Because I’m a better correspondent than blogger… this post is an email I’ve recently sent my brother, which sums things up.
Dear Sean,
I write this letter, as I may. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and since having one of our Skype chats would be inconvenient in a hostel, I’m writing you a letter. Insomnia is made much more unpleasant when you are forced to spend the late and early hours in a hostel surrounded by young people snoring drunkenly, (and so unappreciative of their ability to sleep). I plugged myself into an audiobook the entire night through. Bad idea, as it happens, because now it’s properly day out, and there’s 5 hours left of the book and I don’t want do anything other than finish it. This certainly means a wasted day in Budapest. It was already noon by the time I actually got out of my bed, and that only because I was hungry.
Even then I continued to listen to it while I ate my instant noodles. I made tea too, but somehow it seemed less acceptable to just sit there drinking tea for another several hours whilst plugged into my iPod. Most people would think I’m unsociable. Which is probably true but they wouldn’t know that I’m unsociable because I’m thoroughly wrapped up in a novel. A novel that I hadn’t even intended to get to until I was well shot of my final portfolio. Too bad. So, I took my tea and my typing machine to the patio table outside the hostel and told myself I WOULD write. But the thing is, I was so stuck in the English countryside (the novel is I Capture the Castle by Jodie Smith, such a silly thing that I didn’t think I’d like, the description isn’t that impressive but the reviews are fantastic. I was hooked almost at once. The narrator is so… readable. It has that appeal to young white girls, I suppose, that Jane Austen does, but set in the 1930s. And no, I don’t really recommend you read it unless you really want to, though if you did I think you could appreciate it on an aesthetic level.) In any case, I felt it was a bit hopeless to try to get back to writing Budapest (even though that IS where I am) so to get myself going, I thought I’d better write to you, even though my blog is in desperate need of updating. Much has happened but I just haven’t got the knack of what to say in a post. It comes out all wrong. I really am the worst blogger, in content and timing.
ToDoist isn’t helping me, I’m afraid. It’s not that I need reminding to do things, I just need to want to do them. (Was I always such a lazy child? I rather think I was.) Which brings me to Uncle Berlin’s manuscript. Well, if I can waste a day not doing any work at all, and reading things that cannot even by the loosest construction be considered research, I suppose I can spend a few hours every evening editing.
I’ve finished my tea, but not this letter. I will make more.
Back now. So glad this hostel has free tea, and a kitchen that doesn’t close. Real tea leaves too, not Lipton tea bags. Black from Turkey, mint from Morocco, Hibiscus from Egypt, and green from Sri Lanka. Well, and camomile tea bags. Or at least, it smells like camomile, I can’t tell just by looking at the label. (Hungarian really is quite unlike any other language I’ve come across. Delightful and intensely frustrating at the same time, especially since I won’t be around long enough to learn it.)
I haven’t much money, so tea fills my stomach in between meals of sachets of tomato soup, ramen noodles, and the cucumber and cream cheese bagels from the bookshop here that I like. The place is horribly dusty, frightfully unorganised, plays just the sort of music that I like (from Satie to Billie Holliday) and has a secret garden out the back. It would be quite perfect, only I feel that are simply not enough books.
But then again, I suppose that’s my complaint about everything, so that says nothing. I’ve come across many bookshops that I love, but I’ve never found the perfect bookshop. I suppose I’m saving that for the one I’ll one day open myself in Morocco.
I bought two anthologies of Hungarian poetry yesterday; bilingual editions with the original Hungarian, and the English versions on the opposite page. They haven’t been just translated, but reversed by famous English and American poets, to keep the same feel of he poem more or less in tact. (Or so I am led to believe, as I cannot actually read Hungarian, though the bookshop employee was very obliging in translating a few words for me when I asked him.) They were rather expensive, and I will have to throw away more clothes to make room for them in my pack, but they were necessary. You can’t walk more than a block or two without crossing a street named for some poet. I’m convinced Hungarian poets have gone shockingly unappreciated. But then again, that’s the same for most poets, I suppose. Most artists, too. Nothing really romantic about being an unappreciated starving writer abroad, though I suppose that’s exactly what I’m doing. Not doing me any harm, as I gained a lot of weight in the UK, and can afford to be a bit hungry. It’s a wonder all academics aren’t jigglier people, or perhaps they are and cleverly hide it with waistcoats, jumpers, and tweedy jackets (with optional elbow patches).
I haven’t got my mark back for my final essay. It would serve me right if they failed me. I was horribly offensive. When will I ever learn? I should have stuck to my boring idea, I had plenty of material and it wouldn’t have involved stepping on anyone’s toes. As it is, I think I must have offended nearly the entire staff, at least a bit. Ugh, I get squirmy just thinking about it. It is the sort of thing I would have felt far more comfortable saying to their faces; turning it in as an essay makes it seem like an official declaration of disapproval. My classmates, on the other hand, encouraged the essay, and discouraged direct confrontation. I suppose they don’t have much faith in my tact.
I took a walking tour about the history of communism in Hungary. I really got on with the tour guide, she’s a writer too, and offered to help me with anything I’d like to know about Budapest. Unfortunately, all that this has resulted in her pointing out everything that is wrong with my premise. I am now convinced I’ll never know the culture well enough to set a story here. Actually, I feel that about every setting I use, even the American ones. Perhaps especially the American ones. I think I am cursed to write stories about people in places they don’t really fit in and don’t truly understand but I’ll never be able to outdo Camus, so what’s the point? Don’t answer that, I know the point.
Besides, the agent wants a magical story set in Budapest, so that’s what I shall write. Being mercenary makes me actually feel better about it, but there is that sense of humiliation in picturing a Hungarian reading it and being disgusted by all its faults. The agent might not notice, but my brain would cringe at all the inaccuracies (both real ones and the those I imagine are lurking throughout the story, hiding from me behind the ignorant facades of buildings that I’ve erected for the setting.)
I suppose I’ve worked my way back to Budapest now, and should have a go at writing it. I think I’ll go back to my bookshop to do it, though. The patio is nice (though it’s not really a patio, I’ll attach photos) but I’m bothering people, I think. I’ve been here too long.
There’s seems to be no good place to play my harmonica.
Your sister,
~Kathryn
P.S. I think my favourite thing about Budapest is the sheer number of flower stalls they have on the streets. I don’t know why this should please me, I always sneeze when I go by, and I couldn’t identify more than a handful of them – and even then it’s as simple as, sunflower, lily, rose, daisy, petunia. I might also recognise a tulip. (Those were the ones that grew around the tree in the front yard of our old house, yes?) But I do like the names of flowers, even if I don’t know what they look like, especially the important sounding ones. Perhaps what enchants me is just the necessity to have them on every street corner, to cater to the people’s need of readily available fresh flowers, bouquets at a time. I always imagined flowers as a luxury, a decadent item. But in a city were the average monthly salary is less than 500 euros, people can hardly be expected to waste money on pretty trifles. I can only conclude (using my own inane logic) that in Budapest, flowers are not luxuries, but necessities. And isn’t that nice, somehow?
Rhododendrons and chrysanthemums,
~K
