Before You

Before You

Before You A twenty-something’s quest for her true self

by Amy Smith

Dear Reader: This story was written during my twentysomethings while living in Prague, Czech Republic. While I spent one year experiencing the city, the culture and the people, I do not consider myself an expert Czech tour guide, historian or sociologist. And though I met many unique beings along the way, this is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

I hope you enjoy. If you turn over the last page and like what you’ve read, please pass the story forward.

Copyright Š 2012 by Amy Smith

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this piece, write to amysmith.beforeyou@yahoo.com

For my Mom, who has engrained in me a fierce sense of self-reliance and survival;

For my Dad, who has pushed me to be resourceful and imaginative in situations both big and small;

For my sister, who has taught me to be courageous, for without her embarking upon her own adventure, I would’ve never thought it possible to embrace mine.

Table of Contents I Was Certain I Was Brave I Was Independent I Was Strong I Was Understanding I Was Patient I Was Accepting I Was Content I Was Confident I Was Bold I Was Peaceful I Was Daring I Was Worthy I Was Passionate I Was Deserving I Was Found

Before You

I Was Certain Moments ago, I felt the words spill out of my mouth only to be replaced by a gulp of regret. He didn’t deserve to be told like this: so directly, so permanently, so nonchalantly.

“Alright, I’m leaving too,” he says. “And I may be back a bit later than usual. Promised Christoph I’d take a look at his console. It’s been out of commission for days and I’m afraid he may go postal if he doesn’t get a working controller in his hands again soon. To be honest, I’m tired of him texting me at two in the morning, belligerent and clearly suffering from withdrawals.”

I’m in no mood for yet another round-robin argument over Christoph’s mind-numbing habits and Jay’s aiding his addiction. Their virtual gaming world will never cease to be my bone to pick, my wound to open and leave festering, my chance to bitch and rage about hours spent wasting time and human potential. Don’t they understand that war and killing and terrorist attacks are more than games played on a flat-screen television? I fight the bile that rises in my throat every time I hear them speak in secretive, faux-military code amidst bursts of profanity when a teammate mistakenly throws a grenade that kills their own soldier. Restart for a new life. It just doesn’t happen 8

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that way. Sometimes I wonder how they’d actually fare on a more unforgiving battlefield.

Jay used to have the power to make me smile no matter how upset I’d get, when the wheels in my head were turning at devastating speeds. I doubt he knows that he was able to slow them down a bit. And whenever I’d feel my legs beneath me grow weak with worry or fear or insecurity or sadness, Jay just had to hold out his arms. Rather than letting me fall to the ground, he’d carry my weight and I’d find comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone; that no matter how many times I felt lower than low, Jay would be there to help me up.

Maybe I should take what I’ve just said back. Maybe instead of leaving him, having him hold me for a bit will help me feel alright again.

I catch a glimpse of weakness floating to the surface from deep within and quickly suppress it, bury it with a weight, remind myself that now is not the time to give in to a past which is no longer our present.

There are no words on my tongue left to speak, so I say nothing. I seem to be doing more of that these days: keeping silent. I’ve somehow lost the will to fight. And it’s not just with the video games. It’s with work, my boss, the man on his phone speaking obnoxiously loud behind me, the patron-hating woman across the check-out counter, the stoplight that incessantly refuses to turn green when I need it to. Everything and anything that would have set me off on a verbal rampage only weeks prior, allowing a release of 9

Before You

misplaced frustration, now pushes me into a quiet state of oblivion.

I’ve stopped challenging the forces around me. I’ve surrendered instead, allowing them to lead me any which way. And yet, they’ve taken me nowhere. My biggest fear has come true; I’m living a life of numbing mediocrity.

Jay comes close and holds my face in his hands. I desperately fight not to crave his sweet taste, the soft kiss of his lips, and the safety of his grasp, everything that melts and hardens me simultaneously. I look away, knowing he might see straight into an emptiness he won’t understand, an emptiness I can’t even begin to explain.

“You don’t want to kiss me. You’re mad? Layla, it’s just a game! And I won’t even play. I’ll just fix it and be done; I promise.”

I feel his hands drop away from my cheeks, the last bit of life I have left falling with them. Jay turns and walks out as I stand staring blankly after, stone-cold, numb.

I imagine that this is how my mother felt the day my father packed his bags for the last time. It had happened so often that the only way to keep from hurting was to stop feeling anything at all. I suppose I inherited each of their worst traits; I was the one leaving as well as the one shutting down.

As soon as the door closes, I feel the walls around me crumble. Without my permission and against my will, the tears come. Slowly, but they come. Water droplets take their turn cascading down my cheeks only to disappear into 10

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the corners of my mouth, the saltiness sweeping over each taste bud. They fill the cavity beneath my tongue and force me to swallow, the lump in my throat following soon after.

I let him go. Without one last kiss.

Maybe I should stay, talk to Jay when he gets back about these messy thoughts manifesting themselves in my mind. Despite feeling like he’d been caught by an oncoming train, one in which I was the conductor, I’m quite certain he’d want to work everything out, right me on this very wrong track.

In an instant, weeks of thoughtful, precise, supersecret planning leave me feeling like a jackass. Just like my own father running away from his unborn, from a fear that something so precious might be tainted by inexperience, selfishness and self-uncertainty, I am avoiding the core root of the problem; not our relationship, but me.

Conflicting emotions continue to cloud my thoughts as they often do, yet I force the tears to wash them away. I made a rational decision weeks ago to finally take control of a life I knew was spinning out of control, if only in the confines of my own brain, and I’m not about to let the irrational side of me win once again. Maybe I’m not avoiding the problem; I’m simply going somewhere else to solve it, alone.

With what little hope I have left, that I can be fixed, cured from whatever is wrong with me, I convince myself that there’s no going back now.

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Before You

Through blurred vision, I see the time. If I don’t go soon, I’ll miss my flight. And if I miss my flight, I’ll most certainly never leave. I need to clear my head without all of these reminders of him and of the way I use him for a temporary fix, like a Band-Aid on a gash that will never heal without stitches: the couch where we first kissed, the framed tickets from our first concert together, photos upon photos of us, of him and me, of tools I use to try convincing myself that I’m content with where and who I am.

After realizing I’ve picked up a picture frame, I place it back down on the mantel. I don’t want to forget him, but I don’t want to be so blindingly reminded of him either.

Instead, I grab one of Jay’s t-shirts, shove it into my carry-on and call a cab.

I had packed everything into two suitcases a few days ago, folding and placing everything just right in the many compartments to see what would fit where and how, only to move it all back to my dresser in precisely the same arrangement. Shirts, pants, jackets and panties were placed in drawers as if they could be zippered, picked up by their wrought iron handles and dragged along on imaginary wheels once it was time to go. All I had to do was wait for the right moment to tell Jay I would be leaving for a while.

He would ask why and I wouldn’t know what to say. He would ask where and I wouldn’t know how to tell him I needed to go so far away. I had few answers for myself. No reasons, no explanations, just a feeling of discomfort and misplacement accompanied by an inexplicable tug 12

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at my soul, warning me that if I wanted to fix this, all of this, the change had to be drastic, the distance dramatic.

I hear the cab pull up. I need to go; it’s time.

In a dream, I watch a flower bloom.

A bulb of strikingly bold color stands closed to the world. As the sun warms its velvet skin and replenishing water works its way up through roots, stems, leaves, and veins, the petals outstretch ever so slightly. The tips of each, once held tightly together, begin to delicately separate as if moving too quickly might cause a tear; reaching out slowly, unnoticeably at first. In nature, in real life, such a process takes time, but subconsciously, days are reduced to seconds and in an instant, the moment arrives; the flower bursts open. Petals pull away completely from their fetal position and throw themselves into a back bend, ends curling under in final release, revealing secrets that had been locked away, patiently waiting for their time to be told.

Subtle occasions like these must manifest themselves often without a single soul bearing witness. Yet if we look closely enough, remain open and unassuming enough, such seemingly small, everyday moments might become visible to us, never again being seen as anything less than a miracle.

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My flight’s been delayed, giving me time to contemplate whether or not I’m making the biggest mistake of my life. I formulate reasons why leaving everything I’ve ever known is a terrible idea, why I should turn around now, go home, put all my things back where they belong and ride out what these industry Baby Boomers who don’t know shit about what it’s like to grow up in today’s world are calling a quarter-life crisis with the best of them.

That’s all this internal discomfort has to be anyway: a phase I’ll grow out of once I drop the idealism of my own generation and accept the fact that the world will always be the way it is now, that there’s little I can do to change it.

Understand that work is work, just something we must do in order to survive whether we’re passionate about our chosen career path or not. Come to terms with the fact that the perfect job doesn’t exist, because finding fulfillment in a given profession is a fairytale only small children believe in.

And I’m not a child any longer.

I’m a college graduate with a degree, a degree that means something.

Last spring I’d finally accepted an entry-level position with a growing public relations company after years of interning for firm after firm; making copies, serving coffee, arranging travel, setting meetings, wearing slacks that made my legs itch, button-ups so suffocating they held my shoulders back without any effort on my part and heals that made my toes bleed. That didn’t hurt so much; it just stung.

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What was painful was waking up each morning with the sole intent of making it through another day, sanity intact.

Each company I’d interned for eventually offered me a permanent position and I routinely turned them down.

Not based on salary or benefits, but on a feeling that something wasn’t right, even though I couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was that felt wrong. Walking through office doors into windowless, cubicle-filled rooms quickly left me pining for an escape. Commutes to work were spent plotting a Monday when I’d stroll in wearing jeans and flats and flip my boss the bird; a daydream I reveled in because I knew it was something I’d never actually go through with. I obeyed the rules, delivered more than what was asked of me and never complained; my naivety breeding a hope that I’d somehow find fulfillment between the copy and answering machines.

Then the economy started to tank. With it went my beliefs that the perfect job existed and that I would find it, though only temporarily. I accepted the most recent fulltime offer in an account coordinator position and lasted an entire year before giving my two-week notice with extreme hesitation; I didn’t have a plan or a job to fall back on. I could no longer ignore a faint realization that there’s a deeper meaning to life here on earth; something more important than my company’s clients, agenda or bottom line.

It was just a feeling; one that I had difficulty identifying, but knew it needed to be pinned down and forced to tap out before I was.

In a field where there’s a premeditated answer for every question - why one should write a review on this 15

Before You

product, endorse his brand or feature that celebrity - I couldn’t fabricate a script or figure out how to spin a resignation so it sounded in any way sane when the reason for leaving wasn’t. No one questioned my decision to go, asked me to stay or challenged my motive. They simply waved me goodbye and wished me the best; proof that I was as dispensable as the ink cartridge in their laser jet printer.

I sink into a chair at the gate and stick my earphones in but leave the music off, listening instead to a couple nearby reminisce about the wedding they’ve just had; how great the live band was, how trashed the bridesmaid got, what a fabulous time their honeymoon in Rome would be.

They sound happy but I can’t help but wonder if they’d be equally content had they not just wed, created joyous new memories to revisit and relive. Would they be as blissful as they seem sitting so closely together now as they would be if they were farther apart?

I just left the one man that, on the day we met, I knew I could spend the rest of my life with. Not because I didn’t love him. I did. I do.

I suppose I finally realized I could no longer live with the way things were; with the way I was.

Glancing over at the airport newlyweds, I’m able to easily make out colorful images dancing around on their laptop screen; the lovebirds and I viewing photos from their wedding celebration.

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As a voice echoes over the intercom to call for boarding, I watch a flower bloom. And in what should have been a magical moment, I neither smiled, nor wept; I felt nothing.

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Before You

I Was Brave “Layla! Hello. Hello, Layla.”

An older gentleman at the building entrance greets me with a warm smile and shows me to the flat. He’s been expecting me it seems. After walking me upstairs and handing me a key, he leaves me at the door with a nod of the head, wave of the hand and quick goodbye.

We exchanged very few words in our short time together. His name tag read Tomáš but he introduced himself as Tomash, the doorman. He has to be no more than sixty, with snowy white hair, a nicely trimmed beard and pinkish cheeks which harbor a deep set of dimples. And I was right; he had been expecting me. He knew I was Layla because, as he said, I looked very American; whatever that means.

I’m rarely ever at ease with first-time conversations and Tomáš’ English was quite horrible, so when he simply showed me to my new home and left me to settle in, I was grateful.

Once across the threshold, I find the place void of people and breathe a tired sigh of relief. Something about being on an airbus for fifteen hours with a few hundred other bodies eating, sneezing, coughing, snoring and hog18

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ging my only arm rest makes me want to be alone for a while.

Walking toward the kitchen for a glass of water, I notice a note on the counter.

Ahoj Layla, Welcome to Praha. Jan and I will be working today.

I hope it will be fine. We will return home tonight.

We look forward to meeting you again soon, Misha How sweet; something about this lovely handwritten note, held in place by a short mason jar full of bold, brick-red Angelique tulips makes me feel both welcomed and undeserving. I hadn’t even had the courtesy to leave Jay a written explanation as to where or why I was going nor for how long; didn’t ask him to wait for me nor tell him not to. I just left.

The thought makes me feel heavy and I’m overcome with a desperate need to lie down. I peak behind a few doors and find what will be my new bedroom. Stripping off my filthy airplane-ranked clothes and crawling under the fluffy duvet, I say a quick thanks to whoever is listening for the safe, albeit horribly uncomfortable flight, soon drifting off to a deep, much needed sleep.

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Before You

Dreams are odd; the way they fool you, paralyze you, leave you either longing for more or wishing they had never manifested themselves in the first place. Pictures can be so vivid, experiences so real. And yet after waking, all that’s left is a jumbled memory and a blurred imprint of a place and time that never was and never will be.

A cold sweat sweeps over my body.

In a crowded, old-world dining hall, my gaze becomes fixated on the woman seated across from me at an ornate banquet table; the glazed mahogany wood is protected by red runners, on which crystal goblets, vases and bowls are filled to the brim with rich liquids, flowers and fruit. Chandeliers hang low from the ceiling, lit by candlelight and giving what would be a dreary, dark room a flickering and otherworldly glow.

We must be at a formal dinner for some fancy occasion, though I’m unaware of what or whom we are celebrating. People surround me, but as I will my head to turn this way, that way, the way we do in dreams when every ounce of imaginable energy is used to force the slightest of body movements, I see no solid figures but softly floating blurs instead. Through weakness, I surrender to the direction my stare has settled on, meant to follow. Not left, nor right, but straight ahead. The woman comes into focus, her face the sharpest image in this expansive room. I try, but don’t recognize her.

Sometimes, in dreams, people we know appear to us in bodies with unfamiliar features. Yet somehow we are awarded a sense of familiarity for who they are anyway.

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However, this is not the case with the woman I’ve locked eyes with. I’ve never seen her before in my dreams and never in my real life.

She stares back with intention, is trying to speak though her lips fail to move. Instead, she raises something to her tiny mouth, takes a bite and doesn’t break her gaze. I begin to panic and I can feel beads of sweat pooling in the small of my back, dripping from my brow through the shortest hairs on the sides of my face. I try to look away but any dream-strength I have left is being siphoned away; she’s taking it from me. My eyes drift slowly to her left; a small child sits in an oversized chair that has swallowed up his tiny, delicate frame. The boy’s face is hidden; his head full of angelic blonde hair rests softly on the table while his fragile, porcelain arm is turned up and now dripping a crimson red.

There is nothing I can do to help, to stop all of the blurs dancing so hurriedly around, to alert them to what has just happened before my eyes. No one seems to notice; no one seems to care. I try to stand, to run, to scream, but my throat fills with lead which slowly drips into my stomach and hardens in the hollows of my legs. I can’t move, I can’t speak and yet cannot turn my eyes away.

At 5:30 a.m., sunlight fills the spare room at Misha and Jan’s in a way it never consumed my own room back home so early in the morning, bringing with it warmth that 21

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urges me to rise. I have slept through the night, not waking once after crawling into bed the afternoon before. I throw off the covers, roll to my side, let my bare feet melt on the cool hardwood floor and slowly sit up.

Misha’s curled on the sofa, reading the paper and sipping coffee when I walk into the living room. With a smile, she jumps up and comes close, takes my hand and for the first time since my arrival, welcomes me to her home.

Despite having been so grateful to be alone only yesterday, today it is startlingly comforting to see her face, one that has changed little from our first meeting years ago.

“Let me serve you some coffee, Layla,” Misha says.

“You take sugar? Milk? Oh, maybe you don’t drink coffee?

How about some tea, Layla, can I make you some tea?”

Still rather sleepy, I become instantly mesmerized

by Misha’s beauty, one so different than what I am used to.

Ten years must have passed since I’ve seen her last and her skin is as glowing as ever. With no makeup and few lines forming around her eyes, her exposed naturalness soothes me.

“Yes, coffee sounds wonderful.”

I apologize for the delayed response. Even though I’ve slept fifteen hours I still feel a little groggy. It must be the jetlag. In truth, it is just really nice to see her and I can’t find the words to say so.

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Thanking Misha, I accept the cup of hot liquid and notice that the aroma is bringing me to my senses. I assure her that I don’t want to be treated as a guest in her home, but more like a roommate while I’m here. She need not wait on me hand and foot. I would help out however I could. I would make her coffee. She seemed satisfied.

I follow her back to her spot on the couch and it is there that we sit for a very long while, talking like old friends; like the ones that when reunited after years since meeting last, feel as if not a minute between them had passed. Conversation topics aren’t much different now from the first time I’d shaken Misha’s hand. Instead of school we talk about work. She asks if there are any men in my life. There’s someone back home, I tell her, but I find that’s all I can say without choking up. I’m so grateful to be here, I don’t want to ruin it by bursting into tears on my first official day in Prague.

Maybe she senses this; my apprehension to speak much, my cautiousness of becoming overwhelmed at the drastic departure from the familiar that’s recently occurred.

I’m happy that she takes over and tells me about her stay in the States, when she first met my cousin Colby and me by association. Misha was young, hard-headed, in debt from school and following her dream of becoming a lawyer. Her parents were slow to approve of the move. It was difficult for them to understand why Misha would pay to study so far away when she could receive a free education in the Czech Republic. They felt she would be denying her heritage; telling the whole world that her homeland wasn’t good enough. But she had her reasons for leaving as well as 23

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her reasons for returning. Misha’s parents were thrilled when she had decided not to make the U.S. her home after graduation, but to settle down in Prague.

The morning quickly slips away and the afternoon advances. It looks beautiful outside and I tell Misha I’d love to take a walk. Days have passed since I’ve breathed in fresh air and it may do my head some good to get out.

“You won’t find much fresh air in the city between the drivers and the smokers, but there are some really lovely parks around here that can be refreshing,” Misha says.

“My best advice would be to get lost. Wander around, take a wrong turn and walk opposite the crowds.

That’s where you’ll discover the true beauty of Prague, between the cobblestones and secret passageways hidden among bustling shops and cafes. And don’t worry about getting completely turned around. It’s virtually impossible to not find your way back eventually. Here are a few tram passes. You can pick up the nine from almost anywhere and it drops you off just a block from our building.”

I fight back a few tears. I’m standing in Misha’s kitchen with my daypack, camera and the map she gave me that I probably won’t actually figure out how to read. I’m ready to explore these foreign surroundings, but my thoughts are thousands of miles away. Before I can stop the stampede, I’m pummeled. What am I doing here? What was I thinking leaving home to live with, what are essentially, strangers for an entire year?

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So Misha may not be a complete stranger. One junior-high summer, my mother left me with my older cousin Colby for a week, who was studying law at Berkley. Misha was over for a few pizza and study sessions which I felt privileged to join. Younger years of being told to play in another room were long behind me and I was invited to share in study-break conversations. She had asked me about school, boys, what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I’m sure I told her school was fine and boys were assholes.

That summer I felt free to swear, a habit that would haunt me until, well, forever. As for my career, I wanted to be a lawyer one day, just like Colby, so I could prosecute my male classmates for all the dead-legs they’d ever given me.

My mom picked me up after a week of experiencing the college life and I never saw Misha again, until this morning. As for Colby, we stay in touch. Though we don’t call or email daily, she’s the one person in my life that I can talk to about anything, without any preconceived notions and without judgment. She listens to the facts before she makes her case. When she called last summer just to see how things were, she didn’t have to ask many questions, she must have heard it in my voice. I was in a not-so-great place and I needed a way out; that’s when she asked if I remembered Misha.

“Layla? No need to worry though! You’ll find your way back. You just have to get out there. The more you walk these streets the more you’ll start to realize that the city isn’t all that big.”

With that, Misha brings me out of the deep recesses of my mind and I assure her I’ll find my way. I give her a 25

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quick hug and quietly shut the door behind me, hoping to leave the worrisome thoughts where I’d left them; in Misha’s tiny kitchen, condensing with steam from the kettle and dissipating like vapor as it rises in the air. Instead, they do exactly what I had wished them not to do, slipping through the door seams and following me out before my hand even lets off the handle.

Get lost. I already am lost! I’m in a completely foreign country and have not the slightest idea why other than to escape a feeling that back home, I no longer belonged.

I wonder what this could all be for. Why the opportunity to live with Misha arose when it did. Why I chose to take it. Why I quit my job. Left a man I would give my life for. Why I didn’t say a word when I decided to leave. Why I’m here. Why. I. Am. Here. My entire life up to this point has been lived asking what ifs, analyzing the past, the present, the future. Searching yet never finding, yearning yet never satisfied. I worry that this experience will not leave me feeling any different.

I shut my eyes hard as if doing so will make the thoughts and feelings unseen to me. I resolve to analyze the purpose of all of this later. For now, I force a smile at the doorman, Tomáš, walk out of the building, turn the corner and head toward the river. I let my worries sink into the sand filled between narrow cracks which separate the gray and blue stones that my feet fall heavy on.

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I Was Independent “Dobré ráno,” he whispers.

“Morning,” I answer in an equally hushed voice.

The silence is as comforting as his warm body beside me.

The streets below his studio flat in the center of town are usually loud with shuffling feet and touristy crowds, but on an early Sunday morning, the varied calls from passing Eurasian Jays are all that can be heard.

I must have dozed off again. His sudden wet hair on my shoulder makes me shiver. Sharp, prickly points persistently dig into my skin, the irritation increasing ever so slightly. I can feel spots of red forming without having to see them, without having to turn my head. Though earlier I yearned to pull him close, I now deeply desire to push him away.

Just two months ago I had left Misha’s for a mindclearing stroll around the city. Walks like that one quickly became habit, something I’ve done each morning since arriving in this foreign country. Perhaps it was a way to get settled in or to create something familiar in a strange world that needed to quickly become not so unknown. Initially I’d hoped to live less on a schedule and more on a whim here in Prague, as life back home had been so consumed by rou27

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tine: wake up, make coffee, get dressed, get to work, get through work, get home, work out, have dinner with Jay, bitch about work, get in bed, fight off or give in to his advances depending on my mood, and then finally succumb to the kind of sleep I’d pray for each night; full of vivid dreams, taking me far away from where I was.

When the nights are gone and my dreaming is done, I rise when the sun rises, make coffee for Misha and Jan, and then head out for a walk that takes me wherever the windy alleys will me to go. When I’m filled with thoughts, I write them down; with emotion, I push them aside.

One Saturday, I decided to meander up Petřín Hill before tourists filled the space with cameras, sunhats, strollers and remarks that make a self-proclaimed cultural moron like me cringe: “Oh, honey, look! The Eiffel Tower!

I suppose we can skip Paris and stay in Prague!”

The morning is still, the city is sleeping, but the sun is wide awake and warm. I take off my sweater, leaving the beads of sweat on my bare shoulders to air-dry in the breeze. As quickly as a chill shoots down my spine, a backdraft of heat rises up through my core. What a climb.

Though it would have been quicker to ride the funicular to the top, taking each step on my own, one by one, allows me to stop and admire the clustered red rooftops, the musty brown river dividing the town far below and the occasional decorated church spire rising pointedly out of the earth.

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Statues are delicately nestled in between brightly blooming cherry trees whose fallen blossoms have turned the grassy hill into a field of rhubarb. I don’t stop long to observe any stone figures, until I happen upon one at the summit.

A woman on her knees is held up by one thing: a man nearly on his. I’m well aware that the statue is made of a rock hard, immovable material that would take a wrecking ball to make it crumble, but the couple’s passionate embrace gives me an overwhelming and unavoidable feeling that if he releases his hold, she’ll be on her way down.

Her arms are secured tightly around his neck, while one of his oversized, masculine hands steadies her head. The other supports her shoulder, holding her weight. The two are frozen in a timeless kiss.

“No one knows the story behind these two torn lovers,” I hear a voice say beside me. “Most people concern themselves with the more well-known statue of Mácha, further down the hill. But in my most humble opinion, this one’s way more worth your time.”

Startled by this unexpected narrator, I feel something slip out of my hands and hit my feet. Looking down, I see my journal lying open at the base of the statue. My thoughts which were making their way to paper disappear into thin air, interrupted by a man that has appeared out of nowhere. I reach down to retrieve it and can’t help but wonder whom this guy thinks he is, speaking incessantly to a complete stranger, slinging thoughtless words around, some of which don’t sit well with me. Two torn lovers. If 29

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their history is unknown, how would anyone be able to tell that these lovers are torn?

Before I let my mouth go on a rampage, I give his comment a quick second thought and realize he very well may be right. The figures are slightly reminiscent of images I saw once at Two Lovers Point in Tumon Bay, Guam; a man and a woman tightly embraced, hair tied together by a knot. Bad blood between families kept the lovers apart and only in death did they feel they’d be free to unite for all eternity. Leaping from the safety of a high ledge above to the rocky bottom below is how they chose to end, and as legend might say begin, it all. Not only do slabs of stone at a visitor’s center overlooking the sea tell their story, but so too does the side of the cliff. It is believed that their faces can be seen from a distance, protruding from the jagged edges of the earth that separate the jump from the fall.

I think about a number of other star-crossed lovers: Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella, Jay and – oh who am I kidding. I’m not the stone-woman in front of me or rockface on the side of a cliff or fair lady hovering over a second-story balcony and I wouldn’t want to be.

“The stories don’t matter much anyway,” I say, hoping he’ll realize I have no interest in discussing the matter. “And even if they do, they’re sometimes better left untold.”

“Is that right,” he responds as half statement, half question. I’m unable to tell which.

“How so?” he asks.

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I’m not prepared to play twenty questions or get into some deep philosophical discussion with a total stranger in a foreign city on top of “Lover’s Hill.” I’d really like to be left alone.

“Looking at this statue is like reading words on a page,” I tell him. “Though you might think everything’s being spelled out for me, I’m actually forming images, painting scenery and choosing colors in my mind. Whether the visions I create match the truth or not, they’ll always be more meaningful to me than any you try to paint with facts and figures. I see this statue and form my own story. And it’ll have more power than what any repetitious, hustling, Segway-riding tour guide might fancy up.”

I finally turn to see the man standing by my side, intent on giving him a go-to-hell look that has been slowly taking shape among the muscle fibers in my face.

Instead and against my will, I smile. He’s gorgeous.

“Not to be rude, but better than any kind of bullshit you might try feeding me,” I add.

The slight smirk I feel forming as the words dance to the melody of my voice certainly does nothing to come off as rude; the preceding disclaimer was entirely unnecessary. His mouth immediately mirrors mine and it becomes clear that he’s aware my defenses are quickly weakening, that my response was less of an attempt to get him to leave and more of an invitation for him to stay.

I hadn’t implemented this tactic in a while. Playful sarcasm used to make Jay melt, so much so that he’d abort 31

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any virtual war he’d been summoned for until the mission I’d given him was complete. Since leaving Jay, the furthest thing from my mind has been trying to peak anyone’s interest. But here I stand, in front of a total stranger, willing to through my arms around his neck and fall down to my knees.

One look at Petr and I’ve formed his story in seconds. A native Czech boy, raised in South Africa or Australia or some other exotic place in the Southern Hemisphere, evident by his fluency in English, kissed-by-the-sun hair and far from pale skin. Having a base in Central Europe must mean his university summers were spent effortlessly traveling the world, no territory off limit. After graduating, he may have returned home to settle down for a bit, to reconnect with his roots. He must be an artist of some sort: a painter, poet, writer, filmmaker or musician. Something I’d be a sucker for. Searching his eyes gives me the feeling that he’s seen more than his worn-out Converse have in their short time on earth; a feeling that he has something to teach me, something I have no idea I need to learn.

The Chinese water torture of prickly, pointy hair has suddenly become unbearable. I drop my shoulder just a bit and turn to look at him. He immediately repositions his head in the palm of his large, open hand, looking down upon my sleepy face.

“Why are you here, Layla?” he asks.

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I peek at him through puffy eyes.

“Well, Petr, we had a few beers at U Medvídků last night, remember?” I ask. “And you invited me over. Why, you want me to get going?”

“Oh come on. You know what I mean,” he said.

“Why did you come to Prague?”

Sometimes when prompted, answers to questions appear as images in my mind, rather than form as words in my mouth. I see Jay and wonder what it is he’s doing back home. It’s been a few months since I’ve left, since we’ve spoken. I have no idea if he’s even figured out where I am.

Petr doesn’t know about Jay. He has no clue as to what I’ve left behind. In the time that we’ve spent together, the hours I’ve spent in his bed, he’s never once asked about past relationships, or current ones for that matter, and I don’t ask the same of him. As far as I’m concerned, we both must be content with the way things are since neither of us has tried to label our relationship. Maybe we both know this won’t last.

“I don’t know, Petr. I guess I came to find love.”

I know my response will rile him up a bit, something he deserves for his half-hearted attempt to get inside my head. Petr looks me dead in the eyes for longer than makes me comfortable as if to say, “You can’t fool me.

You’ve been lost long before the moment we met. And if you want to find whatever it is you’re looking for, you better soon admit it or else you’re certain to spend the rest of your life searching for something that doesn’t exist.”

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I break his stare, but I don’t give in.

“I didn’t come to find a soul mate,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster, feeling blindingly vulnerable. He’s certainly hit a nerve. “I can confidently tell you that much.”

“You came to find your soul,” he said.

Against my strongest will to fight them back, tears flood my eyes. It’s like a triggered response, an immediate reaction to words or pictures, moving or still images that speak to a place disconnected from my mind. I have not one second to filter the message, to allow the right synapses in my brain to connect, to generate the realistically desired or logical emotion. It just happens, without my control.

Whatever the cause, I don’t wish Petr to see me cry, so I do what I do best.

“Yeah, maybe,” I say over my shoulder, brushing him off, as I toss away the sheets and get up to go.

Fate. Karma. Destiny. Call it what you like, but there are times when I certainly believe that life has already been decided for me; that I am where I am because it is where I am supposed to be whether I like it or not. I may have packed my bags and boarded a plane, but the choice to leave everything I’d ever known was made long before I had an awareness of the decision that lay on the horizon.

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My biggest concern is no longer accepting having left my entire life behind, but understanding why.

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I Was Strong The work will be intense, Misha assures me, but I’m looking forward to it. Keeping my hands occupied often gives my mind a rest. And after Petr’s recent attempt to break me down, to make me weak, I desperately need to numb my thoughts for a while.

A family friend of Misha’s owns a bakery. Bakeries are everywhere here, she tells me; as many in Prague as there are churches and cathedrals in all of Europe. There’s one on every street corner. Or they’re like Starbucks in America, she says, to better help me understand. But of them all, Silvie undoubtedly bakes the best, most traditional sweets in the whole of Czech Republic. Her husband and business partner is a French pastry chef by trade, so some of their specialties have an international flair. Even so, the contrasting flavors complement each other surprisingly well, the way the two who run the place do.

I’m surprised that the cost of living in the city has been more reasonable than I anticipated, especially since Misha refuses to accept rent money. In return for a place to stay, I water plants, take out the trash and keep dust balls off of the hardwood floors. I enjoy helping Misha keep her apartment beautiful. With she and Jan away on business

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trips most weekdays and off to the country for long weekends, she hardly has time to take care of the flat herself.

A cushion of savings has provided great comfort for these first few months on my own, yet I’ve grown antsy, never having gone without a job for so long. When I explain this to Misha, she immediately mentions Silvie and the bakery.

I’ll have to be paid under the table. Even Misha, being so intertwined with the law, doesn’t disagree or argue.

Pursuing a work visa would draw unnecessary attention to yet another foreigner taking an opportunity away from deserving native Czechs. Or at least, that’s how it’d be perceived. I take Misha’s word for it and agree to not follow the rules. If any trouble arises, she assures me there’s nothing a few hundred Czech crown won’t settle.

I work out that making 1,000 crown a week at the bakery, roughly 200 dollars per month, will afford me some added independence in my new home. I’ll have more than enough to stock the cupboards and enjoy a few beers every now and then, while leaving a bit to stash away for my return home; that is, if I return home.

“Láska, taste this, prosím.”

Silvie is short and plump with rosy cheeks and caring eyes, just the features you might expect to see on a woman running a bakery in her birthplace of middle Bo37

Before You

hemia. Misha warned me that she may appear tough at first - “hard around her edges” were the exact words she used especially since Silvie’s rather reserved when it comes to speaking English. But in time, Misha assured me, Silvie would warm up to be the most caring person I might ever meet.

It’s my second day on the job and Silvie’s already calling me “love.”

“Delicious,” I answer through a sweet, jam-like substance tantalizing every taste bud. I probably don’t even need to respond. Eyes rolling back in my head say enough, I’m sure.

Our baking for the morning is finished and the dishes are washed. It’s nearing seven; time to open up the shop, but not before we sit down for coffee and the plum koláče I’ve just taste-tested. Both are still steaming hot.

“So Layla,” Silvie starts slowly. “What do you think about Prague?”

“It’s great,” I tell her. “It’s not America, but I’m starting to make it feel like home.”

I don’t say much more about the States.

Foreigners are easily identified in Prague. It doesn’t take but a second for any Czech to correctly guess where I’m from, even if I think I’ve mastered a few words from their language. I’ve lost track of the number of locals who are surprised when I confirm their suspicion, however.

“American? But they’re usually loud, rude, obnoxious, en38

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titled. And they eat a lot of hamburgers. You sound American, but you don’t act it.”

On occasion I’ve responded, “No more than you act like a typical Czech, like a tight-lipped, assuming, porkeating, beer-guzzling communist.” Thankfully, this hasn’t landed me into trouble yet; I’ve found many to have a wicked sense of humor.

“No, it definitely is not America,” Silvie says quickly, her eyes shifting downward with a wave of her hand.

“You know, I lived in your country for fifteen years. That is where I met my husband. Well, after I practiced my English on a number of other handsome men.”

Her rosy cheeks grow even rosier. Her eyes disappear into a wrinkly squint as a smile spreads across her warm face.

Before I can ask about Silvie’s experience abroad, we’re interrupted by a light tap at the window. A woman and her young child stand at the front of the store looking in, the woman smartly dressed in heals and a blazer, the young child in a hoodie carrying a backpack and push toy.

Our eyes meet. The woman outside looks on with irritation which is followed by a dramatic downward glance at her watch, as if the expression on her face wasn’t evidence enough that she’s in a hurry.

The clock on the wall reads a quarter after our advertised opening time and I feel a surge of anxiety mixed with a spark of guilt. How had I not noticed? The bakery doors should have been unlocked a full fifteen minutes ago 39

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and instead Silvie and I are sitting here having coffee, shooting the shit and getting to know each other.

“Silvie, it’s after seven!” I say in exasperation as I quickly stand up and move toward the door, place my hand on the knob and turn the key. Silvie moves significantly slower behind me, at a pace I realize, is clearly unrelated to her age. Having seen her lift 10 pound balls of dough high overhead and toss them around the kitchen in the back, I know she can be moving much quicker. I’ve seen her do it.

“Oh relax, Layla,” Silvie says with patience and calm in her voice. “Nothing worth gaining can be lost by taking time.”

She scoops up our dishes and cradles them like a porcelain doll, until she can delicately set them into the sink. Shuffling her feet, Silvie finally takes her spot behind the bakery counter. The woman in a hurry pushes past me when I swing the door open, dragging her toddler by the hand, and leaving the scooter outside to its own devices.

A back-and-forth between our customer and Silvie begins immediately. It feels hostile. Neither will physically strike the other, I’m sure, but the tonality of their voices make this over-the-counter conversation look more like an analogous knife fight; a jab here, a jab there, a loaf of bread in the bag. A block here, a block there, a butter roll shoved into the hand of the little one. ‘No, no, no’ is all I hear from both fighters and yet the woman keeps pointing at pastries and Silvie continues to follow her orders.

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Finally, the bell rings and the fight’s over. The woman pays the amount on the register, scoops up her child and leaves.

Exhausted simply watching the exchange, I tentatively ask what that was all about. If Silvie is still in a fighting mood, I want to be in her corner.

“Please?” Silvie asks.

I find the need to repeat myself often. I’m not sure if I speak too fast or too soft but many Czechs ask “please” in the form of a question, which I’ve come to figure means “huh?” in the politest sense.

“What just happened?” I went on. “That customer was pointing, you were both yelling ‘no,’ everyone looked just a bit upset and yet, she got everything she asked for.”

Silvie puts her hand to her mouth, raises her eyebrows and opens her eyes wide. When she sees the seriousness in my face her eyes disappear again, the way I will see them do many times, as she can fight the laughter no longer. I want in on what’s so funny, although I must say, her smile is contagious and I find myself mimicking her expressions. When the tears dissipate and Silvie can breathe again, she explains that what I literally interpreted to mean “no” is the abbreviation of the Czech word “ano.” It’s an informal variation of the word “yes” in English, like saying “yeah.”

The rest of the day slips by and the hand on the clock spins faster than I care to notice. Before I know it, Silvie’s sending me home with more bread than I can fath41

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om finishing before they turn to stone. Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture. I simply have a weakness for such things constructed out of a flour, water and egg base.

I take my chances with the crowds and head toward Charles Bridge. The late summer sun setting over Malá Strana has lit up little souvenir shops lining the streets.

Couples seem to dance arm in arm in this fairytale part of the city and I long to have someone by my side. This feeling of weakness surrounds me in the form of soft, doughy rolls and suddenly, of Petr, the one man in Prague who can help to fill this empty void.

Now that my hands are at rest, my emotions take over, feet following without protest. They turn me around and take me across town, to the city center, to his studio, to Petr’s door.

“How was it?” Petr asked through a mouthful of my morning’s hard labor, his hands covered in dried clay. It’s clear that I’ve walked in on him working.

He seems pleased to see me despite my showing up unannounced. That or his appetite had grown tremendously prior to my arrival and I came with just the right thing to quell it.

“Have you ever felt what it’s like to not think?” I answer. “To be so lost in a moment, in a movement, that 42

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the only thing you’re aware of is the feeling in your limbs, in your hands, in your fingers, in your veins?”

“Yeah,” he says. That was a dumb question. He’s an artist. “It happens to me when we’re making love.”

Good one Layla. Way to set yourself up.

“Petr, we don’t make love. That’s not what I came here for, remember? Anyway, the bakery was amazing.”

“Layla, I’m kidding,” he says as he pulls me close, just like Jay used to whenever he’d see me getting upset.

“Come on. I’m kidding.”

And he is kidding, though there may be a tiny part of me that wishes he weren’t. It’s clear to us both that there’s nothing serious going on, that this is all for fun. But even so - for my benefit or for his I’m not sure - I feel the need to continuously make it clear, to draw a line in the sand, one so obvious that if ever overstepped I’d have the right to say I warned him.

Petr goes back to his classic potter’s wheel. We’re surrounded by white sheets hanging from the vaulted wood ceiling which cover the dirty, cream colored walls. Others lie crumpled in lumps on the floor. Natural light streams in from a cluster of large windows facing Wenceslas Square and highlights the glistening sweat beads forming on his shoulders, dripping down his biceps, disappearing into the crease on the inside of his elbow. I’m watching him and though we exchange few words and quick glances, I can see that his mind is now nowhere.

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Of course Petr knows what it’s like, to be lost in a feeling. He knows little else than working with his hands, mixing ingredients to get the right consistencies, testing textures between fingers, kneading the clay, forming it into perfect shapes, delicately molding it as the wheel turns in circles.

Though he perspires, Petr concentrates without any visible strain. His movements flow effortlessly, one leading serenely to the next. A small kick of the bottom wheel at his feet sends the mass of clay on the top wheel into a spin.

He’s adding water, drops at a time. His hands, strong, secure and knowing, surround the form as it continues to rotate slowly at first, then faster. As the soft clay shoots upward in escape from his grasp, he guides it back down with the rest, where it belongs. It may seem lost now, but he knows just where to place it, coerce it, without force. The wet medium follows his lead. It’s as if the clay knows something beautiful is forming, something incredible; knows that it’s playing a significant role in some mastermind’s plan. And so it has faith, it goes along.

I’ve settled into a spot on Petr’s couch, out of his direct line of site. I imagine myself on the wheel, spinning slowly at first, like on the day we met; then in an instant, turning so fast, like on the day I left home. I’m out of control with arms waving wildly. If I were to be spun any faster, they’d surely detach from my body and splatter these white sheets with spots of red before coming to a stop, hitting the wall.

Without the chance to completely lose it, at precisely the right time, Petr places his smooth, warm, wet hands 44

Amy Smith

on my burning shoulders for a moment or two, runs them down my arms, around my wrists, between each finger. He moves to my belly, though I don’t notice his hands having ever left my skin. They move up my middle which feels miles long, that or he’s moving incredibly, teasingly, painstakingly slow. Then placing them together in prayer, pinky sides close to my body, he moves up through the middle of by breasts, putting just a bit of pressure where we all still imagine our hearts to be, despite science proving they’re elsewhere. When he’s passed my chest he opens his hands again, palms down, up and over my protruding collarbones, up to my neck, to my face, where he pauses to stare, to look at me and see what shape I’ve taken, what feeling I give him. On instinct, he adds drops of water to my forehead, smashes me flat and starts all over again.

Petr’s creations are like nothing I’ve ever seen. So pure, so transparent, so free from judgment and criticism and self-conscious thought. I decide he’s one of those human beings I’ve always been envious of. He’s found his passion. He’s living his dream. He’s content. He’s happy.

He may not be what I want, but he’s nearly everything I want to be.

I felt that today.

When Petr asks what it is that I felt, I realize I’ve said this out loud.

“Mindless thought, in the bakery this morning. I was so happy to just be standing there, flouring the board, kneading the dough. Feeding the people who came in through that door, seeing them smile and point and nod.”

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“So you want to be a baker?”

“No, no. I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not sure. I went to school and got a communications degree. What kind of person would I be if I burned my diploma and went to work in a kitchen?”

“Right. That wouldn’t be logical. Especially if the work you were trained for in school makes you miserable.

Layla, those degrees don’t mean shit.”

My mouth nearly hits the floor. I’ve lived my whole life as a student, studying, testing, passing, graduating. I was raised to believe that a college education is what would get me a good paying job; a job that would help me support myself, buy a home and raise a family one day.

The shock must have shown on my face.

“What I mean is, those degrees don’t mean shit if you’re not happy doing whatever it is it’s helped you do.”

“That’s easy to say,” I respond.

Harder to put into practice. I grew up understanding that practicality came first. Being genuinely happy and at peace was always an afterthought. Sometimes we have to give up dreams in order to find dependable ways to support ourselves. Doing otherwise is risky because security, and therefore success, is never certain. In a world of uncertainty, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

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“It is easy to say and even easier to believe, especially after I tell you about a little Czech boy who taught himself how to fly.”

I laugh and then feign surprise with the most sarcastic facial expression I can muster, but Petr continues on in spite of it. He loves telling fables and fairytales. I try not letting on that I love listening to him recite the stories, voice fluxing, emphasizing phrases he deems important and softening others so that I strain to hear. I let my imagination follow his lead, drift away like a child’s sleep on a lullaby.

“Of course, everyone thought he was crazy,” Petr goes on, “until they actually saw him fly and asked how it came to be.”

Petr pauses.

“Do you want to know how it came to be, Layla?” he asks, giving me an equal dose of sarcasm. “Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. It all began when one night, a young boy named Tomáš had a dream. And in his dream, he was walking home from a school football match.”

Petr pauses again.

Oh come on, Petr. Get on with it already.

“You know football means soccer, right?”

I answer with the roll of my eyes. I may be American, but I’m no idiot. I caught on the first time he and everyone in every pub I’d ever stepped into in Prague referred to the game in this way.

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“Anyway,” Peter continues, “he was walking home from a school football match when he noticed an old man in front of him shuffling along with a cane. Tomáš wished not to be bothered with having to slow down. So as if pedaling an imaginary bicycle, Tomáš picked up a bit of speed, pushed lightly on his left foot and sprung right up into the air a few meters high, rising over the hunched old man.

Tomáš wasn’t the slightest bit surprised by what, to him, seemed a small feat. His being able to fly felt very matter of fact, like he had been moving around Prague this way all his life. And so, Tomáš made his way home, continuing to push off the ground, gaining more and more leverage each time he took a leap. It felt so natural, so easy and so free that he wondered why no one else in the world had yet figured out how to lift themselves two stories high and remain suspended, simply kicking their feet to move forward, to fly on.

“The next morning, Tomáš woke with excitement, remembering every detail of his dream, how it felt to be weightless. He was disappointed when he realized that the experience happened only in his sleep. He strained to hold on to the memory, but the feeling began to fade and images became blurry before he even had time to get out of bed.

Still, the knowledge of what he’d been capable of stayed with him throughout the day. Unable to concentrate the least bit at school, Tomáš resolved to set off when the last bell rang and attempt to bring his dream to life.

“The moment classes were dismissed, Tomáš bolted out of the building. On his way home, he came across an old, empty lot not far from the Vltava. The area was en48

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closed by a chain link fence, which he’d muscle over to enter. If everything went as planned, he’d simply leap over when he was ready to leave.

“Being young, agile and not afraid of a minor fall, Tomáš climbed the fence with ease. He stood in the far corner, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and started in a sprint. In an attempt to relive the flying from his dream, he leapt, but with too much vigor. He rose a meter or so before landing hard with a thump. Softer, he reminded himself; with less thought and more feel.

“The new strategy worked. On Tomáš second attempt, he found himself twenty meters in the air. Once safely on the ground, he could hardly believe that his dream had come true. Tomáš could fly.

“For the next few weeks, Tomáš perfected his newfound ability in the evenings, on the side-streets of Prague and in old Jewish cemeteries. He got to thinking; maybe everyone possesses the ability to fly and only needs help discovering it. He imagined how, if this were the case, it would change his life and quite possibly the world. Tomáš knew he needed to share his secret with the masses. But how?

“Then it occurred to him. Tomáš’ classmate was the son of a famous Czech journalist. If the reporter witnessed Tomáš’ ability, he might feature a story in the paper. The entire country would hear the news within a single day and seek Tomáš out for guidance. If he could help just one person discover they could fly, Tomáš would be beyond satisfied.

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“Immediately, Tomáš phoned his friend who, weary of Tomáš’ new ability, agreed to bring his father the next evening to the lot where Tomáš had been practicing. Once there, the only things separating Tomáš from his classmate and the journalist was a chain link fence and veil of disbelief. The newcomers looked as if they were wishing for a miracle that was certain to never come.

“Tomáš positioned himself in a corner opposite the bystanders, and started in a run, pushing off lightly like he’d practiced, effortlessly flying up into the air. When he came back down for a soft landing, the boy and his father were fascinated. ‘Young man,’ the father said, ‘you might think this flying thing of yours is cute, but you must know that this is a serious talent you have and it should not be regarded lightly. If left to your own devices, who knows what dire consequences may come of it. You need to see specialists, professionals who will advise on how to best proceed. Once they’ve approved and provided guidance, that’s when I will write your story.’

“They met again the very next day: Tomáš, his friend, the journalist and the specialists. Tomáš wanted his story to be told. “‘No, no, no. This is all wrong,’ the specialists complained after Tomáš made repeated attempts to take to the sky. “‘Your arm formation is terrible. Keep both at a ninety degree angle. Ok, now drop your shoulders and keep your elbows in when you take that running start.’

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“Before each moment Tomáš would push off to gain height, the specialists interrupted, critiquing his every move. His sprint was too fast, his posture all wrong, his leap off of the ground too soft. This went on for some time until nearly all at once, Tomáš couldn’t move. His legs became weak, his mind foggy, his muscles knotted and tight. “‘You do not fly because you are doing it wrong,’ they told him. ‘Try it again!’ they demanded.

“Again, he tried. He tripped up his feet and twisted his arms and in the end, Tomáš stood motionless, remaining curiously still for some time. They had stopped him before he could even start.

“The Prague sky began to grow dark and a cloud settled over Tomáš. With the passing of each paralyzing minute, it became more and more clear that a miracle would not be witnessed that day. Eventually, the specialists turned away, then the journalist, then the friend. One by one, they left Tomáš alone, his feet cemented to the ground.

Tomáš could no longer fly.”

“Petr. That’s horribly depressing.”

“Yeah, it is. And so are you with your ‘who would I be without a degree’ talk.”

“I get it. I get it. But I don’t know how to ‘fly’ so to speak. Wouldn’t you think that if I could fly, if I had an inborn talent or passion, that I’d have some inkling, some idea of what that’d be by now? And that I’d also be doing it?”

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“The thing is, Layla, you have some sort of idea already. You not only have some sort of an idea; you know.

You just need to block out all of the negative and judgmental voices in your head in order to recognize it. Because whatever your passion is, it’s there screaming inside of you, waiting for you to just shut up and listen.”

I felt a sting of pain with that last line as Petr stuck his pointer finger deep into my chest.

“And to your latter question: no. No, you wouldn’t be doing it. Because those negative and judgmental voices I told you about? They have way too much control over every single one of your thoughts, every single action. And the worst part is you don’t even know they’re there. I take that back. That’s not the worst part. The force of those voices is so powerful, they have you convinced that they’re part of your biological structure, something you can’t alter or get rid of. They have made you believe that their pessimism and cynicism is Layla. But they’re not you. And not until you recognize this simple and very true fact will you have the strength to begin exercising them from your mind and making quiet, peaceful room for the passion lying dormant inside of you.”

His finger, long since removed from the center of my breasts, has left a burning sensation where it pierced itself only moments ago. I can hear the sizzle, see the skin melting away to reveal my paralyzed heart.

“Wow, Petr. We’ve only known each other for a short time, but it seems you have already got me all figured out. How do you do it?”

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I don’t expect him to answer, but he does.

“I just know that when those guys are around, creativity suffers because nothing you ever do will be good enough, beautiful enough or worthy enough of anybody’s appreciation or praise, including your own. What you must focus on is one simple, powerful fact; you follow your dreams because they’re good enough for you. Acting on your passion is not something you do for someone else, Layla; it’s something you do for yourself.”

The irises of my eyes, usually a muted blue-green, register in my mind as a piercing shade of turquoise when the whites surrounding them are bloodshot red. My cheeks, usually flat, matted beige, begin to glisten shortly after the backs of my hands have smeared the tears. I want to look away because when I don’t, I see my mother staring back, telling me to suck it up, to snap out of it. Fighting my rage, I look harder. Petr said my passion was hidden somewhere inside of me, so come on mirror, find it. Reveal it. Don’t instigate with this reflected emptiness.

The longer I fixate on my gaze, the more the features of my face begin to appear extremely foreign to me.

The structure of my bones, the space between my eyes, the shape of my brows, the colors of my lips; they all change and rearrange in the glass before slowly fading away.

Though I look like something out of a Picasso painting, it’s Warhol who comes to mind; look at a thing long enough 53

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and it loses all of its meaning. The words rush at me with fervor. They just weren’t the words I was hoping for.

The last time I looked in the mirror with such intensity was the first time I realized I was alive. Not like I hadn’t already known I was a living, breathing being. I suppose that by realized I mean I understood that I was connected to something greater than anything my mind could ever consciously wrap itself around. And by understood I mean I felt it. I was alone and the surrounding silence was deafening. Every one of my senses was attentive and aware. A separation took place, one that frightened and fascinated me all at the same time. There was an overwhelming feeling of lightness and of being, something I hadn’t yet experienced in my ten or so years on earth, which possessed me for a matter of seconds, until I realized I had to bring myself back, remind myself that I was here, now, in this place, on this planet.

Then the heaviness returned.

I’ve never felt that way again.

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I Was Understanding I leave Petr’s the next morning in the humidity of August. Remnants of spring can still be found gathered in fluffy white dandelion seeds, bunched up in clusters on the ground. I look down and kick a pile with my foot. The miniature umbrella-like parts float around, falling ever so gracefully. There must be a million wishes are here, waiting to be granted. Taking a chance that some are unwished on, I throw a few out to the wind.

I wish it wasn’t so damn hot. I wish this river was clean enough for a swim. I wish to find my passion. I wish to feel true happiness. I wish to become a bit more aware, not just of myself but of the world around me. I wish to become less selfish, more selfless. I wish to be comfortable in my own skin. I’m starting to think this move to Prague will be good for me; I wish I would believe it. I wish I wouldn’t be such a sucker for Petr. I wish I didn’t still think about Jay. It’s nearly 6 a.m. when I arrive at the bakery. Silvie is busy pulling loaves of bread out of the ovens and placing them on stacked racks to cool as I unlock the door with my key. Wow it’s warm in here. For such a voluptuous woman, I’m surprised she doesn’t even break a sweat.

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“Dobrý den, Silvie,” I say pulling on oven mitts and getting straight to work. She’s been up for a few hours and though I’ve walked a mile to get here, I haven’t had any coffee yet. I can’t say I’m fully awake. The wall of screened windows in her kitchen lets some air in. The door leading to the small garden space out back is open as well.

I’m grateful that this day will pass quickly. I always look forward to sitting there with Silvie for lunch after we’ve closed shop, wiped down counters and lined up ingredients and mixes for the next morning.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been partial to mornings rather than mid-days and evenings. I’ve always relished a cup of hot coffee and peaceful silence before my mind and energy becomes consumed with what feels like everyone else’s problems. It’s been the consistent piece of time that I find is all mine. Of course there have been moments in the evening when I’ve found myself alone, but a late call from the boss about a meeting the next day or recurring thoughts of his many off-handed comments from an earlier conversation occasionally plagued me late into the night, long after my head hit the pillow. I’ve heard it said that you start to own your job when work filters into your dreams. On the contrary, I’d say that’s when your job starts to own you.

I still love mornings, but now crave afternoons.

With them come their traditional Czech meals and blunt conversations shared with Silvie in the garden.

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“Here you are, Layla.” I let Silvie bring my plate, but no matter how much she protests, I always do the dishes when we’re done. “Dobrou chut!”

I’ve relentlessly tried to say this back, but I’ve given up on trying. I’m simply unable to pronounce the “ch” in “chut.” Not spelled phonetically for the English language, the word starts with a “k” sound in the very back of the throat. Because the “u” is heard more like a double “o,” rounding the lips while letting out a quick heavy breath helps, but sounds little like the traditional Czech pronunciation. When I try, the “ch” makes its way forward, but leaves my mouth feeling like one of a heavy snorer or sloppy drunk. After a few failed attempts, Silvie’s become just fine with my “bon appétit.”

Lunch is the main meal in this country, so while in the States I’d likely have soup and salad or a sandwich wrap (save the monstrous burritos, steaks, and hamburgers for dinner), I’m not surprised to look down at a mound full of potato dumplings, slices of pork in a creamy gravy and sweet, cooked red cabbage. These potato dumplings are by far my favorite item on any menu. They’re called “krokety” and I pronounce this word like a champ; little, round, fried bits of doughy potato goodness.

We sit in the shade under a massive umbrella, which is nice to have when the summer thunderstorms bring torrents of rain and hail out of nowhere. And when the weather is fine, it shields us from the sun while the tall, potted trees do a nice job as well at keeping us cool. Today is one of those days when it’s doing its job to keep us dry.

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I run into the kitchen and bring back some coffee.

While it’s customary to relax after a meal with a latte or cappuccino, Silvie and I are content with a café Americano and a side of warm milk. As I sit back down, a flash of bright light nearly blinds me. We both hear the roll and wait for that loud roar of thunder. I habitually count the seconds between the two. When I was young, my mom told me I could guess how far away the eye of the storm was.

All I had to do was count the seconds between hearing thunder and seeing lightning. Each second represented a mile. The longer I’d count the safer and less frightened I felt.

“Does the thunder scare you?” Silvie asks.

A lot of things frighten me, but thunder’s not one of them.

“It used to,” I answer. “But now I find it to be rather magnificent, soothing really.”

I look over at Silvie who shuts her eyes and nods in concurrence. When she opens them, she begins to speak. I understand every word and find comfort in the slowness of her delivery. I can tell she hasn’t used English in some time and so must stop to think about which words to use. But my eyes and ears and goose bumps are attentive. She can see that I’m listening, that I want her to continue on.

“My mother used to tear up every time she heard thunder. When I was young, I thought she was afraid of the storms. They can be really aggressive. The noise never bothered me though. I would run to the front of our flat on 58

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the second floor, open the double windows and smell the wet ground, the fire in the sky. It was loud, but it was a grandiose show and I could not keep my eyes off of it. I never wanted to watch through a pane of glass. I wanted to be out there, in the middle of the chaos. But my mother, she would go to the back of our place and shut herself away in my father’s study. It wasn’t until I was old enough to make some sense of the world I was living in that I began to understand why the thunder upset her so much.

“You are young. And I know those American schools do not teach you much about what has gone on globally in recent decades. They concern themselves more with tired history; cowboys and Indians, the Gold Rush, the World Wars and the founding of your country. Did you know there is a pub here that was established long before America? Imagine that. You can sit and have pivo in a place that is older than the land you originate from. We can go there. I will take you.”

Thunder strikes again, loudly this time, causing me to jump and Silvie to carry on with her story.

“It was the early morning hours of August 21, 1968.

Most of Prague was asleep, but my mother was kept up by steady contractions. I was on the way. She had packed her bags the day before when her labor pains began, when they were too far apart for concern. Counting the minutes between them that morning, however, she knew it was time to go. My mother could hear thunder in the distance; continuous, rolling thunder. She quickly grabbed an umbrella and rain coat and woke my father. Both headed out of their building in the dead of night.

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“They would walk to the hospital. I was her first child but my mother had a large family. They told her all that she could expect come delivery aside from a pain she would not wish on her worst enemy. One suggestion which she embraced throughout her pregnancy and would continue through her labor was to walk as much as she could.

This made the most sense to my mother who often suffered from terrible gas pains and the one thing that helped was a long walk. Pills and teas and enzymes and remedies were useless. A quiet side-street and a slow, steady pace was all she ever needed to move everything down and out; it had to work just as well to deliver a baby. My mother also despised medical facilities. She did not want to wait around, distressed herself, near needles, the sick and the dying. She wanted to give birth the moment she arrived.

“The air was warm and a full moon was still visible in a sky absent of clouds. The streets were dry. There had been no rain and they felt no humidity typical of summer thunderstorms, yet my young parents were enveloped in a ubiquitous rolling sound.

“My father led my mother in the direction of the castle, looking to cross the bridge below Strahov tunnel. As the two stood breathless, my mother could feel thunder beneath her feet; the ground began to shake. In the twilight of the morning, I was making my way into my mother’s world, and so too were the Russians. Tanks; massive, obtrusive, thunderous, powerful tanks rolled out of the tunnel, one after the other, onto the tiny streets of Prague. And on the side of each was the only star my mother would remember that night; big, bold and red.

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“When I was old enough to hear the story and understand how it related to my own world, my mother told me she had never been so frightened in her life. Thunderstorms, for as long as she lived, would always put her back on that street corner, back to the morning which would change her existence in so many ways.”

Having never seen a tank in my life, I can only imagine how Silvie’s mother felt when the Russians invaded her home. Having never heard a gunshot, I can only imagine what a shock it would be to think thunder and see signs of war.

Finding it difficult to relate to Silvie’s mother makes me think of a tenth grade history assignment. I was asked to interview a veteran and later write a report relating the individual’s experience to the appropriate war. The father of an old family friend had served as a pilot in World War II. Though the man’s daughter warned me that he’d never spoken much about that period of his life before, and she’d be surprised if he started to speak about it now, she invited me to his home to give it a shot.

The man lived in his daughter’s guesthouse, a quaint little place flooding with natural light. After arriving and making introductions, we sat across from each other for what seemed like an eternity before exchanging words. I struggled to connect. His mind was distant. I looked down at my notepad, naked of ink.

Then, off in the distance, the sound of a single engine passing overhead broke our silence and he began to speak.

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The old man had been a fighter pilot in the 40s. He told me about the time his plane went down. He managed to land safely, all crew on board. His voice became shaky as his past must have come rushing back and he soon fell quiet again. He let the tears fall. I wanted to hold his weathered, wrinkled hands, the ones that were probably shaky with fear as he held on tight to the control stick. I wanted to tell him how brave he was. Instead I remained still, let him remember, because nothing I could’ve said would have changed how he was feeling, reliving that day.

I could only imagine.

“The days after my birth were chaotic,” Silvie continued.

“My young mother had delivered her first child and her homeland had been taken over by powerful neighboring communists. Needless to say, she lost sleep. She would also loose many of her friends and loved ones as they went into exile, refusing to give the regime a chance.

“My parents thought about leaving as well, but this bakery had been passed on to my father from his father and he could not just abandon it. Though the thought of Russia controlling his country and his people set a fire in his chest, he would smother the feeling, forcing it to become nothing more than warm coals. Eventually, the fuel ran out and he did not have to try so hard to accept the new regime. He convinced himself it was in his best interest to never question the occupation; not in the privacy of his own home, not in the confines of his own mind. To do otherwise would risk everything. The bakery would become property of the 62

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state, my father would be forced to sweep streets and I, his only child, would be denied a college education.”

“So, how long did the Russians stay in the Czech Republic?” I asked.

“Czechoslovakia at that time, dear,” Silvie corrected me. “Though Russian tanks and the young men who drove them remained for a bit over 20 days, Soviet occupation lasted 20 years.”

Czechoslovakia became free again the year I was born. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to grow up in a world of communist rule.

“Well, Layla, you have to understand that communism did not just roll into our country with those tanks on the day I was born. Nazi Germany had occupied this land from 1939 until the end of World War II in 1945 when ironically, we were liberated by the same Soviet Red Army that would invade years later. They did not stay the first time around, but rather handed control over to the Czech Communist Party and kept a close eye on us. You see, we may have been freed of one totalitarian regime but it was quickly replaced by another. Socialism had been a way of life for generations before me.

“It was not until 1968 that a promise for change began to emerge. A man called Dubček came to power, bringing with him a new ideal of ‘socialism with a human face.’

Built on a premise for political reform, liberation and freedom, Dubček focused on loosening censorships and exploring increasingly radical ideas that opposed old communist 63

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dogma. The efforts became known as Prague Spring and though Czechs were hopeful that it would endure, we intuitively knew it would not last through summer. We were right. “Our powerful socialist neighbors intensified their watch when Prague Spring began to flourish. When the Russians grew nervous enough of our slight stray from the Eastern European imposed, communist way of life, they sent in the tanks. Young Soviet soldiers showed up on our streets prepared to fight. Their government had warned them that they would find Czechoslovakia in a state of revolt, which the young men eventually found could not have been further from the truth. “It was chaos. The Russian troops were caught offguard when what they really found upon arrival was the whole of Czechoslovakia in total disbelief. Our military forces were unprepared to respond to the invasion, so our government ordered them not to retaliate. Even though we did not push back, the Russians remained in our streets and it became very clear, very quickly that the citizens of Czechoslovakia would have to confront them alone. In true Czech form, we fought not with weapons or brute force, but with cunning, non-violent resistance. We defaced street signs. We relocated radio and television studios to undisclosed apartment locations throughout the city so that reporting could continue without interruption. We turned tanks around by giving out wrong directions and misinformation. We made troops feel uncomfortable and unwelcome by writing messages on the walls; literally and figuratively. Unless they were complete idiots, our people made 64

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it very clear to the Russians that they were not needed, nor wanted here.

“Government officials, though not on the ground fighting, urged our people to continue with doing what they could to resist relinquishing control to the Soviets. Dubček fought to keep Prague Spring alive until he, and several other notable figures, disappeared.”

“What do you mean disappeared?” I asked Silvie.

“You mean he took off? Abandoned his beliefs and his believers just like that? Gave up on all he’d fought for; his people; his country?”

“No, Layla. He left by force, hands physically tied behind his back. After he was taken, however, he did abandon all of these things in exchange for his life. During his capture, Dubček was forced to sign The Moscow Agreement which put an end to Prague Spring, once and for all.

In what looked like a pre-recorded, televised address to the nation, our leader announced that media censorships would be reinstated, political freedoms would cease and the Russian troops would remain. He begged, pleaded with us to concede peacefully so that no blood would be shed.

“Can you believe it? Our own government sold us out. After having been locked away in a damp, musty room, they gave us a taste of fresh air, only to send us back into the dungeon. Without their support, we no longer had anyone to protect us and no choice but to abide by rules of the new regime, unless we were willing to give our lives in opposition; and some of us were. But for the most part, resistance dissipated. We all just took a front-row seat at the 65

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show where the Russians were puppeteers; our politicians, the puppets; and we, the silent audience.

“Hope that the performance would end soon quickly faded with each passing year and neighbor or loved one that never returned home. Fear and loathing set in, causing many to live in quiet, numbing passivity, dreading the day that their own doorbell would ring, revealing a stranger sent to escort them to the top of Petřín Hill.”

Where I met Petr.

“It wasn’t always a park full of beautiful rose gardens and warm, sunny days, Layla. Many people took their last breath at Petřín’s peak as payment for conspiring or speaking out against the regime.”

I know that Silvie was too young to remember the early days of occupation first-hand and can tell that the story had been passed on from her parents and elder relatives.

I’m eager to hear more about her own experiences with the regime; when she was old enough to make sense of it all.

“I can’t imagine how some people lived that way, in silent fear, for 20 years,” I say. “It must have been such a relief when it was all over. Do you remember how it happened? How things began to change?”

“Of course I do. Growing up knowing only one way of life means that certain paradigm shifts do not go unnoticed. It was November of 1989, a month I remember well.

I was 21. I am sure you know what it is like to be idealistic and hopeful at that age, certain that there exists a better way, whether or not you possess the means to make things 66

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better. But what you do have is the will and the courage to try.

“My generation was raised in a communist world.

We knew nothing else, had no idea what life would be like without it outside from the picture our parents would paint through legends and fairytales, if they were brave enough.

We functioned on sets of rules, professors telling us what we could and could not study, governments telling us how late we could be on the street, parents threatening us to keep our mouths shut.

“But not everyone stayed quiet and eventually, my peers began to ask questions.

“One Friday afternoon, a few students from my university and I attended a sanctioned march to commemorate Jan Opletal, a young man who passed away precisely 50 years prior at the hands of the Germans. Ironically, at that time, he had been protesting the country’s then oppressive political regime just as we would do this night. Our gathering on November 17 was peaceful, our group calm and united. We were armed with nothing but a glimmer of hope, something we had not felt in our twenty years on earth, which had carried over from one week earlier when we watched in awe as the Berlin Wall fell to pieces. That was the confirmation we needed, that there existed a better way. We too wished for our wall to crumble.

“We met at the National Cemetery at Vyšehrad and continued on toward Wenceslas Square. More than 10,000 people had gathered together by the time we neared Národní třída where out of nowhere, the march came to a halt. At 67

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first we all waited patiently to start moving again, but after some time, word made it from those on the outside of the pack to those in the middle; we had been surrounded by riot police.

"It was surprising to me how calm the crowd remained. But then again, Dubček’s plea for passivity and non-violent surrender 20 years prior had made a significant impact on people of that time; many of whom were gathered with us, with their children. Unable to move in any one direction, people sat on the ground and on cars. Others stood at the front line, facing rows of officers. I could hear the voices of young people shouting, ‘We have clean hands!’ and could see them holding flowers they had carried with them from Vyšehrad, high into the air, fingers waving in the sign of a ‘V’ for victory, though we had won nothing yet.

“An hour must have passed before the police began moving in on us, pressing the mass of people inward. Cars lining the street were forced together. I jumped on the hood of one Škoda so as not to get pinched between its bumper and that of another. That is when I noticed an itching sensation in my eyes; they began to burn, to sting, to water. I had made if from the center to the edge of the crowd and from my vantage point, identified a break between two officers. I bolted for the opening but moved slower than I had expected, not considering the number of bodies between me and the outside in that moment of panic. I turned back to the center when the night sticks rained down on me, on everyone around me.

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“I stood amidst the chaos and for a moment, there was silence. Then, I heard chanting. The shoving stopped.

For a moment I was no longer a single human among many others, but I had morphed into something greater and stronger than myself. I felt something I had never truly known my entire life: freedom. It was like a vortex above our heads began to suck up years of oppression, making the force on the ground lighter, stronger. Students and stragglers within the crowd fought back, though with words, only with words.”

I was astonished to say the least. Silvie had been part of a moment in time that I would soon learn changed the fate of her nation. Hundreds of students and protestors were injured that day, though luckily no lives were lost.

The night of November 17 set the stage for the remaining six weeks of what became known as the Velvet Revolution.

It triggered mass demonstrations and strikes showing public dissent, which gained steady, contagious momentum, powered by an awakened passion in the hearts of all Czechs. By the end of 1989, she said, leading Czech Communist Party members resigned from office.

“What about your family?” I asked Silvie. “Where was your mom when you showed up that night at Národní třída?”

Her mom had passed unexpectedly the previous year. I think about my own mom, about how she would have felt had I been Silvie, in Prague, during a revolution.

She would have been afraid, I tell her.

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“My mother was an interesting woman,” Silvie said.

“Thunderstorms scared her, the Russian regime made her nervous. But she was never afraid of the fire I had inside of me. I do not think she would have been afraid. I think she would have been proud.”

As it goes with summer thunderstorms in Europe, the gray sky opened without warning, revealing the blue backdrop. Heavy clouds parted, letting the warm sun shine gently on the wet earth. Silvie must be right; her mother had been proud.

I’m beginning to understand that there is no such thing as coincidence. When we believe two events are connected, interrelated, one giving meaning to the other, it must be less due to chance and more to a heightened awareness of circumstance growing within ourselves.

When worlds are linear, we function day to day looking only forward and behind, never at the present. It requires little focus, for our minds are always occupied with events that will occur or which occurred long ago. Yet when they take more of a spherical shape, we are inclined to focus on moments in real time, for wherever we are within that circle is one point closer to all life events than if we were merely a point on a line. We are better able to see our surroundings in front, behind, above, below, on many levels and in many realms. This brings an awareness of the present allowing us to better see our world as it truly is: events and experiences interconnected. Coincidence becomes in70

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consequential because every moment has its place. As our ability to recognize these relationships grows, the closer we find ourselves to a fuller circle of life, one in which good is released and returned, where love flows freely, where everything happens because we cause it to happen. Because every decision we make, every action we take is made consciously, with an understanding that it has an infinite, circular purpose.

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I Was Patient Though the ground is soaking wet when I leave the bakery and my sandals are kicking water up at my jeans, I fight the urge to escape the elements and head straight home. I stay away from the castle. I don’t feel like fighting crowds just to get a decent view of the city. With this rain, I’d expect tourists to disappear into museums or pubs, but I know them better now. Instead, I’ll find them hiding under covered sidewalks lined with cheap souvenir shops or crouched beneath a tour guide’s umbrella. As soon as the torrents subside, they’ll emerge like earthworms, wriggling and squirming, one on top of the other to the nearest site circled on soggy maps. I’ll want to scream at them all to stop, to not push or rush; Prague’s not going anywhere.

Instead, I take a side street leading toward the river and pull out my pocket guide book of the city, something I rarely do since most times I prefer to walk these streets in total oblivion, experiencing my surroundings freely rather than being chained to historical facts from a book.

I’ve meandered through this part of town several times before when the sun was shining and groups of visitors were shuffling through. But with the crowds now tucked away from the weather, it feels like the right moment to put these charming little streets into context of the 72

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bigger city. I pass Kampa Museum and a few massive, crawling babies without faces, then flip through the book, using the strange statues as a way to identify this part of town in the guide.

Malá Strana: also known as Little Town or Lesser Quarter; sits at the foot of Prague Castle; got its start in the 700s as a market settlement; granted town status in 1257; was once full of noble homes, palaces and baroque churches; survived near destruction twice, once from battle and once from fire; is now home to many Renaissance-style dwellings, shops and restaurants; this stairway made its debut in Mission Impossible; that wall idealizes peace and John Lennon; a quaint area; worth spending the day.

I toss the book back into my bag, the plain descriptions and numerical stats doing little to help me connect with my surroundings. I’d much rather sit with Silvie and listen to her talk about how her great cousin’s husband’s brother was commissioned to create this marble figure for the king or how her grandmother was wed in that cathedral before it burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, later rebuilt to look nothing like it did before tragedy struck.

Standing in the center of Malá Strana, I glance over at the stairway Tom Cruise may have climbed and it fails to resonate; I’ve got to watch that movie again. I resolve to climb the steps another time and instead opt to walk in the opposite direction, taking the narrow passageway between an outdoor café and a pub. I find myself crossing a tiny bridge above an even tinier stream, its railing constructed of iron polls cemented into the ground. Padlocks, bike locks and what look like locker locks are closed shut 73

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around them. I hesitate to pull out my guide book again to see if anything’s written about this odd display, but curiosity gets the best of me.

Love locks: lovers carve their names onto a small lock, fasten it to the gate above the river and forget the combination or toss its keys into the canal below; a symbol of eternal love, forever uniting.

I watch from a distance as a young man feels the heaviness of a column of padlocks, lifting the bottom most fixture so that all those above it slide upward. He holds his hand at shoulder height for a moment before letting go. The pieces drop at once with a clang and he steps back to take a photo.

I imagine eternal love to be lighter and less pressing, something we give, expecting nothing in return. But the locks leave me feeling like love is more a desperate duty to someone or to something, losing all of its meaning once we feel the need to define it, to lock it up. I look away from all the metal.

“Would you mind taking my photo?” the young man asks.

I smile and shake my head. He hands over the point-and-shoot and I let him show me where I should place my finger. I quietly wonder why people do this. It’s a button on a digital camera, not the trigger on a weapon of mass destruction. I think I can manage.

He steps back to the railing, puts one hand on a lock, turns to me and grins. A stranger’s hand on a lock that 74

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was placed there by someone else, at some other time, with a single thought in mind: eternal love.

I wonder how many were locked by a single person, in hope or in vein that their love would be returned. I wonder how many were placed by lovers still together and by lovers drifting apart.

I have trouble imagining how a single act of fastening a lock and tossing its key would have any effect on a relationship between two people, on a relationship trapped between iron rods where its only hope for release is lying on a rock in the stream below. My cynical side convinces me that for many who have crossed this bridge, the pressure of eternal earthly love, at some point, became too much to bear, the promise breaking like a brittle branch beneath a boot in the cold of winter.

Snap.

I show him the image on the screen.

There he is, locked in time; perhaps better than being locked in love.

Not a few steps farther I find a burst of color extending a few hundred meters from where I stand. It’s the John Lennon wall. The picture images draw me in. The painted lyrics keep me searching for more. This demonstration of love instantly feels lighter, freer than the feeble dis75

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play of desperation I’ve just passed. The wall is powerful, yet its heaviness is not what demands attention, unlike the locks over the bridge.

I crouch down on a curb across the street, the only way to take the entire piece in. My book notes that the art first appeared when news of Lennon’s death reached the rest of the world. The cement wall quickly became a tribute to the musician, the inspiration, the messenger of love and hope and peace and even quicker became a landmark for free expression of anti-communist rule. Overnight, the first images plastered on by young Czech revolutionaries were painted over by the state, but the slate didn’t remain clean for long and from that night on, it never would.

I move closer and pull out my own camera to take photos, but colors on the screen fail to do the wall justice. I find a pen and write down what I see: hope and faith. The words don’t just pulsate on an immobile object from decades before, from Czech youth expressing a yearning for a communist-free world and from those very first layers lost over time, but from more recent searchers tagging refrains from Marley, Bono and even Jack Johnson. The fresh smell of paint helps me realize that I’m not alone.

A small empty space within a four-foot tall peace sign catches my attention and I move toward it. With the cap gone from my pen, I move my hand to the wall and let it rest. My eyes gaze up at the massive letters: I-M-A-G-IN-E. Imagine having been right here, 30 years ago in the dead of night, heart burning with rage, a bucket of paint in 76

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one hand and a brush in the other. Would I have been one to come to the wall? To write words defying my government? To risk being found out? Caught by the guard? Identified on camera? Arrested? Jailed?

Perhaps I would have hid away in the darkness of my mind, the conflict festering inside, void of an outlet, void of a voice. Would I have let others lead and if so, would I have followed or would I have simply stayed behind?

My hand begins to shake. It’s difficult to imagine the person I would have been, the actions I would have taken or those I would not have. Given the fact that I left my entire life back home makes me believe I wouldn’t have stuck around. I may have still tried to convince myself that leaving wouldn’t be running from turmoil but sprinting toward peace.

The ink hits the surface, bleeding a bit, leaving a small liquid splotch against the white paint. Against all control, my hand begins to move.

It’s hard to believe the time has come, a year passing as quickly as a day. I pack my things in solemn silence, trying to keep my mind steady and clear. Reflecting on what I’ve learned and focusing on where I’ll go when I get back home or what I’ll do once I get there is doing nothing for me now but making me anxious. There are just some things that are out of my control.

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Petr, Silvie, Misha and Jan stand by the door as I roll my luggage through the living room. I have so much crap piled into these bags, it was difficult to get the zippers closed. They should give a bit more resistance to my pull but instead, they glide along the floors as if they were stuffed with goose down feathers, attached to wings, threatening to take flight. My head is dizzy. I feel like I’m floating.

Jan and I never spent much time together. Hell, I hardly ever saw him and this makes me sad. I shake his hand. I give Misha a soft hug and kiss on both cheeks. She promises to come back to the States to see me and Colby. I tell her I have no idea where I’ll be, but that wherever I am, she’ll always be welcome. Silvie pulls me into a snug embrace, wrapping me up in her warm, inviting bosom. I squeeze her back, giving a little shake to feign a tightness that’ll never loosen. Through watery eyes, I look at her, tell her I’ll miss her; assure her I will.

Petr looks at me with a selfless smile. Since the moment I met him I wondered what saying goodbye would be like, if the words would even come. My life here with him has been eye opening to say the least. He read straight through me, that day on Petřín Hill, that time in his studioflat. He knew exactly why I had come to Prague without me ever needing to say a word. I want him to know that though I haven’t completely achieved what I set out to, I feel I’m more confidently headed in the right direction. It’s because of him that I’ve grown closer to myself.

I kiss him on the cheek. He holds me there for a second, two, three, for what feels like an eternity. I still feel 78

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light on my feet, but I try to focus, try to hold on to this feeling as long as I can. I want to take it with me. If the others are still in the room, I don’t even notice.

I find the strength to let go, take that step over the threshold and shut the door behind me one last time, leaving a tiny, pulsating piece of my shaky heart in that room.

In literally no time at all, I’m back on an airplane that’s taking me home. In these past twelve months, I never heard from Jay, nor did I ever reach out. I’m not the same person he said goodbye to, which feels like just yesterday.

It’s like I’ve changed; overnight.

I wonder if he’s a different Jay from the one that I left. I wonder if I would even recognize him if we passed on the street. I lean my head back, recline my seat a bit and try to remember his face: the softness of his jaw, the smoothness of his skin. Despite my erratic nerves after takeoff, I’m able to fully concentrate. This act of recalling his features begins to oddly calm me.

I breathe in deep and let the oxygen escape with a force so powerful it jolts me forward. I open my eyes and look out the window expecting to witness the moment a plane breaks through the layer of clouds which cover a city; the one where darkness and shadows from below are left behind in an instant; the one where the nose makes an opening in that dense, obtrusive blanket of fog, carrying the wings, body and tail along with paralyzing force; the one that offers you up to the endless blue sky, to the complete other world that only exists up in the air; the one empty of 79

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bustling streets and pushy people; the one that creates just us and space.

Disorientation leaves me once I realize this pressure isn’t the result of an ascending plane, but one that is quickly, matter-of-factly and undoubtedly descending. I am unable to lean forward as we pick up speed.

We’re falling. This cannot be happening.

My fear of flying never kept me from researching tips and tricks to survive a crash from 1,000, 10,000, 30,000 feet up. The only thing I can remember now is the fact that how you felt physically, mentally and emotionally the first ninety seconds of a flight is the greatest indicator of survival.

Was I panicked? Was I calm? Was I thinking about my fear of flying or was I trying to picture the features of Jay’s face? Come on Layla, think! How did you feel? Were you thinking about Jay but longing for Petr? If you were, did you feel guilty? You’d better figure it out now, because we’re at 20,000 feet and this thing isn’t slowing down. The wings are still intact and though you’re in the back with a better chance of survival, the plane will surely break apart soon. Your seat will go flying and it’ll be up to you to gather your wits, stay conscious and decide which method you’d like to bet your life on, to soften the crash-landing that’s coming at you quick.

I feel myself falling and like in a dream, the journey downward seems to last forever. My body feels light and free, though the force of gravity pulling the plane to the 80

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ground is putting pressure on my chest, as is the thought of both Jay and Petr. I can’t help but wonder who I will see last.

“Layla. Layla! Wake up!”

I open my eyes to find Misha’s face several inches from mine. I sit up. I’m clammy and sweaty, my hair is stuck to me like cooled noodles in a hot cooking pot; I want to peel each piece away from my skin. My throat is dry and scratchy and my head is spinning.

“What in the world were you dreaming about? You must have had a tremor or something; scared me half to death.”

When I get my wits about me and I’m confident that this is no dream, that Misha’s really in front of me, that I’m alive and not free-falling from the sky, I laugh. For one thing, it’s the only way to assure her I’m not crazy, nor still in a dream-like state and for another, I can’t help it. The twisted expression on her face of both confusion and concern can’t be ignored.

Misha stops hovering over me and sits down on the bed. She lets out a sigh and I see her shoulders roll forward in relaxation. The moonlight streaming through my windows highlights the black of her hair which falls in perfect place around her. The shiny, silver, halo illusion makes her look like an angel, or rather, how I might expect an angel to appear in the dead of night. Her skin is porcelain soft, void of a single blemish. Her eyes are so deeply knowing, otherworldly, caring and kind.

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I let my own tension go, lean back and sink into my pillows, pulling the covers up to my chin like a child who has just been proven wrong; there really are no monsters in the closet. And like that child, I keep the covers close.

Those monsters may have only disappeared for the hunt, slipping under the bed until it’s safe to return. I need to be ready to hide my eyes.

She takes my hand away from my face and places it in hers. Her grasp is not strong, but it’s far from weak. I keep the other close to me. Under any other circumstance, in any other situation, I would not let her do this. I am 26, far past the age where I need consoling and comfort. I may not have my life all figured out yet, but this handholding is an act of sympathy, something that provides temporary solace without permanent solutions. I’m not looking for someone else to make it all better.

I don’t need anyone to feel concern for my emotional state either, especially Misha. She has more important things to worry about like the fact that her husband never comes home anymore. But it’s been difficult to hide that I’m lonely, confused and a little bit lost. I imagine the midnight cries she heard from down the hall won’t help me mask it either. She’s not going to believe me when I try to tell her nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine.

Typically, with a nightmare like this, I’d wake myself out of it, roll over and shake Jay until he woke up too and turned toward me. “Had a bad dream” was all I’d have to whisper. He’d pull me close, wrap his arms around me tight and assure me that it was only a dream, nothing more.

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on me, me cheating on Jay, falling, dying, any of life’s possible scenarios that I dreaded most – he’d help me feel relieved long enough to slip into sleep once again. Until now, Jay had been the only one whom I’d willingly let comfort me, without any bit of resistance.

“I don’t remember much,” I finally answer. “I was in a crashing plane. That I’m sure of.”

The truth is I can recall everything. Every last detail, down to the color of socks on the old lady sitting next to me, the smell of ham and cheese croissants, the stuffiness of the air and my aversion to breathing in too much of it, the fact that I was alone and very afraid of dying.

“Was anyone with you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh man, Layla, that’s tough. Sometimes dreams can seem so real. It’s no wonder you were frightened. Is everything alright? I mean, in general, with being alone here in Prague? Are you missing home?”

Where is home? California? The small town I grew up in? The apartment I shared with Jay? If I can’t say what home means to me, how can I say whether I miss it or not?

This is something I struggled with back in the States; feeling out of place, feeling like wherever I was, I didn’t belong. But I hadn’t given much thought to it lately. I tried not to anyway. If I had, I wouldn’t have made it a single day here, alone.

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Over the past few weeks, I had noticed a small ache slowly growing inside of me. It pulsated with more intensity now that Misha was calling it to the surface. Uttering one simple word triggered its release. Maybe I do miss home, whatever that means.

“I don’t know, Misha. In a way, yes, I miss familiarity. I miss a language I can speak and understand without much thought. I miss a short drive to the ocean. I miss certain people. But I know I need to be here right now, away from what I might say is my home. If I left Prague and went back to California tomorrow, I’m not so sure what or who it is I’d be going back to. On the other hand, being here really is difficult sometimes.”

I’m struggling, trying to explain a feeling I’ve only felt, not yet had to describe in words.

“I don’t know if I’m making any sense.”

“Layla, you make plenty of sense. I have been where you are, feeling out of place at home, feeling out of place abroad. When I was younger, I knew there was a big, wide world out there and I wanted to see it. My world was getting so small it became suffocating. You may think Prague is pretty big, but just like any city you grow up in, it slowly closes in on you and you find yourself questioning whether or not you are where you are supposed to be.

“So I left. I was 22 when I went to the States, when I met your cousin Colby and I had no concern about leaving people, missing people, being so far from home. When you’re that young, you don’t think about these things; you 84

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just do whatever it is you want to do. You go and you do it and you don’t look back.

“Finding myself in a foreign country was a huge reality check for me. I struggled. I too went to a place where the language was fairly new. Yes, I learned English in school, but putting it into practice is drastically different when you have to use it, live it, every single day just to survive. Think about how many people here know English to help you get around, Layla. Now think about how many people in the States knew enough Czech to help me settle in; none. I had my share of feeling lonely or like I wasn’t savvy enough to survive abroad without family nearby to save me. It was tough, and you know we weren’t so easily connected back then. It was a letter or a very short phone call that kept people in touch. Not everyone had email and Skype didn’t exist. Being ‘that Czech girl’ soon got old too and I started to question whether or not I had made the right decision to study so far away. But I stayed. And it was the best choice I could have made.

“Look, Layla, the point is, you’re here for a reason even if you don’t know it yet. Give yourself the opportunity to realize it by becoming fully acceptant of who you are now. Allow yourself to feel a little insecure, unsure, selfish and alone. But also allow yourself to acknowledge your intelligence, beauty and contribution to this world. The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the more you’ll realize that you’re already home. Home is something we have the power to create, Layla. It’s not something that can simply be found.”

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I had been looking up at the ceiling watching it ebb and flow, swell and release, as it does when you lie on your back in bed staring ahead with intense concentration; an optical illusion that calmed and hypnotized me, helped me focus. I’ve heard every word that Misha said and it all made perfect sense. But I’m still skeptical of whether or not it’s possible to become fully accepting of oneself; flaws and all.

Misha spoke again, breaking the short silence.

“Can I ask you something?”

I turn and feel her gaze filtering through the shadows of the room. I’m glad it’s dark. At this moment, I think I’d have a more difficult time looking at her than at my own self in the mirror.

“Of course,” I said. “What is it?”

“You said you were alone on the plane in your dream?”

“From what I can remember I was. Why?” “Well, I came into your room after hearing your muffled cry. It sounded as if you were calling for someone, addressing this person by name.”

I’ve never been told I talk in my sleep. This is a first for me and I’m curious.

“Layla,” Misha asked, “who’s Jay?”

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Last night, in its entirety, feels like a dream within a dream when I wake in the morning. Misha and I stayed up until dawn. I confessed to her how I just took off, how I left things or didn’t leave things with Jay, how I now have this connection with Petr, how I still don’t really know who I am or what I want from this life, leaving me with many mixed emotions that bombard me daily. And instead of facing them straight on, I find myself in a constant state of limbo in which I’m neither happy nor sad, motivated nor discouraged, satisfied nor desperately yearning for something more, something different.

Misha, in true Czech form, told me to give myself a break. I may not have looked my emotions in the face, but I have not yet turned a blind eye. She made me revisit the day I left home, when I recognized a feeling of unsettlement and took a chance at mending myself by changing my surroundings rather than accepting the situation as it was.

The disservice could only come now, by failing to recognize perpetual unsettlement, residual negative emotions, that may have followed me to Prague.

She assured me that I wasn’t alone in my quest for inner peace and the struggles I’ve experienced to find it.

Not many on this planet are perfect or perfectly content.

Mother Teresa, a woman whose life appeared to be centered on faith, once questioned divine existence, questioned her own purpose. Like Mother Teresa, we all have an obligation to ourselves and to humanity to call out our fears and doubts, nail them to a cross and raise them up. In time, 87

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we’ll find that the darkness inside is in fact our saving grace.

And whether or not I did the right thing by leaving the way I did, without saying goodbye to Jay, Misha believes I still have a chance to make it right.

I stand still beneath the hard water, let it wash the dry, sticky sweat away from my skin, taking the residue of bitter, salty tears down the drain. I have no more left to cry.

Only fears to face and risks to take. My hair grows heavy on my head. My eyes are covered by the thick, wet mess it makes. But I can still see, not necessarily what will be but rather, what needs to be done.

Who knew a random shower in our apartment on a summer day in Prague could feel so much like a re-birth, like a baptismal ceremony on the Jordan shore where sins are washed away clean and revelations are made. Desperate measures, planned escapes and secluded adventures needn’t be necessary to find what it is we’re looking for. Sometimes a little guidance and a quiet look inside is all it takes, wherever we may find ourselves.

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I Was Accepting I haven’t heard from Petr in some time and set off for his flat. Something he said weeks ago has stuck with me ever since and I’m just now beginning to understand its meaning. This delayed response is nothing new for me. Often concepts and ideas float around in my head for long periods of time before they’re fully internalized and either dumped for all eternity or appreciated and applied. His shared realizations are starting to take hold.

He spoke about passion, about everyone having it whether they were consciously engrossed in it or still blindly unaware it even existed. I want to tell him I heard him.

The negative and judgmental voices keeping me from discovering enthusiasm for anything are simply products of a fear I haven’t yet had the courage to defeat, which is why I put up with a mediocre job, a mediocre salary and a less than mediocre level of fulfillment for so long. Thankfully, something inside of me refused to let fear turn into total complacency. If it had, I would have never left home. I would have never shared last night’s conversation with Misha; one that for some reason or another opened my eyes in a way I never imagined possible. If I were a believer, I’d say it had been some sort of divine intervention.

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It feels good to have finally come to recognize two of my most powerful fears. With each step I take toward Petr’s door, the closer I come to taking control away from the first; my fear of saying goodbye. I would not only find Petr to thank him for helping me see, but to also to wish him the best. Not because I’ve made any decision to love one over another, but because I want to stay true to the reason I came to Prague, the reason he so poignantly pointed out for me the first few days we spent together; to face my second fear of finding my true self.

I ring the bell to his building. No answer. That’s odd. It’s mid-morning and Petr’s typically working in his studio around this time. But then again, Petr’s not a typical guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly switched up his routine. I lean against a tree. I would much rather sit against the building, but decide against it. The first few feet of these facades are covered in dry piss from both dogs and drunks.

A woman appears from behind the glass double door pushing a stroller. I walk off to the side before she notices me and appear in front of her as if I’ve just arrived, stopping to pull out my keys. As she swings one door open, I place a hand on its frame so that she can easily pass through. She says a quick thank you and exits, turning down the street with a leisurely gate. I step inside, shut the door behind me and try to mimic the woman’s selfconfident stroll. Petr has always just buzzed me in. I’m in 90

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new territory now, letting myself into his world, and I feel a little strange about it.

I step into the foyer, a big open space with skylights set in the ceiling four stories high. From here, in the center of the ground floor, I have a 360 degree view of every door in the building, yet fixate on the second floor, second door on my right. I give the guard a nod and a smile. He nods and smiles right back. He recognizes me from the few times before.

Turning to go up the steps, I let out a short breath and pull my shoulders back. Showing up at his place unannounced feels so unnatural and a bit dangerous. For all I know he could have another woman in there. To which I couldn’t complain. Petr and I aren’t official. He’s simply someone I connected with one day on Petřín Hill, someone I spent a few nights with, someone who taught me more about myself in a matter of days than I ever thought possible to learn in a lifetime.

I’m usually comfortable around Petr, but I’m lacking that comfort now. I feel like I should put up my guard; get defensive. But before I start beating on my chest, I remind myself why I came: to thank him and to say goodbye.

Standing in front of his apartment flat, I ring his bell again. No answer. I press my ear to the door waiting for the slightest sounds, but hear nothing. I knock lightly this time while placing my hand on the knob. With a turn and not much force, the door swings open.

His flat is empty.

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“Petr?” I ask softly, not knowing why I ask because I don’t expect an answer. I step inside and absorb the void that surrounds me. Everything’s gone. Petr’s gone. He didn’t have many furnishings to begin with: a bed, a small couch, a nightstand and several pieces of art. I could have transported all of his possessions single-handedly in less than an hour. He must have been out of here quick.

I move to the wall of windows at the far corner of the room where he used to work the clay with his hands. I turn and sit on the floor, leaning my back against the wall. I close my eyes and breathe him in, remembering the conversation we had about passion, as I watched his own take shape in front of me, watched him caress it, shape it, feel it.

Every ounce of pure love for that moment exuded from his body, filled the room, drifted over and tried to permeate my skin. But I wasn’t ready for it. Instead it rested on the surface like a thick Shea butter body cream, taking its time to hydrate, fill pours with its healing properties, while still allowing them to breathe.

I’m not bitter or upset about Petr’s unannounced departure. Neither am I upset about not having been ready at the time to fully understand his veiled teaching. My feelings are quite the contrary. I’m oddly at peace and rather relieved the situation unfolded as it has. Petr came into my life as quickly as he left, yet I don’t believe that means he needs to be forgotten. I thank him quietly. I thank the walls, the space in the room, the floor that carried his weight, the air that filled his lungs and now filtered through mine. I uncross my legs, stand and walk to the door. Before I leave, I whisper my goodbye.

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Out on the street, once the door of the building shuts behind me, I’m overwhelmed by a flood of emotion, hitting me like a flash flood without warning. It’s so instantaneous I can do little to catch my breath. My vision is blurred. I can hardly see.

So many times I’ve passed women on these streets looking like wrecks of a mess. Tears falling, make-up running, straight hysteria in her eyes; I’ve often wondered what it is that’s caused her to release such emotion for the world to observe. She becomes a spectacle, a crying stone, something that beckons to be studied and stared at. Sometimes she’s on the phone speaking a language I’ve never heard, yet her tone is unmistakable; upset, covering up a voice that’s broken and insecure. Often times I’m certain the wrongdoer is some man and the reason for her troubles.

What else would cause her to act like a raging lunatic in public? It’s an even easier conclusion to make when she’s not on the phone and he’s standing defiantly there in front of her.

Though I don’t feel close to such hysteria, I do sense in intense sadness growing stronger against my will.

In an act of precaution (I surely don’t want to draw any sort of attention if it gains too much control) I quickly find a side street which will allow me to bury my head, let these forceful thoughts that came in like a storm swirl and rage around as I sit; one third host, one third observer, one third pawn to their facetious little game.

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The short, stone wall I seek refuge on is shaded by trees, providing confidence that no one will witness this potential breakdown. Closing my eyes helps me concentrate on the feelings invading me. If I try to understand them, perhaps I can control them, force them to leave. The darkness blocks out sounds that, in the light, would steal my mind and take it to the clouds, following the chirp of a bird or the dance of a leaf. Such distractions wouldn’t help me now. To intensify my focus, I bury my face in my hands.

If I believed in karma, this would in fact be the little bastard seeking retribution. If I believed in coincidence, this would be the ultimate. Instead I try convincing myself that there’s a lesson here to be learned.

And so, the analysis begins.

Why am I so upset? Did Petr really mean so much to me? We had a connection on a level deeper than physical. The sparks were instantaneous. Every moment we spent together made every moment without him feel increasingly insignificant. But if I never thought about the future much, never pictured him there, how truly important was he? Even so, my heart aches now that I know he’s gone. It’s no wonder I have a hard time saying goodbye; it’s a catalyst for the aftermath that hurts so much.

Would having had the chance to say the word made any less painful? Or would it have persuaded me to grovel, cry, and beg him to stay? Maybe that’s why I left Jay the way I did. I wouldn’t have been strong enough to go if he had asked me not to.

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It’s the first time I consciously feel super shitty about Jay; about leaving him, making the decision about our future for him, getting into bed with another guy shortly after him. I realize now how much I really fucked up.

Not because I left Jay, but because I wasn’t honest with him, wasn’t honest with myself.

“Answers don’t reveal themselves, you know.”

Startled by a woman’s voice, I nearly lose my balance on the wall, my hands moving down from my face to the stone supporting me. The light is blinding. I must have been in the dark for a while. I blink. And blink again until the spots disappear and the shadows around me regain their natural color and form. Through my squint, a petite old woman comes into focus. She has wrinkles on a face which looks vaguely familiar, one I’ve perhaps seen only in dreams. The portion of the wall on my left is slightly stooped, just enough that she is able to rest upon it, as lightly as her sweater floats upon her bony shoulders. Her stocking covered toes, slipped into open sandals, barely reach the ground. She stares at me intently. Though I’m still struggling to adjust my eyes to the sun, I can see she is looking at nothing else but me.

“I’m sorry, was I speaking out loud?” I ask confused. It’s one thing for Misha to hear me talking in my sleep, but it’s quite another for some random stranger to hear me thinking my thoughts.

She takes a small bakery roll out of her bag without removing her gaze and takes a bite. What’s with these people and their rolls? In the morning, in the evening, in the 95

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street, in the subway, they’re always eating rolls. No butter or jam or meat or cheese stuffed inside, just rolls. Soft, fluffy, white rolls.

“It’s up to us to reveal them to ourselves,” she says with no regard to my previous question.

“Please forgive me, but how do you know I’m looking for answers?” I ask, making no effort to hide the irritation in my voice.

Perhaps for her, the answers to these questions of mine matter very little because she does not directly respond. Obviously she doesn’t match my desire to know with a desire to share, quite in the way I’d like her to.

And how do you know I speak English? I wonder.

I’m in no place where any tourist might find herself. And even so, I could just as easily be Czech or German or Italian or Scandinavian as I could be British or American.

As my brain is busy trailing off, the woman scoots down from her perch on the wall and walks slowly toward the side streets between buildings from which I assume she came. Baffled, I watch her leave; her slightly stooped shoulders mimicking the stone wall resting over a wobbly cane in one hand, half-eaten roll in the other. Her back is turned, but I can still feel her stare.

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On my way back to Misha’s I can’t get that woman’s face out of my head, nor can I get her voice out of my ears. All this time I feel I have too many questions and not enough answers. And like nothing, without any warning or explanation, a complete stranger essentially tells me I’m going about it all the wrong way.

Am I so easy to read? Lately it seems as if the entire universe is speaking a language I find inaudible and my written pages are sprawled out on the floor for everyone to see, read, and comment on. They’ve been written with careful thought, yet at the same time, what appears in the script of what I might call my life is a complete mystery to no one but me.

I try quite hard, whether it’s visible or not, to make each word mean something more than its literal translation; when combined together, to mean something more than their meanings apart. Perhaps it’s the weight I place on these words that make them seem less significant. So careful and cautious I’ve been of my actions, of the letters on the page, that I’ve lost sight of the plot, the story, the beginning, middle and end. In doing so, my words have become meaningless.

I find a bench to sit. One of the great things about Prague is the sprinkling of parks where you might least expect them. In such a compact city with moving people and rushing trams, it’s nice to take pause in the middle of it all, freezing time in your mind as the world continues to spin around you.

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I’ve only walked a few hundred meters from the stone wall where I met the lady with the face, but I feel the need to sit once more; this time in public, where perfect strangers walk with their heads down, less likely to approach and strike up a conversation.

I lean my head back and soak up some sun. There’s no telling how long it will be out in full force; they say it’ll rain again within the next few days. It’s quite common to expect rain and get sun here, sun and get rain, but I relish the warmth anyway. I bring my head forward and look down at my burning toes, exposed in their peep toe flats, eyes skimming over the image on my torn up tee. I was in such a rush this morning to see Petr that I threw this top on without a glance in the mirror: my first concert, A Perfect Circle, with Jay nearly seven years ago.

For nineteen years I had been content with the likes of Brooks and Dunn, Lorrie Morgan and Dwight Yoakam.

Melodramatic love songs were somewhat of a release for me; a lost, boyfriend-less teenager among a flurry of girlfriends who had apparently all found love. There are times when I believe not much has changed.

Then Jay came into my life with his loud heavymetal, alternative-rock taste. Intrigued by his passion for melodies so different than those I was used to, I gave them a chance and soon fell in love with some of his favorites.

He would argue, but the lyrics were just as sensational as my country classics. Instead of cheesy love songs though, these aimed to understand the world without a filter, musicians asking themselves what this all was for.

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Which is what I started doing when I first met Jay; looking at my life a little deeper, asking myself more and more what I was doing with it. And now here I sit without him; wearing his t-shirt, wondering if this whole journey will end in a perfect circle or whether it will take me a thousand miles from nowhere.

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I Was Content The heat of summer melts into a very warm fall which quickly freezes over as the winter’s cold appears, without a transition of changing leaves and progressively cooling climate.

Though I’m told the snow came later this year than in the past and will disappear earlier as well, I find myself fighting a dreariness that drapes my surroundings. It’s strange how weather can have such an impact on emotional well-being.

Below freezing temperatures limit my jaunts outside. Coming from California where we celebrate Christmas on the coast, I have to put some effort into staying sunny and sane, although I must admit that the vitamin D tablets Misha shares with me do their part to help.

When I first arrived in Prague, colors in the city were so beautiful and bright. Yet after the first fall of snow and cover of clouds that have come in and remained, pink and green trimmings, yellow and orange facades and intricately woven rod-iron balconies have diminished in boldness, amassing the deepest shades of gray; mute, bland, achromatic gray.

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The shop is less busy now. It seems many people have more time to do their own baking once the holiday season arrives. But I still show up to help Silvie out, listen to some stories and give my mind a rest. The damn thing rarely stops.

“So how do you like this weather?” Silvie asks as I walk in from the cold, stomp snow off my boots and pull off my hat, gloves, coat, sweater and scarf.

She releases a deep, hearty laugh when she sees the sarcasm on my face match my “It’s lovely” response.

“But you do not see snow every day in California.

How can you not think it is lovely?”

“Silvie, I was being honest. It really is lovely, but I’m lazy. I have to put on all these layers to walk a few hundred meters outside as I get from place to place, just to take them all off. I can’t feel my fingers, I can’t feel my toes, and I can’t feel my face. You’re right. It typically is very sunny where I come from, but I have been to the snow, so I know what cold feels like. But honestly, Silvie, I never knew cold could get so, well, cold.”

“Yes, but it will be gone soon. The winter is not expected to last long this year. It is a shame really. Seasons used to actually be seasons, broken up by subtle temperature changes. Now, one day its summer and the next, middle of winter. All the big cars you Americans drive have completely changed the weather here. Winters are short, summers are long, and whatever time is left for spring and fall leaves little to be enjoyed.”

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I try telling her that not everyone back home drives SUVs, that many people I know own small sedans. Without getting into a full-on discussion about global warming and who’s doing what to contribute to and combat it, I try to explain that waste and carelessness for our environment is everywhere, in every country. She looks over at the endless piles of plastic bags we put our customers’ rolls in and drops her head in agreement.

She tells me that maybe she’ll start discounting customers who bring in their own takeaway containers.

I tell her I think that’s a really great idea. And I promise that when I get home, I’ll drive my car less; take public transportation more often.

We close early and stay in the shop for lunch as usual, sitting under an open kitchen window with the snow falling lightly outside. It’s so warm from having had the ovens on all day that the cold air coming through makes for a welcome, refreshing breeze.

I stare out the window to the garden where Silvie and I have spent warmer days. At first, my eyes take in the falling snow as one revolving sheet of white. Then just like a manual lens, I shift my depth of field and focus on individual pieces of snow which before, molded together to form a solid blur. Picking out a flake at the top of the frame, I follow it downward until it disappears from the shot or melts away on the sill.

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One tiny snowflake makes its way inside, landing on the sleeve of my long sweater. It stays for a moment, assures me that my walk back to Misha’s will be freezing. I lower my head to the table and zoom in as close as I can.

The ice which forms each vein is intensely magnified now.

The background is a blur.

Its six crystal arms are an elaborate piece of work for something so short lived. The symmetrical pattern is a perfection that’ll never be replicated, not even by a primary student with superb scissor skills. Sure physics can explain how it happens, how these little flakes form, but however we try to mimic their beauty, on paper, in photos, in blown glass, Mother Nature’s attention to detail will never be matched.

“Did you know that no two are exactly alike?” Silvie asks, setting down our coffee.

No two alike. That’s hard to believe. Of all the snow, in all the world, in all of time, I’m being told that there have never been and never will be two snowflakes with identical structure. In some way or another, each one that falls will be slightly different from the next.

“Sort of like humans,” she adds.

I’m surprised the little creature has survived so long in the warm kitchen. Before I lift my head to look at Silvie, I watch the flake disappear as quickly as it came, leaving a tiny droplet of water where it once proudly stood on its arms and legs of crystal ice. Yeah. Exactly like humans.

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“I just love wintertime,” Silvie says when she finally has a seat.

I look up.

“More than summer?” I ask, longing for warmer days myself.

“I would have to say yes, more than summer. Most people see winter as a depressing time of year. It is cold, it is dark and it makes everyone frown. Birds hide and plants wither away. I understand how it can be less than pleasant.

But for many of us, winter signifies rebirth, like spring in other parts of the world.”

“Oh right. It was in November when the Velvet Revolution began; your journey on the path to freedom,” I say with a smile, remembering Silvie’s story.

“Exactly. There were a few demonstrations, the communists left and I got the hell out of this country.”

“Czechoslovakia wins its freedom and you skip town. So that’s when you first went to America?” I asked, recalling her say she had met her husband there.

“That’s right, where I met my husband, René. He was working as a sous-chef at a little French restaurant in Pacific Beach. I was an au pair for the well-off family in San Diego that owned the place. I know what you are thinking. I thought it was strange as well: an American family owning a French restaurant. But somewhere down the line they had French ancestors. Your country really is a bit of a melting pot. Anyway, as the restaurant was passed 104

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down and the family became more Americanized, it lost the traditional French flavors and flair. In an effort to revive its authenticity, the owners decided to hire a few French chefs, working under the table of course. One of them happened to be René.

“I would take the children to the restaurant for lunch. Many days, we would walk on the boardwalk and play on the beach before showing up, dripping with wet sand. Thankfully nobody cared. All of the patrons knew who we were and those kids were allowed to do what they wished.

“I remember the first time I saw the sea, hesitant to put my toes in the water. The oldest daughter took my hand and said something I could not quite make out. My English 20 years ago was terrible when it came to both speaking and understanding, yet the young girl was always so patient with me, speaking slowly. On this day, however, she had said something too fast, the excitement in her eyes pulling me forward and masking my panic. We ran into the crashing surf, marking my initiation into the waves. I felt like a child for a moment, experiencing the touch of abrasive salt, stinging cold and curly seaweed all at once. It was stimulation overload. Senses I never knew I had before woke from their dormancy and forced out a high-pitch, giddy, childlike scream.

“The beach became a place where I would go and sit whenever I had the chance to be alone. Immersing my toes in the damp sand helped cool my body on a hot day.

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over to form a perfect barrel and then crash onto the shore, losing their shape in between granules of broken rock and glass before slowly retreating to the depths of the ocean.

When days were difficult for whatever reason, if I was missing home, family, food or familiarity, I would take what worries possessed me and throw them out to the sea, let the last crashing waves carry them away and the cool wind blow the others off of my face and out of my mind.

“I very rarely missed home, though. I missed people more: like my mother. But that was nothing my place in this world could fix. Though she was a part of my life for 20 years, I often longed to talk to her after she had passed, to wrap myself in her arms during my own, personal thunderstorms.

“It helped that the family I worked for quickly came to treat me as one of their own. I knew they would never replace my mother, but it was comforting to meet such caring people. They never made me feel like just an au pair.

“I remember my first birthday celebration in the States. They gave me the day off, but we all met for dinner at a sea food restaurant near the boardwalk that evening.

The menu came to our table near a large picture window.

We had the best seats in the house. I let my host family order since the menu was in English and, still being new to the language, I had trouble visualizing what would appear on my plate based on the names of each dish. Now, I grew up around food, so I was no stranger to trying new things, but you must understand that the Czech Republic has never been known for exotic cuisine and that night at the restaurant presented a first for me: lobster.

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“Talk about feeling like a foreigner. The waiters brought this huge red shell on a platter and set it down on the table. I had never seen anything quite like it, didn’t even know creatures like that existed, and was surprised to find that they were edible. My efforts to get to the sweet meat turned out to be quite entertaining. Everyone at our table had a great time watching me in panicked confusion as I picked up that silver tool to crack the shell, placed my first claw inside, squeezed and broke it all into tiny bits. I nearly died when the father reached over to help me with the body and wanted to vomit when I saw its green insides.

“I am sure this sounds to you like an insignificant experience, but when you are in a place so new and unfamiliar, the simplest of tasks can make you feel like an outcast. It passes though. When you live abroad, it is normal to experience phases of discontentment and displacement. But you must keep in mind that it does not last. I eventually settled in and mastered the children’s routines which gave me a few extra hours each day to myself. I decided to look into a second job and naturally picked up evening shifts at the restaurant, waitressing, working on my English and getting to know René. When it was slow, he would show me how to make pastry dough for the next day and quiz me on English names of kitchen utensils. That is when I fell in love with baking and with the man who taught me how to master it.”

“And so you married him; the man who showed you how to make crème brûlée and swept you off your feet?”

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Silvie smiles; it’s clear she still feels the same way about her husband today as she did when they first met. She may even love him a little bit more.

“I did. We came back to Prague eventually and offered to take over my father’s shop. He was ready to move to the country by then. You know, it is funny. When people get older, many have this overwhelming desire to return to nature; to that from which they came. My mother was buried in her hometown of Southern Bohemia where all of her family has been laid to rest. My father wanted to spend more days close to her, trimming the ivy that ran on her plot, planting fresh flowers as the seasons turned, watering the life that found nourishment from her bones.

“Have you been to a graveyard yet, here in Prague, Layla?”

Death and goodbyes; they kind of go hand in hand.

I don’t care for where this conversation’s heading.

“No, I haven’t,” I answer in an almost whisper. “In all honesty, I’ve never been to a cemetery ever, anywhere, in my entire life. I’m rather spoiled I would say, sheltered from the pain I can’t even imagine accompanies the loss of a loved one. I suppose I should knock on wood; there’s just never been a death of someone so close to me.”

“Well you are right,” Silvie says. “The pain is unimaginable. But dear, death is a part of life. And until you can learn to embrace that unchanging fact, you will never experience life as it is meant to be lived; with complete sur-

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render to its powers and a child’s curiosity for the secrets it beholds.

“Do me a favor before you leave this country; whenever it is you will leave. Take a walk up to Vyšehrad Cemetery, where the Velvet Revolution was born. It is less known among tourists than the Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov, which I’d never recommend going to anyway.

Now that place is depressing. Headstones have shifted over the years, so much so that they suffocate each other, topple over one another, no longer mark original plots. I do not understand why anyone left a loved one there, without privacy, dignity, or a proper place to pay your respects.”

“Yeah, I’ve walked by but haven’t gone in. I find it so odd. Why wouldn’t they have expanded the cemetery to make ample room for each body? Or simply stopped selling plots of land once it became apparent that they were running out of room? Shouldn’t there have been, like, a maximum capacity?”

“Yes, you would think. But Jewish religious law does not allow graves to be destroyed or tombstones to be removed indefinitely. So, when the cemetery eventually ran out of space centuries ago and surrounding land could no longer be purchased to expand, it became common practice to remove stones, place freshly deceased on top of an existing grave, cover it with fresh soil, replace markers and add new ones. That is why the headstones are all so close together. It is said that in one given area where you would expect a single tomb to be, there marks up to twelve layers of graves, one on top of the other. Fascinating, yes, and it is a sight to see, but not for the 300 Czech crown you will 109

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have to pay to enter. So go to Vysehrad instead. It is beautiful. And it is free.”

I’ve never been to a cemetery, never stood over a grave. There have been times, however, where I’ve peered into a huge empty hole and contemplated jumping in with both feet. Sometimes the darkness is tempting. I’ve jumped off a bridge into traffic and in front of a speeding train approaching the station. The impact’s instantaneous causing my muscles to spasm, stealing my breath for a moment. I shake my head as if the thought will somehow pour itself out of my mind, after I watch my body take the leap, feel it take the fall. And then it’s gone; the feeling’s gone. But the thought remains and I feel shameful for having imagined what it would be like because my life is not some sort of tragedy, because I know there are people worse off, because I have food to eat and somewhere to sleep and clothes on my back and a family that loves me and books to read and TVs to watch and a car to drive. And so I am shamed for having imagined what it would be like.

I’m not so sure what it is that keeps me planted firmly on the edge, what makes me take a few steps back, instead of plunging forward without any hesitation or one last look over my shoulder.

But I want to jump. I think I need to jump. Perhaps then I might learn to fly, to appreciate life, to no longer fear all kinds of goodbyes; the ones that haunt me in reality and 110

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in dreams and in uncontrollable thoughts that plague me on these shaky platforms.

“Ok Silvie, so I’ll walk up to Vysehrad. I’ve never been to a cemetery before but if you say it’s something I must see, then see I must. Although, I’m a bit weary at the thought of walking above and around a bunch of deceased humans. Isn’t it sacrilegious? Shouldn’t the dead simply be left alone?”

“Layla, you are not going to dig up graves. I have to agree with the Jews on that one. The dead should remain where they are. What the sense is in excavating old tombs, I’ll never know. When you go to Vysehrad, you are going to see the beauty in death. Most cemeteries here in Europe are different from those in the States. They are not simple, nor cold. They are extravagant and warm. You will see what I mean when you get there. It is easier to say goodbye when you know your loved one is in a beautiful place; not just metaphysically, but here on earth as well. And even if you have no one to visit, there is nothing wrong with having a look, appreciating something so lovely.

“You have to use your imagination, but I will tell you that it is a little bit like being at the beach.”

She looked out the window as she took one last sip of her lukewarm coffee.

“I miss the beach,” she finally says.

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“Me too, Silvie. Me too.”

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I Was Confident All this talk about family and the beach makes me desperately miss home. I spend the next few days at Misha’s, sleeping a lot. And in my sleep, I dream. Dreams that make no sense and dreams that are so real I wake up feeling like I’m somewhere else; and once I’m fully awake, like I’m somewhere I don’t belong.

They come one after the other, in rapid succession.

I’m sitting on the carpeted floor of an empty room, save for a woman who reminds me of myself, throwing sheets of glass around wildly. I want her to stop but don’t have the nerve to tell her so. She should be allowed to throw things, sharp things, if she wants.

The glass sheets shatter into tiny pieces and without warning, they turn into pins all around me. If I want to stand or move or leave, I need to pick them up; hide them away so that I don’t get hurt, so that she doesn’t get hurt.

She seems much more fragile than I. It’s difficult though because I can hardly see. My vision is terribly blurred. The yellowish-tinged tungsten light coming from above and the shadow of the woman moving fluidly around me are both felt more than seen. Crisp outlines escape me. I don’t touch my eyes because there’s nothing physical covering them.

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Whatever impairs me is caught up in the wiring, in the sockets and out of reach.

Strangely, I’m not panicked. I try to remain still, legs swept to the side underneath my body. I press my hand lightly to the floor, move it along slowly away from me, doing my best to pile up the pins, create some space, some necessary clarity. They move along without much force and eventually a circle of carpet surrounding me feels safe. But because I’m unable to see, I’m uncertain whether or not there are tiny pins hiding between the thick fibers. So I don’t move. I sit blindly as the shadows continue to dance about the room.

I wake up relieved that I’m free from the constraint that was a carpet full of sharp glass shards and pins. Then I realize I’m still in Prague; that I’m still afraid to say goodbye, upset that I left Jay the way I did, that Petr left me the way he did, that I’ve been here for months and still am not sure how to feel better than I’ve been feeling. The sun shines softly outside, though I know the snow will soon fall. It must be early morning and I’m in no mood to rise. I sense the cuts and pricks awaiting my feet and close my eyes to them. Throwing the covers back over my face, I feel the shadows lose their magic. I fall back into a deep, tiring sleep.

In my dreams, my mind is constantly moving, but my body refuses to budge without a massive amount of effort. I often find myself victim to intense physical paralysis, which would be just fine if I were lying in a field of daisies or on some tropical island under a blazing hot sun, but I’m often wanting to escape something and don’t have enough 114

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power to bat my eyes. When my desire to move is unbelievably strong, I’m at times able to overcome inertia with an intense output of energy. Needless to say, these dreams leave me feeling exhausted.

I’m walking home in the dark of night through a neighborhood I’ve passed once before, but it’s been a while. I try to remember the streets, the turns I had taken, the buildings I saw, but my memory has abandoned me in the absence of sunlight as it often does in real life. This nighttime world feels completely foreign to me from the same world at day.

In search of someone to ask for directions, I soon find myself in a narrow corridor which drops me off into an open dirt courtyard. There are few glowing street lights, making it a bit less difficult to see. Shadows appear, but unlike the familiar shadows in the dream I had earlier, these are completely foreign. I’m certain they’re not mine. They belong to people, lurking around corners; people of the night. My muscles tense up. I find myself on guard.

If I turn and run, they’ll come after me. I know that in situations like these, in dreams like these, running won’t take me far. Doing so in slow motion with an attacker on my heels is little fun and I don’t feel like putting up a chase tonight. It’s too late to bolt anyway. I’ve lost any lead I ever had. They’ve seen me now and are fast approaching. It’s time to hide any fear.

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I’m backed into a corner with no immediate promise of escape. The shadows ask me where I’m going but I do not know and cannot answer. Their eyes are empty, yet still they stare, emitting a certain hatred that’s more felt than seen; for what, I don’t know and don’t care to find out.

As it happens in dreams, the unexplainable occurs.

An open door appears behind me, exuding the brightest of light, beckoning me to enter. I hadn’t noticed the exit before, but its sudden presence is no abnormality. In my dream mind, it was there all along; perfectly understandable that I’m only seeing it now, when I need it, for the very first time.

I slip out of the courtyard through the new opening and find myself in a barn-like room full of others like me, scattered about, looking on with eyes kinder than those I stared into moments ago. I see no shadows in here, but I do feel fear; a fear freezing these shadow-less people in their spots. They look at me and stare.

Thinking quickly, I gather my wits and shut the heavy wood door I came through with as much force as I can muster. The dark shadow people from the open courtyard are pushing their way in from the other side. I look around. I have no time to wonder why the shadow-less people refuse to move.

One man frozen on a bale of hay beside me is nearly as tall as I am sitting down. I tell him to stand, come over and help me hold the door. I don’t intend to be nice, nor give him an option to refuse. Instead my demeanor is force116

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ful; my tone is harsh and direct. He has no choice but to follow direction.

With both feet on the floor, he towers over me. And he’s not just tall, he’s big; his arm’s twice the size of my thigh. With all that weight behind him, he should be able to keep the shadow people out himself. But he doesn’t move until I order him to. He places both hands on the door and leans softly, the hundreds of pounds behind him wasted.

I’m taken aback. How can someone so massive be so deceivingly weak? He has no power, no strength, no desire to survive! The others disappear from my mind and I focus only on the man in front of me; on the muscle of a man that hangs flimsy and limp. I tell him to move his hands, dig his shoulder into the planks, set his feet, bend his knees, tighten the fibers in his gigantic legs, use all his force, all his might to keep them out. Look at him! Look how big he is!

How strong he could be! But all he can do is put his shoulder to the door, as softly as he did his hands moments earlier. They’re making their way in. My anger subsides and I too am overcome with weakness. I feel weaker than the shadow-less man with arm muscles the size of thighs, unable to muster enough strength to put his weight into a door.

Just as the mysterious escape route had appeared earlier behind me, now appears a woman; a woman whose face I’ve seen only in dreams. She offers me a ride in her car, pointing to an opening on the other side of the room. I don’t stop to think. I get inside and don’t look back.

It’s nearly noon when I pull off the sheets, exhausted from the tossing and turning of both my body and brain.

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dreams have left me with this feeling, an odd mix of power and weakness, and I struggle to determine which I possess more of right now. I try giving in to sleep again but the faces of the night haunt me, keep me awake, so I pull out my notebook and write down everything I can recall. Perhaps then, the images in my mind will live not in me, but on paper, and I’ll rest more easily.

Though I don’t believe much in coincidence, I do have faith in signs; in incidents that carry with them some undiscovered, deeper meaning, lessons to be learned. My eyes, however, have been blind to those appearing in broad daylight. So, I ask that they manifest themselves in my dreams and stay with me until I wake.

How simple life might be if we knew exactly what was expected of us here, what work we should be doing, where we should be doing it and with whom we should be spending our days. Nothing would be wasted; not time, not energy, not emotion; the sanity of so many saved.

Perhaps I am the woman in the shadow, the woman on the carpet gathering up pins, my vision in real life blurred as it is in my sleep. Perhaps I’m not ready to see, not ready to receive the signs that are revealing themselves to me, all around me. Perhaps in order to view them more clearly, I need to open more than my eyes.

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I Was Bold The weather in December leaves much to be desired: hot chocolate, hot spiced wine, warm raging fires, anything that embodies the polar opposite of snow, ice and freezing cold. It’s been a wicked, unforgiving winter and with Misha and Jan away from home more often, they leave the apartment feeling colder inside than out. Without much warmth, it gets lonely, so when Silvie asks me to join her one snowy weekend at her family’s place in the mountains, I don’t hesitate to say yes.

The tiny cabin is more of a summer house, she explains. Often during winter if the storms aren’t terribly bad, she and her family will gather there anyway, if only to get out of the city for a few days. The bakery would be fine.

She’ll shut down her operation for a week and inform her regulars of the planned closure. And as she’s done in the past, she’ll leave a scribbled note on the door for those who stop by less frequently.

I find that Silvie’s place in the country is larger than she had led me to believe, even with the number of extended family members packed into it. The expansive property it sits on makes her summer home feel like a mansion.

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all around the city, it seems, are masked in a deep snow and covered by a blanket of gray. It’s refreshing to find myself in a place with more greenery, even if most of the trees are capped in white.

For the first few days, I spend a lot of time in the garden, breathing in the mountain air so deep it stings my lungs and looking out to the miles of land that extend deep into a dense forest. There’s nothing to fear out there, Silvie tells me, other than losing my way. There are no bears, no mountain lions, and no snakes; nothing like what I’d have to look out for in California.

She also says it’s too bad I didn’t make it here during the summer months; that I’ll have to come back next year. Mushroom hunting and geocaching are some popular outdoor activities that she can’t believe I’ve never participated in, let alone heard of. I try to explain that where I come from, “mushroom hunting” paints a completely different picture than the one she’s describing; trampling around in the woods, wearing knee-high boots and pulling wild mushrooms out of the earth. Mention the phrase to any adolescent in the States and you’ll quickly find a few bags full with several quick phone calls. Mushrooms found from either situation sound dangerous. I’m not sure the adventures are worth the risk of ingesting poison.

Geocaching sounds a bit less formidable, however, as the only poisoning might result from brushing up against some wild plant. The biggest challenge doesn’t necessarily seem to be staying alive, but keeping from getting lost.

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abysmal at this pastime as well, even if equipped with a GPS tracking system.

Irrelevant, Silvie explains, because the hunt can be carried out in teams. There are 3,000 caches hidden in the Czech Republic and the fun is simply locating them, checking out their contents and leaving something of your own behind. Apparently it’s a game played all over the world so she continues to be baffled by my never having heard of it.

Sounds a bit like the time capsule idea, minus having to wait centuries for the find to be novel. I tell her I’ll think about giving it a try sometime. I enjoy hiking, albeit on very well marked trails and am no stranger to staying overnight in the woods. Yes, camping; plenty of times as a child. Yes, in tents; not everyone in California is from Hollywood and has adopted the practice of “glamping.” Getting out into nature may be on the decline, but I’ve experienced my fair share of dirt and campfires.

I feel a strong need to step out of the cabin and kid with Silvie that I’m off to find a cache without any help from some high-tech tracking system; come find me if I’m not back in a few hours.

She hands me her mobile phone and smiles. The cabin number is listed as the very first contact. Call if I have trouble finding my way back. I take the phone but don’t intend to use it. Instead, I follow Misha’s advice that I’ve come to love more and more since my first days in Prague; I head out into the shallow snow without any direction and the sole intention of getting lost.

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It’s early afternoon and for such a cold, winter day, the sky is clear as glass, the sun reflecting off the transparent atmosphere and onto my face, warming me the way a sip of hot tea does after hours spent trudging through snow.

There’s a cleared path marked by trodden footprints starting just past the garden, leading out into the shaded woods.

Someone had been snowshoeing and marked a trail wide and flat enough for me to follow. Had this been fresh snow, my boots would have sunk right in, the snow swallowing half of my body with each step. The walls of white on either side nearly reach my knees.

I’m overwhelmed by the quiet, the silence of the open space and am so grateful Silvie invited me here. In this moment, I’m thoroughly content with being away from home, from Prague, from my mind.

The surrounding trees are magnificently tall. The deep brown molasses of their bark is far richer than the gray tinged trees in the city. Everything is so vibrant and fresh and alive. There’s even some blood red and freshly burnt orange fusing into the striations that work their way up each trunk. Above me, crisp green leaves light up like the pegs of a Lite-Brite plugged into the wall of a child’s playroom as the sun filters in through their fibrous veins.

The line between imagined and real is becoming slightly blurred.

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acutely aware, more than they’ve been in the recent past, and I embrace the familiar, but long lost feeling. Before it begins to slip away, I head in the direction of a boulder that I’ve spotted not far off of the path, ahead in the distance.

Not yet covered completely in snow, I climb atop the massive stone and brush frozen white clumps off the surface and onto the ground, watch the flakes fall from the rock as they do from the sky. I pull my legs up to my chest and then let them relax into a crossed position. My surroundings are still as bright and magnificent as they were moments ago. I’m a bit startled this feeling is not gone completely, yet slightly concerned that it’ll disappear altogether if I watch it too closely. I close my eyes and open my ears, imagining them to be four times their size, funneling in the wing flap of a bird, the crawl of a worm, the bite of an ant; I want to hear and hold on to every movement.

In little time, the only thing audible any longer is my breath; the inhale, the exhale, inhale, exhale. My inhales are short, save for a few where my body feels the need to take a deep breath, which I hold before releasing with a powerful exhale until my lungs are completely empty, leaving me feeling lightheaded and dizzy.

My ears soon shrink back to size and I no longer hear my breath, so I focus on nothing but the subtle rise and fall of my chest as I sit on the rock nestled in snow in the open space of the forest behind Silvie’s home. I feel the muscles in my whole upper body relax, my shoulders slowly roll forward losing any proper posture, hunching over, my head hanging low.

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Despite the cold, I notice a warm sensation moving slowly from my toes, to my calves, thighs, hips, belly, chest and shoulders. It creeps up my body, then gains momentum after making a U-turn, speeding down through my biceps and forearms, shooting like lightening out each finger; thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinky. The heat escapes for a moment, entering again through my toes, loosing not a single degree of warmth.

The steady stream of fire within is calming. I imagine anyone observing me might actually be able to see it for the slight instant it leaves my upper body, as it makes its way from hands to feet in the frigid air, arches and meets back at the far end to complete the circuit all over again.

This goes on for some time until the surge of energy racing through my veins slows, becomes less warm and begins to fade away. I let it; I don’t try to force it to stay. My mind is doing a surprising job of keeping still, observing rather than participating in this odd occurrence. As I feel the arches of heat lose their intensity and the energy escaping my fingers become a slow trickle, I sense myself growing even more still; my body, my mind. There is nothing moving inside anymore. No energy, no thoughts, just complete, encompassing stillness.

I relish the feeling, try not to control it. I simply let it be.

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ing. All this time my head has felt heavy, sagging forward.

With my eyes closed, I’d swear it’s been just inches away from my lap.

Without warning, I feel my head become light, lift itself high into the air. My shoulders follow, rolling in reverse, blades pinching together. My face points up toward the afternoon sun. I feel the energy return, emitting upward bursts from the center of my body, not making its way back this time. The give is continuous, yet not for a moment do I feel empty.

My arms drop down to their sides and my spine begins to elongate, stretching down through the rock and into the earth, up through the trees and into the sky. I feel hundreds of feet tall. My mind wants to tell me this is nonsense, impossible, unimaginable, fantasy. This sudden growth spurt is not reality. But I shut it down for a moment; it’s my turn to play.

With my eyes still closed to the world, I visualize the space around me, looking down from my disproportionate height onto the elements below. There’s no snow on the ground, no winter in sight. In fact, I’m no longer on a solid rock but on the wet soil of a grassy field. Tiny blades tickle my skin. My head’s in the clouds. I can see over the trees. For miles and miles it is quiet; I’m peacefully alone.

My body begins to sway, millimeters, then inches from side to side with the breeze. I’ve stopped growing, but remain tall. I soak in the sun for a little bit longer.

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a sip of the potion that makes her shrink. If anything, I want to eat more of the cake that makes her grow. I’ve had enough of feeling so small, living my entire life like I should fit smugly into a teapot; put the lid on and forget about me.

Slowly, my eyelids separate and I slide off the rock, pull myself to my feet, stretch out my arms and take a look around. Back on the ground, back to reality, I find that the feeling fails to entirely disappear. I smile. Never, have I ever felt so tall. And light. And like my head might lift off my shoulders, my arms might fly away to the sky; like if gravity didn’t hold me here, my whole self would be up, away, gone.

The sun has nearly disappeared, setting behind the mountainous backdrop; a painted canvass that hangs on the wall. In the distance, the scenery looks like a piece of art.

It must be nearly five in the evening when I even start to contemplate the time. I hope Silvie isn’t too worried or upset with me. I’ve surely been gone for more than a few hours, though it feels like just minutes. I continue my deep breathing on my way back to the house; try to keep my mind silent. I want to hold on to this feeling forever.

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fear of the feeling I had experienced, fear of returning to it and never coming back, fear of being different, fear of being weird.

I suppose I’ve always had a toe in this other world in the mirror; perhaps everyone else knew except for me.

Growing up, I wanted, tried to be normal. But I always felt different; a little unusual. Kids don’t ever try to hide that from you.

Today, on the rock, was my day back in the mirror.

And now I want to put both feet in.

Something happens to us all as we transition into this phase known as adulthood; a time when we’re expected to begin taking care of ourselves. We start looking at the world in a way we never had before, in an attempt to better understand it. Trouble is, it can’t be understood. Understanding the world means understanding people; people who do horrendous things for no reason, no regard for human or animal life; people who give up their lives in service, denying themselves any pleasure in the world; spectators who do nothing but sit around and let life simply happen all around them.

At some point this becomes realized; this fact that understanding the world as it is, is impossible. We let it go, accept defeat. It’s then that we shift our attention and look at trying to understand something perceivably more within reach and easier to control; ourselves. We ask questions 127

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like: Who am I? What do I want? What do I stand for?

What do I believe in? Surprisingly, this proves to be an even more troublesome feat than attempting to better know the entire universe.

Had I held on to the connection with myself that I’d made that first day I realized I was alive, I wonder if these curiosities would still exist or if I would have had a stronger sense of who I am so that they never would have taken up the space that they do now in my mind.

“Layla! We almost sent out a search team for you!”

Silvie proclaimed as I slowly come through the door.

“But then I went and had a look outside. I could see you in the distance sitting on the mother rock. That is what we call it, the mother rock. I do not know what you were doing out there but you seemed to be fine. So we decided to let you be.”

I thank Silvie for keeping an eye out for me - my mom would be pleased - and for not causing a scene by calling in reinforcements. After apologizing if I did cause her any worry, I explain that there are times when I’m able to appreciate the beauty of a place in a different way when I’m alone, away from people. I beg her to not take offense.

I don’t worry about the others; the rest of her family doesn’t understand a stitch of English. We’ve been communicating through Silvie’s translations or ridiculous charade games and newly invented sign languages.

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She completely understands, or so she says, and I quickly tell her to let me help prepare dinner. I no longer ask, because Silvie will always deny any offer of assistance. I’m her guest, she tells me. I am her guest, I explain, but I’m also her friend. And friends help each other out, especially in the kitchen. The work is too much for one person, alone.

“Ok, grab a knife and start cutting those onions. I’ll put these in some water.”

Silvie pulls the few branches I collected on my way back to the house from my hands. She gives me a sly smile as I hand them over, which leaves me dumbfounded.

I loved how during the warmer months, Misha brought fresh flowers home from the market. She wasn’t often around to enjoy them, but it never mattered. What mattered was that when she did come home after a long day at the office, she knew she’d be welcomed by bright bursts of color on the kitchen counter, the dining room table, the living room coffee table, the small armoire in the hall, the dresser in her bedroom, the shelves in her bathroom; each fresh petal doing its part to make her smile.

As the days have become colder, Misha’s filled her home with perennials less and less. They’re not as hearty now as in the spring and summer and are much more expensive than they’d typically be in warmer months. On my way back from the rock today near Silvie’s cabin, I came across a barren, yet beautiful tree. I picked a few of its delicate branches thinking that they’d at least bring some neutral colors to Misha until the bold flowers were plentiful 129

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and reasonably priced again. And even if what I brought home dried out and died, I was certain they might still provide some comforting texture against the stark white walls in her flat.

“What’s with the face?” I ask Silvie.

“What face? What do you mean?” Silvie banters back with one eyebrow raised, lips pursed as if she’s got a secret and she’s determined not to let it slip.

She’s messing with me. I love how some humor’s cross cultural.

“Come on, Silvie, you made a face when I handed you those branches. I swear it said something like, ‘I know something you don’t know.’ You can’t make a face like that and not explain why; so not fair.”

I may be an adult but I’m not too proud to fake a pout that makes Silvie question whether or not I’m really going to shed a tear. I smile so she knows I’m bluffing and she continues toward the sink to fill a vase with water.

“These, my dear Layla, are cherry branches. They are a symbol of Saint Barbara, a legendary holy figure.

Now, I realize that our country is not so religiously inclined, but nevertheless, we do celebrate some people and events related to the so-called divine.”

I nod in understanding, permitting Silvie to go on with the saint’s story.

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“Poor Barbara spent much of her youth locked away in the tiniest room at the top of a tower while her emperor father was away on business. She lived her whole life in this dark place, lit only by daylight streaming through two very small windows.

“She often desired human interaction, but was denied any by her pagan father. Who knows if it was out of spite or in desperate need for someone to connect with, but at a rather young age, Barbara decided to give her heart to God, devoting herself to prayer and peaceful solitude. She became consumed with the Christian faith and one winter while her father was out, she declared her new love for all to see. With little in her immediate possession and quite a bit of time on her hands, Barbara prayed and picked away at the stone walls, turning her tower with two windows into a tower with three; representing the holy Trinity.

“Upon his return, Barbara’s father was not the least bit pleased to find his daughter’s room boasting another potential escape route; two was more than enough. He was also enraged to learn that his daughter’s conversion to Christianity facilitated the change; so much so that he demanded she renounce her faith. When she refused, he commanded that she be tortured and then beheaded.

“It was said that while Barbara awaited execution, she passed time by nurturing a cherry branch that she’d broken off of a tree near her window, moistening it with small droplets of rationed drinking water each day. Depressed, alone, Barbara eventually found comfort in her fate when, days before her death was scheduled to take place, the dried branch blossomed.

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“Now it is customary to buy these branches after Saint Barbara’s Day in December, place them in water, and wait to see if they bloom by Christmas. If they do, it is believed that you are destined to have good luck for the following year. That, or you will be married; one of the two,” Silvie says emphatically, emphasizing the end of her story by crossing her arms in an exaggerated motion.

I might say that it’s a coincidence I’ve brought home cherry tree branches - a random object which could just as easily have been a pine cone – that represent something like love, luck or marriage. But I don’t believe in coincidence or superstition. Finding a few nice looking sticks in the woods doesn’t make me a martyr or someone’s soonto-be lifelong companion.

Silvie gives me a wink as she finally places a few branches in the water filled vase and sets it on the table.

She wraps the others up in newspaper knowing I’d like to bring them home to Misha. When she asks which it will be, marriage or good luck, I tell her that if I have to choose, I suppose it should be luck. Like I’ve said since the beginning, I didn’t come here to find love.

Misha agrees; they do a lot to liven up the textureless walls. She loves them scattered about the place, bringing a bit of the outside in. She makes no mention of the legend of Saint Barbara, of the superstitious story about

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luck and love, hidden in the tiny green buds protruding from the bark.

On Christmas morning, she wakes me with a hug.

I walk out to the kitchen to make coffee for the two of us; another morning where it’s just her and me. A bundle of the brown branches sits on the dining room table and I see what it is she may be smiling about; a single pink flower, bursting from a stem.

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I Was Peaceful Thankfully, the tough part of winter passes quickly.

Street cleaners have piled up the last of the snowfall onto sidewalk edges, which has turned a filthy brown from foot traffic and car exhaust. Some days it seems as if we’ll skip spring completely as the weather goes from near freezing one day to scorching hot the next, the snow melting away to reveal cigarette butts, candy wrappers, tram tickets and piles of preserved dog shit.

It’s a pity how, with time, everything once seen as beautiful and pure eventually becomes clouded and mundane, even if only temporarily; people, buildings, cities, landscapes, art. After a few months of living in Prague, of passing the castle on my way to the bakery, of crossing a bridge that has survived two World Wars, it amazes me that the fantasy and intrigue of this place is slowly fading. Tourists taking photos, oohing and aahing, running and pointing, distract even more from any promise of returning charm.

I push through the filth in the streets and in my mind so that I can still view the city as the magnificent place that it is. I know that with the coming of spring or summer or whichever season Mother Nature chooses to bestow upon us, so too will come a reinvigorating burst of 134

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color; a canvass splashed with the palette of an overjoyed artist, painting under the rays on a sunny day.

A few drinks in a beer garden by the river help to bring back the awe. With each sip of Pilsner, the gold and green of St. Vitus Church begins to glow brighter, until it’s the only image on that hill that I see; castle walls around it disappear.

After the emptying of my glass, steps over the Charles Bridge become lighter and lighter as I head to Misha’s. I stop to watch an old man in his jazz band sing into some sort of phonograph, which carries his raspy voice like a beat-up feather on the wind straight to my ears, tickling them as it passes and continuing on in whatever direction it’s blown. Racked with passion and emotion, his sweet melody coerces me to smile and sway, getting lost in the crowds which flow on around me.

If for just this one walk home, the magic returns, but it’s not long before I start to wonder if this too is merely a dream. How did I ever let this place become so lifeless in my mind? There’s a castle down the street for Christ’s sake; I pass it every day on my way to the bakery. Yet it takes a few beers to help remind me of where it is I’m living my life. I give myself a break; it’s easy to forget, I suppose. My stay in Prague may be a fairytale on the surface, but I’m still hosting a slight battle of knights beneath it all.

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After that day on the rock at Silvie’s cabin, I’ve often tried transporting myself back to that place of quiet, thoughtless, peaceful meditation. Once Misha’s left for the day, I find a warm spot on the living room floor where I sit cross-legged and stretch toward the ceiling, inhale and exhale, until the fog from my morning mind has burned off.

Then, just when I can see a little bit brighter, I close my eyes. Thoughts make their way in and I work hard to turn them away. As soon as I feel one beginning to form, I send it out with a forceful blow, let it twirl around until it disappears into thin air.

The time it takes to quiet my mind grows shorter each morning as I am sent back to that open field of mindless thought sooner than I’d been the day before. I grow in height faster too and always with the same intensity.

I stay in this place for a while, before ending each session with a few heavy breaths. I enjoy how this is going.

I find myself starting my days feeling lighter and freer, thinking less thoughts, experiencing more moments. It’s my two feet in another world; a world so real and unreal all at the very same time. Some days are of course harder than others to keep my mind completely open. Some days the thoughts return like a boomerang, smacking me hard in the face, despite how I work to send them away.

My mind is far off and I can tell this will be a twofeet-in kind of day, but I try not to give it much attention.

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The line between observing and experiencing completely is becoming fragile and thin. I don’t want to break it, erase it, disturb it. Like a childhood toy, one simple shake and the aluminum powder divide will disappear.

I’m in deep, but still slightly aware that I’m sitting on a hardwood floor waiting to be taken to another place.

This experience is different from my dreams where images and scenarios in my mind become waking reality, where there is no outside voice I’m forced to quell, observing and commenting on my thoughts, my feelings, my actions. My dreams have become a parallel world that when in play, is real life with nothing around to question or analyze its validity. Yet here on the hardwood, attempting to tap into a dreamlike state, I find myself pleading with my consciousness to surrender.

Just as I feel myself growing in height in the middle of a grassy field, I’m startled to see someone appear from afar and approach me slowly.

Every time I come here I’m alone. Is my imagination causing the apparition? Or have I fallen asleep upright and like a dream, what’s happening now is no longer in my control, is not of my own creation?

I focus on the image and resolve to let this scene play out on its own while trying to keep my mind from convincing me that none of this is real.

I’m slightly unnerved now, looking down from my monstrous height at a figure growing nearer and conse-

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quently, taller. What feels like hours later, we’re face to face, eye to eye.

My mind is quiet, muscles relaxed. I can simply observe.

He says nothing. Just looks at me and smiles. It’s not an angry or devious smile. There’s no pain in his stare.

He’s open and free; the same as me in this moment.

I inhale a deep breath and without warning, let it out more forcefully than I would have liked.

And with that, he disappears. Jay is gone quicker than my distracting thoughts on the wind.

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I Was Daring Colors around me are growing more vibrant with the change in weather, but I still find myself viewing the world in shades of gray. I had hoped journaling would help.

Realizations splash in the form of ink on paper, spilling out of my head in profound surges of liquid emotion. But when I go back days later and read what I’ve written, the revelations seem stale, colorless.

I’m hoping it’ll feel different on canvas.

There are a ton of stationary shops in Prague. After my shift at the bakery and lunch with Silvie one afternoon, I decide to stop inside a papírnictví close by and pick up some supplies. I walk in and emerge with a few things I’m certain I’ll need: tubes of acrylic paint, a brush and a piece of blank material that’s just asking for a mind-splattering.

My first strokes are careful. I’ve completed a light sketch of the city skyline after numerous glances at the digital screen on my camera. There’s no way I can paint the scene from memory and I’m not about to sit at the edge of the Vltava with canvas on my lap. As I prefer it when I write, I wish to try this alone.

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vas make contact. I remind myself that it won’t matter if the final product’s any good. What matters is that I enjoy the time spent creating it. There’s a hesitancy in my hand which stops me. Sketching the image in black and white was easy. I knew it would be painted over, the overextending lines erased, the rough outline growing into a more defined composition. But now that it’s time to paint, I tense up, become careful and calculated as the shapes begin to take on more permanent forms.

I put the brush down and exhale deeply, taking few steps back to distance myself for a moment. I resolve to ditch any critical thoughts. The less focused I am on perfecting the images that are forming, the more I’ll relish in the soothing effects of creating something, anything, just because I can.

An immediate feeling of clarity hits me. Eight months ago, I was working an office job that I didn’t like and knew I would never love. What was it that kept me for so long? Why didn’t I just tell them all to shove it? Did I feel like I had no other choice? Would quitting have meant that all the time and money spent on a college education would be wasted? That job fed my misery; I wasn’t able to imagine that I might be good enough, strong enough or talented enough to try a different profession that better fed my soul.

I let what-ifs and fear run my life. What if I spent years searching for passion and never found it? Found it, but wasn’t good at it? Was good at it, but never made any money from it?

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Deeply embedded in the back of my mind was and still is a fear that if I try, I might fail.

I move closer toward the abstract shapes taking form. I would never have bought canvas and paint back home in the States. The process would have been too conceptual for me at the time; too much left to chance, too free.

I would have questioned every stroke, every choice of color. And when nearly complete, I would have questioned the entire subject, finding ways to defeat the project before I even gave it the chance to work itself out.

Standing now in Misha’s kitchen, I begin finding comfort in an image that’s become a misshapen mess before my eyes. I’ve grown more pleased with not knowing how it will turn out. Perhaps being in Prague is slowly changing me. Or perhaps for some other unknown reasons, I’m simply slowly changing.

Before, I would have never given myself the chance to try something new, something that might have had the power to make me very happy. I did a decent job at work and would have been promoted in time. My rent and bills were never paid late. I was successful in the sense that I was able to support myself and plan financially for the future.

But none of it set me free.

When Jay walked out the door on the last day I saw him, shutting me inside, I considered not leaving. As with every part of my life I was in conflict with, staying where I

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was and closing the door would have been the safest solution.

But then I looked at the clock and at my life ticking by with the second hand.

In a race against time, I had to decide to miss my flight or make it; remain where I was or force myself to change; be content with being afraid or fight the fear head on.

This painting has got to be the epitome of a disaster; but somehow I can see its beauty. And for that, I’ll never regret having had the courage to try, to change, to leave.

Surprisingly pleased with the final product, I place the painting in my room to set. It’s a keeper. I have a look at it every now and then and think about how a small child could have been the artist behind it. The image is way more abstract than I had anticipated. For that reason, I no longer compare it to the photo I originally worked from. I suppose the finished masterpiece is never an exact replica of an artist’s initial vision. For a painter, the brush moves on its own; for an author, the words appear out of nowhere.

I invite Misha in for a second set of eyes even though I’m weary of what her reaction might be. She surprises me.

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Misha leaves the room and returns with a photo of her and Jan sharing a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower. They were younger then and happy. The geometric patterned skirt of her light, flowing dress wraps around his legs, mirroring his arms wrapped around her shoulders. The sky and a few clouds take on a cotton candy pink as the sun sets behind them.

She looks at me and she doesn’t even have to ask.

I don’t mind giving it another shot, painting another picture. The colors are magnificent, yet I immediately think it’d look stunning in black and white. I’ve grown comfortable with buildings and shapes, but people? I tell Misha there’s no way I can paint faces and bodies, eyes, ears, arms, legs, hands and make them look remotely real. I think she has way overshot her faith in my new hobby.

She tells me she doesn’t care. She’ll buy the supplies; I’ll shut up and paint. I tell her she can’t. I’ve wanted to show my appreciation for all that she’s done for me in some way, and this is the perfect opportunity. I’ll restock and try my best to replicate her photo. It’s the least I can do.

I feel a bit of pressure, even though there’s nothing to lose. Misha’s a friend now. If this painting turns out horrible, I don’t have to give it to her and she doesn’t have to take it. Strangely, I also feel a bit of excitement, like how I felt during my first day at the bakery, getting my hands in the dough, making something tasty and beautiful.

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I’m starting to realize that it’s the process, not the finished product, of baking and painting and living, that I’m enjoying the most.

“Not fair! We didn’t make it!”

Usually I tune people out on the trams and metros in Prague. It’s not often anyone around me is speaking a language I recognize. But standing in the number nine after grabbing more supplies from the art shop for Misha’s project, a tiny voice catches my attention. I realize that I understand, or at least I think I understand, what’s been said.

I look down. A little girl in pigtails with a pink Dora the Explorer backpack strapped tightly over her shoulders has just hopped up three tram steps with great effort; the distance between each is nearly half her height.

She turns back to a man whose hand rests firmly in her grip. The light above the entrance glows, the alerting buzz sounds off and the doors close, nearly trapping his bag.

“Daddy! We didn’t make it!” she continues to say as she leads him down the aisle to two rear facing seats.

She climbs up on one as he sit’s calmly down next to her.

“Honey, we made it, we’re on the tram now. We almost didn’t make it,” he says, stressing the “almost.”

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“Oh,” she replies, clearly content with his response as she props herself up on her knees and stares out the window at people, shops and dogs on leashes passing by.

The next stop is mine. I get out.

Didn’t make it; how often do we look at our lives and tell ourselves we didn’t make it? Didn’t follow our dreams, didn’t try hard enough, didn’t own the biggest house or the fastest car. When if we shift our perspective, it’s clear that we did?

Back home, I was always feeling like I hadn’t made it and often like I never would. “It” was and still is difficult to identify largely because it may have been a sum of things: a fulfilling job, personal relationship, physical appearance and sense of self. But it was never the thought that I had been lucky enough to wake up that morning or go to sleep having lived through another day.

I contemplate whether or not this thinking is engrained in us from childhood, from society, from the pictures we see and stimuli we’re exposed to, all around us.

Why else would such a young girl say so defiantly that she and her father didn’t make it when clearly, both sets of feet were planted firmly on the ground inside of that tram?

It was nice to hear the father reassure his young child of her success. But what of a time that will come when he’s not there to hold her hand? Will she look at her own life and believe that she’s made it? Or will she look at her life and think it unfulfilling, because for one reason or

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another, she’ll lack the confidence to believe she’s achieved all that she’s capable of?

I prop up a new canvas in the kitchen and tape Misha’s photo to the wall.

They look so happy, so much in love. I wonder if it was just Paris or if they still kiss each other with such passion. Both being lawyers, the two work tirelessly, and return home late at night or sometimes not at all. For as long as I’ve lived with them, I rarely, if ever, see them together.

I have no idea how they make their relationship work with such crazy schedules. Perhaps she wants this piece to remind herself that she has a husband whom, at one point in time, she loved and who loved her in return. Perhaps she wants to remember the times they used to spend together, holding hands in romantic cities. Maybe she just wants something to hold on to.

I empty the black and white acrylic paint onto an old Tupperware plate I’ve found in Misha’s cupboard, mixing in several spots to create a number of gray shades. I have no idea which ones I’ll use or if I’ll use them all, but I do it anyway. I like having so many options at the ready.

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place the lines on their lips and in the lattice iron beams of the tower. Artists spend their lives perfecting the art of realism and I’m not about to attempt it in my second painting.

I’m finding idealism to be a bit more attractive at this stage.

When I’m not working on the painting, I move the canvas from the kitchen to my room. I prefer that Misha doesn’t see its evolution; just the finished product. It consumes me though, taking only a few days to complete and when it’s ready, I’m nervous to show her. It’s one thing to create a piece of art for myself to enjoy; it’s an entirely separate matter when commissioned on a project. She may love it or she may hate it.

It’s a Thursday and Misha’s taking the car to work instead of the tram. Jan wasn’t home again last night, but neither of us acknowledges this when we sit together for our morning coffee. She has sad eyes.

As she gets up to rinse her cup, Misha tells me that she and Jan will both be out of town this weekend. I interpret this to mean that they’ve spoken and that all is alright.

Rather than prying, I quietly hope this means they’ll spend the days at her parents’ summer house, just the two of them.

“There’s something I want to show you before you head out,” I say as I disappear to my room.

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I return with the canvas covered in a light bath towel and place it on the chair where I’ve been sitting. The 24” by 36” vertical frame is looking quite large now. It is a much bigger painting than the city skyline; my first. I loved the challenge of filling so much empty space this time around. I loved having the room to explore.

She has that look of lost wonder I’ve seen on her face more and more these last few weeks. Our eyes don’t meet. Instead they’re fixed on the towel covering the painting of her and the man she once loved, who loved her back, kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

“Misha, if you hate it, tell me. I won’t be offended.

It’s only my second painting and while I had an amazing time creating it, if it’s not what you expected, you just say so. Ok?” It’s true. I did have a wonderful time working on this piece. It was incredible to wake up each day knowing I’d be doing something I’ve come to love, not something I must.

Her eyes move up slowly to meet mine. She smiles a small smile and gives a slight nod.

I slip off the towel and hang it over the chair, lean the piece back and step away far enough so that Misha feels as if she’s viewing it alone. I don’t want her pressured to hide disappointment or dislike, which I’m afraid she might.

She’s too polite.

But I do keep her in my line of sight. She stares at it for a long time.

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I hope she doesn’t feel it’s too abstract or too void of color with all of the black, gray and white. And like my Prague skyline, the finished image is far different from the original photo. Misha and Jan’s faces are shadows, their figures long and lanky, the Eiffel Tower further off in the distance and leaning more like the Tower of Pisa against a stormy sky. It feels less like a painting; more like a dream.

In real life, Misha and Jan shared a gentle kiss on a sunny day. In my imagination and now in this image, their lips haven’t yet met. They’re inches apart, worlds apart and yet they’re both so very close. It’s who they are before they come together and who they will be after they do, all in the very same moment. On whichever side the focus will lie is up to Misha to decide.

It seems as if an eternity has passed when I notice a tear drop out of her eye.

“We’re getting a divorce.”

I walk over to my chair, cover the painting with the light towel, place it on the floor and sit down.

“Oh man, Misha. I’m so sorry. When did this all happen?” I ask slowly, secretly wondering why she had me paint such an intimate picture of the two of them just a week ago. There’s no way their split developed over the course of seven days; impossible given how much time he spends away from home. This had to have been building up, long before I got here.

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the day she found out she was pregnant and the very last day she can remember feeling complete and completely in love before everything in their lives and in their relationship began to change.

“It happened so fast, I just, I didn’t know quite what to think. We came back from France during the spring of last year and a few weeks later, I lost the baby. I was mortified. I went from being so full of love and life for my husband and for my unborn child to being a hallowed out, walking corpse.

“On top of it all, I had just been assigned to what has become one of the most challenging cases of my career, which is why since you arrived, I’ve essentially been living at the office for days on end. After I took the assignment, Jan and I slowly started falling apart; I believed in one thing, he believed in another. And as much as I loved him, as much as I still love him, we cannot agree; on anything.”

The morning is turning into another session with Misha where I learn more than I ever thought I would about her life. Sometimes you think you know someone and then they open up, tell you their secrets. It’s when we take the time to really listen that we find we knew nothing at all.

“In my despair of losing our child, I stopped working. I stayed at home and I wept. I felt sorry for myself, for the human being inside of me that I couldn’t keep healthy and strong. I don’t think Jan knew what to do with me either. He would come home from work, watch me cry for a bit and then leave for the night. I couldn’t seem to get 150

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passed my own mind. I let thoughts overwhelm me until my whole self was numb from self-pity and pain.

“We didn’t talk about it. He never knew what to say and neither did I. Even if one of us did speak, I’m not certain the other would’ve wanted to hear.

“After weeks in a deep depression, it was something I saw on the evening news that finally brought me back to reality.

“Layla, you must have noticed some ‘different’ people here in Prague by now. They hang out in groups around parks, travel in packs, carry on their days without a care in the world, so it seems. Darker skinned families and friends who fraternize together in the city and they don’t look traditionally Czech. You may have heard them referred to as gypsies.”

She makes her statements in the form of questions, in an effort to jog my memory. If I weren’t totally oblivious, I might say they were laced with common stereotypes.

Perhaps it’s the lawyer in her that makes me hesitant to answer “yes.”

The truth is I have noticed them. People in groups make me wary whatever the gender or skin pigment and I naturally become more aware of my surroundings. One against all is never the most desired position to be in. Unless of course you’re Bruce in Enter the Dragon. I, on the other hand, prepare myself to run when my fight or flight senses are heightened.

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As she speaks, I realize I’m a lot more judgmental and assuming than I wish to be.

One late morning a few weeks back, three adolescent boys passed me on my way to the bakery; dark skin, brown eyes, slicked back hair, baggy jeans, buttoned-up shirts and silver chains hanging around their neck, swaying from side to side as they walked.

Gypsies; Silvie had warned me about them.

I could see the trio approaching on my side of the street from a block away, their swagger in full force. If I continued on, I’d have to step off to let them pass. I considered crossing to the opposite sidewalk but decided against it, certain it’d be too obvious a sign of discomfort. Anyone proactively looking for trouble would smell fear with that move.

The two nearest me spoke out loud, though not to each other. As usual, I didn’t understand a word, but maybe it was better that way. They made their way closer and I felt myself inch into their direct line of sight. They spotted me and as I felt their hard stare, I thought about averting my gaze, but something forced me not to.

Empty; eyes set in faces holding mouths deserving to be stuffed with bubbly bars of soap.

Misplaced; hands on oversized belt buckles moved them up and down with a simultaneous gyrating motion of the lower half.

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I tensed up. These kids were young but if they dared touch me, I wouldn’t think twice about landing my foot in each one of their asses. I kept my eyes locked on the smallest one with the biggest mouth, flailing his arms in the air and shaking his chest at me. I did my best not to look up, down or away.

The three never slowed as they continued past me and their obnoxious, intrusive voices were eventually drowned out by passing cars. Not wanting to give them the satisfaction, I never turned around. I was enraged. I had no idea what their words meant, but their body language and demeanor had said enough.

I walked on, tried to brush it off, but couldn’t get the scene to stop replaying in my head. Initially, I was disgusted. At the moment I realized their display of machismo had nothing to do with me and everything to do with them, I was overcome with sadness; sadness for having had my own preconceived thoughts about those young, misplaced, perhaps misguided kids. I knew what if felt like to not belong.

“They’re Roma,” Misha says.

“Or gypsies as you’ll hear them often called. I’m sure you’ve seen these people near Silvie’s bakery.”

I nod.

“They’re considered an ethnic minority and have been in the area for centuries. There’s a large population, something like 300,000, living here in the Czech Republic, but you’ll find them scattered across Europe in Slovakia, 153

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Germany and England. With persecution dating back to the war, when Nazis exterminated up to 1.5 million Roma in gas chambers, integration into society has always been a challenge.

“Largely illiterate, the lucky ones are given jobs as dishwashers, brick layers or taxi drivers. Others resort to a life of pickpocketing and crime. This has infuriated the ‘white’ Czechs, as many Roma call them, who stereotype, criticize and attack, feeding a stigma that perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, struggle and violence.

“Though you see a few around the city, many more have been driven out by rising rents or fear for their own safety, some seeking asylum in the outskirts of Prague and even in other countries. Unfortunately, without much education or command of native languages, they don’t have the slightest chance of succeeding in these places either.”

Fascinating, but what does any of this have to do with Misha and Jan splitting up?

She continues.

“It was Monday, April 20, 2009; a date I will never forget. It was the day I had been scheduled to have my first ultrasound, was supposed to hear and see the beating heart that would be my baby. But because I had just lost what life I had inside of me, I instead sat on the couch, watching the evening news and feeling sorry for myself, selfishly looking for someone else’s tragedy to make me feel better, someone’s story which would be far worse than mine.

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“And it came. Someone’s misfortune appeared on the screen before me as if I’d willed it so. I must admit that on one hand, the broadcast made me feel guiltily less sad.

But on the other, it enraged me out of the self-pity I had been wallowing in. On the day I should have seen my child resting safely in my womb, I saw another woman’s child fighting for her own life here on earth.

“The little girl lying on a hospital bed in Ostrava was bandaged from head-to-toe and coma induced. The two-year-old had severe burns over 90 percent of her body.

Earlier that evening, a Molotov cocktail was launched through a window of her home in Vitkov, a small town northeast of Ostrava, where the hospital was. She and her family were Roma.

“By the time the news aired, investigators had already determined that the attack was racially motivated. In an unrelated event that happened six months earlier in a neighboring town of Litvinov, neo-Nazi radicals faced off with Czech police in run down Roma living quarters which quickly turned into a fierce riot. To add fuel to the fire, the clash took place on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. It was all very clearly premeditated.

“What’s troublesome is that acts of racial violence like these, threatening Roma safety and heightening the divide, occur all the time, whether they make the nightly news or not. Usually they involve misguided teens and ignorant Neanderthals. But watching an innocent child suffer as a victim of such hatred; I was devastated. And then, I became furious. I got on the phone, called the office and told them about the story I’d just seen. I asked my assistant 155

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to contact the family to let them know I wanted to represent them if they decided to press charges. I knew I couldn’t bring my own baby back if I prosecuted the wrongdoers, but I might be able to create some peace for the young girl’s mother and family; and maybe some peace for myself.

“The family was hesitant to enter into a legal battle, but I assured them I would work pro bono. They’d been through enough and fighting back wouldn’t only benefit them, but the entire Roma community; it could put an end to the madness. Before long, I was on the assignment, throwing every ounce of my being into building a case. It was essential that I obsessed over details of the incident and history of the Czech-Roma clash; and I needed to work fast, before something worse happened to another innocent being.

“When I started working again, Jan and I had gone without speaking for weeks. At first, I was wary of telling him about the case. I could not imagine how he might react.

While some native Czechs that aren’t tolerant of Roma display acts of racist violence, others harbor underlying prejudices which they hide deceivingly well.

“The press went crazy the day our firm announced we were taking legal action for the atrocities committed against this Roma family just days prior. My name was naturally mentioned as their lawyer. And at that point, Jan pretty much stopped coming home.

“Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on since a bit before you arrived.”

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I’m not exactly sure what to say. I find it fascinating that Misha, who until now seemed so calculated and docile, decided to take on such a hot-blooded issue; and without much support. It’s bad enough that her husband disagrees with her choice. How has the rest of the Czech community reacted?

“Most Czechs have been, surprisingly, very supportive. The case is well-known now and has received some international media attention, which has also pushed our courts to follow through with the proceedings whether they would’ve liked to or not; because a larger world is watching. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll make much progress even if we do win this case. The perpetrators may serve some time, but Molotov cocktails will still be made and thrown; they have been since the incident. Roma and Czechs carry deep misunderstandings about each other and many people are like Jan, turning their heads from it all.

“I love him, though. I always will. Thank you for this, Layla. You may not believe so yet, but you have some real talent for capturing emotion and expressing it in this way. I realize it’s only your second painting, but it truly is a wonderful beginning.”

I give Misha a tight hug before she picks up one of her dreams wrapped in a light bath towel and heads for the door. I lock it behind her. It’s hard to believe she’ll go through the day without thinking about the conversation we just had, about the way her marriage is dissolving, has been dissolving, right in front of her.

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I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced heartbreak quite like hers. I can remember the few times Jay and I spent nights apart, angry or upset. Going into the office the next day was always worse than lying in bed alone.

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I Was Worthy As the weather warms, Silvie and I return to having our lunch and conversations outside in her garden at the bakery. She can’t believe I’ve been here for almost a year.

“I can’t believe it either. Honestly, the day I stepped off of that plane at Prague airport, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d make it a week. Nothing terrible had happened at that point.

Fear was just showing itself, I suppose.”

“Are you as much of a scared little rabbit now as you were then?”

Another cultural nuance that I’ve come to love Europeans for. My scaredy cat is Silvie’s scaredy rabbit.

“I don’t necessarily think so. I mean, I was fearful because I was lost. I had no idea what I was doing with my life and felt like the only way I might figure it out was to leave it behind, to separate myself from everything I had ever known for a while. I still find myself afraid every now and then, mostly of things that are simply out of my control. But instead of running away, I’m forcing myself to muster up enough courage to face the problem. Then roll up my sleeves and do what I can to beat the shit out of it.”

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Silvie gasps and covers her mouth in mock shame, then giggles. She’s used to my swearing by now.

“Well Layla, I must say. You really knead that dough with confidence now. The first time you came into the shop you were so timid and shy, I thought I might have to make you clean the water closet to toughen you up. But then we shared a few meals and I realized I liked you too much to ever make you do that. Some people just need more time than others I suppose, to get comfortable with themselves, and then comfortable with others. Once that happens, everything else just falls into place.”

“Is that right?” I ask her. “Everything else will just fall into place? I want to believe that so badly.”

“It is right. And you can believe it. But do not forget that I said you first have to become comfortable with who you really are before that can happen. And this takes courage.

“Most people float along in life, doing what it is they think is expected of them, pretending to be happy because for the large part, it is easy. When we follow the rules, no one challenges us. We do what we are told is right, we are rewarded and the cycle continues.

“Now, Layla, imagine blanketing your entire existence over a soft voice, one that calls out to you often but one that you must strain to hear. Long before our lives get noisy, many of us are able to make out the muffled words and sounds as they surface from below. Some listen intently, determined to give this voice a stage to speak on. Others 160

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smother it with work, drugs, sex, shopping, fashion, gambling, television and even family, making it easier to ignore.

“It takes strength to remove the covers, to stand in front of the mirror and demand that murmurs in the depths become roars on the surface. When your ears are ringing with the truth, of whom you were before you were born and who you were meant to be, that is when you will find your unique path to happiness.”

I ask Silvie why she thinks that finding our true selves is so difficult and after some hesitation, ask if she believes I’ve yet discovered mine. I’m too familiar with my life, viewed from the inside out, and I desire to understand what it most honestly looks like from the outside. I’m not hoping she hands me one of her sugar coated apricot cookies; it’s not a boost of my ego that I’m after. Silvie’s a straight shooter. She’ll tell it like she sees it.

“Layla, you are fascinating to watch, always so entranced by your thoughts. The wheels in your head are turning, always turning. I wish sometimes that I had the ability to get into your brain and rummage around. You came into my shop wary and unsure, not just about this job, but about yourself. You often looked down and when I did catch your gaze, your bright blue eyes were muted. You have heard it said that eyes are windows to the soul and I believe it.

When we met months ago, yours were fogged up and shut tight, clearly warning that you wanted to let nobody in.

Your smiles were calculated, conversations careful.

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“But as with the weather, I witnessed a slow transformation, watched your eyes become clearer, your smiles more natural, your conversations more genuine, free spirited and real. I cannot tell you if you have yet found your way. That is something only you can answer for yourself.

However, whatever you are doing is producing something beautiful and I hope you hold on to it. I hope you nurture it, allow it to grow.

“Speaking of beauty,” Silvie said, switching gears.

“I hear your paintings are quite lovely. Misha called to tell me about the few that you have made. I would love to see them before you go back to the States.”

I promise Silvie I’ll show her a few and even make one for the shop within the next few weeks. I might say that it’s because of her I started painting. I thank her for allowing me to help out, despite my inexperience and lack of confidence. After working at the bakery and discovering the satisfaction of creating something delicious from scratch, experimenting on a blank canvas felt more natural.

Mixing pigments to get a look that felt right was much like working with a recipe and adding salt to taste. It allowed me to trust that I knew what worked and what didn’t.

I was able to try painting without much hesitation, something I wouldn’t have ever attempted back home.

Now, I can imagine my life making things, exploring textures and expressing emotions that before were kept bottled up inside, left to bubble and ferment without escape. Before coming to Prague, I slightly feared I would soon explode, but time in this city has removed whatever lid was keeping those emotions tightly sealed off. Worries are being re162

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leased in the form of cool vapor and I can feel myself beginning to fizz with life.

Sitting in the park on a royal blue bench by the river, resting my arm on the curled tail of a medieval dragon, I can’t help but wonder if I look to be waiting; for someone, for some thought, for some profound revelation.

That’s when I see her passing by in the distance, near the water. That woman; the one with the face from my dreams, the one from outside Petr’s apartment on the day I found him gone, the one that told me it’s up to us to reveal answers to ourselves.

Her words had left me baffled, but I’m slowly beginning to understand what she’d meant.

All this time I’ve been looking to the world for answers, looking for life to lead me, asking for my life’s purpose to be miraculously proclaimed from the heavens, loud enough for all to hear. Because that would be easy; because if I suddenly had all the answers I wouldn’t ever have to look myself in the mirror and ask if I was on the right path; I would already know. Consumed by the search, I lost sight of the simple fact that I had what I was looking for all along, deep down inside, buried beneath the clutter of other people’s opinions, society’s conformities and my own idiosyncrasies.

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It became so clear upon seeing this woman again.

While in Prague, I’ve been forced to live in the unfamiliar, test my resilience and listen rather than think or speak. And in the process, answers have begun to surface. And I’ve begun to recognize them.

“You’ve come a long way,” she says.

Moments ago, the woman turned from the river where she’d been looking out over the still water and took a seat next to me on the bench. The way she lowered herself down on the pealing wooden slats, kept her gaze toward the water, spoke with patience and sincerity, gave me the feeling that even with her back turned, she knew that I was here; or at least, she knew that I would come.

“I have,” I say, with hope that by keeping my response short and being less persistent, she may speak more than she did the last time we crossed paths. When we first met, I demanded to know who she was, why she was speaking to me, how she knew exactly what needed to be said at exactly the right time.

But today, on a secluded bank of the Vltava, my voice and mind are calm. Rather than feeling anxious or curious as to why this mysterious woman has continued to appear, I allow myself to be absorbed by her knowing presence. I don’t look for answers. I no longer have a desire to.

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“You clearly realize you possess everything needed to be happy in this life and you are surprised to find that what you need is very little. Hold on to that knowingness. It will wax and wane, like the light of the moon, but will always be there to guide you.”

I turn my head toward the old woman. I want to look into her eyes, but she continues to stare at the river.

“I did not speak the whole truth when I said you must reveal the answers to yourself, Layla.”

She turns to me now. I should be frightened by this complete stranger calling me by name, but instead, I’m sucked in by her entrancing gaze. I watch her lips move, thinly laid into her soft, wrinkled face.

“There is a trick, an art, a skill, that if you learn well, will help you better identify the answers you have within you, left behind by lives lived long ago. You see, the day and night are full of moments, passing scenes, exchanged words that are meant to trigger an awakening within us; meant to revive a lesson we have already learned. The trick is to always be open enough to acknowledge these moments; not necessarily to spend all of our energy looking for them but to remain aware, present, so that when they do occur we are better able to understand the next move we must make.”

It’s interesting she’s telling me this now, at a time when I’m preparing to return home, but am still not fully certain what to or what for.

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I can’t say I’ve been looking for any signs lately, but I’ve noticed that since my day on the rock and my subsequent morning rituals of practiced meditation, I’ve become a bit more aware of the world around me. Having this clarity has certainly helped me create my paintings.

“There is one more thing you must come to accept, something that until this point you have always feared. A life breathing element you have tried to ignore in yourself and in others but is the single thing that, once you embrace it wholly, will never fail to set you free.

“It is love, Layla, for yourself and for creatures all around you. You admitted that you have come a long way and you have. But let me be the first to tell you that you have a long way to go, because you have denied yourself one of the most incredible gifts this life has to offer. And it is time that you fully accept it.”

Since coming to Prague I’ve tried so hard to avoid thinking about Jay. I’ve done everything to erase him from my mind. A man who throughout our whole relationship worked so hard to make me happy, a man I simply wanted to break down and to hurt. He would tell me he loved me.

Over and over again he would pull me close and smile and whisper in my ear, but not once did I respond. I wanted to, but couldn’t. I kept silent, angry at him for being able to say something to me that I was never able to say to myself.

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It’s funny how what I swore I wouldn’t search for in Prague turns out to be the single thing I needed most to find.

I wasn’t hoping to find love in Petr, but I did.

Watching him work, I witnessed the energy and passion for life emanating from his pours. The infatuation he felt for his craft was something I never knew I wanted to experience so intensely. In Silvie I found a love for her family, for her country, for her past, present and future. In Misha, love for a life that she would only dream of. And in them all, I found a little bit of love for myself. With each of their help, whether they knew it or not, I was able to give myself the space to try; to try and fail, to try and succeed, to try and learn to be at peace with trying.

But what is it that I’ve found in this strange woman with the face?

There seem to be some things in life that are simply unexplainable, though we work so hard to make them somehow understandable. She is one of them, helping me to believe that every moment can be masked in magic, if we’re willing to view each breath in such a way.

I’m certain she’s become my sort of guardian angel, which says a lot about how far I’ve come. A year ago I would have been more inclined to write her off and call her crazy. Now, I don’t see why guardian angels can’t be normal, everyday people walking on terra firma. I’m convinced that heavenly messengers don’t always take on fanciful forms, hovering above ground and masked in gold, 167

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but can be humans, visible to those with eyes and hearts wide open.

I think about how every person and situation in life assumes only as much importance as we choose to give it, acquiring mass and meaning in amounts we determine. Just a year ago, my world had become a nightmare, simply because I weighted it as such. Looking back, I cringe to think that there were times I found myself ungrateful; blind to the beautiful mysteries around me, the ones I was healthy and well enough to experience every day. If only I had viewed my world as if opening my eyes for the very first time.

I watch her walk away, disappearing again as quickly as she had come, this time the same as the last.

Only instead of wanting to run after her, I let her go.

Unsure if we will meet once more, I close my eyes and picture her face, repeat her last message to myself.

Love, will never fail to set you free.

I sit on the royal blue bench by the river until the sun disappears behind the castle, casting the cathedral in its shadow and lighting up the sky in an orange glow.

I reflect on how much I’ve changed over the past year and can’t help but feel content.

I think I’m ready to go home.

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It’s late when I get back to Misha’s and I’m not surprised that the lights are out, her bedroom door is shut and she’s already asleep. Things don’t seem to be getting any better with Jan. I haven’t seen him come by at all since I gave Misha her paining, though I have noticed some of his things slowly disappearing from plain view. His law books are off the shelf, his hats and jackets no longer on the stand. The bathroom we all share no longer smells of his aftershave. Traces of him are gone.

I step out of the shower after washing away the hot sticky day and into my light oversized tank. Anything tighter and I just might suffocate from the heat. I open my window. The air is warmer than I’d like, but as it rushes over my freshly wet hair, it’s surprisingly, soothingly cool.

Exhausted, I crawl into bed, moving around on top of the duvet, trying to find a position that’s comfortable enough in this humidity. As I rewind the past twelve hours in my mind, I’m surprised to find that my thoughts are expiring quicker than usual, and I’m drifting fast into sleep.

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I Was Passionate For the past few months I’ve dreamt nearly every night. Sometimes I’m able to recall the situation or the feeling or the people in them. Sometimes I wake without any recollection, aware that I was dreaming only because of the cold sweat on my back, droplets of water on my brow, restless positioning of my sheets or tears in my eyes. I also find myself tired; energy spent running, chasing or flying away from predators.

Last night was the first restful sleep I’d had in quite a while. This morning, I find myself in the same position I had closed my eyes in. Refreshed, I slip out of bed, throw on a pair of cotton shorts and walk out to the kitchen to make Misha some coffee, only to find that the coffee’s been made and Misha’s already gone.

I pour coffee into my favorite mug, a simple, yet one-of-a-kind piece handcrafted by Petr, and place it in the microwave to give it some extra heat. No wonder the house is empty. I’ve slept in later than usual. It’s half past eight.

As I wait for the short thirty seconds to pass, I look off to the far end of the white-tiled kitchen counter and notice an unopened envelope sitting at its edge.

That’s odd. Misha always puts mail in the same place as soon as she retrieves it from the box; the recycler.

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Most of it’s usually junk; coupons, advertisements and community newsletters. Not much different than the crap that fills our mailboxes back home. But sitting across from me now isn’t a stack of glossy newsprint with obnoxiously loud graphic layouts. It’s a plain, white envelope.

Looks like a letter. Like something I would have written to a pen pal back in the early 90s, when I wasn’t old enough to have an email account. When writing letters and sending them through the post was still, well, normal.

I wonder if it’s for Misha, from Jan. Maybe it’s a written apology for all the time he’s neglected her emotions; a plea for her to take him back. Maybe it’s a Dear John letter or divorce papers. When I find myself inching closer to look, I hesitate. This is really none of my business.

As I head toward the other end of the room, to the kitchen’s bay window overlooking a lush courtyard, I pass the far end of the counter on my way.

With the white rectangular shape in my peripheral, I stop and turn, facing the piece of mail head on. A quick glance can’t hurt. The return address is blank and the only text visible is printed in Times New Roman. There’s no handwriting to help me decipher whom it’s from. However, it’s clear the letter wasn’t intended for Misha. The envelope’s addressed to Layla Prescott; the letter was sent to me.

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Here is a moment when I could really use Jay’s calming touch as the wheels being to churn, even though there’s no reason to get all worked up before tearing into this thing. For all I know it could be from Silvie; I haven’t been to the bakery in a while. She has Misha’s address on file, I’m sure of it. I rack my brain as I stare at the stationary positioned neatly on the square tiles in front of me, in an attempt to narrow down whom it might be from.

Petr: maybe. He had never been to Misha’s but I’m pretty sure she’s listed. All he’d have to do is look her up in the phone book.

Colby: possibly. She’s the only one back home who knows where I am. And she knows where Misha lives. Ever since the two finished school, Colby sends holiday cards to Misha each year. But if Colby ever wrote, she wouldn’t type out the address; she’d handwrite it. On second thought, Colby wouldn’t write; she’d call.

Jay: doubt it. When I left I didn’t tell him where I was going, let alone at what address I’d be staying. Finding me here would be nothing short of miraculous.

This must have been here last night when I came in after dark. I just hadn’t seen it considering I went straight into the shower and after that, to bed. I half wonder if I would have tortured myself then as much as I’m torturing myself now or if I would have ended the battle immediately by opening it.

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bitter about the way that I left, that he understands everything without my having to say a single word. I want him to give me a reason to reach out. I want him to assure me that he hasn’t completely forgotten and moved on. I want the chance to respond, tell him that I didn’t leave because I wasn’t happy with us; I was miserable with myself.

I don’t know why I couldn’t say all of this back then, the day he tried to pull me close, his sweet scent intoxicating me with each disappearing inch of space between us. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t want to drag it out and see him hurt. I was selfish and scared.

But as much as I wish this to be Jay, I’m not naïve enough to think that he’s been waiting for me all of this time, without a single letter or phone call or email from me.

I don’t expect him to not be angry or disappointed or upset.

I don’t expect him to ever want to talk to me again.

I pull the white envelope closer and without further hesitation, lift the seal and pull out the paper.

“Dear Ms. Prescott,” it’s addressed.

My heart drops at the sight of these first three words. In my twenty six years, I’ve never been addressed as Ms. Prescott. This is from no one I was secretly hoping for.

Unable to fight a desire for instant gratification, I scan the body of the letter, too impatient to read every word before finding whom it’s signed by.

Johana Růžička.

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Inviting me to a private session at her studio in Prague, compliments of a long-time friendship with Misha. I should stop by tomorrow afternoon and should not worry about bringing a single thing. She understands that I’m new to the craft and has seen a photo of my most recent painting: the figures in front of the Eiffel Tower. She wants this to be a no pressure affair; wants it to be free in every way.

Come with my mind open. Leave my insecurities at the door. She’ll see me at 2 p.m.

I run down to the internet café close to Misha’s where a measly, one crown will buy me a minute online. A quick Google search of her name tells me she’s an internationally regarded portrait and still life master painter.

I pinch myself and the pain registers, yet I still have difficulty believing this sequence of events. I pick up a paintbrush for the first time in my life and only weeks later a renowned Czech artist agrees to have me over for a oneon-one lesson.

Misha; She must know everyone in this city.

I don’t care if this was a bribe, if my brush strokes aren’t good enough, if my technique’s amateur; I’m beyond excited to be painting on a real easel tomorrow with an authentic, successful artist.

I look up Ms. Růžička’s studio for directions. I also happen to find that her work is showing at one of the many art galleries in the city center and without much thought decide it’ll be a pleasant place to spend the rest of the day.

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I show up at her studio at a quarter till. It’s ingrained in me to be a few minutes early rather than a few minutes late, though I wonder how many artists actually have a clear concept of time anyway. When I paint, I lose track of the first and second hands rather easily. There are never any minutes or hours, but rather one continuous, never ending moment full of shapes and lines and strokes and pigments.

I’m nervous. I don’t really know what real painters wear when they work so I decided to dress comfortably. In loose, baggy cargo pants, a thick strapped tank, ponytail and headband to keep the fly-aways out of my face, I stand outside the studio and give myself a few minutes to gather my thoughts so that I can leave them at the door as she asked and walk in with a calm, collected mind.

After viewing her work for the first time yesterday, I’m anxious to get inside, to see where and how she creates her beautiful masterpieces; all of them so big and so bold.

A single painting of the Prague skyline, one that puts my measly first piece to shame, would have filled an entire spare wall in Misha’s apartment. It’s incredible how standing in front of something for so long, staring at its every intricacy will eventually transport you to the spot; like in Mary Poppins, I felt as if I had stepped into the painting, bringing it to life.

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one small space at a time. Whatever her strategy, it works. I love the scale with which she depicts her subjects too, appearing larger than life.

A simple flower portrait that must have been eight feet by eight feet, a perfect square, was shown wonderfully in the open gallery, with plenty of space to breathe, even grow if it wanted to. The image was of an Angelique tulip in full bloom, similar to the ones Misha left on the counter, holding her welcome note in place, on the day I arrived.

The deep orange blossoms set upon a light red background gave a burst of color like a setting sun in a wild-fire soaked sky. The painted flower’s size was so unreal, but not for a moment did it seem oddly disproportionate to the living flowers in Misha’s kitchen.

I hear the door to the building open next to me and look over to find a petite woman, not much older than me, walk outside and turn to light a cigarette. She’s wearing loose, baggy pants, a fitting v-neck tee and a color-stained half-apron, out of which I spot two small brushes emerging from oversized pockets.

Soft brown curls fall around her face and sit perfectly at her shoulders. She appears to be the same woman whose photo accompanied Ms. Růžička’s artist bio that I saw yesterday at the gallery.

She must feel my gaze and turns. This has to be her.

“Ms. Růžička?”

“Yes! Oh hi, Layla is it? Nice to finally meet you.

Please, call me Johana,” she says with her hand extended.

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I take it, place my left hand lightly on her right arm and lean forward for a soft, polite kiss on each cheek.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you,” I say. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve taken this time.”

“Oh please, it’s my pleasure. Misha has been a dear friend of mine for years and I trust that she would only send me someone she believes truly has talent.”

She puts the rest of her cigarette out, turns to the door and signals toward me to follow.

“Alright Layla, let’s see what you’ve got.”

We spend the entire afternoon in her studio and as I expect, time flies right out the window.

Johana shows me all of the pieces she’s working on, placed meticulously around the room; some hang on the walls, others sit on the floor. She paints for me while I look on and take notes. Sprinkled in between strokes are elements of theory and interesting facts about Czech art history. Looking around, I see many images that would get her arrested if the country were still under communist rule; art 20 years ago was not the art that it is today.

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move the brush in a way your body and your heart tell you to; to deny that is to deny yourself as a creator. Being a relevant artist is redefining rules and breaking molds; shocking and pleasing and moving and inspiring; all of the things rules don’t typically encourage when followed.

Most importantly, Johana ensures me that painting is all about enjoying the process. Similarly, life is best spent doing whatever it is that you love, without concern for the end result. This is certainly something that I’ve heard a lot of lately and found myself beginning to practice; not just on canvas but in every moment I spend awake.

She asks me what I’m working on now and I tell her about the piece I want to paint for Silvie. Something really abstract, more so than the one with the lanky man and woman near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

I’m pondering a thunderstorm in all its rage, yet I want it to be beautiful and soothingly calm. Quite the challenge I’m afraid. How do you make a stormy sky look peaceful? In the foreground, on a bridge will be a woman and her young child resting softly in her arms.

Johana instantly pulls out a blank canvas of professional grade cloth, something I’d never find in a papírníctví, and sets it on an easel.

“This is yours,” she says to me waving one hand over the fresh, clean surface. “How much time do you have left here in Prague?”

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“Perfect. Plenty of time,” Johana says as she hands me a set of keys.

“Anytime you’re ready to work, you let yourself in.

Bring all the supplies you have from home. When you run out or you find you don’t have what you need, you know where mine are.”

Are you kidding me? I don’t deserve all of this.

What kind of strings did Misha pull, I wonder.

“Johana, really, I don’t know if I can accept this. I can’t pay you studio time and there’s no way I can afford the quality paints you use. And that canvas. That had to have cost --” “Layla, you’ll accept it. You would be crazy not to.

When you have a dream or a passion or even a hobby, something that makes you unbelievably happy, and someone offers to help you spend more time doing it, don’t you ever turn that down.

“And payment’s not important. Not monetarily anyway. You’ll pay this forward; maybe not now, not in a year’s time, not in five year’s time. When the moment comes, when your heart speaks to you, tells you to do something like this for someone like you, you will; you’ll complete the circle.”

When she suspends the keys in midair, I hold out my hand, palm up. They drop with the tiniest clink.

“I don’t know what to say other than thank you. A million times, thank you.”

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“You are most welcome. And there is no need to say any more than you will be back tomorrow to start. Just like we talked about today and just as you did with your last few paintings, begin with a light sketch. Get the basic shapes and proportions onto that canvas of yours. And in the meantime, between sketching, have a look at a few landscape artists like Pavel Laška and Gustav Macoun to gain perspective on how others have depicted natural scenery in their paintings. Of course in the end, yours will be an interpretation of those works and of all the thunderstorms you have seen and heard in your lifetime.”

She will be in and out the next few weeks and will watch my progress, consulting me on color, technique, lighting and brush stroke. However, she stresses that I will ultimately need to find the right balance for myself. Personal styles are not determined over the course of only three weeks, but they will begin to reveal themselves. It’s important to be aware of how that style is developing.

Johana walks me to the door. I thank her once more and turn to go. I’m still having a hard time believing what is happening. I come for an afternoon lesson and leave with an apprenticeship.

The moon is full and low in the sky, illuminating streets without street lamps. I pass the tram and decide to meander home through the parks and side alleys. It will take a bit more time, but the night is too beautiful to escape from so soon. The lunar light casts shadows all around.

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the road sparkle, radiating the reflection of the moon as I walk above it all.

In any other place at any other time, I might feel uneasy, walking alone in an alley at night, but I’ve never felt that way here. I see a large shadow moving in the distance and am overcome more with curiosity than any sort of fear or apprehension. I partly wonder if the shadow belongs to the woman with the face. She seems to appear at times like these, when my mind is off in the distance.

I come to a turn in the road, prepared to meet the shadow, yet it’s disappeared from sight, as quickly as it came. There’s nothing to be seen. There’s nobody here. I wonder what it is she’d say to me tonight, if it had been her.

When Johana handed me the keys, their cold silver on my skin, the pointedness of their teeth pricking into my turned up palm, I felt for a mere moment that they had cut right through my hand and dropped to the floor. In no way was I deserving of the offering.

Imagining myself back in Johana’s studio and rethinking those thoughts as she handed me the keys, I see the old woman’s face appear; the face that would have told me that this is one of those moments to hold onto, to recognize as an awakening, one meant to guide me to my next move, my next action step. To stop questioning it and start accepting it, because whether I know it or not, this is what I want. This is what I need.

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My next move would be to take the keys and to show up the next day. Thankfully I did and undoubtedly, I will. And I will not question the process. I will only let it carry me along.

The parks I pass on my way home are quiet, save for a few homeless men and women huddled around a waterless fountain with their dog. The night is warm and they seem content, staring up at the moon as I was only moments ago. There are so many things we take for granted, homeless or not; the rising of the sun each morning, the shining of the moon each night. It’s nice to just stop for a moment, to freeze time, to look up and around at the beauty which surrounds us; to know that we are where we are because we made the moves to get us here; to know that if we badly want to change, we can, because there are people and moments in our lives that will guide us, push us forward.

Oh such a delicate balance between self-made destiny and uncontrollable fate. There’s no way our lives are reliant on one or the other; they must function in perfect harmony.

I can’t wait to tell Misha how great today was and how amazing the next few weeks will be. I’m not entirely sure how I will ever repay her or even thank her enough.

I arrive to find Misha once again in her room, asleep. I hope her moment comes soon too; the one that will liberate her from the sadness she’s now engulfed in.

And I hope that she will recognize it when it shows itself to her.

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sketch book. I start with a sky; a sky before dawn filled with storm clouds, roars of thunder and cracks of lightening, parted by a fading moon and a single guiding star that will soon look over a woman holding her young child on a bridge by the river in Prague.

I stop working at the bakery to spend more time at the studio sketching, reading Johana’s library of books, looking at works of well-known artists and soaking in all that I can about this newly found world. When I’m not working on my own painting, I watch Johana for hours on end. We listen to BBC Radio 3 with its continuous stream of classical melodies. I never imagined I’d come to love this genre of music so much. The chamber choirs give me inspiration I need as I work on the solemn and simultaneously tumultuous sky; the symphonies the calm I need to focus on the baby in its mother’s arms.

I paint, I breathe deep, I look in the mirror and hardly recognize my own reflection. I’m a completely different person from a year ago; from just a few months ago.

With no formal training, never having picked up a brush and no idea I would ever want to, I paint. Not because I’m a prodigy, not because I’m any good, but because I’ve discovered it’s something I simply love to do. It gives me a feeling I’ve never felt before; one I want to hold onto for as long as possible, one I never want to let go.

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I Was Deserving The next three weeks come and go like nothing, passing so quickly I’m afraid everything I’ve learned from Johana will soon turn into one big, mess of a blur. I’ve just said hello to her and it’s nearly time for me to say goodbye.

She’s pleased with my last painting and praises me for my eye. Some people have it, she says. And some people don’t. She tells me I’ve got it and hands me a business card.

“Layla, I’ve taught many art courses over the years to students of all levels, including professional artists who have been painting for decades. None of them have had the promise and potential that I see in you. Believe me when I say that you would be doing yourself a disservice if you forget everything you have learned here in Prague once you return home.”

I take the card from her hand and read the information she’s handwritten on what was the blank side.

“This guy is expecting your call in the next few weeks, after you get back to the States and settle in, of course. He is an incredible man, a beautiful artist and an amazing teacher. He will know just what to do with your talent. I met him at one of my shows some years ago. He 184

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was also working on an art exhibition of his own. Aside from helping you hone in on your skills, he will teach you how to market yourself, if that is what you want. There are some amazing artists out there Layla, who aren’t seen and never will be because they do not know how to get their work into the right hands.”

I feel like if my smile gets any wider it’ll push my ears right off my face. I thank Johana for the referral and assure her that I won’t let her down; I will call the painter in the States as soon as I’m home. I hope that we will keep in touch and if she ever has a show overseas, I hope she’ll let me know. I joke that when I have a show in Prague, she’ll be the first person I call. Our laughs die down into grins; we both have a feeling that what I’ve just said is entirely possible.

We have a quick hug and I admit to her that I’m horrible with goodbyes. She kisses me on both checks and assures me that this is only an “until next time.” Johana has zippered my painting up into a portable carrying case that she kindly is letting me keep; one of the many supplies she’s started me off with.

I take one last look around her studio and make a promise to myself that I’ll never forget this feeling. I’ll never forget that I’ve found exactly what it is I want. She walks me out to a waiting taxi; there’s no way I can take this canvas home on a tram.

It’s early enough in the afternoon that I’m certain I’ve got enough time to stop by the bakery. Instead of going directly home, I ask the driver to take me to Silvie’s. If I’m 185

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lucky, she’ll just be closing up and I can give her this gift; slowly beginning my until-next-times.

We pull up to the bakery and I give the driver 100 Czech crown. It’s closer to the studio than I thought, so I ask him to keep the change. The sign on the bakery door’s already been turned to signal it’s closed, but through the windows I can see Silvie running around in the back. I knock loud enough for her to hear and see her squinting at me from the kitchen. She pays me no mind and continues to wipe down the counters, wrap up the pastries and stack up the dishes.

I knock again and give the handle a little wiggle so that the bells on the inside jingle. She’s going to kill me. I let go and watch her come closer. I laugh; her face tightened up in a knot shows her irritability with a customer that pays no attention to signs. Through the glass door, I hear her mumble something in Czech, but can’t make out the words. Even if I could, I still wouldn’t know what they mean.

It’s not until she swings the door open wide and gives me a hard stare that she starts to laugh with me.

“Layla! I did not expect you! What are you doing here? Come in, come in.”

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She ushers me through the bakery, the kitchen, and takes me to the garden; sits me down with a plate of food I’m far too excited to eat.

“I’m sorry to just drop in unannounced like this but it’s been a while since I’ve seen you last and you know I’m leaving soon. I just want you to know that I can’t imagine never having met you. You’re a beautiful person and I’m so grateful that you’ve opened your home and your heart to me.”

I set down the covered canvas.

“So here is my thank you; as promised,” I say, unzipping the protective layer.

I set the painting on the table, directly across from Silvie who stares at it for a while without saying a single word.

The silence is reminiscent of when I revealed Misha’s painting to her. Similarly, it’s hard to read how Silvie feels about it; if the subject resonates, if she fancies the colors, if she even recalls telling me about the final days of Prague Spring; the day she was born.

But then I watch her hand cover her mouth, the way she does when she smiles a big smile or prepares to let out a hearty laugh. For a moment I fear that she finds something funny. But no sounds emerge. Her eyes disappear into her face and I wait for her to say something. As her hands drop and her eyes open wide, I can see that they’re filled to the brim, like a raincloud holding a pocket of water in the sky. Yet, she smiles. I think she likes it.

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I set the painting up against the umbrella pole in the middle of the table and come to her side to give her a hug. I don’t say a word. I hope she just knows that she’s someone I will never forget.

I can’t say that the thought never crossed my mind to extend my stay in Prague; to give myself more time to discover whether or not I might make this place my home.

Yet like some things in life, an unexplainable force is telling me I’m done here, pulling me back to the States; perhaps the same sort of feeling that nearly a year ago drove me away.

Separating myself from my entire life back home wasn’t easy. I left many things undone, many words unsaid.

Right or wrong, I’ll never be sure, but I’m certain there’s only one way to find out.

It’s true that at times I look in the mirror and don’t recognize my own face. Over the past few months, I’ve looked deeper inside myself than I ever thought I would.

Discovered and revealed more than I thought I had to show.

I learned how to rely on myself rather than on a job or a degree or a significant other. I learned to love to be alone, to love to paint, to listen to strangers, to get lost, to walk aimlessly, to sit in a park, to stare at the sky.

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I started to appreciate little things, things I easily took for granted before; a new morning, a city skyline, a friendly kiss on the cheek.

I started to learn the importance of loving myself, just as the woman with the face said I would.

Still, there’s a sliver of sadness I see sparkling in my reflection, showing itself only when the light shining in hits just right. Situated under all of these new experiences which give my face new life, I’m aware that this tiny bit of uncertainty has the power to creep up from behind and destroy everything I’ve built thus far; a sadness emanating from a chapter in my life that needs to be either closed or continued. I cannot yet be sure which.

Holding the phone and calling card in my hand, I dial his number.

And wait.

For a ringtone, for a voicemail, for silence; for something.

Before I hear anything, I hang up. And dial Colby instead.

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there for me when I realized I needed to get away. She’ll be there for me now that I know it’s time to come home.

“Layla? That you?”

“Colby, hey. How’s everything?”

“Fine, fine! Good to hear from you. It’s been a while. How’s Misha? How’s Prague?”

I tell her about Misha and Jan. How they split, quickly and quietly and how she hasn’t spoken much to me about it. She’s been throwing herself into work. Prague is still wonderful, I tell her, but I’m ready to come home.

“You stuck it out a whole year, Layla. That’s great.

How does it feel to know you’ll be leaving soon?”

“It’s bittersweet,” I say. And it is.

“I’ll miss this place terribly and the people I’ve grown close to, but I can’t wait to be home; to see family and friends again. I feel sort of like a different person from when I left.”

Sort of. Not completely. I know that there’s work to still be done.

“I can see how that might happen,” she says softly and I know she means it. She’s internalizing everything I’m saying.

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hear, what I wanted to say. I feel like a different person? Is that what I wanted to tell him? In some ways, I’ve changed, I’ve grown. But in others, I’m no further ahead than I was a whole year ago.

“Oh who am I kidding, Colby? I haven’t changed.

I’ve been out here baking and painting and walking in parks, ignoring the fact that I left my whole life at a standstill a year ago. I’m just as selfish and insecure as when I left. I don’t know how to fix this feeling and I have no idea what I’ll do when I get home.”

For a moment I lose sight of the fact that I plan to pursue this painting thing, something I’m apparently quite good at and people believe I have some promise for. For a moment, I’m lost again; discouraged and alone. The shitty thing about feeling alone is it makes you want to be even more isolated. It takes all of my strength to not hang up on Colby, though she’s done nothing wrong; to end it, like I did with Jay. “Layla, wait a minute,” she says in a tone that’s a bit harsh for my unconditionally understanding cousin.

“Just stop for a minute. What is this really about? I realize the transition back home will be tough; even harder than you probably expect it will be. But if you did it when you moved out to Prague, you can do it when you move back home. You started the painting thing and the last time we spoke it seemed as if you knew where to take it from there. What happened? What’s changed?”

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Silence: the kind that makes the whispered voices in my head sound like screams.

I’m not sure how to answer her questions, the ones I’ve been asking myself all along.

I often look back in time and try to pinpoint exactly where things fell apart, how I fell apart that long year ago.

The frustrating thing is that nothing really happened. And even more frustrating, I’m not so sure anything’s really changed. I was at a standstill, a crossroad, a place where living just to get by was getting me nowhere and making me miserable.

When I finally realized that something was wrong, that something had to change, even if it was me, I began to entertain Colby’s idea of my living with Misha in Prague for a while; perhaps there I could sort all the chaos out.

When Jay was out of the house, I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror, battling the options out with my reflection, hoping that one of us would make a decision.

Many times, we both gave into defeat, staring at the other with wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes.

Somehow, I had the courage to go and I’m still unable to see how the truth became so blindingly evident; that I had to leave. I had to leave to save myself; had to leave to save us.

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chosen to return those tough feelings are clearly resurfacing, becoming more difficult to hide or ignore.

Alright, enough, out with it.

“Colby, I never told Jay I was moving to Prague.

We never talked about it. He had no idea that I was leaving or where I was going. He never knew.”

Silence, though this time, from her end.

“He still doesn’t know,” I said, expecting more silence; Colby’s not the type to lecture. But she broke it in a way that blindsided me, a transatlantic slap in the face.

“Layla, after you left, I called Jay at his work to see how you got off, see if he’d heard from you yet because I hadn’t and I wanted to be sure everything was alright.”

He knows? All this wasted time, worrying about not having left a note. Colby left one for me.

“He knows, Layla. He’s known all along. I had no idea you just left. I didn’t want to upset you by confessing this when you first arrived in Prague. It was obvious to everyone that you needed to clear your head, alone, without Jay. My telling you would have just clouded your mind even more. And if you had been ready to talk to him yourself, you would have called.”

She paused.

“Layla, I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, no. I know. It’s ok.”

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I say it’s ok. But it’s not ok. Nothing at the moment is all that ok.

“So,” I hesitate, not sure if I’m ready to know the answer to the question I’m about to ask. I knew what I did would cause him pain, but without having contact with him, I never had to witness it. In fact, I was never even forced to acknowledge it. If I ask Colby now, my veil of ignorance is gone and I’ll be forced to see the external consequences of my selfish act.

“How’d he react?”

I just come out with it, unable to take the question back despite how badly I may want to.

“He didn’t really,” Colby answered quickly. “I mean, you know Jay better than anybody. He accepts things the way they are, lets them be regardless of how much it might hurt him. But I think it did hurt him, Layla; pretty badly. He didn’t want you to know that we spoke. He knew it would be easier for you that way. It may sound weird, but even though he had no idea you were leaving, he seemed to sort of understand why you left; not needing or wanting an explanation.”

I’m not cautious now with my questioning. Inquiries come out like rapid fire now.

“Have you spoken to him since then?”

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he was saying the words more to you, than to me. I just happened to be the only one who heard them.”

I catch the lump forming in my throat. No matter how strong I think I am now, I realize my feelings are fragile; this talk of Jay nearly brings me to tears. Thankfully Colby speaks up again.

“You know I never have an agenda. I don’t push my ideals on people. But Layla, you’ll never feel alright unless you talk to him again. He may not want to see you and he may not even want to listen. Those are possibilities you’re going to have to face. But remember why you fell in love, remember why you left and then forget it all and follow your heart. Do whatever it is you feel is right, right now.

And you know what that is, Layla. You just know.”

From across the field on a hot summer day, I see him suiting up for a game of soccer with some of my old high school friends. I’m jogging the track alone, but that’s nothing new. I’m conscious of needing to appear confident since I have no one to hide behind; shoulders back, head high, like I’ve chosen it to be this way, like I enjoy being by myself.

As I take the curve, where we used to start the 200 yard dash at meets my senior year in track, I give a small wave to the few that I know. There’s no avoiding it, although I would have liked to. The guys were friends then, the kind I’d talk to in class while the teachers were busy 195

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setting up the projector or attempting to collect homework that no one did from the night prior. They weren’t the kind I could count on if my car didn’t start before first period. I haven’t seen them since graduation so the quick hand raised half-high with only a second pause is all that’s needed to assure them I’m not an oblivious airhead or a stuck up bitch; two of the most common personality assumptions that I’ve heard accompany my loner label.

I redirect my gaze and move on. Yet for one instant I think I catch his eye, the one I’d never seen before. Without warning it’s him I imagine watching me as I pass, slow to a walk, sit on the itchy plastic grass for a quick stretch, turn off the noise that’s been filling my ears and gather my stuff to go. Seeing this stranger gives me a feeling I’ve never experienced before; a knowingness that if given the chance to meet, we could really get along, before words are ever exchanged, even before eye contact is made. I wouldn’t describe it as love at first sight, not as lust at first sight either. There’s no emotion to process, no butterflies to suppress, no fear of what to say if given the chance to say it. It’s more of an overwhelming certainty; one that bypasses the brain entirely and speaks directly to what I might say is the soul, not even the heart. That will come later.

Regardless of whether either of us knows it yet, he’s been the reason for my casual dating, my lack of commitment, my boyfriend-less high school and college years.

He’s the one I’ve been unknowingly waiting for. For once in my life, there’s nothing I’ve ever felt more certain of.

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My cell phone rings and it’s an unknown number. I never pick it up unless a familiar name appears on my screen. And even then, I don’t always answer.

Whoever it is leaves a voicemail which is weird.

People calling from strange numbers usually hang up and try later; or not.

His name’s Jay. I don’t know him. We have some mutual friends, which is how he got my number. He’s sorry the call’s unsolicited, but he wasn’t sure of any other way to get a hold of me, if not to sit at the track every day, all day, until I returned. And if I don’t respond, he says, that’s exactly what he might do. In any other instance I might resolve to not call back and never return to that track. Instead, I laugh. He has a way of making me laugh already, when the wheels are spinning.

It’s not like me to return a call like this, but I do.

And I agree to meet him the next evening for dinner. I’m not nervous talking to this strange voice on the other line.

It’s almost as if this were all supposed to happen, exactly in this order, at this time, in this way.

For the next four years, I did everything I could to make sure that us being together always felt right. I ventured to never go to bed upset even if it made me sick and kept us both awake for hours on end, my asking him over and over again if and why he loved me; looking to make sense of his being with me after an already exhausting day of self-loathing.

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He would tell me repeatedly despite my being unable to say it back. And eventually, I could sleep.

Jay tried so hard to prove it by weekends away in a cheap beachside motel - the only waterfront kind of accommodation we could afford - surprise me with handwritten notes of sweet daydreams or the simple phrase that I was unable to read out loud; for fear that he might hear it, believe it to be for him, leave me with no choice but to live up to the promise, to not disappoint him, to not let him down.

It should have been enough for me that he came home every night with a genuine smile and an unavoidable eagerness to wrap me in his arms, to want to make me happy, to want to wipe away my tears.

I’m not sure at what moment I realized the problem was me. I was feeding off of Jay for validation, to feel like I was worthy of love, rather than creating it for myself, from within.

That day I said goodbye after looking at the clock, ticking slowly, each quarter inch forcing me to make a final decision, I realized I could no longer look into his eyes full of love and acceptance for all of me, including my faults, knowing that he was staring back into nothingness; into empty sockets. All that he was doing and not doing would never help to fill them.

Whether he knew it or not, there was an expansive distance growing between us. I saw myself drifting away, on an open sea, with no sail or oar in my possession, noth198

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ing I might use to try and bring me back to shore, as we moved farther and farther apart; as he watched me go.

Now Colby tells me he’s known all along. I wonder what his life’s been like without me this past year; if he’s erased me completely or if he’s waiting for me to raise my sail and come home.

She’s right. I need to talk to him again; provide closure for him if he needs it or explore whether or not this time apart has done our relationship any good.

When Colby got on the phone, I’d curled up on the small sofa in the living room and set the receiver down on the side table after we hung up.

Looking over at it once more, I’m afraid that if I don’t call now, I may lose the strength to dial his number again.

Reaching for the phone, I’m startled to hear it ring before I have it in my hand. The tiny rectangular screen lights up and goes dark, repeatedly, as I fixate my eyes on this wondrous piece of technology which fails to tell me who’s on the other line. My heart falls into my stomach. It has to be Jay. He saw the missed call from an unknown number and decided to call back. He may not know what he’s in for; he may have no idea that it’s me.

I answer but am slow to raise the phone to my ear.

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“Hello?” I hear from the palm of my hand.

“Layla? Are you there?”

He knew. How could he have known it was me? My heart stops as my mind races, working to find the right thing to say.

Still no words come out.

“Ahoj, Layla.”

It’s a man’s voice and he drags out the vowels in my name for days. My heart resumes its beating in my chest, pounding hard against the cage that holds it in place.

I can feel the blood pumping so fast it burns through my arms and they grow numb. I’m dizzy. But before I see stars, I breathe deeply and focus all of my energy on not letting the phone fall to the floor.

Jay would never say “ahoj.”

“Petr, hey,” I say quietly. I almost wonder if he’s even heard me; heard the disappointment in my voice.

After he left, I’d only once imagined what it’d be like to talk to him again, how it would feel to be reunited.

Would I want to throw my arms around him, lead him into the nearest secluded room? Or would I look at him with indifference, knowing that what we had was nice, but it will forever remain in our memories, locked in the past where it belongs.

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“Look, sorry to call out of the blue. It’s just that since I left Prague in such a rush, I’ve thought about how I had no time to say goodbye. I felt horrible.”

“Yeah, I know how that is,” I say, as shitty as the truth sounds leaving my lips.

“I got an offer from this agency in Dubai before I left, to show some of my more creative pieces at an auction. It was one of those things where I only had moments to decide; the event would take place in a matter of days and they needed an answer. The art scene there is exploding like you wouldn’t believe, Layla. I absolutely couldn’t say no and had no choice but to pack everything, leave immediately.”

I muster up some enthusiasm although I’m working to mask the disappointment that’s growing as I acknowledge how much I’d hoped it was Jay that had said hello.

“That’s amazing Petr, I’m so happy for you.” And I am. He’s a talented artist and he deserves to be recognized.

“It’s been really great; better than I could have hoped for, really. I had a few high bids on several of my pieces and I’m pretty sure I’ll be going back sooner than I think. For now though, I’m in Prague to tie up some loose ends.”

No, please don’t say it.

“It’d be great to see you.”

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He said it.

On one hand, I’m indebted to Petr. Without him, I don’t know that I would have even begun to believe that making a living doing something one loves could be possible. I don’t know that I ever would have opened my mind enough to buy a piece of canvas and throw some paint on it, toss inhibitions to the wind. Without him leaving me the way he did, I don’t know that I would have ever felt even the smallest amount of pain Jay may have felt when I left home, without saying goodbye. Without him, calling now, I’m not sure I would have ever let him go completely from my mind.

“It would be great to see you as well, Petr. But I can’t.”

I can’t because he was right for me for a moment in time, but that moment is gone, left for my memory to hold on to as a pleasant dream; one that took place in another space, at another time, bringing me closer to myself. Now it just feels too far away.

“I’m leaving soon,” I tell him, “and I have some things to finish up before I go. I have to tell you though that I’m so glad we met. The time we spent together was, incredible. I can’t even begin to explain how you’ve helped me. Unfortunately, you may never know just how much; I suppose you’ll have to be satisfied with not knowing.”

“I understand,” he says with a sincerity I don’t believe my ears had ever heard until now. “I understand completely.”

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Thank you, Petr. I think I’m starting to understand as well.

“Good luck with the painting, alright? You’re good, Layla.”

“My painting. How’d you know?”

“I stopped by Silvie’s bakery looking for you a day or two ago. She told me you probably wouldn’t be in much anymore; that you’d be going home soon. I finally convinced her to give me your number since I wasn’t sure how else to contact you. She was hesitant at first, but she must have known of me, because once I explained how you and I met, it didn’t take too much convincing.

“When I was there, I noticed an incredible piece of art hanging in the back. I could see it just over her shoulder where she stood and asked if I could have a closer look. I tried to make out a signature, but found none. I asked Silvie who the artist was. She just smiled this proud, knowing smile, said you had been born with a brush in your hand and were only now learning to use it.

“I’m so glad you found it Layla, or rather, have realized it since it’s been with you all along, waiting to be discovered. We’re all born with something we’re inherently good at, something our souls are meant to do on this earth.

Some of us find it early in life, some of us later and some not at all. The fact that you have found yours is a gift, not to be taken lightly; so take it and run. Cultivate it like you would an open field. Care for it, feed it and help it grow.

The fruit of your labor won’t show overnight either; suc203

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cess will only come with hard work. You’ll be tested both physically and mentally but it will be up to you to continue on.

“And never forget to focus as much, if not more, on the process than on the results. You’ll need to plow the earth, plant the seeds, pull the weeds, water, harvest and repeat. In the end, you will feed many, giving others the strength to find their own ways in life. But remember to be just a little bit selfish as well. Do this all for yourself, first and foremost. If you don’t put care and love into whatever it is you do, your crops will suffer and not a single soul will benefit. Your efforts will have been for nothing.”

“How is it that you know so much about farming?”

I can’t help myself. His analogy resonates with me so strongly that if I don’t say something offhand to make me laugh, I’ll cry, and I’ve done enough of that already.

He reads through my tone and realizes I understand everything he’s said because he comes back with an equally ridiculous response. Something about living off the land in the Midwest with hicks and hillbillies; a thing I should know enough about myself.

“Thank you, Petr, for everything,” I say, knowing that this will probably be the last time we speak.

“It was nothing, Layla. Good luck.”

“Same to you,” I say before I hang up.

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I keep the phone close, part of me hoping that it will ring again with Jay’s voice this time on the line. The other part hopes it will remain quiet; I’m content with the way things finished with Petr and I’m clearing my thoughts as I clear what’s been my room since arriving in Prague; it’s better that I speak to Jay with an uncluttered mind.

My suitcases are spread out on the floor, open and empty; the way I felt when I made that drastic change a year ago. Only now do I realize that there’s no one I can rely on to fill their emptiness, my emptiness, but me.

The thought makes me wonder if such a drastic change had been necessary. Could I have evolved the way I have here without having picked up my entire life and moved halfway around the world? Weren’t the secrets and signs surrounding me all along? Wouldn’t I have eventually begun to notice them? Understand them? Listen to, follow and appreciate them? Perhaps I would have met a Misha or a Silvie or a Petr back home, in time; people who for unknown reasons would have crossed my path, helping me to better see.

I’m amazed to think that in just a few days I’ll be heading home. My luggage and I will be full. I’ll even have some extra baggage that I’m more than thrilled to carry around: my brush, my paints, my crisp, clean canvases, my discovered passion, my calling, my wide-open, empty field ready to be cultivated.

I have no idea what will come of my painting. I have no idea what will come of my life. And for the first time, ever, I am not the least bit afraid of not knowing.

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I pull some sweaters out of a dresser drawer which make me perspire just looking at them. The heat this May has become nearly unbearable; it’s going to be another hot summer. I toss them into the larger of the two and watch it begin to fill. Slowly at first, and then quicker, like the rising of a river in winter, threatening to overflow.

The dresser is nearly empty now, save for a few pieces I’ll wear these next few days, t-shirt dress and sweater I’ll wear on the plane.

And Jay’s shirt; the one that smells like him, looks like him, feels like him. The gray fabric is fading as much as the black screen printed band logo on the front is peeling. I hold it softly in my hands, the way I would have liked to hold his face and kiss his lips before I left, but wasn’t strong enough to actually do.

Before folding it up and packing it away, I take it with me to the window seat. I lower myself, aware of each miniscule move I make before sitting completely. I take a deep breath and dial his number, again.

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I Was Found Stepping off the plane, I feel tired and refreshed all at the very same time. My hands shake a bit, though not from nerves; I’m surprisingly calm.

My feet are firmly on the ground and yet, part of my heart is still back in Prague. I’m not so sure I’ll ever get it back.

Nearly 24 hours ago, Misha and I were sharing our last morning coffee together, sitting on her couch and talking like old friends.

“I can’t believe you’re really leaving, that I won’t come home tonight to smell your beautiful paints and peek at your newest creations. It’s felt as if you have been here all along, Layla; from the beginning. And yet, it feels like just yesterday that you arrived.”

“Tell me about it. My heart’s trying to convince me I’ll only be heading out for a short walk around the city, maybe a stop at the bakery, to return and do some painting.

My mind’s telling me otherwise. When I really think about it is when I realize I won’t ever have this same routine again.”

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I was in such a different place when I first got to Prague, mentally and emotionally. I can’t even begin to describe how much Misha’s helped me move away from that; with introducing me to Silvie at the bakery, to Johana at the studio. This experience has been like a dream where I’ve transformed into someone I could never imagine actually becoming in real life.

“You’ll do great things when you get home, Layla.

And whether they turn out to be big or small is irrelevant, as long as you always stay true to yourself.”

“Spoken like someone who knows,” I say with a gallon of smile and not an ounce of sarcasm. My observation is loaded with appreciation for the strength she’s had to hold her own.

I think specifically of her following her heart with her latest court case, the one in which she stood for something she firmly believes in, human decency and mutual respect for others regardless of background or race, color or culture; despite the lack of popularity it was certain to bring; despite the lack of support from the one person she thought she could rely on most: her husband.

“Well, I do,” she says adding that there are times she questioned her own beliefs and motivations in life, but it was usually only prompted by the questions and doubts expressed by others.

“It is not always easy, to follow your own path, especially if it goes against the way you were shown since birth or the way followed by most others around you. There 208

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will be people that won’t hesitate to tell you that the direction in which you are headed is wrong or that there is a better road to take. It is made even harder when those people are nearest and dearest to you. The trouble will be that they don’t always know what is best or what is right for you and you will; you always will. Quiet your mind and listen to the voice that is inside, to guide you. Sometimes, that voice will be the only one in this world that you can trust.”

When I was in the dark place that I was, before I met Misha and Silvie and Petr and even the woman with the face, I would have found it harrowing to think that in the end, when all is said and done, we’re all very much alone; that we can rely only on ourselves to discover answers, reveal secrets and assure that we’re making the right moves.

Now, after having met them, the same thought is equally liberating. I’ve found the confidence to choose a path, my path. Those who support me will walk by my side, while those who don’t will simply take a different turn. Either way, I’ll continue on.

The flight home wasn’t horrible. Quite the opposite actually; being in the sky was surprisingly pleasant. My hands never clutched the armrest, my nails never dug into my skin and my heart kept a beat so steady I hardly noticed the plane take off.

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Surrounded by open sky on a beautiful cloudless morning, I felt weightless in the air. Standing here in baggage claim, I still feel a bit light on my feet.

This defiance of gravity helps me feel free; free of the constraints I once fought so hard against, yet unknowingly kept in place by never taking the risk to make a change.

After leaving the runway in Prague, I realized this new sense of weightlessness, of freedom, has begun to have a tremendously calming effect, when before it would make me anxious, freak me out. I notice this most as my fear of flying reduces itself to a mere memory.

The trouble I once had with being in a plane was accepting my lack of control; control which essentially was never mine to have, both in the air and on the ground. My reactions, however, were left untouched, so I worried and fretted over every “what if” I could imagine. What if the plane goes down? What if I never see my family again?

What if I get fired or let go? What if I can’t pay rent? What if I continue living in this state of limbo where nothing I do is satisfying?

The mind games we play with ourselves are pointless in the end. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last year it’s that everything that will be, will be. There’s no use in getting all worked up about it. Our one requirement as a human being is to take each moment as it comes and be open enough to see and hear the messages all around. And then, take action. This newfound knowledge has given me the courage to bravely face both the darkness and the light.

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Walking to arrivals, the rolling suitcases, shuffling feet, honking taxis and reunited laughter become a steady hum; one rhythm pulsating softly, sounding the way the world might through an earful of fluffy cotton, while I feel as if I’m standing on a cloud.

Through the crowd, I see his face.

Days ago, I heard his voice; for the first time, in a very long time.

“This is Jay,” he answers, the way he always does when the number’s unknown. His voice is friendly on the surface, but I sense a bit of melancholy underneath; though this might just be a slight reflection of my own current state.

I’ve just finished packing. My suitcases are zippered up and lying on the floor of my bedroom at Misha’s.

I stare out to the garden courtyard below from my enclosed window seat a few stories above. I had taken several deep breaths before I dialed, but my heart sped up so much in the few rings preceding his answer that I desperately long to take in another. I don’t. I don’t want him to hear any hesitation or anxiety in whatever comes out of my mouth. I was

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calm before. I need to be calm now. I close my eyes and picture his face.

“Jay.” His name on my lips once again feels so natural; it’s been a while since I’ve said it out loud.

“It’s Layla.”

I badly wish to follow this up with some insignificant question like “how’s the weather” only to fill in the silence, postpone or deter the uncomfortable conversation that is sure to follow.

The quiet energy between us grows in length and I can’t quite do anything to stop it. It’s out of my control. I hear some small noise on the other end and for a moment realize it’s possible that he’s hung up.

“Jay,” I say slowly, “you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I just am not so sure what to say right now, Layla. I thought I might never hear from you again. For the past few months, I’ve mourned your being gone like a death. I wasn’t sure how else to let you go.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m dead to him now.

If I were Jay, I’m nearly certain I would myself have written me off just the same. Regardless, hearing him say it doesn’t lessen the sting.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to call.”

Not so much time passes before he speaks again.

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“Layla, I’ve imagined this conversation a million times before and it seems as if everything I ever wanted to say in a rage is lost to me now. Shortly after you left, Colby called asking if you had arrived safely. She told me where you were but didn’t say much about what you would be doing.

“I didn’t ask if you’d told her why you left and she didn’t say; she didn’t need to. In retrospect, I can’t say that I was entirely surprised you were gone; that I didn’t, deep inside, already know you would leave.

“The last day I saw you, the moment I tried to kiss you goodbye, I finally felt the emptiness in your eyes; an emptiness that I saw had been growing for some time, but was far too selfish to acknowledge. I guess I hoped that the more I told you I loved you, the more I pulled you close and held you in my arms, the quicker the emptiness would fill and eventually disappear. But I was too late. I’m sorry.”

“Do you wish things would have all happened differently?” I ask him. There’s no point now in talking much about how or why I left. He very seemingly understands.

“I’ve missed you, Layla. For every moment and every month apart you’ve been in my heart and on my mind. Some days I was saddened by your absence, others I celebrated your memory. I had some time to really look at myself as well; to focus on the things I was doing in my own life that was keeping me from being truly happy. The difference between us seems to be that I used your presence to heal every pain, so I never looked too deeply at that 213

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which held me down; because you never failed to lift me up. And now I realize that was unfair.

“But to answer your question: no. Not for a second do I wish things had happened any other way. It’s as if this is exactly how things are supposed to be.”

I breathe a sigh of relief; he couldn’t be any more right.

We stand rather still, a few feet apart and in these moments I find myself back in a wide open field, the lemon grass and yellow daisies softly brushing against my skin, warm fresh air smoothing over my hair. The sun beats down on my smiling face, its rays warm. I’m so tall, I might reach out and touch them.

We’ve met in the middle and he looks into my eyes with an all-knowing smile that says nothing and everything all at once.

And this time, he’s real; no longer just a vision or a dream.

I walk close to him, place my hands in his and whisper the words I’ve wanted to say for so long.

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