Freedom of Speech

“It was time for us to not see each other for a while; we really needed a break."
The young woman across the aisle was clutching her cell phone, staring out of the train window as she conversed. The car was fairly quiet and all passengers could follow her side of the conversation.

“We needed to take some distance.” That sounds like private information to me, and, if possible, I would want to avoid sharing such personal details with strangers. This is an old saw-horse for non-natives in the Netherlands: we converse more readily than the natives with strangers in public spaces, but we prefer to keep details of our private lives out of those public encounters.

Having said that, there is visible evolution underway; conversational boundaries appear less daunting. Whether or not this is happening independently of the ever-increasing vociferousness of the xenophobic right-wing (on occasion this can trigger responses such as “if you don’t like that in NL, just look at your own country” or “you can leave if you don’t like it” – before things get that far, I try to say: most countries seem to have one. Both countries which continue to supply me with passports certainly do), I can’t say.

More good news: xenophobes from England travelled to Amsterdam this weekend to join their Dutch comrades in an anti-foreigner demonstration, which basically fizzled out due to poor attendance. The righties were indignant about being forced to hold their rally far from the city center. Police kept the xeno’s and rival groups at a safe distance from one another, and I believe the Brits even got a free ride back to the airport in police vans. With so much hostile debate - on the streets and in parliament, for that matter – one doesn’t necessarily want to spend a train trip as witness to the hashing out of a private relationship, no matter how skilled the speaker may be. By the end of the young woman’s conversation with her estranged (business?) partner, she was chuckling and suggesting time and place for coffee.

For those wanting to avoid uninvited input of this nature, the Dutch railway system offers an alternative: many trains include a ‘Silence Car,’ a compartment where conversation, use of telephones and over-modulation of audio devices are discouraged. I respect the zone – not even my emery board comes into view. ‘Silence’ (and the Dutch equivalent ‘Stilte’) appears on the windows for those seated inside. The phone and conversation ban is also introduced with small visual aids on the walls. The challenge can be to identify the car before boarding, by catching a glimpse of the sign as your train speeds up to the platform before screeching to a halt. I scan the cars with some anxiety as they pass; my successes in entering Silence Cars have been purely coincidental.

Several recent occasions come to mind, all of them on trains passing through Amsterdam on their way to Schiphol Airport. Natives who have unwittingly taken seats in the quiet zone can generally be cajoled into a reflective state or at least into reducing their conversation to a whisper. Some collapse in giggles when asked by fellow passengers to respect the rules; others demonstrate belligerence – all of which contributes to even more noise.

A good number of the passengers are foreign visitors on their way to catch a flight home at the end of a busy working day or week. Once on the train, they are experiencing their first moments of leisure, remembering local hosts fondly. They make phone calls to offer thanks and to finalize agreements; they ask people to look out for a vest or scarf carelessly left behind. A Swedish businessman had evidently been working hard: he was slap-happy with laughter as he bid his hosts farewell. A Greek salesman ran a last inventory check, commenting on items held up from the open briefcase on his lap. A man speaking a minority language from the Surinamese interior was harangued into silence by a businesswoman (with whom I shared a moment of significant, simultaneous eyebrow-raising) speaking Sranantongo, the unifying language of Suriname, along with Dutch, of course. A group of French-speaking women introduced great mirth and good cheer into the wordless zone with chatter and laughter (please consult video fragment below). A fellow passenger, again across the aisle, explained (breaking off her glare at the rather derelict figure, with a bandaged hand and unkempt hair, hunched sideways in the bench across from mine in utter oblivion as he emitted a loud, grating snore) - she explained in a delightfully heavy Amsterdam inner-city accent why this was okay:

“They’re foreigners, they don’t know the rules.” I was grateful for this unexpected encounter with a glimmer of tolerance in the zone where we were meant to have immunity from exposure to any and all contrasting views.

Distinctive Breeds

[please see video below text]

A departure board of the old, clattering kind: few lights, great sound – hanging in the Gare du Nord, the train station where passengers heading north bid Paris farewell. People arriving from the north must weave their way towards the street through the crowds, staring upwards at the display until their train’s track number spins into view or recording short videos until the jostling is too much to bear.

A daughter of train-commute culture, I participate in the rail dynamic in general and the Amsterdam-Paris transfer in particular with profound pleasure and some fluency – most of the time. Things got off to a bad start on one occasion, but good fortune was eventually restored, by a number of people, I should add.

The taxi which brought me to the Gare that day pulled up to the main entrance with some speed. I was on the late side and had imagined gathering my bags and setting out swiftly towards the train in an unbroken flow of motion, but this strategy involved backing out of the cab, effectively blocking from my view a small raised yellow barrier next to the taxi lane. The painted mound tripped me and I crashed bags and all, breaking the fall with my left arm.

I still wanted to catch that train, but as I shuffled off, a Porter rushed over and explained that MANY complaints had been filed about the treacherous yellow dividers. They were meant to protect pedestrians on the other side but ended up felling incoming taxi passengers. This eloquent young man of West African origin convinced me that I should at least go to the hospital next door and have my arm checked. He would escort me there after accompanying me to the ticket office to report the accident and secure passage on a later train.

I went along with the plan, and once I was seated under the neon lights of the Emergency Room waiting area, the Porter and I waved goodbye. A handsome medical team from Colombia, Algeria and Senegal x-rayed and bandaged my arm with great alacrity and good cheer - while coping with several regular 'patients' running amok in the hallways in white robes, dashing in and out of the examination rooms; harmless, it was explained, people in need of tea and attention and a place to go more than any medical treatment - and I was sent back to the Gare, supplied with a ticket for first-class and ushered onto the train with apologies and small bows. A man seated across the aisle had witnessed the fuss. He jumped up with a twinkle in his eye to help me store my luggage. A conversation began. It wasn't long before I understood that I was in the company of an International Cat Show Judge, the author of articles and books on distinctive feline breeds. In the hush of our comfortable compartment, I heard stories about the nitty-gritty of Cat Show politics as our train moved north.

I remember the jovial Cat Judge and the concerned Porter whenever I pass through the Gare du Nord. Usually I pause to get a feel of the motionless crowd and read the departure board, even though the track number for Amsterdam doesn't seem to vary. The public announcements have been updated to include an English-language health warning about flu symptoms, an audio nod, I believe, to the warm-hearted medical staff next door.

Is/was on a Roll: English as Accessory Pt. 2

The July 23 LifeBeforeNews post was offered in the spirit of vacation. Vacation is still the dominant mode in Amsterdam, but meanwhile entries are piling up fast for ‘English as Accessory Pt.2’ (Please see ‘English as Accessory’ May 2, 2009) as the holiday season wears on. Please bear with me: your vocabulary list of Dutch words may be longer than you think, because they're English. And consider this: it turns out that third person singular present and simple past forms for the verb ‘to be’ (is/was) are identical in Dutch and English. You could be onto something.

Not so very long ago:

I was rearranging suitcase contents around midnight. The late cancellation of my flight out of a small regional airport in the USA (We apologize for the inconvenience. Please see our ticket desk for overnight vouchers) had resulted in my transfer to this nearby hotel, built on an awkward rectangular plot of land surrounded by new highways and access roads to industrial zones. Early morning would see me transferred back to the airfield – no need to unpack. I had been happy with the vending machine delivery of root beer (No meals are prepared here. Please visit our Food Lounge next to the elevators on the third floor), my childhood soft drink of choice. Cool sips, TV news in the background, as I puttered.

A voice in the news report caught my attention. The woman was speaking English, easily and fluidly, with a Dutch accent. I didn’t believe much of what she was saying (defending her son, who was a suspect in connection with a young woman’s disappearance on a Caribbean island), but hearing her made me homesick for my hood in the Netherlands. I had been away for several months. Her tones in English were/are part of the daily setting in my second homeland. Not only when English is spoken, but also when English is inserted into Dutch. (as I mentioned, Please see LBN post of May 2, 2009: “English as Accessory”)

Please find below a list of words, compounds and phrases from the English language, shown in context in above images; all common usage (in certain circles) in spoken and written Dutch:

Time heals everything
Claim (cultuur = culture)

Thrill
T-shirt
Service
Privacy
Killer
keukenDesign (keuken = kitchen)
Finest hour
Diehard
Corporate

The May 2 post included:

splendid isolation

for Kids
Outlet
Copyright or wrong

In focus
Update
Never a dull moment
Next
Something rotten

Now back to my vacation.

Award-winning Utopias: travelling to possible locations to write this

Please note: the above image is the start of a video clip; duration 00’27” (twenty-seven seconds).

A first choice would be a provincial cafe.
It could be so relaxing, so down.
So grand - a monumental
converted residence in a big country town.
The staff glides along behind a marble bar.
These North Country people are rich.
So why go here to write this?
There’s no tension-filled entrance,
when the author slips in,
looking past the regular clientele
for a place to stop,
the resident heads always tilt
in suspicion
at moments like this, and
here's where the author would get the jilt,
unaided by other-worldly messages, or intuition.
But the newcomer just eases through, surviving the swallow.
What a fantastic place for disorientation.
What can you do, when you reach
the back, which has been renovated
into a rounded wall. No corners to lean against, and
it takes up most of the hall.
No tables back here (please don’t leave the group).
There’s comfort in knowing that someone
has created this setting. It didn’t just grow here,
as just another accidental destination.
It’s merely the result of a few bad decisions.
This could have turned out differently.
You could have selected a location to write down something
you already knew,
but finding a location to write this means
you don’t sit down next to images that follow you,
the usual crowd.
Those you don’t yet know
slink in from the shadows.
They say “we’re joining you.”
There’s a formality, a propriety to it.
A little ritual all the way through it, that always
gets things going: Say hello. Say thank you. Grab a hand.
Grab something. They seduce you into staying.
You position yourself accordingly
at a reasonable distance from this place
where you have chosen to be.
You found a chair, enjoy the reprieve, but
How will you know when it’s time to leave?

Always great to be back in Catalunya

From: The Acoustic Properties of Clay (fins quan?)

El Masnou is a municipality rising to the west from the sea: a maze of alleys, staircases and undulating north-south roads has grafted the town onto the hilly terrain...the old steps are too wide to take one at a time, so you must hobble down. A gutter slashes a central drain for late-summer rains which flood the main road below, blocking traffic between Barcelona to the south and France to the north.
You reach that road: hectic and flat, parallel to the beach, but separated from this and the train station by the road. You walk on: one hour north along the boardwalk to a beach café, placed a few metres to the right of the boardwalk on the beach, next to a site of marina construction. A sand dike sustained by rocks is topped with an idle machine, whose cabin and shovel are rusty. The side panel bears graffiti: fins quan? When will it end? Inside the café, cyclists de-helmet and sip coffee, as do walkers who have just fed the wild cats living inside the rock piles. The men perched high on the jetties to catch fish for the cats tend to keep to themselves. (Sit on a bench to take a longer look. ) A frail but impeccably groomed elderly couple is out for a stroll. They cannot travel far and take in every detail on their abbreviated route. A hand-written notice (…when will it end?) has been fastened to the fence separating the boardwalk from road-works. They pause to read the sign, the woman’s hand gripping the man’s forearm...

...to re-enter town from the beach, you brave the tunnels linking the boardwalk and railway lines with the sidewalk. In your mind there are several, one opening to town and the beach and the northbound trains, another with an exit to the train heading south. Each line has its own ticket booth. If you need a ticket for the opposite direction, you must run back into the tunnel and rush (if you can, the tunnels are wide enough for only two people) to the other end, ascend to street level and find the entrance to the alternate tunnel which will take you back to the other platform. This tunnel could also take you back to the beach, so avoid missing the exit, because if you arrive at the beach and think that you were in the wrong tunnel and search for the entrance to the other tunnel and enter there, you will find an exit to the railway line along which you do not want to travel. [fins quan?]

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg, a guy-thing

Where were you?

I needed to relax, so I went for a drive.

I grew up in car-culture, where there was space to coast gently or even speed up without experiencing stress.

Really? That’s so funny. It’s such a guy-thing.

She was genuinely surprised, even though she had known me for a long time. But she had grown up in a city built for boats, surrounded by countryside originally designed for tractors and cows. Automobiles have extended their influence at an alarming rate over the past half-a-century, but this has happened with a competitive core feeling, and many drivers lurch at top speed from one red light to the next, not associating cars with calm.

I had never specifically thought about life in cars that way, although it’s true that driving a car was definitely a guy-thing while I was growing up. My mother drove if Dad was off at work, but when both parents were in the car; my father was always at the wheel. We sometimes drove to a favourite nature site in the Watchung Hills for a Sunday afternoon walk with the dogs. Vacation expeditions usually meant packing a picnic for a full day’s drive: parents in front, four daughters in the back. We sang songs together, practiced tongue-twisters, clung to long series of numbers to deliver a final sum and we answered riddles. All of this was administered by my father, who must also have felt that driving was a guy-thing, if only because he was doing it and there were no other males present. The arithmetic and riddle litany became familiar enough so that we were eventually able to recite the full answer as the question was being posed. When stories wore out, they were shelved, repeated no more. New and challenging riddles were introduced to keep the bar high.

Just around the time when I decided to start relaxing by going for drives, I was revisited by one of the archived riddles, in an otherwise inconspicuous article about long place names, naming Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg as the fifth longest word in the world (Guinness Book of Records) and the longest name for any lake anywhere.

My father would ask:

What’s the meaning of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg?

We learned to answer:

You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle.

The riddle was one of Dad’s favourites, and having never heard it again since the childhood car-drive days, I felt as though his story-telling powers had somehow willed the Lake into existence, as a real place. I do accept the version which says that as a young man his imagination was piqued by this word of Algonquin origin, which he stored and passed on to his children as few others had done – I never had friends who were familiar with the sounds. But it felt, it feels, like a tribute to him that the lake is there, albeit officially known as Webster Lake, in the town of Webster MA, named after Daniel Webster (who left us a dictionary). The riddle was something of an oratorical exercise, and from a contemporary perspective, it was a lesson in Native American culture and New England geography. The competitive origins of this story would bear out years later as a girl-thing.

Rising sea levels in literature

Time to release my files, to offer transparency on documentation I’ve held onto, some of it for a very long time. First up: the “Roses are red…”quips written by a childhood friend on the back of a card which reads “Learn to complain without suffering.” This appealing take-off on the self-help industry was ahead of its time. As young girls we were amused by the messages on both sides of the cardboard. As an adult, I acknowledge that some cardboard should stay, but some should go.

Papers from my archive that can and should be recycled include blow by blow accounts of family feuds; detailed daily logs from offices, church organizations and sports clubs; Christmas newsletters containing hyperbolic reports of the achievements of one family; Certain love letters; Copies of third-time reminders of subscription cancellations; Photocopies of an article from a South Florida newspaper describing ´Floribbean´ cuisine from the ´mango gang.´ After all:
There are only four years to go before celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Julio Cortázar’s Cronopios and Famas (Historias de Cronopios y de Famas), a work addressing a number of socio-cultural concerns as relevant today as they were in 1962. Nonsense, you say, this literature of the absurd pokes fun at human foibles, but nothing is intended for serious reading. The author himself said he wrote the book for fun, but for many readers, this kind of fun can only be appreciated by those who have experienced not-fun or extreme discomfort. Cortazar’s commitment to the written word was experimental, intimate and irreverent. The texts in Cronopios and Famas are short, a length familiar to those who hoard undesignated jottings from train rides, notes from a seminar or thoughts that pile up during a telephone conversation and have nowhere else to go.

"As the scribes will persist, the few readers there are in the world are going to have to change their roles and become scribes themselves. More and more countries will be made up of scribes, and more and more factories will be necessary to manufacture paper and ink, the scribes by day and the machines by night to print the scribes’ work. First the libraries will overflow the houses, then the municipalities decide (now we´re really into it) to sacrifice their children´s playgrounds to enlarge the libraries. Then the theaters will go, then the maternity homes, slaughterhouses, bars, hospitals. The poor use the books like bricks, they stick them together with cement and build walls of books and live in cabins of books. Then it happens that the books clear the cities and invade the countryside, they go on flattening wheatfield and meadows of sunflowers, even though the Department of Highways manages to keep the roads cleared, even if only between two extremely high walls of books. At times a wall gives and there are terrifying automobile accidents. The scribes labor without let because humanity respects vocations, and the printed matter reaches the seashore. The President of the Republic gets on the telephone with the presidents of the republics, and intelligently proposes to cast the leftover books into the sea, which act is accomplished simultaneously on every coast in the world. Thus the Siberian scribes see their works cast into a sea of ice and the Indonesian scribes etc. This allows the scribes to step up their production as the earth again has space to store their books. It does not occur to them that the sea has a bottom and that at the bottom of the sea the printed matter is beginning to pile up, first in the form of a sticky pulp, then in the form of a solid pulp, and finally a tough though viscous flooring which rises several feet a day and will finally reach the surface. Then much of the water invades many of the lands and there is a new distribution of continents and oceans, and presidents of various republics are replaced by lakes and peninsulas, presidents of other republics see immense territories newly open to their ambitions, etc. Sea water, forced to expand with such unprecedented violence, evaporates faster than ever, or seeks rest. Blending itself with the printed matter to make that glutinous pulp, to the point that one day ships´ captains on the great trade routes report that their ships are advancing slowly, thirty knots drops to twenty, to fifteen, the engines sputter and pant and the propellers are wrenched and bent out of shape. Finally the ships stop wherever they are at different places in the sea, trapped by the pulp, and scribes all over the world write thousands of articles and books explaining the phenomenon and are filled with an enormous happiness. The presidents and the captains decide to convert the ships into islands and gambling casinos, the public arrives on foot upon the cardboard seas, and on these islands and casinos dance orchestras fill the night and sweeten the air-conditioned atmosphere and the dancing lasts until the early hours of the morning.. New printed material is piling up on the seashores, but it´s impossible to put it into the pulp, so that walls of printed matter are growing and mountains are being born on the shores of the old seas. The scribes realize that the ink and paper companies are going to go bankrupt, and their handwriting gets smaller and smaller and they use the most imperceptible corners of each sheet of paper. When the ink runs out they write in pencil, etc. When the paper goes, they write on slabs of wood or rock or on stone tiles, etc. The practice of intercalating one text into another begins to become popular, to take advantage of the space between the lines, or to scrape down the letters already printed with razor blades so as to use the paper again. The scribes are working slowly now, but their numbers are so immense that printed matter now separates the land completely from the bed of the ancient seas. On the earth the race of scribes lives precariously, doomed to extinction, and at sea there are the islands and casinos, or rather the ex-transatlantic liners, where the presidents of the republics have fled to refuge and where they hold enormous parties and exchange wireless messages from island to island, president to president, and captain to captain… (´End of the World of the End´, from Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar, 1962.)

Things to think about on escalators

I was looking for a reference work on the fourth floor of the Central Public Library of Amsterdam. As spelled out on an English-language page produced for their website (http://www.oba.nl/): "The right to information is enshrined in law and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." An employee assigned to the fourth floor reference section had said that if there were any books with detailed info on the subject of drums from the Colombian Pacific rainforest, a key element in a text I was translating from Spanish into English, they would (probably) be on the shelves I was circling.

Coincidentally, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, the FARC, had reportedly just kidnapped (reportedly, because even with witnesses describing the culprits, their identity as FARC rebels has not yet been confirmed) a new group of people vacationing in the region referred to in the aforementioned text about the drums. The kidnapping itself was reported in international news sources but had not left what you would call a lasting impression. That's not surprising, as the new hostages vanished in the news shadow of another related event, the release by the FARC elsewhere, just days before, of two people who had been held for years. Those were high-profile negotiations. Colombia and Venezuela, the USA and France - just a few of the countries involved. The rainforest kidnapping may have now drawn Norway to the table.

I thought of this while scanning books for references to Afro-Colombian musical instruments. None were found that day, but a visit to this relatively new library is always fun. At the ground floor reception desk, visitors can pick up a foldable map of the ten-floor building, presented as Europe's largest public library. The classic library hush does not apply here, with scheduled and spontaneous piano performances audible on multiple levels, blending with escalator chatter from those en route to upper-level meetings, lectures, presentations or the view from the top-floor restaurant (n.b. the tuna sandwich displayed here upper right is no longer on the handy foldable map, perhaps in conjunction with the first recorded break-ins at the library, evidently carried out by individuals in search of restaurant cash).

All Tar No Feathers

I tried to get a specific and clear appraisal of the roof problem from the plumber-turned-roof repairman still lingering in the doorway before he bolted down the stairs and vanished. I say ‘bolt’ because of his surname, which translates into English as “Rabbit,” and I imagined him, reluctant as he had been to use the ladder leading to the skylight roof access, applying equal strength of feeling to the moment of departure. We had climbed up onto the flat roof shared by adjoining buildings, hoping to see an obvious explanation of the new leakage once again leaving a delta of dark stains on my ceiling. There was in fact nothing at all ‘rabbity’ about the man, a lanky Dutchman with a broad, confident smile, unless one considers his enjoyment of conversation in a negative light. I did not. I was surprised, in several ways (mainly because he had initially politely turned down the customary offer of coffee/tea after descending from the roof and then suddenly said ‘Well let’s have that cup of tea’ when I persisted in my efforts to extract some meaning from this excursion to the roof, part of a long drawn-out sequence of viewings, assessments, e-mails, conversations and shoveling of roof debris into garbage bags), but my surprise diminished with the subsequent observation that his eagerness to converse found quite coherent expression.
The subject matter, it must be said, was changed almost immediately, from the roof dilemma to intercommunal frictions in the Netherlands. He asked for my opinion of an anti-immigration/anti-Islam Dutch Parliamentarian who attracts considerable attention with his inflammatory remarks about not only Muslims in general and their Holy Book in particular, but about most of his left-of-center colleagues and Her Majesty the Queen as well, remarks which have considerable following in the Netherlands, as demonstrated by his emphatic victory at the polls. In reply, I acknowledged that the Parliamentarian was successful in occupying the limelight but in the end must be seen as mostly destructive, prescribing more sanctions against those he did not like than solutions for problems facing us all. “Mr. Rabbit” revealed that he is a loyal Christian Democrat at election time, but one who is not indifferent to the persuasive arguments of the right-wing rabble-rouser, the only person addressing his anxieties experienced on the street where he lives when surrounded by roughly-hewn individuals of North African descent, most of whom do not appear to like him. Some of whom get away with very bad behaviour, when what is needed is severe punishment for their crimes, as demonstrated by the outbreak of extreme violence in Iraq following the defeat of the dictator Saddam Hussein. These people, he said, without wishing to offend anybody, clearly need to have the lid kept on tight, and if things do get a bit out of hand, force should be used to maintain order.
The conversation had shifted considerably from the moment in the doorway when I was intent upon gleaning something, anything, useful in thinking further about the roof. I tried in vain to return to the subject of repair, talking about the more recent efforts on the roof next to ours. I offered to show him the video I had made of the East European workers loading up the rubbish container under the supervision of a Dutch team leader, who became nervous when I popped up through the skylight and began documenting their labors which involved, with our permission, use of our roof space for their supplies.

The plumber didn’t want to see the video, so I tried to get him back on the topic of the disposal of roof rubble, which, in our case, had been left in our hands. The City Waste Collection Service, I had been told, will not retrieve roof debris containing dirt and vegetation as it could hold toxic waste. We had a dozen or so bags needing transport to a different kind of disposal lot, where the license plates of approaching cars are computer-checked as the driver approaches the entrance gate to verify the address of the owner and confirm eligibility for that particular dumping site. We never got that far, because someone bribed the city garbage collectors that same morning and they removed the whole lot. I don’t blame them for a minute. The garbage collectors receive little thanks for what they do, and the ultimate sham was perpetrated by the City itself, when a series of posters were printed in expression of gratitude towards these people. The words (in translation) “Thanks Joe!” (or other names, depending on the picture) accompanied images of smiling, handsome street cleaners and rubbish collectors - later exposed as male models! The workmen themselves weren't good enough? Some thanks. I had hoped to engage the plumber on these and other issues, but a pot of tea only goes so far.

My Aunt and General Noriega

Lots of snow had fallen by 6 p.m. that day. We drove along the hilly Connecticut roads flanked by magical scenes. Majestic trees, stone walls lining the slopes, the front porches of wooden homes - even the vast parking lots at shopping malls were beautiful under the snow.

I had lived in Amsterdam for a decade and my daughter was born there, so the New England winter scene was nothing short of spectacular for us both. Amsterdam winters are mild, and if it does snow, I rush to an upper-story window to watch the airborne flakes. More often than not, they melt before reaching the ground.

Another difference: the snow in Connecticut that day was heavy enough to weigh down pine branches and restrict car routes to those which had been shoveled free, but the point was - the roads and entrances to lots had indeed been cleared for traffic. The Netherlands leads the pack in protecting human infrastructure against the sea, but a light dusting of snow inevitably overburdens road-clearing resources each time.

Nevertheless, progress was slow on the drive back to my Mother’s home. By sometime after 6 o’clock, the rental van needed gas and we needed a snack, so on December 20, 1989, my daughter and I ate hotdogs sold at a roadside service station in the USA. This was possibly her first real hotdog. No one would dare serve second-rate dogs to Connecticut motorists, and these were really good. I kept the receipt, and used it to note the day's historic importance before tucking it into my wallet.

We drove on, happy with the warm food, the exotic setting and with each other’s company. The car radio was another source of pleasure, with Connecticut’s Hispanic stations a major attraction to both me and my half-Colombian daughter. That day, we listened to less music than usual because the invasion of Panama by U.S. forces dominated the news. I was appreciative of the listening time carved out by the car ride. My normal attention to radio and TV news is always interrupted on the road, especially during family visits.

The news was not surprising: another U.S.-backed agent in Latin America was being taken down. It took a few days to capture General Noriega, allowing time for the image of his face to take on a dartboard function in the press and on TV. All reports backed the notion that Noriega was big, nasty fish, that it was worth killing people to get him and that his removal would pave the way for government by virtue. Noriega’s pock-marked face drew derision nationwide.

Many, many Panamanians died as a result of the invasion. To the extent that I was able to tune into mainstream TV and radio during that period - I heard no one questioning U.S. motive or strategy. Friends and family, even those attached to critical, left-ish causes in the past - they were either indifferent towards or enthusiastic about the assault on Noriega. Articulate, well-educated individuals sneered at his bad complexion. The only exception was my Aunt, my daughter’s Great-Aunt, who we had visited that day in the Connecticut countryside.

My daughter had rolled in the snow like a pup, bending over to rub her long dark hair in the fresh drifts, shrieking with delight as she jumped up and whipped her head around. I was deeply happy, seeing her delirious in play, and remembering being a small child myself on those same hills, where my lanky woodsman Uncle would glide along on snowshoes in order to pull my sled. The final packing before moving from this home was happening that week in December. This chance at a final romp was pure coincidence.

My Aunt was my father’s baby sister. Clan complexities had imposed a fairly formal grid on our communications, and that day was not much different. While my daughter rushed around in celebration of all that was new and snowy and beautiful, I cautiously asked my Aunt what she thought about the invasion of Panama. She felt that truth was being withheld by the government, and she questioned the legality of propping up a leader elsewhere and then ferociously bringing him down, asking U.S. citizens to back both campaigns. Our conversations expanded into other fields after that day.

No Coincidence

Had I remembered to take the book I was reading when I left the house, none of this would have happened. Recalling the events of that ride is as hectic as the journey through the over-built landscape of the Netherlands at locomotive speed is peaceful, or so one might expect.

The train sped through fields lower than the barges on the parallel waterway with its perfect border of trees. I held my small digital camera by the window and switched from photos to video, to record the conversation in the seats behind me, but the microphone is evidently not as good as the lens. (You'll only hear a cough, not the early evening chatter about mathematical theories.) Many people in Holland are concerned about the intrusion of industry throughout the countryside, as illustrated by the buildings seen from the train, but the family behind me laughed with delight, and recited the countdown out loud in three languages.

Line 7, should be my lucky number

As I entered the Metro I bumped limbs with a young woman who held 1 arm bent at the elbow and raised like a spear to apply lipstick - just as I was pulling down a seat next to her in the central section of the car, where 8 people in total can sit down in combinations of 2, at the crossroads of the long main aisle and the short alley running between doors on both sides of the car. This open space offers standing room and several chrome poles to hold onto when it's crowded. At mid-morning there are empty seats. About 6 in the central block were occupied.
The young woman smiled at me to indicate that it was alright, she took no offenc(s)e at being jarred, and she was confident that I was not only not offended by having met her elbow while sitting down but that I understood that her efforts to finish applying make-up in this setting had a particular significance which would not be revealed. I returned her look with a reassuring but controlled grin and saw that she was probably in her 20’s, scruffily dressed in various layers of black. In the moment after the collision when she looked away from her compact mirror and at me, I couldn’t help noticing that her eyes glistened too much for this time of the day. She returned her gaze to the mirror and continued with the lipstick operation.
I secured a position of balance and comfort on my seat and looked straight ahead at the man across from us. He wore a suit which I will not easily forget: the fabric of both jacket and pants was green & yellow hound’s tooth. He was already looking across the aisle at the 2 of us in a kindly way. There was something about the random pair we formed, suddenly together, that caught his attention, as though he found meaning in our shared seating arrangements and contrasting height, hair, eye and skin color, style of dress. His stare was persistent but without malice.
Then the bottom of a large square-toed leather shoe came into view as the man sitting nearest to him across the main aisle swung his left foot up onto his right knee and commenced with a rapid shaking movement. The socks extending up the ankle from the shoe were lemon-colored, short with 1 dark rim at the ankle periphery. His suit was light-colored, his white skin tanned, his hair cut to military precision.
The hound's tooth suit smoothly rose and exited at the next station, gently vacating his fold-up seat by slowing the upwards motion with 1 hand as he stood up, all of which prompted lemon socks to spring from his seat to the newly vacated spot in 1 noisy sideways jump, after which he flung his right foot over his left knee and found a resting point for that foot on the chrome pole which had no other takers at this relatively quiet hour of the day.
The young woman and I got off at the same stop. She walked ahead of me to the exit, the spike heels of her pointy-toe boots clattering on the platform. Her eyes, shining a bit less, perhaps more glazed over than before, met mine again for a second before we boarded an escalator for the ascent to the street. I settled in 1 tread below her, staring directly into the red numbers on her back: 55. At street level she was received and embraced by a tall young man. The cobblestones interfered with a boot heel as they drifted off together, and she stumbled. I think she regained her balance with assistance from her companion, but it was hard to tell.

Nobody Asked

My bicycle remained unused and inert while I was out of town. The tires needed air, so I stopped at the pump hanging outside of the bicycle store around the corner from where I live. Anyone can use it. I forced the kickstand down with my right foot and squatted to unscrew the tiny, black cap on the valve, coming face to face with a poignant world on the tire, its hub, the spokes: ladybugs stood out on the chrome center, tiny spiders hurtled through the dark, oily recesses of the chain guard. These and more bugs I couldn't name had colonized my bicycle in my absence. They would be forced to take refuge on the inner fender, I imagined, when I took off and built up moderate speed. I unhooked the air hose from the wall and bent down towards the valve as I connected the pump with the tire - and then I was knocked backwards by the blast of an exploding inner tube.

To passers-by who provided commentary, it sounded like gunfire, an attack. I felt the air pressure hit my body, finding it strange how even such a small blast could have a physical impact. A young woman came over to see if my ears were alright, explaining as she walked off that "these days you don't know what might happen." An elderly man said that he had been through 'the War' (WWII) and was used to everything, but that people today in Holland were only just starting to sense a connection between their own circumstances and today's far-off battles. I referred to internet options, both for getting news on wars and for getting closer to the war. Web-pages advertise jobs galore in Iraq, for example, such as on http://iraq.jobs.monster.com/ Car repair could just be a growth sector.

We chatted as I walked my bicycle in the direction of the repair shop. He was retired, receiving a pension. I mentioned this year's revelation of Dutch retirement funds being invested in companies producing cluster bombs. The money came from salaries paid to a wide range of professionals, including many thousands in the public broadcasting sector. The man shook his head and told me that he was proud that his tax money was going to pay for today's wars, because at least he knew where it was being spent, because with internet and all: "these days you can't tell where your money is going." We had different perspectives on whether or not it was a good thing to produce cluster bombs, but agreed on a bottom line: people expressed indignation about their money being used to support the arms trade, but nobody paying into the fund had bothered to ask until now.