The sharp taste of white wine is still on my tongue, at least when I think about Amsterdam. But not in the way I intially thought it would be. After walking through Skinny Alley, a narrow passageway lined with prostitutes on both sides who were hidden behind curtains (some exposed by a thin glass window), I thought I would hate Amsterdam with its infamous Red Light District and the smell of marijuana drifting around street corners. I don't know much, but I know I will remember their faces long after they forget mine, their beautiful eyes lined with thick black and fake eyelashes. I am sure the Australian guys I'm traveling with will remember the girls' exposed bodies long after they forget their blank and sometimes seductive looks. Such is the nature of prostitution.
Amsterdam, however, is much more than red lights and legalized sex for money exchanges. It holds a deep history for those with the time to explore it, like the house Anne Frank was hidden in for two years and a Van Gogh museum that tourists wait several hours in line to see.
On every block, one will also notice the Heineken signs boldly proclaiming the enormous Heineken brewery where I spent much of my afternoon. My short stay in the city didn't allow for a dip into rich history, but I did emerge with something else.
We crowded around the woman who had just filled all our glasses with the golden Heineken liquid, topped with an inch of pure white foam. "Women generally don't like beer because they don't know how to drink it," she said, smiling. "They sip at the foam, not realizing that the foam provides the bitterness of the taste." The sweetness comes from the honey-like liquid underneath.
Like life, this brewery contained within it an intricate process of development. Beer wasn't just something that could be thrown together the night before a party. I entered the factory intrigued and left with conviction. It is true that the only cross I saw marked a cathedral known for sailors who used to come repenting after having slept with a bunch of random girls during their travels. Despite the seemingly secular nature of the city, though, I still wondered: Why do people, why did I, automatically associate drinking with drugs and prostitution? Maybe the easy answer is that they often go together. They don't have to. And the fact that Christians often throw them in the same trash pile makes me so angry.
Beer brings people together. And yes, indulgence ruins intimacy as friends stumble around trying to find a cab home, looking out for number one, but what happens before that is magic. I'm not talking about the "buzz" because I don't drink to get drunk (in the states I don't drink at all--I'm not of age). Rather, there's something inherent in beer that awakens the lover, the dreamer, the fighter in all of us. For however many gulps it takes people to finish, they can believe that life is good. For a break of time, the world and its ugliness is forgotten. Childlike dreams come back in the commeraderie. Lips are loosened toward honesty and real aspirations. This is not some philosophic or concrete truth, although perhaps it could be explained with the chemistry of the brain. I'm not concerned with this or giving it a name--it's part of the mystery of being human. Alcohol also reminds us of how human we actually are, for our bodies can only take so much before control is lost.
I'm not undermining that some drink just to experience this loss of control: they are lazy, life has left them less than satisfied and they crave the rocking pleasure. The magic still touches them, though not as long as it touches me as I watch them. It tastes as sweet as the ginger Dutch pancake I ate around two in the afternoon, and the bittersweet taste of Heineken's reminds me that Amsterdam is more than cheap thrills and hazy morals. No, the city I just described is what lies between the foam and the carbonated gold. One cannot leave Amsterdam without tasting the bitterness of women who make a living by selling their bodies. Where are the fathers of this world? Do their daughters remember what it was like to be called princess by a man of dignity? Or were they not fortunate enough to live a life like mine? I wanted to know their stories, where they've been. A silent melancholy grabbed onto my shoulders through those lanes. These women experienced real reduction: men mocked on. And as my mind dwelt here, the bitter bubbles of beer threatened to overwhelm my tastebuds.
But the gold lay just under, in the sun that shone through the canals and the brewery and the beauty,
and the tensions between the bitter and the sweet, waiting, inviting people to come see.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
london
Sitting inside the glass window of Pret across the street from the Russell Square stop of the underground, I catch hundreds of glances from people passing by. Some are clearly tourists, more tourist than me--here to see the Olympics and oh, guess we might as well see London too, since we're here. But to some, I'm the tourist. Joke's on me because London will swallow you whole.
Within five minutes of arriving, I was approached by an old restless man with white frizzy hair, a frayed book in hand, reaching out his other and asking for change. I couldn't make eye contact with him for pity. He was harmless, though. London, at large, was not, with its people and its prices and its bright red telephone booths that promised familiarity though giving only monotony. In all my time in England, I had yet to see someone actually use one. Welcome to the 21st century. London, where everyone has a cell phone. Maybe I was just being cynical and couldn't accept that something once utilitarian could become something entirely new (now a significant marker of England).
American music played background in cafe Pret, a table to my left spoke Spanish--both tastes of home. I was so thankful for these, as they came most unexpectedly. Certain triggers already struck me toward thinking of the people I love, like the vending box outside the underground stop; the banner blaring SMOOTHIES*MILKSHAKES*JUICES reminded me of waiting for Adam after he missed the Tube a couple months ago during Wheaton's stay in London. Suddenly, I had an urge to follow the street back to the Mentone where we had stayed--a place I braced myself never to see again. What would that do other than bring back memories I could never live again? Sweet ones, like sitting in a quaint cafe with Phoebe and writing the afternoon away. Or bitter ones turned gentle as time diminished the edges to a soft touch: Adam and I sitting on a ledge talking serious.
Then, I had experienced London for the first time from the inside of a hotel window with a fragile white curtain blowing in toward us, pushed by the breeze and revealing the scary stares of street dwellers. I was safe inside with friends and books and professors. Now I was back in the same London on the same streets in the same summer. I wondered for a while, watching the new people filter onto sidewalks to avoid traffic lights, why this London felt as foreign as an American accent after a summer in Europe. Then it donned on me deeply, like sugar settled into the bottom of a glass Coke bottle. The real difference between then and now was me. I didn't know how much a person could change in only a month and a half, but it didn't matter. Because even an infinitesimal amount could light the tension between what was and what is, who you were and who you are. The tension was palpable namely since it was invisible. It was uncomfortable since it wasn't communal. I wanted to fight it, to return to the girl I had known, whose skin was my own.
Right then, as I had these thoughts, I saw a man enter a phone booth. It wasn't a bright red one. Rather, a dark blue--English telephone booth nevertheless, and it made me smile to myself. A little piece of home returned to my soul. Something somewhat new, but no, never entirely.
Within five minutes of arriving, I was approached by an old restless man with white frizzy hair, a frayed book in hand, reaching out his other and asking for change. I couldn't make eye contact with him for pity. He was harmless, though. London, at large, was not, with its people and its prices and its bright red telephone booths that promised familiarity though giving only monotony. In all my time in England, I had yet to see someone actually use one. Welcome to the 21st century. London, where everyone has a cell phone. Maybe I was just being cynical and couldn't accept that something once utilitarian could become something entirely new (now a significant marker of England).
American music played background in cafe Pret, a table to my left spoke Spanish--both tastes of home. I was so thankful for these, as they came most unexpectedly. Certain triggers already struck me toward thinking of the people I love, like the vending box outside the underground stop; the banner blaring SMOOTHIES*MILKSHAKES*JUICES reminded me of waiting for Adam after he missed the Tube a couple months ago during Wheaton's stay in London. Suddenly, I had an urge to follow the street back to the Mentone where we had stayed--a place I braced myself never to see again. What would that do other than bring back memories I could never live again? Sweet ones, like sitting in a quaint cafe with Phoebe and writing the afternoon away. Or bitter ones turned gentle as time diminished the edges to a soft touch: Adam and I sitting on a ledge talking serious.
Then, I had experienced London for the first time from the inside of a hotel window with a fragile white curtain blowing in toward us, pushed by the breeze and revealing the scary stares of street dwellers. I was safe inside with friends and books and professors. Now I was back in the same London on the same streets in the same summer. I wondered for a while, watching the new people filter onto sidewalks to avoid traffic lights, why this London felt as foreign as an American accent after a summer in Europe. Then it donned on me deeply, like sugar settled into the bottom of a glass Coke bottle. The real difference between then and now was me. I didn't know how much a person could change in only a month and a half, but it didn't matter. Because even an infinitesimal amount could light the tension between what was and what is, who you were and who you are. The tension was palpable namely since it was invisible. It was uncomfortable since it wasn't communal. I wanted to fight it, to return to the girl I had known, whose skin was my own.
Right then, as I had these thoughts, I saw a man enter a phone booth. It wasn't a bright red one. Rather, a dark blue--English telephone booth nevertheless, and it made me smile to myself. A little piece of home returned to my soul. Something somewhat new, but no, never entirely.
oxford
My body marked the next day as the beginning of my travels through Europe--my last day in Oxford, with the lingering cold that decided it was time to let me smell again. Everyone knows Oxford has a beauteous smell on days that share the rain and sun, when the temperature matches a crisp fall day in the states and the dusters line the streets. It was glorious. The spires sang.
I typed out an e-mail to my mother on an English keyboard with the @ symbol next to the right pinky and read one from my boyfriend. His words freed me to be me apart from him.
My book beckoned me toward the terrace. The space was somewhat indie in its sympathies; a young man was sleeping off his hangover, plastic tarps covered ugly pipes, a stained mirror blocked a small piece of brick, smoke rose from ash trays, and a floor drum remained from the night before. A woman from Germany who I had met yesterday sat smoking and playing with her iphone and watching the man fumble over the pillow that lay lazily under his disheveled hair. It was quite the sight. When I got to page 284 in my book, I decided to venture out to mail my brother his birthday card and finish my walk through the Ashmolean museum. My legs progressed forward lethargically, so much so that my 80-year-old grandmother would have put me to shame. But it was okay because no one was here to notice.
The Ashmolean seemed dry, just like my steps, until I entered the Greek sculpture room. People, artists, lined benches on both sides, sketch books opened. They drew with focus--some with a loose hand, others making the intricate details foreground, and they ranged in age from twenty to seventy or the looks of it. Each was enthralled with their own work. I drew closer to the benches for a glimpse at artistry. Half-formed waist draped in cloth and basic silhouettes grabbed my attention. The room left me with a comfort that had not frequented my experience for some time. It was an international understanding of sorts, an acknowledgement for the arts outside of academia. Perhaps the fact that this site brought me much renewed hope proved that I had become pretentious, believing that only my classmates still cared and all other state universities were set up simply as moratoriums for aimless students who would rather drink their way through Europe than feel something other than pleasure--like the tension of its bloody history or the language barriers that were the external examples of an internal war between one culture and the next. What of these things and the pain they made one feel? The artists in the Ashmolean knew the aesthetic, and they sketched it in subtle strokes for the common man to see a different angle than they were accustomed. So it was: an international understanding of a universal truth, that art wasn't just for the academicians.
Upon my return to the hostel, I made a quick lunch and was peeling an orange, juice falling in sticky lines down the length of my fingers, when I overheard a conversation in the common room. One man mentioned Spain a few times, although they spoke mainly of universities in the states. Ten minutes passed, and I finally worked up the courage to unlock my vocal chords.
"Did you say you were from Spain?" I asked.
"Yeah." he answered.
"My grandparents live there. It's where my mom is from, Northern Spain, Galicia.."
"My whole family is from Galicia," he said and smiled. "Where are you from?"
"The states," I said. "Near Chicago."
A guy in pajama pants popped his head around the corner.
"Who's from the states?" he questioned in an indecipherable accent that I soon found out was Dutch.
"I am."
He pumped his fist into the air, and his face lifted in anticipation.
"I love the United States!"
I laughed. Overseas, I rarely ran into lovers of America. Since I was in no rush, having picked up the leisurely European lifestyle, I sat down for a casual chat. His name was Daan, and as he talked about America, his gestures grew grander and grander. He was from Holland but hadn't been there for a while--Oxford gave him temporary refuge, a place of study that he planned to later extend into maritime law. We ended the conversation with an agreement to talk again and a facebook friend request.
Then I went to my favorite French cafe on St. Giles street in Oxford and wrote down my interactions over my last English scone of the summer and a very bitter cappucino. I tried not to think too hard about the irony.
I typed out an e-mail to my mother on an English keyboard with the @ symbol next to the right pinky and read one from my boyfriend. His words freed me to be me apart from him.
My book beckoned me toward the terrace. The space was somewhat indie in its sympathies; a young man was sleeping off his hangover, plastic tarps covered ugly pipes, a stained mirror blocked a small piece of brick, smoke rose from ash trays, and a floor drum remained from the night before. A woman from Germany who I had met yesterday sat smoking and playing with her iphone and watching the man fumble over the pillow that lay lazily under his disheveled hair. It was quite the sight. When I got to page 284 in my book, I decided to venture out to mail my brother his birthday card and finish my walk through the Ashmolean museum. My legs progressed forward lethargically, so much so that my 80-year-old grandmother would have put me to shame. But it was okay because no one was here to notice.
The Ashmolean seemed dry, just like my steps, until I entered the Greek sculpture room. People, artists, lined benches on both sides, sketch books opened. They drew with focus--some with a loose hand, others making the intricate details foreground, and they ranged in age from twenty to seventy or the looks of it. Each was enthralled with their own work. I drew closer to the benches for a glimpse at artistry. Half-formed waist draped in cloth and basic silhouettes grabbed my attention. The room left me with a comfort that had not frequented my experience for some time. It was an international understanding of sorts, an acknowledgement for the arts outside of academia. Perhaps the fact that this site brought me much renewed hope proved that I had become pretentious, believing that only my classmates still cared and all other state universities were set up simply as moratoriums for aimless students who would rather drink their way through Europe than feel something other than pleasure--like the tension of its bloody history or the language barriers that were the external examples of an internal war between one culture and the next. What of these things and the pain they made one feel? The artists in the Ashmolean knew the aesthetic, and they sketched it in subtle strokes for the common man to see a different angle than they were accustomed. So it was: an international understanding of a universal truth, that art wasn't just for the academicians.
Upon my return to the hostel, I made a quick lunch and was peeling an orange, juice falling in sticky lines down the length of my fingers, when I overheard a conversation in the common room. One man mentioned Spain a few times, although they spoke mainly of universities in the states. Ten minutes passed, and I finally worked up the courage to unlock my vocal chords.
"Did you say you were from Spain?" I asked.
"Yeah." he answered.
"My grandparents live there. It's where my mom is from, Northern Spain, Galicia.."
"My whole family is from Galicia," he said and smiled. "Where are you from?"
"The states," I said. "Near Chicago."
A guy in pajama pants popped his head around the corner.
"Who's from the states?" he questioned in an indecipherable accent that I soon found out was Dutch.
"I am."
He pumped his fist into the air, and his face lifted in anticipation.
"I love the United States!"
I laughed. Overseas, I rarely ran into lovers of America. Since I was in no rush, having picked up the leisurely European lifestyle, I sat down for a casual chat. His name was Daan, and as he talked about America, his gestures grew grander and grander. He was from Holland but hadn't been there for a while--Oxford gave him temporary refuge, a place of study that he planned to later extend into maritime law. We ended the conversation with an agreement to talk again and a facebook friend request.
Then I went to my favorite French cafe on St. Giles street in Oxford and wrote down my interactions over my last English scone of the summer and a very bitter cappucino. I tried not to think too hard about the irony.
an introduction
I keep expecting to see a familiar face around the corner of Broad Street and walking down St. Giles, but I don't because I'm alone. I've only ever been this alone once--in the confines of international terminals. This is what it must feel like to start over, to rip yourself from the past and put yourself in a new place for a change of pace. But what it does is brnig you to your knees in realization of how insignificant you are, how small.
For three days I wandered in and out of this feeling like a lucid dream. Sometimes, in the heaviness of this haze, Oxford sat brooding over herself like a pretentious fool and I wanted to leave her naked for the birds. But the city was too big and no matter where I went, I was the one being left: sitting in silence surrounded by strangers.
When I took a walk to Port Meadow by a canal walkway, the droning noises of cars and voices was replaced by wind rustling leaves. The water hole, which my classmates and I had made our own with our joy and our commeraderie and our love for each other, stood empty and seemed to bore a stare into my eyes with the message you are alone. I know, I thought, I can feel it in my bones.
Two more nights in Oxford and then I would be gone--who knows when I would return, if I ever would. This was jarring too, not because of the beauty I was leaving behind but of the life I had experienced here. After leaving Oxford, this life would remain only in memory, growing blurry with time until only faint images. Part of me longed to forget, and the rest knew I'd remember the subtleties: the patterned codes on all the entrances, the way the sky let all its water out whenever I went running in university park, the four white doors in a zig zag maze leading to the laundry room. But more than that, I'd remember almost forgetting the code to my door after my boyfriend kissed me good night, the writing that the rain inspired in me, and teaching classmates how to use their laundry cards. These weren't subtleties after all, though. They were memories of my little life, a little life that I'd been given.
Despite the pain of separation, I was ready at twenty to travel Europe--to see it through my own eyes.
He had promised when I came back, he'd be waiting for me. Until then, I was here. Alone and alive.
For three days I wandered in and out of this feeling like a lucid dream. Sometimes, in the heaviness of this haze, Oxford sat brooding over herself like a pretentious fool and I wanted to leave her naked for the birds. But the city was too big and no matter where I went, I was the one being left: sitting in silence surrounded by strangers.
When I took a walk to Port Meadow by a canal walkway, the droning noises of cars and voices was replaced by wind rustling leaves. The water hole, which my classmates and I had made our own with our joy and our commeraderie and our love for each other, stood empty and seemed to bore a stare into my eyes with the message you are alone. I know, I thought, I can feel it in my bones.
Two more nights in Oxford and then I would be gone--who knows when I would return, if I ever would. This was jarring too, not because of the beauty I was leaving behind but of the life I had experienced here. After leaving Oxford, this life would remain only in memory, growing blurry with time until only faint images. Part of me longed to forget, and the rest knew I'd remember the subtleties: the patterned codes on all the entrances, the way the sky let all its water out whenever I went running in university park, the four white doors in a zig zag maze leading to the laundry room. But more than that, I'd remember almost forgetting the code to my door after my boyfriend kissed me good night, the writing that the rain inspired in me, and teaching classmates how to use their laundry cards. These weren't subtleties after all, though. They were memories of my little life, a little life that I'd been given.
Despite the pain of separation, I was ready at twenty to travel Europe--to see it through my own eyes.
He had promised when I came back, he'd be waiting for me. Until then, I was here. Alone and alive.
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