Murmuring. The sounds, the loud laughter. It probably is nonsense escaping the mouths of these people, but it fills what otherwise would be a silent space with a mass of noise that conducts my inner turbulence into scale that matches it better.
I sat down in the bar closest to our new house. It’s brown because of the wooden furniture, and the colouring of the wallpaper, bearing witness of the time when a cloud of smoke was one of its defining characteristics. People here play chess, probably far better than me. I didn’t follow their moves yet, but I counted seven boards. There’s Go as well. It appears that even if only for a little bit, I’m settling my trials and tribulations in my favourite neighbourhood in Amsterdam, de Jordaan. We moved here a week ago.
A lot has happened since I last wrote for this blog. In random order: been homeless, organized a street festival, started two jobs at two universities, lost my last grandma, ended another job, moved three times, dropped an amount of baggage I cannot quite define and bought my most expensive coat yet. Oh and fall has entered. Yes.
I don’t think that’s all, but to me it seems like quite a lot to handle in a period of two months. The handling seems to be going fine, I’m just wondering when the days come in which I’ll digest it all. Could it be that if so much happens to you at once, the experience of it disappears into the void? Or will it catch up one day, when I’ve stopped running and forgot watching my emotional back?
They say that if you don’t chew your food well, it just passes through, meaninglessly and ends up in the sewage with half of its energy still inside. Because you didn’t mingle with it. Could it be that way with life as well? Is that how people sometimes discover who they’ve been all along?
It’s messy here. In the way a classic Dutch bar is messy. The ceiling bladders here and there. Pringles cyclinders behind the bar. Brown books on the shelves; piled up games. A baby shoe is hanging from the bar, next to it to ice skates you can bind under your shoe. Old and new are blent. My lower back hurts. It’s not my position. It’s my structural lack of self-support.
Six globe-shaped lamps are pending in a half circle held by iron bars. On the seventh position, a double spotlight from IKEA, stuck to the ceiling as two big frogs, looking in opposite directions. The murmuring goes on. So does the turbulence. Guess this is home for now.
Sailing on Dreams 