Travelogue 1098 – 3 August
Humans

The girls have dug up last year’s tails. They’re watching “Trolls” on TV, contentedly stretched out in their life-size, elastic mermaid tails. I’m not sure where the mer-impulse came from, but their whims turn with dizzying speed these days. The tails extend, in their blue and purple glory, from the hip all the way past their toes. They wave the tails like ‘real’ mermaids. “Are mermaids real?” Little Ren asks earnestly.

Maybe the minor mermaid craze arose from Baby Jos’s short obsession with tails. “What if I wake up one day, and I have a tail?” she asked with a big smile. She wished it would happen. “What would my teacher think?” she asked. I’m stumped by questions like those. But I am getting used to staggering amounts of questions from the girls. They are factories of wondering questions. I thought the questions were a phase; that was a few years ago. No one told me the questions phase was … childhood. At the end of the day, when I’m tired, I’m usually two questions behind, answering on a delay, answering the rainbow question when they’ve already moved on to fairies. “Where do fairies live, Papa?” “You can never really find the ends,” I answer. Somehow it all meshes into its own sense.

But I do remember the power of these childhood passions. I am reminded of the things I wished for at a similar age, and wished for with intensity. I wanted to fly, and I wanted to be able to time travel. I wanted to be able to change into animal form whenever I wanted. The possible and the impossible existed together in the same thought. I ‘knew’ the things I wanted were impossible, but it was within a child’s power to believe in possibility. Growing older, I remember deciding that if I believed in something strongly enough, it would be required to manifest. Then I concluded that believing strongly enough was knowing. And knowing something was possible meant forgetting that it was ever impossible. That negated the magic, and I lost interest.

While Baby Jos wanted a tail, Little Ren wanted a unicorn horn. That would give her magical powers. Little Ren is mercurial. She moves from unicorns to sombrely posing the question, “But I just want to know why I exist.” Wow, I say, that’s a big question. When you figure it out, let me know. “Why am I me?” she asks.

Little Ren is the philosopher, it seems. She’s the one who has wrestled with the term “human”. When she was younger, she used ‘human’ to describe adults. There were children, and there were humans. I was a bit mortified by that, but I don’t like rushing in with a negative: “don’t say that!” The word naturally evolved into a descriptor of people – “there are so many humans on the street” – to a somewhat fluid identifier to draw contrast with animals – “fluid” because sometimes nice animals can sometimes be human.

Travelogue 1097 – 1 August
Summer Vacation?

It’s the first of August. That date is a signal to the mood centres of the brain, a trigger for depression. I’m a teacher, and I’m a teacher in a country in which school years stretch from mid-August to mid-July.

School years in America started in September and ended in June. By the time September came, there was a hint of autumn in the air, you were rested, and you were eager to get started again. In the Netherlands, summer vacation feels just long enough to run some errands, catch up with your team of doctors and dentists, see a few friends … once each, and perhaps squeeze in a rushed and tense trip in order to store images in your phone for winter.

July turns to August, and you find the “vacation” unconvincing. Work is a beast already catching up on you, its hot breath on your neck. And it’s a formidable beast, whose tail reaches deep into the summer of the next year. One returns to work with a half-charged battery. I’ve noticed that European school years start slowly and quietly, taking a good month to build momentum. I remember American school years galloping out of the gate.

It doesn’t help that the last day of July was a rainy one. It was chilly; the rain barely paused all day. The girls and I ventured out to buy last minute party items; it was Menna’s birthday. We surprised her when she arrived home. We lit the candles on the cake, and the clouds outside made the house as dark as though it were October.

Travelogue 1096 – 23 July
The Butcher

I had a session with Dirk the Butcher yesterday. He was so enthusiastic, he found extra pain to inflict. One cavity was not enough. He found a series of them in my front teeth, and he was reluctant to let me up from his chair. “I have so much time left in our appointment. Why don’t we take care of it?” I submitted reluctantly. The truth is, I have found some appreciation for the Butcher, his ham-handed Dutchness, his sad blue eyes, his rough grace. There’s no disputing his efficiency as a dentist. He attacks with a sure hand, and the results are solid. The pain was intense after the session, but it passed quickly. I looked into the mirror and saw a cleaner smile.

I wondered what sort of psychology lurked in the long narrow skull of the Butcher. Who does this job for so long? People fear you; they tremble as they sit in your chair. You have short, emotional encounters with people, during which they cannot speak. They walk out in a daze of pain and violation. The meetings are physically intimate but formal and impersonal. I can’t imagine there’s much variety in the work.

Out in the world, people must shudder when a dentist shares with them his or her profession. It’s a bit like being an undertaker. Dirk the Butcher looks the part, somewhat underworldly, tall and pale, back a bit hunched with age and work, his eyes pale and watery and staring, his smile unsettling. He’s ageing. His arms are so scrawny, I don’t know whence the strength he exhibits when he pries open my jaw. “Relax, relax” he says curtly, as he jams one more instrument into my mouth. It’s his version of reassurance, which must, in the offices of the Butcher, be delivered in the imperative.

Travelogue 1095 – 17 July

Kundera

A favourite author passed away last week. I want to write something about Milan Kundera, and yet I find it challenging. He was a favourite in my youth; he’s someone I’ve taken for granted since then. He informs me from that distance in time, as do a set of authors who affected me powerfully back then, people as varied as Durrell and Dostoevsky, Kerouac and Eliot.

I felt I had a special right to him, I suppose, being of Czech heritage. He was one of the giants of his generation, the last Samizdat generation, the Chapter 77 generation (though he didn’t sign), the generation that also produced Havel and the writers of the new Czech constitution. Ironically, though he was possibly the most famous Czech artist at the time, he was shunned by the others for having left Czechia. I defended him. He had become an ‘international’ author, writing in French in his later years. Born to be an expat, I felt instant sympathy for his position.

The themes of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ are a young person’s themes, which is a reason it’s remained in my past. There are novels that I have brought along with me as I aged, and novels I didn’t. This is one of the latter, like, say, “On the Road”. Dostoevsky survived into my late 30s, but still fell away. Still, something of Kundera’s novel stayed with me, something of its moral courage and its frankness. I was delighted by its philosophical frame, its unembarrassed discourse on the significance of life and what was significant about living. He seemed refreshingly free of the self-conscious jadedness I was used to, and far from devaluing what he said, his ‘naivete’ was pulled off with clarity, wit and sophistication.

It was a special time. The present times have become so dark, these dire 2020s become so much more like the 1930s than the Roaring 20s, so serious, so portentous, that I think we have grown to distrust the preceding decades. They plotted against us. Everything that seemed cheery was a wink among conspirators. Politics and climate and globalism and the tech revolution were all poisoned, and done so deliberately. But it was a special time. I was in Slovakia in the early 90s. I would never have known that certain emotions were actually possible if I hadn’t been there. Labelling them as optimism or hope would only make me a target for trolling in the Bitter 20s. I’ll keep my counsel. But I regret sometimes how Eastern Europe became so overshadowed by Ethiopia in my own story. I haven’t often had the opportunity to contemplate and appreciate the former. Thinking of Kundera brings something back.

Travelogue 1094 – 12 July

Restart, Please

This is how our summer started. Thursday was the girls’ last day at school. Baby Jos celebrated with stunts off the group swing in the playground out front. She fell badly and broke her arm. We spent the afternoon at the hospital getting x-rays, a cast, and unwelcome doses of Dutch bedside manner, which sound to the uninitiated like the grim voice of Dread. They made her cry.

The next morning, we had to bring her in for an operation. I was emotional. She had to be put under general anaesthetic. It’s the second time already Baby Jos has had to be put under. I find it too hard to take. Menna stayed with Baby Jos, and I was put in charge of her little sister. Little Ren and I explored the hospital. We had snacks in the café. We bought balloons. When it was time, we raced up to her room. Baby Jos was groggy but already cheerful. Good!

That was Friday, my last day of work during this school year. I had been scheduled to meet with my supervisor for my appraisal, on literally the last possible day. We postponed until the fall. I was able to make my second meeting of the day, late in the afternoon. This meeting was a mentor session with a literary agent. I had scheduled the meeting weeks earlier, thinking I would be in a great headspace, summer started and my writing in full swing. Instead, I was drained and distracted. I hadn’t scheduled one of these meetings in a long time because I had undertaken a major edit of the book. Not so humbly, I expected a glowing word or two. Not so humbly, she trashed it. I left the call more than schooled and defeated.

Saturday was a hot one; the temperatures stifled all thought. Sunday was busy with kids’ activities for the girls, a birthday party and a final ballet class. I spent the day worrying about Baby Jos.

Monday started with an email from my employer announcing that my supervisor was leaving. What happened? I thought. Was it me? Now I’ll start the year with an appraisal from a stranger, looking over the notes from an odd year, a year full of medical issues and tumult.

Later in the morning, I had a dental appointment scheduled. I had been unhappy with this dentist, but I only had a few cavities to fill. What could go wrong? The dentist quickly answered that unfortunate question, throwing up her hands halfway through the filling operation and saying she would go no further. She treated me like a recalcitrant school child, crossing her arms, and crying that the operation was too difficult. She would stuff in a temporary filling and refer me to her colleague Dirk, whom I call “The Butcher”. I will see him Friday.

Tuesday morning, I woke feeling odd. Still, I hefted Baby Jos on the bike to run some errands. Feeling light-headed, I stopped for coffee and snacks. The dizziness only increased. I rushed home, sweating for fear of losing my balance while carrying my delicate little girl on the back with a cast on her arm. Back at home, I popped the thermometer in my mouth: 39.5˚C. The rest of the day, I tossed and turned in bed, fighting nausea and fevers.

Okay, so, have I cleaned the cosmic slate? Shall a fresh morning dawn when the songbirds greet me, dropping laurels leaves in my hair, leading my family along a garden path to the beach? My faith in the Great Season is faltering.

Travelogue 1093 – 28 June

Fire!

When I opened the front door this morning, ready to take the girls to school, I was stunned by the sight. There was a huge column of black smoke rising from the south. The wind was blowing the smoke past us to the northeast. It was a sight to arrest the heart for a moment, The girls rushed out because I had cried out. They stared in wonder. The blaze was so intense, we could see the smoke glowing red underneath.

We had to move in the direction of the fire to go to school. Thanks to social media, I already knew what was burning. It was a building we passed every day, a colourful building in an up-and-coming little borough called Keilewerf. It was a builder’s yard, piled high with lumber. The place had a hippyish vibe, something happy and communal about it. Baby Jos would not accept that that was the building that was burning. It made her too sad. The police had cordoned off our usual route to school, so we only saw the fire from a distance. That could be any other building, Baby Jos insisted.

Think of the terror that sight would have inspired in Scaliger’s day! Fire killed. It wiped out cities. In 1452, just a century and a half before Scaliger’s day, two-thirds of Amsterdam had burned down. It was this fire we have to thank for the beautiful city we still see today. They mandated building in stone afterward, but stone was too heavy for the marshy Dutch earth. They built with brick.

Travelogue 1092 – 19 June

Baby’s Spring

It’s June. Gentle winds are shaking the leaves of the poplars, making a sound like rain. Red poppies are in bloom. There are scents of freshly cut grass in the air; there are scents of lilac. The summer hush has begun to settle over the city. This is one of my favourite times of year.

If the city has quieted, it’s not a quiet season for the girls. Their school takes them to amusement parks. Their hockey teams have picnics. They have recitals downtown. And Baby Jos celebrates her birthday. A child’s birthday is never just one day. It’s a celebration in waves. The joyous wave this week was the party for her friends. She invited her closest school friends to an adventure park, where they climbed walls and jumped on trampolines and scared themselves on obstacle courses high above the ground. They indulged in cake and cupcakes. Parents sat together and shared their exhaustion, shared photos, complained about the school and still managed to laugh.

We’re in constant motion, slaves to our springtime activities. The new summer sun has shone on all of it, imbuing everything with a surfeit of light, like living photos that were overexposed, abundant with sunshine and smiles, overwhelming the sombre Dutch colour palette with yellows, whites and greens; like memories washed out by sun and time; like the photos from our trip to Rome, in which everyone is squinting and the colours are fading into gold.

There was some concern that none of this would happen for Baby Jos because she suffered an injury to her foot a few weeks ago, having caught it in a bicycle wheel while riding behind her papa to hockey. Nothing was broken, but the doctors put her in a cast to keep the foot still while it healed. She was at first proud to be walking on crutches into school, and then she was bored and frustrated when she couldn’t play. Fortunately, it only took two weeks to get back on her feet, just in time for the parties.

The latest celebration was the recital. It fell on Father’s Day. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to commemorate the day. The girls were excited to wear make-up, proud to be on stage, transfixed by the crowds of parents cheering them on.

Baby Jos tells me it’s my best Father’s Day ever, and she’s immediately right. It was true before she said it. It is true because she says it. I’m perfectly happy.

Travelogue 1091 – 28 May

La Scala

Part Eight

Suddenly I’m alone. Menna and the girls have gone to a church camp. The flat is eerily silent. I haven’t been alone like this in a long time, and it’s disorienting.

I miss them. I pause to think about what they would be doing at each moment. When I should be catching up on my own work, I stop to clean up, picking up the girls’ things, which lie scattered around the flat as though there were an explosion.

One thing I find is their jar of snails. Last week, they became unaccountably fascinated by snails and slugs. I suppose it was because of the advent of spring, and the work their mother had initiated on the potted plants outside. Among the leaves, in the soil, and underneath the pots were all kinds of fun little creatures. Baby Jos fancies herself a scientist and has no fear of slimy things. Little Ren loves whatever her sister loves. They have decided that snails are cute. They have decided that slugs are cute. In fact, they are desperate for pets; they have been for a while. Unfortunately, their papa is allergic to half the animal kingdom and is too grouchy to deal with the rituals that would no doubt devolve upon him.

Concurrent with their snails-for-pets moment came their lemonade-stand moment. It made for a strange alignment. They set up a table outside our door last weekend, but not for lemonade. It was for a view of their snails, set out for public inspection on a pair of plastic beach shovels, filled with mud and their creeping pets. They made a cute sign asking for two euros. But then when neighbours did stop to look, they were too shy to ask for their fee.

I’m laughing at the memory, sitting alone at my computer. The solitude doesn’t weigh on me yet, but it is insistent. It is an insistent fact of life, isn’t it? From the moment one becomes aware of one’s essential solitude, one is never allowed to forget it. It’s as concrete an aspect of life as there is. An argument could be made that solitude is the central problem we seek to solve with religion.

Religion tells us that we are never actually alone, and not just sentimentally but metaphysically: there are invisible beings around us all the time. It makes a certain intuitive sense, doesn’t it? As singular as we are in our heads, in our bodies, we never quite achieve absolute solitude. Even an atheist would concede that life is a continual negotiation with others.

And if one were to concede the rather elementary metaphysical point implied by an all-powerful God that exists untouched by time, that all things exist at once, then the space we inhabit becomes very crowded. Perhaps it’s religion’s most salient point: we are not alone. One might expect that an afterlife would offer a lifting of the veils, the veil that separates us from one another, and the veil that separates us in time.

This idea of timelessness does complicate the idea of reincarnation a bit. In actuality, Scaliger and I exist simultaneously. So his scepticism that I represent “progress” is justified. And it essentially posits that one soul is a community, and a fairly large one at that, according to most accounts of reincarnation that I’m familiar with. It not only puts into question the idea of progress, in time without time, but the idea of an atomized soul that requires hard boundaries with other atomized souls.

What the reincarnationist theory still represents to me is the drive to domesticate the other by calling it all “me”. It’s the cannibal’s solution to solitude.

Travelogue 1090 – 20 May

La Scala

Part Seven

When Scaliger died in Leiden, it was in January. Such a grey and desolate time in Holland: I’m not sure that it was the winter that killed him, but it was certainly a sad backdrop for what looks to have been a lonely death. Apparently, the great man was a bit of a curmudgeon. (The evidence is mounting!) He had resisted the idea of moving to Leiden, but the university raised such a sweet and enticing siren song. He would take over the chair formerly belonging to the great Lipsius. He would be the only professor allowed to wear the red gown. He would be exempted from lecturing. He would be allowed to hand-select his students (among whom would be Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch humanist). He was finally lured, but one senses that he never quite settled in or felt at home. He complained bitterly about the Dutch (the resemblance is uncanny!), describing Leiden as “one crowded pub” and complaining about the noise. “On days of fasting” he wrote, “they start drinking very early in the morning.” He had the university move him from house to house, because he longed for more space and peace of mind. His last house he described as a hovel. It was cold, and it leaked, which is no small matter in the Netherlands. This is where he died in mid-winter. It sounds miserable.

Can two bios be the same soul, I have asked? The question is condensed, and yet it contains within its several words so many big assumptions. Belief is a complicated machine, hiding many working gears inside. It reminds me of the twentieth-century shell game of finding the smallest particle, leading us from molecules to atoms, to protons, to quarks until suddenly we were saddled with an uncanny new world view, or set of world views, thrust upon us by quantum mechanics. It’s exhausting. We might have been happier with molecules.

Scaliger looks down the centuries at me, and he asks, “Is that me?” Between us is an unfathomable gap, and the concept of “me” is instantly swallowed up in it. Whatever we may decide the soul is, we don’t get to say it’s Scaliger. Scaliger died when the animal body died. The man was the man, and whatever escaped at death was not the man. When we mourn, we mourn truly: the human life has ended. What’s more, if we find ourselves alienated – even unconsciously – by the “other” in human form, then any meditation on the concept of a soul ought to be a very sober one. It’s a ‘thing’ as alien as possible, and probably itself gave rise as much to our terrors of ghosts and demons as to visions of celestial angels gaining their wings.

It’s just that this problem of finite life is too often approached from the perspective of death. When our purpose is to defang death, our dreams about the afterlife are two-dimensional and cartoonish. We approach the light, essentially still human. But death is not the "other"; life is. Life is the uncanny. Death is a placeholder like zero. Life is strange and prolific. It surges and resurges in weird shapes, hungry and irresistible.

Travelogue 1089 – 13 May

La Scala

Part Six

What would Scaliger have to say, if I laid claim to his life? He expected to find himself in Christian heaven, but here I am telling him he’s evolved into … me. “This is evolution?” he will ask. And how shall I answer?

I had no idea what a fun pastime looking for past lives was! But do I believe in reincarnation? Do I believe that two bios could be the same soul? Well … there are some fundamental problems with the questions, and they begin, like most problems, with the assumptions behind the terms.

People are surprisingly promiscuous with their ‘beliefs’. I am more conservative. Maybe I’m the one taking the term too seriously. What is a belief? It’s so insubstantial, I wonder the purpose. I have no reason to doubt someone who says they ‘believe’ in reincarnation. Not only am I unable to disprove what they believe; I am unable to disprove that they believe. So what role does the confession “I believe” take? I suppose it sets up a contrast. “I believe” suggests “unlike others” or “unlike you”. The confessional purpose then becomes either persuasion or defence. Saying it internally, it may be an avowal or a vow, again separating one from others.

Removing belief from the thing believed, what is it? Is it a kind of warm feeling of confidence or security? If I say, “I think”, it affirms an opinion and admits its basis in logical thought; it admits a vulnerability to persuasion. If I say, “I wish”, it allows for absence of validity. If I say, “I know”, it claims verifiability. Many mystics will use that tactically: “I know, and you could know, too.” Verifiability lies in the mystic experience, spoken of on this plane, proven on another. Two people who have met on another plane can wink about it here, but that’s about the sum value of it on this plane.

Language gives us away. While a conspiracy theorist can claim any wild source and any level of cognitive relationship with the information, a rational person can only claim knowledge with a plural subject.

“I know the election was fair,” or “I know climate change is real” sounds a bit overwrought. Instead, you hear, “We know that climate change is real”. Why? Because most knowledge is communal. The principle that knowledge is verifiable makes it communal. It’s one of the beauties of knowledge.

For me, the phrase “I believe” ends up being little more than a rhetorical device. Like, I have come to this conclusion instinctively.

Travelogue 1088 – 1 May

La Scala

Part Five

The sixteenth century was a time of tumult. It was also a time of significant scholarship, the time of Galileo and of Erasmus. Humanism and classical studies were the pursuit of many scholars, and there were so many of them working on classical languages and philosophy that it’s easy to stumble upon whole sets of them that you had never heard of before.

Not all the French humanists were in Paris. One cantankerous old writer was based in Agen, near Valence, in southwestern France. Born in 1484, he had been named Giulio Cesare, a typical Renaissance name, harking back to Roman history. He was Italian, but became physician to the bishop of Agen, and devoted his life to scholarship, accruing enough reputation to take on the mighty Erasmus and be taken seriously. He is remembered primarily for his defence of Aristotelianism aesthetics and science. His opinion on Seneca apparently had some effect on the young Shakespeare.

In good Renaissance form, he raised his son, Joseph Justus, on a steady diet of Latin and poetry. He made him write 80 lines of Latin every day until the Lord took him away, and his son was abandoned to his fate as overeducated youth in an age glutted with overeducated youths.

The boy distinguished himself. He studied in Paris; he studied in Valence. He travelled through Europe. Along the way, he became a Protestant. He taught in Geneva; he taught in Leiden. Between the two latter posts, he hid away on the manor of a friend, and he wrote. He studied Latin authors. He compiled histories of texts, histories of knowledge.

His contributions were in the field of textual criticism, a science dear to the hearts of Renaissance scholars. And he is credited with being the first to see the ancient world as a collection of contemporaneous civilizations, beyond the cultural borders of Greece and Rome. It included Babylonians, Jews, Persians and Egyptians, all of them sharing knowledge and culture. It’s a thought I feel some kinship with. I may love everything Greco-Roman now, but as a child I was much more interested in Egypt, Sumer, and Persia.

Scaliger, as he was called, left for Leiden in 1593, and it was to be his last academic post. He never saw France again.

He was called ‘Scaliger’ because his father maintained he was descended from the La Scala family that had ruled Verona in the Middle Ages. Enemies of Scaliger went to great lengths to prove that was not true. He fought them bitterly, maybe out of loyalty to his dear old dad, maybe threatened in his sense of self. But it’s quite likely his dad was inventing.

That's a cool bio. I felt instant affinity with it. And he was a handsome devil, too. I wish I could say I had found him by chance. The truth is, one day I woke with the name on my lips, ‘Scaliger’. I don’t know why. I had never heard of Joseph Justus or his father. Months earlier, investigating a spring trip to Italy, I had investigated Verona, and had read about the La Scala family. The name had probably remained with me. The mind is such an odd machine, so cluttered with data, barely coherent. The most one can do is marvel at the things that pop out of it.

Travelogue 1087 – 28 April

La Scala

Part Four

Yesterday was King’s Day in the Netherlands, the day the country goes mad celebrating the king’s birthday. It was a beautiful day, and it just so happened that, this year, the king was going to celebrate in Rotterdam. So we dressed up in orange, and we went downtown.

The crowd wasn’t so bad at Blaak, where a stage had been erected to host hours of bland music and five minutes of royal presence. We squeezed through the people and found a spot where we could just see the stage and the two jumbo screens beside it. In good Dutch style, the king was (almost) on schedule. We didn’t have to endure for too long the carefully forgettable band filling time till he arrived. One of the screens followed the king’s progress as he and his family walked along the central streets, seeing sights on the way to us. (Imagine Charles III strolling through Manchester and waving to his people!)

Some ageing pop star mounted the stage just ahead of the king, leading the crowd through a few old standards, one of which, oddly, was in English. Then the king and queen and their several princesses appeared, waving at the crowd. Unexpectedly, I was moved to wave back, as were hundreds of others. It was a strange feeling.

Europeans sneer at the American fascination with royalty. But it is, objectively, a strange and fascinating phenomenon. In this age, royalty is an abstraction. What is a monarch? It’s an expensive indulgence; it’s an intriguing institution. At best, the royal family forms an interesting dialectic with elected officials, perhaps standing for history and decorum. At worst, they are a domesticated breed of narcissists, who entertain with their foibles. But words don’t resolve the riddle at the centre of their longevity. How do you explain it? Even at their height of power, kings and queens were not all-powerful. They were pawns of history. The most powerful among them were keen individuals quick to read and manipulate the much more powerful forces around them.

We encountered my British neighbour after the event. He seemed stunned that we would have gone to see the king. He was at pains to hold his tongue, I could see. The Brits are drearily literal on the subject of royalty. I suppose they have cause, what with recent events, what with the sheer expense of their royal house. But it’s disappointing. There are much more interesting discussions to be had about royalty than the rather obvious tut-tutting over items in the news.

Royalty came late to the Netherlands, installed after Napoleon was pushed out. But its roots reached all the way back to the sixteenth century and the Dutch fight for independence. It reached back to Willem of Orange, known as Willem the Silent, stadtholder of Holland. The latter position became a hereditary position for his family and a subtle form of royalty among the staunchly independent Dutch. Something about the Napoleonic experience made them ready to call their king a king.

The era of Willem the Silent is endlessly interesting to me. The Reformation was still raging on. Indeed, it provided the first impetus for Dutch rebellion against the Spanish. Religion was redrawing the map of Europe. Aristocracies continued their post-medieval grabs for status and territory, aligning and re-aligning with each generation. The scientific revolution was underway. Combined with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this is the classical era of European civilization, when it was most vital and weirdest.

Travelogue 1086 – 23 April

La Scala

Part Three

Cracking my head on the pavement gave me more than a pretty scar. It left me with a small lesson in complacency. It’s so easy for the human mind to forget things. If anything puts paid to a philosophy based on human wisdom and the human capacity to learn, it’s the balancing capacity to forget.

I’ve had my challenges in recent years – dealing with the short and the long versions of COVID, for example, – but none of my challenges have upset the safe home. The day-to-day in Holland is a far-cry from the primeval struggle to survive that may be our common heritage. I’ve become lulled by inactivity and safety into a kind of sleepy confidence in my own physical coordination. I have plenty of memories of clumsy accidents and the feeling of helplessness that accompanied those, but it took an effort to summon up that sense of falling, out of control of one’s own body. Until a few weeks ago.

I was trying a little stunt, skipping to one side on the scooter as I tried to escape getting tagged ‘it’ by Baby Jos, and suddenly I was falling. A part of my mind watched the fall with fascination. Somehow my limbs became pinned or tangled with the scooter, or with each other, and so I had no way to brace myself as I fell. During that instant, I was reminded what it felt like to be helpless. The laws of physics do take precedence, after all, over human ideas of justice and what’s commensurate. “I was just playing around,” doesn’t fly in the court of gravity and concrete.

It's a good reminder. We hurried to the hospital, and the girls watched the doctor delicately sew my face together again. I got to see a monster in the mirror for a week or so. That part was fun, and a harmless lesson that there is plenty of harm to be had. There will even be lethal harm some day.

The final struggle forms our hearts from a distance, the event that is, in fact, no event for the self, but a ceasing of events. It forms our perspective on “the other”, being perhaps the most frightening among the ranks of others. Perhaps he’s their general. He is strange, and we can't be sure how deeply his strangeness has permeated things.

Travelogue 1085 – 12 April

La Scala

Part Two

It was Easter weekend, and I was playing with the girls out front. Things got out of hand, and I took a dive while riding one of their scooters, bashing my head against a concrete curb. I had to get a few stitches and wear lots of bandages. Now my eye is black and swollen. I look into the mirror, and I’m fascinated by the new face. This kind of accident really does change your features, temporarily. My wife looks at me in wonder. Who is this guy?

I’ve always thought it a bit tedious to see the same face in the mirror every day. Does anyone else feel that way? I observe the mania for selfies, and I think not. In any case, this little injury is kind of entertaining as an exercise in variety. I want to enjoy it, but when I go out, I feel compelled to hide it. I don a cap and look at the ground. I cover the bloody stitches with bandages. I turn away from people I have to talk to. We do these things instinctively: injuries are shameful. We might be marked for culling from the herd.

Do we read history like a mirror? Are we looking for different versions of ourselves? Sometimes I feel most fascinated by the most alien and the weirdest in history. But even then, it might be a drive to assimilate what I see, shape it into comprehensibility, make it a version of myself. It’s a metaphorical search for the self.

Some people shove past the metaphor. They literally see themselves in the faces of historical figures. Those faces they call past lives. “I have lived before. I have lived inside those faces. That is me.” It’s such an interesting form of appropriation. It reminds me of the Biblical literalists. Every religious program must have its literalists. “That really happened. That is me.”

As you open the programs of these religions, you find plenty of code designed to appropriate the other, from conversion to conquest to submission, extending to the ethical claim of the Golden Rule. Ethics itself could be read as a means of assimilating or appropriating the other. A literal claim to be the other becomes just a matter of degree.

Travelogue 1084 – 9 April
La Scala
Part One

I had no idea what a fun pastime looking for past lives was! I found one buried in the seventeenth century, and I was quite excited! And I’m not even sure I believe in reincarnation.

Believing is a mysterious act. It comes easily to some people, but, for me, belief is something down a long road. Concepts, like stars, need to align. So, a soul passes from one life to another, learning lessons as it goes. That seems simple enough. But there are lots of assumptions underpinning the idea that I find difficult to gloss over, assumptions concerning linear time, evolution, and consciousness that behaves like indivisible atoms.

I’m a teacher. If there is a metaphysics built on learning and evolution, I should have one response: “Sign me up!” But beliefs are jealous little genies, and they don’t like giving up secrets. Souls are born to learn, but what are the yardsticks, if most of existence is unconsciousness? What are the incentives? Is the reward really beating the system thousands of years from now? Why does it take so long? The range of human virtues seems to me so narrow, I can’t imagine what occupies us for thousands of lives.

My thoughts about religion are naïve. I know they are. It’s one reason I gave up. No matter what religion I approached, something like the reverse side of Woody Allen’s dictum applied. He said that he would never join a club that would have him. The religious version might be: a religion could never open the door to someone who was outside to begin with. I just couldn’t manufacture the feeling of faith or the correct spiritual experience.

Maybe it’s just the spirit of the Easter Egg Hunt, but I was pumped to have found a past life! And it was much easier than I thought! I had no clues. I had no evidence, not even the ethereal sort that sails over the bar of most believers. No dreams or flashbacks or goosebumps. My only supporting evidence was a cool bio.

Travelogue 1083 – 31 March

A Time of Frolics

It’s spring; it’s time to cavort. Nay it’s a time to frolic. I’ll use a word with Dutch roots. We frolic in the mud that never dries, frolicking in the damp woods (of city parks,) where forest sprites still inspire us with mischief.

Can we visualise spring as an fairy or sprite like Ariel or Puck, frolicking? Then we can ask him about his gods, knowing he would lie. It’s okay to be Puck and lie about love. He’ll say the sun is the god of spring frolics, and then he’ll deny it. He’ll say that the rains rule spring.

We’ll ask Puck to tell us the name of his rain god. Which one? he might reply. He’ll reply from a height, I’m thinking. He can’t sit still. He is restless, the way sprites are. How were we to know rain gods numbered more than one?

There’s no reason for rain to have one god but there are too many reasons for many. We may ask Puck whether they are classified by geography or by storm. My hypothesis will be that they are divided by the rhythms of the rain, and I will ask for an introduction to the goddess of drizzles. Puck will not commit.

Puck will giggle, and he will evade our questions, be careless even with his lies. We will have been fine with lies, and that’s why he is coy. He giggles, and I will suspect the goddess is hovering over his shoulder. He will anticipate my question: why lie about the rains?

“It’s simply the abundance of them. How would you catch every drop?”

But that’s a dream. The mundane is something more magical. Our flat looks like spring, scattered as if with cherry petals. But no, that’s just paper. Scraps and bits and corners and strips of white paper. The girls have become obsessed with origami. They watch videos, and they create planes and birds and dogs and princess crowns. We live among the snowy scraps of pretty things.

Travelogue 1082 – 19 March

How Much Busy

We’re busy writing about love. It occupies our time this spring. While cherry blossoms are finally budding under grey skies, while ducklings paddle their tiny circles in the canals, at last safe from this winter’s late freezes, we are making a haste of slow questions. It’s a lazy time of being busy, routine asserting itself among the signs of novelty.

The winds have come and gone, making for us for a season of falling. I walked my bicycle up the steep slope of the Erasmus Bridge after work, while the sun battled clouds over the river, because pedalling was too precarious, tipping us over like toys. We citizens of Rotterdam walked our bikes in a long row over the span. The sky was too big for us.

The girls are teasing us, saying we’re too serious for spring. They’re making up songs and asking us to sing along. They’re jumping in our laps when we’re relaxing, and playing ninja around us when we work. They’re asking for ice cream when we go out; they’re asking for ice cream when we’re inside. I’m enjoying every minute, even as the tension of being alive is paralysing; even when the tension of the next moment is pressing in on my lungs, I am thankful.

We’re busy writing truth and lies about love. It takes up all our time. This is a topic I’m interested in. I want to write about our truth and lies about love. I will pursue this in a separate document, and I’ll publish when the tension of love ebbs, perhaps among summer’s pauses, when dimension wavers and seems ready to fail.

Travelogue 1081 – 22 February

Strike

It’s not the best time of year to let yourself go. Ageing winter leaves the ground muddy, people weary, prospects grey, and tempers short. Yet this is the moment that sanitation workers chose to go on strike. The strike lasted only five days, but by the fifth day mounds of trash had begun gathering by the garbage chutes.

Strikes in the Netherlands are very scripted. Dates are set, and the city government announces them. Advice is published on how to survive the inconvenience. The press pitches in with sidebars and commentary. Employers and school administrators make contingency plans. There’s nothing very wild about these cats.

It’s enough to make one question: did I ever really understand the point of a strike? Was it to cripple the employer? It seems to cripple everyone else more. Was it to stress the importance of the work that labourers do? It seems to put people in mind of what’s not being done. Is the point to make the public think that the workers deserve more money? It seems designed rather to put people in mind of budgets, of all the money being spent on allowances and adjustments required by the strike and on the subsequent clean-up.

After the strike was done, things only got worse. Of course, not all neighbourhoods could be cleaned the minute the strike ended. In fact, many areas went another five days without pickup, even though the city mobilized extra workers. Garbage bags piled up higher. Some bags broke, and trash drifted across the roads and squares. This is our city as winter limps into its final weeks.

Travelogue 1080 – 19 February

Longing

This package was taking too long! Little Ren and I had picked out a pretty, red dress for her online. She had seen something on TV, I’m guessing, and so, suddenly, she had determined that she had an urgent need for a long dress. And so we did it; we ordered something online for her. Every day afterward, she asked whether the dress had arrived.

She decided the time had come for action. She picked out some paper and pens. She sat on the floor and began drawing capital letters in bold marker colours. It took her twenty minutes, but she painstakingly produced a colourful letter to the postman. “Postman,” she wrote, “please give me my dress.” She even folded a sheet of paper to make an envelope. She put the whole package together and pushed it into the mail slot in our front door. Later, I discreetly removed it. “The mailman must have picked it up,” I told her.

It’s a season of longing. February teases us with thaws and breaks in the clouds. The winds pick up and make us restless. I hear birdsong in the morning. Night is in retreat. We cycle to school in daylight. There’s some sun in the windows when I cook dinner.

The weather is changeable as a pinwheel. You can follow the path of blue patches of sky among the clouds, even as a barely perceptible mist falls on your face. You can warm yourself in a patch of sunlight, even as a wall of dark clouds approaches from the west. There’s something enjoyable about the capriciousness of it, after weeks of consolidated weather fronts: raining for days, then clear and cold for days. Nothing expresses the longing for spring better than the protean, seaside weather of February, blustery and shedding its fleeting light showers on us, while the seagulls wheel and cry overhead.

The day is coming. The cherry blossoms will open, and Little Ren will take her first spring promenade in a long red dress. The postman will deliver.

Travelogue 1079 – 7 February

Fog and Frost

Baby Josie takes too much enjoyment in correcting her little sister. Now Little Ren is crying because she wanted to believe that the thin layer of white on the ground was snow. She has an affection for snow: she identifies as a winter baby. Winter is her season. During the rest of the year, she looks forward to seeing snow. This year we have not been fortunate. Even now, during our second cold snap of the season, we aren’t seeing any precipitation. Only this lowering fog, and the white condensation on cars and road and grass. There’s no snow, but only frost.

It's a word Baby takes up, as we set out on bikes, to her little sister’s increasing agitation. “It’s just frost, Ren.” They’re at an age when taunting each other is entertaining. Entertaining, and hurtful. Ren is heart-broken. “It’s just like snow, isn’t it?” I say, trying to lift her spirits. It’s just ice from the sky. Ren isn’t buying it.

“Look at the sky,” I say. This is a game we play often, while we cycle to school. At this time of year, we often catch pretty sunrises. Today, the fog is too thick. But instead of casting colours into an open sky, the sun is playing tricks with the fog. To the right, over the river, the light glows in a kind of archway among the fog. I’m not sure how that happens – the sun rises to our left, – but it’s a lovely sight. Little Ren is quiet now, riding complacently in the child’s seat behind me, watching the morning unfold. The frost is forgotten.

Later, after dropping the girls at school, I’m crossing the Erasmusbrug just as the fog is breaking. The sun sends long rays through the remains of the low clouds, reflecting off the high pillar of the bridge, racing across the road, and striking the waters of the wide river below.