Travelogue 1128 – 30 March
On the Water

It is Easter weekend, and the town is quiet. The early morning is particularly subdued because a drizzling rain is falling. I decide on a trip to the store before the girls wake. I throw on my running gear because it is easily available. I pull rain gear on over that, and I am ready for the bike.

I enjoy cycling in this weather, provided I don’t have far to go, provided I am not pedalling toward my work. A light, misty spring rain is refreshing. It dampens sound, and it slows time. It is contemplative. I slow as I cross the Beukelsbrug, taking a moment to catch my breath and look at the river. I see something there in the surface never still.

When I return, Little Ren is up and no one else. She is busy drawing. She has found a cartoon of a fairy that her big sister finished yesterday. In the quiet of the morning, she wants to replicate it. She asks my help. She stops me when I’ve done enough, and she carries on. She sings while she draws. She can’t sit still. She rolls back and forth on her knees. She tosses her head to the left and the right.

I feel obliged to record every stage of our girls’ growth. Things change so quickly. What I find to be the essence of this little girl now, aspects of her that I can’t imagine ever changing, her songs, her restless fidgeting, they will slip away. I’ll be reminded of them years from now, and I will be overcome with gratitude and sorrow, regret for things gone; we are allowed nothing in the transit of time.

When she has done something well, when she has played a song well for her piano teacher, when he praises her, Little Ren has a smile that is radiant and innocent. It is burned into my imagination. I think it is a part of everything I do. It’s an image floating on surface of the river in the morning.

Travelogue 1127 – 20 March
Lighting the Set

Napoleon never woke up with “Ziggy Played Guitar” looping in his mind. I’m comfortable saying that this experience separates me from the Emperor of the French. I don’t remember where or when I heard the song, but the central guitar riff has become lodged in my brain, and I cannot let it go. I sing the song to my girls in the mornings as we prepare them for school. I sing, “Oh yea-ah, Baby plays vio-o-ol.”

There are more substantial life circumstances, you may counter, that separate me from Napoleon Bonaparte. I have never led an army, it’s true. I’ve never been to Corsica. I have not yet been chased out of Russia. But then again, I could be. These are things I could do. Though the odds are so long that they approach infinity, the chance remains. And still there survives not one chance that Napoleon heard David Bowie sing. He never once heard an electric guitar. Through all the shouting and screaming in battle, he never heard an electronically amplified voice. He famously pleaded with Goethe to join him in Paris, but he never even once asked Bowie.

That guitar riff is my privilege, living two hundred years later than Napoleon.

I can think of another person who never heard of Ziggy Stardust. Old Scaliger pottering around his garden in Leiden in the early seventeenth century never heard of Ziggy Stardust. Maybe he whistled some old folk tune in the morning, a hymn, or a madrigal that haunted him when he woke. I like the image of the ageing professor alone in his garden, kneeling among the cabbage, poking at the dirt, pulling up weeds. In the garden, he might grumble about politics among the faculty. He might labour over some point of Latin grammar. Or he might just feel the dirt between his fingers, breaking apart the clods, looking for signs that Death had been creeping around his window again. He glances up at the misty sky, wondering how long he has.

I don’t know if anyone else has the impression that each century of the second millennium has a characteristic light. I have been to too many museums, I think. The seventeenth century is definitely darker than most. The light is Rembrandt’s and Caravaggio’s, full of shadow. The weather is Dutch, attenuated daylight under scudding clouds.

The nineteenth century is also dark. It’s Neo-Gothic and Heathcliff-on-the-moors dark. The exception would be Napoleon’s era, during which the atmosphere is early-spring-morning-before the-battle. It’s a holdover from the summer of the eighteenth century.

Travelogue 1126 – 15 March
Napoleon in a Wig

Baby Jos is bringing home news from the world. She is old enough to be learning names and facts and ideas. She has told me about Keith Haring, of all people; she has told me about dresses during the Victorian era. She has told me about rain and condensation; she has told me about planets and stars. She is telling me about Napoleon.

“He was selfish,” she says. “He brought back slavery.” This is what her teacher has told her about Napoleon Bonaparte. It is an interesting pair of factoids about the Emperor of the French. Neither factoid can be discounted, but the historian in me is instantly irritated. “Tell me more.” There is one more: many people died in war.

Coincidentally, the Little Corporal has been on my mind. I had had a certain fascination for the man when I was a child. And the recent trip to Paris has brought him back to my thoughts. It is hard not to think of him at the Louvre (named the Musée Napoléon during the Empire) even if only in the salon with the huge canvases by Gros and David, depicting grand battles and the glorious coronation. (“That’s the Empress Joséphine!”)

“Napoleon was a selfish man,” she said. That is true enough, Baby Jos, but please just remember that history is more complicated.

Why does it bother me so much? I get protective. History is like the abandoned house where kids cannot help but play reckless pranks. People are children when it comes to history; they are seduced by their power over it. They emotionalize history; they sentimentalize it. They gather facts under umbrellas to make pretty terraces among the wild garden. They psychoanalyse historical figures. They twist history into morality tales.

This latter, the moralizing, is the trend of our day. It is an embarrassing and a frustrating practice; embarrassing because it is the most transparent and clumsy sort of editorializing the human mind employs. We are in a sad state if we think we have an edge on the people of eighteenth-century France, whether in wisdom or in experience. And it is frustrating because it occludes clear sight. Moralizing is the woman with the tall wig at the theatre, succeeding less in getting attention than in forcing everyone to crane their necks to see around her.

Travelogue 1125 – 3 March
A Spring Cloud

Thermometer readings are slightly different than they have been. The clouds come and go. But it’s a Sunday, and there are a few hours in the early afternoon when the clouds retreat into a haze, and when the sun imparts a certain warmth on the back. The people of the city respond incommensurately, shucking jackets, appearing in shorts, sitting on terraces outside. They sense a change. Elianne’s papa informs us, before ballet class, that meteorological spring, unlike astronomical spring, begins on the first of March. It’s spring! That’s certainly the consensus of the people outside, to judge by their behaviour.

Change is like that, a judgement formed by impressions, impressions founded on vapours.

Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is already dead, that we are living in a new age. He cites a historical example. The Greek writer offers the year 1776: all evidence surrounding the observer would suggest it was an age of feudalism. There were kings and queens, lords and ladies. Lords lived on great estates of land, worked by peasants born to peasant families who had worked the lands for hundreds of years. The nobility seemed to be in charge of politics and of all opinion and fashion. By outward signs, it was a feudal society, but in fact the capitalist age had dawned, and was already firmly in charge of humanity’s destiny.

Change is like that, the germ inside constancy. Every moment steals in under guide of sameness.

Varoufakis has a theory he’s promoting, and the narrative serves that purpose, but it does still make sense. His theory is that we have entered another feudal age, effectively falling back in evolution. But this forma of feudalism serves a different set of lords, this time the tech aristocracy. Effectively, according to Varoufakis, doomed capital opted to take its own life, funding the turnover itself. It’s a theory, and not a very romantic one. But it’s as good as any other. There’s obviously something in the air, meteorological, if not astronomical. Consider the dubious Lord Musk, nudging the Ukraine war this way and that with his satellite services, offering them to one combatant and then the other in a partisan bid to seem above the fray, far above, high as the spring cloud.

Travelogue 1124 – 26 February
Beweeglijkheid

It’s a still morning. It’s always a still morning after a holiday, isn’t it? At least if you get up as early as I do on a workday. The streets outside are quiet. Even with the equinox approaching, the mornings are dark. The windows are blank, suggesting either hope or depression, depending on the inclination of one’s mind. I sense the weight that depression has put on while I was away, chewing anxiously in anticipation of the return to the mundane, but I can balance her sway with a renewed will. I will turn resolutely toward hope. I don’t need the day to be a lark; what I need is to see that it unfolds with purpose. The week must be set on a steady course.

We arrived home on Saturday. Sunday morning, the girls had ballet. There was no rain, so I tossed Little Ren onto the back of my bicycle. By ten, we were rolling alongside the Westersingel in the centre. The Westersingel is a nineteenth-century canal that now features a small sculpture garden along its banks. The last sculpture we pass is my favourite, Rodin’s “L’homme qui marche”, an armless and headless body in bronze, a man stepping forward. We just saw another version of the same statue by the same artist last week in the Musèe d’Orsay.

It's a lovely piece. It's quiet, and it’s still, as most statues are, but it was created as a study of movement. The torso turns; missing its arms, the motion seems awkward. The torso was left unfinished. I quote from Dutch prose about the Rotterdam piece, because Dutch is the language for rough exteriors: “Door de afwisseling van lichte vlakken en donkere schaduwen zorgt de lichtval voor beweeglijkheid in het beeld.” Roughly, that means that the rough surface creates a feeling of motion with its alternating light and shadow.

Travelogue 1123 – 18 February
Plus Ça Change

We’re off to Paris in a few days, so why not break out a few words in the beautiful language? Add a few more, and you have my entire French vocabulary. I’m not proud; the Parisians will be sure of that.

It’s spring break – though it’s still winter, - and the girls still have ballet classes in their calendars. We still dress in our layers and our jackets, and when we leave the flat, we bow our heads into the light rain and a chilly wind.

The ballet school is in the city centre, upstairs in a small brick building near Eendrachtsplein. It’s a small old building, with small, old rooms. We ride the cramped elevator, and, walking down the narrow yellow hallway, we pass a locker room, and we pass a few open studios with bars and mirrors. At the end of the hall, there are some steps leading up into a foyer serving a set of small studios for children’s lessons.

We enter and we are greeted by familiar faces. We’ve been attending weekly for more than five years. One of the new faces is an old face, a girl who attended school with Baby Jos but then transferred to another school. I sit with her father, and he shows me the spreadsheets he’s working on. His daughter takes two classes, so he spends a good part of his morning in that bleak room.

We work and we play. The two activities are colours succeeding each other on a pinwheel, accelerating, and finally blurring.

During breaks in my own workday, breaks between classes, I take walks. Nearby is the Erasmus University campus. Even among the brutalist architecture of the university, I find spots of charm. There’s a long reflecting pool in the centre, surrounded by lawns, and divided in the middle by a curving pedestrian bridge. I enjoy walking around the perimeter. Beyond, there’s a canal, and, beside the road along the campus’s verge, there is a gravel walking path among saplings and grass. That path is for long breaks. I don’t get many of those anymore.

Sometimes I stop to reflect during those walks. I say to myself, “I woke up this morning, and I am still here.” It’s a generic thought. It could be said with contentment or disappointment. It might refer to Planet Earth or might refer to Rotterdam. It might refer to the state of living. I say it with one meaning or the other; I say it with all meanings. I don’t know.

I think change is like that. It is the germ inside constancy. There is no stasis, in fact. Every same thing stands in a different moment; every moment steals in under guide of sameness.

Travelogue 1122 – 14 February
Attentive

There’s been a change in the air, something subtle, something gentle: a slight access of light, a brighter shade among the clouds, a shot of colour, a shot of oxygen, maybe. One can breathe a little more easily. I have seen a few crocuses among the grass. I have noticed birdsong in the courtyard of my building. I look up for birds among the dark skeletal branches of our trees.

This is how things start. Small signs are stirring, and you notice. It helps if you are quiet and attentive. Voices change.

Baby Jos has brought home a variety of new tones this school year. Out of the blue, she will reason with me like a young adult. The tone catches me by surprise, and I smile. She frowns; she wants to be taken seriously. I adjust, and I listen. She’s got so many things to say. In other moments, she’s a girl again. She imagines things, and she tells stories. She observes things as we walk, and I have to be attentive. Her vocabulary shifts almost weekly. A great number of things are now “adorable”: small dogs and children and toys and cartoons and jewellery and styles. Then, “come on, girl!” she declares. And she can chatter all the way there, all on her own steam, pausing only to shush her little sister when Little Ren dares to contribute.

Travelogue 1121 – 31 January
This Is Europe

I’m shopping near the university, in a cosy little neighbourhood of Rotterdam known to be on the posh side. Posh or not there’s a man who is tottering and mumbling. He is dressed fine and groomed, but there’s something wrong with him. He confronts an elderly pair sitting on an outdoor bench. They are speaking in Italian. He interrupts them and starts in a reasonable tone, informing them that they are in the Netherlands, advising them they should speak Dutch. The couple are confused; they question; then they protest. He raises his voice. “Oh, Dio,” complains the woman. This is Europe now. It’s a tiny country on a continent that is a patchwork of languages, but, sure, Holland for the Dutch! To be sure, this man was unbalanced in some way, and he was put in his place by a few locals, in Dutch. “Sod off,” yelled one ordinary-looking bystander in Dutch. “They’re in the Netherlands,” the poor man replied, thinking we needed one more reminder.

In Italy, meanwhile, a museum director in Florence complains that tourism has turned the city into a ‘prostitute’, and this brings down upon her head a frightful torrent of outrage. Maybe that was to be expected; it was strong language. But the story becomes confusing when you look at who complained loudest: a lot of right-wing allies of Italian Prime Minister and Mussolini fan, Giorgia Meloni. It might have seemed at first blush like a sentiment they would applaud: damn those foreign interlopers. You wonder if it might have become economic. Tourists provide profit. But no, you only need look as far as the museum director’s surname: Hollberg. It turns out that Meloni’s government has been trying to push non-Italians out of top cultural jobs so they can be filled by sympathetic cultural warriors. Ms Hollberg chose a bad moment to voice her opinion, especially in such colourful terms.

Travelogue 1120 – 20 January
Twist and Shout

We will be tortured for ages by the image of Trump awkwardly dancing to “YMCA” on rally stages. We will be tortured for generations by the memory of Trump recommending bleach for COVID.

I’ve always wondered about the paradigm established among the shouting social media cliques for evaluating the COVID response. It was always a question of who was right. As a topic, that’s fair enough: in retrospect, both sides ought to be able to admit they were wrong on some points, medical and historical. But what an odd sum to take as the final measure! Right and wrong are material for discussions about lessons learned for the next time, not for moral judgement of humanity, or leadership, or the medical establishment struggling with crisis and fear.

The fact is, we succeeded. We succeeded in caring. The world mobilised to protect men, women, and children. The details of implementation pale in importance next to this singular achievement. The efforts made to save lives were authentically remarkable.

The social compact relies on the impulse of charity. And, yes, charity does exist. It’s not the time to hash over adolescent debate topics like “altruism is really ego in disguise”. There was never a need to make great efforts to dress up greed as charity, as the fleshy former president demonstrates for us every day.

Please, with one internal eye always on the horror of Trump’s herky jerky Twist, let’s give our academic cynicism a rest, when all that’s good is already under attack. Let’s forego the self-conscious poring over brain scans for the chemical signature of caring; let’s take a break from the tiresome campaigns to impugn everyone’s honour and intentions. Everyone’s doing the best they can. And the finest human systems are still flawed. Corruption and ignorance and waste find their way into any environment, and good people can do no more than minimize it. Baby might still rate more than the bathwater, say.

I’m not Christian, but I think of a Biblical author. Paul had his moments. He wrote, “And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.” He also wrote, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Children shout over each other; adults ask them to stop and listen.

Dancing Trump is a totem of bad times. Dancing Trump is the gargoyle. Cement him into the wall of the temple as a reminder. Look upon him and shudder.

Travelogue 1119 – 18 January
Just a Drop

When in Holland, look for signs of change in the forms of the water. Now the water has become white, and when it falls, it falls in pellets. On the ground it crunches and causes hazards. On playgrounds, it lies in patches of white. On the canals, there are thin sheets of ice on the surface. Seagulls stand on it, looking uncertain.

Big changes, we describe in terms of floods. Floods of immigrants, for example. Or we whisper about the literal tide predicted with climate change, quite possibly the final one for low-lying towns like The Hague.

But a big change is already upon us, isn’t it? Flood tides rising and threatening to overcome their barriers and run free. They swept over Iowa this week; we spot them in Europe, too. These are the waters of Narcissus, rising to their highest mark in decades. They claim a few inches every month, a few dozen souls every week, victims of the Narcissian malady, the crippling trance of self-regard. Victims are mesmerised by their image, hypnotised by their voices, enraptured by their opinions.

Liberals have loudly declared – and, bless them, the libs can be counted on to be loud, in all seasons – that Trump is a threat to democracy. That begs the question: do you believe them? The Trumpist right has only two answers to choose from: no we don’t, or yes but we don’t care. It’s a tragic binary, both sides founded on discord, distrust, defiance, and nihilistic abandon. It’s not the most inspiring political programme: there’s little to recognise as optimism there.

The “Trump or democracy” dynamic seems familiar to me, parallel to the dynamic formed during the COVID crisis. Do you believe in the public health officials responding to the crisis? No we don’t, or yes but we find it very inconvenient. It’s dark reasoning. It has some parallels with the bedrock position of Republicanism: do you believe that paying taxes provides for the public good? No it’s a conspiracy among civil servants, or yes but we don’t want to pay.

In none of these litanies is space allowed for a pause. Narcissus responds without hesitation, self first with immediacy, self first without reflection.

Society might require an antidote to the Narcissian waters. In crisis, one must care first for the welfare of others. One forgets the self for a moment, releases ambition and self-expression, sets aside righteousness, and settles a gentle focus on the needs of other human beings. No need to proselytise, no need to debate.

I’m prescribing a drop from waters of Lethe, the peaceful sleep of forgetfulness. We do so love our “ideas”; and they will return to us once the medicine wears off. There is nothing to fear.

Travelogue 1118 – 7 January
The Orthodox Holiday

We successfully negotiated Janus’s gate. We are in a new year. As though straining to differentiate itself from 2023, January’s temperatures have taken a dip. Last night, I detected a taste of Minnesota as I breathed deeply of the crisp night air over Rotterdam. I could see stars. That was itself a delight in this season of clouds.

But the calendar still plays its tricks. In an act of mirroring worthy of two-faced Janus, or perhaps of all the water still on the ground, today is Christmas. It’s Orthodox Christmas this time. We, in our exhaustion, defy the mirror. We spent our energy early, starting with the Dutch holiday, Sinterklaas, in early December. There’s little left for December’s Christmas, and less for New Year’s. Orthodox Christmas is just a pleasant occasion for wishing everyone well.

Is Janus still watching? Every day is a gateway, after all, and this is his month. The two-headed god is charged with gates and transitions. What moment is not a transition? His very physiognomy suggests his function, with four eyes to watch. So we must be seen nearly every day, tripping through a doorway.

Furthermore, everything we pass has a god or goddess attached, the trees, the banks, every field buried under a street, every river. Understanding their function is challenging. What did the ancients imagine their gods did from day to day? Did they live in Olympus or were they everywhere? Did they form the essence of the thing they represented? Was Janus simply a deformed citizen of Olympus, or was his spirit inside every doorway? Or maybe both? Why not? Was he just a bureaucrat, a manager of sorts? Was it his job to ensure that doorways didn’t malfunction, perhaps turning people back the way they came? Or was he some sort of Heisenbergian observer, making everything possible just by his eyes? Would the gates dissolve without his gaze? The mystery formed a part of their divinity, I suppose.

One hardly knows what to reverence anymore. On these cold mornings, so slow to warm into day, one ventures out in layers against the weather, and a longing dawns inside, as slowly as the light, to offer devotion, to find the loitering god like Janus and leave something at his feet. It arises from one’s vulnerability, and it only seeks the worthy object.

I hear the answer that is obvious to the secular group mind: reverence everything. Love all, tread lightly, be gracious. And I admit it makes sense. I also admit I make a rather poor model of these virtues, especially during Janus’s own month. I am irritated with city life, and, as far as I can tell, so is everyone else. The winter has become unkind, and it lingers too long. Not even the tardy Orthodox Christmas has much power to lift spirits.

Travelogue 1117 – 3 January
God of Gates

Janus looks forward and back at the same time. At midnight of the new year, I wonder what there might be to see. I imagine only tunnels of wind in both directions, rippling through the veils of rain. One year becomes another on a wet, winter night, and old Janus presides.

Newscasters make the most of the change, trumpeting the drama of our times, but they discover the truer note when they drink on air and enact silly sketches. Joy becomes enjoyment, and celebration becomes self-indulgence. Fireworks are a handy substitute for hope.

The first day of this year offered us one small and singular note of optimism. It was right away, as we left the house. To get to Metro, we have to pass through a narrow square of sorts, a span of pavement between two low buildings of residencies. It’s a depressing stretch, usually littered with trash. On New Year’s Day, in particular, it’s an unpleasant sight, full of the remains of fireworks, remains that decay in the rain into an ugly sludge.

That morning, and it was early for a holiday, we encountered a sole neighbour with a trash bag in one hand and a garbage picker in the other, moving methodically across the plein. He had clearly begun his work much earlier; the plaza was uncommonly clean, even for a regular weekday. He cut a lonely figure in the heavy air of a morning after. But he had a patient smile, and we were sure to give him a salute for his service. Here was my first hero of 2024.

He continued his labours as we carried on, emerging from the plaza into the broad open space before the transit centre, climbing the wide steps up to the tram lines. Janus is the god of gates; we advanced under his watchful eye. Our neighbour lingered behind in the shadows of the square. Had Janus seen him yet?

Travelogue 1116 – 29 December
The Questions

Hey ho, the wind and the rain. It's been a Shakespearean Christmas season, even the Netherlands feeling the stress of too much water. River levels in the east reached fourteen metres above NAP. NAP means the Normal Amsterdam Level, which is the standard in the Netherlands, a measure just below sea level.

I’ve been spending vacation time working on a research paper about assessment. This is for professional development. I’m analysing an exam given last year in a course that I supervise. That means going over the exam again and again, examining the questions that make it up. I find weak questions, and I make recommendations for improvement.

At night, the rain strikes up a steady rhythm. It falls on the roof and patters against the windows. The drops become so many questions falling on me from the sky.

I’ve also been using vacation time to catch up on dental work. I sit in the chair as they work in my mouth, staring into the bright light over the dentist’s shoulder, asking myself questions. “What am I doing here?” is a prominent one. I reflect, not for the first time, that what distinguishes the human from the animal is the ability to submit oneself to pain, to appoint a time when another human will inflict pain, to contentedly submit to the administration of pain, motivated only by an abstract idea of health. I feel some amazement every time I ease myself into that oversized chair.

Seeing doctors and dentists more often than friends does something to your head. You begin to think a lot about mortality. There was a time I thought questions came with answers. The two were complements, like protons and electrons: free in space to match when the time was right. Now it looks like a universe of protons. They fall from the sky, upsetting the NAP and lulling us finally to sleep.

Travelogue 1115 – 19 December
Pooling

The water that lured Narcissus didn’t necessarily run deep, but it was still, still as a mirror. It captured him as surely as a fly in honey, trapped him in its pool of pure mood. Narcissus was the son of a god, and he was a beautiful man. He had many admirers, including the timid mountain nymph Echo, who pined away for him until she was nothing but sound. Nothing would save him from himself, or from the terrifying power of water. Prophecy warned that he should avoid his reflection, and yet the picture of oneself is too seductive – count the people you pass in one day checking themselves out in their phones. And - let’s be fair - avoiding all water is rather difficult. The mood mirror catches us all eventually.

The subject of an article I read recently in the Guardian was the shift in global power relationships around the world. It was a legitimately interesting topic, the shift away from binary Cold-War models and toward a multipolar order in which smaller powers mix and match their alignments, meaning economic alignments with China and military agreements with America, for example. Biden had recently met with Xi in San Francisco, as the author mentioned in the introduction. But none of this was the lead. The pretext for the article was a poll.

Among the findings in this European Council on Foreign Relations and Oxford University project were that big chunks of “those we asked” in a selection of countries (1) believed the U.S. was at war with Russia; (2) believed Russia would win its war against Ukraine; (3) thought the U.S. would go to war with China over Taiwan in the near future; (4) believed the E.U. would fall apart. Most of “those we asked” would prefer to live in Europe or the U.S. but would rather trade with China. And so on. (Here is a nice essay about the role polls play in news cycles.)

This sort of poll, so ubiquitous now, begins to sound comical to me. I picture a Kimmel sketch in which people on the street outside his studio are peppered with random questions. Ask people questions, they answer. No matter how distant the topic; no matter how little they cared a moment before; no matter how fantastical the topic, they will manufacture an opinion. A poll is more Rorschach test than exercise in thought, but the very seriousness with which polls are treated emboldens people to confuse impulse and reason. Democracy stands at risk of devolving into opinion polls, which are at best, let’s admit it, nothing more than barometers of fleeting emotion.

We read polls the way Narcissus read the waters. What matters is our glorious selves. Polls that support our assumptions make us glow with affirmation; polls that counter our assumptions make us glow with indignation. The latter is more addictive than the former. In either case, we have learned nothing, accomplished nothing, exercised no critical-thinking or problem-solving skills.

Travelogue 1114 – 13 December
Coolhaven

Our routine this autumn has been to take the Metro to school, two stops to Coolhaven Station. We cross the bridge, and then we descend to the waterside. It’s not the most direct way, but I find walking along the water peaceful.

The Coolhaven, or Cool Harbour (‘Cool’ pronounced like ‘coal’), was dug about a hundred years ago. It appears as nothing more special than a widening of the River Schie before that river turns south and empties into the Nieuwe Maas. The stretch of open water separates Delfshaven from what once were the furthest western stretches of Rotterdam, and it’s peaceful because there isn’t much traffic anymore. There’s nothing particularly scenic; it’s lined along most of its banks by calm residential areas. But this place has been so central in the geography of my life in this town, its meaning enhances its beauty. It’s like Loring Park in Minneapolis, a place I saw almost every day for years.

I walk the same way after dropping the girls. It’s only been ten minutes, but the light has changed. On the way to school, we walk under dawn’s first light. The night has not yet been overcome. By the time I’m walking back toward the Metro Station, the dawning day has become ascendant, and the sky is more blue than black, more day than night. The waters are calm, and I drink in the sight of them, absorbing quiet contentment.

They say water is a symbol of mood. I accept the gift of stillness from the Coolhaven this morning, this whisper of comfort during a time of year that feels chaotic.

Travelogue 1113 – 3 December
Be Real

“Why are younger voters flocking to the far right?” worries the Guardian.

I thought I had better check Instagram for an answer. There, a young lady told me with a blissful smile that she had been sent to this earth to experience ‘every human emotion’. Odd that human emotions comprise such an exotic menu for all the disembodied souls. Is it that much of a privilege, given the scope of this universe? After the hormonal cascade of emotions in adolescence, what is left but dread and anxiety? But there you have it: those tears at the high school prom are a real draw.

It would seem that popular scifi mythology has seeped into general culture. We are now encouraged to believe, from the cold lips of Spock and other alien boosters, that we are a savage but a special species, so violent but so romantic. Visiting extra-terrestrials marvel that one human stops to drop a coin in the cap of another human … who was abandoned by the rest and sleeps on the pavement; are astonished by the little girl who feeds the baby birds left motherless … by her big brother and his slingshot.

I thought I had better check the hard news, instead. Headline: disgraced former congressman George Santos is talking to the press. He is quite indignant about the way he was treated. And now Santos, this man who conned an Amish man out of his puppies and who used donor money for Botox, is scandalised by the behaviour of his former colleagues, and he promises to tell all. Scrolling down the page, I find out that there is an international conference on climate solutions going on. Oh! It seems quite a number of experts feel we’re approaching a crisis point, and all of civilization is on the line. Hm!

Anyway, young people are voting for right wing parties again. “…the woke ones from the big cities,” says one, “care about the climate and gender stuff but they are ignoring the real problems that we have here and now.”

Travelogue 1112 – 1 December
Dark and Light

The winter cold has descended. Rain has become intermittent hail. We have fished out our gloves and hats. And now everyone is counting the days until holidays. The youngest eagerly anticipate Sinterklaas, or ‘pakjesavond’, which is only a few days away. Little Ren is counting the days until her birthday, which happens soon after Sinterklaas. And I’m counting days until our winter break. I don’t think I’m alone in that.

It’s a time of close spaces and crowds. The cold drives us inside. It drives us into the Metros and trams and buses, all of us together, made bulky in our coats, awkward in our boots, carrying umbrellas, made grumpy by the intrusion of winter. The season drives us into stores, where the aisles are crowded, and the stock is becoming thin. We’re wet; we’re shivering. We are unusually tired, simply from the lack of light and from all the minor discomforts that follow us among our errands, like the gnats of summer, but more persistent.

That said, there are surprising appearances of good cheer. Everywhere there is sudden largesse. Last night, Little Ren had her gymnastics class. The teenage girls who run the class had turned the school gym in Blijdorp into a fun obstacle course. A contingent of Piets arrived and handed out little craft kits. At the end, the older girls distributed bags of candy. The little girls were very excited.

It's a funny season, full of contradictions. We do our best to spark other types of illumination as the sun withdraws its light.

Travelogue 1111 – 29 November
Messy

It was a jarring sight. Teachers from the girls’ school were gathered in front of the main entrance, sitting on the ground in a semi-circle. They had set small tents up, and they sat in sleeping bags. As the children began to gather and stare at them, the teachers sang songs. The children were entranced.

My girls had to explain to me. The teachers were camping out here to prevent Rommel Piet from getting into the school. Sinterklaas arrived in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. The saint travels with a coterie of ‘Piets’, who are his assistants. One of those Piets is notorious now and may be known to my readers: ‘Zwarte Piet’ or Black Piet. Because he has become so controversial, Zwarte Piet keeps a low profile these days, at least in urban Holland. Another of the Piets is Rommel Piet. ‘Rommel’ means mess, and Rommel Piet likes to steal into homes and schools and leave a huge mess, mischievously tipping chairs over and hiding things. Every year he seems to break in somehow, to make a 'rommel' of the classrooms, and every year the teachers try to thwart him.

I enjoy this small survival of the trickster in a culture so dedicated to order. It speaks in some way to my soul, so lost in the thicket called November. What was so jarring about the sight of teachers sitting on the ground was the season. It was near freezing, and chilly showers had been coming and going. Seeing them on the ground was to empathically feel the cold and wet concrete against one’s tender morning skin. And yet, those dedicated teachers smiled and welcomed the children, and they cheerfully offered up songs about the saint.

Travelogue 1110 – 28 November
Candles

Dante is reciting from the “Inferno” from the shelter of an open portico. The cobble stones in this piazza tilt upward, as they did in the last one, and as we follow the incline, past the steps of a medieval church toward a passage between the side of the church and the shops lining the lane, we climb to another piazza at another level. Two high, square towers rise above us, like a medieval version of New York’s ill-fated Twin Towers. We are nearing the top of the hill.

Is it a dream, Dante reciting for coins, and tourists queueing up a hundred metres for gelato? No, this is a memory. I am recapturing bits from my trip in October. This is the hike through the village of San Gimignano, a funny and lovely little place an hour or so outside Florence in Tuscany, where the burgers of the Middle Ages competed with each other to build the highest tower. At one time there were 72 of them standing on this Tuscan hill. These days, it’s the tourists fighting for attention, shopping for boar’s sausage or elbowing in at a vista for their selfie. But still it’s a beautiful village with long views of the green hills and their vineyards round about.

Like consciousness itself, memory occupies an ambiguous position between light and its shadows, retreating one way from noxious fogs generated by stress or virus, retreating another from their abrupt seizure and distortion during sleep, advancing toward the light whenever the force of neglect threatens to drown it forever in the unconscious.

As in the case of the mysterious unconscious, memory inspires all manner of theories. Whole memories exist somewhere, like Plato’s perfect forms; memories are glimpses of a universal tapestry, containing all the data of life; memories suggest in their ephemeral nature the final extinguishing of self. They are special sight; they are psychic rubbish. But certainly memories come to comprise so much of the content of thought that they assume a special place in the day. We come to be living in memory as much as living in experience.

Perhaps one day, sorting through the bits and bobs of childhood, I find a trapdoor. And I open the door to see Scaliger looking back. Is he as lonely as I am, he in his time, and I in mine? He has celebrated his last Christmas. It’s grey winter, and he sits alone in his study. Young Heinsius has been by to check on him, but now he must return to his work. Instead, he studies the wavering flame of a candle. He does this to recover his focus. The house in Leiden is gloomy in winter, even in the afternoon. He has one candle against the darkness.

Travelogue 1109 – 24 November
Nothing

I was too hopeful, it seems. We all were in thinking that the nominal centrist Pieter Omtzigt would be the big winner on Wednesday. Instead, it was Holland’s longstanding crazy uncle, Geert Wilders. It only made sense. Rutte had spent most of his career fighting off the steady encroachment by Wilders into the mainstream. We had placed too much faith in centrism and too little in Rutte’s political skills. So the genie of hate is out of his bottle. It will be hard now to dismiss him as a crank, but it does remain to be seen how stable any government Wilders could assemble would actually be. His sort of provocative rhetoric plays well to a crowd but may not get him far in negotiations with serious politicos when the press is outside the room. It’s a corollary of the new politics, best demonstrated by congressional Republicans in the U.S. ‘Vote for me, I’ll achieve nothing!’ could be their slogan. They still win elections. The twenty-first-century electorate is made up of cackling masochists. Modern voters seem to take as their model 80s football hooligans, happy to trash their own stadium for a laugh. There’s no shame the morning after. It’s part of the game; it’s someone else’s job to clean up.

I woke again to the pitter-pat of little raindrops on the dark panes of our windows. I’m up hours before first light in this season, and my first task is Sinterklaas duty. The girls’ shoes are in the entryway, and I have to quietly drop gifts into the shoes. First, I get to read the heart-breakingly sweet notes my girls have written to the saint. Little Ren is just learning to write, and her notes are sometimes cryptic, always illustrated with her drawings, asking for some gift, astonishingly cute. I am alone in the morning with these notes in the morning, wishing time would stop.

In some sense time has already stopped. The month of November is a kind of sinkhole of consciousness, even when it doesn’t begin with convalescence from COVID. November is always a convalescence, existentially, a convalescence from itself, from decay. Its darkness is a course of treatment, a round of waters from Lethe, a dip in chilly waters, a subsidence of consciousness. We are reminded that living is experiencing the shifting boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness. We spend the years explaining that moving line to each other. The unconscious is inside us. It is the divine; it is the true consciousness. It is the blackness from which consciousness miraculously arose and which will swallow us again. It is a source of wisdom. We own it. God owns it. It is literally nothing. All these things we tell each other, explaining a mystery that – if there is in fact design to the universe – was specifically designed to be unknowable.