Wind-Down

My memory is a funny thing - highly sensory - sort of photographic, but more like cinematic. I can usually tell ahead of time when a moment is going to become a memory - a certain combination of senses hitting me at once in the head, the heart, the gut. These days my brain is working overtime to capture and store indefinitely, and I can do nothing but stand, rooted, when it hits me - watching C. buy flowers in the Dappermarkt, strolling along the Leidsestraat in the light rain, making lists of the last things I have to buy, see, photograph, walk through, do; the last benches I have to sit and write on, the last times (for a while, anyway), that I will laugh and dance, talk, drink, eat, listen, observe, with this constellation of people who I have entwined myself with in Nederland.

I think that leaving Amsterdam is going to be harder for me than leaving anywhere else has been, although it always rips at my heart a little to be transplanted. I've grown up here in a sense - navigated a language barrier, a bicycle, new neighborhoods, new ways of teaching and learning, making friends of my own accord,pursued curiosity rather than fear, taken care of myself, begun to integrate myself, and chosen things to love wholly without the influence of people I knew, emulated, adored, or needed before I came here. Even in Saint Paul, in the beginning, I had the comfort of a small campus and people who lived in the rooms directly surrounding me, moreover, I had the examples of cousins and bookstore friends and parents and people I had known my whole life to build upon and follow, a set of ideas about what college and liberal arts college and the Midwest could do for me. Here, I did not have that - I was ready, after years of fear and self-examination and worry and slow, steady rehabilitation from these things, to stumble into the world on my own shakey toddler legs, and I did, and I could not predict or regulate what would be difficult or easy, and I loved being thrown into that maelstrom fiercely, with all my heart. I'm concerned that I have/will become addicted to change of environment, reinvention, and the constant set of challenges and rewards spit at me from living in an unfamilier culture. Despite the fact that I am emotionally preparing to leave, wrapping things up, buying and taking pictures of last things, grappling with what it will be like to leave the life I have begun to build here, despite the fact that pieces of my heart are firmly grounded in Buffalo, Eagle, Saint Paul, North Truro, Many Glacier, Trumansburg, despite the fact that I love so many people who are not here, despite the fact that I am young still and far from full-grown, or even mature, I think in some ways I will always think of Amsterdam, of Nederland, as my first adult home.

Two nights ago, at the Bitterzoet, we listened to a Dutch funk family band blow the roof off for two solid hours. They were sweating, they were smoking, they were belting. The drummer sang a la Levon Helm, the bassist stuck his tongue out when he was concentrating, the sax player moved every part of his body except his arms, the lead singer was the one of the teeniest tiniest frailest looking waifs of a white girl I have ever seen, but she could have given Aretha a run for her money. They came back for an encore, the DJs began to spin - Sister Nancy, People Get Ready, A Tribe Called Quest for good measure. I was dehydrated, I had not been home for twelve hours, I was carrying my school bag on my right arm, I had just said goodbye to Letje, I was dancing with a familiar fever, a familiar smile. I looked around at my beautiful friends all concentrating, all happy, all busting moves that I have come to feel so much at home in the middle of. At the hipsters and go-go Dutch girls and slow rastas with beautiful dreads and scruffly young men with backpacks and headphones around their necks wagging their knees. And I teared up a little, realizing that I have only nine more nights of the potential to be surrounded by these particular characters and motions and sounds, to be in the midst of this particular mental film.

I'm not even entirely sure who my readership is, though I do know some. But whoever you are, I'd like you to think about whether you want me to continue this blog or not when I return, and let me know. I'm torn.