Travelogue 903 – April 28
Our Pilots

Clearly, I’m reading the Guardian too much. This morning I saw a report that the Pentagon has released the official videos of UFO sightings that have been circulating illicitly for five years. The videos spooked me. On my daily trip to the grocery, I was checking the skies.

There was nothing to see. Coincidentally, it’s been the first rainy day in weeks. Riding my bike to the store, I gazed into the clouds, and I saw no strange lights or shadowy vessels. But the change in weather and the darkening of the skies only heightened the mystery. What lay beyond the low screen of rain clouds?

Maybe they’re monitoring our progress with COVID-19. I’m guessing that public health would be a major concern among interstellar organisations. If the germ we’re dealing with currently was able to jump from bat to human, then what sort of devastating bug could leap from us to them? We might wipe out the whole star system. They came a long way to be taken out by something like COVID.

Maybe they’re monitoring the American election. I can imagine this might explain their long silence. The first Pentagon video was recorded in 2004 – during an election year. They may simply have found every election more disturbing than the last. In 2012, they might have been tempted by humanity’s uncharacteristic show of reason. But then they waited one more cycle in the name of caution, and 2016 happened. If my theory is correct, we won’t hear from the emissaries of reasoning extra-terrestrials for quite a while.

We do one thing right as a species. Watch these videos and listen to the Navy pilots as they track down these mysterious objects. In a movie, these scenes would have been scripted as hushed or full of portent. That’s not reality. These boys are having fun. They’re laughing, and they’re shouting to each other in admiration of these little flying saucers.

I hope the banter of these pilots was the aliens’ first impression of us. It’s definitely the best they will have for a while.

Travelogue 902 – April 26
The Tory Emperor

I had to laugh when a Guardian writer attributed an interest in Marcus Aurelius to a type of privileged Tory who would downplay the threat of the coronavirus. Huh? Strange that I hadn’t seen myself as the privileged backbencher before. I don’t have the penetrating mind of a Guardian columnist, clearly. And so I still read the old man, even as I obey social distancing rules without complaint.

Perhaps Aurelius himself wasn’t aware how prejudiced he was, favouring economic productivity over precious human life. But, of course, we all recall his proclamation against quarantine when the Roman stock exchange took a tumble and unemployment figures were skyrocketing.

I can only reassure our esteemed columnist that life is fleeting, and all prejudices die. I read it often enough in the writings of the Tory emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “Celer buries Hadrian and is buried himself. These noble minds of old, those minds of prescience, those men of pride, where are they now?” Sage commentators from the Guardian can be sure that the fat Tories will follow soon, rolled into Aurelius’s intellectual limbo and forgotten.

The sort of frontal attack her article represents is so boring. Proving yourself smart and taking the liberty of being unkind, these are the hallmarks of most commentaries during the early Trump years. Aside from a few late-night talk show hosts, most opinion has been too earnest. It seemed to us as though indignation should work. It was justified. They were a dark couple of years, and opinion makers being right and snarky didn’t really help anyone.

I’ve been seeing some funny stuff online lately. It seems like people are getting funnier. It’s very possible that I’m only now discovering what was always out there. But it may be that things had to get worse. Or we needed time to mature into confident opposition. It’s a kind of ripening of opinion.

Oppressors are nearly always comical. Look at our autocrats from the past century, their strutting; their fantastical, clownish oratory; their peculiar grooming; and their fondness for costumes and parades. They and their followers are ridiculous. And they can’t stand being laughed at. It’s too bad they’re so feral, but that doesn’t eclipse the comedy. Why are we so drawn to the Tiger King story? It’s the autocrat written small. Repulsive and a little frightening, but delightfully funny.

I admit, there aren’t too many passages in Aurelius advising us, “Laugh. Have a good time.” But his writings were ruminations. They suggest he didn’t need a reminder to have fun. Maybe the comedy in his position came to him readily enough. Maybe he needed reminders of graver responsibilities. We clearly don’t need to be reminded how serious the situation is. The Trumpistas, on the other hand, have their eye on a different ball than we do. Their reminders should come in the form of laughter: “you are mortal; you are ridiculous.” Trump wilted after the disinfectant episode. He was playing a bad part without conviction, and the crowd jeered. Simple enough.

Travelogue 901 – April 22
Sin and Distancing

I’ve started into the ninth book of Aurelius’s Meditations, slowly working my way through the emperor’s thoughts verse by verse, fortifying my spirit with his spare language and sun-baked philosophy. A dose of Aurelius is like a dry sauna, cleansing by desiccation.

There are interesting variations, though. Sunday evening, I had an asthma attack that sent me to the doctor. I was utterly wiped out. But Aurelius’s words that night were about kindness. Predictably, his words were an exhortation to show the kindliness of the gods, but I was touched, as though a stern dad were putting his hand on my shoulder.

The emperor starts the ninth book in a way I would have thought uncharacteristic, speaking with some passion about ‘sin’. I’ve been meaning to look into other translations. Was the Greek translated correctly, or appropriately for his time? It’s hard for me to dissociate the word from its Christian usage. That’s probably unfair. I doubt the Christians came up with the concept.

I’ve been thinking of Christianity – again unfairly, I’m sure – as a kind of tonic to the philosophies of Aurelius’s time and class. I’ve come to think of his ideal virtues as those of the noble classes. From those assured power and renown, religion and philosophy asked an ongoing contemplation of death, the great leveller and the waster of reputation. Christianity was a religion that spread among the plebeians. From those who never had power nor fame, Christianity asked an ongoing contemplation of heaven, where everyone was redeemed in the eyes of a familiar God who knew where every sparrow fell.

But there’s something current about Aurelius’s Spartan ways, stressing internal strength and contentment, something apropos while the world suffers through a time of pandemic, exercising social distance and suffering silently. And least those with dignity are. There are those protesting, like school kids whose recess has been taken away. But the majority have a care for the other as much as for themselves, a virtue commonly recommended by both Aurelius and Jesus. When encountering on a narrow sidewalk a stranger who makes a circuit to maintain social distance, one person is offended and another sees a courtesy. Which are you? It’s really as simple as that.

In Holland, we’re well into our sixth week of shutdown. It’s a culture that prides itself on common sense and moderation, and it must be said that things are calm. Dutch moderation didn’t go for full lockdown. Perhaps as a consequence, the country has always been among the top ten in deaths from the coronavirus. But no one panics or protests. The streets aren’t deserted, but people are generally and genially careful. They maintain distance, but they do it with a wry smile.

Travelogue 900 – April 19
Choosing the Gulls

The sea gulls are loud. It’s all I hear as I wake up. I lie still and listen to them. I like bird song, even the plaintive cries of gulls. I can imagine them circling around each other, perhaps fighting over some scrap of food. I know some people hate gulls, but I’ve always liked the sound of their voice. They remind me of the sea.

It means a lot to me, living by the sea. But it would be hard to say what that means. Without the sensory experiences of the winds, the North Sea clouds, the occasional salty smell, and the cries of the gulls, how would I know the sea was there? I rarely visit it. The sea is more an idea than a fact, and the gulls the opposite. The mind likes ideas, but the emotions favour facts. I see the gulls every day. Did I choose the sea or the gulls?

The sun is out again, after only one day of light showers. It’ll be another beautiful spring day, and I can’t wait to take the girls out for a walk by the canal. The grass will be strewn with pink petals from the cherry blossom trees. They’ve been in full bloom for weeks and their flowers are beginning to drop. If we can get out in the morning, there will be a pleasant chill in the air.

It’s Sunday; ballet classes come first. Ballet class doesn’t mean leaving home. Nothing does anymore. It all happens by video call. Little Ren’s class is first. We set the computer on a chair in the kitchen so the girls can dance on the clear floor of the attached dining room. I help her slip on her pink ballet shoes. I join the meeting on Zoom, and we all say hello to the teacher. Other children show up in their windows.

It’s wonderful that the lessons continue despite the shutdown, but the rituals around a family activity can be as important as the activity itself. We used to arrive early and change, while the other families arrived. I would take Little Ren into class. We would sit together on the wooden floor while the other children entered. After both classes, we would go out to a café for treats.

Living the video conferencing life is convenient. It saves us a lot of time. But I’m sure the girls miss the excitement of seeing everyone, the immediacy of dancing for your teacher in the same room. Little Ren finds it hard to concentrate in this format. She gets distracted; she wanders. Seeing the world through her eyes is a reminder of how small the computer screen is, and how flat. If we could afford the thoughts, we might wonder at the arbitrary power we’ve invested in these little screens and their pictures.

Travelogue 899 – April 11
The Lonely God

Someone on Facebook has warned me to beware any vaccine they develop for the coronavirus. It’s part of a plot on the part of Bill Gates to wipe out a portion of humanity. It wasn’t clear what Gates’s reasons might be for that; and it didn’t seem to matter much. Guys like Gates have evil agendas. They eradicate people like weeds. They take guns away, like ice cream from babies, just to watch children cry.

I shouldn’t find it funny, but I do. Isn’t it wonderful that fans of the Avengers find adventures in the headlines, that they should see Thanos in the spindly figure of Bill Gates? The human imagination is dazzling.

Who are we to each other? I think the pandemic has offered opportunities to take stock, look at society and our fellow humans with a new eye. In general, has it made us appreciate each other a litte more? Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or was alienation already a cancer in the body of post-modern societies? And has the pandemic only exacerbated the situation, making our fellow man even more sinister-looking beyond that metre and a half, behind their masks, behind their windows and doors?

Edgy people are getting edgier. Those not used to courtesies and self-sacrifice are finding an end to their patience. They stalk the streets and host vengeance-on-the-world parties. Ideologues have had time to dig their trenches. Behind their lines, they scribble pages of new twists on old paranoia.

“Men exist for each other,” Aurelius writes, in one of his blunter formulae. “Then either improve them or put up with them.” It’s a sentiment he returns to repeatedly, and you feel the depth of the challenge. We don’t know much about the emperor’s social life. He may well have been an amiable gent and a gregarious host. But the essential friction among people affects extroverts as much as introverts. Even the cheeriest garden party only allays our tensions for a minute.

That said, the landscapes that I glimpse through his prose are lonely ones, not unlike the recent photos on Facebook posted to illustrate the lonely feeling of social distancing. “It’s a lonely job,” the cliché tells us, being at the top. Holding all the power, in a position that comes with godhood, might isolate a person. He talked himself through his trials, drawing on the wisdom of his teachers from the past, the philosophers. These pep talks are his Meditations.

How many are writing their Meditations in these lonely times? What ratio would describe the Meditations being written compared to the treatises of raging propaganda?

Travelogue 898 – April 6
A Different Time

The girls are adapting easily. How would they know whether it’s a new world? Coming one year later, the pandemic might have been an event that really registered with Baby, an event that made a permanent mark in her memory. But she’s too young. She was going to school every day. Then, quite suddenly, she wasn’t. She didn’t ask questions. She plays with Little Ren, her little sister, and she does her lessons with Mom at the kitchen table. The rhythm of life is familiar enough.

For older kids, I imagine it will be a milestone of sorts. For young adults, it will be more, a turning point, perhaps like 9/11 was for a previous generation, perhaps like the fall of the Berlin Wall for another. For old-timers, it’s more like a quiet watershed, like a massive mudslide you watch from a distance, too far away to hear, an event that changes the landscape you’ve been admiring for years. Who knows? There are plenty of partisans out there ready to tell me that everything corona is hyperbole. Why did we ever shut down the taverns and the stadiums?

I’m happy if the girls are free from worry. They don’t need this particular dose of cold water to the face. The world is not safe, and they’ll find that out in due time. For now, adversity wears the mask of the sister. They make each other cry. They monopolize toys; they pinch; they steal more kisses from Mama than is fair to the other.

Leave it to us to shoulder the horror. Leave it to the ouders.

At night, I listen to my ghosts, and I turn to my solaces. I read a verse or two from Aurelius, the counsellor, the consoling voice to those with a plague of concerns. He’s a good counsellor because he’s an anxious man, confiding to his journal the needs of the soul for order and sense. An emperor, he felt powerless. Someone unique, he felt anonymous before time and fate. His meditations read like affirmations, like the comforts one breathes to oneself at the end of a tough day.

And then he reminds us he’s from another age. “You have perhaps seen a severed hand or foot, or a head lying by itself apart from its body,” he writes, reminding us he’s a ghost himself. My fears have no life anymore, he slyly says.

Travelogue 897 – April 2
Farther

There’s always some train passing. I see a tram, or I see the intercity trains. The interiors are empty. The sun shines through the windows unimpeded. If auto traffic doesn’t look to have slowed much, public transit looks hard hit.

In Week Three of the Shutdown, I’ve wandered a bit farther afield on my walks. When the sun has been shining, I’ve been drawn to walk into the sun. It’s the end of the day, and sometimes I find myself on the high road leading west to Schiedam. I say ‘high’ because it rises above the level of the neighbourhood, passing over a busy artery that leads north into the Spaanse Polder. That’s about where the elevated Metro curves in to run parallel to, and above, the road to Schiedam. Dead ahead, at this time of day, at this time of year, shines the sun. I can’t turn away from the warmth and light, and so I keep walking.

Without turning around, I enter Schiedam, following the road into the town centre, following the Metro line to the central train station. It isn’t far; I can see the zig-zagging roof of the station from where I start on the Schiedam road. My eye follows the elegant curve of the elevated Metro track as it turns to the right, gliding down the gentle hill toward the station.

The effect of the station itself is unsettling. It’s nearly empty. The people who are there seem lost or vaguely hostile. Everyone walks around each other without looking, except for the teenage boys horsing around and laughing too loudly. The quarantined world is one that bad boys seem to enjoy. I check the boards, curious to see what is still running. The train schedule seems normal, except for the abundance of red script identifying trains that have been cancelled.

The Metro ride back is also an eerie experience. There are four of us in the car. All of us are male. Three of us are young and shrouded in hoodies, - meaning, the other guys. All in all, public transit is a spooky experience. The Metro train takes no time to cover the distance I’ve fashioned a long walk from, taking that long turn in the sky over the football pitches in less than a minute, while I watch out the window from my seat, trying to count my steps.

Travelogue 896 – March 28
Under the Metro

It’s not the most colourful neighbourhood to be trapped in. We didn’t move to Spangen to contemplate the littered streets and drab, decaying architecture. We moved here five years ago to have a nice apartment on our budget, and to be within reach of the rest of the city.

Now it seems the rest of the city has faded away. I spot the high buildings once in a while, when cresting some small rise nearby, and I salute wistfully. Once I lived in a city. Now I live in a neighbourhood. There will be many lessons learned from the coronavirus, and one will be that a place is only as good as its half-kilometre radius.

Now it’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve seen any other part of the city. The furthest I go is the supermarket, which is on the other side of the Metro station. In the other direction, I take walks occasionally in the afternoon. Years ago, walks were my daily staple for sanity. It’s nice to have them back. But my past lives had prettier backdrops. It’s a struggle to squeeze any inspiration out of this one.

I find myself drawn to the pitches on the other side of the Metro line. Out here, the Metro line itself rises from the earth like a stalking giant, extending a high platform away from the city and toward the rail line’s next stop in the neighbouring town of Schiedam. Under that elevated track are the pitches I’m talking about, a complex of half a dozen or more community pitches.

Some young people and families flout the social distancing rules to come out and kick around a football, but, for the most part, the pitches are now quiet. It’s the peace that draws me. And it’s the sense of space. It’s nice to have one place nearby where you aren’t ushered down narrow alleys among city buildings, and where you can see some distance. The mind and body respond immediately, as though there is more oxygen and as though thoughts find more space.

I turn one corner and cross in front of a school that is dark and neglected. I turn another corner and walk the length of a parking lot facing the pitches. Half the cars parked there are occupied by someone busy with their mobile. I’m from another time; I can’t see that as anything but creepy. Down farther, I pass the broken façade of an abandoned fire station. Leaving the parking lot, I follow a path underneath the elevated tracks, skirting the edges of the far pitches. These fields are grass, and no one plays out here. It occurs to me that I would rather play on grass, but then I’m no football player. Gaming fields have their measures, and my walks are short.

We’ve turned a corner in the corona shutdown. We’ve entered long stretches of temporal space that we hope are the middle stages of the crisis, though it’s hard to escape an uneasy feeling we’re entering a vast open territory we would call the Future, or a new age, if we just knew.

Travelogue 895 – March 24
Week Two

I can still find my class schedule on the school website, like a report from a ghostly life beyond the reach of the coronavirus; like glimpses of people in a parallel Metro train, where they don’t have to keep 1.5 metres apart; like the world you think you wake up to before your memory corrects you.

In my ghostly class schedule, I see the rooms numbers where students would have been waiting for me on this very day; where I would have flung my jacket around the back of the chair and sat in the swivel chair to log in on the computer; where I would have stood at the window during the last minute before class started, staring out over the decommissioned harbour six storeys below.

But that is just our shadow world now. Each day’s events take us further away, as though those Metro trains were drifting steadily apart on divergent tracks. This world is the quiet one, in which everyone maintains an empty seat between themselves and their neighbours.

It’s funny how quickly it all happened, and how easily. It overtook us like a spring breeze, rippling grasses and bending slender branches among the trees, then raising goose bumps when it arrived. It was all the stranger in the way it arrived with spring, blue skies dawning on quarantine.

Our last day of normality was a rainy one. I dressed Little Ren up and put her on the bike. Wow, I’m already nostalgic for that kind of whimsy: to take my little girl out to the café, just because we felt like it; just because we craved a treat; just because we wanted a change of scenery. I worked on the laptop at our table; Little Ren played among the toys in the children’s corner.

As I paid our bill, I asked the barista what time they opened in the morning, and he told me with an awkward smile that the boss had just called to say that the government was shutting cafes and restaurants for three weeks. A chill ran down my spine. Life without the café? Now it’s been almost two weeks.

Those were grand days. People sat freely at tables, all in the same room, sharing the same air, touching tabletops that strangers touched only moments before. We lived dangerously.

Travelogue 894 – March 18
High Noon at Eight O’Clock

We have found our quiet routines for a quiet new era. It doesn’t take long. Animals are built for habit. We’re up early. Even with nowhere to go, sleeping in is not an option. Little Ren wakes up, and she makes her noisy way downstairs. She dresses herself. She insists it’s time to go.

When the corona shutdown began last week, it triggered a wave of hoarding. By Saturday, many shelves at the local Albert Heijn were empty. There was no meat, no greens, no fruit. There was no rice, no pasta, no bread. “Aha,” I said to myself, standing forlornly amid the desolation. Shopping could no longer be random.

That’s when we started shopping first thing in the morning, right when the supermarket opens. Little Ren took this mission to heart. After the first morning trip, she was committed. We were not going to miss a day. She dresses herself in the morning. She puts on her tights and shoes. He pulls on her own jacket, though she leaves the zipper to me. She finds the bicycle helmet, and she silently, but impatiently, waits for me to be ready.

The ride to the store is quick and agreeable. Little Ren chatters the whole way. She likes to tell me, “You’re going the wrong way, Pop.” I play along. “Oh, really? Well, let’s try this way.” There are enough turns along the way to make that game possible.

The weather has been fine. The moment the corona crisis broke, spring came to the Netherlands, as though nature had only been waiting for a sacrifice. The weather has been eerily pleasant; all the more eerie for how miserable the winter was, relentlessly wet and windy.

The cherry trees have blossomed. Tulips and daffodils are blooming, often in bright patches among grass strips dividing the roadways. The girls are at an age that they love flowers. These are the high points of cycling with them, when they shout out in delight at the sight of more buds opening.

The shelves are never as empty as they were last weekend, but there are always a few key lacunae. Some gaps rotate; some are constant. Fruit and vegetables, for example, come and go in quick succession, different colours for different days. Pasta and pasta sauce come and go. Meats each have their two- or three-day season. Even precious toilet paper appears suddenly in great bounty. The more fixed gaps are among the soap and medicine shelves. Sanitizer and paracetamol are simply gone.

When we arrive at the supermarket, Little Ren takes charge. She marches through the entrance and straight to the turnstile. There she pauses like a gunslinger at the doors of the saloon. This is it. Papa, grab that basket.

Travelogue 893 – March 11
Real Men, Real Viruses

The coronavirus panic is spreading quickly in Europe. Italy is in lock-down, and schools have been closed in Spain and Greece. I read this morning that a hundred are dying per day in Italy.

It’s surprising that the simple fact of a virus loose in the world would be controversial. There’s a lot of chatter in Europe, not much of it real controversy. But the news from the U.S. relays all kinds of debate and indignation. The cult of politics is omnivorous. Its appetite is limitless.

On the right, people have suddenly developed strict standards about how many need to die before a virus gets a badge of authenticity. Not enough people have died! Anyone promoting containment is … a cry-baby, a socialist? Is that what they want to say? It seems like an odd line to draw in the sand, but I suppose you have to admire their bravura in the face of a threat that typically makes people mad with fear. Humanity doesn’t generally spit in the face of disease.

Denial of frowning faces is kind of a vogue among the right. So much bad news is exaggerated, they say. Racism and sexism, Russian interference and the Holocaust, they’re all bogeymen. Mexicans are rapists, but the wall stops them. It’s quite a happy and uncomplicated world the right sees out the window. There’s something nice about that, I guess.

I continue my daily reading project, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I take in a few lines every night. It doesn’t seem as though the emperor’s world was so tidy as Trump’s. His duties weighed on him. Moral choices didn’t seem so obvious. And mortality was a concern at closer proximity. His regular contemplation of mortality was common enough for philosophers of all ages. It was an exercise in humility. It was also a kind of booster shot against the horror of non-existence. The daily reminder was like exercise or toothcare, a kind of small pain as inoculation against the big one, inevitable though it may be.

I think about our solaces. I think about our conversations with nature. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,” to quote another philosopher. “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.”

Travelogue 892 – March 6
What Are the Odds?

A hundred percent, the weather app says. The chance of rain in the next hour is one hundred percent. I linger over that prediction a moment before I share it with Little Ren.

Little Ren wants to go outside. She requests it over and over, so that it’s hard to say no. “It’s raining outside,” I say, and I hold her up to the window so she can see. The pavements are dark with the damp. The brick wall opposite is streaked with rainwater. The rain gutters are full. In every puddle, we can see the drops of rain splashing.

Little Ren loves the outdoors. She’s curious. She is drawn to the open spaces and new sights. On occasions when we do step outside, she wants only to run. She feels a joy in the act of running. I can tell: I still feel the same sometimes. Her short legs plug along, churning quickly. She looks down at her feet, always wondering, and she stumbles. I watch her from behind. She’s always running away, and without hesitation.

Water is beading on the windows. The patter of rainfall is steady. The clouds above don’t vary in the grey shadow they cast over the city. I suggest to Little Ren that we go out later. She hears any equivocation as a no. She stomps away, dejected.

This is our world now, warmer, wetter, and windier. It’s been a dreary winter, a drag on our spirits. It takes energy to travel into the wind. It takes energy even to live with so little light. Ice and cold have their own effect on morale, but they offer something to engage with. The scenery changes. Landscapes are white. Or, at the very least, the chill air makes for sharp perspectives. Puddles ice over; your steps crunch. Climate change is just making the world greyer and more tired.

I think about our solaces. I think about our ghosts. I think about the conversation between humanity and nature. I reflect on the echoes and the harmonies that we interpret as chatter. They inform us, whatever their source or their motivation. God talks to us; the moon talks to us; the unconscious talks to us. Even conceding that each of those may exist, even conceding they talk, do they see us as interlocutor? Is it wrong that we collect their utterances as text or captions for our stories?

I return to the weather report contained within my phone. One hundred percent, it says. When does a calculation of odds become a flat statement of fact? At one hundred percent? Do we sometimes forget what we meant when we created the idea of probability? Can we use probability to overrule chance? Do we then become creators? Let there be light. The grammar seems ambiguous.

Travelogue 891 – February 25
Sun as God

I wish it were still in fashion to worship the sun. It makes perfect sense to me. It’s the source of life, nurturing and constant. It sheds light and warmth on us all.

Okay, maybe I’ve become a little over-excited by the shining sun this morning. It’s the first sighting in days, maybe weeks. After a windy morning shower, the clouds suddenly parted. I put little Ren on the bicycle. By the time we had left behind the streets of our neighbourhood, the clouds had opened to reveal a wide, blue sky. The sun shone unimpeded over the south-eastern horizon, into our eyes. The light was startling. It was disorienting. We had to stop to admire, as though we had spotted a glowing elephant ambling down the Vierhavensstraat.

Well, why not a god? Even in the age of science, the sun is still rather mysterious. Its face is too bright to look at. Its face is ever-changing. There are storms and spots. Its mass is stable and unstable. It burns on and on, for billions of years. It throws out threads of fire millions of miles long. And waves of radiation. Recent pictures of its face show cells of fire in constant motion. (As big as France, I believe they said. Everything big is as big as France.) But we insist on simple-minded categories of animate and not, and the sun remains a thing. Even as we discover the complexity of the biosphere here on Earth. Even as here, on the tiny rock that is Earth, we find systems so interlinked in sophisticated networks, animate with inanimate, that they might seem lifelike to the superstitious. Doesn’t the line dividing life from lifeless seem a little dated, reminiscent of a diagram from a 1950s textbook?

Being that as it may, it seems as though European cultures favoured storm gods like Zeus and Thor. I suppose that’s understandable, given the climate. But storm gods were gods to fear, rather than gods to admire and love. That’s a pity.

The clouds are already gathering again. By afternoon, it will be raining. We had our moment of joy. We were reminded of the power of the sun, and then, just as quickly, of the power of the storm.

Travelogue 890 – February 23
Dear Diary

February is a short month, fleeting and tumultuous. It enters with authority; it comes as a challenge. It occupies its place in the calendar like a Bonaparte. February commands. It marches us through marshy territory. We are only reluctant and hungry troops who must be led into the more hopeful terrain of March. That will mean facing into the wind. When there’s no wind, there is rain. When there’s no rain, there is fog. After a quiet night, the morning comes with a new wind.

It’s the middle of the night. It’s raining outside. I’m in need of consolation. At this hour, this quietest hour of the night, I can hear the muttering of the ghosts.

I’ve been reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I read a little bit every evening, just a ‘verse’ or two. It’s a book of consolations, written by a Roman emperor nearly two thousand years ago. It was written to console. But it was not written for any reader. It was written to console an emperor.

It’s an enigmatic book, written as a personal journal. That’s my interpretation, anyway. There isn’t a lot offered for context. It was passed along through history in twelve books of somewhat random notes, and it was studied as a philosophical text. Aurelius was looked upon as a philosopher, even in his own day. His reputation in intellectual history rests upon this volume. I wish I knew the story of the manuscript, how it survived from Aurelius’s tent, or palace, to make it into the hands of scribes. It’s probably something as banal as a play by his son for reflected glory. Or perhaps the vain emperor passed his notes among friends on the rare occasions he was in Rome.

Aurelius was, in fact, a warrior emperor, spending much of his reign in the field, marching against foes of the empire. That wasn’t unusual in that era. I can see how it added to the mystique of an emperor. Who wants a stay-at-home emperor? This was Julius’s mould, set in the conquests of Gaul and Egypt. Who wanted him languishing in Rome?

Aurelius’s notes are repetitive, as any personal diary must be. Much of it is Stoic philosophy, calls to duty and reminders of mortality, sounding like this one I read in the evening: “How many whose praises used once to be sung loudly are now relegated to oblivion; and how many of the singers themselves have long since passed from our sight!”

Travelogue 889 – February 13
The Colour of Ciara

Baby and I had penance to pay this morning. When Storm Ciara blew through town at the beginning of the week, we took a pass. I wasn’t going to take her to school on the bike in winds of 45K per hour or more. So we indulged in public transit.

Sunday night had seen winds measured at 100-120K per hour. We left the house on Monday morning to see the damage. It didn’t seem we’d been hit too hard. There were twigs and branches strewn everywhere, but no trees were down. Frankly, the debris from New Year’s was worse. But fireworks wouldn’t have downed the art piece on the roof of the building next to my workplace. The piece was simply the date of the building’s completion written out in neon several stories high. Yesterday, I noticed it was tipped over.

It’s become clear that Ciara was not going to be an isolated event. It’s been such a mild winter, I’ve become complacent. Vaguely grateful, but complacent. No, the winds were not going to abate completely. Neither was the rain. And then we found out about Storm Dennis, due at the end of the week, another bout of heavy wind and rain.

We woke to rain this morning, and we realized there was no reprieve this time. We would have to face the weather this time. We would have to be tough Nederlanders. ‘Just get on with it’ is the national slogan.

We dressed Baby in her pink rain overalls. I ran up and down the stairs looking for my rain gear. How does everything get spread around the flat like this? We were finally ready, several layers of weather gear covering us, Baby’s helmet in place. Once we were outside and under way, it didn’t seem so bad. But the steady wind was colder than the five degrees or so Celsius in air temperature, and my hands were raw before we were halfway. I was cycling into the wind, and it felt like Baby had gained ten kilos overnight.

Baby is the shy type. She didn’t want anyone to see her in her pink rain pants. She insisted we strip them off in the hallway, out of sight. My fingers were useless, and these pants were nearly impossible to get off around her shoes. By the time I got her seated in class, I was exhausted. Juf Jessica, may I just stay and colour? ‘Juf’ is the common title for female teachers, short for Juffrouw, or miss. She would have smiled in that sweet and commanding way, and I would have had to go.

Baby engaged with her colouring task this morning. Her mama paints, and so Baby is quite enthusiastic about colouring. This morning she was asking what colour her new shoes were. When she asked, she needed precision. Brown? No, bronze. She was asking if they might not be ‘burnt umber’. Um, you’d better ask your mum.

Travelogue 888 – January 27
Dark Town

And so 2020 has been a year, so far, of grey skies and mild temperatures. It’s been a year of running. I’ve been accumulating the kilometres, turning in the long runs with fierce discipline, allowing only minimal down time between them. And I’m feeling fine.

Once I reach a certain training distance, I start arranging runs to Delft. When I’m not running, I find myself missing this dark little town. It’s small and accessible. It’s local. It’s pretty. It’s many shades of rose, darkening into brown and charcoal, all shades reflected in the town’s small canals.

When a run is two hours long, it’s hard to reach Delft before dark, even on weekends. So the town lives in my imagination as a stimulating mix of shadow and endorphin high. There’s a dark quality to the medieval, in any case. Whether that’s the preponderance of stone and brick or the narrow streets and the high shadows, I can’t say. If it’s dark in summer, it’s sepulchral in winter.

Even the earliest start in winter means I spend twilight in the flat fields between Schiedam and Delft. I watch the clouds change colours; my watch buzzes when it counts off the kilometres. Once I’m near town I steer myself by the crooked tower of the Oude Kerk. The tower is distinctive for its fourteenth-century beauty, its clockface, its turrets at four corners and its central spire. It’s distinctive because it visibly leans. It was probably built on land reclaimed from the nearby canal, a canal that was redirected for the church’s sake. The tower began leaning before construction was done. It came to be known early on as Scheve Jan, ‘Crooked John’. The Old and the New Churches dominate the small town and the surrounding flat landscape, as they have for centuries.

If we’re able to arrange a baby-sitter, Menna meets me at a café near the Oude Kerk. We stroll through town. We find somewhere for a beer, where the tables are set too close to each other, where candlelight barely penetrates the gloom, where university students practice laughing at volume.

The way back to the station leads through alleys so narrow that we have to stagger ourselves to let others by. It doesn’t stop the students on bikes. The tighter the space, the harder that Dutch people concentrate on staring past you. That’s all right. We all avoid mishap, and the two of us enjoy our walk under the uneven brick gables.

Travelogue 887 – January 21
On the River

The Maas Tunnel was closed for renovation, and I had to find a way to get home. Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold. I had time to regroup. But when you’re standing outside in shorts, covered in sweat, it doesn’t take much to send the body into a spiral of cold. I had to keep moving. I had directions to the ferry, so I set off, jogging along the path beside the river. The neighbourhood consisted entirely of humble apartment buildings. There were shabby parks by the river, bits of grass, bits of old pavement. No one was out. There was a little café near the tunnel entrance. Inside were three men smoking shisha watching me go by. Any further west, and the riverside turned into port facilities. You could see the forest of cranes.

The ferry departed from a little square harbour called Sint-Jan. It wasn’t any further than half a kilometre from the tunnel. Even in the worst case, I wouldn’t have to wait more than twenty minutes.

Worst case: as soon as I was in sight of the entrance to that harbour, the bow of the ferry emerged into sight, leaving the harbour and heading toward the other side. I cursed my luck. I carried on running until I reached the little quay for the ferry. I watched the ferry go. You could watch it all the way across the river. But I needed to keep moving. Rather than take any risk getting lost or losing sight of the ferry itself, I turned around and ran back to the tunnel. I watched the low-lying boat, looking like a padded dust pan, chugging across the river and then gliding into the harbour on the northern side of the river, a harbour called Sint-Job. That’s a place I know well, only a few kilometres from home, only a few blocks from Baby’s school.

I watched the squat little boat return. I was at its quay in plenty of time, and I watched it drift into place. The gate was opened for southbound passengers. And they opened a gate for us. I boarded the ferry, which offered so much more space than we humble passengers needed, built as it was to carry autos and now carrying only a few two-wheelers and a fatigued runner. I searched quickly for a place out of the wind. There were a few little cubbies built for narrow benches set in shallow recesses with foggy windows. I sat. I stretched, and, without much ceremony, the boat lurched out into the water.

This is where the story discovered a new tone, where the misadventure became adventure. Being on the water was different than admiring it from the shore or the bridge! It was so easy to forget the simplest things during the ordinary course of my days. On the water, the quality of sound changed. The quality of light changed.

It was so refreshing. The sun had just set, and the city stood on the shores, removed and hushed. The play of colours on the water were subtle and complex. The sky and its quiet revolutions seemed more immediate, while ever untouchable. And this was not at all a scenic bit of cityscape. Here were both the verges of the big city, the lights of which lay east, and the verges of the port, the garish lights of which looked like they might aspire to be the set of a Netflix science fiction series. But the whole canvas was both dynamic and peaceful, a sum more than its parts, and being here on the river awakened some old affection for the city. In recent years, I had passed a point of deadening familiarity.

I disembarked at Sin-Job feeling sincerely renewed in some way. This complication in the day’s schedule had cost me very little: I lost half an hour at most, and I felt fine once I started running again. And in return, I had taken on a little light.

Sometimes renewal and refreshment seem absolutely inaccessible. And sometimes they are so easy. You stumble over your own soul sometimes, like tripping over a running shoe left at the foot of the couch.

Travelogue 886 – January 20
Over the River and Under

I’m passing over the river this morning, like I do every workday, pedalling the bike up and over the Erasmus Bridge. It’s always a nice view, looking west over the widening river and toward the clutter of machinery in the distant port, looking east into downtown, looking down at the rows of tidy houses on the western end of the river island known as Noordereiland, red and white houses from another time. Further east stands the red Willemsbrug, linking the other end of the island to downtown.

Just yesterday, I ran over the Willemsbrug. I set out from home in mid-afternoon. I had just enough time to put in a long run before the sun set. I was scheduled to put in at least seventeen kilometres. I ran into downtown. It was a clear day, cool but not cold, just about perfect for a winter run. I crossed the Willemsbrug and did a loop around the island before crossing to the south side. My plan was to run west to the Maas Tunnel, cross under the river and run home.

When I lived a bit closer to it, the Maas Tunnel was a staple among my training routes. It was fun to run underneath the river. The tunnel had a pedestrian level, and so I was saved the emissions and noise that came with running alongside a highway. Completed in 1942, the tunnel had an atmosphere I enjoyed; maybe the closeness of the space, maybe the close air, maybe the green tiles and the wartime yellow lighting.

It had been a long time since I ran this way, crossed one of the bridges and run through the south side of the city. I realized how long when I passed my workplace, and it came to me I hadn’t run this way in the year and a half since we relocated. I realized how long when I arrived at the entrance to the Maas Tunnel to find it quiet and encircled by construction barriers. It had been closed for renovation for two months already, I found out later.

I stood there in disbelief. Going back via the bridges would add another at least five more kilometres to the run, just when I was about to wrap up with the final stretch. I knew I couldn’t deliberate too long in the winter air. The site seemed deserted. What were my options?

But I had an abiding faith in Dutch systems. I knew there had to be a plan. This is a land of convenience and contingency. There was always a plan.

I finally spotted someone in the neon colours of construction sites everywhere. I rang my keys against the barrier and waited. She ambled over, and sure enough she spoke English, and sure enough there was a plan. She fetched a pamphlet for me, pointing out the map leading me to the ferry. For the duration of the renovation, this ferry across the river would be free.

Travelogue 885 – January 13
Friends of the Moon

Leaving our flat together in the morning, Baby and I are singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. We walk by the quiet flats of our neighbours in the half-light of dawn. “Out came the sun and dried up all the rain ….” Above, the clouds are crawling like spiders across the sky. They are crawling across the face of the gibbous moon. After they have passed over, the moon is bright. Baby likes to say the moon is following us. “It likes us,” she says, and I agree.

It seems to me the moon was full three days ago or so when I did my long run to Delft. The sun was going down on my left and the moon rising on my right, just as I was crossing the fields that lie in between the two urban areas. The land was completely flat. It was the perfect place to witness the end of the day. The clouds in the west were lit by a low fire. And high above, clouds were pink with the last of the direct light. That pink rose higher each minute, until the fire went out. Then it was like a light was shut off among the clouds. There was still light in the sky, but cooling into blue now. In the east, the moon hung just above the fields, a round white orb, swollen by the humid air into something grander than the sun, huge and elegant. It was an active hour for the birds. Flocks flew overhead, and dozens bathed in the canals beside the bike path. They were raising quite a fuss.

This morning, the moon is waning. And it’s on its way toward setting. Baby struggles with the idea of the moon ‘going down’. She asks me about it repeatedly as we descend the stairs to ground level. “Is the moon going down?” she wants to know. “Is it going down like we are?” She has a way of posing challenging questions. Is she asking if the moon has its own stairway? Or is this some observation about humanity?

“The moon likes us,” she says. It’s following us! I can’t say how refreshing it is to hear something so positive, so encouraging, so cheering. Could it be possible, after all, that the elements in nature do smile on us, like they do in children’s cartoons? I hadn’t realized how choked the stream of hope had become. Year after challenging year, the world around me took on steely shades of hostility. The gods became Greek in their capriciousness and contempt. But here it is again, optimism, like a spring flower.

“The moon likes us,” she says, and I enthusiastically affirm that it must.

Travelogue 884 – January 9
The New Number

The year (the decade?) came in with a bang, as is the tradition in the Netherlands. No one sleeps; fireworks are set off all over the city through most of the night. You emerge in the morning to the debris of battle, stepping over scattered piles of spent casings of firecrackers rockets, little pink, cardboard cylinders, burnt at one end and abandoned. After a few days, and a few rain showers, they melt into a pink sludge, gathered in anonymous mounds along the pavements.

We didn’t dare step out, but at midnight we held the girls up to the windows and watched the rockets in the night sky. Some fireworks were part of the shows downtown; some were set off a block away, and their sparks rained down on the roofs of the apartments across the street.

As it happens, a few days ago, the city council in Rotterdam decided to ban consumer fireworks, making it the first major Dutch city to do so. They cited injuries, and ‘an atmosphere of lawlessness’.

It did always strike me as a bizarre indulgence, this city-wide assault on the senses. Locals would call it ‘celebration’. Admittedly, there’s a moment or two among all the cacophony that does feel celebratory. I hold Baby as she stands in the upstairs window, and she watches with amazement. She names the colours among the explosions in the sky.

Then I think about the kids down in the streets, lighting rocket after rocket. I see the fun in ten minutes of that. I have trouble seeing the fun in hours and, indeed, days of it. Even the girls are losing interest after ten minutes or so of watching the lights in the sky.

I explain to Baby that it’s a new year. I recite the number. But this is rather abstract for her. She’s only recently gotten a grasp on seasons. Christmas came, and then it was winter. She complains that there should be snow if it’s really winter.

I’m not sure I’m really on top of the concept myself, the concept of these changing years. The change comes too abruptly. The timing of it seems odd. Why this moment a few weeks into winter? And why in the middle of the night? As I’ve said, I do find the human response to the new year hard to fathom. Let’s light up some gunpowder! But I’ve always been partial to reflection over celebration. And if any holiday seemed made for reflection, it would be New Year’s. Instead, we make the most noise possible, as thought to drive off reflection. Reflect on this: what sort of profile would you draw up for a personality averse to reflection?