. I am invited to a concert in a jazz club (which won’t be jazz) next Wednesday. There will also be a party at the Serbian cafe on that night, typical -no dates and when there are, they always fall on the same day. I liked her friend in June on the bridge, a hairy armpited chainsmoking dangerously 17 year old true Bohemian. What will win, vague lust, or the desire to be among a throng of happy liberated people? Take a wild guess on a form of compromise....

The weather gets even worse at the weekend, constant rain and the funfair blasts, 9am on the dot. Off to the main post office to send mum’s tenth real letter of the year, then shopping for music and food. There are already fake Christmas trees on sale in Tescos... Next, off to the cafe to congratulate Radmilla -no Serbians are there, quite probably still somewhere with a bastard hangover, but happy the revolution was almost bloodless.

Back home to check the disc Lucie left late Friday night, she dreamed about me again and once more I spoke Czech. (Reminds me of the Cohen poem from Death of a Lady’s Man where his wife says she dreamed he made love to her, and he thinks to himself ‘At last the spirit has taken up some of the heavy work’) Lucie was baking chocolate gingerbread while writing but offers me none. She invites me to a Celtic guitar concert on Friday 13th, which is also a full moon. For these reasons, I have to go of course. She is working in a tea house with Cohen and Dead Can Dance, the owner is a soon to be divorced ‘nice looking’ 33 year old mother with two small children. Hmmm, will have to put in an appearance there next week while Lucie is not working, says the hopeless schemer.

Lucie is reading Jung and Freud and is still in Tolkien fantasy -land (her words) ‘I am watching myself very carefully if the amount of things destroys me or not or if after some time I just fall down or not. I’m curious, now surrounded by knowledge, learning in the school meaning’ She asks rhetorically, ‘Am I not a materialist?’ Well no my love, not really.

Back once more again to the great work, it keeps me off the streets when I am not on them. I have some wine to celebrate the fall of a dictator and my five days of abstinence. Feels good to drink, felt okay not to drink too. (Despite having six bottles of whisky, four of wine, 21 beers and assorted Czech spirits in the 33 day period just before. Lucie also sent a list of what lectures are happening at the tea room-mainly Buddhist etc, and an Autumnal red leaf (possibly sustained with hand cream). I should know what tree this comes from, but it is well chosen, almost a teardrop of fire with a stem.

It is half past nine at night, headphones on, Doremi Fasol Latido, hope I never grow out of this. This music represents my messed up magical teenagehood. Remembering all the stuff I used to write in my Park High rough book while drunk in lessons. ‘Swimming isn’t the word for what my head is doing now’. Shame I didn’t keep them long enough to recall everything, it will be somewhere in the brain because nothing is lost-but do I care to go through the files that deeply for old ramble? Quite possibly yes, but not tonight.

Keep looking at the leaf and fetch the candle to mix with it and so balance the computer . Turn the light off too, ancient and modern, love it. I can’t see, I can’t see, flying is trying is dying. This song inspired a long period of strangeness which mingled with all the previous and future ones-made me what I am today in other words/worlds.

Enough for today, back to the work.

I return on Monday evening, broke my promise to write every day. Yesterday I spent nine hours straight, finishing the Chantral and Songs (mistakes and comments) and by midnight could not go on. So, Sunday, more fantastic fireworks-I took photos which is as stupid as my picture of the low full moon. Any coloured light, if seen at all will be tiny. I drank two bottles of cheap white wine and noticed the beauty of the turning leaves-although they herald the season I dislike.

To bring the week full circle, repeat as the previous Monday and add the happiness of seeing a Yugoslavian family knowing they can return home and stay there at last. Today is Joanna’s birthday-on Yom Kippur too, she must be pleased. At the moment the violence in Israel continues to rage with hatred by those who would die to support their perception of truth. It is also Tsvetomir’s 18th today - I have just called him, he had been for a Chinese with his family.

Long pause whilst I read this all through for censorship purposes...

Mainly spelling mistakes. The odd sentence is passable, but of course this does not qualify as good writing, kept me in the flow for a while though-notice your life!

Wondering what to put as the ‘message’ in the Halloween box this year, what have I learned?

I have three letters to do and a massive arrangement of my stuff, three dates with various people and fourteen lessons this week. There is also an ocean of booze not to be drunk too.

The weather will probably cheer up from now on, still it was more than enough to be doing this during the Yugoslavian revolution. ( In terms of historic significance - although it is certain that Kosovo will remain a terrible problem )

I don’t know how to majestically end this writing, so I won’t