holy thursday!

Oh, it is so nice to get up at 6.40 am and go to the doctor's.
It didn't begin all too bad. I managed to get the second ticket. I was supposed to be seen at 7.45.
So I go upstairs.
At the office I see a girl, totally terrified by me, by the world and by herself. She has the 7.30 ticket. Here comes the doctor. We give her a warm welcome with singing and flags to make sure she has noticed her patients waiting. Dr. Marlena, smiling as if she were high, hides in her burrow. Not to be seen anymore. Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Nothing. A new patient has arrived. We talk to each other in a VERY LOUD MANNER, to make the first patient hear us, that perhaps it wouldn't do any harm to knock and ask whether she could come in. But the lady seems to be not only terrified, but also slightly unperceptive, so, at 7.50, I say to her: Couldn't you ask Her Majesty? The Terrified One gets up and approaches the door, which takes her an awful lot of time. She practices the gesture of knocking to make sure it will go smoothly and finally knocks on the door, so quietly I'm kinda sure even the door wouldn't notice. She opens the door slightly (about 5 millimeters), says she's sorry to be alive and asks if she may enter. Yes. She may. She probably could at 7.30 just as well, but the poor doctor "didn't know there was someone waiting". Lordy.
The Terrified One gets out, I get it. Your name? So I tell her. Oh, well, I can't see your file. Would you please go downstairs and get it?
Finding no words to describe this ever so curious absurdity I take my bag and run from the third floor to the ground floor to get my file. Here I catch the nurse who's just about to leave for her gossip & coffee break: GIMMIE MY FILE. She: DON'T HAVE IT.
Huh?
Here it comes. The whole department starts to look for my documents. Telephones, catalogues, whatever you wish. The nurse calls my doctor to say the file is not here, only to find it the very next second. She tapes the envelope up with due diligence (which means another five minutes of waiting). I go back upstairs, but guess what, the next patient is already in the doctor's room. Some idiot says it's my fault so I'll get punished and will wait another fifteen minutes for my turn. I explain to myself his underestimation of my deadly powers is a sign of his mental illness and decide not to kill him.
Then I finally get to the doctor's office.
I sit down.
My doctor loves the whole world and makes sure every part of it feels well looked after. After one sentence uttered to me, there comes a sentence to a nurse, one to a doctor, one to miss technician – as all those people keep walking in and out to discuss some matters of life and death: nail polish, croissants and stuff. GODDAMNIT. The circle closes, back to me. The doctor turns out not to be able to tell one medicine from the other and apparently uses "zinc”", "calcium' and "magnesium" as synonyms.
I feel I really want to go home.
And forget to ask her one important question. In fact, when I realize this, I still have the time to go back and ask it. But I feel it would take too much of time and suffering.
At 9.30 I feel like a zombie and try to mentally prepare myself for the day.
In the afternoon I go where people spend their time talking books, language and translation, that is: workshops with Professor M. He's smoking and I'm asking him hundreds of questions. Each time he laughs and says: you may ask, but I may not answer at all.
But he always does.

And in the evening I meet Ol. in a café owned by a famous writer to choose a book for my mother. When I'm choosing between a story of a portraitist from a concentration camp and a book by a German woman of Turkish descent, I hear a deep male voice. It's him – the author of the most beautiful stories about Czech Republic. I copied fragments of his books and took them with me to Prague to have a walk around the city according to his hints. He goes crazy – he recommends dozens of books, tells me about them and their authors, and he says it all like a friendly host who shows to his guests everything that's best at his larder. Finally, I choose "Life. A practical guide". I write to my mom: something wonderful has just happened to me, but I won't tell you about it before your birthday. She writes back, but you'll forget it by then!
I won't.

So after all I'm quite happy to have gotten up this Thursday morning. Even at the dark 6.40.