Belgium

I haven’t slept; the bright sunlight feels like a heavy blanket against my chest. Along the freeway are big stretches of warped glass, or birds and fish on long cement walls, we drive across a bridge with sleek cables that stretch out like big wings, like sails. We pass clusters of trees that look strangely flat, trees full of nests. The black birds seem to leave ripples behind as they glide through the purpley skies. All around us is a bright rainbow of green; light spring green, deep damp green, green leaves aglow with sunlight. At a gas station we pick up festival-bound hitchhikers. They give us Swiss chocolate and a little weed. We sail through the border and say, oh. We stop and smoke a spliff in a little cluster of trees, and later wish each other happy lives and I doze off watching orange rooftops and clusters of cows pass by the window. It all looks so clean and wholesome. In Brugge we park and then follow the peaks of old medieval towers, the big ancient brick buildings, wandering around and snapping photos of the red doors, the green shutters, the geese and swans and ducks along the murky canals. We buy French fries and write Brugge a letter. We gawk at big chocolate Easter sculptures. We stop at an art gallery with slippery floors, We find a wall of beer. We find a huge red poodle sculpture; it looks diabolical. We stop for tea, and then back in the car we begin to drive whimsically, turning onto smaller roads and searching for some quiet place where we can park. A headache grows in my temple, and finally we find a little turn out in the countryside alongside a swampy field. We push down the back seats and lay down blankets and pillows, and smoke out the door as the sky turns dusty midnight purple. The sound of rain drops patters through my dreams.

When we wake up, outside the window is thick white-gray mist; skinny reeds bob through the milky morning. We hit the road. In Antwerpen we stop at a little café and have tea. A man comes in with a sweet lab dog, and she walks over and greets us quietly. We find a busy market where men are calling out the prices for their asparagus and selling olives from enormous silver bowls. The scent of feta cheese and oil lingers in the air. They sell salami and cheese, they sell dream catchers and posters, tulips and clothing. Vincent buys a little water pipe. We hit the road, and eventually recognize the warped glass along the highway. Back in Amsterdam, traffic is fussy—we wiggle our way into a little parking space and eat Chinese food before parting ways.

Amsterdam: Part One

Amsterdam is cold and sleepy—gray lays over it, thick like a comforter. The tall, old buildings curl in on each other, leaning close for warmth, folding into each other. Cyclists steam by like schools of metallic fish. In the huge parking lots they huddle together, slumberous silver and rusted turquoise or engine red, glossy black, chipped copper frames. Vin wraps himself up to his nose, saying his Asian blood is too hot for the damp cold that goes all through you. By the ferry, little ducks bob and peck in the damp green-gray water.

Sleepy Amsterdam is full of a million languages, and no one seems to really bother with Dutch. We spend the days strolling through the streets, along and over the glossy canals, crossing tram tracks and bike lanes haphazardly, ignoring the crosswalks with their beeping timer mechanisms. Amsterdam is adorable, quaint, reminiscent of the things that you think of in Portland, or maybe San Francisco. I linger outside the shop windows gawking at the novelty gifts, handmade soaps, woolen hats, quirky t-shirts, pastries, waffles, psychedelic truffles, marijuana lollypops, little glass bongs and grinders with the big triple x across the top. We find a shop entirely devoted to buttons; too cute for words.

At the market there are booths set up with little yellow wheels of cheese, with jars of pickles, with flat waffles and poffertjes—fat pancakes the size of silver dollars. We eat the poffertjes with butter and powdered sugar using little wooden forks as we meander through clothing booths full of colorful scarves and bizarre American flag leggings, Amsterdam caps with tassels and bright green Heineken sweatshirts. As the market begins to shut down, egrets appear and pick at the ice left behind by a seafood booth.

The coffeeshops are dimly lit and sweet-musty smelling, with little nugs labeled and displayed in their countertops, with laminated menus and pre-rolled joints stored in slim plastic tubes. In one shop, an electronic panel in the counter glows pleasantly, displaying the menu on one side, and as the shop keeper weighs and packages the weed in small plastic baggies, the other side displays the weight and price of each strain, tallying up a neat total. People sit at the tables in pairs, rolling spliffs and drinking tea. Vin and I frequent a shop called New Times, with a burnished purple counter and purple candles at each table. We smoke Vin’s long spliffs and sip on English tea, Earl Gray, Moroccan Mint or Rooibos. The third or fourth day we stop by, the man behind the counter hands back our money and bumps fists with Vin. One day, an older man behind the counter is weighing out clumps of hash. Vin asks what it is and the man tells him couscous, handing him a little clump with a friendly smile.

One evening we stop at a dark little smartshop full of glow in the dark posters and metal pipes. The man behind the counter has long hair and shows us a menu of truffles that are rated based on the intensity of the physical high, the energy, and the visuals that each type produces. We buy two little boxes of Cosmic Connection. Back at the house we open them up and contemplate the black clusters. They look like animal shit. We eat them with Nutella, cringing at the acrid after taste. Vin’s friend, a thin blond girl, stops by and sits on his Fatboy bean bag sipping a beer while we watch some show about some nut job living with lions. When she leaves I go to the bathroom and sit on Vin’s strangely high toilet seat; my legs dangle off. I realize my toes suddenly seem miles away and the rug is undulating softly. Back in his room, the deep red curtains are rippling, deep velvety burgundy, the golden shapes on them glowing faintly. We are feeling melty, listening to Gramatik with the TV on mute, watching shadows spill across the African plains in lazy half-fascination. Mostly, my mind fills up. I feel like I can see myself from a strange new angle. I look at my legs stretched out before me. I pull a blanket over my head and watch the white polka dots drift sleepily through the dark.

Dealing with Decisions

I had this strange moment in a shower so hot I could barely make out my toes in the steam, where I realized that I alone could make the decision of when to turn the shower off, when to get out and put on clothes, what to do next. Suddenly, in a huge damp wave, I was overwhelmed with the enormous quantity of decisions we are required to make everyday, and the nonchalance with which we do so. I guess this casual attitude is necessary in order to function. I also began to wonder if this is why I sometimes find it so hard to function; a decision so trivial and seemingly small, just trifling little steps of logic like, should I shower now or in the morning, should I study more or sit and write, should I try to knit this scarf while I’m stoned, what should I eat for dinner—all these little things that come at us in huge waves in the span of mere seconds present me with an unconceivable amount of options, the weight of which I may be incapable of comprehending.  The length of time it takes to make these decisions, too, becomes an overwhelming problem—these are precious seconds during which everything is changing, maybe. If I do not complete a particular decision in a particular period of time, the resulting minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, may be vastly altered in a way that I will never understand, and perhaps always question.

What if. What if today I did not decide to buy chili sauce? I would not have strolled down Pedro Antonio, I would not have bought soy sauce, called Laurel, stopped by the house, seen Leon, helped him move, gotten a coffee, talked about writing, belief systems, nudity and shitting, musical festivals, prostitution, drank a beer, bought a specific brand of incense, walked up to the park, smoked a bowl, met two boring girls, met one zany dealer, walked home in the dark, made spicy rice for dinner… Maybe instead I would have studied. Maybe I would have been more capable of studying now. Maybe I would have done better on my test tomorrow. Maybe without my paranoid overzealous worry I would have forgotten to check the time for the test. Maybe I would have missed it. Maybe I would have made pasta for dinner.

I guess being able to make decisions without thinking about it on such a specific, intensive level is about being okay with the way things turn out, or about trusting yourself to be okay in any of the sweeping spectrum of possibilities. In a way, I guess it’s about letting go of all the past decisions you’ve made, realizing that the veins of possibility that once stemmed out from the countless decisions you’ve made throughout the years of your life that you have already lived are now closed, or rearranged into different time frames, and that reaching back to them, imagining them, rolling them around in your hands, in your heart, is useless. It’s about being okay with the good and the bad that have come from the tremendous scope of decisions that you have already made, and trusting that the opportunities that you missed will reappear and that the mistakes that you have made will not; it’s about separating time frames in terms of possibility and usefulness, and making fresh starts in every moment.