All good things...

I’ve been in Prague since July.

Jay and I left Texas on July Forth of last year, actually. Since then I have gone from working as an Architect to retraining for an intensive month to be an English teacher. Meet some interesting and great people. Lost those people. Met a pot-head from Denmark in Prague to escape his pot-loving friends. Traveled to Slovenia. Taught English. Gotten to know some quite amazing people from all around the world and actually become friends with them. Spent Christmas with a Frenchman, an Aussie and another American, drinking wine all night until we ran out of every bottle in the house, then moved on to a pub that closed on us and ended out the night dancing at a lesbian bar. Traveled with some of these amazing new friends. Had brunch, religiously, every Sunday at Fraktal (the only place in Prague to serve a Mexican influenced American style breakfast). Grown to appreciate Czech beer. Seen a concert in an old nuclear fall-out shelter several floors below ground. Traveled to Nuremburg and Dresden in Germany. Had a love/hate affair with Slivovice. Swept up enough red carpet fuzz from my living room floor to recover a thrown. Watched countless hours of American TV shows sent by mail from the States. Eaten as much queso as anyone would that still lived in Texas – also mailed direct from the States. DJed at a dance club. Helped begin writing a screen play. And now…

Half of that may not make sense to anyone else, but I guess that is okay. That is why this is a blog and not some best-selling novel. I am sure I will write about it all in length some day soon. I just haven’t had the time to honestly keep up with it all since I have been here.

But things are about to change. I know.

Over the last month I have grown less and less happy and more and more constantly stressed out with teaching. I reached the point this last week where I knew something would either have to change or break. I have looked into other jobs here in Prague, but none of them really work if you want to actually live and eat in this city. At the same time my dad needs help back home from me.

Angela, an amazing Australian lady whom I will write about some day, went to Dresden this weekend. Within two hours of getting off the train we had both thoroughly discussed our individual situations and decided to leave Prague. It’s crazy, I know.

I have loved this city and will continue to love this city. If you have ever been here then I don’t need to explain that to you. If you have not, I will write about it more in the future – I promise.

But, to get back to my point, I am leaving Prague. I am going back home for a while. All the cards fall into place too easily and perfectly right now. I will return to Wichita Falls and help my dad with his business for a while. Then – then I must figure out what I want to do next. Continue on the road of figuring out what I want to do with my life.

I am sure I will expand on this later, but I just wanted to let everyone know. Those of you in Texas, I will be trying to see all of you very soon!

Waking or Dreaming...

I read somewhere, one time, that our sleep cycles last around ninety minutes. Which means that every hour and a half you are asleep your mind and body pass through a cycle where you sleep deeper and deeper, then you dream, then you go back to normal sleep again, rinse and repeat. This means that in an average eight hour night you experience five sleep cycles.

This is assuming you can sleep for more than ninety minutes at a time.

I have also read - maybe at a different time, from a different source - that our time in REM sleep, that is dreaming, starts out at the beginning of the night lasting only a few minutes, but by the end of the night this time can increase to between ten and fifteen minutes.

This fascinated me. I did the math. That means that in an average night the average person dreams for an average of forty-five minutes. After this I wondered if maybe we live more in our dreams than we do when we are awake, because when we dream it is just like being awake to our minds. I read that somewhere, too, that our minds act the same while dreaming as they do while we are awake. So being awake and dreaming are the same to our minds.

I remember always being told that dreams move faster than real life. I don’t know that for sure, I just remember being told that since I was a kid – and it makes sense because a lot happens in dreams, you know that. Even if it is true I don’t know how much faster dreams move than real life – and I can’t find any information from my research.

Just doing the math, though, if we sleep for an average of one-third of our life, which I am told is pretty average, then for every forty-five minutes we dream we are awake for sixteen hours. Do the math again, that means if we dream 21.333 three-forever times faster than real life, then we live as much in dreams as we do when we are awake.

This makes dreaming rather important. You know, if it is true.

I could hear water running...

Last night I couldn't sleep. I laid in bed for hours. I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the wall. I got up for a drink of water. I went back to stare at the other wall. This is how sleep has been for me lately. It has involved anything but rest.

Even when I do happen into an REM cycle lately, my dreams are filled with the frustrations that refuse to be played out in my daily life. The frustrations that are bottled up inside of me with no possibility of release. I wake up more exahusted and less capable of facing the world every day.

While I was staring at the second wall I decided to rid myself of some of these frustrations. I breathed in deep. I held my breathe. I gathered all of my fears together that I could quickly catch. I put them, as a poison -- a deep red powder, as appeared in my mind -- on my tongue and exhaled, blowing them into the air, away from me. I felt a slight relief, if only momentary. I gathered more fears and some frustrations. I set the red poison on my tongue again and let it all out. My heart lightened and the thoughts bombarding my mind lessened.

I thought about the stress of teaching and how I constantly feel like I need to prove myself to my students. I ground this into a fine powder and blew it across the room. I gathered all my loneliness from the last few months and forced it to disolve into a light dust. I blew this across my pillow into the air.

I began to wonder if this poison would come back to me, if I was still breathing it in. I decided that since I created the poison with my mind I could make the rules of how it acted. I decided that it might still be in the room, but it couldn't come back inside me. I was safe from it.

I round up the frustration and resentment from my last talk with my parents and the fight we didn't have. I placed this in my mouth and chewed until the powder was light enough to blow out.

None of this was really helping anymore. My heart was still pounding and my insecurities still haunted me when I closed my eyes. I gave up on blowing everything out of me. I lay in bed still sleepless. I stared at the ceiling.

Instead of staring at that first wall again I came up with a new plan. I decided to try and meditate. It didn't really matter to me that I didn't care what this really meant in my sleepless yet mindless state. I lay there and I tried to clear my mind of all thoughts. But it did not work. The thoughts kept flowing over the damn I built higher and higher.

I decided laying down was a bad way to meditate. I sat up. I closed my eyes. I tried to clear my mind. I found myself thinking to myself, 'clear your mind.' This thought was just as intrusive and destructive to the silence I was seeking as any other thought. I tried not to even think it, but I just thought about not thinking about it. I tried to listen to sounds around the room to clear my mind of my own thoughts.

I could hear water running in the bathroom wall. I played the sound in my head, 'wshh wshh wshh.' I tried to listen harder, to quiet my mind. I heard the slight rustle of the breeze outside my window. I thought, 'whhhh, whhhh, whhhhhhhhhh.' I shook my head to break these thoughts free. I couldn't even listen to silence without my mind interpreting the sounds for me.

Holy Batman brains...!

I just bought Dr Pepper at the potraviny down the street!