Travelogue 883 – December 29
The Letters in Love

Being ill has forced me to recover a feeling for idleness. Rest is a good thing on its own merit. That’s a revelation. Even when you’re all slept out, lying idle is a good thing. Staring out the window, and indulging only the emptiest of thoughts becomes something positive. What a revelation.

I think I’ve rarely in life been as busy as I was this last fall season. It picked up in September, and it never really let up. I had something to do at all times. Every day, there was somewhere to be, multiple somewheres. That kind of hustle can be exhilarating. It informs a sense of purpose. Ultimately, though, being busy doesn’t invest the busywork with significance. You can be busy with trivia, and frankly most of us are. Society values motion over substance. It’s something like staring at the phone on the Metro – even if it’s Solitaire – instead of staring out the window. The phone apparatus itself invests its owner with seriousness.

But I was beginning to resent the motion. It doesn’t pay off. In a society that values motion, there’s no one left to notice what you’re doing. They will surely notice if you stop, but no one has time to check on your motion. Who polices the Solitaire players on the Metro? Those people should at minimum be shopping. Or they should be advancing the progress of some new trend.

I’ve had time to attend to the things that the girls love. They have a passion for puzzles and for drawing. Little Ren in particular is mad about puzzles. She’s solving puzzles well beyond her age level. Baby is the artist. She loves drawing and painting, an interest she probably picked up from her mother, who has been dedicating herself to water colours lately.

And Baby started reading! One evening she took a sudden interest. It had clicked in her understanding that letters added up to words. She looked down at her T-shirt, where one word was emblazoned in big letters. She read the letters as she saw them, looking down: E-V-O-L. The next day, she wrote her first word, EVOL. We cheered her on. Mama gave her new words to puzzle through, a list of three-letter words, vowels in the middle. And Baby was thrilled. It’s amazing how things start. I wish I could remember the first word I read.

Travelogue 882 – December 23
Winter Hero

I was hero for a day. We have been laid up all weekend, the whole family, with a horrible flu. The house was a mess; we were a mess. We were out of medicine and out of tissues. The situation could not have been more dire.

The world outside seemed menacing. It was solstice time. The days were short. Light was in short supply. Even at two o’clock, the was sun having a hard time penetrating the clouds. And, yet, even in that debile light, I knew there would be people in the streets, making their rounds. They were likely to be smiling, these people. They were likely to be in a Christmas spirit. They were going to be healthy and cheerful.

There was nothing to be done. I stood. My aching limbs would make dressing slow, but I had to push through the pain. My family depended on me. In the tradition of proud fathers through the centuries, men who have braved all that nature and humanity might hurl against them in order that their families may survive, I braced myself for the elements, and I set out for the store. It would be an epic trial, my steps slow and feeble, the weight of the backpack on my shoulders crushing. The light was dim, the rain gentle but persistent, the temperatures fiendishly mild. In short, everything was stacked against me.

So anyway, I made it. I won’t brag. The mission was accomplished. No one celebrated me along the final stretch toward home. I had no cheers. Even my family took my offerings in stride. To the girls, these were no presents. Medicines were more inconveniences. Baby was too wiped out to shower me with gratitude. She just stared at me from underneath her blankets. It made me sad again to see her in such a state.

The truth is, I may not have suffered for my family the way I should have. There were moments I enjoyed being out of the house. The walk was almost pleasant, once I’d accepted the slow pace and once my body had warmed up to the unaccustomed movement. Indeed, the store was crowded and loud; and, indeed, the people were offensively healthy and high-spirited. But I slipped through their nets of peppiness with minimal injury. I paid and packed my bag and was on my way home through the drizzling rain before they’d known it. The quiet courtyard of my building was a welcome salve to the aggravations of a season. I paused only a moment, but peace is potent in small doses.

Travelogue 881 – December 16
Take Solace, Republic

After watching the quiet and melancholy fall of Labour in England’s election, I confess to a certain pride in the vitality of the opposition in the U.S. I admire Bernie’s dogged persistence and consistency. I appreciate Mayor Pete’s earnestness. I’m fond of ‘Sloppy Joe’ the way many Americans are, guiltily but sincerely. And who could help but admire the powerhouse that is Elizabeth Warren?

I read an article recently that drew the tired parallel between the U.S. today and Rome in its early imperial era. The author wasn’t claiming it was a new idea but directed the analysis away from the emperors and toward the failing legislative bodies. The failure of the Roman Senate was the story of weak and self-interested old men. And therein lies the author’s caution.

The sad visages of Moscow Mitch and Lindsey Graham drifted through my mind as I read, but to say the two eras are the same is to miss one huge difference. The Trump story features a host of strong and charismatic women rising in opposition, and, by the way, being rather effective. They have provided not only critique but alternatives, whether in substance or style. The story of Trump is also the story of Pelosi and Warren and AOC.

There are men in there fighting the good fight, too, guys like Schiff and Nadler. What is refreshing is that they don’t seem threatened by Pelosi’s leadership. They aren’t stealing any scenes. They do their job.

It’s a refreshing change. To deny the good news here is to make an effort to look the other way. I don’t think that’s unfair to say. It’s the kind of mentality that constructs insults for Greta Thunberg. It takes an effort to be that cynical.

As tiresome as the drums of the left can be, the reactions in our times to Obama, Hillary, and Greta make it pretty clear how deep the biases and hatred run, and how ugly they are. To put it another way, the violence of the bigots gives them away. The right doth protest too much. Their pathology alone ought to convince those on the fence, those who may be intimidated by the forceful rhetoric about racism or sexism. Take a breath; comfort yourself that people like Trump will have money and power behind them for a long time to come; and take a quiet look around.

Rational and positive opposition is a good thing. Be concerned when your screaming succeeds, and yours is the only voice in the room. That’s when the ghost of Caligula comes a-calling.

Travelogue 880 – December 5
Sint-Niklaas

Santa is a more elusive character than his Dutch counterpart, Sinterklaas. Santa may show up occasionally at shopping malls to meet the children, but those appearances are random and serve little real purpose in his mission, except perhaps to gather gift ideas. Would a wise old man compile his lists this late?

When it comes to Santa’s central mission of delivering toys from the North Pole, he works in secrecy. He circles the globe in one night, eluding all surveillance, and then he disappears into the first light of Christmas Day. Kids never spot him breaking into their houses. He’s forgotten once the gifts are open.

Sinterklaas, in contrast, lives a much more ordinary life, befitting the pragmatic character of the Dutch. We need not imagine him as an ascetic dug into arctic seclusion. Sinterklaas lives in Spain, a more commodious place for a workshop, I’d say. He doesn’t constrain himself to one night. He enters Holland weeks ahead of the holidays, and he arrives in the light of day. He doesn’t sneak around, but arrives by boat, and then joins a parade through town.

The parade in Amsterdam is usually in mid-November. For the next few weeks, children watch for gifts of candy left in their shoes, and then, on the 5th of December, Sinterklaas leaves his presents at families’ homes.

The timing is aggressive for transplants. We’re used to having all December to shop for Christmas. We struggle, especially given the timing of Little Ren’s birthday, just days after Sinterklaas. We don’t have the option to ignore the Dutch holiday anymore, since Baby started school. She comes home with lots of chatter about Sinterklaas and queries after her presents.

In fact, today, Baby came home from school, to tell us she had seen Sinterklaas himself. It turns out the teachers had taken their kids out to the pier in Delfshaven to see Sinterklaas arrive by boat. The school posted a video of the event for parents, the scene a mob of children cheering the approach of a small boat with a waving Santa figure. The suit is similar, all red and white, but in truth Sinterklaas is more fit than Santa. His beard is longer, looking more old-time prophet than jolly elf. But there he is, recognizable as the type, Father Christmas.

Baby was suitably awed. She is now the authority on Sinterklaas, even correcting me on the name. “Papa, his name is Sint-Niklaas!” The stage is set. Now we arrange the gifts for discovery this evening. Sinterklaas has come! Excuse me, Sint-Niklaas.

Travelogue 879 – November 19
De Dingen
Part Two

It’s not even six, but it’s nearly the pitch of night outside. The café is cosy enough, furnished in hues of warm wood and bits of higher colour in the wall art and chair cushions. It still feels dim and hushed, though. It’s not an easy thing combatting the winter darkness.

Cosiness is important in winter. The Dutch might say the café is gezellig. That roughly translates to ‘cosy’. But it’s more. It doesn’t translate well, as Dutch people are eager to tell you. Gezellig is really a standalone concept for the Dutch, a mood. It could be good company, good cheer, comfort and warmth. I hypothesize now, sitting in the dim café, shielded from the cold, that the word grew organically in opposition to the lingering winter.

Kermit doesn’t receive much comfort at his post. We say he doesn’t require any. But what do we know? Physics teaches us that his body stands against gravity because the body pushes back. Already matter is mysterious. How do we reason through the state of the inanimate?

‘Inanimate’ describes matter that is imbued with no anima. Anima is soul or mind. It’s what motivates, makes us move. A chair is inanimate. A statue is inanimate. Is a dead body? Probably. But what about a zombie? I don’t think this concept has been fully worked out.

Our ghost has taken to leaving the door in our entryway open. It’s as though he craves the cold. This door shields us from the air that leaks through our front door. It’s an instinct now to reach for that door every time we enter the kitchen, it’s left open so often. We don’t think about it anymore.

Presumably a ghost moves. But it has no substance. Is it anima without matter? Does it speak to inanimate matter? Could Kermit communicate with our ghost? Maybe he is too busy pushing against the substance of the building below him.

Why does he do that? Why does he stand so long without a break? Why does our ghost like to move things around? Maybe what really matters to the inanimate is geometry. There’s some big blueprint where all the angles are right, or a common sense of symmetry concerning the alignment of all things.

Me, I’m cheered by the taste of carrot cake, and the aroma of my coffee. These are forms of solace. That must seem impossibly simple-minded to the inanimate.

Travelogue 878 – November 18
De Dingen
Part One

It was going to be our last rehearsal for the fall plays. That meant it would be the last time I would be in The Hague for a while, other than for the performance itself. I arrived in town early. I wanted to take my time cycling, enjoy the place. I wanted to see Kermit on Piet Heinstraat.

I rented my ‘OV Fiets’ at Central Station, and I leisurely made my way north and west across the centre of town. It was the end of the workday, so crowds were crossing city spaces in every direction. The bike paths were busy. I didn’t mind; I drifted along on the right side of the path, and I took in the sights of this pretty town. Just north of Central Station was the spacious, green park that I had always found so peaceful. My urban life hasn’t afforded me many views across open spaces. It’s a kind of salve to the agitated mind.

I settled in at the café on Piet Heinstraat. It was a stormy evening, and dusk had been coming earlier every day. It was already getting dark when I first spotted Kermit, still occupying the top of the gable across the street. He stood atop this four-storey yellow house on the corner, and he raised his arms in a kind of salute to the yielding summer, to the passing year. He grinned perpetually and hopefully toward the south. He grinned endearingly, fatuously, and without rest.

I could only make out his silhouette against the last of the day’s light that made its feeble way through legions of clouds. It made him seem heroic, standing against the darkening clouds, his features obscured. The night advanced inexorably, taking no note of Kermit. Despite Kermit’s efforts on behalf of warmth.

All this was conjecture, of course. Kermit was a happy puppet, but he was a puppet. I had no access to his thoughts. Perhaps the season was well aware of the tiny frog. More than aware. Perhaps Kermit was the wizard that summoned the winter.

Somehow this did seem like his time and his world, a winter dusk in the city, when people were rushing home to flee the cold and the bleak streets. It was the time of year we humans abandoned the cold out-of-doors to the rule of the things that had no nerves and no emotions. Buildings stood silently and sleek cars flashed by, dark and sealed and offering only the reflection of the city lights from their polished surfaces. Soon enough, the street would be still as Kermit, cold and silent.

Travelogue 877 – November 17
Show on the Train

Screening the film in an old church was, after all, appropriate. The film was almost a hundred years-old itself, a relic from another age. There was some correspondence in relative ages between the event and its setting, I would say. In the history of film, a hundred years is ancient history.

The film was a silent one, and so the high pipes of the organ displayed so prominently behind the film screen were put to good use. The church reverberated with musical accompaniment for the duration of the film. Much of the music turned around a motif of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.

Presiding as movie star was one of the early high priests of film, Buster Keaton. This film he made during the decade of his prominence, in the 1920s. It was called ‘The General’, and it was set during the Civil War. The plot was based on actual events, when a set of Union spies stole a train and led a wild pursuit around Tennessee, as they left a trail of destruction. Keaton played the part of a clumsy Confederate engineer, who single-handedly chases after the spies, even as far as Union territory (where he rescues his beloved, who was kidnapped with the train).

The film was funny, of course. Keaton was a master of physical comedy, and the trademark deadpan expression just made him more endearing as the film went on. He pulled off some of his imaginative stunts, like sitting on a coupling rod among the train’s wheels as it set off, and leaping on and off the train and between cars as though he were an elf. But the film was more. Keaton was earnest about setting the scene. Town scenes and props were authentic. There were plenty of expansive landscapes. The trains themselves were amazing, and the battle scenes impressive. There was a surprisingly panoramic feel to this comedy. In one scene, a rail bridge was blown while a train crossed. Apparently, the wreckage remained there for decades as something of a tourist attraction. (The movie was filmed in Oregon.)

Considered his masterpiece now, ‘The General’ was poorly received. People didn’t find it funny enough. Its dismal performance at the box office undermined his role as independent filmmaker. He never quite recovered his status as director.

I’m no genius, but I can appreciate how Keaton might have felt, since I’ve just wrapped up a run of several plays. Audience reaction is a mysterious quantity. I have people approach me afterward with a light in their eyes and a smile, who dive right into a list of critiques. They’re too excited for introductions. Some of the criticism is quite helpful. Some is strange and off the mark. But I always smile, wondering about the impact that art has on people. Many of my audience were probably coerced into attending, being friends or family of actors. But they were touched. It’s not the bored and indifferent who approach a writer afterward. They find it hard to verbalize how theatre affects them, so they speak in accessible, analytical ways. I’m not boasting that it was the written word that touched them. It might have been the acting, the immediacy of the art form, or just the ritual of live events. But something did touch them, and that is gratifying.

Keaton started as a child vaudeville star whose singular talent was taking a beating. The concept of the act was a naughty boy annoying his father and being tossed around the stage. His particular forte was his ability to take a fall. It’s said that his dead pan style evolved from his observation that audiences didn’t respond well to his laughter while being thrown into the orchestra pit. That is an attentive artist.

The film ended, and the Dutch audience clapped. The shadows in the old church seemed long. The evening had deepened outside. The shadows were sombre. This might have been the genesis of comedy, I thought as I left, a tonic to nights in the temples.

Travelogue 876 – November 16
Show in the Church

I was writing about how theatre is made. The cast and the crew work slowly and carefully for months, and then, when the actors take the stage, time plays its trick. The springs are pulled from the clock, and everyone is abandoned to a shocking free fall. It feels like the show collapses into a spinning series of stills, and then it’s over.

A week later, I was scouting for a different experience. I wanted to join the audience. Time treats people in the seats with more respect. When a performance works, time eddies in a pleasant pool, still enough to catch a rich set of reflections. Even when the show doesn’t work, time gathers, though it might gather at one’s feet like a puddle of waste.

There was a film festival in Schiedam, the next town west on the Maas River. It’s a ten-minute cycle ride. The film I chose started early enough that I could be home again for dinner. The venue was the town’s central church, the Grote Kerk.

Schiedam rose from the marshes at about the same time as Rotterdam, in the thirteenth century or so, (though marginal villages existed on these sites earlier). For centuries, the two towns were probably very similar, towns with dams, towns with big-river access. It took a while for Rotterdam’s port to gain primacy.

Schiedam held her own during Holland’s Golden Age in the seventeenth century, but did even better when Dutch genever, or gin, captured the fancy of Northern Europe’s sailors and drunks. For more than a century, it was the premier origin of Holland’s magic liquor, so much so that the town’s name survived in French and English for a while as a generic name for the stuff.

Whatever the means, Schiedam had its salad days. And so it is that, despite its current reputation as a dumpy little city with a crime problem, Schiedam does have a very attractive historic centre, a district more cohesive than Rotterdam’s, which was lost in the Second World War. At the centre of this pretty little district is the Grote Kerk.

The church is no Chartres, but it’s a solid beauty in sooty red brick, comparable to other Golden Age churches in South Holland. It could be little sister to Den Haag’s Grote Kerk, smaller, more angular, only lacking the graceful heights of the nave in Den Haag. It could be an older, shrunken sister to Rotterdam’s Grote Kerk, missing the lighter Renaissance touches. But she is a pretty addition to this swampy little region at the delta.

The film was projected onto a huge screen set up underneath the sixteenth-century organ case, which occupies all the space in its high arch. The case is a beautiful work to contemplate in itself, composed of dark wood with many ornamental carvings, including the Dutch imperial lions with the crown. There appear to be a pair of fit mermen holding up the highest set of organ pipes. At the top, lost in the shadows of the arch is a winged angel equipped with a trumpet.

Travelogue 875 – November 12
Show of the Season

The sky is shreds and tatters this morning. In the north, the clouds are dark as dusk. I’m watching out the windows as we dress Baby in a rush. We have some new rain pants for her, and we’re struggling with those. They are lined with fleece, and so they must be rolled on and peeled off. Baby amuses herself by lying limp in our arms as we try to put on the final layer.

Baby and I are finally on the bike, pedalling south. In this direction, the sky is shreds and tatters. The clouds are flying low. Some are white, and some are grey. Between some of them are glimpses of blue sky. It’s a sky of conflict, and it’s a sky of paradox. There’s a play up there, a story to be told. The clouds tear as they race. Among the trailing threads of their raiment, the open sky is allowed brief windows.

I’m in theatre recovery. The plays had their first show last weekend. All of the fall has been devoted to this point to pulling together these shows. Next week, we perform in The Hague. And then that’s it. That’s the shock and the joy of doing theatre, how quickly it’s over. Months of writing, planning, rehearsing, and promoting can begin to feel like a job, or like a second family. Then, quite suddenly, you’re stage-side as the lights are coming up.

I think it’s something we all love and hate, the precipitous nature of that moment, without being able to reconcile the duality. The moment breaks from the physics of time, arriving outside of its objective place, and passing like a cascade in an otherwise slow stream. You shake off the spell at the after party, scratching your head. All those weeks rowing along in the calm waters of rehearsal, your careful thoughts measured like the motion of rowing, and then the tumble of the cascade reduces everything to instinct, and you can’t be sure of the result, of how exactly you did.

As fall came on, Baby was rehearsing the seasons in her mind. She always had trouble distinguishing summer from sunny and cold from winter. When fall’s first chill came on, she couldn’t understand why I would deny it was winter. I couldn’t interest her in this intermediary season. She only wanted to know when the snow would come. Last year, she was quite taken with the change of the leaves, so I tried reviving that interest and giving the season its name, but the fascinations of children – or this child – rarely have long lives or afterlives. And so, we’ve reached a temporary impasse in understanding the four seasons. She does have a remarkable memory, though. She remembers the leaves of last year. She remembers throwing snowballs at Mama and where they landed.

To be fair, the seasons are each distinct, aren’t they? We do them a disservice to stress their homogeneity too much. Every autumn is not the same; what makes them beautiful is the variation on a theme. Children have an instinct for these things, and we would do well to pay attention. Winter comes. Where adults take comfort from the familiar, children just want the opportunity to throw snowballs.

In theatre, we play games with time. We narrate a season, and we re-enact it. It may be meant as an act of solace, but the ephemeral nature of it projects more shadow than light. We start with sentiment, but we act out something stark and frightening. Afterward, we give in to a slight shudder. We raise our glasses to each other’s health, and the terrible premonition passes.

Travelogue 874 – October 22
Frog Days

Out the window, above the roofs of Piet Heinstraat in The Hague, I see only blue sky. There isn’t a cloud in sight. The sun is low. Cyclists rushing home at day’s end along the narrow brick street are squinting into the western sun. It doesn’t slow them down. They cruise along, never hesitating at the speed bumps. And everyone is bundled up, though it was nearly fifteen degrees all day. It’s as though we were impatient for the ambiguity of summer’s long farewell to be done. When autumnal clouds moved in, we threw on our best winter coats and raced into the showers on our bikes. Still, we haven’t seen any temperatures remotely approaching freezing. In fact, now the forecasts say that the weeks of daily rain may be coming to a close. Certainly, those blue skies I see are heartening.

The view out the café window is far more involved than clear skies. The quaint clutter of this neighbourhood predominates, a clutter made up of three- and four-storey structures, lined up in close order along the tiny lane that is crowded with bikes, bikes moving or bikes parked in messy rows. Each narrow building is fronted with brick of yellow or red, and fitted with humble but distinctive features, whether gables or square jutting bay windows or Jugendstil stained glass or tiles.

Another lane empties into this one, just opposite my window. It’s just as narrow, but long and straight. It diminishes into distances washed in brick red. The houses there are more uniform than the ones on Piet Heinstraat. The latter is like a hip high street, blessed with boutiques, health foods, collectibles, and expensive coffee. On the corner outside, there is a store advertising comic book paraphernalia, toys and apparel, DVDs, models and books. In a transom window upstairs, above a balcony door cracked open for a fresh western breeze, there stand a family of wooden toy horses, painted pink and black. Above that transom window rises a simple gable, chimney-like and straight-edged, set inside mansard roofing shingled not in tile, but in asphalt. Decorating the highest metre of the gable is a crude relief of a rising sun’s rays. Set upon the very top ridge is a celebrant Kermit, raising his plastic arms toward the south, as though exultant that the sun has survived another tilt of the planet and even now warms the backs of his cousins in equatorial lands.

Travelogue 873 – October 10
Thousands Must Die

“Kurdish,” is her answer. I teach an evening class for adults. Before class starts, before most students have arrived, I’m asking what languages are represented in the room. Among four students, we have four mother tongues. L tells us, “Kurdish,” and my heart sinks. I know already she’s from Syria. I didn’t know she was Kurdish. She has replied without any emotion.

I ask her if her family is safe. It’s an intrusive question, and I might not have asked it if I had thought about it first. But I felt bad for her immediately. I felt guilty about our president. I felt ashamed by this one man’s shamelessness, and about my nation’s powerlessness to provide the slightest check. Policy is whim in the White House, and so little guided by thought, or really any recognizable internal process, that I wonder whether the best check might not just be a twenty-four-hour snooze function. Chances are the man wouldn’t recognize his decisions the next day. He would denounce the same as liberal plots. Meanwhile, thousands must die because we can’t figure out what impeachment means.

I utter some mild words of solace for L’s benefit. No one else in the class seems to understand our conversation. It could be they didn’t hear her. Maybe they are confused by her bland tone. Maybe they aren’t following the news, or don’t know what Kurdish signifies. L doesn’t respond any further. She is occupied with her phone, and I’m thinking it might very well be an effort to find out some news about her family. She may just be texting about her evening plans. There is no affect at all to judge by.

We are studying language in this classroom, and I’m reflecting during these quiet moments before class begins that language is only one plane of communication. L is very effectively communicating what it’s like living in the world that men like the U.S. president and Mr Erdogan seem intent on fostering, a world of random cruelty and persecution with impunity. People find themselves targets suddenly. Old prejudices flare. Overnight, alliances shift, and, just that quickly, their families are on the run - again. The failure of reason to explain reduces all values to survival and vendetta. Expression is reduced to flight and silence, violence and passivity. That’s how the ninety-nine percent were born to live. So says Don Jr at the country club, with an indifferent shrug. The waiter quietly prays for justice behind an impassive face.

Travelogue 872 – October 8
The Random and the Lost

“I want to say this with great solemnity,” Pat Robertson announced yesterday, “the president of the United States is in danger of losing the mandate of heaven if he permits this to happen.” He’s speaking about Trump’s sudden abandonment of the Kurds in Syria.

These times defy easy analysis. We can say the televangelist’s god is a capricious one. Indeed, that seems to be the central message of the god of our times: I am Random. Which is more random, the sudden pronouncement of Trump that the Turks have free reign in Syria or the pronouncement that this is the trigger for Robertson’s god’s displeasure? But these are just details in a sea of senselessness.

The sea here off the shores of Holland feels no need to provide sense to humanity. The sea doesn’t bow to thought. It bows to the winds and tides. It provides us only the wisdom of water, water set free to the skies, water for the clouds and the rain. These are the real principles of our lives.

We’ve left the house already when I realize I’ve left the rag. Baby and I are walking past our neighbour’s doors. Baby is holding my hand and singing. She’s got her jacket on; she’s got her helmet. I’m relieved we made it out of the house early. I run through the long catalogue of things I must carry with me now that the weather has turned. It’s been raining for about three weeks already. You would think I would have this routine down. But there are so many details. It’s not raining at the moment, but it rained during the night. That means everything is dripping. That means the bike seats will be wet. That’s right, I need the rag. I don’t want Baby to spend the day with a wet behind. We turn back. We’ll be late again.

That’s the depth of philosophical principles here. Maybe we lost the “mandate of heaven” long ago. That’s why the rain never moves on. That’s why no one alerts us with these pronouncements when we get close to the line, when we might “permit” things to happen.

“ … if he permits this to happen,” Robertson says about Trump. It’s a strangely passive phrase, given the circumstances. The president is no witness to disaster here. Disaster has been his fiat.

Robertson is a man serving a god. He unleashes nothing unholy on the world, does he? He accepts his fate from unearthly forces. His flock fall in line with faith, or they permit awful things to happen. They make history with these sorts of demure gestures. They submit. Five times a day they surrender. Things happen. Mandates are granted; they are taken away. Masters are feckless; ministers are fey. The days turn. More clouds.

Travelogue 871 – September 27
Dry on Arrival

I’m monitoring the weather constantly. I watch the skies. I check the forecasts. The daily forecast says the same thing every day now: rain. But the general forecast for the day is not enough. I need to see the hourly forecast. Being on my bike so much has made me acutely watchful.

The first half of September was lovely. I seem to always forget how beautiful September can be. Thoughts of September during any other part of the year are coloured by the remote stress of returning to work and starting the school year. Then September arrives like a gentle, cool breeze at the end of a summer day, coming in so much more quietly than imagined. It was a lot of exercise, hitting the bike paths again, but the skies were clear. The temperatures were perfect. And the wheels at work started turning again more gradually than I had feared.

This week, the skies changed. We had watched the change coming. Every day, the block of rainy days approached, and we saw there was no end to the chain of days devoted to rain. At the last minute, the leading edge of those days softened. We were blessed with a few more nice days. But there would be no escape. I dug through closets and boxes to locate all our most serious rain gear. It turned out we didn’t have much.

In Ethiopia, weather forecasts were irrelevant. It was sunny. Then it was rainy season, and it rained every day. In rainy season, you stayed indoors. You travelled by taxi. There wasn’t much at stake when it came to the weather. The stakes had been much higher in Minnesota, where temperatures could plummet fifty degrees in one day. You could find yourself driving in a blizzard. You could really suffer.

In Holland, the stakes are different. The risks are rain, rain, and more rain. Sure, compared to the risk of freezing to death in your car during a Minnesota white-out, rain is an inconvenience. As a Minnesotan, you take it all rather lightly. But then one day you find yourself on your bicycle in a sudden shower on your way to work. In moments you are soaked. You start the workday wet. Even your shoes are wet. Everywhere you look, people are sniffling. The view out your windows is gloomy. You begin to shiver.

The stakes change. Daily strategies change. In the Low Countries, water is our element. It shadows you in canals. It washes across the road. It leaks into your shoes. It falls from the sky. You invest in the best gear. How do you get on a bike and arrive dry three kilometres away? It’s an absorbing puzzle.

Travelogue 870 – September 17
Dredging Season

The new sculptures beside the river are dark in theme. They’re dark in colour, a gritty reddish brown. They are cast in familiar shapes, bicycles and shopping carts and scooters, but these are depictions of abandonment and decay. They sit among trails of debris; they are making a mess of the pavements.

This must be the season for dredging. I don’t know when they do it, but suddenly these items are appearing alongside the river. I take my exercise there, running several kilometres along the river and crossing to return on the other side. The route is now populated by these relics. They are rusty. They are coated with mud. Some have shells on their flanks, like barnacles on the keels of ships.

I can afford a few distractions in my running routine. This fall’s training season hasn’t been pleasant. It’s allergy season, and that has become an issue. It’s not just that I have sneezing fits and a stuffy nose. Bad allergy days leave me dead tired and muscle-sore. I just want to sleep.

With the date for a half marathon approaching, less than a month away, I’m not sure what to expect. Some days, I feel the benefits of all the training: new strength and new resilience. Some days, I feel only the days I’ve had to skip because of allergies: fatigue and failing speed. So I vacillate between great hope and sad resignation.

The barge comes to my rescue today. I’m running north up the Schie, and the boat is heading the same way. These boats ply this river all day long, long and shallow troughs, lying so low in the water it seems they’ll founder. They’re sturdy; they move smoothly forward. They are driven from the stern, where there is a deck and a cabin. Often there’s a compact car tied down on the deck somewhere. In the bed of the long trough is often nothing but piles of sand.

These barges are perfect rabbits. Their speed is closely matched to mine, though a knot or so slower. In the span between bridges over the river, I can overtake one; sometimes I can pass it. Usually the boats chugging this direction are loaded down with sand. I’m able to catch this one easily, and I run alongside it now.

Up ahead the bridge has been lifted. I arrive there before the barge does, running underneath the road that passes so near overhead. Pedestrians are waiting for the bridge; they watch me run underneath them and underneath the bridge. It’s cold there, and dark. The part of the road that rises is a short piece over the middle of the river. The road is held up by rows of pillars. I’m running in a narrow passageway between pillars dividing the river’s edge from the parallel road and the pillars dividing a small channel from the wider middle, where the barge will pass.

Emerging into sunlight again, I consider idly how far ahead of the barge I can get in the next span. I consider pushing myself into a sprint to the next dredgers’ sculpture.

Travelogue 869 – September 11
Bogeymen

We had ghost issues last night. I’m feeling rough today. My eyes are burning as though the tear ducts have dried up and have accumulated dust through the night. It’s a long day for me: three long classes and a play rehearsal. I wish I could close my sandy eyes. The days never start in gentle ways. The girls are fed and dressed, everything in a whirl, and then I’m lifting Baby into her bike seat. I shove off from the curb, and we’re on the road.

At midnight, the fire alarm went off. We jumped out of bed and stumbled around in circles. We retrieved a chair for me to stand on so I could bang on the disc hanging from the ceiling, jab at the mysterious buttons on its surface, twist it in efforts to unseal the cap. But the thing kept sounding. We opened doors to clear the phantom smoke. Nothing seemed to work, until something unnamed did work, and the thing shut off. We stood underneath it in wonder, breathing from our exertions.

Ten minutes after we returned to bed, the alarm went off again. And a ceiling light that had been dead for months turned on.

The ride to school is a pleasant one. We wind through the quiet streets around our building and by the busy transit hub at Marconiplein. Then we have a long stretch along a bike path well-insulated from the busy street. It’s misting this morning. I tell Baby to pull the hood of her jacket over her head. “Why is it so donker?” she asked when we woke her at 7:15. Why is it so dark? “Winter’s coming, Baby.”

Ghosts always seem like they’re distracted. Their efforts are sporadic and indirect. It’s like they can’t focus very well. Or they just don’t have the energy to do everything they intended. They communicate by means of these trivial acts, and the message is foggy at best. They become alien to us; their logic changes over time. What seems clear to them is a mystery to the humans.

Our ghost doesn’t seem particularly malicious, though I don’t like much that he’s messing with the electricity. Usually, he’s content to pace and whisper. He sets a ball rolling in the middle of the night. Once in a while, he turns on the TV. He’s like a bored pensioner.

Baby and I arrive at the school yard. I release all the straps and lift her out of the seat. I lock the bike, and we head in. The halls are busy. This is the busiest building in the neighbourhood at this hour. The teacher greets us with a smile. I wish I had more to give back. I’m something of a ghost myself today, my concentration waning and every effort half its intention.

Travelogue 868 – September 9
Dutch Parenting

Suddenly, I’m on my bicycle more than I have been in months. Suddenly I’m on the bike more than I’m on the ground in many of my destinations. And, what’s more, it’s not the same old bike. Suddenly, it’s a lumbering beast of burden. I’ve added a tall and clumsy children’s seat on the back. It’s worth more than the bike itself, so I’ve thrown on various security devices that I have no room for. There’s a chain I have to wrap around the handlebars and a U-lock that fits into its holder on the down tube.

Any true Dutchman would have known better than to install a children’s seat on the back of a traditional ‘men’s’ frame with top tube. Mounting is a new and strenuous procedure, particularly when Baby is strapped into her seat. To make matters worse, when Baby is in her seat, I have to wear my heavy backpack in the front. I’m getting used to all this re-distribution of weight. Our most perilous moments are not on the street, but when Papa is trying to get on the bike and then trying to get it into motion.

Baby is a good sport. It’s exciting for her. She shouts, “Whee!” and I shout it back to her. We cruise steadily down the bike path. Papa takes it slow. It feels like we’re riding high because of the very proper posture enforced by the bag in front of me. We come to slow stops at traffic lights, get very slow starts.

Baby finds the whole routine of going to school very entertaining. She brags about every aspect of it to her little sister and makes her cry. We have to comfort Little Ren that she has her own pre-school, and Papa will take her on the bike one day. I’m comforted that my girls fight about who gets to go to school, and who gets to ride with Papa. Realizing they will roll their eyes over all of it in years to come, I relish every moment.

But do I have the stamina? During the summer, a cycle ride was the height of relaxation. Now, overnight, it’s become fall, and pedalling is hard work. I’m pedalling to Baby’s school. I’m pedalling across town to work. After work, I do the reverse. I have to fit in a side trip to the store, where I add some more weight to my self-powered lorry. Then come the evenings. Some evenings I’m cycling into town for an evening class. Other evenings, I’m cycling to rehearsals in The Hague.

Precisely the week that school started up, we started rehearsals for the fall performance of my new plays. I go to the Schiedam train station, where I catch a train to The Hague. In Den Haag, I get an ‘OV Fiets’, a very cheap bike rental provided by the public transit authorities in every train station. I pedal across the centre of Den Haag to our rehearsal space. After a breathless rehearsal, I’m straining to make my train. Otherwise, I wait an extra half hour at the station, when I should be getting the girls ready for bed. Getting ready for my own bed ….

Lying still and waiting for sleep to come, I’m beset by images that flash across the mind like fragments of the day, torn apart by its own centrifugal force. Images are shot through with late summer sunshine, piercing through the gloom of fading consciousness like it did through the clouds. The days are a perfect prelude to fall, bright spells of warmth overtaken by quick showers. Grey clouds are ever on the horizon, blown by chilly gusts. It’s impossible to avoid the rain altogether, but the precipitation is light and blows over quickly. The sun dries you before the next shower.

Travelogue 867 – August 31
So Many Homes

I’m excited for her. Of course I am. When you are witness to the beginning of a life, privileged to see the unfolding of a new story, you are joyful and expectant. You are also humbled.

My Baby. I’m sitting across the table from her. She’s sitting with her mama, and her sister is sitting with me on my side of the table. We’ve stopped for some snacks after playing in the park.

My Baby. My oldest. She is in a buoyant mood today. She’s been chatting without stop, telling herself stories. Actually, this is her happy state most of the time. She is a cheerful soul.

She will start school in a week or so. She has little idea what that means. She’s not thinking about it much. I am. I’m making myself melancholy thinking about it. “These are our last days,” I’m telling myself, with some melodrama. “She will make friends at school. She will fall in love with her teacher. Her world will expand, and Mama and Papa will start their long slide deep into the supporting cast.”

Every month, every year is the start of a new phase. But starting school! That is something too big to contemplate. I find it hard to absorb all that it means. You can’t see it all. What is clear is that the start of a big phase is also the end of a big phase. And this has been a time so special in my own life, that I can’t help but mourn. It has been just the four of us all this time.

Baby has been narrating a dream. She tells us she dreamt about her parents. “Their names are …,” and she hesitates. Menna quietly points to me and to herself. I watch with interest. “No!” Baby responds emphatically. “My parents live far away!” We laugh.

Everything Baby does, she does with urgency. She’s a passionate soul. But there’s also a mischievous (and miraculous) self-awareness. She’s laughing inside, with some special joie de vivre. It colours everything she does with such freshness that I’m continually charmed and admiring.

Explaining her dream, she leans over the table and looks into my eyes. She communicates with such earnestness and with mischief, I am captivated. Baby tells us she has many homes, and she has many parents. “I have so many homes.”

“Really?” I’ve seen Menna wanting to correct her. I’m hoping she doesn’t. I’m curious.

“In my home, the walls are pink, and the door is red.”

“Oh, that sounds beautiful.”

“You can visit,” Baby says graciously. “And Mama can visit. And Little Ren can visit.”

We are guests in one of her many homes.

Travelogue 866 – August 28
Fictions – 4

She had risen above the maelstrom on the toes of her ballet shoes. Turning slowly on pointe, she had risen slowly above the land, freed from gravity.

She had laughed with joy the first time she had seen a pirouette. Her father had taken her to a ballet performance. She was only four then. She told everyone she was a dancer like her cousin. She had told her cousin, and her cousin had showed her how to do a pirouette.

It felt like being a leaf that was caught by the wind.

Fall was coming, her father said. She asked him often. Last year, they had walked together by the river every day, and they had stopped to watch the leaves. She asked him often when the autumn would start. Summer was too sticky. It would come soon, he said. Don’t worry, it will come. He had a gentle voice. It reminded her of the river.

Her father had taught her that Hiroshima was a city of six rivers. She would have liked to see them all. She was high enough now. Turning in the sky, executing perfect form, she could have surveyed the whole city below. But all she saw was grey, roiling dust and smoke.

After the light came these horrible clouds. It’s like they were alive and eating the sky. Would she ever be free of them? Now that she could dance in the sky, she would have liked to have the blue sky as her backdrop. Would there be any sky left? They were so hungry.

Travelogue 865 – August 22
Fictions – 3

It was a festive occasion. The mayor of Rotterdam was there with his wife, standing with several hundred other citizens in a circle around the sculpture. It wasn’t the most pleasant weather. It was a chilly day for May. A fog had settled over the big river and its city. Still, people had come out for the ceremony.

The occasion could have been a solemn one, since the sculpture memorialized the suffering of the city during the Blitz of 1940. The German air attack had wiped out the centre of the city. Most people standing there remembered the attack. They certainly would never forget the war. It lingered like the fog, lingered in the ongoing reconstruction and in rationing and other privations. And still, the people there were smiling. The years after the war were ones of sustained optimism.

The artist had come from Paris to oversee the installation. Ossip Zadkine was an odd-looking man, rail thin with a shock of white hair. His face was wedge-like, tapering to the chin, and fit with outsized ears. His movements were nervous and awkward. It was strange to think of him sculpting, shaping stone and bronze with the grace of a lifetime artist.

This huge bronze standing sixty metres high in the square was his creation, a bronze figure named “The Destroyed City”. Once the tarp was pulled from the statue to the crowd’s applause, it was revealed to be a towering Cubist depiction of a man with his head thrown back and his arms thrown high in the air in horror. There was a hole where the man’s heart would have been, symbolic of the city’s grief. The people in attendance stood politely in its presence, maintaining their circle, and commenting quietly to each other.

The dramatic effect of the piece was accentuated by the airy plaza, set between the busy avenue of the Westblaak and the harbour. The space underscored both the size and the insignificance of the artwork, even as the emptiness of the place portrayed the devastation the city suffered more poignantly than any sculpture.

There were others there. There were always ghosts at these events. Where there was something to mourn, there were plenty of mourners. The tall man moved toward the circle of people, approaching across the expanse of flagstones.

“Another damned ruined city,” he mumbled. “How many can there be?”

He would have been an awful sight if anyone could have seen him, one side of his face burn-scarred and his leather jerkin abraded and spotted with blood. He limped slightly, though it may have been with boredom, as he had been wandering for centuries, since he had fallen from the tower with his brother.

“And so which war is this? Which universe is this? A damn ugly one, I have to say. Everything is grey as slate.” The ghost had been drawn some ways just to witness the unveiling of this statue. He had lumbered through the centre where, eight years after the war, there were still broad spaces lying unnaturally vacant. It was ugly and familiar. He knew what it looked like when cities were set ablaze.

“And what is this monstrosity?” the dead soldier muttered, passing through the crowd and toward the artwork. He stopped to stare up at it. It was a statue. “Is this a god? It’s no king.” He glanced back at the living, who were still maintaining their circle, admiring and chatting quietly. “It’s a dark god,” he concluded, looking up again, “deformed and horrible. He’s calling down a curse, and his magic is melting him.” The ghost shook his head sadly. “This is how the war must have started. It was summoned by an evil god. After this, the fire rained from the skies.”

The ghost averted his gaze, and he stumbled forward again. “I have seen enough of fires from the skies. I wish the gods were done with fire.” Gloomily, he followed the harbour to the river. He lowered himself into the waters of the Nieuwe Maas. With laboured steps, he pushed through the silt at the bottom, following the current.

Travelogue 864 – August 12
Fictions – 2
Pope of Fools

more apologies to Victor Hugo

In the twinkling of an eye, all was ready to execute the contest for Pope of Fools. Bourgeois, scholars and law clerks all set to work. The little chapel situated opposite the marble table was selected for the scene of the grinning match. A pane broken in the pretty rose window above the door, left free a circle of stone through which it was agreed that the competitors should thrust their heads. In order to reach it, it was only necessary to mount upon a couple of hogsheads, which had been produced from I know not where, and perched one upon the other, after a fashion. It was settled that each candidate, man or woman (for it was possible to choose a female pope), should, for the sake of leaving the impression of his grimace fresh and complete, cover his face and remain concealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In less than an instant, the chapel was crowded with competitors, upon whom the door was then closed.

The grimaces began. The first face which appeared at the aperture, with eyelids turned up to the reds, a mouth open like a maw, and a brow wrinkled like our hussar boots of the Empire, evoked such an inextinguishable peal of laughter that Homer would have taken all these louts for gods. A second and third grimace followed, then another and another; and the laughter and transports of delight went on increasing. There was in this spectacle, a peculiar power of intoxication and fascination, of which it would be difficult to convey to the reader of our day and our salons any idea.

Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting successively all geometrical forms, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; all human expressions, from wrath to lewdness; all ages, from the wrinkles of the new-born babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying; all religious phantasmagories, from Faun to Beelzebub; all animal profiles, from the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle. Let the reader imagine all these grotesque figures of the Pont Neuf, those nightmares petrified beneath the hand of Germain Pilon, assuming life and breath, and coming in turn to stare you in the face with burning eyes; all the masks of the Carnival of Venice passing in succession before your glass,—in a word, a human kaleidoscope.

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted the people on all sides. That was, in fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment through the aperture in the rose window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces, which had succeeded each other at that hole without realizing the ideal of the grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had constructed, nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedral nose, that false mouth; that little squinting eye under red, bushy, bristling eyebrows; of those teeth like the embattled parapet of a fortress; of that callous lip, upon which these teeth encroached, producing the grin of a hungry weasel; of that soft chin; of that leathery skin of unnatural colour; and above all, of the expression spread over the whole; of that mixture of malice, amazement, and greed. Let the reader dream of this whole, if he can.

The horrible mouth opened, and it spoke to the crowd in the chapel. “You remember the word deplorable? You remember when Hillary used the word deplorable? She used two words. She used deplorable and irredeemable, right? I said, what a terrible mistake that she used the word irredeemable, but it turned out to be deplorable. Deplorable was not a good day for Hillary. Crooked Hillary, she is a crooked one. Crooked. Crooked. She is crooked.”

People were perplexed. They were silent. and then they applauded again. The acclamation was unanimous; people rushed towards the chapel. They made the lucky Pope of the Fools come forth in triumph. But it was then that surprise and admiration attained their highest pitch; the grimace was his face.

Master Coppenole, in amazement, approached him.

“Cross of God! Holy Father! you possess the handsomest ugliness that I have ever beheld in my life. You would deserve to be pope at Rome, as well as at Paris.”

Travelogue 863 – August 5
Fictions – 1
A New York Yankee

apologies to Victor Hugo

On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a maypole at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the crossroads, by the provost’s men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts.
The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because they knew that the American ambassadors, who had arrived two days previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery, and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place in the grand hall.

The palace place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into which five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin of the place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic façade of the palace, the grand staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current, which, after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves along its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake.

Above their heads was a double ogive vault, panelled with wood carving, painted azure, and sown with golden fleurs-de-lis; beneath their feet a pavement of black and white marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar, then another, then another; seven pillars in all, down the length of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the double vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of the pillars, stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel; around the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the windows, between the pillars, the interminable row of all the kings of France, from Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with pendent arms and downcast eyes; the valiant and combative kings, with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then in the long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults, pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination.

The two extremities of this gigantic parallelogram were occupied, the one by the famous marble table, so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the ancient land rolls say, “such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world”; the other by the chapel where Louis XI had himself sculptured on his knees before the Virgin. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six years, was entirely in that charming taste of delicate architecture, of marvellous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing, which marks with us the end of the Gothic era. The little open-work rose window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced it a star of lace.

In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of gold brocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to which had been effected through a window in the corridor of the gold chamber, had been erected for the American emissaries and the other great personages invited to the presentation of the mystery play.

All at once, the door of the reserved gallery which had hitherto remained so inopportunely closed, opened still more inopportunely; and the ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, “His eminence, Monseigneur the President of the United States.”

The President halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade. While he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the audience, the tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a better view of him. Each man vied with the other in thrusting his head over his neighbour’s shoulder. He entered, then, wearing a fine scarlet robe, which he carried off very well, bowed to those present with the hereditary smile of the great for the people, and directed his course slowly towards his scarlet velvet armchair.

Stopping at the balustrade, the President spoke to the crowd.

“It's great to be back in this country that I love. I love this country, very special, very, very special, on the banks of the beautiful Seine River with the hardworking patriots of the French heartland. Thank you, Paris. We love you Paris. So we've got thousands of people standing outside, and I asked the officials, can we sneak some up along the aisles?

“Can they sit on the stairs? But I'll tell you what, this is some crowd, some turnout. We've sold tens of thousands of tickets, and you know what the sale price is, we keep it nice and low, we keep it nice and low. But there never has been a movement like this. This is a movement the likes of which they've never seen before, maybe anywhere, but certainly in this country. If I hadn’t won the 2016 Election, we would be in a Great Recession/Depression right now.

“I was watching the so-called debate last night, and I also watched the night before, that was long, long television. And this morning, that's all the fake news was talking about that. The people I saw on stage last night, and you can add in Sleepy Joe, Harris, and the rest, will lead us into an economic sinkhole the likes of which we have never seen before. With me, only up!"

Travelogue 862 – July 31
A Nice Breeze

I welcome the cool breezes. The weather has turned. It will rain today. We won’t be able to ride bikes, but we’ll have the relief of some fresh air to breathe and some cool air against our skin. We’ve been through two record-breaking blasts of heat already this summer.

We suffered in the heat. It felt like we would suffocate. Menna made the comment that we look forward to summer through the damp chill of winter and spring, making for too many months of anticipation. Then when the summer comes, we suffer. This kind of heat has a debilitating effect on me. Cold can be dispiriting, but mind and body still function. If anything, they are stimulated. Heat slows me down. Quick thoughts congeal into a thick syrup. My skin breaks out in heat rashes. When I run, there is little pleasure and my times are embarrassing.

These intervals of cool sea breezes feel like awakening. The walking sleep of hot summer can start to pall, like a nap that’s gone on too long. You’re more tired than before the nap; you have a headache. Cool air is like a tonic.

The rewards of hot and sleepy summer are tied to the lazy passage of time. My girls love the sunshine. Their energy levels don’t suffer. And we have time to play. They lighten my experience immeasurably.

Yesterday was muggy. It wasn’t the hottest day, so I felt like I could move. The hot sun was broken at regular intervals by lovely white clouds. It was a picture of the best kind of summer’s day. If it hadn’t been preceded by such extreme heat, it would have been perfect.

We made it perfect, anyway, walking together to the ‘Dakpark’, a park built onto the roof of a kilometre-long strip mall. It’s a surprisingly pleasant stretch of green grass and clean walkways. In the middle, there’s a fountain where children play, a long shallow basin in dark stone fitted with small fountains shooting water straight up in random order into the breezes. The girls were enchanted. They waded tentatively into the water. They followed other children as they ran, smiling to watch their antics.

One parent was filling water balloons from the fountain nozzles. Baby Jos held hers in both hands like something precious. She brought it home with us, and only then did she throw it against the pavement to watch it burst, laughing with pure delight.

Travelogue 861 – July 26
The Toilets

I studied history in university. My mentor taught Roman History. For anyone interested in a deeper study of Roman life, there was also a Classics Department. The purpose of that department was a study of ancient languages and civilization. I would have liked to have taken more courses in classics, but I was a history student. There was something of a friendly rivalry between the departments. Classics students studied Roman toilets (so we said,) while we serious history students tackled the big issues. Still, I was somewhat envious. I found immersion in an ancient language and culture very tempting.

In Gent, I thought about the Roman toilets. Civilization is made of its details. An understanding of it requires making time for the toilets. Four years in university is so short. As a history student, I had four years to find my way through several millennia of European politics and culture. No time to smell the roses, or the sewers, as it happens. It’s too bad. It’s the knowledge of the day-to-day that transports us, creates real understanding and empathy.

Setting aside medieval Gent, an example: many of us have absorbed an outline of Muslim history. It’s topical and relevant. We read short histories, and we understand something more than we did before. That’s good. But how many have heard the call to prayer – not in movies, but in person? The adhan is integral to the mundane and tactile experience of Islam. I’m guessing it would be difficult for someone who grew up in the Middle East to separate historical Islam from the sensory Islam, the sound of the adhan, and the prayer itself. Taking the thought further, how many have heard the call often enough and in enough settings to have a feeling for how it changes according to country, area, city or village? What do we know about Islam, current or past?

Making a decision to write fiction, I have been confronted by this old (false) dichotomy between history and civilization, between events and experience. A story about Gent can never be a true accounting. Research is an effort to align fiction with reality as closely as possible with finite resources. They never merge. They just hover near for an instant.

In the city museum, I had walked across the huge floor map of Gent. It was a reminder how my study started. The city was born in the mind as a map. Landmarks were discovered, in time and space. Maps were histories, and histories were maps. Continuing on, I inevitably wanted to feel the ground of the place under my feet. Detail is a kind of descent into the map. Detail is infinite: shadow and texture and the passage of every minute of the day.

One fun feature of the castle at Gent are the toilets, apparently a luxury for the counts and their families: private toilets built into the castle walls. The toilets hung over the moat, and waste was thus disposed of immediately. Bored commoners could watch from the road for noble faeces dropping into the water.

Travelogue 860 – July 18
Status of Seasons

I go for my walk with the girls. It’s evening. This is later than we usually go. We’re giving Mama some time with her guests.

It’s been chilly for summer. Clouds come and go, never freeing the sky entirely. The girls have on their jackets.

When we get to the park, Baby always races ahead, while Little Ren stops at the bridge to look for ducks. Children enjoy their rituals. And I enjoy what they enjoy.

Watching Baby running makes me so happy. I can’t say why precisely. It could be the sense of freedom expressed in a child’s run. It could be her pride. She likes showing me how fast she can run. I look forward to this moment whenever I we get time to go out.

At the top of the stairs, I present them with their lollipops. That’s the ritual. Then we walk along the path where the train tracks used to be, becoming quite narrow this time of year, crowded by the brush on either side. We talk about what we see today, the flowers and the insects and the rabbit poop.

Much of the brush crowding our little path consists of blackberry bushes. Little Ren fell in the thorns once, so now we are very respectful of the long shoots the bushes throw in our way. We have been watching the progress of the berries. Many are ripe now. We pick a few samples. Some are tart. Baby makes a face. She calls things that are tart ‘winky’ because they make her wink.

The sun is lower than usual because it’s evening. Its light is filtered through the heavy foliage of the season. When we emerge into sunlight, we stand still and absorb the warmth. When we resume our walk into the shade, we are chilly again.

The details define the moment: the angle of the sun, the chance weather, the progress charted by the season. Every week makes a difference in the state of the season, its leaves, its fruits, the blossoms and the insect populations.

None of that accounts for the subjective experience of seasons. Because I work in a school, seasons have their cycles of stress and release. Summer is becoming sweet just now, the relief of approaching vacation time blowing in like fresh spring air.

The accumulation of detail feeds any scene. Fiction is composed of setting and experience. So it was that my every step in Gent counted. How might the sun strike the cobblestones of one narrow street, say a small alley running east and west? How would the line of that sun divide the brick wall rising to the north? How would that line rise through the afternoon, and how would the warmth stored in the brick feel to the touch? How would the complex of colours in that small space be affected? How differently might the brick have looked then?

Travelogue 859 – July 12
Stone by Stone

I studied history in university. My mentor taught Roman history. His focus was late Empire, but his courses covered all the thousand years or so of Roman history, and quite a bit of historiography along the way. The old question, ‘when did the empire really fall,’ for example, prompted all sorts of questions. If the Byzantines called themselves Romans; if Charlemagne called himself a Roman Emperor; if Latin was taught in the schools of the British Empire until the twentieth century, then how do we define the empire and Roman civilization? Was Constantine more recognizable in a Byzantine context than in a pre-Augustan context? Et cetera.

We can agree that Rome changed, though we can’t agree on what precisely Rome was. We can agree that Rome fell, though not on when, or even on what we mean by ‘fall’. I love history. I love its riddles. The mysteries keep us engaged and add a human element. Behind the gradual change are everyday decisions, like the collective shrug over another accusation of rape on the part of the president of the U.S., let’s say.

Gent had its rise and its fall. The rise was gradual, the product of generations of good trading decisions and hard work, and the result of many successful negotiations with the counts of Flanders. One can imagine the expediency in each decision. Families knew each other. Merchants traded with people they knew and trusted. The counts had more important matters to attend to, like pressing campaigns to pursue against neighbouring nobility, marriage alliances to negotiate, hunts and banquets to arrange. No decision happens in a void. So city-states like Gent gathered piecemeal rights and privileges that gave them monopolies of wealth and influence. With these, they made themselves an irritation and an indispensable asset to the counts.

In the thirteenth century, the counts acknowledged the importance of Gent, building the castle Gravensteen. The name means ‘count’s stone’, a proud reference to the counts' contribution to a city being rebuilt in stone because of its new wealth. His was going to be THE stone house. It was suitably impressive, towering over the town and its bustling port on the River Leie, surviving more than seven centuries until my family could arrive and our girls could run madly along its ramparts.

The place didn’t serve long as a place of residence. The counts of Flanders were a peripatetic lot, as were most medieval nobility and royalty. They visited less and less often, and within two centuries, the castle was used primarily as a court and prison. This was its manifestation in the era I’ve been writing about.

Travelogue 858 – July 7
The Count’s Castle

Baby Jos was very excited to visit a castle. It was our first stop in Gent, the Count’s Castle, or Gravensteen. We stood outside the high grey walls to take pictures together, documenting our first real castle. Inside the gates, the girls ran back and forth across the rough flagstones of the courtyard while Mama and Papa listened to audio guides. We entered the buildings of the castle, and we moved slowly from chamber to chamber, absorbing what we could of the setting and history while reining in the wild enthusiasm of the children.

Little Ren wanted badly to play the small harp standing in the countess’s tiny chamber. The instrument was likely a sturdy replica, but, no, we couldn’t let her play. Museum guests stood in semi-circle, frowning as they listened to the same audio passage, frowning at Little Ren in her distress.

Baby Jos wanted to race up the narrow, circling staircases, regardless of who stood in the way. At the top, between slats guarding the crenellations, we could see the sprawling town. At that height, our babies panicked us at every turn. They continued making dashes one way and then another, as though possessed. We captured them; we led them by hand back to the stairway. Down again we wound, down the cold, constricted wells of spiralling steps, where the air was close and smelled of ancient stone.

Standing at each vantage point, my task as papa was to track racing, tumbling babies. My task as writer was to see the living map, to make the floorplan come alive and speak to me. It’s a tremendous challenge, actually, seeing through time. It requires much more than a vacation day with the family. It takes concentration and imagination. It takes a freed mind, a capacity to daydream. That’s not easy while monitoring crazy children.

I sigh now to think, ‘I chose to write fiction.’ How foolish. That’s life: we choose things without knowledge of them. That’s how it works with time and matter. We choose, and then we learn. Fiction requires varieties of work and commitment that feel somewhat alien, alien to my character and alien also to the zeitgeist.

Of course it requires work. In these days of triumphalist and angry capitalism, it’s no great challenge to conceive of art as hard labour. Anything good must emerge from labour and pain. That’s quite easy to get. But there’s another side to creation that excites more suspicion. Stories also require time spent in active imagination. And imagination is known to keep company with lazy fellow-travellers like ‘reflection; and ‘daydreaming’. And who can abide all the time that authors spend reading? The only reading worthy of our age happens in airports. And frankly, it’s better if the books are Harvard-edited manuals of business management.

So it is that I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I love stories. I feel guilty that I would spend precious vacation time in a place like Gent. I should be more functional, building status with names like Ibiza or Tuscany. I feel guilty about moments stolen in medieval alleyways, when I ought to be earning money or muscle tone. I feel guilty even about the time I don’t have, the hours that exist only in longings, time I would invest in dreaming, contemplation, meditation, speculation, reflection and wonder.

Travelogue 857 – June 30
The Big Map

The first room in Gent’s city museum, or the STAM, as it’s called, is the map room. Laid out on the floor is an aerial view of the city, covering three hundred square metres. Available for comparison are smaller historical maps of the city from previous centuries. Several of these maps I’m already familiar with. In fact, there is a lot I recognize among the features of the city.

I’ve been studying maps of Gent, current and historical, since I started working on this book. In my odd relationship with this place, I can say the map has pre-dated the city. While it’s true that Gent is older than I am, and while it’s true that I had visited Gent before I started the research for this book, real acquaintance began with the maps. Previous trips had been too brief. It’d been impossible to form a coherent sense of the town based on the route from the train station to Sint-Baafskerk.

I circled the museum’s floor map, studying the details. The outline of things was familiar, the town’s shape determined by the course of rivers and canals; the town’s orientation according to the compass. I wanted to drill down into the picture, see the paths that became the streets, see the public buildings that shaped the centre and the rows of houses that rose and rose again among the areas less central. I wanted to follow the canals that had shaped the city’s history. I did follow the miniature of the long trench of the Terneuzen canal, dug in the nineteenth century to link the city to the Dutch port on the Scheldt estuary, twenty miles away. I was thinking it would be a nice cycle ride.

Of course, I could identify the museum in its own map, situated in the Bijlokesite complex, once a convent and, for centuries, a hospital. The large complex also houses a concert hall and an academy for opera. Each building seems to come from a different era. The museum building includes the old abbey church and a dormitory for the nuns.

Outside the map room, my interest waned. I enjoyed some of the artefacts, the medieval crossbows, for example. But the historical background was general and offered me very little that was new about my period of interest. I lingered in the rooms devoted to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, eras that I hadn’t studied as well, times of Spanish dominance, slow decline and decadence.

I also enjoyed the room dedicated to the mystery of the panel stolen from Van Eyck’s ‘Lam Gods’ triptych in the 1930s. It made for an engaging story. Seven months after the theft, the likely thief died of a heart attack, and only left a cryptic clue in his desk about the whereabouts of the panel. No one has ever found it. One theory ascribes the theft to the diocese itself, hard up for cash. I had a good time looking over the contemporary headlines and watching video clips from news reels and later documentaries.

Travelogue 856 – June 23
Solstice 19

It was approaching midnight, and I couldn’t sleep. I opened the front door to the flat to let in a breeze. The evening was cool.

There was still a tint of cerulean blue in the sky, making shadows of the rows of clouds in the west. I experienced a double sense of wonder, inspired by the lingering sunlight at that hour and by the beauty of the colour. I took in the fresh air, breathing out a wordless prayer of thanks for the season.

I’ve been taking the girls to the local park about every other day. We walk hand-in-hand to the canal. They run across the bridge to climb the stairs on the other side. These steps lead to a dirt path that runs along the ridge of a man-made hill. This once was a railway line that brought freight cars to the Van Nelle plant. Now it’s like a wall that divides one district from another. On our side there is a canal with its narrow margins of grass. On the other side is a playground and petting zoo. These days, we can’t see much on either side because of the spring growth.

Along our path, the wildflowers and berry bushes have been growing noticeably. Bees and butterflies flit among the flowers. We’ve seen the season’s first dragon fly. This is our little nature walk, and I try to make the most of it. We stop to call out the colours of the blooms. We stop to check the shade of green in the blackberries. The girls know they will get to taste them when they turn purple. If we spot a ladybug, we set it on Baby’s finger to crawl up her arm. Little Ren will squat over a train of ants, and she knows not to squash them. Further down the path, we descend another stairway, the stones of which are being pushed out of position by the roots and grass underneath, and we run to the playground on the corner.

That day, I told Baby Jos that it was the first day of summer. She’s been longing for summer, when she and her sister could play in the water. She never really got the concept of spring. Sunny days were summer, and cold days were winter. I pointed out the budding trees and the new flowers, attempting to link spring to fall, when the leaves fell. She repeated, ‘it’s summer!’ with some relief.

It was the solstice. I had watched the long day unfold, waking at four to briefly appreciate the brightening colours in the sky. I had enjoyed every hour of sunlight, morning into afternoon. And, as midnight approached, I stood outside my door to marvel at the final colours of the calendar’s happiest day.

Travelogue 855 – June 22
Citadelpark

In Gent, we stayed at a hotel beside the Scheldt River, just inside the bounds of the medieval city, close to the city’s southern gates (demolished a long time ago). It was a neighbourhood that appeared to be more of a legacy of the imperial era of Belgium, when the industrial revolution had brought something of the old mercantile energy back to Flanders. The houses were snug and stolid, set with humble bits of Jugendstil ornamentation.

One morning, I woke early to make a museum trip on my own. I walked west across the breadth of old Gent, across the Scheldt and across the tongue of land between the two rivers. It only took me fifteen minutes to travel this distance. I traversed the Citadelpark, a generous tract of green urban park set on the site of a post-Napoleonic citadel built.

The park occupied part of a hill that rose like a ridge along the spine of that tongue of land between rivers, a hill that contrasted so starkly with the surrounding Flemish flatlands that it had a name, Blandijnberg, and a long history in the defences of the city. In the age of the Citadel, it must be said, history seemed to have found its rounding off. The French sent no more conquering armies. And the wars of the twentieth century made of the greatest nineteenth-century fortresses quaint hallmarks of futility.

Actually, the French did send one more army, in 1832. But it was in defence of the new Belgian kingdom, rather than in conquest. A year after Belgian independence, the Dutch king invaded. He wanted Flanders back. While the other powers dithered, it was restoration France that came to the rescue. No one outside of Holland objected. It seemed that neutral Belgium had quickly become a vital buffer for the countries in the region.

Well before the Kaiser’s generals projected campaigns across the Belgian frontier, the Citadel had become irrelevant. In the late nineteenth century, when Belgium was eager to count itself among the industrial and colonial powers of Europe, Gent re-imagined the district of the Blandijnberg. The park was planned. The university moved in with new buildings.

Crossing the park, I found a path that led behind a small, artificial waterfall. The park had that kind of moulded feel, like other urban parks surviving from the time before world wars, when park spaces had been designed as sites for the amusement of the city’s families, and the city’s lovers. Designers simulated and enhanced nature, dreaming up a kind of romantic pastoral. I’m sure it would have seemed absurd to simply allow nature to reclaim the hill. Nature for its own sake was not the point.

Crossing the park on the paved roads, I had to dodge cyclists careening around corners with the casual lack of concern for safety of students everywhere. I’m reminded with every adrenaline spike how this district is now, above all else, a university district.

Past the park and back in city streets, the rest of my way was downhill, past facades of the same era as eastward, down to the humble Leie River. The river was crossed in a minute, and I’d arrived at the Bijloke.

Travelogue 854 – June 11
Gefeliciteerd!

And I interrupt the Gent program again to report on events, momentous events. We celebrated a birthday on the weekend, the fourth birthday of my dear girl, Baby Jos, no longer a baby, but a tall and loud and forceful little girl.

Humans live to be surprised by each other. Habits are comfortable and efficient, but novelty is nourishment. Children have great versatility to surprise, growing so quickly, graced with such stores of energy. Discovery is continual, and it’s mutual. I mean that children’s discovery becomes conscious through the mirroring of adults. And children make the mundane new for adults.

Jos has grown so quickly this year. I am surprised by simple things. I am surprised by how heavy she has become to carry. I am surprised by the muscle in those lithe arms and legs. I am surprised by her humour, a child’s robust and subversive humour. She makes faces; she crosses her eyes; she makes up funny dances. Intelligence glints in her eye.

My Jos is passionate. She howls when she doesn’t get what she wants. She tells me she loves me, and then she tells me to go away. She laughs with joy when cartoon characters sing on TV. She cheers when I bring home treats. All of it I enjoy without reservation, encouraging her to enjoy.

My Jos is not shy. When the guests arrive at her birthday party, she greets them herself. If they have brought gifts, she asks about them right away. When it’s time for photos, she is quick to take a pretty pose. And when it’s time to blow the candles out, she’s excited and exhibits no stage fright. When people sing for her, she is openly delighted.

Baby Jos anticipated the party for days, thinking often of the cake and ice cream and gifts. She spent days reasoning forcefully with her younger sister about the privileges of birthdays. “It’s not your birthday, Ren. It’s mine.” Little Ren is unconvinced.

The two share everything, though not always peacefully. When there is peace, it’s often due to Little Ren’s idolization of her big sister. They play games together; they pretend. Baby Jos comes up with most games, and Little Ren repeats.

One morning, they’re playing dress-up. They’re rubbing Legos across their faces. It’s lipstick, they explain. They’re banging the Legos against their palms. It’s face cream. They rub their faces again. They apply the cream to their hair. They behind their backs and over their shoulders. They’re dressing, they say. They are perfect mimics, and it’s clear they have watched their mother putting on her bra.

Four years old and starting school soon. I am overcome!

Travelogue 853 – June 10
Processions

We had had good luck with weather. Our days in Gent had been the sort that make you want to sit outside, gathering the spring sunshine while you had it. Outside Sint-Baafskerk, as I’ve said, the square was bound on one side by a long line of cafes, and all of them had rows of tables outside. The tables and their wicker seats were packed tightly into partitioned areas nearly as big as the spaces indoors. And each café had outdoor heaters, installed above the storefront windows for the first row of tables or set upon poles for the tables further from the doors. I was quick to convince the girls they wanted juices and snacks, so I had an opportunity to have a beer and recuperate in the sun.

There’s a lot I wanted to see in this town. The trip was research. I’m writing a book set in Gent. But sightseeing was tiring work.

Fortunately, all was close at hand. Following the curving line of bars in Sint-Baarsplein, we passed the Lakenhalle into the next square, and then onto the street called Botermarkt that led up the slight hill to its intersection with Hoogpoort. Here, the Gothic broke out like ivy gone riot all over the buildings. Most of it was self-conscious nineteenth-century restoration. But I was not unaware that this intersection formed, in actual fact, one hub of the Gothic town itself.

I speculated that it was on the site of the kitschy old bar on the corner that the old guild of crossbowmen, Sint-Jorisgilde, had been housed. Through the town’s glory years, this guild, one of the oldest, had led in war and they had led in civic and religious processions.

I would have given a lot to have had a window opened in time so I could watch a medieval procession in this era, when the civilization of the Middle Ages was at its most codified, when ritual was most elaborate, and when the independent city states in northern Europe were at their freest and proudest. Originally processions were church occasions, but they evolved into expressions of local pride. The bridge between church and city was often the city’s patron saint. No self-respecting city could do without a relic of the patron saint, and some story linking the saint to the city’s history, no matter how improbable. On the saint’s day, the city and its mythos were celebrated.

The processions provided timely applications of glue to hold together enclaves like Gent, standing against titanic nation-building forces like the good dukes of Burgundy. I read recently about one of Gent’s many rebellions against the feudal authority, in 1467. Charles the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was making his first entry into the city after his father’s death. It was the ritual acknowledgement of his new authority over the town. Unwisely, he chose to make his entry during the city’s favourite religious festival, a two-day procession to the nearby town of Houtem to honour Saint Lieven. Hundreds of townspeople retuning the day after the duke’s entry, started rioting in the Vrijdagmarkt.

Travelogue 852 – May 29
The Strike

I interrupt the Gent journal to report on today’s transit strike. Rotterdam woke on strike day to persistent showers. The rain hasn’t abated yet, and it’s nearly noon. I’ve dug out my rain pants, and I’ve ventured out on the bike so I could experience the town on a day without trams or trains or buses. I found it a singularly and surprisingly difficult thing to imagine, a city without trams. It’s good once in a while to be made aware of the things you take for granted, and clearly I had taken the regular rumble and screech of rail transport all aboard into my psyche. Transit routes were cycles of nature, and train cars were as ubiquitous as canals and cows in their fields.

I can report that the streets were predictably quieter this morning. Life hadn’t stopped, but there was less activity. It felt like summer break. Cars sped by with all their former carelessness, but conspicuously absent was the network of sound underneath, the grumble, the bell, the whine of steel wheels.

I stopped by a Metro station. This seemed the ultimate test of the strike. I had never imagined the Metro stations as anything but open, at every hour and forever. The Metro station was a kind of community centre, where we met together to share our quiet disdain for each other.

Cycling by two Metro stations, I saw the proof. The stations were gated off, closed. It felt wrong. Those long train platforms silent and empty: it couldn’t be. Those were our sacred spaces, comprising a species of catacomb where we buried our sunlight and buried our individuality. Where would we find the day’s cold comfort, the shadowless, concrete dreamscape inhabited by sleepwalkers on smart phones? This was a blow.

I took a moment to stop at the grocery store. Here I found people. The aisles were alive with smiles and activity. There was an atmosphere of holiday.

I had originally thought that calling a strike that punished customers more than employers was a dubious strategy, but here I saw through my American bias. In America, the prevailing ethos is to punish the weakest person in any hierarchy. Wrath over a transit strike would be visited upon wage-earners who arrive late to work, sweaty and soaked by the rain. Here, all is viewed with a measure of indulgence. A strike is like a blizzard. The community shrugs and accepts it as a natural phenomenon, out of their control. That could never be countenanced in the America I remember.

Still, I wouldn’t recognize the attitude as support for the transit workers, either. I asked a few people about it in the days before the strike. Most only shrugged. Some were cynical. That was yesterday. Today, it’s a holiday.

Travelogue 851 – May 28
The Square

Outside Sint-Baafs cathedral, there is an open square. On one side is a line of café-bars with outdoor seating. That line drifts away in a curve to open the square wider at the opposite end, where stands the Lakenhalle, the Cloth Hall, which was built during the first half of the fifteenth century. The Lakenhalle is situated right underneath and adjoining the Belfry, Gent’s famous bell-tower.

Picture Gent in the 1430s. While the Vijds were finishing their chapel in the ambulatory of the church then called Sint-Jans, and while Jan Van Eyck was completing his masterpiece, the cloth merchants were busy building their hall across the square. Perhaps they were already using the space for business, storing cloth, conducting their inspections, negotiating daily. It’s hard to imagine how townspeople went about their business in a town centre dominated by multi-generational building projects. The square must have been a mess. Sint-Jans (later Sint-Baafs Cathedral) itself was in the midst of a slow-motion transformation from Romanesque structure to Gothic that would take the better part of two centuries.

The Belfry had only been completed some fifty to a hundred years earlier, so recently by medieval standards that the city watchmen hadn’t moved in yet. They still occupied the tower in the neighbouring Sint-Niklaas Church. These three towers, Sint-Baafs, the Belfry and Sint-Niklaas now form (as they did then, I suppose) a line of heights that give Gent its signature skyline. Tourists are advised to stand on or near the western Sint-Michiels Bridge crossing the Leie to get the finest view of these three towers standing together.

The imagination struggles to picture the city amidst all this change and growth. These days, there’s such generous space accorded these monuments in the centre of town, and there have been such extravagant efforts made to medievalize, that it’s hard to visualize the chaotic and crowded activity that would have been the fifteenth-century experience. It’s safe to say that business and life went on. The churches were open for business, regardless of the stage of building. The cloth trade carried on; it was the life blood of the town. If there was so much open space then, it was put to use, for markets or ceremonials. It’s hard to imagine Gentenaars sentimentalizing the open square, sitting for quiet beers at clean tables overlooking the well-swept flagstones of the square.

Today, the curve of Sint-Baafs Square continues past the Lakenhalle and into the next square, which is fronted by the old city hall and Sint-Niklaas. The square also contains a few curiosities from later times, including the modern City Pavilion, tall and intriguing, a structure that would have baffled the hard-bitten cloth merchants of old Gent. ‘What purpose does it serve?’ they might have asked. Well, it’s beautiful, and it provide shelter for concerts and events. They would have shaken their heads at the waste of space.

There is also an eighteenth-century gateway built into the corner between the Belfry and the Lakenhalle, an entryway into a city jail housed in the basement of the Lakenhalle. A very conspicuous relief was carved into the tympanum, depicting the Roman myth of Cimon, an old man sentenced to starvation but kept alive by his daughter, who breastfed him on prison visits. You can only stand below and laugh or scratch your head, wondering what the city fathers were thinking.

Travelogue 850 – May 26
Hats Off

The canons from Sint-Baafs Abbey were made homeless by the emperor’s vengeance on the city of Gent. They were allowed to relocate to Sint-Janskerk in town. John the Baptist was the patron saint of Gent, and so for centuries the church was named for him. With this shift, the church became known as Sint-Baafs. Today it is still known as Saint Bavo’s, and it’s most famous as home to the Lamb of God triptych painted by the Van Eyck brothers.

When I’ve visited Gent in the past, I’ve gone directly to the cathedral. I’ve stood in that small, sacred room off the nave, where dozens of tourists shuffle around the masterpiece, listening to their audio guides. Now I’m back. I’ve heard the lectures before. I’ve read extensively about the piece. I’ve examined reproductions of the painting closely on the page and on the web. None of that makes me an expert, but this is no introduction. The triptych like an old friend, and I’m just happy to be in the same room. I circle it, looking closely at a handful of details. What you don’t get in books is a sense of the object’s dimension, the air it displaces.

We tour the cathedral, taking in the towering space of the interior and the rich decoration accumulated over centuries. We stroll back to the chapel where the altarpiece was intended to stand. The painting would have dominated this small space built by and dedicated to the Vijd family nearly six hundred years ago.

Much has been written about the adventures of the triptych since the fifteenth century, barely surviving the iconoclasm of the Reformation and subsequent wars. It was claimed by the Nazis and nearly lost among German caverns full of treasure and art. One panel was stolen in a high-profile, mysterious and still unsolved case.

We need reminding how fortunate we are to be able to see the piece. So many artworks from that era are lost. And among the ones that have survived, how many people have had had the privilege to view them? The triptych was produced to serve a specific purpose in religious ritual. Its panels were only opened on holidays.

After we first entered the cathedral, I was idly walking in circles, looking for a place to park the buggy and looking up into the heights of the space. A guard caught my attention and with a friendly wink, gestured a suggestion that I remove my cap. I nodded and complied, of course. How many times a day does he have to remind people that this is still a church?