Wednesday, July 16, 2003
the first day was a double, we determined that as the sun went below the horizon and it became dark blue outside the plane window and then ten minutes later the light began to refract around the horizon at eyelevel and we watched the sun bubble up orange and i started writing poems.
we went straight to the rokery on a friend's suggestion.
it might have just opened at around 9 in the morning and i was very dizzy and confused.
today i was wondering about the street it was on, called "rokin" and the verb "smoke" is "roken".
the two clerks were starting their day reading the paper and stacking oranges.
brett went downstairs to look at the smoke menu and i stared at the red candles.
after we smoked i stared at the mural for a while and wrote a poem and then we left for the hotel.
our room wouldn't be ready for 3 hours so we took a walk to museumplein and sat at cafe cobra for 3 hours.
that was the first time i paid for the toilet that trip.
it cost 50 cents for girls, there were stalls that were transparent until you locked them and then turned opaque.
for the boys, you got to pee against a wall of water.
we went back to the hotel and slept.
it was a deep sleep that i figured to be
about one r.e.m. cycle complete.
about three and a half hours.
we might have wandered up to the red light district that night, i don't remember, no,
i think we only made it as far as the dam where we found a restaurant that served dutch food.
i had a fillet of salmon (zalm) with a dill pesto and fries and brett had 3 balls of mashpot all with different ingredients.
one with carrots, one with spinach, etc. then we wandered over to a bar called la chouffe
where they had la chouffe on tap. that wasn't the first night i had la chouffe, though,
i thought i would drink the house pilsner. so we sat at the bar and drank beer and i tried to recall some WWII history
and we talked about the alluring aesthetic of propaganda- utilitarian, simple lines, easy, subversive.
we got somehow but don't remember.
i don't know how great it is to be back in a place where you can be fully understood, or recognized for that matter.
people look and expect looks. my eyes end up shifty and tend towards the larger expanses, such as the entire scene.
quiet is better for now, but not sure how to break it quietly.
"why fly a kite when you can just take a pill?" -Kramer (Seinfeld)
vondelpark has lots of twists and turns
that bring you deeper and deeper into it.
soccer players and birds each on discrete turf
we saw a bird so white you could use it to whiten your clothes
if you rubbed it all over you
i was crying when we entered the park, not really all of a sudden
we sat in a sunless area and assumed the sun went down
i talked and apologized
i felt like i had lost the poems to some fickle force of social preference
i couldn't hear my own words and on paper
they were white, weightless and interchangeable
""the settlement, in clusters and dispersed, has long required a document of secret motion and instruction- a collection of studies that might serve to clarify the terms obscured within every facet of the living program"
-Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String
someone was playing the bells, i swear, after i had left them, after i had timidly played one- the handles were marked with orange dots- it was the quiet guy. i ran back up and gasped "were you playing the bells?" but he didn't say anything. although we were seemingly led through the history, we all ended up in different places at different times. i found a console in the corner that brought me back to the year 1000 but i can't remember much about it- the area was flooded in 1280 after a tremendous amount of work digging pinstripe canals all over the place, but anyway the magic worked. the letter shaped major river, if you can count two letter as one unit of the alphabet like they do, became the signature. the flourish at the end was the tide that pushed them out to sea and you can see their big faces on display. children are very important here, and there is a whole "wing" dedicated to their stories. one of their journals was found 40 years after the fact in a wreck. he was in hiding. guess why. but you won't find any like long explanation of those who were traded rather than merely exterminated. only the depiction of a trader showing him his face in a mirror. coming out the other side is not showing disrespect for their culture at present. everything seems fine now.
we went straight to the rokery on a friend's suggestion.
it might have just opened at around 9 in the morning and i was very dizzy and confused.
today i was wondering about the street it was on, called "rokin" and the verb "smoke" is "roken".
the two clerks were starting their day reading the paper and stacking oranges.
brett went downstairs to look at the smoke menu and i stared at the red candles.
after we smoked i stared at the mural for a while and wrote a poem and then we left for the hotel.
our room wouldn't be ready for 3 hours so we took a walk to museumplein and sat at cafe cobra for 3 hours.
that was the first time i paid for the toilet that trip.
it cost 50 cents for girls, there were stalls that were transparent until you locked them and then turned opaque.
for the boys, you got to pee against a wall of water.
we went back to the hotel and slept.
it was a deep sleep that i figured to be
about one r.e.m. cycle complete.
about three and a half hours.
we might have wandered up to the red light district that night, i don't remember, no,
i think we only made it as far as the dam where we found a restaurant that served dutch food.
i had a fillet of salmon (zalm) with a dill pesto and fries and brett had 3 balls of mashpot all with different ingredients.
one with carrots, one with spinach, etc. then we wandered over to a bar called la chouffe
where they had la chouffe on tap. that wasn't the first night i had la chouffe, though,
i thought i would drink the house pilsner. so we sat at the bar and drank beer and i tried to recall some WWII history
and we talked about the alluring aesthetic of propaganda- utilitarian, simple lines, easy, subversive.
we got somehow but don't remember.
i don't know how great it is to be back in a place where you can be fully understood, or recognized for that matter.
people look and expect looks. my eyes end up shifty and tend towards the larger expanses, such as the entire scene.
quiet is better for now, but not sure how to break it quietly.
"why fly a kite when you can just take a pill?" -Kramer (Seinfeld)
vondelpark has lots of twists and turns
that bring you deeper and deeper into it.
soccer players and birds each on discrete turf
we saw a bird so white you could use it to whiten your clothes
if you rubbed it all over you
i was crying when we entered the park, not really all of a sudden
we sat in a sunless area and assumed the sun went down
i talked and apologized
i felt like i had lost the poems to some fickle force of social preference
i couldn't hear my own words and on paper
they were white, weightless and interchangeable
""the settlement, in clusters and dispersed, has long required a document of secret motion and instruction- a collection of studies that might serve to clarify the terms obscured within every facet of the living program"
-Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String
someone was playing the bells, i swear, after i had left them, after i had timidly played one- the handles were marked with orange dots- it was the quiet guy. i ran back up and gasped "were you playing the bells?" but he didn't say anything. although we were seemingly led through the history, we all ended up in different places at different times. i found a console in the corner that brought me back to the year 1000 but i can't remember much about it- the area was flooded in 1280 after a tremendous amount of work digging pinstripe canals all over the place, but anyway the magic worked. the letter shaped major river, if you can count two letter as one unit of the alphabet like they do, became the signature. the flourish at the end was the tide that pushed them out to sea and you can see their big faces on display. children are very important here, and there is a whole "wing" dedicated to their stories. one of their journals was found 40 years after the fact in a wreck. he was in hiding. guess why. but you won't find any like long explanation of those who were traded rather than merely exterminated. only the depiction of a trader showing him his face in a mirror. coming out the other side is not showing disrespect for their culture at present. everything seems fine now.
Monday, July 14, 2003
connecting the streets to the map
red, blue threads and numbers
only took a few days for him
and then we would be out without
the map knowing which tram
to get on but maybe not which
side of the street
if you're wondering about the first day, i can start there for a while
but would rather find the little tunnels that lead throughout the week.
why? why was this week so special? maybe that's still to be determined here.
not that it was a week or that there were days with names like berries
that we tried to assign a flavor to. because it doesn't seem that in remembering
we are. i don't know yet.
well, we were delayed on the way back. maybe this will be accordion style
like the stripticket we used on the tram. or maybe it will be associative
like the difference in the hotels. we don't know what will happen
when we get to the first airport because we certainly missed our connection.
his pillow slowly deflates as he sleeps. i cried when we got off the tram
at centraal, but it didn't seem to matter, we were leaving anyway.
why would it matter?
red, blue threads and numbers
only took a few days for him
and then we would be out without
the map knowing which tram
to get on but maybe not which
side of the street
if you're wondering about the first day, i can start there for a while
but would rather find the little tunnels that lead throughout the week.
why? why was this week so special? maybe that's still to be determined here.
not that it was a week or that there were days with names like berries
that we tried to assign a flavor to. because it doesn't seem that in remembering
we are. i don't know yet.
well, we were delayed on the way back. maybe this will be accordion style
like the stripticket we used on the tram. or maybe it will be associative
like the difference in the hotels. we don't know what will happen
when we get to the first airport because we certainly missed our connection.
his pillow slowly deflates as he sleeps. i cried when we got off the tram
at centraal, but it didn't seem to matter, we were leaving anyway.
why would it matter?
