Saturday, Jun. 21, 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.
(Continued from Holland 1.)
Holland 2
I sit on the train. Towns and villages blur by. I smile at the gray-blue Dutch dawn, smell the Dutch apple tart scent wafting from the passenger beside me, eating his breakfast. Drops of rain fall onto the double glass window.
I think about my reservation at the youth hostel… Why had I forgotten about the time difference? That simple miscalculation (echoing my mathematically impaired childhood) had cost $3 and lost my guaranteed lodging that night. Would I have to sleep on the street? Would I be slumming it, snoozing on Henry's black leather bag at Amsterdam Centraal Station? (They added an extra "A" to the word Central. Was it a sly jab at me? Did the extra "A" in fact mean "a**hat," which is what I felt like right now?)
I just breathed in the dry train air and tried not to think about it. "I may be an a**hat, but I'm an a**hat on vacation, darn it," I reminded myself aloud. A few of my fellow passengers glanced at me wearily, but said nothing.
We pulled into the station and I immediately hop off the train, through the station and onto the puddle streets of the city of A'dam, as the train sign had termed it. (How trendy! By the same token, I live near W'ton, although I hail from L'na. Quick, everyone, let's abbr. evrythg!)
It was raining, but I had a good umbrella, my trusty rain jacket and a heart hungry for adventure. With map in hand, I wonder why the directions to the youth hostel are so circuitous. They wind this way and that, looping around the city. I soon understand why.
Women stand, backs slightly arched, in black light doorways. Their pouting red lips are the only area covered on their bodies. One intones, "Can I ask you a question?" Another queries, "You an American?" And still another asks my favorite question of the day, "Vy don't you poot down that bahg and vee-zeet me?" I have no response to any of these questions, so I just smile and look away. It makes me a little nervous when I'm addressed by them like a potential client.
Yep, the shortest route to the hostel goes right through the red light district. In fact, after I turn a corner and pass three more "window front" ladies, I realize that my lodging is squarely in the middle of the sex district. It's just down the block from the Sex Museum. How quaint. No wonder they have a strict curfew.
I waltz in, check in, plop down my bags and take a catnap. For, like, five hours. Okay, so it wasn't a catnap. But it was hard to sleep on the plane, with all the friendly folks, the dry air and the imminent risk of a fiery suicide bomber deathtastrophe. And the bed was comfortable. It was calling my name out, but with a crisp, Dutch accent. I couldn't resist. The sheets were crisp, too. It felt as though they'd been starched. But maybe they just weren't the same soft cotton that I'm used to.
I gather myself up out of sleep. It's early afternoon, time for a preliminary round-the-block recon. Before long, I am on the street. There's a little boy walking unsteadily. He's about three, one hand holding his father's. The other hand is covered with powdered sugar. They've just left one of the little bakeries that serve amazing breakfast treats. These places have a huge display case, the length of the entire bakery, lined top to bottom with fresh and inviting pastry goodness. Powdered sugar on a steamy warm golden waffle -- I can almost taste it as the kid walks by me. He's so intent on his hand-held breakfast that he trips over the uneven sidewalk.
I give into the urge that his obvious delight plants within my greedy stomach. I walk into the bakery, which radiates a toasty warmth from the ovens in the back. I feast on the handsome smile of the clerk first, then I breathe in the crisp-tender delicacy of one of those waffles. (But I get the kind partially dipped in chocolate before the heavenly shower of powdered sugar.)
Heaven. Pure, unadulterated, uncut heaven. It's like I've passed up the cannabis and headed straight for the crack! But it's even better than your average crack. (Not that I've had crack, of course, but from what I've read, this was much better than that stuff.)
I'm half-way through my waffle and I realize -- I haven't had any cannabis! So I thumb through my "Lonely Let's Go Planet Frommer's Le Guide Blue" and find Abraxus, which gets glowing reviews from all of the above guidebooks. It's down a small alley, just a 10-minute walk from the waffle house. The three-level place has a comfy basement with a tripped-out DJ spinning trip-hop-nautica, a bar with flirty, slightly goth girls, some internet stations and a large display case of eclectic goodies. I got some comp comp time, so I checked my work inbox and sipped on mint tea. Soon, I decided I needed to sample some of the food on the menu. There are pot brownies, pot muffins, space cakes, hash-hish cakes, fruit and candy. I opt for three or seven of the pot brownies and space cakes. I eat them slowly at first. My pace is methodical and reserved. I nibble on them with the cautiousness of a scientist. But that's a silly metaphor, since I was simultaneously the scientist and the subject. And that's so not a kosher experimental methodology. And I knew it. But I forced myself to eat slowly, until, after the third one, I just gobbled them down like a hopped up Cookie Monster on meth-amphetamines.
It's around this time when I realize that the trip-hop-nautical music is performing an hypnosis on my me. It's ringing around and dancing with sound and causing my brain stem to flower and bloom with a zoom-a-zoom-zoom and a boom-a-boom-boom and gee, aren't the flowers are pretty, George?)
Spirals and lines and spheroids, trapezoids and freakazoids and -- oops! -- I said "freakazoids" and everybody knows that's not a shape… or at least it wasn't a shape until I just thought it was, and now I realize that it was, in fact, a shape. It just never had been called one. You learn so much about yourself and about meaning and about the meaning of yourself on this stuff. Was that a run-on sentence? Because my head just keeps running on. Boy Howdy! Howdy boy, did you know that a freakazoid is just a trapezoid with a penchant for breakdancing? Nah, I didn't think ya did. What? It's not? It's just a word from the early 80s? What?!?
I disagree. I mean, isn't the very nature of an abstract thought merely a matter of nomenclature and an observant mind? Mind? I don't mind at all! Ha ha ha. Seriously, folks, I really appreciate you all coming down here for a gander at the old "dairyland.com!" Oh, I meant "diaryland." Ha. That reminds me of conversation I had in a Paris café with Kenneth Starr and Liza Minelli. Liza told Kenneth and me that, "You can't beat a good malted milkshake from America's dairyland." And you just can't argue about that. Enough said.
The ramble/rant/stream of unconsciousness above is just an example of what flew through my mind in the time it took for a crumb of one of those brownies to fall from my mouth and hit the floor -- we're talking about half a second of elapsed time.
So you can imagine that by the forth brownie/muffin, I was really focused on the ridiculous profundity of my every thought. Or at least their perceived profundity… Hey, give me a break. It's not like I trip out everyday. As experiences go, it's like a rare and unique snowflake for me, brought to me in part by a grant from the wacky Dutch government, that put down a bunch of money to ensure the quality of my cannabis and the hygienic environment of this very coffee bar.
For the under educated of my readership, I'll tell you this: the government of Holland studied drug use extensively and found that the major problem with most frequently used illegal drugs was simply the fact that they were illegal. That was the worst problem with them. So they legalized them. Yes, there's drug abuse and yes, there are people with serious addiction problems. But the government cites that the rates of reported problems are much lower than before. And as an added bonus, the tourists just eat that stuff up … literally.
[Continued here.]
