Amsterdam-news years day

Amsterdam. No longer living historyless behind fresh paint. This place cobbled together out of something from each human tendency. So in the grey, achey morning we mind our step out into the leftovers of new year's celebration. Hazardous taxi rides threatening decapitation to what must be beautiful women tucked under scarves as we careen over drawbridges older than consumerism.
Out of the hotel sidestepping vomit and empty champagne bottles rolling in gutters. Into brimming coffeeshops to find a seat to smoke and caffienate for the whole day is rolling out before us. A look into the eyes of what passes for authority in my life now, and over to the friendliest drug dealer in my life of uncountable friendly drug dealers. Smoke my smoke like turning to fresh pages with this guy, you know the guy that signs my checks. And then out to stoned wander through a city growing familiar.



A language of consonants, and the throat. Young women with bills standing in window frames nearly naked and I'm freezing cold as we eat and traipse and find more places to smoke in. Unamerican thoughts finally processing themselves outside of america. I now think of grad school overseas: cramped apartments up several floors of teetering stairs looking over a garbage strewn canal, pale-skinned women talking to me and blinking through the smoke, books with pages barely clinging to their edwardian dust covers as I read pretending one can have a unique thought.



And the next morning we wake up and are told that Nairobi is on fire and that the road from the airport has been blocked by what are very likely righteous youth outraged and disappointed. And she's there. Seeing it, maybe. The sinking feeling in my gut entangled with some much larger one in hers. We think.
An entire day in Amsterdam Airport trying to change flights for safer ground. A million attempts at communication through every mechanism I can lay my frustrated hands on. I offer my kingdom for 5 minutes on the phone. I cannot offer enough.

An unplanned night in Amsterdam. Freezing under the logos of multinational corporations because where the fuck are we really? And public transit with the maternal instinct personified and more smoke and more alcohol because these things are not strange to us. We're now three drinking 6 varieties of identical Heineken and sprinkling hash on our joints way back in the corner there like we've been living here a decade and we're merely staying warm in the loooong night between leaden days. This city is a place to write poetry after port wine. A place to look down into your reflection in the canal's distorting scum of oil. Somehow a place that has made more sense to me than I assumed.


In the morning, Africa.