I am making friends. I go into my favorite cafe, one on the canal. I need to learn the names of things. Like the actual canal. Think ear canals, how they fill with water and pressure. That’s my recently departed head cold right there, filling me with its words.
In this canal cafe, the Delft ink blue plates glow on walls, soft yellow stained glass catches and change the light some. A long lost, but not forgotten (no because they put a thick clear glass seal over its top) medieval stairs disappears into crumbling blackness under the floor right as you step in.
A corner table up by the bar (when it’s too cold for sitting out in front) and the canal on one view and the people watching the canal on another view. Hardly anyone in there usually. Except Hans. Hans is retired and he’s helping me look now. For a place to live because it’s hard to find anything here. Hans, retired with not much to do, but his blue eyes are alert and Hans is fit and tall (Dutch tall) and Hans likes coming in here to catch up on what is going on in the city of his birth.
You’re from Utrecht?
Right there, he says pointing out the door as if obvious, right there
Hans wants to know what I write in my notebook. What is it? He asks.
I dunno, trying to stop time with words I guess. Hahaha. We laugh.
So there is a cat that is either the overall cat for the city or all cats were created in the image of one orange cat with a white chest. I am not sure. They all look alike. There is a cheese shop next door too and I never thought about Gouda (say Hgggoooggddaa like that from the back of your throat like you’re going to spit and that’s how they announce the stop for Gouda on the train so it must be how they pronounce the cheese) this much but now I find there are so many Goudas and flavors they mix in and the cheese here is good. Kaas is the Dutch word for cheese. Kaasblokjes means cheese blocks or cubes and they make for handy snacks.
Market days are Saturdays. That is today. I just finished my laundry and hung it to dry here in my little room at the AirBnB. The woman who is effectively my roommate until April 7th is a soft spoken person learning organic farming. She is kind and we get along and she has offered me ten days at a deep discount because she knows, everyone knows, what it’s like to look for flats here.
It’s silver grey out. Rain will come in soon. I think it’s a great day to walk. To perhaps take the train to Amsterdam and practice the walk to the office. Because I start on Tuesday and knowing the path is key. Bit by bit, things go from unfamiliar to part of some new land that fits into memory.
I keep reading about layoffs in the States. Whenever I second guess my decision to stay here (yes I wake early in the mornings sometimes in a sweat at times), I read about what job losses are like now. I think about no one talking to no one anymore about the Divide. I think about pickup trucks and long highways. A small twinge there. Strange the things you miss. I miss the vast wilderness. I don’t miss watching conservatism and Christianity. I miss proper New Mexican food. And landscapes. I don’t miss the crime. The fentanyl. The predictable lack of curiosity the younger Americans are showing now. Here, at least, the culture has not given in totally to phones. Here people sit and talk more. Phones are put away (and polite jokes if you are staring at yours too much). They enjoy the smaller details of things. They are not killing themselves to make more. That kind of obsession is not evident here. And after killing myself to get ahead, to make more in the States, I welcome this new slower pace and month long vacations. And protections are in place for me here too, in case of layoffs. Hard to know if I’ve done the right thing. But I don’t think I’ve done the wrong thing. But sure, I miss things and I miss people fiercly.
The bar tender at the cafe is in his young thirties. He’s a real pro, knows his bar. The Dutch don’t drink a whole lot compared to other cultures, but they like to sit and chat and the bar keep is good with this. Pouring coffee and the white Dutch beers that have to have the foam cut off. After, living in Ireland it’s hard to watch this beer pour. Not letting the head settle. Pouring it perfect. They just guillotine the foam right off and smack it down on the wood surface.
He says: You’re from where in America?
I say: I’m from California
He: I’ve always wanted to go, but you know why?
Me: Why
Him: Guns. I’ve always wanted to shoot a gun. To go hunting.
Me: What would you want to hunt.
Him: Deer. And pheasant.
Black oil grease smell of the gun barrel. I was raised with guns. Had my hunting license at 14, cleaned guns. And never really found an interest in them. But hunting seems reasonable, always has to me. Deer meat is good and there are enough of them out there. I ask him where he would want to hunt. You tell me! he says. I suggest Oregon or Washington. You could do both there, the birds and the deer. He thanks me and stares off dreamily. We all have our other sides to travel to in the end.
