BLACK GIRL IN PRAGUE: DAY 8

I know this is a surreal post but it's all I've got.

Being in Prague to write and explore, away from family and friends and everything familiar, feels like being dropped into a vast ocean of beauty, sinking safely, miles down, and finding treasures that I know I can't bring back to the surface. I can't because they won't survive the journey home, they're only relatable here, unique to this experience. Even trying would mean they'd be destroyed by pressure, age, or other forces that I don't know about so leaving them is bittersweet. The sweet is knowing that they'll be here for the next person to see. It's already happening.

But I have the images of these treasures stored in my memory. Some of them. Logging them as they appear. Disappear. I have no doubt that it'll be like waking from a dream when I get home to the warmth and seeming newness of my reality and the things that loosely belong to me. And maybe I will fall asleep properly from there, and find myself here again. I don't know.

As I think about it, it seems that I should be jotting down notes about what I've been doing here in Praha, the sights I've visited, the architecture, the food, the beautiful language, etc, because remembering dreams like this one (it's what it feels like now) is as promising as keeping water cupped in hands, watching it slide through even the most tightly-laced fingers. But I don't want to remember this experience with great accuracy. I want to remember the moments and how they made me feel. The things that hurt, that made me cry-laughing, or just cry, or just laugh, to be proud of--the new things and the people that have touched me deeply (and there have been a few) and made me see myself differently...and in almost no time. It's been just days. Time is fickle. Or I am.

For now, I want to trust that the memories will come back to me as quickly as they were formed in the intensity of mere days that feel like years and that these memories will come when I need them most, as life lessons, or that they'll be reborn in a new novel that I've yet to write. I'm in limbo now. My just-finished novel, tentatively titled, "Sweet Tea and Honey" has just been sent out to publishers by my agent this past week and I can feel the loneliness of waiting. Something will happen or nothing will. The work has come down to this milestone that I don't control (It's what it wanted, wasn't it?), and it's not easy to hold one's breath for so long. But it's good that I am right now since, like I said, I'm underwater at this very moment.

This coming Thursday, my last day in Prague, I will have the pleasure of reading with the international, well-respected, literary journal  B O D Y alongside talented writers like Joshua Weiner. If you're near Prague and can be here Thursday, July 11 at 7:30pm, it would be great to meet you. Tell me you read this blog and make me blush. :)

I'll try to insert the image of the invite below and if you see it there, I'm saying Yay! because it'll be the first time I've been able to insert a photo in this blog on my own. :) If not, click on "B O D Y" above and it'll take you to the live link.

Thanks for reading. xo