Sleepless Summer of 2018

When you know one day we'll all be talking about 'that summer of 2018' in London fondly and the youngster will not believe...

We probably started living in a civilized society some 12 thousand years ago. We were making love, making up stories, honouring gods, observing stars and celestial bodies, giving names to things. But the oldest written records we have are from about 5000 years ago. There are THOUSANDS of years of human history forever lost and we can never know what happened. Who was the first person to give Earth it's name, to speak it out loud, and when did it become a universally accepted name for our planet? When did we start thinking about nature and forests and rivers and oceans as habitats ON AN ACTUAL planet as oppose to just known world around us? Does your brain sometimes hum long into the night pondering these questions?

It's 2018, half way through the summer and sleep is something we can only dream of here in London (terrible pun totally intended). Most of us stay awake due to the strikingly intense and surprisingly consisten heat (I'd like to note here, for any Big Guy up there listening, this is not a complaint! Please keep it coming, I am aware we'll have to pay for this summer treat dearly later on.)

Some toss around the whole night in cold sweats and with heart palpitations due to the merciless withdrawal syndrome - like this gorgeous poor brave and foolish boy next to me. After more than a decade of smoking just about anything that can provide various levels of euphoria (I am including nicotine here btw) - or later on - at least give a ritualistic sense of order to your day - David dropped the habit suddenly and (so far) never looked back. And although his mind feels ready for all kinds of expansions and jumping into the person he's meant to become, his body pushes back in a loud-toddler-like-look-at-me-and-obey type of fashion.

As for me - with my 33rd birthday just behind the corner, the whole Leo astrological season kicking-off and the longest lunar eclipse just few days away, I'm sleeping poorly due to brain going into overdrive. Suddenly and in a great close-up - friends and stories from the past came forward demanding attention, friendship and relationship dynamics in a need to shape opinions about and insisting on being categorized. There's the whole pondering and reflecting aspect of birthdays and *'oh my god, I've been so busy just trying to survive in London I might have completely missed on discovering what my soul purpose is' * (more on that later and boy, will that be a fun little blog post ughhh).

We had David's friends staying with us*, followed by one of my biggest actress-crushes from my early Uni days Petra - who I used to swear I'd one day work with and sure enough - as soon as I made my way up in the media, I casted her in radio plays and audiobooks I directed, and hence what started as straight-up stalking grew into a friendship for life.

My friend Klara flew in from Maldives for like two seconds, where she have first - three years back - found a renewed sense of purpose in life after being stuck in London's rut for almost a decade like a sock forgotten in a washing machine, and now even love & possibly her future (David Attenborough better watch your back!). When you - in geoloical or inner-balance terms - land on the right spot, other things start to allign like crazy.

Two closed doors over, another sleepless hostage of the night - one of my dearest and oldest friends Tereza being kept awake by the unceasing traffic outside our single-glazed living room windows, first one to test a new double matrasse dragged in (like 90% of my possessions) from the street just few weeks ago.

It's been four years since her last visit to London and just about a whole lifetime of changes manifested in our lives in the meantime. Yet, I'm happy to report, we managed to hit the sweet spot mostly lasting from mid-twenties to about mid-thirties - of stunted biological development, so although we are definitely nowhere near the same poeple crushed by heartbreaks and big changes four years back, we look still the same. And most fortunatelly - our friendship too.

I'm here booking a silent disco yoga class for us, whilst Tereza studies The Communist Manifesto for her politically charged article. The very same day world remains both amused & petrified by Trump unabashedly licking Putin's ass dry in Helsinki, and across the pond another American slayed his 226th Guinness World Record - one that he proposed himself - slicing watermelons on his stomach with a samurai sword (he did 26 in one minute)... the world (our world) is still chock-full of the bizarre and wondrous, and thanks lord we have each other to share this with and marvel.

You'll find us almost every day diving into Hampstead's mixed pond (no matter how metropolitan on the surface, you never can pry the central-european countryside out of us), improvizing picnics on just about any scorched patch of grass we come across, going to theatre a lot and for the first time in my life - letting life happen to us as oppose to micro-manage every day hour by hour.

All of these people bring stories with them. New ideas on what life could be like. Facing them could be unsettling and uncomfortable (I mean all I REALLY want to do is have a cocktail and put on Netflix to silence not indulge my brain's thunderous cogs.) - especially to someone who prefers to entertain rather than sit quietly with his worries and fears - but having these 'ghosts of christams past' appearing here in London in such 'so-not-coincidental' abundance and combination - has its own hidden logic.

Because, most crucially and regardless the sleepless nights, suffocating tube rides, dehydration and loss of apetite - we never cease to talk.
As one of the greatest Czech movie directors - Milos Forman - said:

"I think the meaning of life is in living it and then chatter about it with friends."

And it's in the talking where opinions, ideas, dreams, plans, regrets and hopes are being given shape and released out into the wild, walloping forward so we can chase them.

Catching them later on is actually inconsequential, the important bit is that by running ahead - they show us the direction.

*Full non-glamorous disclosure: Yes, I might as well admit - being a Leo and mentally forever 14 years old - I do sometimes very much not enjoy the idea there will always be friends around who knew him back when he had a life I wasn't part of, back when he used to fuck other people. But as my mama said once - these things are like dirty dishes. You might hate the idea of dealing with them, but the unshakable truth is - dirty dishes will be your reality until the rest of your life, or as long as you eat from plates and use cuttlery. So unless we move to Alaska, we'll live surrounded by poeple, some of which - yes - preceed our story as a couple.
And of course yes, I do think it's different in regards to my friends, haha. Ohhh..