At the window of a chain coffee place, I am sitting with a large cappuccino and the view of one of Amsterdam’s easternmost waterways. No tourist comes here, though plenty of ex-pats live in this hood. By my own elitist standards and desire to support the small businesses that mill patrons into neighbors, this is not my kind of spot. But there is no question that sometimes, as in a classroom or airport lounge, the generic helps you think.
Not from here a few days ago there was a gunshot. That made the news. Gunshots make the news in the Netherlands. Murders are a national story.
Yesterday was Kingsday. Of the three days of bacchanalia that take place every year, Kingsday is the bacchanalia-est. Not much more than a country-wide frat party with everyone wearing the color of the land, the city center becomes a giant orange orgasm.
You can feel the knackered hangover this morning as this pseudo-Starbucks is less busy than it should be now.
I am thinking about what to write, not for this space, but for another. I have this idea of going through a few poems line by line, sitting with them for a month each. That is not just because I think of poetry as prayer—something I learned in different ways from teachers and my friend Charlie and my friend Mona and others—but because I think our whole world needs a kind of silent meditative retreat.
I am no scholar and even less of a silent retreat guy. Rather, it feels like I have cut my leg on distraction and rootlessness and that out of instinct I need to put pressure on the wound, to sit with something over and over. What better than a poem?
Anyway, I’ll let you know.
As a book dealer in Ireland once said to me, “look after yourself,”
Ted