Sunday, Jun. 15, 2003 - 10:39 am
Um... I'm sorry.
This relationship just isn't working for me.
I'm at www.dailypreciousness.org now. So change that bookmark.
Holland 1
I suppose it was bound to happen -- historical inevitability and all that sort of thing: I get jabbed in the side.
There's a dull ache, like the shock of being hit by a bullet… but more metaphorical… It's one of those arrows. You know, one of the arrows the iconic bird is holding… the great seal has been folded to reveal the arrows in the eagle's grip. And I get shot in the side with one. Thanks, Dubya.
Before my vacation even begins -- before I even get off the ground, this crazy war has inflicted a vacationus interruptus on me:
The man behind the check-in desk at Dulles types in my name, twists up his lips in confusion and asks blithely, "You didn't get a call about your flight, sir?"
"Yes, I got a call saying it was leaving on time".
Tap, tap, tap. It was cancelled, he replies nonchalantly, adding that the military asked for the use of that plane. He taps at his keyboard some more. "We'll find you another flight."
Tap, tap, tap. I experience a sinking, proto-stress feeling. It's like a porcupine juggling javelins in my stomach.
In the cab ride to National airport, I think about Henry. I'm lucky to have him on my side. He'd offered a complimentary drop-off and pick-up service. How could I have refused? It was a relaxing ride to the airport. There was comforting, warm hand holding action.
He even had some neat new music on hand to share with me. I listened to it for a minute before I realized that it was the acoustic version of some music that I'd just shared with him. And he took me to a restaurant across the street from his office, where the staff doted on him like adoring aunts. "We've missed you," they nagged good-naturedly. "Why don't you come by and see us more often?" He countered with the usual playful familiarity, grinning like the cherished nephew or son-in-law. Then he sang the familiar "business sucks" tune that everyone in the business district knows.
We finish our food, say our goodbyes and depart.
I'm rolling along, over the canyon-like potholes of the Dulles speedway. I can smell the leather seats in the cab. They're worn threadbare. Like the cabbie, I think. He's not looking quite as chipper as his picture would suggest. What happened to the smiling man in the mug shot? He seems kind of worn down, too. I guess this sort of work might do that. He's like a puppet to me. I can yank him north or south. I can taunt him with an hour of inch worming down I-95 at peak travel time. Or I can shout a dramatic command: "Follow that cab!" (Does that ever happen in real life? Would a cab driver do that? How does that fit into their professional code of ethics? I wonder. I'll have to try that sometime…)
I jump forward to the Troppen Museum, the museum of the tropics. I inspect puppets of a different kind. They're pulled by literal strings, but weathered by former use and by the rigors of travel. Packed up in little coffin-like crates, they no probably traveled over the seas on tradesmen's ships during the Golden Age of Dutch trading, 1600-1601. Their lacquered faces show cracks and chips that belie their age. The random irregularities are etched into eerily appropriate places.
Was that smile line the result of a clumsy curator in the 1800s? The nick just above the left eye -- was it inflicted during a turbulent seaborne voyage? So many exotic mysteries inhabit the space behind the inscrutable eyes of the little figurines.
As I marvel at these dolls, I hear a handful of first-person narratives. They're of teenage inhabitants of formerly Dutch colonies and historical trading partners. "Mama was a jazz singer in the 1930s," one intones. Black and white images, a bit fuzzy, depict a svelte beauty with shiny skin and painted lips. She's singing and swinging with the big band behind her. Trombones make graceful arcs in the air behind her -- the spirited choreography peculiar to the genre is in swings in a sympathetic rhythm to her hips.
I imagine her dress is a scandalous red, matched by her pouty, painted lips. But which red is it?
Would it have been the scarlet, harlot red of the tulips, which translates in the language of flowers to "my love for you passionate"?
Or is it the ruby red of shiny wooden shoes, waiting to be bought, quietly resting on racks in the tourist shops?
Is it the hue of spicy red peppers that added zing to the Indonesian food for which Amsterdam known?
Or would her dress echo the subdued color of the Gouda cheese, in its burgundy wax shell? (The cheese's name, a friend reminded me later, is pronounced "Chooda," with the "Ch" sound pronounced in the throat like the Yiddish "Lachaem.")
Whatever the color of her dress, she was a real sight. This doting granddaughter and sassy octogenarian typified the museum for me. It was a great mix of the very recent past and the distant memory. It provided good context.
I remember leaving the museum and wondering if my umbrella would survive the strong gusts coming up from the Zuider Zee (Southern Sea). They inverted my umbrella twice that afternoon. The windmills that I'd seen would've been whirling feverishly in this weather. (We're at Orange Alert, Don Quixote!)
Windmills are one of the first things that spring to mind when one imagines Holland. But they don't exactly have one at every street corner. Like the plantation home of the South or the formal teahouse of Japan, the windmills of Holland have been relegated to the status of objects of historical preservation. After the industrial revolution, their efficiency and unreliable performance didn't sustain them into the age of steam and turbine.
Now they sit with historical plaques -- vestigial organs of an industrious nation that dug itself out of the mud and into a wind-powered technological era… except for a few.
In the industrial Southern suburbs of Harlaam, there exist a dozen or so modern windmills: turbines of white steel, lanky and graceful, towering over gray smokestacks and construction cranes. They are sleek and streamlined, like nubile dancers standing erect and tall in a crowd of squat, ash-covered mine workers.
I sit next to a nubile dancer in first class. The cold, dry air of the plane seems to accentuate the bones in her long, graceful neck. The seat's a little wider in this cabin, but my neighbor doesn't need it. You could probably fit two or three dancers in these seats. We get a choice of party snack mix or pretzels. (Sadly, there are no peanuts on airplanes -- apparently a few hundred deaths on planes and the anti-peanut lobby has selfishly succeeded in banning a truly wonderful snack from air travel. It's a crime! Where was Jimmy Carter when this happened? Those genetic freaks should just take the train instead. It would probably help poor Amtrak increase its passenger load by tenfold.)
I chat with the dancer-type, who is a student from Ghana. She's going back home. Through the pleasant haze provided to me by four miniature glasses of wine, she is smiling. My God, is she thin! But those Ghana folks are probably just tall and lanky naturally. I read in a running magazine that they're prone to have high-twitch muscles, which are perfect for marathon running. Think Engergizer bunny brand batteries in their muscles. White folks, like me, aren't usually as lucky. We're more likely to have low-twitch, which is sort of the old busted Duracell muscle of the running world.
Pattie is a college student, studying business in Chicago. She's on spring break. Her smooth, dark chocolate skin is glowing after her second drink. She's apparently even more affected by the wine than I am! We talk about what it's like to be far from home. I ask her about her mother. "She used to sing to me -- the stories of her village!" The woman brims with childlike enthusiasm. I've hit upon a geyser of memory. "Do you have a favorite story from your childhood?" She immediately begins with a charming tale about her village's fastest messenger. (I'd mentioned that I'm a marathon-runner, so she figured I would appreciate this story. She was right.) The moments race by while she shares with me her stories. Before long, I realize that we're almost there. It's a painful and bitter moment for me. Yes, I'd enjoyed the story. I had enjoyed it so much that I hadn't realized that we were almost there. In other words, I was about to be forced to restore my seatback to the full, up-right position. That story had taken up most of the flight. I'd forgotten to indulge in the the luxury of space afforded me in my first class seat. Oh -- yes, the chardonnay was tasty. (The in-flight magazine called it "a boutique-style chardonnay: Reserve Sainte Foi 2001, darling… delicious toasty, buttery aromas carried through, balancing the granny smith apple taste. The soft finish and thirst-quenching mild lemon flavor really come through!")
Bathed in the buttery granny smith apple flavor, I chat with Maria, the talkative gal from Mexico City. But she's much too into the flirty Dutchman who lives in Houston (he calls it "Hey-YOU-stone") to spend too much time with me. Was it my manly foot odor that caused her to be cold with me? I don't know. Maybe it was just the tall, blond Dutchman. Maybe he had told her lies about me or implied that my foot odor was symptomatic of the SARS virus. (Yes, the SARS virus was the other little news item that popped up while I was on vacation. The day I left was probably the very beginning of the epidemic. Scary to think that I was on a huge airplane, packed tight with people, sitting right on top of one another, just a-spreading those colds.)
I survived the flight. SARS-free. I landed in the amazing International Airport, Shiephol. The airport is all lemon yellow and bluebery blue. It has the clean, spare aesthetic of an Ikea store that has morphed into a major intermodal transportation center. Oh, and it's a mall, too -- a huge one. Picture five thousand Japanese tourists' omiyage (souvenir) needs being met every hour. Rows upon rows of boxes fill the shelves. They house buttery milk chocolate, sharp ebony-colored licorice and cream-dreamy filled chocolates confections.
A million euros and a thousand bows later, the tiny little tourists trudge out the doors of the duty free shops, weighed down with twice their weight in presents. I glide by with my feather light luggage and grin at them. They nervously look away.
In less than ten minutes off the plane, I have located a money machine, gotten a fat load of colorful euro bills for my wallet, called the youth hostel about my room, bought a ticket for the train and plopped myself down.
