Travelogue 827 – October 20
On Leaves
Part Two
‘I’m walking in leaves,’ she says. They lie in drifts everywhere. They have gathered on the first-floor balcony outside our door. They are ground by the footsteps of our neighbours. They dot the grass of the small lawn below. The tree that nearly tops the balcony with its high branches is almost bare.
Elsewhere, there are still plenty of leaves left on the trees to fuel a long autumn. There are trees that have barely begun to lose their foliage. Some have only started to turn red, even as street gutters are cluttered with yellow leaves from others. It only remains for the temperatures to finally turn, and the rains to come, for autumn to take on its true character.
A few weeks ago, I ran a half marathon in Brabant. Usually, this is the first race of the season that requires long sleeves and perhaps even cap and gloves. This year, the one adverse condition was overwhelmingly the sun. I performed miserably, and I have the luxury of blaming a hot October sun.
Part of the ritual of running these large road races is the prolonged wait before the start. Crowds gather in the chute that trails back for a solid kilometre from the starting line, while some individuals find open space to warm up with stretches and dashes out and back. The day of this latest race, people were finding shade, keeping cool as long as they could before joining the crowds in the open sun. Those of us in the starting chute were already sweating,
The race provided little respite. There was no shade for the first half of the race. I knew I was in trouble. I started slow. I made every water stop count. And still, the second half of the race got the better of me, afternoon sun adding kilos to my burden every kilometre. I finished in my worst time to date, and I was happy with that.
If you aren’t running a half marathon, the second summer has been a blessing. People have found any excuse to be outside. They have taken kids to the park. They have strolled and cycled among the streets. My students have devised every excuse to miss classes. Attendance has dropped in proportion to the temperature outside.
Baby and I stopped by a local café, after her Saturday ballet class. We sat inside, while most of the clientele sat outside. This café is one of the most popular in the west of Rotterdam. It is set on a corner and offers outdoor seating along two walls. There is no view to speak of, neither downtown streets nor parks. No monuments, no markets. It’s just an intersection along the busy Nieuwe Binnenweg. Next door is a thrift shop. Across the street is Ekoplaza, an organic supermarket. With nothing but parked cars to look at, the outdoor tables are still full, and the corner resounds with lively chatter.
Baby likes sipping her orange juice from a spoon. She can concentrate on that delicate process for a surprisingly long time. I’m free to enjoy my espresso, leaf through a Dutch newspaper, and watch people. It’s most amusing to watch people as they make their entry. Some enter distractedly, in mid-conversation, and come to a standstill in the middle of the room. They need a moment to orient. Others enter aggressively, searching for a table with intense purpose. Some have generous boundaries, spreading themselves luxuriously across several tables. Some are modest and quiet, settling into a corner with a laptop and becoming still as the furniture. They whisper their orders and smile wistfully at the barista.
The regulars have their own relaxed pace. It may be a product of their privilege here, or it may be the lifestyle that allows them to be regulars at a café. They are friendly; they provide the place with its most human element. Their smiles are genuine. It’s just another day. A beautiful one, to be sure, but just a day in the neighbourhood. There’s no need for smiles like shouts.
Baby never finishes the orange juice. Maybe that’s what recommends a spoon to her, over a straw. The juice lasts forever that way.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Friday, October 19, 2018
Travelogue 826 – October 19
On Leaves
Part One
‘Yesterday,’ he says, ‘yesterday was the last hot day. Now the cold and the rain will come. Maybe snow in the next few weeks.’ That’s the owner of my regular café talking about the weather. It’s early in the morning. The sun has barely risen over the city. I don’t have much to offer in reply. ‘Well it was bound to come,’ I say, offering my generic wisdom.
We have been lucky with this Indian summer. The sun has been bright. The temperatures have been summer-hot in the afternoons. The advance of autumn has proceeded, nonetheless. The sun may be warm, but he is sleepier every day, rising later. This morning, I was readying for work in the dark. I couldn’t get myself to turn on the lights. I preferred to stumble across the room half-asleep. I preferred to stand at the window watching the pigeons beating their wings, bickering over something on the rooftop across the street. Behind them, the day’s first light painted the few clouds in the east with hopeful shades of pink.
Baby has enjoyed narrating the season. ‘The leaves are falling,’ she likes to say. ‘I’m walking in leaves.’ Twice a week, I walk with her to the bus station in the morning. We walk the path that follows the canal, underneath the trees that are readying for autumn. We shuffle our feet through the yellow leaves. We look for the ducks in the canal. Baby watches them dive in search of whatever it is they eat. She decides that’s ‘yucky’.
We board the 38 bus into town. Each journey with her is a joy for me. Each is unique. She says something funny. She plays a new game. She squirms in her bus seat, she talks to me about what she sees on the street outside. There’s nothing better than time like this with her.
By the time the bus reaches our destination, it is crowded. I must stand, swing the backpack over my shoulder, gather Baby, negotiate with people standing in the aisle, and swipe my transport card, all while the bus sways and finally swerves into place at the stop. It’s a dance that always recommends to me the longer and less convenient tram ride.
I let Baby down to the pavement with a sigh, and we walk hand in hand to the school. Parents and children are descending on the one gate like predators, many on bicycles weaving among the crowds deftly, intrepidly. We shuffle through the gate and walk together through the playground to the entrance to the peuterspeelzaal, the pre-school. The teachers welcome Baby, and she smiles with real affection, even if she smiles shyly. I ask the head teacher how she’s doing. Well, she says. She’s always happy. She likes to follow the teachers and see what they’re doing.
It’s still difficult for me to leave her behind, I linger by the door, and I watch her. She’s content. She sits on her little stool, and she watches her classmates play. She wears an expression of mild curiosity. We’ve said good-bye, and I’ve been forgotten. That’s a good thing. I make myself leave. I have only twenty minutes to make it to work.
On Leaves
Part One
‘Yesterday,’ he says, ‘yesterday was the last hot day. Now the cold and the rain will come. Maybe snow in the next few weeks.’ That’s the owner of my regular café talking about the weather. It’s early in the morning. The sun has barely risen over the city. I don’t have much to offer in reply. ‘Well it was bound to come,’ I say, offering my generic wisdom.
We have been lucky with this Indian summer. The sun has been bright. The temperatures have been summer-hot in the afternoons. The advance of autumn has proceeded, nonetheless. The sun may be warm, but he is sleepier every day, rising later. This morning, I was readying for work in the dark. I couldn’t get myself to turn on the lights. I preferred to stumble across the room half-asleep. I preferred to stand at the window watching the pigeons beating their wings, bickering over something on the rooftop across the street. Behind them, the day’s first light painted the few clouds in the east with hopeful shades of pink.
Baby has enjoyed narrating the season. ‘The leaves are falling,’ she likes to say. ‘I’m walking in leaves.’ Twice a week, I walk with her to the bus station in the morning. We walk the path that follows the canal, underneath the trees that are readying for autumn. We shuffle our feet through the yellow leaves. We look for the ducks in the canal. Baby watches them dive in search of whatever it is they eat. She decides that’s ‘yucky’.
We board the 38 bus into town. Each journey with her is a joy for me. Each is unique. She says something funny. She plays a new game. She squirms in her bus seat, she talks to me about what she sees on the street outside. There’s nothing better than time like this with her.
By the time the bus reaches our destination, it is crowded. I must stand, swing the backpack over my shoulder, gather Baby, negotiate with people standing in the aisle, and swipe my transport card, all while the bus sways and finally swerves into place at the stop. It’s a dance that always recommends to me the longer and less convenient tram ride.
I let Baby down to the pavement with a sigh, and we walk hand in hand to the school. Parents and children are descending on the one gate like predators, many on bicycles weaving among the crowds deftly, intrepidly. We shuffle through the gate and walk together through the playground to the entrance to the peuterspeelzaal, the pre-school. The teachers welcome Baby, and she smiles with real affection, even if she smiles shyly. I ask the head teacher how she’s doing. Well, she says. She’s always happy. She likes to follow the teachers and see what they’re doing.
It’s still difficult for me to leave her behind, I linger by the door, and I watch her. She’s content. She sits on her little stool, and she watches her classmates play. She wears an expression of mild curiosity. We’ve said good-bye, and I’ve been forgotten. That’s a good thing. I make myself leave. I have only twenty minutes to make it to work.
Friday, October 12, 2018
Travelogue 825 – October 12
Bow of the Ship
Part Two
My life is texts. During the day, I teach language. That amounts to little more than guiding people through texts. Exercises are like scripts that I direct. I instruct about the rules. I listen, and I correct. I model pronunciation. I tease and cajole.
Language requires play, so I joke. Humour is the spark in any language. It has occurred to me that this is why I’m such a poor language learner. I enjoy studying the grammars of other languages, but speaking is dull. I can’t endure the poverty of the early stages when conversations are stilted, when you can only come up with rote ways of delivering any thought.
This evening, I’m listening to four actors read my script. They’re reading it cold; it’s the first time they’re seeing the text. I prefer cold readings because they reveal mistakes and the clumsy patches in language. They show how well the characters and action are fleshed out. It’s not as though any script is so good it reads perfectly the first time. Where the readers stumble is informative.
I’ve written repeatedly about the pleasure of theatre. The thought bears repeating because theatre offers so many distinct experiences to its practitioners. In my imagination, each production is a jewel with many faces, presenting different sets of glancing light at every turn. The complexity is what makes it live and breathe.
Just the reading of a script offers surprising dimension. Actors are exploring as they read. They are finding a voice as they go. It’s what they do. I give minimal direction before we start, and none as we go. Midway through thhe script, each has discovered a persona. That persona never corresponds exactly to my vision. But tonight, it hasn’t diverged too much, either. With each persona comes a voicing, an inflection and a cadence. The play begins to develop a rhythm. Hearing that rhythm emerge is exciting.
There is a pregnant pause after we finish. What do you say? It’s such a strange activity for an evening. We’ve enjoyed it, but it’s hard to say what the outcome is supposed to be. There is no applause yet. We’re not sure if we will produce it. The actors can’t be sure whether the reading was also an audition. I ask some questions to explore their impressions of the piece. So we discuss, though briefly. The building is dead quiet now, a ship in the doldrums.
We part ways. I nearly get lost looking for the bathrooms and then looking for the exits. The old building is a maze of curving hallways and multiple staircases that lead to blank landings. Portals never seem to be in plain sight. When I do at last emerge into night, I test my land legs. I search for my bicycle, locked to one of many random racks set around the block. The moon is rising over the bluffs of the great hospital.
Bow of the Ship
Part Two
My life is texts. During the day, I teach language. That amounts to little more than guiding people through texts. Exercises are like scripts that I direct. I instruct about the rules. I listen, and I correct. I model pronunciation. I tease and cajole.
Language requires play, so I joke. Humour is the spark in any language. It has occurred to me that this is why I’m such a poor language learner. I enjoy studying the grammars of other languages, but speaking is dull. I can’t endure the poverty of the early stages when conversations are stilted, when you can only come up with rote ways of delivering any thought.
This evening, I’m listening to four actors read my script. They’re reading it cold; it’s the first time they’re seeing the text. I prefer cold readings because they reveal mistakes and the clumsy patches in language. They show how well the characters and action are fleshed out. It’s not as though any script is so good it reads perfectly the first time. Where the readers stumble is informative.
I’ve written repeatedly about the pleasure of theatre. The thought bears repeating because theatre offers so many distinct experiences to its practitioners. In my imagination, each production is a jewel with many faces, presenting different sets of glancing light at every turn. The complexity is what makes it live and breathe.
Just the reading of a script offers surprising dimension. Actors are exploring as they read. They are finding a voice as they go. It’s what they do. I give minimal direction before we start, and none as we go. Midway through thhe script, each has discovered a persona. That persona never corresponds exactly to my vision. But tonight, it hasn’t diverged too much, either. With each persona comes a voicing, an inflection and a cadence. The play begins to develop a rhythm. Hearing that rhythm emerge is exciting.
There is a pregnant pause after we finish. What do you say? It’s such a strange activity for an evening. We’ve enjoyed it, but it’s hard to say what the outcome is supposed to be. There is no applause yet. We’re not sure if we will produce it. The actors can’t be sure whether the reading was also an audition. I ask some questions to explore their impressions of the piece. So we discuss, though briefly. The building is dead quiet now, a ship in the doldrums.
We part ways. I nearly get lost looking for the bathrooms and then looking for the exits. The old building is a maze of curving hallways and multiple staircases that lead to blank landings. Portals never seem to be in plain sight. When I do at last emerge into night, I test my land legs. I search for my bicycle, locked to one of many random racks set around the block. The moon is rising over the bluffs of the great hospital.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Travelogue 824 – October 11
Bow of the Ship
Part One
The sun is setting by seven. We sit by the window, though it will be dark soon. We have found a round table in a quiet corner of the school. We sit with coffee from a machine, our scripts in front of us, and we read aloud. We’re reading through the draft of a new play. The play is both new and old. I wrote the original draft fifteen years ago and produced it for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Six months after the performance, I was on my way to Ethiopia, and the play was forgotten. Years afterward, I couldn’t remember the title of the play or what it was about.
I happened to discover the script in a box while I was in Minnesota last year. I read it on the plane, and I started editing it almost immediately. I loved the concept, but the language was dated. There were monologues that I knew current tastes would find trying. Character’s motives were cloudy. These days, I want plays to be as intuitive as possible. The characters should emerge as clearly as possible from dialogue alone.
So now I’m listening. There’s no better way to test a script. It seems to be going well. I’m certainly enjoying the accents. I have two Irish actors reading today. The play is set in Minneapolis, but my bartender speaks with a northern Irish brogue. It’s wonderful; somehow it fits perfectly. The other two are Dutch, but their accents in English are also British isles.
I’m simply enjoying being in this building. It’s one of my favourites on the west side of Rotterdam. A beautiful building lifts my spirits.
This structure dates back to 1931. It was built as the first headquarters of Unilever, though now it belongs to the Hogeschool Rotterdam. It shares a certain nautical flare with a few other notable expressionist buildings in the city. That aura of ship setting out to sea seems heightened by its occupation of a long block that is set like an island between the high cliffs of the hospital and the elegance spaces of the museum district. The front of the building faces the museum district with a kind of bravado, its façade curving and concave. Above its doors is a tiled, square tower with three high, narrow niches capped with allegorical statuary of some sort.
Just inside the front doors is a spiral staircase decorated with dark wood, stained glass and lamps suspended from several floors above. Its original aura survives the piles of bikes out front and the streams of indifferent adolescents. It elevates the mundane.
We have entered the other side, the humble side that faces the hospital and the busy avenue, the side augmented by modern additions, glass-fronted and lacking in all flavour. There is a cafeteria with a rounded bar for service, reminding me of a snack bar the stern of a ferry. I have boats on the brain.
Bow of the Ship
Part One
The sun is setting by seven. We sit by the window, though it will be dark soon. We have found a round table in a quiet corner of the school. We sit with coffee from a machine, our scripts in front of us, and we read aloud. We’re reading through the draft of a new play. The play is both new and old. I wrote the original draft fifteen years ago and produced it for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Six months after the performance, I was on my way to Ethiopia, and the play was forgotten. Years afterward, I couldn’t remember the title of the play or what it was about.
I happened to discover the script in a box while I was in Minnesota last year. I read it on the plane, and I started editing it almost immediately. I loved the concept, but the language was dated. There were monologues that I knew current tastes would find trying. Character’s motives were cloudy. These days, I want plays to be as intuitive as possible. The characters should emerge as clearly as possible from dialogue alone.
So now I’m listening. There’s no better way to test a script. It seems to be going well. I’m certainly enjoying the accents. I have two Irish actors reading today. The play is set in Minneapolis, but my bartender speaks with a northern Irish brogue. It’s wonderful; somehow it fits perfectly. The other two are Dutch, but their accents in English are also British isles.
I’m simply enjoying being in this building. It’s one of my favourites on the west side of Rotterdam. A beautiful building lifts my spirits.
This structure dates back to 1931. It was built as the first headquarters of Unilever, though now it belongs to the Hogeschool Rotterdam. It shares a certain nautical flare with a few other notable expressionist buildings in the city. That aura of ship setting out to sea seems heightened by its occupation of a long block that is set like an island between the high cliffs of the hospital and the elegance spaces of the museum district. The front of the building faces the museum district with a kind of bravado, its façade curving and concave. Above its doors is a tiled, square tower with three high, narrow niches capped with allegorical statuary of some sort.
Just inside the front doors is a spiral staircase decorated with dark wood, stained glass and lamps suspended from several floors above. Its original aura survives the piles of bikes out front and the streams of indifferent adolescents. It elevates the mundane.
We have entered the other side, the humble side that faces the hospital and the busy avenue, the side augmented by modern additions, glass-fronted and lacking in all flavour. There is a cafeteria with a rounded bar for service, reminding me of a snack bar the stern of a ferry. I have boats on the brain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)