1st
Thank god, it’s February. If you asked me to write, in January, we would have had a problem. It’s probably not healthy, but there are feelings, frustrations, and agonies, which I generally don’t discuss with anyone. I suppose a journal would be the right home for these, but I don’t do that. I should, but I don’t. But I also know that these feelings are temporary, I am in an exceptional time of my life. I have been tired for four months straight. I have lost a part of my identity, and there have been days where it’s felt like the entirety. Come to think of it, at the writing club I occasionally join, we frequently work on the free writing exercise, and during the winter mine invariably turns into an outpouring of exasperations, my own. Afterwards, and awkwardly for everyone involved, I read what I have written. For the benefit of the doubt, I’m told it’s good fiction, I have got the beginnings of an interesting gloomy character. I don’t have the heart to tell them.
No, I don’t want to dwell on January.
2nd
On Nothingness.
Not in an existential sense, I am not that philosophical, rather about vocation. Last month at a dinner party hosted by a friend, I’m introduced to the rest of the group, and inevitably after some other formalities, we arrive at ‘What do you do’? To which my friend, interjects immediately with ‘Nothing!” We go back a long way and he says this jokingly, but I don’t have a choice really, and confirm that that is exactly what I do at the moment.
Which is fine,temporarily, but I feel like I’m looking down a tunnel of the next 25 years of my life, where I’ll continue to be doing that, essentially nothing. Over the last few years, when the question was posed, I noticed I would answer without saying WHAT I DID, because essentially it was nothing, instead I would reply with where I did it. A non-answer, really, aside from signalling I am in some sort of club, and more often than not the interlocutor wouldn’t probe any deeper, because if they did, I’d have to give some vague answer. The reality is that I was serving up one steaming hot plate of bullshit after the other. Staring at a laptop and some made up numbers. I digress, I’m working on a more in depth analysis of that whole fiasco in another piece.
For now, I just woke up today not feeling so great about the big nothing. No major life work to accomplish. What’s that famous saying, you can endure any how if you have a why? Hmm.
So someone will say maybe I need a career coach. Trust me, I was there twenty years ago. The first question will be, what do you want to do?
“Well Mr. or Mrs. Coach. Essentially, I don’t want to do anything. I want to read, run, spend time with my family, travel, learn about things that interest me. I don’t want to pretend I give a shit about any company or any of the fake numbers that I have to make up.”
And he or she will laugh.
“You think I want to be here listening to you bitch and moan about your life? Suck it up, you entitled shit. You’ve got an extra mouth to feed”.
3rd
‘’The Devil always shits on the biggest pile” – Dutch proverb, author unknown.
It would appear, rather regrettably, that some of that January gloom has overflowed into February, for it is without reason that for much of this morning I was thinking about this sentence. I’ve heard before that humans try to rationalize and make patterns out of nothing – could it be true in this case? I’m not so sure. I’ve also heard to look at things in perspective, to practice stoicism, and to exercise gratitude.
Let me analyze some more.
If it is true, then one must take care not to have any shit, but most of all, to look around to make sure that if you do, that it is not the biggest. .
Fine. The old me would have done just that. But why not take it one step further, instead of worrying about the shit you may or may not have and consequently the size, why not become the Devil himself, and shit on piles, the biggest ones?
4th
2 a.m. or something around there. I’m in between being awake and asleep, but I know where this is heading. I try to maintain this state, but it is futile. How, how can a thing so tiny, so precious, so innocent, so fresh, wreak so much havoc on me. During the day it’s magnificent, but at night I toil. Minutes pass, it could be hours though. Should I get up? No, because then I’d be wide awake. Just ride it out, it’ll pass. 4 a.m. It has to be a joke. I went to bed exhausted and I should be able to sleep through anything. Thirty minutes later I am fantasizing. Of building a concealed chamber in my basement. Of putting something around my head to drown it out. Of abandoning it all, and moving to another country, starting anew. 5 a.m. and again. Is that a glimpse of the first crack of dawn I’m seeing? Resigned, I accept that the next day is ruined before it has even started. I’ll be a zombie. As if life wasn’t hard enough, now I’ll have to do everything in a state of utter exhaustion. Something is wrong with nature, whoever wrote the script miscalculated on this part. At 6 a.m., there is finally some respite, but it’s all in vain and too late.
8 o’clock and we’re all awake. A quart of black coffee down the hatch, and I seem to be okay. I’ve started to do this thing with my son, lifting him to my chest so he is facing outwards and placing his feet against our large front window. I lean into him and he compresses like an accordion. None of the instruction manuals I read said anything against this, and he seems to enjoy it. In between a giggle his eyes seem to fixate something below, and it is there that I spot the dozens, if not hundreds of crocuses that have shot up, seemingly overnight, right in our front yard, meaning that if I venture for a second outside, I’ll bring in some pollen, a single strand of which can torment me all night. He looks at me and smiles, as if he knows that they are his accomplices. Both new life, both beautiful, and impossible to get angry at.
5th
The 7 am run is something that I’ve aimed to do for four months now. I should give up but I’m stubborn and there’s always a small chance I might wake up at 6:30 and feel the need to go out in the cold and dark. Today, it didn’t happen. Then there’s the 9 am group coffee run with my running club. It’s good for me to get out and socialize, and they usually go a little faster than I’m used to, which is also good. The problem was that at 9 am I was still in bed. Ok, I’ll get it done by myself, before lunch. At 10 am I am asked to take out my son for three hours, if possible. So I’m back at 1 pm, and we need to eat lunch. At 3:30 pm, Fatima takes Milo out for a stroll. I have a couple of hours to myself. Now, the run has to happen. I got changed into my running outfit, and for some reason thought it would be a good idea to lay down on my back. Now the critical point. Do I just close my eyes and sleep, or do I go for this run? It was one of those days, that I felt no desire to run, but I wanted to feel how I feel after a run. I didn’t even have to run – I ran yesterday, but the sun was shining today. So I go.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and make it a practical run. I start with a light jog, nothing two strenuous, because in less than two kilometres I’ll be at the fish shop. The fishmonger is in the back gutting and cleaning the two sea bass that I ordered; “Keep the heads on” he asked, oh hell yes sir. This takes ten minutes, meanwhile I am stretching it all; hamstrings, quads, calfs, glutes, I cut short of doing downward dog out of respect for the other patrons.
A younger version of me would have felt self conscious about running down the street with a bag of whole fish, but now there is no shame. The fishmonger hands me the package, and thankfully in Canada at recess we often played American football, so I know how to tuck it firmly under arm and cradle it, lest it comes lose. The way back becomes a game, I am dodging scooters, bicycles, pedestrians. At one point I encounter a group of kids, and come close to sticking out my free arm, to give them the forearm shiver, as I deke my way through, avoiding their imaginary tackles. The streets of Utrecht are littered with bags of garbage from a week long garbage man strike, and these I treat like obstacles too. Finally, I touchdown at home, and can relax. —
6th
37 days of resolutions, or in my case, 37 days of slight guilt for not having stuck to any, alright, alright, not having begun. They were vague to begin with, I felt I didn’t have a problem, or at least a problem big enough to warrant something as bold as proclaiming to all that I’d be partaking in a new year resolution.
The main idea was to keep the phone in the basement at all times. We’re on the ground floor of our building, so you could be there in less than 10 seconds, enough time to pick up a phone call if needed, so it wasn’t anything too drastic. But it didn’t even happen for a day. And if anything, it’s backfired. For one reason or another, I found myself to be on my phone more frequently and for longer spells in January. I’ve got a morning ritual now where I’m playing Wordle with my coffee, before work begins. Recently there’s another one, Wordiply that’s come into the mix. Oh and I found a great blog that is updated daily too. These are the vices that I care to admit, but there is plenty of mindless scrolling as well. I’m not very active on social media, so I don’t succumb to the supposed dopamine hits from getting likes or views. I think it’s just the fact that the phone gets me a quick hit, of something, but quick is the imperative word, because these days, literally a single minute of downtime is a blessing. I can’t tuck into a book for 60 seconds, but I sure as hell can watch some guy make from scratch and plate the worlds best eggplant parmigiana with fancy sound effects. What’s the alternative? Another minute of more chores? No, the brain can decompress, or, truthfully, rot a little. I suppose the problem occurs when that one minute turns to ten, fifteen, sixty. It’s rare, but it can happen. Actually it’s not a hit of something, just a numbness. An internet induced numbness.
7th
An excerpt from yesterday’s reading, it was a random paragraph that I suppose the author was fond of, and she didn’t go on to comment on it, she left it at this before continuing on with her memoir.
“When the cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he still practiced six hours a day, even after he had turned ninety, he replied “because I think I’m making progress.”
The author I’m speaking of is the daughter of Ingmar Bergman, so possibly she had him in mind.
Nevertheless, I totally get him and her. Can you imagine, having this mindset? This passion. I may very well have gotten this notion from a YOUTUBE Short or some other inspirational sappy twenty second clip – it was about Kobe Bryant and maybe had a voiceover, but it was saying more or less when you find this, the world starts being there for you, or life happens for you, not to you. Therefore, imagine waking up every day, knowing you want to improve at ‘FILL IN THE BLANK WITH LIFELONG PASSION / SKILL” It would mean most of the conversations you have, the books your read, the endeavors you take on, how you use your free time, are with the aim of improving that. There would be no such thing as work. I’ll need to do some soul searching, but I can confidently say I haven’t found that thing, and I’m wondering if I ever will. There’s some notion that it involves reading, researching, and maybe writing.
I’ll explain how I got to that conclusion.
I’m in Rome. Rome! I’m there during my sabbatical, one of the few countries that were code orange, at the time, thus with the right COVID test, I am able to fly in to from the Netherlands. That I didn’t have the right test on the way back, a costly error that set me back 500 Euros and smuggling ourselves over the German border is another story.
I’m spending a week there, and the idea is to read, run, explore, eat, sit at cafes and then to do the same with Fatima when she joins me a few days later.
It’s pure bliss.
On one scorching day, I head to the Maxxi museum, pictured below to escape the scorching Roman sun.
It’s a wonderful museum, located in a seemingly residential neighbourhood. Adjacent to the museum is beautiful library, filled with several students and several comfortable chairs, chairs designed for reading. I spent the entire afternoon there flipping through books and reading, imagining what a life spent doing exactly this could be like.
The reason I’m reminded of that day is that when I paid my entry fee for the musuem and library, I noticed on the price list the following:
JOURNALISTS: FREE.
How’s that for the world being there for you.
And so, what will I do with this notion. I think I know all too well. Pay that damn 10 Eur entrance fee, every time.
8th
I have just finished writing a small review of Disquet, another book set largely in Scandinavia and authored by a Norwegian. Therefore, I thought I’d continue the theme on today’s post.
While reading this book, I thought about why it is that what transpires in Scandinavia does not manifest itself in Canada. Ok, Canada is expansive, so let me narrow it down to my province, Ontario, which shares a similar climate and terrain; lots of lakes and forests, a wilderness that you would think would also permeate solitariness. That however is not a characteristic commonly associated with Canadians, who are often likened to Americans, at least in terms of being boisterous. In fact, a long time ago, when I was still suffering from bouts of homesickness, when I was out at some Canadian meetup event in Europe, I recall being called out as not being really Canadian, because I was so quiet. Which I am, in general, but especially so in comparison to a group of drunk ‘real’ (?) Canadians.
Perhaps you need to venture far out from the Greater Toronto area to gain a sense of solitude, and to encounter that in other people. But by and large, even when I have done so, nature has not seemed to impart the same sensations on the Canadian people as it has to the Scandinavians.
Which is a real pity. How I would have loved not to have to strive to be some type A personality, so revered in North America.
One of the nicest gestures that I’ve been graced with was when an old girlfriends Mom bought and read the book Quiet, I believe with the intention to learn more about me. In fact the whole family read it, and then she loaned it to me.
Maybe that is why I’m so drawn to the Nordics. How lovely would it be to have lunch with a colleague and simply eat instead of making small talk. To stare out into fields, with a silence cast in the same colour, golden.
9th
The worst you could do is keep it in your head. Sometimes, that happens. Then if you’re not paying attention you need to use some weird instinct that at some point humans must have developed to gauge appropriate thickness, open it up, and start reading at random. Been there? Skip ahead thirty pages, if still not there, track back a dozen, plus one, minus two, until you arrive where you left off.
Next I would say is the dog ear. Terrible. I never resort to that. I’ll risk it all by keeping in my head before damage the thing.
If you’re dealing with hardcover, you could fold the inner flap in between the pages. That’s ok, it’s acceptable but when you’re dealing with a brick and you’re in the middle, things get messy.
But all three I’d say are pretty shitty, and I rarely have to deploy these techniques. Thankfully, where I usually read, on the living room sofa, I can almost without fail reach in between the cracks and find a bookmark that was lost days or weeks ago. If I’m out, and find myself in an emergency situation, it’s usually quite easy to find a temporary fix; an old receipt, the edge of a torn of packet of chewing gum, and if you’re really getting desperate, a napkin, preferably unused.
Or grab a business card. Actually I quite like these, and I’m currently using one now. Ton van den IJssel Tweewielers. Laan van Nieuw Guinea 30, 3531 JK Utrecht. We bought some bikes from there. When my mom visited, we rented a tandem from them. Call me a sentimental old fool, but years from now I picture myself, leaning on a cane while I browse my bookshelf, and I pick up the book ‘Barcelona Dreaming’, it’ll come fluttering down from the pages and I’ll be taken back to the good ‘ol days.
For me, peak bookmark is when the bookstore gifts you one of their own with their store name and address. I’m certain I have several dozen of those tucked away here and there, ready to be discovered in some distant future and flood me with memories. Ah, that store, that book, those times.
And how interesting it is to find the bookmarks from others in a second hand book. I’ve seen old dry cleaner receipts, a postcard, a flyer advertising a recital. Who were these people? It’s tempting to try to look them up.
In one neo liberal cranny of the world or another, I overheard an enthusiastic conversation about bookmarks. We can thank capitalism for all sorts of useless shit, but these guys were on to something. The man explained that our memories are strongly linked to our olfactory senses, and proposed manufacturing scented bookmarks. Imagine, reading 5,000 pages of Knausgaard with a jasmine scented bookmark, and the maelstrom of emotions you’d be inundated with years later visiting a botanical garden. You could even customize the scented bookmark to sell along side your favourite books Some obvious ones you’d make; Heminwayss Old man and the Sea (here I suppose you could take your pick), Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. It gets a bit awkward with Lolita and Moby Dick, but you get the idea. Why stop there? You sell the scent in a perfume to wear while you’re reading and next time you’re out and you detect that aroma wafting from the pretty girl on the subway, and well, it would be game over. Pheromones, reinvented, but that’s the name of the game.
I take a whiff of Ton’s card, and unfortunately it only smells like new book. But at least I know that I’m on page 51.
10th
Finally, today I went out with Milo for a run, with a modest aim of going out for an hour, regardless of speed and distance. Yesterday was the first day he tried real food, a slurry of potatoes and eggs, rich in carbohydrates, to make sure he’d have adequate nutrition for today. Almost as soon as we stepped outside, the little guy fell asleep. So things were going according to plan. We live some 200 meters from the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal, and unbeknownst to me at the time of moving in, a sanctuary for runners. As the name indicates, heading north you could run all the way to Amsterdam, and the other way, perhaps as far as Germany, though I’ve only made it to the next town, Nieuwegein. The route is not only a boon for endurance athletes, due to it’s use primarily as a shipping canal, it’s seemingly almost entirely straight, thus also a perfect place for some interval training. You can often see some running clubs zipping back and forth, which is exactly what I intended to do with the baby stroller. One or two kilometers one way, and back the other. I didn’t want to stray too far from home, in case Milo needed a drink.
It was slow going, I don’t think we clocked more than 6 kilometers in the hour, it certainly felt like we were north of seven minutes per kilometer, and the truth is, I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I thought I would. The speed – or lack thereof (though I am hardly fast by myself), the heaviness, the awkward posture required to push the stroller made me tire quickly. With 20 minutes left, he woke up. He didn’t look too happy, and I realized we were both bored. Not the greatest introduction to the sport, but inside we wrestled for a good thirty minutes, so maybe there’s an athlete in him after all.
11th
Something different today, in that I’m not even going to attempt to write something interesting, witty or reasonable. I’m just stopping in the library, putting in these ten minutes, and heading back out into the city where I intend to vegetate for a good three hours. Some music, some reading, some people watching and definitely not writing or thinking about what to write. I suppose it makes sense to reach this point, a mental or creative exhaustion. As with the running every day challenge, eventually you want a break. So here we are. It’s tempting to stop for the month; it’s too much, it’s too dark, there’s no time; we do it in March okay? If this was a run, it would be one of those shitty runs where you are checking your watch, and to your horror not even half way to your goal, so for the rest of the way you barely lift your feet off the ground and find every excuse to stop for a minute. A stoplight, a loose shoelace, a minor strain in your calf that needs some stretching. If there’s a shortcut available it takes all your willpower to not take it. If there’s something to look forward to, it’s that in the latter days the feat of writing for ten minutes will be rapturous. Not only will the writing be brilliant, jus sitting down to do it will bring an immense satisfaction. I hope. At least with the running, at the end of the month I could say I felt better. I slept better, and I subconsciously started to eat better, because I knew that would help me the following day. What the hell am I going to get out of this? The way it’s going, I’ll double my caffeine intake, start smoking, and look out into the world for the shitty things in life, because somehow writing about that is much easier for me. Mercifully, for today, that’s all she wrote.
12th
if you thought yesterday was bad, today is even worse. Its 22:19, and I’m typing this on my phone, directly into the website. I wish I could regale you with exciting stories and interesting adventures, but at the moment Fatima is studying for some Dutch exams to be taken this week, and so I had to take Milo out. In total we were out for nearly five hours today. He’s got some anti-motion detection system, since once you stop moving with the stroller, he wakes up. That’s fine, I like walking with him, maybe I’m a bit bored of my neighborhood (I’m still too afraid to venture much farther alone), but eventually he does wake up and then I need to carry him. He’s a good 9kg at the moment, so a few minutes and my arm starts to burn. But in general I liked being out with him. The temperature was mild and lots of people out. I managed to squeeze in a slow run as well. Dinner was, for the fourth night in a row, some veggies in the oven. No, there’s no haute cuisine happening in this household. With my last ounce of strength I made it to the basement to practice the trumpet in preparation for my next lesson this coming Thursday. And in two minutes, I’ll try to reach my parents and my sister to have catch up, and like this, I’ll keep it short.
we’ll be back to regular writing during the week.
13th
What I didn’t mention last night, was that on our final wandering through the streets of Oog in Al at dusk, I realized I had lost a glove. It’s happened about two times before in these last weeks. At some point I take them off, probably to fidget on my phone, leave them on the top of the stroller and carry on. Then we go over some bumps or up over a curb, and one of them falls off. And so it was last night, but I didn’t fret, I’d just walk the same streets again and like I always do, find it on the sidewalk or next to a bush. I can’t say this pair of gloves is beautiful or that I hold them dear to my heart, but they’re warm leather and cloth, resilient to the rain, and not inexpensive. Luckily, Milo was peacefully asleep, oblivious to what was going on. So without much concern, I put my headphones back on and set off to retrace my steps from the previous 25 minutes. Stars – Nina Simone playing as I walked past warmly lit living rooms on a peaceful Sunday evening, though I could only occasionally peer inside since my eyes were cast downwards. I don’t care much for the lyrics, but I defy you to find a softer piano than on that track. The first time around was fruitless, and even though darkness descended, Milo was still asleep and Nina’s soothing chords, now on repeat, were close to bringing me to heaven, so I’d make another loop. My eyes deceived me a few times, and then Milo awoke. The search would resume the next morning, I was confident it would be there, somewhere among a pile of leaves.
Today I couldn’t have asked for better weather, a whopping 12 degrees, clear sun, delicious rays of light, illuminating everyone and everything, high and low, far and wide. We’ll be back in no time, I’m just going to get my glove, I confidently cried out as I left the house. A few hundred meters in, some doubt crept in, but I quickly quashed it, because who in their right mind takes a single glove? What kind of sick person would do that? If anything, I was perhaps looking in the wrong place. Some considerate passerby saw my lonely glove and must have placed it on a post box or hanging off a fence. Off I went, for another loop. At this point, my mind started playing some tricks on me, it wasn’t this street that I was on, it was the one with the school. Did I even leave the house with two gloves?
So now I’m back at the house.
And you know what, two years ago, I also lost a glove, and I had the wherewithal to keep the remaining one. Sure, it’s brown, not black, but it’s the right handed one, to match with the left handed one I have remaining from yesterday.
Somewhere here, there’s a life lesson. A case where two losses lead to a gain. But I can’t get poetic about it, and next winter, when you see me wearing mismatching gloves, do me a favour and ignore that.
14th
This is an underdeveloped idea, I often do that, but who has time to develop ideas and think in this capitalist paradise we’re living in. At the same time, it was born from a capitalist whore-raping structure – the corporation. Taking a step back, it’s now clear to me that all that really is, is a group of bum chums, who assign each other a value. And we, society at large, take that at face value. The value the other person(s) assign in turn gives the person access to all sorts of tangible things; whores, cars, houses etc; and some other intangibles; sense of superiority, accomplishment, self-actualization; purpose(?). Never mind that it’s all arbitrary, and at the end of the day, since society thinks slave labor in Asia making useless things is valuable and necessary, the system can work.
You and I are amigos. Can we not pay each other a salary? I say this, because I’ve been indoctrinated with economics, and something is only of value if there is some compensation behind it. Can I employ you, and you employ me, as writers, and then we just pass each other back and forth a nice salary every other month? This would allow you access to all kinds of things (for example you could buy a house; or even better a second or third house; the gold standard of living in our democracies). It would give me a sense of worth.
But you can’t tell me you’d get some sort of primordial sense of accomplishment, of being, of success when you wake up on pay day (just don’t spend it because you have to send it back to me the next month).
It’s funny how it all supposedly works, and the more I think about it, the more I feel I’m on to something. If you think writing for ten minutes a day is inconsequential, meaningless, harmful, unproductive – you should see what the boys in the office are doing.
How’s 3,000 Euro Bruto sound to you? No, better make that 4,500 Euro to account for inflation. You can work remotely as much as you like, with twenty holiday days. I’ll send you the contract by end of the week.
15th
An order has just been placed for Freedom from the Known. Already the title speaks directly to me, for the life of work is all that is known to me. Freedom from that, well, that’s only reserved for the well to do. But let’s see if Mister Krishnamurti can put a dent in that belief, after 40 years of living and breathing, or rather suffocating and dying in that world and frame of mind. I’ll need to examine the misery from the corporate experience more deeply – I am in fact in another document writing down my feelings about that whole fiasco. I’m trying to reason with myself – did that dread only come about with the onset of Corona? Maybe reason isn’t the right word, instead it should be ‘trick’. I swear to you, there was a brief period of time where I loved working there and felt such a privilege to do so, not only that, to be around people who also enjoyed it. It was my first experience of work not being work. I think that’s why I’m so bitter about it, that all of that went away, one way or another, and now I’m, for lack of better word, fucked.
I’m picking out some words from your post that stand out at me.
‘Though Necessary’ – isn’t this precisely the point? That it is necessary. Worth, pleasure, pride, that’s just a bonus that requires a lot of luck and possibly some skill. Some dirt on the big cheeses could also help.
‘Support and allow you a life worth living’ – funny you should write this, I literally told one of my running friends that I am still trying to crack this code, and I feel I have a window of a few more months before I wave a white flag, bend over and accept my sorry fate for the next x years and then float around the poverty line or somehow smuggle myself to a Universal Basic Income experiment zone.
“I rather choose to do the things I really want and try to use them in a way it benefits others, instead of doing the things I don’t want, the things that mostly benefit me.” ⇒ Is that something you came up with yourself? It is deeply profound. I’m not being funny at all, but put that on a meme and it would go viral. Seriously, I’m going to have to think about that for a few days. I never thought of it that way, but you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Wow.
2 hrs later – I had to come back, because the first thing that stuck out when I read your post this morning was the part about being privileged to think that you need to do something not to your liking. Isn’t it the opposite? Or do you mean that it’s a priviledge to even have that opportunity, instead of figuring out what to eat or how to rebuild a house after an earthquake? No need to write a response, I’ll reread your post and think about it some more.
16th
It’ll be one of those posts from me, but with good reason. A day filled to the brim, save for a couple of coffee breaks, there was no downtime. These days for me the golden hour is something at around 9:30 pm until 10:30 pm, though I’d like to stretch it to midnight, that idea is usually cut short when I succumb to sleep with all the lights on, my teeth unbrushed, and a book on my chest. But don’t worry, there’s a living and breathing alarm clock that goes off at 12:30 am to make sure I properly prepare myself for bed. Today it’ll be extra savory, since I felt I haven’t stopped since the get go, and after this I’m heading out for a run. Bergkamp will be for dessert, I have no problem watching football compilations. I’ve been doing so since the dawn of the internet – I distinctly remember DOWNLOADING some massive MP4 or maybe even the predecessor to that file format, whatever the hell it was, and watching Ronaldo phenomenon do his thing at Inter and being mesmerized. Football porn, especially for someone in Canada where you just don’t get that kind of exposure to the beautiful game. Then I’d try out all his tricks on the field, the stepover one, you know it? Five or six – no more, you don’t want to be superfluous – in rapid succession until the goalkeeper is frozen. Then just go around him for a tap in. I can still do it, at least in my head, in theory. I can still get excited about pretending to do it for real, complete with the wagging finger celebration, signifying no,no,no to the masses, that what I just did is inconceivable and beyond comprehension. Or is it an affirmation, saying see, I told you all I have the biggest balls on the planet? I’m sitting here at the computer trying to figure it out, but getting nowhere. You know what, fuck it. Tonight, for one night only, Ronaldo phenomenon is rolling back the clock and making a comeback. Right now, on my run I’m going to blitz through four of the opposition, complete the stepover in full flight, and then I’ll let you know what the finger wag means.
17th
So, it seems we’re back on the football. And why not. A good time then to let you know about a project I worked on a little before my European adventure began, back in the late aughts, in my mid 20’s and probably my peak football infatuation. The idea: to randomly approach people on the street who were wearing football jerseys and ask them a little about themselves, why they support that team, their favourite player and post that information, along with their picture and some extra information about their club on my website, the woefully named ‘futbol couture’ (link below). It seems I had dipped my toes into word press all the way back then, and I even commissioned a FC (futbol couture) logo to be designed. At the time I was working at a financial data company (yikes) and this was going to be my side project. In addition to the interviews, I’d also post the latest news in football fashion, along with some of my commentary.
Maybe it’s hard to conceptualize, if you tried that concept in the Netherlands you’d quickly tire of hearing about Ajax or Feyenoord, but in Toronto, it’s rather quite special because of its melting pot of cultures and people from all over the globe, and wearing something like that is done so with fierce pride and sentimentality. It’s also perfectly acceptable to wear sporting paraphernalia on any given day and to any event, sporting or not. I imagined myself interviewing an 80 year old man who emigrated to Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood in the 50’s, wearing a Lazio jersey, and he’d tell me about the time he went to the game as a little boy with his grandfather and they saw Mussolini in the crowd. Or the fresh off the boat Brazilian, sporting a faded Flamengo jersey, with the tattoo to match, who would reminisce about caipirinha filled sunny afternoons watching the Rubro-Negro play with his amigos.
It’s difficult to recall my frame of mind back then, surely there was some commercial element to it, but I like to think that what I was more interested in were the people, learning about their stories, and sharing with them that nice connection that football can offer.
Towards the end of the summer that futbol couture ‘launched’, I found myself lost on the streets of Rotterdam trying to make my way to Erasmus University for a master’s program that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take, in a city I wasn’t sure I liked. Shortly after that was completed, I found myself at adidas, a kid in a candy store. And the rest, as they say is history, though there are days now that I think that if I blow the dust off the site, and with some rebranding, FC can make a comeback.
I never got around to interviewing anyone, except for myself. So now, with a fifteen year gap, it would be an honour if you were the second guest, but in keeping with the spirit of the site, you can only fill out the information if you legitimately wear a piece of a team’s kit out in Seoul one day.
Name:
Jersey Worn:
Favourite Team:
Favourite Player:
Why are you wearing this jersey?
Where did you get this jersey?
What jersey would you like to buy next?
Club link:
Club Fact:
https://futbolcouture.wordpress.com/
18th
Today, guests. Lovely couple. My best mate in NL. House spic n span. Joining them are Calvin, 3, and Nina, almost one. Yelling, lots of it. Milo traumatized. Calvin stealing pacifiers. Spaghetti on the walls. House plants destroyed. Raspberries pressed deep into the rug. At one point, a symphony of crying from all three. Hair pulling, the kids and ours. Fatima and Jack, traumatized. Stress levels through the roof. Though we don’t drink, wine o’clock is so tempting. Bad times. Terrible times. At least we learned today, that Milo will be an only child, and that guests are no longer welcome in this home. Back to regular writing procedures tomorrow. For now, rest.
19th
Approximately day 140 of sleep deprivation. To make things a little more interesting, I’m entering the beginning of what will for weeks be added agony, as spring comes to life, my face, throat, eyes and ears will be on fire, hayfever keeping me awake. It’s worse at night, apparently the pollen falls back down to earth as it cools. Tempting to become a recluse, a night wanderer, do all my things from midnight onwards and then spend the days sleeping in the basement, away from the light and the pollen floating mercifully high in the atmosphere.
Last night I was awoken and asked to change a diaper. I’m pretty sure I was at the deepest level of sleep when it occurred. Ok, maybe I can absorb that. But then from 6 am the little man was practicing his vocals. At 7 am we capitulated.
Yet I was still determined to go for the bi-weekly group coffee run. Some coffee , four cookies and three spoonfuls of cold pasta leftover from last night at least offered some hope.
There are two groups to choose from, the more casual slower paced and less distance vs a bit faster and longer. Too bad there was no in between, which would have been ideal, so I chose to go with the latter, advertised at 5:30 / km and distance 16-20 km. Certainly I was biting off more than I could chew, the last few weeks I have been going out for some really light kilometers, not once going sub 6 min / km. Lord knows what I was thinking.
Right from the get go, it felt off and I told the rest of the group I was half asleep and I’d be quiet for the run. But wait, why are we doing close to 5 min / k? Subliminally I was sending messages to the pacer, but he was in his own world, or set out this morning to punish me. Fine, I could keep up, and did so for maybe four kilometers, and then I made it a point to slow down to 5:30 min / k. I hate being the last one, but if I’m doing to the agreed upon pace, I can’t really be faulted and said to be slowing down the group. Christ, maybe my sulking got them to 5:15 min / km, I still felt I was being transgressed.
Shortly after I thought of calling it quits. Not because of any muscle pain or breathing issues, but because of tiredness so colossal, I don’t recall ever feeling anything close to it. Not the sweet tiredness of running a lot during the week, or the tiredness the day after a 30 + km run, those are sweet variations, and even experienced with pride. This was a disgusting inhumane tiredness. A lack of sleep, a lack of training, a lack of will. My diet has been less than steady recently. Too many coffees and cookies to get a quick hit. In the past I’d take a cola during a run or after a long run, these last days I took some for the sugar high.
Somehow I persevered, even though at some point those assholes were 50 meters ahead of me. The thought of a cappuccino and bread pudding, which is a kind of cake made from all the leftover pastries and cakes from my favourite cafe kept me going.
The fucked up thing about all this, is that for the rest of the day I felt completely energised. I don’t think it did anything for my creativity, as this post testifies, but at least I felt like myself again, if only for a few hours.
20th
Your stories about your various escapades in Seoul are excellent, and even more so when you couple them with your photos.
I, on the other hand, have to excuse myself yet again for some uninspired scribbles of late. The last two were done on a phone or Ipad at the last hour and well past my battery being empty. Today I feel a little better and I’m writing early, however not stricken with any inspiration. But it’s not all doom and gloom, even though I had no business writing anything on those two days, I’m still pleased with having done so, even if at a detriment to the reader (s – but probably not). It’s too early to say this is a habit, but during the last week or so I have found myself, if not writing, then thinking about writing. For instance, while swimming, I was thinking about what could make an interesting story. I had thought to make an entire post dedicated to the one lady who has no regard for the unwritten rules of the lanes. When she clearly belongs in the first lane, the lane where you go to talk to your friends, there she was in all her glory, merely floating in lane three, oblivious to the half dozen or so mid-level swimmers that needed to circumvent this ignorant obstacle But I’m not quite there yet as a writer, that story ends here with me getting it off my chest, because someone had to hear of this travesty.
While I’m out walking with the stroller I am also thinking of ideas. The library is a gold mine of characters. Trumpet lessons have gotten interesting and challenging; more fodder. Then there are the bigger questions; where to live, where/if to work, how to destroy the oligarchy or better how to join them, how to get comfortable with rescinding your morals, why life is so hard.
All ideas, swirling around in my head. I hope to eventually write about them with a quality that I can feel satisfied with. That’s been the case with one or two of these posts the last few weeks. What’s that, you want another excuse? Well for me, it’s challenging because if that idea comes, ideally I could write then and there, but I’m limited to leaving the house at certain hours, which preferably coincides with some inspiration, but that is rare. I suppose that’s something I need to learn; how to jot down those ideas somewhere and return to them, hopefully with the same intent. As my Spanish teacher always says, poco a poco.
It all begs the question; what to do come March?
21st
Since we’ve started to converse about books in more depth over the last year or so, you strike me as a person with an incredibly high threshold for giving up on a book. And I also would have categorized myself into that group, until recently. Prior to becoming a member at the public library in August, I can count but three or four over the last five years. Halfway through Austerlitz from W.G. Sebald I allowed myself the pleasure to surrender. Thoroughly inspected on Goodreads, and endeared by many, I recall that a lot of the story was in a dream, and even if the writing is good (though it didn’t leave an impression on me), one of my central aims from reading is to figure out real life. I’ll do my own dreaming myself, at night. It’s notably absent from my bookshelf, my bitterness with it may have caused me to discard it at one of the neighbourhood book exchange boxes (cool concept, but 99% filled with shit, like Sebald, and probably other peoples DNFs). Another notable flop for me was Rebecca from Daphne du Maurier, purchased at a second hand bookstore in Lisbon. On a two hour bus ride south to Porto Covo, I gave it approximately ten pages before deciding I would leave it on the back of a chair for the next traveler, an asshole move if there ever was one, I admit. Something about it’s mysticism didn’t appeal to me, what’s more is that we were about to hike down the coast for a few hundred kilometers, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that disregarding a shitty book from your hiking pack would be a wise decision. The others I believe were impulse buys at a bookstore; books that I thought I should be reading, books that if one were to see on my shelf I could be mistaken for if not an intellectual, maybe someone with half a brain, and that vanity appealed to me. Some analysis of Lenin, and a dialectic about capitalism, that I regrettably can tell you nothing about. Sidenote: the Zizek podcast largely went over my head.
Aside from those, I’d very often persevere, there’s no shortage of 1 star ratings on my Goodreads. If it gets really bad, I have been known to skim, or read through the pages at a pace that doesn’t allow for anything to sink in, but more often than not, I’d put in the honest effort to make it to the end.
All that has changed since I borrow books, no less than five DNF’s over the last couple of months. The Accusation – Bandi, lasted two pages. Though the concept of the book and writer are incredibly intriguing, it didn’t pass my litmus test: the first page and I didn’t click. Two non-fiction works also feature: ‘If You’re so Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy” – I felt it was bogged down with too many empirical studies. I did max out the renewals, but it was left unopened for those weeks. And ‘The Lonely Century’ – a book that appealed to me because I fear, possibly inaccurately, that my parents are lonely, and that in my old age I may end up so. This one, I may borrow again, though I’m hoping I may find a podcast that gives me the gist. Actually a few years back I decided I’d get most of my non-fiction information from podcasts. There are for sure a few other titles, I’d have to consult the library records to say exactly which ones, but you get the idea. Adversely, this window shopping of books resembles too much of my internet behaviour; clicking on this site or that, starting an article before clicking on another, or at worst, reading a headline and deeming myself sufficiently informed.
I guess this is one case where I have to hand it to free market economists, since I believe largely what keeps me mired in these unfavourable books is the capital investment I made. God, that is awful, what a way to live. Don’t ask me how many years and how much money I spent on my education – but if education was free, would I also pop in and out, never learning anything (there’s a strong case to say I didn’t learn anything in my paid for education too). Well, I suppose that’s one for Conversations with Tyler and maybe Mr. Zizek.
22nd
I am riding high after a good run. I’m not sure how much you know about my running alter ego; often he is lazy and doesn’t want to go out. Fuckin hell, sounds a lot like the writing ego. On a good day that feeling might dissipate, but often it stays and the post run coffee and couch sitting are what compels him to finish. Not today though, today I wanted to go out. My mind wanted to roam, my muscles fancied some contractions, my joints even felt like they wanted to feel some pressure, resulting in one of those rare runs that feel amazing from start to finish. The day started off neither good nor bad, however if you were to put it on a scale it would oscillate a little up and down before settling, perhaps imperceptibly heavier on bad. Reason unknown. Back to the run, it tipped it heavily towards the good. Long may it last.
During running I thought some more about writing, you gave me the offer so I will brainstorm a little here. If I were to compare the February exercise to running, I’d say it accomplished what I had in mind; the sowing of a habit, but there were certainly days when some rest would have been advisable. I’m talking about the sessions that took place well into the day, when I was writing for the sake of writing anything, often about how I didn’t want to write or how bad I was feeling. What is better, quality or quantity? How does it work, in writing? Maybe it’s like running, you will get everyone chiming in with their own formula of what works, but in the end it’s a lot up to personal preferences and individual traits.
When I felt good, ten minutes was definitely not enough for me either. I didn’t have the reviewing problem, probably to your detriment. I acknowledge the value of it, however (see: your posts), and when I can I do it. Sometimes I started well, then ran out of steam; maybe you noticed some abrupt endings. As I mentioned several times, getting the timing right, of being free to write and having a strong desire for it, was a challenge. I’m even contemplating getting a laptop, I think it could help.
I love the thought of working on a single piece. Do I have it in me though? Can I write THAT much about a single topic/theme? That’s why I liked these 10 minute samplings (and the freedom to write that I have nothing to write). I’d need to work on my discipline, because if I don’t have to write, then I’d foreseeable skip one, two, or three days. Just thinking out loud. I’m still finding the right balance for all my hobbies and obligations. But when I read your post, this was what caught my attention the most. I’m just having some doubt if it’s too big of a leap. Let me sleep on it some more.
Certainly, I’d like to switch some aspect of it, to keep it interesting, and like you said to make some kind of progress. Would you have a preference for pairing it with reading, walking or art? I think this could be cool. Time of day would be hard for me!
With the writing group every member was asked to bring an exercise to a session, and here are some rough outlines of what we’ve done (probably like me all googled some writing exercises)
-pick any book, go to page 53. The first sentence is the beginning of your story, and on page 73 the first sentence is the final sentence. Write a story.
-We were asked to list three emotions, and afterwards write a story using them.
-We brought a stack of photo clippings, chose a few at random and needed to write about the photos; what was happening, before, after.
-We brought a book from an author we liked; spent 5-10 minutes writing out their work, and then spent 20 minutes continuing the work, trying to imitate their style.
From above, maybe we could take turns posting a daily photo and we both write about it?
Lastly, if none of these ideas tickles your fancy, then let’s indeed explore the beast that is AI.
23rd
I’ve only scratched the surface of Freedom of the Known, when I last put it down a few days ago I was at page 18. So far, I am still with him, however there is a big fear he will eventually get too lofty, too wishy washy, too zen and out there. But so far, I think I might possibly get him. It’s going to be a cliche, but the closest thing I can think of that describes what he proposes is multi-day hiking. Even more so, because when I’ve done them, it hasn’t been out of a need to go and ‘know’, it was done out of a sense of adventure. I don’t have the book with me, but I believe he says something like wanting to not-know was already self defeating, something like the happiest people aren’t trying to be happy, they just, well, are. So what’s going on out on those hikes? Is it simply because one is away from ‘society’, thus doesn’t have a reminder, or a comparison right in front of them, thus an escape? I think it’s more, because I don’t think the same thing can be achieved by staying put in one place out in nature, a cabin for example (though I haven’t tested this theory). I think with walking, you’re so preoccupied with the day and needing to be aware of so many things; your feet, your energy levels, the climate, the direction, that in this way you’re freeing yourself from the known; your failures, your regrets, what you ‘have’ to do. I’d gladly spend the rest of my life walking, but since that is not possible as far as I ‘KNOW’, somehow I need to find a way to think like that in my everyday reality, and if that doesn’t work, hopefully at least find a way to walk for two weeks in a year, until I crack capitalism’s code, reaching it’s Mecca; the much lauded passive income. Krishnamurti, help.
24th
For the last three evenings, when all the dust has settled, I allowed myself the luxury to indulge in some real downtime. Sure, reading offers that, but the next level is plugging in some noise canceling headphones, and getting into bed with a beverage and the Ipad to watch some movies. My options these days are limited, I only have access to a platform called Kanopy. In some colossal fuck up at the government level, it’s a streaming service available for the public, all you need is a library membership, which is free in Canada. Some poor municipal officer is going to get a bullet in his head when the fine folks at Netflix/Prime/Disney unearth this missed opportunity to squeeze another buck out of the Canadian immigrant populace. I digress.
Right before Milo was born we watched ‘Nine Queens’ (illegally streamed, fuck you Bezos!), which was outstanding. It featured Ricardo Darin, who apparently is one of the most prolific Argentinean actors, and rightly so. I rolled the dice on Kanopy and was pleasantly surprised when they offered not one but two more of his films. After a cursory IMDB check to make sure I wasn’t dealing with absolute duds (now you know where I get my goodread habit), I started with ‘Chinese Take Away’. It was slow, mildly funny and probably overly sentimental, but I still enjoyed it. Possibly because it was just nice to sit back and properly relax. Darin again was great and made the film work, he’s got that ‘anything I touch turns to gold’ aura about him.
After that I moved on to ‘El secreto de sus ojos’. This one probably cracks my top 5 of all time. I won’t urge you to see it right away – I’ll just leave it at saying that I think it’s a nice compliment to Angels with Dirty Faces. Some football, a lot of their politics, and of course love.
But I think the main reason why I’m writing this, is because I had seen ‘El secreto de sus ojos’, maybe twelve or thirteen years ago, though while watching it this week I had absolutely no recollection of it. It took a vulgar scene midway through for it to click. Somewhere in my memory bank I knew I had seen a good Argentinean film around those years, so why didn’t I remember it? No, not just a good film, it’s phenomenal, and watching it this week left me deeply affected. Surely it would have done so as well back in the early 10’s? Why did I draw such a huge blank? I have no answers – only a fear about what other good things I am forgetting.
25th
A short jaunt through the bookstores of Utrecht.
Let’s get this one out of the way first; Broerse. Big, three levels, complete with escalators. Newly refurbished and glitzy. High volume. Commercial. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re owned by a conglomerate of investors who have their fingers in chains of pharmacies and supermarkets. Despite that, I venture in once in a while. I particularly like to peruse their display of the Netherlands top ten selling fiction and non-fiction, so I know what the masses are reading and thinking. I also give it a bonus point for having a decent cafe where the tables overlook the Oudegracht, I’m a sucker for that.
The opposite end of the spectrum: There are some niche stores; LGBT and Women’s Only, which I wander into seldomly throughout the year, mostly out of a sense of solidarity. On the fringes of town there’s one or two beatnik shops which after one or two bad experiences I tend to avoid. Finally, there are Kringloops and charity shops, if you’re patient you could find something suitable, but the stars need to align for that to happen.
More interestingly, and what I would recommend is the route I take which usually starts down the Oudegracht at a second hand bookshop, the preposterously named Hinderickx en Winderickx. Presumably these two started the shop, but now only one remains, and he’s the classic bombastic scholarly literature snob, hardly acknowledging my entrance while the Marriage of Figgaro or some other pompous piece let’s me know I’m not welcome. Time and time again I make the same mistake of saying hello, for which I receive a furtive glance of irritation. But the guy knows his stuff. His English fiction is full of literary wonders and more than once I’ve steeled myself and made a purchase. Steeled myself because I can’t help but feel I’m being judged by what I buy. Maybe, just maybe I earned an ounce of Hinderckx’s or Winderickx’s respect when I bought a second hand copy of James Salter’s Light Years. If there’s nothing that catches your eye, you best leave quickly and quietly to venture further up the gracht.
It’ll bring you to Aleph’s; a red awning reading BOOKS & CD’s. That’s right, CD’s, this place is antiquated, bohemian and in no hurry to catch up with the times. It’s a bit of a mess in there, but if you know where to look you might be rewarded. A few weeks ago, under a heaping pile of rabble I unearthed a Kundera novel that I’ve had on my to-read list for some time. I also notably purchased the one and only ‘art’ book that I understood from Aleph’s, John Berger’s Picasso. In short, you won’t regret going in, but be prepared to be confused at the disarray. If you still don’t have a feel for the character of this shop, a few years ago I attended a little jazz concert there, which at the end, much to the delight of the audience in attendance, erupted over a wild rendition of Bella Ciao.
If you’ve struck out at the second hand shops, a little further up and just below the Dom Tower is Bookstore Seven Sterk. This is the most aesthetically pleasing of all the shops. It’s well lit with high ceilings, and an elegant chandelier. Yeah, bougie. If you stand in the front and look up you’ll see the tower, while out in the back it overlooks one of the prettiest gardens of the city. Their offering is always up to date, and if you let me be an ignorant expat for a moment, I only wish their English section was fractionally bigger, as it is vastly eclipsed by Dutch titles (which I also like to glance at, causing me to curse myself for not being fluent). It has happened before, but I’m usually pensive to make a purchase there, since I know what awaits me a few streets away.
Boekhandel Bijleveld is situated across from Janskerhof, on the corner of one of the busier streets in Utrecht. The owner’s weren’t born yesterday, and take full advantage of this by stacking their five large windows with beautiful books fresh from the press. They’ve got all the heavy hitters, but their tastes are so refined, particularly in non-fiction, that I’ve been known to blindly make a purchase without consulting the interwebs. The layout of the store is in a circle, and I usually make my way clockwise. It’s been rewarding, and a joy to walk out of there with my books neatly packaged in their brown paper bags, unwrapping the gift to myself, giddy with satisfaction, until I make the same circuit, usually a few weeks later.
26th
Some more Sunday, sadly.
This time it wasn’t Milo, it wasn’t Mother Nature, instead it was a sore throat that kept me awake. The temperatures have dipped here, hovering just above zero, and the weatherman failed to inform me of that, so I caught a chill on my Friday, and now I’m paying the price. We didn’t have any exciting plans in particular, but there’s definitely a spanner in the works in the regular Sunday proceedings. Running is off the table, and who can trumpet with their throat sore and swollen? So if I can keep the headache at bay, I’ll be practicing Spanish, reading, and here I am, writing. If you hit all the lights and take some well calculated risks, you can be at the Nuede, the heart of Utrecht, within eight minutes from my front door. Dedication. Alright, I’ll take a cheeky coffee afterwards on a terrace with a heater, as you do, when you’re writing. Actually before I left the house there was a rare and strong urge to complete several domestic duties, which I hope still exists when I get back. Sorry, man, nothing but boring happenings. Somehow when Knausgaard describes his household chores, it’s interesting. So, for lack of anything else to write, I’ll try a bit of it in the next paragraph.
Before leaving the house I went down into the basement, where we store the vacuum cleaner. I need to bring it upstairs for Fatima to use, so I bring it up and leave it in front of our door. But before heading in, I notice that the dust container is nearly full, and it’ll be have to be emptied. Pressing a red button, the container becomes detached and I carry it to our kitchen. To avoid getting dust in the kitchen, I take the wastebin out onto our balcony, so I can empty the contents out there. When I open the container I see all the dust from last week, and it’s an impressive amount. There are several long hairs wrapped around the center that I have to forcefully pull out. I’m amazed at the amount of dust we can collect in a week. We don’t get that kind of dust in Canada. I can’t explain it, but another Canadian friend of mine made the exact same comment. Why is the Netherlands so dusty? Once the bulk is emptied, I proceed to smack the container against a brick wall, sending plumes of dust billowing into the air. Thankfully the wind is strong today, so it blows out into the neighborhood. Am I part of the problem, am I making the Netherlands dusty, doing this? Though nowhere near clean, I am satisfied and reassemble the vacuum cleaner. I text Fatima that it is there, but to wait for me because we need to lift the sofa and get the dust from under there, which is always hazardously excessive.
Nah, it’s not the same. Nowhere close. Time for my coffee, and then some cleaning.
27th
Since five months my sleep has been disrupted (in the past month I must have mentioned that ten times), but hear me out. I’m also on the record that I deplore reading about dreams, however now I feel destined to write about the ones I’ve been experiencing lately. Again, hear me out before you brand me a hypocritical nitwit. Afterall, this is a ‘safe place’ isn’t it? It’s not a dream about flying dragons or chocolate rainbows.
So I’m frequently, if not nightly, awoken while I’m in sound sleep. I’m not a sleep scientist, but I believe it is called REM, the deepest form of sleeping that I’m suddenly awoken from and called into action. This is all conjecture from here on in – I think that when you’re in this deep sleep your emotions, possibly even the subconscious ones, are sifted, felt, rationalized, and compartmentalized. Normally, if you don’t have a baby, you won’t wake up, and often don’t even remember what you’ve been experiencing during this time of sleep. Since I do, I can distinctly recall the dreams and feelings at these moments.
I’m not joking when I say that I’ve been dreaming about work, nightly. I’m always there, with the people that I’ve worked with for the last decade, and they are always tinged with a sadness, that I’ve left, that I didn’t even properly say goodbye, that I didn’t even want to leave (point up for debate, but that’s the feeling in the dream, thus I presume subconsciously that it is true). Haunted is the correct term. Ten years is a long time, and though these were largely professional relationships, they still held some meaning for me. A lot of these people are good people, and I daresay I might even admire many of them.
I believe there are more meanings behind what’s taking place too.. Beyond the people is a loss of identity, and also my relation to money, work, living. I’m quite certain that I read losing a job or a loved one is akin to losing a limb.
I’m quoting an Instagram comment now (@zackalexander__) that I randomly came across this morning. “The darkest night of the soul is shattering because we tend to lose the external things we heavily attach our identity to and value from. When you grow up in homes where your caregivers were emotionally immature, many of us were taught to seek value in things that were outside of us, that we weren’t inherently good unless we were achieving or performing. The dark night literally rips all of that from you so that you’re left with nothing but yourself and to have to learn how to find value from within, but it’s only through this process that we can finally find our true inherent love and value and learn to live for ourselves and not simply just carrying our unprocessed childhood wounding.”
For me that’s too deep, and I have some perhaps more superficial explanations. First off, I have to exonerate my parents because the love I’ve felt from them is immense, and though they weren’t perfect I’m not sure I would label them as emotionally immature. The fact of the matter is that I value myself, I believe achieving and performing is something that I want naturally? And I’m not even seeking validation, the ‘value’ that I seek, that I would be content with, is a normal living wage; to pay the bills, to provide for the family, to eat healthy food, to travel occasionally, to live a normal life. (I know what you’re thinking but just let me flesh out my thoughts).
When my mom was visiting, she needed to catch the train from Utrecht to Schiphol, however when we arrived at the station it turned out the trains were temporarily cancelled, so she would need a taxi. Since I’m not earning an income, my first thought was to find one or two other passengers to share the taxi with, thus reducing the costs. If I had a regular income, I probably wouldn’t have done that, the cost of a taxi ride, 70 euros would easily be absorbable. Now since I have a ‘finite’ pile of money, I had to be cautious.
Those are two scenarios, but I can imagine an even better alternative. The people from work, they’d get a limousine with a chauffeur, and expense it to their work budgets, which were colossal and meant to be ‘controlled’ by someone in finance (like myself hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha hell no, I didn’t do that, no one did that, in the decade I was there).
The sadness in my dreams is somehow related to that – the second and especially the third scenario. I’m a son of capitalism, and now I’m out of the game. I questioned briefly if it was maybe that ‘power’ that those people at work held, to not even have to pay for anything but have the company foot the bill, that I admired. That’s a bit harsh, but is there possibly an element of truth in it. Do I value their value, instead of their inner value, their personalities?
I like to think I’m mentally strong enough, I don’t dwell on these things during the day, at least not with any intensity. Things are in perspective then. Still, I look forward to the day, or rather, night, when it’s a dragon that I slayed that’s on my mind.
28th
A Night in Tunisia.
Or more accurately, a cold gray morning in Utrecht, but let me explain. Today’s post was going to have the same flavour as yesterday’s, but you’ll be pleased to know I changed my mind when something good happened. Miniscule, irrelevant, but I’m going to ride that wave, for a change.
For a couple of months now I’ve had a new trumpet teacher. After months and months of languishing, mostly in ‘Arban’ – something of a bible for trumpet exercises, I finally decided that I’d need some guidance again. The pickings for a trumpet teacher are slim in Utrecht. Slim I tell you! The last one I had was daylight robbery. In the middle of the five sessions that I bought at an extortionately high rate, she had the impudence to ask me what I am working on. Holy shit, you’re the one that’s supposed to be telling me, the student, what to work on. That’s what I said in my head, what came out was probably something much milder. The prospect of getting a friend of a friend teacher fizzled out after he asked me when I wanted to have the lessons. Guess he was offended when I suggested Wednesday evenings cause I never heard from him again, and I didn’t want to press the issue. It felt somewhat like a defeat when I had to resort to the internet to look for someone online, but I was getting desperate, and frankly sick of Arban. I stumbled upon a platform called Apprentus, a website where teacher’s offered online lessons, not limited to music, and there I found Denys, who advertised as being based in Amsterdam. Perfect, because the trumpet being such a physical instrument, I hoped that once in a while I could hop on the train and have an in person meeting to correct any corporeal deficiencies I have when playing . Turns out that he only had studied at the conservatory in Amsterdam, and he’s now giving the lessons online from his home, Ukraine. I haven’t broached the subject, but everything seems to be going ok for him, his wife even delivering a baby in the last month. We started off with a trial lesson, where he could gauge my competencies and I could explain to him what I wanted to learn – largely I had no idea, besides a vague conception of getting better. When he badgered me into something more specific, I said I’d like to learn more about jazz and improvisation. My former teachers were all from classical schools, that is they could teach me how to read and play sheet music. He’s got the stereotypical Eastern European stoicness and after a few moments, let out an affirming Mmm hmm.
The first lessons may have been ambitious, looking back on my notes I see in the first week he gave me the homework to practice some minor scales (ok, I can handle that, basically reading the notes and playing), some ‘Licks’ (to be played with swing – he had to explain that term to me), writing out all the intervals of D Major, since according to him it was essential to learn some music theory to be able to improvise, and to play Autumn leaves – the melody and the first notes of the chord. I imagine a lot of this Chinese to you, and believe me it was for me as well.
Nevertheless, I appreciated his faith in me, and it was exactly what I was looking for in a teacher. Someone who could provide a clear set of exercises to work on, give me feedback on it, and slowly build from there.
Fast forward a few weeks, and we’re still working on the above. There’s some more scales and theory that we’ve worked on, and a few weeks ago Denys identified a major deficiency in my playing. One that I kind of knew I had, since it was something I neglected from day one, however anyone with the slightest idea of playing music will tell you that rhythm is a foundation. Somehow in the past I could get by – largely by playing music which I knew the melody beforehand, thus already having a sense of the rhythm and length to play the notes, or first by listening to a piece or exercise and trying to emulate that. When I admitted this to Deyns, I finally got a laugh out of him and he said he used to be the same, in fact winning national competitions by using the second tactic. He could basically fake his way through, and since then he’s learned that this can’t be the way to play, especially for improvisation. So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to teach myself rhythm, almost from scratch. I dug out the metronome that my first teacher gifted to me, but never used. The beginnings were tough – I already have a hard time reading the notes, making a pleasant sound, knowing the fingering of the valves and being conscious of my breath while playing. Adding another element to the mix didn’t bode well. Actually if I thought of rhythm it felt like immediately all of the other things had to go. I was essentially confusing myself. Instead of playing I was focusing on counting out the rhythm. One and two and three and FUCK, start again. It’s such an easy concept but in practice I started to overthink it. So he advised me to scale it back. Forget about playing, forget about the notes – focus on the rhythm. He gave me the sheet music to A Night in Tunisia, a piece I’m not familiar with, and told me to write out the rhythm lines on each bar, meaning a line where every beat should take place. Then take my metronome and just sing out the rhythm, making sure to keep it. For the past two nights I’ve been doing just that, keeping the rhythm not only with the metronome, but also my arm moving back and forth so I can better conceptualize the timing. A breakthrough came through this morning, when I found I could keep the timing, with what felt like minimal effort, throughout the piece from start to finish. The next step of course is to use the trumpet, make it sound good, eventually maybe even improvise. I was pleased.
Later in the morning we stopped by our local library with Milo, and there, sitting across from us was a child. He started to read out loud from a book, making mistakes and stuttering on some words, obviously learning to read, and doing so with pride. Had he looked up from the book, he would have seen a man some four decades his senior, nodding his head in appreciation and approval.