My parents used to camp on the beach at Morro Strand State Park. We thought about packing their ashes in cute old suitcases and setting them on a camp table to feel the campground again. We imagined mixing their ashes, some of him, some of her, into beautiful bags and thought how fun it would be to walk along the dunes letting their ashes flow on the wind. We could walk through a flock of terns, who would spread the word that these two were back as they flew and parted the sky.
If we could get a moment at the shore to build a mound, set a sand dollar on the top, and let the incoming tide slowly dissolve it into the surf, that would be grand.
We’d hope two western gulls would perch nearby and watch the whole procession. But mostly we’d tune to the presence of their spirits.
We took Norwegian Air out of Copenhagen and landed in Amsterdam a bit late in the day. The train station was a bustling hub of diverse humanity. People looked to come from every corner of the globe. Outside central station it was crowded, rushed, and dirty. By the time we got to our AirBnB, via a 15 minute bus ride, we were sure we’d made a poor decision on where to stay…until we met our host and saw our apartment. Until we woke in the morning to find a green parrot perched in an Elm outside our bedroom window. Until we found the local grocery store had fresh organic produce, eggs with bright yellow yolks, and found the Danish nut and seed bread we’d eaten in Copenhagen. We continued to eat our mostly raw breakfast. I was loving it.
The buses ran prompt and got us around town quite easily. But the streets are the places we found most charming. Strolling hand in hand along quiet canals, as bikes cruised around corners, horse-drawn carriages clopped along the cobblestones, and musicians played music here and there.
Donna loves the bikes.
And of course the Coffeeshops, not to be confused with Cafes. Both are plentiful in Amsterdam.We talked with the proprietor of one of Amsterdam’s oldest coffeeshops, The Bulldog, about cannabis edibles and discovered that it’s against the law to make anything with cannabis. Even the lollipops and Spacecake are made with some kind of cannabis oil, with little to no psychoactive properties. He said that once upon a time, Amsterdam was the world leader in progressive medicine, but now they are trailing the likes of California, Colorado, and other US Cities.
We hooked up with a friend of a friend, Lorand, who lives in the hip neighborhood of Kinnerbuurt. They have a farmers market that runs the length of a pretty long street, and is open every day of the year. Fresh everything. Lorand guided us through enormous food courts inside a refurbished tram repair center. It’s called Foodhallen. It’s spacious rooms, varied aromas, music, and people made it an interesting place to get a bite and feel the vibe. We also discovered a fantastic cafe where I tried fried goat cheese. I thought it was fish. Our cafe host even got in the action.
L-R, Lorand, our host, Tom, Donna
We spent hours touring the Nine streets area where we found cafes, retail stores, canals and reflections, plus the ever-presence of bikes, locked and being ridden.
We walked many streets more than once, and it didn’t seem to matter. There was always something to see, taste, smell. We tried to go to the red light district, but each time we tried, the way there was crowded, and the energy was more than we wanted to handle, so we’d mosey on over to the nine streets area and relax into the non-stop shops and cafes.
Near Ann Frank house while touring the canals on our last day.
The only activity we planned in advance was Ann Frank’s house, and if I had one word of advice for that tour, see the movie first. We streamed it on Netflix and it gave such a great sense of the cramped quarters, the difficulty of being quiet, and how personality conflicts are amplified by war and confinement. The place is tiny, the stairs narrow, and with wooden floors, it’s practically impossible to keep quiet.
Our second day in Amsterdam we wandered into a souvenir shop to purchase refrigerator magnets and gaze over all the shiny objects.
What a fun store. I thought it must be hard on a shop owner trying to sell high volumes of tiny items to make ends meet. While doing our transaction we asked if he could point us to the Van Gough museum. He asked if we had tickets, and said that it’s quite helpful to purchase in advance, and it’s great to go late in the afternoon to avoid the crowds. He said he could sell us tickets which turned out to be such a great move.
My lack of art history knowledge caught up with me the next day. We took the tram to the museum area when I got the feeling that Amsterdam was bigger than I’d thought. Much bigger. It’s almost twice the area of San Francisco, and larger than all the cities we visited, Copenhagen, Brugge, and Paris.
We walked by the Rijksmuseum and sat in the sun at an outdoor food court with coffee and a nibble. When it was our designated museum entry time we walked a hundred meters or so to the Van Gogh museum. We’d asked about its location a couple of times and were corrected on our pronunciation each time. It’s not Van-Go, it’s Dutch, Van-gawk, but you have to slur the second syllable through the back of your mouth. An acquired skill I think.
We picked up our audio tour gear, and agreed on when and where we’d meet, since we have vastly different attention spans for museum tours. I started the exhibit and was greeted by a large, say 8×12 foot painting of peasants in the field, some mostly sitting, eating, sharpening blades. I’d seen it in art appreciation class in junior college. I moved on to a series of self portraits and learned that he taught himself many techniques by painting himself, as he did not have money for models. I searched for that image when drafting this blog post but never found it. I did find dozens and dozens of peasant paintings, little studies of faces, feet, and folks at work. He was a prolific painter, who took great pleasure in painting the simple life. When I got to the timeline display of his life, I was shocked to tears when I discovered he’d taken his own life.
We spent a bit of time in the tulip museum, in the Nine Streets area, where Donna learned that many of the varieties of tulips they sell won’t do well in our climate, so we waited for home to buy our bulbs. They went in the soil this past weekend. We’ll wait for Amsterdam in our spring garden.
Outside the tulip museum we discussed a book we’d read. Donna confused All the Light We Cannot See, with bits from The Goldfinch. I’ve had a fear that I might lose my wife to dementia. In that moment, I thought it was happening. I started to cry. Donna took me onto the bridge where I tried to talk about it. She reassured me that she is not losing her mind.
I’d love to spend more time in Amsterdam. Such a vibrant city with more to see than can be done in four days. When we returned home I told Donna I wanted to visit Ikea and get a little hit of Scandinavia. We came home with a few odds and ends to keep our trip alive along with a mounted and framed black and white photo of the same image that got me interested in Amsterdam a few years ago. I’d seen it at an executive office on Sutter Street in San Francisco. It was one of several framed images, all done in black and white, of various cities around the world. Each had one element of color. We brought it home from Ikea. It’s lovely next to our fireplace.
Window to Amsterdam in our living room.
Until we return, we have a photo, we buy aged Gouda cheese, and we recount stories real and imagined.
My wife and I get a lot of mileage out of our vacations. From pre-trip planning to the embrace of each city as we’d get to explore them, and then basking in the memories through photos and story telling after we’re home and back to business.
This year, as part of our pre-trip planning, we dove into WordPress Reader posts every morning, before going to work. We continued looking at Reader posts during the trip. We discovered things like the giant wooden sculptures outside Copenhagen, or how best to get to Chatres to visit their famous cathedral.
We booked all our rentals through AirBnB and enjoyed getting acquainted with each city through their photos, maps, descriptions, and tenant critiques. The units got smaller as we headed south. The Paris apartment was very small but what it lacked in size made up for in efficiency, proximity to services and the metro.
I’d say the world is a better place than it was 10 years ago though there is strife, in our own back yard. But we found plenty of heart, plenty of light. Now Anaïs Nin might disagree, since she did not like this image displayed in the Irving Penn exhibit in the Grand Palais, but I found the photo engaging, personal, and it was my favorite.
Anaïs Nin
But how on earth did we get to Irving Penn? We stumbled upon him in Paris, the same way we found ourselves in Chartres, laughed with Chinese tourists in Amsterdam, and got a museum recommendation from an Iranian in Copenhagen. Our guides were out there and we kept running into them.
Even in Paris, where it’s big and fast, guides would materialize with a regularity that we started to expect. Paris was the only destination where we saw signs of terrorism. Not terrorists, per se, but the vestiges of anti-terror. Police patrol in groups of four, machine guns at the ready and no-nonsense looks.
The Eiffel Tower was completely fenced off. If you didn’t have a ticket and cleared security, you didn’t get in. At train stations, large parks, and Notre Dame we saw baret-clad police patrolling the grounds. In Chartres and other prime terrorist targets there were large stone slabs around the perimeter to prevent cars and trucks from getting too close.
I just love train stations like Amsterdam, Antwerp, Montparnasse and Gare de Lyon. The symmetry and size of the old stations is worth a coffee and a few photos. The vanishing lines, the repetition of simple themes to adorn large structures that house the likes of all electric trains that can travel 170 k/h. They leave the station, rolling smooth, gaining speed as the city shrinks from view, and accelerating to love-on-a-fast-train speed through the countryside.
Antwerp Train Station
I wasn’t prepared for Copenhagen, but I say that in a good way. I’d done research to find attractions like Tivolie Gardens, Nyhavn, and Paper Island for food choices galore. We walked through Nyhavn and it was a vibrating place with boats and outdoor cafes.
The day after we arrived we decided to let our senses guide us and what guides they were. We found photo ops everywhere, a metro system that connected us with lots of exploration, and a city that has made bike riding an art form. There may be more bikes in Amsterdam, but there are more bikes on the road in Copenhagen, and the bicyclists move along as a well-oiled machine.
I had issues with Musee D’Orsay. People with smart phones and cameras were getting selfies in front of Monet, Renoir, and Manet. But it’s still a feast for the senses with all those impressionist paintings in one place. I had an awakening there a few years back, when I started to cry and couldn’t stop. It started as I approached the Renior painting of Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette.
Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette
I started to get emotional, like the work meant more than paint on canvas or a name on the painting. I’d seen it in books during college, and never thought I’d see it in person. When I walked around the corner there was an enormous painting of a woman on the hill with a white flowing dress and parasol. It overwhelmed me, in a way that I could not then, and can’t quite now, explain. I’ve recounted the story of seeing this painting many times. When I entered the room this year, I found the painting smaller than I’d remembered and there were two, like it had been a study of the same woman in the same dress on the same hill and then I thought that there’s probably more to the story. BUT, this year, after looking over paintings, I was shocked to find that they were not Renoir paintings, but Monet. MONET.
Woman with a Parasol, facing left
We spent three weeks on this trip. A good amount of time to be gone without breaking the bank, or overdoing my capacity to play from late morning until ten or eleven at night. We walked between three and seven miles a day. We’d keep my injured knee happy with a stop for a coffee or a perusal in a charming shop; there were plenty of both.
Pidgeon House, Brugge
In the countries we visited, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France we felt a sense of unity; like we belonged to each in our own way. In each country I was mistaken for a local. And it was fun to fit in. But as with all our vacations, it came to a close, and we came home to jet lag, stacks of email, and colds. Tune in as I traverse those steps again, with photo and motion pictures. Let me make my vacation last a bit longer and perhaps give you a short one in your office or home.
Twas the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a turtle swimming from a reef wreath. Perhaps it was scared by the storm’s worrisome wind, scattering lawn chairs and spinning our chimney cap ’til we thought it might take flight.
We find turtles without trying. Last summer we found them while paddling up the Lagunitas Creek, out of Point Reyes Station. After our paddle we stopped by Spirit Matters and found a lovely Kwan Yin seated on a turtle. This past September, on our trip to Kauai, we found turtles while exploring the reefs at Tunnels on the north shore. Turtles are magic in that when we find them, we are always in an environment that makes us smile.
I haven’t always been a Giants fan. I played baseball as a kid and worshipped the Milwaukee Braves. Mostly because they drove the Dodgers crazy and the Dodgers were my folk’s favorite team. My mom listened to them on her little black and silver transistor radio. She hung on every Vin Scully word.
When the Dodgers moved to LA in the fifties, we got to see Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Joe Adcock, and Hank Aaron in person. Eddie Matthews, the soft-spoken third baseman with the big bat, was my favorite. He drove the Dodgers nuts, but when we went to watch him play at the LA Coliseum he usually struck out.
Don Zimmer, rest his soul, was the worst. He was not known as a home run hitter but in 1958, when the Dodgers moved to LA, he had the left field fence figured out. The coliseum was a football stadium for the LA Rams, but home to the LA Dodgers for the few years it took to build them a baseball stadium. They erected a 50 foot fence in left field to prevent rampant home runs, but Zimmer had its number. He hit, what would have been routine fly balls in any other park, that flew over the left field fence. He hit 17 home runs that first year, the most he hit in his major league career.
Back to the Giants. Last night Dinard Spann and Matt Moore woke up the Giants defensively and we had a Panik Attack. Moore came darn close to a no hitter, the giants bats made noise, and Denard Span showed serious speed. Serious D. He ran nearly 100 feet and reached a speed of over 20 mph to track down what would have been an extra base hit into the left-center gap in the third inning. He made another in the ninth. He was flying. Joe Panik’s swing looks back and what a swing it is. One piece, built for contact, and he can certainly take it deep when it matters. IT MATTERS NOW!!!
So, my dear Giants, I have been patient, though disappointed, since the All-Star break. Last night you showed your stuff, which you’ve kept carefully under wraps. Don’t be bashful, play Giant’s baseball? Ball contact, speed, hits when it matters. It’s almost September. It’s time to go.
I submitted three flash fiction stories to Change Seven Magazine, and they published them today. Each story is in some way connected to surfing.
Change Seven is an online literary journal that pays tribute to Dorothy Parker, that feminist dame who was so far ahead of her time that it hurt.
The origin of the site’s name comes from the following:
“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I can change seven.” ~ Dorothy Parker, The Paris Review, 1956
The Giants have been whooped by the As three games straight in their annual battle by the bay. Tonight the Giants have one more chance. Back in 1989 this same match up was set against an area-altering event during game three of the World Series. This is short short fiction about that day from the point of view of a very young not-yet-baseball fan.
On the TV a man with no hair talked about a battle and a bay. He called a little man a giant. The little man had black streaks under his eyes. The TV made a funny noise, then squiggly lines, and then it went black. Mama Rose took my hand, put Bobby’s hand in mine, and ran from the house. The screen door slammed. She took us to the park across the street and set us in swings. She kept looking up at the trees and wires. She looked at her watch and then looked up and down the street. She asked us if we’d felt anything. We both shook our heads.
A woman with bright red hair came into the playground with a little girl and a brown dog. She asked Mama Rose if she’d seen the news. Mama Rose said, “Don’t scare the boys.”
“What happened,” I asked, but Mama Rose didn’t look at me.
The red haired woman talked about a game and a stick and a cypress. She talked fast and looked up at the trees. Mama Rose asked if her husband was ok. The red haired woman did not answer.
A man smoking a cigarette came into the park carrying a small girl with snot running from her nose. The man closed one eye and held the cigarette in his lips. Something from the smoke end dropped on the little girl’s arm. She yelled “Ouch,” while he wiped up the snot with a white rag.
“The Marina got hit hard,” he said to Mama Rose.
Mama Rose shook her head and shushed the man. She took me and Bobby back to the house.
She looked up the stairs and said, “Dave I need you.”
She told him to watch us while she ran next door. He turned on the TV. A man with wires and stuff coming out his ears talked fast with a crunched up face. There was a large grassy place with lots of orange seats and people running.
He pushed a button on the remote. A car was driving on a street over water. The road in front of the car fell and the car vanished. He pushed the remote and there was a sideways house with smoke coming out of the windows. He pushed the remote and a car was driving on a street over water. The road fell and another car vanished. A woman with big eyes and a bright red mouth talked fast about an epicenter. She did not blink.
“Daddy Dave,” asked Bobby, “What’s an epicenter?”
Daddy Dave turned off the TV and said “Let’s have a snack.”
Bobby asked if we could watch cartoons. Daddy Dave said that the TV was over heating and we would have to wait until it cooled down.
Mama Rose came back with two kids I did not know. The one with the orange shirt said a truck was squashed like a pancake.
“A pancake?” asked the other kid.
“A pancake,” said the kid again.
Mama Rose told the boys to play in the back yard. The one in the orange shirt said that he’d just seen a bunch of people squashed like pancakes.
This is my post for Cees Weekly Black and White challenge for STEPS. It’s been a while since I’ve played. Been busy bettering my writing with the Writers Studio San Francisco. They meet weekly on the seventh floor of the Mechanic’s Institute, which is a great old building at the base of Post Street near Market in San Francisco.
These are the stairs that take me there. At least part way. There’s a great old library in the building and lots of people playing chess. Next class starts June 28.
It’s been at least two weeks since I stepped foot in the surf. The waves have been large and unruly but it rained which is good. My ten week workshop with the San Francisco Writers Studio has been fulfilling. This class ends Tuesday. I signed up for the next one which starts in two weeks. Between now and then I plan to publish some of the work I’ve done in the class.
Yesterday I got wet and it solidified the notion that SUP days are better than others. Even though I lost my footing more than once, I caught waves and paddled the length of the beach. After an hour session I left the water with a clear head and sore muscles.
So why the title African SUP? Watch the one minute video: It’s the music.
SUP DAYS are better than others 