a series of random(?) occurences

It is eight o clock in the morning. I decide to go for a bike ride. I ride around the nearby forest, through the familiar paths, across the old bridge, past the ducks. Say hello to my friends at the petting zoo: the birds, goats, llamas, deers, donkey, and rams.

I come across a road I've never noticed before: a long straight road lined with symmetrically planted trees on each side. An arrow shaped sign points in the direction of the street. It reads: Reeshof.

I begin down the road, which from the looks of it will never end, just continue going straight forever and without encountering any hills. The street is cobblestone and there is a smooth red bicycle path that runs along the left side. After a few minutes of riding down the path, I encounter two other bicyclists who are riding quickly in the opposite direction. Other than these two, there is no one. No traffic, no cars, no other bicylists or pedestrians.

A few minutes later, a string of houses appear on the right side of the road and further ahead I can see the flashing lights of a construction vehicle. As I approach it, I see three men in the woods. Two are on the ground with chainsaws. One man is slicing through a tree at the spot where an orange line has been painted. A long line of trees, for as far as the road goes, have been marked with this orange paint. A second man stands closeby, slicing to pieces a tree which has already fallen down. A third man is operating a very tall machine that moves on large tires and has a massive black claw extending from it. The man sits in a small glass cage at the top of the machine. When the first man has sliced through 3/4 of the base of the tree, the man in the cage reaches out his massive black claw and closes the tree in his grip. He tightens his trip, tightens it some more, then, with a quick jerk, he pushes the tree forward, and begins to ease his grip. Slowly, carefully, he begins to withdraw his claw. The tree remains, hanging, floating, suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, before finally falling in a slow, swift motion away from the man in the cage, away from his massive black claw, to the ground. It does not make a sound.

A few minutes later two more men arrive in a truck carrying supplies. The driver pulls over to the side of the road, turns on the caution lights and they both get out and begin looking for supplies. I approach them, say "Hallo!" and ask if they speak English. One man, rummaging around in the bed of the truck looks up at me and replies, "Yes."

I ask him why they are tearing the trees down. He stops, stares at me for a second, blinks, and asks, "What?"

I repeat the question, this time adding, "What are you going to build here?"

He stares at me again, expressionless, without responding. He furrows his brow and shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know."

Then he turns away from me and continues rummaging.

I continue on. There is a steady rain, the light misty kind. I ride to Reeshof and keep going. I begin following signs for Gilze, a town I've never heard of. The bike path runs parallel to farmland for a while, then merges next to a highway, through the woods, and then along a highway again. Next to the highway begins a high fence with barbed wire on top and signs every few metres which depict the face of a snarling German Shepherd. Small cement huts with long rectangular slots in the front for sticking out guns are on the other side of the fence.

A prison? A military base? I continue riding down the path for a few more kilometres and the tall fence remains at my side.

Military trucks. I can see military trucks parked inside. Shortly after I notice an airplane off in the distance, descending from the dark clouds. An alarm begins ringing and a traffic light up ahead turns from green to red. Cars and trucks stop in both directions, a gap of about 60 metres of empty highway between them. They wait. I continue riding toward them. I slow down when I get to the red light but proceed through it. I am now in the 60 metre stretch of highway over which an airplane will descend upon in just a few moments.

I get off my bike and begin walking it, slowly, carefully, as if I am able to make myself invisible by moving cautiously. I reach the halfway point. The point at which, in about ten seonds, an airplane will fly just above my head, and then the high fence, and finally touch the runway on the other side.

I pull my headphones down and off of my ears, Idiotheque now vibrating around my neck. I fix my eyes on the airplane. I feel, or maybe I only imagine feeling, its immense power and speed as it cuts through the rain and the wind. I hold my breath, want to close my eyes, but force myself to keep them open. I can make out the pilot's head now, a black dot in a small glass cage.

He does not look at me, does not see me standing in the middle of the road, his gaze focused only on the runway. The wind, the rain, the alarm, the sound of the idling traffic, all stops. During this moment that the plane is above me, I hear and feel nothing but an immense surge of warm air. And then the plane is gone. I turn to watch it touch down on the pavement on the other side of the fence. It does not make a sound.

I remain there for a moment, until the alarm stops ringing. Then the traffic lights turn back to green and traffic begins to move again.

I continue on. I pass through small village after small village, past expansive fields, knotted willows, slaughterhouses, men building a hotel, dairy farms, past grazing sheep. I follow signs for Breda, the closest major city to Tilburg. It takes me about three hours to get there.

I am thoroughly soaked when I arrive and I am also very hungry. But the first shop that catches my interest is a small record store with a red carpet leading to the front door and a sign in the window which reads: "All vinyl - 5 Euro". Eating can wait. I park my bike and go inside.

The vinyl is in the back. The categories are: jazz and classical. I flip through some of the albums in the jazz section. Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington. An entire section only of Duke Ellington. I ask the man at the counter if they have any Nina Simone on vinyl. "No" he says, "Only cd."

I go back to the jazz section to do some deeper digging when I hear Nina Simone's voice. I stop and look over at the man behind the counter but he is busy on the computer. I look to the other end of the store and see another store clerk, a woman who is adjusting the stereo in the back corner. I approach her, with wide eyes and mouth agape and ask, "WHY did you put on Nina Simone just now?!"

She scrunches up her nose, purses her lips, places her hands on her hips, and responds, "I'm just looking for something, that's all. Why?"

I realize that my question must have sounded a bit rude and I quickly explain, "Oh, it's just that I was just asking the man at the counter if you have any Nina Simone on vinyl!"

Her face lightens up a bit and she walks back to the front of the store.

On my way out, I point to the ceiling and say to the man at the counter, "Hey! Nina Simone!" He looks up from the computer, pauses to listen, laughs, and says, "What a coincidence!"

I ask him if he knows of any nice vegetarian places closeby. He points me in the direction of a good one just down the street, called "Bagels and Beans."

I sit there writing, drying, staring out the window, belly full of a large mixed juice of orange, strawberry, banana, mango, a bagel with pesto/roasted tomato cream cheese and a hot chocolate met slagroom alstublieft.

My tights have finally dried by the time I'm ready to leave, although I unfortunately can't say the same for my gloves and hat, despite the fact that I placed them on the heater when I first arrived.

I dress up in my damp clothes and continue on. Although the rain has finally stopped, I decide to take the train back to Tilburg. While riding my bike down one of the busier streets, a man driving next to me in a car yells a question to me in Dutch. I respond by yelling that I don't speak Dutch. "You don't speak Dutch?!" He laughs and speeds ahead. Another car stops next to me at the next red light. I look down into the passenger window and a tiny baby looks up at me. The light turns green and the same car continues riding next to me for a few more blocks. The baby's gaze remains fixed on me for the entire time.

I speed up to the bicyclist in front of me and ask him if I am going in the correct direction for the train station. He's not from here either, he says. By the time I find the train station, I've asked seven strangers for directions. I wait at platform 2 for the 14:50 train to Tilburg. After a few minutes, I see the train coming around the bend, swiftly, and with immense speed. At the head of the train floats a dark figure in a glass cage. The train approaches the platform and comes to a halt. It does not make a sound.

Hector

Hector knocked on my door while I was laying in my sleeping bag after having just woken up from a short early evening nap in what would be my bedroom for the next week. I had been debating for the past ten minutes whether or not I should get out of my warm sleeping bag in order to grab some nacho chips and salsa to snack on. He said that his room was just down the hall from mine. He said that I looked cold and asked if I wanted a tea. I said yes. Chamomile or mint? Chamomile I said.

I told him about my getting-out-of-my-sleeping-bag-for-chips-dilemma. I pointed to where the chips were, in a high cupboard on the wall, on the other side of the room. He opened the cupboard door and reached for the bag. A container of cucumber spread fell to the ground, breaking, and splattering cucumber mayonaise onto the cement floor. He handed me the chips and went to get something to clean up the mess. But I still desired the salsa so I stood up, still in my sleeping bag, hopped over to the cupboard, grabbed the salsa, and hopped back over to the bed. He returned with a wad of toilet paper and began wiping up the splatter.

Hector is from Mexico. When I told him that I am from Pittsburgh he said, "Oh! The Steelers! I love the Steelers!" He told me that the mother of his daughter is from Oklahoma and that he had tried to convince her to go to Pittsburgh for a Steelers game with him but that she refused because she's not interested in football at all. I asked him why he likes the Steelers and he said that he likes the colour of their uniforms. He asked me what I thought about their performance in the past season and I said that I haven't been paying attention ever since they won the Super Bowl. He held up five fingers and said "Yep, that's right! Five time superbowl champs!"

Hector asked me if I wanted some of the rice that he had already begun cooking. I said yes, of course, that I was not going to turn down free food. We continued talking for a few minutes when we heard someone yell from the kantine "Who's cooking rice? It's burning!" Hector ran into the smoke filled room and I slipped out of my sleeping bag, pulled on my boots and followed him. The rice was beyond the point of being able to be eaten so he offered me some pita bread instead. I said sure, but that he shouldn't feel obligated to feed me because I'd already eaten. He said not to worry because it wasn't his food that he was eating, it was Rosa's, the girl in the room next to mine. I told him that I was not going to eat food that belongs to someone else and he explained how although she generally doesn't appreciate when others eat her food, that it would be okay because he was going to the grocery store later tonight and that he would replace it. I told him that the store had probably already closed and he said, "Oh I guess you're right. Well, then, I will go first thing in the morning!" He said that he has no problem buying and sharing food with others so long as he has been working and can afford to do so. I asked him when was the last time he worked. "Three or four days ago." He moves furniture- a friend of his owns a van and they make 15 Euro per hour doing this.

Hector said that he was going to go to the main kantine to see what the other Mexicans were cooking for dinner and I said that I would walk over with him. They weren't there. Hector had spent the day at the main library with them but they hadn't returned yet. Another man was there -a man from Spain- and he was starting a fire in the furnace. The three of us gathered around it, sticking our hands out in front of us and rubbing them together.

Hector asked me if it was this cold in Pittsburgh and I said no, that it had just been 70 degrees there the other day. I told him that actually, I go to school in Waterloo, Ontario and that it is also not as cold there as it is here in Amsterdam.

Hector has spent time in Canada. After living in New York for a while, a friend of his, a Native American from Florida, and he went to Toronto and started hitchhiking across Canada. They made it to British Columbia in a month and a half. He was nineteen at the time. Hector has hitchhiked all over the world, including Texas. But he says that he no longer has the patience for hitchhiking.

He talked about travelling throughout the United States and about how Oklahoma is a scary place. I told him I've never been there and he said, "Don't ever go there." Hector and the mother of his daughter met in Oklahoma and then travelled for a few years together throughout the United States, Mexico, and Australia, before having their child. He says that they no longer get along. She now lives in New Mexico with their five year old daughter. She has her own radio show on National Public Radio where she interviews various indigenous peoples. He doesn't think that the show is broadcasted nationally. It is one hour long and he admits that sometimes it is very boring to listen to.

The mother of Hector's daughter was born Baptist. Her father is Mormon and her mother is a southern Baptist. But she is nothing like them. In fact, on her right arm she has a tattoo of a vagina in the shape of the feminist symbol and on her left arm she has a tattoo of Jesus being boiled alive in a tea kettle. Once, her father asked Hector if he had ever seen her tattoos, and if so, what were they of? Well, of course Hector had seen her tattoos, he was having sex with her! But he said that he had never looked at them very closely. Her father asked Hector if he thought he could convince her to get them removed. Her father would even pay for this to be done. Hector said that he doubted she would do it for him if she refused to do it for her own father.

Once, she and their daughter went to visit Hector in Mexico. The police handcuffed her at the border and took her in for questioning. They asked if she was planning to overthrow the government. If she was against George Bush. What kind of political activities she had been involved with in the past. Who she was visiting in Mexico. If Hector was trying to overthrow the U.S. government. If he was against George Bush. They asked why the father of her child didn't live in the U.S. with her. She said that he didn't want to live in the U.S. They told her that 99% of Mexicans want to live in the U.S. She said this must mean that he belongs to the 1% who don't.

Hector says that the U.S. government makes it seem like all Mexicans want to come into the U.S. to take all the jobs but that this mass migration of young Mexican men has serious consequences for Mexico as well, both economically and culturally. He says that in many communities, the young men have gone to the U.S. to work, leaving mostly women with children and old people. Then, when young Mexican men go to Los Angeles, for example, many of them become involved in selling drugs. If they are forced to return to Mexico, they are full of anger. Hector says that, "These people immigrate to other countries to work, but instead of sharing their culture, they are sharing their anger."

Hector moved to Spain four years ago to promote funding for a small community of indigenous people- the Yurata. With them, he created paintings which he sold both in Spain and abroad. With the money raised from these paintings, the community built up infrastructures. He says that this was their only source of income. After a while, though, Hector became tired of doing this work, for which he himself was not being paid and so eventually he ended his involvement in the Yurata co-op. Two months ago he travelled to Amsterdam to visit friends for the weekend. They are living in Friekens, a small squatting community a ferry's ride away from the city centre of Amsterdam. He says that he liked it here so much, that the people were so friendly and the environment so relaxed that he didn't want to leave. So he hasn't.

new year, new concept

I really don't want to write about myself anymore. I don't really enjoy it that much and besides, it can only be interesting to read for a limited amount of people. I want to write about things which can be interesting for anybody to read. So from now on I will only write about the people I meet. I really do meet a lot of interesting people and I always enjoy hearing and writing about their stories. So not only will this give me an opportunity to do something with my creative energy it will also serve as motivation for talking to more people. Yesterday I bought myself a new polaroid camera and I want to take a picture of the people I meet, if they allow me to. This means that my camera and notebook will now have to follow me wherever I go.

Yeah, I feel good about this idea.