What if we had birds in our heads?
The birds could nibble gently at our negative thoughts. They could take the beautiful ones and deliver them to friends or string them on the trees.
Maybe the birds in our heads would sing us songs about flying through nature, the joys of thermal uplift.
As a first guess, you might think the guy riding his bike around the fountain is trying to set some sort of “no hands/fountain-lap” Guinness Book World record kind of thing. His intensity and speed suggest a completely meaningless challenge, like stacking M&M's as high as you can or holding a pencil in your toes until you cramp up permanently.
For the record, the fountain at the Haarlemmerplein is no great shakes. Just a few rows of jets that pop straight up and then fizzle out. Wet, then nothing, and then back to wet again in a way that means kids can walk into a dry area and then enjoy the spray without getting soaked but with much delight. Maybe this is why there are always people sitting on the benches and hanging about even if this flat plaza with this fountain in the middle is hardly a destination.
(In America this space would have to be a road or a parking lot because it is at a kind of crossing and is in front of a supermarket, the market where I often shop, including a few nights ago.)
Anyway, riding around the fountain no hands as fast as he can is clearly this guys mission. At one point a small city maintenance cart has to do something on the plaza and gets in his way such that he put his hands on his handlebars with clear irritation.
Three facts at least distinguish this guy from myself as bikers:
I could never make the small radius of turn he is making unless I had my hands on my handle bars.
Even with my hands so placed I doubt I would be able to keep up with him given his speed, the occasional walker or fountain hopper he avoids, and the wet of the surface sometimes bikes into.
His fear of biking is less than mine.
Though I can’t parse why he was doing this no hands fountain round and round (which he did the whole time I picked up some pasta and veggies) I walked away from the plaza thinking about and analog for how well and easily the dutch ride bikes with no hands.
Because one of the really beautiful things about bike riding here is how well calibrated it is. What I mean is that as in the old George Carlin joke, there are only really two kinds of drivers: assholes and idiots. (The assholes drive faster than you and the idiots slower.)
But biking reveals all sorts of skills and all sorts of grace and all sorts of styles. They text. They ride with their arms crossed. They change clothing while they're riding. Some Dutch bikers model a straight-up horse riding posture while others lean back as if sailing a skiff. Some show their skill by darting through traffic, others their joy by singing as they go. And on and on, such that every individual can be worth watching in a way that car traffic never allows.
But what is something another culture does that anyone can do (ride a bike) but which the natives not only do better than the visitors but which includes this binary stepping point of fluency, like riding no hands?
No idea. I would have asked the guy doing the fountain laps but he was busy.
The light fades here towards winter with alarming speed. A mid-August day—so much shorter than but a month ago—previews the tiny windows of light just a few months ahead.
From a dream: Dear Mom, I am sorry you were not happy, I could not help you be.