I wanted a pastry. I dressed and grabbed my laptop carrier and an umbrella as it was raining. The rain fell straight down, heavy drops, no wind. It was damp rather than cold. I walked peacefully without pace. The few I passed under umbrellas were similarly meandering, but those without scrunched their shoulders with hands in pockets, heads bent down, faces tightened, and eyes squinting. They were approaching misery as if it was their intended destination.
At the end of the block, I turned south from Kerkstraat onto Utrechtsestraat. I crossed the street diagonally, jogging a bit to get out of the way of a tiny Smart Car. Once I was on the sidewalk, I watched it putter over the Prinsengracht bridge, its engine muttering “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” I probably would have done more damage to it if it had hit me. “Well, I seem to have a slight bruise on my knee. Sorry about your mangled one-seater.” Golf carts were probably cheaper and just as fast. Still, I loved the Smart Cars. They were so wonderfully tiny. They were still a novelty for me at the time as they were still rare even in most urban areas of the U.S. I wanted to pick one up and carry it under my arm as I walked throughout the city.
I walked out of the rain into a bakery, Patisserie Kuyt, at the end of the block on Utrechtsestraat. I waited in a long line, absentmindedly looking at the pastries on display. Well, those within my vision as the many in line blocked my view. I could also see that there was a separate glass-encased display with even more goodies. The bakery was all clean lines with whites, oranges, and lime greens. Plenty of light from the large window next to the door. The space was narrow, but long. I couldn’t see how long because a partial wall jutted out to block my view. I had to move several times to allow people to walk through, going either in or out. Behind me were several chairs at a high bar, the chairs tall with a back to lean against. Interestingly, the backs and seats of the chairs were made of glass. Different. I liked different. The wall was white, lit by lights built into the wall, lights covered by a black obtrusion—a design aesthetic—emitting a glow above and below. There were other lights higher up, tiny soft white lights also built on the walls. High ceilings. Throughout the bakery I saw track lighting as well.
Interior designs fascinated me and Utrechtsestraat was a wonderful street for interior design. Like all buildings in the older areas of Amsterdam, the storefronts were narrow at the street but ran deep front-to-back. Everything within this place was rectangled, cubed, ninety degree angles, white, orange, lime green, and black, a four-color scheme; the floor was black, but otherwise black was used on the walls only as highlights or, as I walked beyond the half wall losing my spot in line, part of the faces of white-masked women with orange lips, huge orange-flowered hats, and a chaos of orange flowers surrounding their faces on the sides and under their chins with black appearing again to provide some relief from the explosion of orange. Surrounding this long image on the wall, perhaps four by sixteen feet, was lime green: above, below, and on either side, a wall of lime-green giving way to a white ceiling and a black floor.
I walked to the back of the line noticing the lights hanging from the ceiling here and there, gathered in bunches, long thin white broomsticks holding half-globed golden halos a foot or two wide to soften the yellowed-glow. Ah, more colors, the dulled metallic gold and the yellowed light as well as mid-ranged brown wood-grained tabletops in the back half of the patisserie. So, seven colors. I felt like the Count from Sesame Street, “One color, two colors, three colors, four colors, …”
I stood in line, again, waiting. No rush, no impatience, just observant waiting. People with umbrellas, mostly young people in their twenties it seemed. A couple women at the bar drinking coffee and eating pastries while looking at their smart phones. Everyone—every single person, man or woman—dressed with style. I looked around outside the window to see if there was a fashion shoot or a nearby studio for photographing men and women wearing expensive clothing. Nope. Just the culture of Utrechtsestraat.
While looking outside, I saw another Smart Car put-put past the window. I thought I saw the guy inside thrusting forward in his seat toward the steering wheel, possibly trying to will the car to go faster. I tried to suppress my laughter, but the image along with my mind at play? It was too fucking funny. The woman in line ahead of me turned around to glare at me as I laughed. Only … it wasn’t a glare. It was a look of utter boredom, the look of a woman who had been living for hundreds of thousands of years and was absolutely exhausted by her continued existence. Her blank face said, “I haven’t laughed in ten thousand years. What could possibly be funny now?” I wanted to tell her I hadn’t even lived forty years, that I was an infant in comparison, still capable of being amused by sights and sounds and smells and … everything.
She looked away before I could say anything. If I had seen her face in a magazine I probably would have thought she was beautiful. However, her face in person wasn’t as lifelike as magazine images so she elicited no more of a response from me than a mannequin would. Maybe that was her job; she was a mannequin walking the streets in stylish clothes day after day, never changing expression, never interested in anything, never alive while working. Maybe at night, after she clocked out, she was wild and whimsical, full of stories with a million differing facial expressions and a billion gestures, a verbal and nonverbal dynamo capable of capturing the spirit of every man, woman, and child, a woman so charismatic she could lead both saints and sinners to their deaths with brilliant tales of what it was like to drown in a canal. Invisibly dressed to the nines by day and visibly present everywhere by night while gallivanting in rags to the delight of all.
She was indeed dressed well. She wore a lime-green wool coat, an orange scarf, black pants and boots, and a white purse dangling from her forearm. I paused for a moment, thinking. I looked around the bakery and—no! “Are you shitting me?!” Jesus fucking fuck. I could feel it bubbling within me, a fit of laughter coming. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. When it burst forth it puffed her ironed-straight blonde hair. Again, she turned around. For a second—just a moment—she looked angry. Her eyes shifted back to ennui so quickly I wondered if the look of anger was a hallucination. I said, “Pardone,” in the best French accent I could afford on a middle-class income. She was turning away as I apologized, my sincerity equivalent to hers. Well, no, that wasn’t true. She had hundreds of thousands of years on me and her insincerity was impeccable.
The line was making progress. I saw what I wanted—a chocolate croissant. There were still three people ahead and I figured the woman in front of me would either be very fast with her order or perhaps wait centuries to utter a word to the server, expecting to be understood without having to say a word. She had that mystique about her and I thought of the Hans Christian Andersen story, The Princess and the Pea.
I turned away from her as I heard a familiar muffled sound from outside. Sure enough, the put-put belonged to a Smart Car. Three Smart Cars on Utrechtsestraat in fifteen or twenty minutes. Well, I wasn’t sure exactly how much time had elapsed while standing behind the Princess. I should have been more awed that I was in the presence of royalty, but the third Smart Car fascinated me much more. Had every vehicle in Amsterdam been replaced overnight? Were the drivers all going to a Smart Car flash mob in the Museumplein? Had Shriners upgraded their little motor carts to Smart Cars on their way to a parade? The possibilities were endless.
I wondered what would happen if the whole world shifted to bumper cars. It seemed like a decent idea. How much more fun would it be to be stuck in traffic on an expressway inside a bumper car? There would still be people complaining, though: “My car only goes to the left! I keep circling to the left and everybody keeps ramming into me while laughing maniacally. This isn’t fun anymore!” A carnie would have to shut down the electricity and run onto the freeway to fix the woman’s defective car while everyone else gave her the stink eye for interrupting the fun. There certainly wouldn’t be any more drive-by shootings; where would the perpetrator go? There would probably still be shootings, though. Some guy who’d had a bad day would get pissed that he kept getting smashed by other drivers then whip out a Glock to blow people away. That wouldn’t happen too often, though, as the guy would empty his clip pretty fast and all those in nearby bumper cars who hadn’t been shot would run over to him to stomp his ass to death. News helicopters would cover the scene from above, an “on-the-spot” reporter using that “professional sensationalism” voice that broadcasters had long ago mastered would bleat over the radio: “I’m on the scene looking down at what appears to be a man in a blue bumper car being brutally beaten to death by a fiercely angry mob. A listener on the freeway going by the name of ‘KatieBPretty6’ just texted that the man in the blue bumper car had fired at least a dozen shots before being mauled by vicious vigilantes. No word yet on how many have been killed or injured, but oh my, the carnage is unlike anything I've seen in my weeks of on-the-scene reporting. We've just received word that police driving Mario Karts and clown cars are on their way now. Back to you, Jim.”
The Princess of Pettiness was fast after all. Instead of the croissant, though, I ordered a double espresso and “Miserable,” a hazelnut almond biscuit with rich vanilla cream. I stepped to the side and waited. I looked around to find out where Petty was sitting so I could find a spot as far from her as possible. The tables were all filled and, shit, she was at the bar, the only place left to sit. Fuck. I walked over with my drink and pastry. Fortunately, there were two empty seats; I chose the one furthest from her and set up laptop. At least each seat afforded ample bar-top space.
“Miserable” made me anything but. An extraordinary amount of flavor in something so small. I indexed as I sipped my espresso, staying a couple hours to work. As the clock approached noon, I packed up and left Pattisserie Kuyt. The rain had died down, now just a mist, not enough to bother with an umbrella. It was warm enough, comparably, that the mist felt good and yet still cold enough that the air felt light. I walked with a bounce in my step, bounding so enthusiastically by the time I turned the corner onto Kerkstraat that I thought I had accidentally stepped in Flubber. Well, better Flubber than dog shit.
One nasty thing about Amsterdam was the abundance of dog shit on the streets and sidewalks. The etiquette of scooping up the shit of one’s dog had not yet reached Amsterdam. Instead, dog owners stood proudly by Boxers, Irish Wolfhounds, Labrador Retrievers, and Chows as they dropped turds both large and small nearly everywhere people walked. They smiled while looking around as if they wanted to catch the attention of anyone in the area so that they could witness the miracle of poop plopping from the asshole of a Pug. I had once walked by a woman speaking Dutch to her mutt, apparently trying to tell the little thing, “Don’t shit over there; no one will step in it! Come over here, right in the middle of the sidewalk. There you go. Good boy, you are such a good little boy. Momma loves you, yes she does, yes she does.” Fucking dog walkers.
When I got back to my apartment I made soup and a sandwich. I indexed most of the afternoon, taking breaks to write and study a little Dutch, just long enough to be able to forget everything I learned by the next morning. It rained on and off throughout the afternoon. The rain made me feel cozy while indexing, partially because of the soft, soothing sounds and partially because I knew I wasn’t missing anything outdoors while working. I ate around four-thirty, a frozen dinner popped into the microwave, then continued working until six.
I stopped and considered my options. I could go out in the rain, explore the city, find a new café or club, head over to Bloem, or … I could stay dry in my apartment while shrooming. I opened the fridge and pulled out the Colombians. I ate them with a couple scoops of peanut butter and water to wash them down. I almost ate the McKennaii as well, but I decided to wait. Maybe when I felt the first effects of the Colombians.
I didn’t do anything to prepare, no special ritual. I remembered what my “whole self” had mentioned last time. He could do the work himself. Of course, that was with Hawaiians. Who knew which self would come into being on Colombians. I loaded a bowl of Super Lemon Haze and took a couple puffs then opened the window to have a cigarette. Everything felt smoother as the rough edges grew more freely. Fuck trimming them. They needed wild growth not manicuring.
There wasn’t a person on the street. First time I had seen that. Weird for such an early hour even with the rain. I noticed it was heavier now, a real downpour. I saw a car motoring from Utrechtsestraat toward my apartment and the Magere Brug. It wasn’t a Smart Car. That made me sad for a moment. I was hoping the world had transitioned to a uniformity of Smart Cars with everyone driving a single-seat car. What about the kids? Fuck the children. They could take public transportation, ride bikes, or walk. No need to plump up anyone under eighteen. Redesign the fucking cities if it wasn’t feasible to get around without a car. Wasn’t my damn idea to build cities and suburbs without trains, bike lanes, or sidewalks.
I pulled out the McKennaii just as I felt my spine tingling. I ate them all, nasty as they were. Dried shrooms may not be palatable, but at least there’s only a couple grams to chew. Fresh shrooms though? 35 grams of chomping. Well, the dose of Hawaiians was only 12 grams, but the other varieties were anywhere from 20 to 35 grams per dose. I got used to them, but for whatever reason I was gagging a bit as I forced the McKennaii down my throat.
I wandered back into the living room after pounding a glass of water. I had closed the window earlier after my cigarette and the apartment felt warm. I turned down the thermostat. The Colombians seemed mild, but it was also early. I was also used to more potent shrooms. The McKennaii reinforcements promised a more potent experience in time.
I turned on a trance station to produce a movement rhythm. I hadn’t moved much all day and I wanted to break a sweat. The shrooms were mild thus far, my thought clear and emotionally not much different than I had been before eating them. My body, though, felt slinky, craving limbs akimbo. I moved to the center of the room and let the music guide me. My pace changed with the rhythm, the beat. Time passed and I was aware of it.
I danced on and off for an hour, covered in sweat by the time I stopped. My heart was beating fast. I turned off the stereo. When I did the silence astounded me. I knew instantly that I was feeling the beginnings of the McKennaii and that the Colombians were shifting gears. I wanted to feel the rain so I grabbed my keys, ran downstairs, and walked outside. The rain felt wonderful for a moment, but then I was freezing. I unlocked the building door, ran upstairs to my apartment, and stripped off my clothes. I put them in the hamper. Fuck, I still needed to do laundry. This time I wrote it down before getting in the shower. I washed with lukewarm water as that was the temperature my body seemed to prefer. It felt almost as if I wasn’t in the water at all, that I was simply standing in a dry shower. The soap and shampoo lathered, though, and that confused me. How could that be?
I dried off without too much difficulty. My mind was beginning to take different shapes. Or maybe it was my thoughts. Ideas were angled then square, circling and spiraling, making triangles and rhombuses. Running parallel to these internal images were verbal ideas and commentaries. “It seems odd that I would think in shapes within the same mindspace as words while still being able to notice what I see and feel. There’s an open door in front of me, a snake-like coil spinning sideways with a vertical spike continuously stabbing it, and these word-thoughts defining what I’m experiencing, providing a play-by-play of sensation, emotion, and nonverbal thoughts.” I wondered why language typically dominated when it came into play. It usually distracted attentiveness from the other goings-on, but while shrooming it was on equal ground with the rest of the happenings, sensations and emotions acquiring just as much—or even more—attentiveness as language.
I used language to let language know it was losing the battle. My big toe wiggled in delight, finally feeling it was as much a part of me as the word “the.” How fucked up that an article such as “a” acquires more importance within my being than my big toe. A disaster! Why not just exclaim “disastrous”?! But why would any word be more important than my big toe? Preposterous that descriptors could become more meaningful than the described! Madness, absolute madness, delirious ribbons of ideas making humanity delinquent in its duty to the body. Why have words at all if they aren’t heightening sensory and emotional awareness?
Language had dulled our senses, detached us from our emotions, and made feelings incomprehensible. Of course we had become anxious, depressed, frightened, and lonely! Nouns disrupted our sense of movement, verbs replaced the actions they were meant to represent, and adjectives robbed the qualities of being from being! The species couldn’t survive much longer if it remained so dependent on language. We dumped garbage into oceans and ate corn syrup with a sense of impunity when we were not at all free from the punishment by doing so; our bodies told us how dangerous it was too eat foods with too much starch, but words convinced us it would be okay. Verbal thoughts created ridiculous beliefs and those beliefs directed action: “One more bag of Cheetos won’t hurt. Maybe I’ll follow that up with a box of cookies and wash it all down with a 72-ounce bucket of sugary soda. My taste buds say it’s okay so it must be.” What about the nausea that always follows, the inner deadness and the emotional dread, the fat accumulating over weeks, months, and years, the diabetes developing and the organs failing over decades, and then the miserable decade before death, a death coming twenty years before it might have if words hadn't convinced us that what was bad was good?
I had been as negligent as anyone else, harming my body, ignoring my senses, misunderstanding my emotions, dismissing my feelings. I believed all the suffering was normal because others, including doctors, used words to tell me “you're in the normal range of health for your age.” Well, yeah, the fucking scientific studies determining "normal ranges" were based on statistical samples of unhealthy individuals. "Healthiness" had been a label that had little to do with optimal health. "You're in the mediocre range of health which, if you want the truth, means you're pretty fucking unhealthy compared to what you could be if we had constructed societies to optimize our sensory and emotional experiences. But we love words so fuck that other shit! Yippee!" I made the pitiful mistake of believing that other human beings knew a goddamn thing about anything. Fucking idiots! I, too, was one of the idiots because I had listened and believed.
I had been wandering around the apartment naked while raving internally. My big toe was being ignored again as I angered with words. I stopped walking as it seemed the movement was fueling the diatribe of language. I looked down at my big toe and allowed myself one last series of verbal thoughts: “Everything I have been doing since booking an apartment and flight to Amsterdam in November of last year has been in service of making such discoveries. I am freeing myself from the confines of externally-created beliefs, values, morals, and principles that I had inadvertently internalized as reliable truths. But Rome wasn’t built in a day—Never Say That Again! Those fucking clichés, they were the worst offenders. No time to stop, keep going, keep shrooming, eradicate every diseased thought of society.”
A deep breath then a wiggle of the toe. A smile, evidence of an emotional connection created by awareness of a collaboration between sight and the physical sensation of a wiggling toe. I spent the rest of the night in emotionally gratifying silence introducing verbally segregated body parts to one another in the process of integrating them into a loving union.
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