I went to Patisserie Kuyt on Utrechtsestraat in the morning. There was quite a line, but fortunately no Petty Princesses. There was more of a mix of ages on this day as well. It made sense that it was busy on a Monday morning, what with everyone heading to work. It felt good to wait, though. The weather wasn’t half bad, cloudy but not really cold. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. When I came to the front of the line I ordered a coffee and ganache cake. I’d had my eye on the cake ever since I saw a woman bite into one and watched her swirl her tongue to catch the crumbs and icing on her lips. She was a little bit older, probably in her late fifties, but it was damn sexy—I was increasingly unconcerned with age when it came to the sex appeal of women. I suppose I wanted her more than the ganache, but the only feasible option was the cake so I went with it.
I weaved my way out of the traffic in the store and took a bite. Heaven for the taste buds. I wished I had bought another to put in the fridge to eat with shrooms. Possibly in the future. I had indulged sight, sound, and touch a great deal while booming, but I had mostly neglected taste and smell except on a couple of occasions. It was time for some sweets.
As I walked back toward my apartment I decided I could spare some time at Eik en Linde to say hello and order an uitsmijter for old time’s sake. I finished my coffee and disposed of the cup in a trash bin before I unlocked my bike. I rode over the Magere Brug and down Plantage Kerklaan to the corner of Middenlaan and hung a left. I parked out front and went inside. The curly Q was packed and so was most of the bar. I wondered if there was a holiday I hadn’t remembered or if someone had died and a crowd had gathered to mourn. I found a seat near a middle pillar of the bar and caught Kasper’s eye. He gave me a quick hello and I ordered a coffee and a ham and kaas uitsmijter mit tomaten and champignonen. Kasper gave me a quick “Ja” and called in the order before scurrying about to serve the myriad customers at the bar. I looked around the room. Most of the tables were full. What was going on this early in the day?
I never found out. I had my coffee, ate my uitsmijter, and waved Kasper goodbye. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say “Sorry, it’s just so busy.” I didn’t blame him one bit. In a way I was glad because it gave me a chance to go back home and work on the psychology textbook. I had more indexes lined up and I wanted to keep pace so I could continue enjoying my stay. Overall, everything I had done had been rewarding: diverse experiences, full days and nights, keen insights from shrooming, and even some heartache as I faced more fears, anxieties, and sorrows.
As I cycled home I thought of the previous night, the pain of realization, the layered hurt of rejections. The sorrows were like Russian dolls, inside each one was another in the same form. The intensities differed, whatever was deepest inside hurt the most, like diamonds of pain had formed from the pressure created by outer layers of more recent hurts. The wounds were deep, deeper than I wanted to admit. The rejections were losses, harms felt more acutely because of open-heartedness, vulnerability, expectations, and attachments. A mix of selflessness and selfishness, of giving and desiring, the combinations creating a powerful powerlessness. I couldn’t yet see the whole of the pattern, but I realized a change in perspective and approach in relation to others was necessary. How to maintain a spirit of trust and generosity without sacrificing self in the process? A question to address while shrooming, I believed. That would be the night’s agenda, though the Thai would likely expose what was most pressing—which could very well be an experience of joy instead.
I arrived back at the apartment around eleven. Still early. I started indexing then ate a big salad around one before getting back to work. I had a puff of Arjan’s #1 after an hour’s work, took a break, and watched the day go by outside the window for half an hour. The sky was cloudy but it was fairly light. The pedestrians walking by were a bit more hurried than at night and on the weekends. Mondays. Too many cars so I went back to work after fifteen minutes. Soon enough it was six. I had made good progress. I probably only had a day’s worth of work left, possibly more depending on how long it took to edit.
I checked my email and saw a response from Eliene. Shit, I had forgotten I sent her an email the previous day. I was apprehensive before opening it, perhaps still too raw emotionally. As I read through it, though, I was pleased: “Michael, happy you messaged. Auriana left for conference until Thursday. Hate being alone. Can you come over tonight?”
Impulse answer: Hell yeah! I saw she sent the email around noon. Damn, I hoped she was still up for a visit. On the other hand, I was hoping to shroom. Let’s see: Shroom alone or spend the evening with Eliene? I replied to her email. “Yes, I’d love to come over. Can you give me your address again?” I loaded a bowl of Arjan’s, smoked, and took a shower in anticipation of heading over. As I got dressed I checked the email. Eliene had responded. “Tomorrow night? Sorry, something came up. Love to see you tomorrow.” She added her address at the end and gave her phone number as well. Slight disappointment, but now I could focus on shrooming. Knowing I would see her the next night lightened my heart.
I was not sure if I was like others or not, but sometimes when I experienced intense emotions and moods it was as if they would remain indefinitely, as if I was simply a series of wounds or, conversely, a being of everlasting light. I wasn’t sure what that meant other than that my emotions had much more power than my thought. Maybe I was dropped on my head as a baby and my amygdala was damaged. I certainly had thousands of head-on collisions playing American football in high school as a running back and linebacker. It was possible there was more damage to my noggin and spine from those hits than I had ever imagined. Neuroscience was discovering that early life (including adolescent) brain and nervous system traumas had impacts that impact health much more severely decades later. If that was the case then I would be looking at increasing difficulties over time. Maybe the science would continue to progress and treatments would be developed to help in some way. Of course, the U.S. health care system was dominated by insurance companies so even if the science was there it wouldn’t mean I would have access to it.
Enough was enough. I had been in a marijuana-induced run-on of thoughts. Time to shroom. I made a salad and poured a glass of wine as I ate the Thai. I opened the window to let some fresh air inside, smoked a little more Arjan’s, and had a cigarette. I grabbed a beer from the fridge, turned on the television, and searched for a soccer match. Football, soccer, whatever. I enjoyed watching the games now and then. I felt good and high and I enjoyed the feel of the cold beer in my hand. It tasted especially good.
I watched maybe ten minutes and went out for a walk. I was still high, but not stoned. I walked over to Frederiksplein and then to Sarphatistraat. I walked east and crossed the long bridge over the Amstel. I was glad I was decked out in my winter gear because there was a mean wind over the bridge. Once I crossed the wind lessened. I was in an area of the city I rarely traversed in spite of being so nearby. It was newer and, because of that, a little more bland. Of course, everything seems bland after being around seventeenth and eighteenth century architecture in a city designed like Amsterdam.
I crossed Weesperstraat and kept walking. The buildings were newer and less spectacular yet I didn’t mind them. They were different and I liked that. I turned down Roetersstraat, crossed a couple of bridges, and found myself on the ever-familiar Nieuwe Kerkstraat. The road had had some bends in it but I was still surprised I wound up there. I was right at the point where N. Kerkstraat crossed the Muidergracht to become Plantage Kerklaan. I began to feel the effects of the Thai. I thought briefly of walking to Bloem. I felt warm inside and feeling warm inside corresponded with the environment at Bloem. I stood for a time wondering and as I did the thought of Bloem drifted away. I forgot entirely what I had been wondering about and that made me laugh.
I saw a woman with a wonderfully rounded ass walking toward the Magere Brug and decided that was the direction I should go. I was half a block behind her, but I could see her well enough to notice how her cheeks shifted up and down, back and forth. Her flowing pants weren’t too tight, but they were wide at the ankle and snug around her ass. The fabric gradually pulled toward the body as the pants rose—or a gradual distancing from the body as the pants descended. For me, though, her ass was the focal point and that determined the interpretation of the design aesthetic. I continued following her until she passed by my apartment. She was drawing me in her wake and I walked half a block past my apartment until I heard a raging car behind me. Even though I was on the sidewalk I felt I was in grave danger. I waved goodbye to the rounded ass of goodness and walked home.
I went inside, removed my coat, and had a puff of cannabis. I opened the window and smoked a cigarette. The shrooms felt light, but they always seemed to feel lighter when I was moving about outside. The effects began less than a half hour earlier so they were likely to intensify, especially now that I was in a relatively static environment. I felt nothing looking out at the street. It was a street and there were beings passing by, but I felt no connection to them. They were characters in a soap opera or a video game, two-dimensional objects under a cracked-glass sky. This would not do.
I picked up Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. I ignored my bookmark and leafed through it, looking for something to speak to me, something to wake me from my disorganized thought. I forced myself to think of pain and rejection, but they held no meaning. Nothing seemed to have meaning. At first, this sense created panic, but then I found an easiness within it. “Well, I’m free of meaning and, more importantly, from needing it. What shall I do?” Even as I spoke I was flipping through pages, reading snippets and passing by them as they said nothing out of context. I finally found something and read backward to where the idea began. I found it and read it through:
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
Yes, that was what the storm was all about, what shrooming was all about, what being in Amsterdam was all about. I wanted to come out of the storm a different person, someone else, someone I respected and loved. It had been happening; I was already past the point of no return. Whoever I had been might be carried along within me, but in a different form. The wounds might never heal, but at least I would know where they were and what caused them … to the extent that anything like that can be known or understood. There were still too many blind spots, confusions, and misinterpretations. All I could do was walk in a direction even if the destination was impossible to reach. The question I asked myself was whether I had been oblivious and before I answered I heard my own voice ask, “What makes you think you aren’t now?” Good question. Should I simply acquiesce to knowing and understanding nothing?
No answer. Fodder for future contemplation. The Thai wasn’t well suited for thinking such thoughts. I marked the page, shifted gears to my sketchbook, and turned off my mind.
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