Did you know grass was legal in Amsterdam?!? I know, right?!? And not just Amsterdam. It's not some rogue nation-state making its own rules, but all of the Netherlands. Me, I'm a Reagan Baby. I just say NO, wouldn't touch the stuff, but I thought it was an interesting, "travel fact."
Also, five Amstel tall boys, .70 Euro cents a piece, fit in my shoulder bag.
These things are at the heart of Vondelpark O'clock.
As I've traveled alone more and more, city parks have become a haven of sorts. I'm not sure if since--going back to a rocky start in Madrid--the first place I felt really good in Europe was in a city park it's a conditioned reaction. Notwithstanding, I visit every major city park in every city I go to. People watching is endless entertainment and city parks in Europe are just nice. Compared to Texas, the weather is cooler, the grass is greener, and the wild life is almost like the pages of a picture book emptied into real life.
The Dutch, among so many over things, have their parks down. With what seems like a little more room and urban planning from the get go, the Netherlands has a nice mixture of well ordered city parks with benches and ponds and city parks of dense forest with a few trails weaving through the columns of trees. Vondelpark in Amsterdam is the former, but it is massive. I took a different entrance into the park everyday and as many landmarks as I established I never seemed to double back. They have wide stretches of lawn where you can lay out. Park benches situated near the more populated areas to soak up humanity in its supreme weirdness. They even have an adult sized tree fort/jungle gym I couldn't find again if you begged me too. And the birds! They have amazing ducks. I would always feel a thrill when I saw a mallard, but compared to the massive wooly brown and purple ducks quacking around, they're like green headed turds. And all the ducks had their babies at their feet. No matter how broken you are on the inside, when you see a bunch of ducklings drinking from the pond hidden under their mother you can't help but feel, for at least a second, maybe I can be good. They have a fucking heron in Vondelpark! Huge with her s-curved neck and feathers like hand strung strands of lace curtain.
God, it's beautiful day. I love the murky and oppressive blue in the sky here. I'll sit here until sundown and go get something to eat. The same place. The place behind Wok to Walk. I think that kebab saved my life last night. Best one I've had in Europe. The chili sauce left a thumbprint on my brain. The tatziki and chili and meat on a spit meat, he just...that guy gets it. It's cause he's Dutch, the Dutch get it. Look at this guy.
He made a wide circling turn on his rickety bike spray painted red and black and as he was bound to careen into me he made a lazy turn. Lickety-cut, lickety-cut his bike trundled on.
That's how I'll write it later. I like the way Malcolm Lowry writes sounds, I think I can steal that. Lickety-cut. Can you use trundled there? I'm going to, all words are made up anyway. I swear I'm two days out from speaking Dutch...Holy shit, he got off his bike and in the middle of the path broke into an impeccable Michael Jackson dance. Robotic tics and shuffled feet and body control, it was all there. I wonder what song it is. He's dressed like smooth criminal era MJ, I wonder if he's stopping and dancing to that weird digression in the song that always bothered me so much as a child.
Look at these ducks and baby ducks. Mother and father look like calico cats and the babies are just tufted in brown and yellow and black. I wonder how many we're lost this spring. It seems impossible to believe all of them, these babies, survived.
Hey Dutch girl. Hey Dutch couple. Ne, ne, ne. That's why I want to speak Dutch so I can say--Ne, ne, ne--in that convincing and melodious arc. I like their friends on their bikes. It's like we all get to be ten years old forever here. I wish I'd rented a bike. I'll tell people I did, I'll insist they have to, but I didn't. I lie. Not about things that matter, not too much, but I lie. It's like a compulsion I have to get out in small and inane ways or the beast will grow in me like a tapeworm. A long flat liar tapeworm. It must be an occasion. Their friend on yet another bike charged in with hugs for the couple floating on their imperceptible pedestal. Marriage? Come on Dutch girl, you know I'm cuter than your Dutch boyfriend.
Heeeeyyy Dutch girl, you know I'm cuter than (bomp, bomp) your Dutch boiiiiiifriiiiend.
That's a fucking hit record. Why am I falling in love with every Dutch girl I see? The one from earlier today, on the side street backlit like it was movies with her longboard and flaxen hair. Her cool sunglasses. She laughed at us, but it was in a good way. I wish I had better clothes. I'd take picture of people if I had better clothes. Like some tapered paints and slim jackets and bow-ties. Tortoise shell Lennon sunglasses and a stupid hat. Like a skimmer or something. And dress shoes, nice pointed brown dress shoes. I'd tell people darling this and darling that and tell them I'm an aspiring fashion photographer collecting the street looks across Europe. I could print fake Vice Magazine business cards. Vice would probably love it. Then I'd feel obligated to start a fashion blog, cause I can't live with creep guilt. Could be cool.
And the girl from the other hostel, the one one Den Haag, I could have loved her. We had a whole conversation and we made that good eye contact. The game of chicken who'll break it eye contact. I was certain she looked prettier the next day. Her hair was down and I think she was looking for me as I came in and out of the hostel. I swore she had on a Nirvana tee. I'm American, that's our thing, but it could be our thing. Mine and hers. Our eyes locked every time. Maybe because I was looking for her. She even mentioned she didn't have a boyfriend. The breadcrumb trail.
"What's the wifi password," he called after her.
She crossed with an armful of laundry poised and efficient. A good worker, the loveliest quality yet of her glittering menagerie putting weight on his once forgotten heart.
"I like you," she replied with one azure eye cast over her shoulder, hair like honey dredged chrome pulled up in sheer practicality.
He paused for a moment, never responding, and quickly stared into the void of his tablet to punch in the password "ilikeyou" embarrassed to think even a crack would show from the impact of her words.
"Don't you believe me?" she asked having paused on her path to the laundry room perched on the balls of her slender feet.
"No, it works. I just hoped that was exclusively for me."
She laughed. A good laugh. He could hardly tell pity from flirtation anymore, but he was glad he'd said it.
She said she'd have to have a boyfriend before she could go on a trip like mine. I could be that boyfriend. She loved the trip. She might could love the traveler? Maybe as much as I love telling people about my trip. "Woooaaahhh," they all say. Fuck your two weeks after your semester in Rostock. Six months! I'm so fucking cool. You're so cool. Her skin was so fair and pretty with her dumb sandy hair and stupid, perfect blues eyes. Like, no other blue. But, really, like lots of blues. I need more words for blue. Maybe thats why we have so few words for blue, because that RadioLab podcast said blue was the last color we made up. I love how the greeks described the ocean as the color of wine. I could have loved her, but why all these Dutch girls? It's because they don't have to be real. No, it's so you don't have to be real. You don't have to eventually ring hollow and watch the facade cave in with their growing disappoint as their eyes wonder for something no longer real, as you once were to them....Damn, that's good, I'm gonna use that somewhere else later. You're so smart. Smart and cool.
I think I'm in love (probably just hungry)
I think I'm your friend (probably just lonely)
I think you got me in a spin (probably just wasted)
I don't think those are the words. I do love that song. I'm gonna listen to it later. Why'd you do it J Spaceman? Why do lead singers think they matter so much? Fucking Sting. But no time for all that, it's Vondelpark O'clock, me bruv. We going one for one?It won't be like yesterday. Monte, Compete! as Swide would say. Reach! as the wolf would say. Fuck it! Woo! It is our designated park time after all. Holy, sacred Vondelpark O'Clock. Like when those German seeming girls asked you and it sounded like, "Where is Wonder Park?" It is wonder park, but I had to tell them I'm just a stranger here. I wonder if I look Dutch? Maybe I just walk with purpose.
I'm a stranger here, just blowed in your town. I love that song. Sonny and Brownie. Or is it Brownie and Sonny? I should listen to that song.
Look at them. This couple and their friends. I wonder if they'll make it. I wonder if any of us will make it. I've always wanted to say that to a girl who is just pretty, who has only had to be pretty "Don't worry, maybe your second husband will love you."
The heron lit into a tree with her gossamer plumage of confederate greys and eyeshadow blue--and her s-curved neck--the air supplicating to her beating wings.
I wonder if I need to specify what kind of eyeshadow? It's like that type that's light and silvery the classy girls just barely use a bit of. I love these birds. I'm gonna write a fucking poem about it. I swear I could be a great poet. It's only because I think poetry is a joke. It may be the only kind of writing I wouldn't try so had at it might be good.
Walk Away Renee
Duck families skitter by. Mother and father poised painted wooden decoys. Ducklings but fawns tufted in brown and white. They drink from the river, a quorum of five crowded around mother's column feet.
A Herron, with its elegant neck shaped like the bend in the creek
Two dark water birds with candied corns beaks and dinosaur feet.
Fat leafed plants with their faces upturned savage their thirst until dusk turns to dishwater, crowding those cast in shadow, those looking downward into the wavering reflection for salvation.
A couple sits wrapped in blankets.
A man with a bong in front of him and a boy on a bike have an exchange of sorts.
The couple decides to go.
The trees have had it easy. You can tell by their arrogance.
I wonder if it'll make people think about death. Or religion. That's every poem ever, right? I've got to figure out where I'm gonna use the heron neck reference. Is that even a heron? I'm not gonna read it again. I'm pretty sure it's no good. It's not me, it's not Rimbaud. That guy didn't care. I just care too much. No, not true, it's the ongoing battle to be me. I'm a withering echo chamber of I don't give a fuck. It's a vacuum in me where the words echo over and over again. Maybe that's the way it is with everyone but people dare to build something irrational in defiance of this base state of being. I wrote a poem, how fucking ridiculous. I wonder if people even notice me as much as I cackle to myself.
And when you're smiling for no reason you'll know you're happy again, and they'll know you've gone mad.
As quickly, he felt bad.
There it is, the sickly sweet wave of nausea. How many deep did we go today? It's the tobacco. Why is it always with tobacco here? I hate cigarettes but I want to be polite. I can't do all of this. All these things. The light meals and the tall...I can't even finish the word. I can't focus on a single thought too long. The fifth one-for-one was a bad idea. Vondelpark O'clock is too much fun?
Lickety-Cut. Lickety-Cut.
No, no repetitive thoughts. Nothing over and over again. You can't. Not in a foreign land, not in a park like this. You will not be able to recover if you lose the thread. It happened yesterday, how'd you let it happen again? Put your goddamn headphones in.
His mouth perspires saliva and his guts rose into his--stop fucking narrating.
Oh God, music only made it worse. It was like it was thrumming tilt a whirl off center in my brain. The scene from the Sandlot. Kids sick everywhere.
Why would you do that to yourself?
Lay down.
It's Michael Jackson again. Across the river.
I can hear the young kids mocking him. They're so cruel. Their cruelty is so heavy the water on the pond ripples.
Okay, you cant lay down. Just sort of, like, perch against the tree. Pour out the rest. Just tump it over and don't look at it. You know you'll lose it if you watch it pour onto the ground. If you can weather the storm, maybe twenty-thirty minutes to go, and we'll go get our kebab. From the same place as last night. Then we'll go to the hostel. Out till around 11, that's a good day. Hold it together. Kebab. Sleep. That's the perfect day. The park has a hostel in it. We'll stay there next time. We'll be okay and eat our kebab with chili and tatziki and stay here again and hold hands with our Dutch girlfriend...
He awoke like a man in peril, a man thrust from a dream just shallow enough to drown in. He did a cursory inventory of his bag and skulked away eyes darting back and forth. The congress of night gathered round him whispered to one another, hands over their face.
No comments:
Post a Comment