Hamming it up with the Greeks, and other tales of a sailor's life

After a dozen hours of dreamless sleep, I awoke in my room in Bruges on the 13th half-expecting to hear carnival noises, but hearing only the shuffling of breakfast-goers on the stairs next to my door, decided to shower and follow suit. Lord Jim and I had a pleasant petit-dejeuner of wheat bread, swiss cheese, coffee, and orange juice before hopping the train to Amsterdam. Reading Conrad seemed apropos since I'd be lodging on a boat for 2 nights; although the pairing wasn't planned but, like many things of late, serendipitous (the boat idea only came to me while in Ghent, when I changed my itinerary around both to have private rooms henceforth (the dorm thing wasn't exactly my speed) and to squeeze in two more nights in Paris at the expense of one in Lyon). I don't remember much about the ride--in my mind it's all tangled up with the ride from Amsterdam to Paris. Suffice it to say that I got into Amsterdam in the mid afternoon, checked into my boatel (as I soon after began to describe it), and took a long walk around the city, feeling a bit dejected.



My "room," which I loved intensely for 48 hours.



The view at sunset from the deck of the Anna Maria II.

Something of my--call it ennui--is recorded in a previous post, which I began to write while in Amsterdam, beset by a nameless weariness that, again, can be best described if I let me speak for myself:

The past couple of days have passed in a kind of stupor, not bc drunk or under any kind of influence, but bc I think I am cloyed.

I sit in a bar in Amsterdam, alone, w/a tumbler of Heineken, Bon Jovi on the PA, some South American football match on the screens, and I realize that I am simply passing the time at this point. Have I outstayed my welcome? Have I outstayed my own tolerance? I half wrote a blog tonight--half write bc I wrote it and erased it--in which I tried to articulate the indistinct, indifferent mass into which everything has morphed. Everything and everywhere is beautiful in some abstract way but utterly w/o interest to me, unless it be the coutryside of Bruges w/its bleating lambs and canals and rain and windmills--but THIS. This... thumping cliche of city life. This, I cannot abide. So I pass the time as I can, silent, in a kind of stupor, half hoping for a connection but doing nothing to invite one, unreflective (except about my unreflectiveness). When one is alone in a city, only then does one have a glimpse of the banality of cities per se. With friends, a city might might perhaps become unique or specific--but alone, everywhere is people by the same of the same. True, only Amsterdam offers naked, ugly women rapping with rhinestoned fingers on glass windows to call my attention to their available pussies. But can one get more cliche than humanity's oldest profession? This city makes an old man of me, older than I've ever been.

Written while still sticky and choking from the miasma of the red light district, which was funny for about 1 minute (I did crack a smile at the first boob I saw), and feeling like all the hard-won reverence of Ghent and Bruges was slipping away, I must be forgiven if my first impressions of the city that gives the word "notorious" new meaning were characterized by cynicism, boredom, and even a kind of quiet rage.

The second day more than made up for the first, thanks to a long run along the canals and into Vondelpark, a red bike called The Boss, Van Gogh, synchronicity, and jazz.

All this cheese has caught up to me. Or so I felt that first Dutch morning. Determined to counteract the paunch I laced up and headed out into the wet morning air and ran. And ran. And ran. I ran for a hour and fifteen minutes, driven both by a primal fear of the gut and by the Octopus Project. By the time I got to the park, my legs were trembling. So I stretched. And stretched. And stretched some more, until the fear kicked in again and I ran and ran some more. By the time I stepped on board the ole Anna Maria II, I was spent, completely and totally. The upshot of this is that I've been limping on a more or less shattered knee for the past several days. Overexertion is a bitch. Don't worry Mom. It'll be swell in a couple days.

Undaunted by a little weariness, I headed over to Mack Bike where I met The Boss:



The Boss was mine for 24 hours. He took me everywhere, starting with the Van Gogh museum, which utterly and absolutely floored me. I spent 2 hours stepping from painting to painting, looking at every one, closely, listening to Grieg and Marc Ribot, a necessary fortress of sound to protect me from the insipid sputtering of the crushing masses, as I gently noted. I sat for an hour after in the commissary, reflecting, drinking a Westmalle, writing a postcard to Shenee (depicting Van Gogh's "View of Montmartre with Stone Quarry"), which I have yet to send, and on which I doodled an array of gory sunflowers, and munching on a pistolet. Even the photos I took immediately after felt inspired by the Dutchman at his most Japonese:



"Vondelpark, 2008"


"Almond Blossom"

Adam Van Goghenstein? Perhaps not.

The Boss and I then hit the famed Bibliotheek for some free internet, and then to Leidseplein, where I spotted a jazz bar called Cafe Alto, the one with the giant saxophone hanging from the brick edifice. You know the one. This reminded me that I had forgotten to find the address of a coffee shop called De Rokery, which Sean had spoken of with fondness, but I knew it was nearby. One of those moments you see. Letting the big red boss roll where he pleased, it was only a matter of time before he led me to it. It was either his doing or the cat's:



I followed this little one in the door and like the old man that I am, skipped the hash menu, drank a beer, and wrote to Sean from their coin-slot computers. I snagged a couple souvenir coasters on my way to the jazz bar.



For the next several hours, slipping progressively into a Duvel-fueled bliss, I stood rapt before this mediocre jazz trio as it were Bill Evans's--as it were Jesus's. The piano player smoked from a long plastic filter poking out through his stringy salt and pepper locks. The drummer was a doppelganger for Sean too, if Sean shaved his beard into a jagged, close-cropped goatee and sideburns. Which I am not recommending. He played standing up much of the time, which I asked him about at the break. "When you are playing a tree howr gig, your azz gets tired," he replied. I nodded, knowing full well about 3 hours gigs and tired azzes. I then complimented his playing and he smiled gratefully and I slipped upstairs to the loo.

I must have steered home correctly--or The Boss did--bc I only remember curling up in my tiny bunk, nodding to the tiny night presented through my tiny porthole, and was gone.

***

Paris rewards a second viewing. When Shenee and I were there, we did most of our touristy stuff during the daylight hours, basically returning to our room after hours and hours of walking and riding the metro and drinking and making the museum rounds (except the Louvre) and eating baguettes and me getting cranky bc I was still hungry (an alter ego we have fondly named Ammo, who also emerges in traffic and when the internet is inexplicably slow). We always planned to go out again, but after downing a bottle of cheap but spectacular Bourdeaux, or whathaveyou, we just didn't have the mustard for it and inevitably woke up the next day wondering why we failed yet again to see Paris at night. This is all in retrospect of course, bc now having seen Paris at night I know precisely what we missed.



The hunchback on fire, leaping from the belfry of Notre Dame.



The Seine and a giant wrought iron lighthouse or some such structure sending me signals across the city in the dark. I do not, however, speak French Morse.

Even the metro stations are prettier at night:



Incidentally, I think it was on the long walk down this colorful if seemingly endless corridor that I realized the degree to which I battered my knee in Amsterdam. It began to feel as though my bones were made of pain.

After an hour or so in the cool catholic air of Notre Dame, an atmosphere I have come to love with an addict's affection,



I spent the next day almost entirely at the Louvre, sometimes gaping before the ludicrously celestial masterworks of man, sometimes hamming it up with them:



Apollo of Los Angeles



Adam, King of Syria



Hercules Adamus



A face in the crowd, or, Where's Mona?



Gallerie D'Apollon, where Henry James decided he wanted to be a great man.

Aside from the Vang Gogh museum, I have never spent so much time at a museum without shooting pains running up my legs and through my back, destroying my will to live, let alone appreciate the fine arts. I have many thoughts about museums in general, and although recent experience has certainly qualified some of my harsher criticisms, they have not altogether exorcised me of my unpopular opinions. That said, I went back to the Louvre again the next day to see the Dutch and German masters, but alas, those exhibits were closed and I was forced to truncate my visit. Which was not all bad, considering the wooziness I felt for most of the day after my evening on the Left Bank watching Celtic vs Rangers (Scottish Premier League for those out of the loop), at first alone, but then with a quartet of Scots who helped me to get very, very drunk.

Celtic 2, Rangers 1, a truly glorious match, celebrated with a nice game of beer pong.



Needless to say, I cabbed it home bc it was too late for metros and it was that or sleep on the sidewalk, which had crossed my mind. I was that drunk.

I must head to le Gare de Nice to meet my love, who disembarks momentarily. She and I will spend the next 2 nights in Nice, then return to Marseille (on different trains, alas) where this time around we will do all the fun touristy stuff (Chateau D'If, of Count of Monte Cristo fame, the Notre Dame de something or other, and lord knows what else. Then home.

For now, into the rain!