With this winter-sunset view of the Amstel in the heart of my adopted home city of Amsterdam, I leave all you dear readers for some undetermined period of time and complete my 365 days of at-least-one-post-per-day. I expect to be back in a few months — and any comments, post-views, or requests for less or more of this or that type of post in the interim may help guide me when I start the next chapter.
A brief stop on the magere brug (thin bridge) over the Amstel, on an extremely rare clear morning bike ride to work last week. We’re looking north along the Amstel towards the building which houses the National Ballet & Opera, plus city hall for A’dam, with the moon setting off the the west.
All from a delightful long walk over to and around Amstelpark, at a bend in the river where apparently Rembrandt liked to come for plein air painting, near this windmill in fact, according to the signs. 🙂
One of my favorite light sculptures from this year’s edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival, which this year I did by boat. Last year we were in lockdown, so no boat tours were possible, now that I know where to find them all, I can go back see some of my favorites again from the banks of the canals instead of from a moving boat :-). The building behind it is the Amstel Hotel, apparently the first hotel in Europe to be electrified, if I understood what the boat tour guide told us.
From roughly the same spot along the Amstel, while exploring the city with different friends on different days in late September. A thing I keep meaning to do is sign up for rowing lessons, which I think are offered from this pier; though, if I do it, I’ll likely end up doing it on the Nieuwe Meer a bit closer to where I’m living.
Both taken along the Amstel by where the Dutch National Ballet & Opera company are housed in the same building as City Hall. The one below taken from a balcony during intermission of an evening (yes – summer in the north) ballet performance.
We resume photos from my wintry walk to enjoy the light festival, this time with some videos if your bandwidth is sufficient. 🙂 There really was a bit of a party atmosphere, with both the steady stream of pedestrians, adults and kids, couples on dates and sad singles like me – along with the boats, one of which you do see passing directly through the animated light sculpture above. Look closely and you’ll see kayakers and paddleboarders out as well, in these or future photos.
This is definitely one of my gnarlier re-entries from resource-poor work setting back into developed-world life. Not surprising, that fact, since it was a full intense two years in Papua New Guinea, a place which remains unique to me in its vast and complex history and sociocultural variety. Plus the fact it was my longest assignment so far. But the fact it’s not surprising doesn’t make the re-entry any less personally … well, gnarly, which is basically a nice way to say challenging as all get out. I sit in darkened auditoriums – mostly Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, where I’m spending five weeks just now – and when the orchestra goes through its organized tuning-up ritual, tears come to my eyes that humans can organize themselves for the creation and appreciation of beauty and magnificence, not just death and destruction. I sit, finally, at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica and find myself racked by sobs when we sing some of the hopeful, compassion-and-acceptance-filled hymns that are standard UU fare: again, reminded that the world can be full of hope and collective human effort towards generosity, warmth and creation rather than in-group fighting against in-group. It’s also me letting myself, finally, feel some of the pain and grief our patients experience in PNG and which I’ve not let myself feel since it would have impeded my work while I was still on the job…
I know this is all a bit raw, and I apologize – but I do need to move through this process. Remembering beautiful times and places, like the daffodils above which I saw during my too-short two-day sojourn in Amsterdam, helps. As do all the bike rides I’m taking up to Topanga Canyon or down to Hermosa Beach, here in LA. You’ll see those in due course. But I still have a lot of basic sorting and catching up to do, and my basic apartment setup is lacking in many basics such as printer and even reliable steady internet…Â So I’m still color-correcting and sorting – and yes, I really do delete most of the photos I take and try to put only the ones I think will you give you some window to where I’ve been. My soul and body are still landing back on this side of the world; in some ways these photos help me trail myself back to where I am now. Maybe they’ll give you either a glimpse of places you’ve loved or would like to be, or lacking that maybe a sense, if you know me, of why I seem to confused a lot of the time lately!
This is definitely one of my gnarlier re-entries from resource-poor work setting back into developed-world life. Not surprising, that fact, since it was a full intense two years in Papua New Guinea, a place which remains unique to me in its vast and complex history and sociocultural variety. Plus the fact it was my longest assignment so far. But the fact it’s not surprising doesn’t make the re-entry any less personally … well, gnarly, which is basically a nice way to say challenging as all get out. I sit in darkened auditoriums – mostly Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, where I’m spending five weeks just now – and when the orchestra goes through its organized tuning-up ritual, tears come to my eyes that humans can organize themselves for the creation and appreciation of beauty and magnificence, not just death and destruction. I sit, finally, at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica and find myself racked by sobs when we sing some of the hopeful, compassion-and-acceptance-filled hymns that are standard UU fare: again, reminded that the world can be full of hope and collective human effort towards generosity, warmth and creation rather than in-group fighting against in-group. It’s also me letting myself, finally, feel some of the pain and grief our patients experience in PNG and which I’ve not let myself feel since it would have impeded my work while I was still on the job…
(so much world, so little time....) 
