WanderLost

Arriving in Prague was a whirlwind much like the taxi drive, long and lots of time to think yet it was all over so jumblequick, with only a few soft moments to myself to think and to admire the foreign consonant tangle of billboard words above old and cracked buildings announcing that I’m here in Eastern Europe and can’t escape and mostly don’t want to but am gaping like a tourist fish, the kind that migrates to places it’s never been before, drawn on by some strange urge having to do with winds or tides, wild crazy quickcolor dreams from childhood, or possibly the magnetic poles. Hip hop tip top up the stairs with my suitcase lumbering then back down and rush through the entire TEFL class course in one giant blur of bright lights and grammatical phrases, my new mantras that I chant to myself before going to sleep and dream of like giant white lilies of peace and wholeness, blending together harmoniously in streams of golden light. Migrate to the city next, downtown heart of the city, through the screaming metro tunnels of exposed cement, wires and artificial lights, crowds pressed in tight trying not to see each other while peering from the edges of their eyes. Snag a job and now I’m teaching, running up and down tram metro tram bus and heading into buildings with unfriendly secretaries who squint at my foreign words and call clients to come down for English lessons all the while eyeing me like I’m a genie who, misunderstood, might vaporize back into whatever exotic burnished lamp I crawled from — or sometimes they’re friendly the younger ones usually and they’ll talk and talk and tell me all about their boyfriends and school exams and cars and lives and hopes and dreams, they’ll bring me tea and show me pictures and always wave goodbye. Student faces in rows before me, whiteboard behind, and the panic the they’re-all-looking-at-me panic and realizing that they’re waiting now it’s quiet and everyone is waiting for someone to talk and realizing that it’s me. The power there is in ordering the classroom and the silly book lessons the absurd conversations and stilted topics to discuss over and over again, first in room 102 and then 109 210 415 etc. etc. row following row of students staring, wondering why I can’t get their hobscrabble consonant somewhat familiar yet entirely foreign names right, whispering to each other in their slick brumble tongue like I can’t hear it or don’t see it or won’t recognize the lickle trickle of syllables that surrounds me daily in the streets and separates me from the thought of the crowd like twisting strands of barbed wire. Close the books and run along home, dispersing into the night like shards of shattered glass, hop the tram and zombie-stare through dark windows until the fourth stop, run across the road play chicken with the traffic and make it (each time a triumph) to the fateful curb and over I go into the apartment, rattling red elevator pulling me up the levels one by painful slowly one until clang I’m here rattle keys and in through the door I go and the day is over, or at least it’s mine now, and that’s a comfort but is it really? Simmering stove pasta in its little bowl, same as every night, meanwhile waitreading Walden or Kerouac, admiring former’s simplistic lifestyle and latter’s hypnotic globetrotting, dreaming up halfway decent partway interesting tidbits about my own day and maybe writing them down or forgetting them in the softening of the pasta on the simmering stove strained from the pot with the spoon handle holding the noodles back as the boiled water rushes down the drain, then mix in some sauce and sit down at table book still held in one hand, immersing in soft saucy noodles and sweetdelicious words altogether combined with the spires-and-stone of Prague that makes this life bearable and in small bursts exquisitely wonderful.