Four Spots

After a week or more of freezing weather in Prague the temperature has swung back above zero. I was beginning to get used to the everpresent cold, getting the feeling I always get when something lasts for days rather than hours, that this was going to go on forever. At least there will be less infection-spreading insects in the summer, I consoled myself, trying not to worry about all the other things that got frostbitten as well. 

Yesterday the thought occured to me of setting up a post office rather than a blog (or notice board rather than a post office), where my life might run parallel to the lives of friends, or should I say colleagues, living abroad. The project's ambition - if it has one (and if it can be called a project - I will use neither of these words here anymore) - is to act as a place where letters are left and picked up (so I was right with the "post office"), letters that are private to us, who know each other, and public to anyone else who might for any reason be interested - outside audience, while welcome, is not, however, a prerequisite for its existence. I do this without having consulted the friends in question, i.e. Maja, Helga and Pasi (I hope I am not to be accused of any bias towards two-syllable names), in advance, which makes our post office an experimental one. I am prepared to close it down if I fail to persuade you, dear contributors, that leaving your letters here is a waste of time. Let us get writing, then.

Besides the easing of temperatures, we even got some winter sun today, which also marked the end of the girls' week of fever. Since M. has finished her work and I could not go clowning in hospitals not feeling well myself, we spent almost the entire week at home, fighting the children's temperature, listening with fear and interest to their fever-induced comments, making ourselves much nicer meals than we are used to, and watching DVDs at night, with pauses to put a cold wet blanket around little J. when her fever ran too high. Even now the girls are still very cranky and J. just fell asleep on the ground in the middle of a game, after a fit of anger aimed at her older sister. In this (I wonder if relaxed is the right word) state of mind I took every phonecall as an unwelcome intrusion. Luckily I only had a few, one from L.V., who offered me to go to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) tomorrow to perform as "crazy waiters" at a confectioners' convention. Sweet. I took some time to think it over and when I called him back I said I would like to try, as I needed some encouragement in this field of work. He sounded happy but did not understand what I meant by encouragement. I said I was not satisfied with our last jobs. He became even more concerned. I specified I was not happy only about myself, but that I still wanted to give it a try (I thoughtI sounded enthusiastic, because I really was). But he was not convinced. "You mean you did not like the mind reading stuff we did last time?" I said again I merely disliked myself. He said: "I don't like the money they are offering, it's black mail (in fairness, he did mention this before). I'll think about it." We were back at the beginning and I took it as a no, I changed my mind, we are not going. Did I loose his trust, I wondered. Is this a solution to my dilemma of doing things primarily for money? Boring. Banal. But the phone rang a second time. It was J.Z., musician and poet, for whom I do small translations. He asked me for a quick translation and also whether I will come to the launch of his new CD. I excused myself on the grounds of time ("we were all sick, you now") and still feel ashamed about it. How would "I am not really interested in your music" sound? 

I plan to see Murnau's Nosferatu tonight, in a cinema, just as I planned to see another film yesterday. However, leaving house these days feels almost like breaking a vow. Or am I making up excuses even for myself? But I have to go anyway, as I am required to make a boat out of a watermelon (F.'s wish), which will probably keep me busy until early morning. Now I remember that a similar thing kept me from going anywhere yesterday - I was trying to fix the inner tube of a scooter wheel. I discovered where the hole was, fixed it, broke a bicycle pump, fixed it, put the tube laboriously back in the wheel, discovered that in the process of fixing one hole I created three more and ran out of patches.

Reading this article over, I can see it is not a letter at all, as it is full of "I". How about "you" then? Will this be a quadrimaculate blog after all?