AMSTERDAM
NIRVANA (long version—see also AMSTERDAM, OH AMSTERDAM)
I see the needle and the damage done,
a little part of it in everyone,
every junkie's like the setting sun.
—from “The Needle and the Damage,”
by Neil Young, Harvest 1972
Ignoring the small red verboten circles with a camera icon nesting inside, a young
blonde leans out the sunroof of a red car, flashes her camera at a storefront
widow, the driver speeds off with squealing tires. The scantily dressed black
prostitute explodes out of the door, cursing in both Dutch and Spanish.
Sociology studies aside, photos are forbidden in Amsterdam's Rosse Buurt, the red light district where whores display their
goods behind velvet and glass. No money in stolen photos. It made me think of
the photographer Edward Curtis. Modern day primitives selling small bits of their souls to the gringos.
Only the soulless reside here. It could have been me, a thief of images, come
to steal this scene, but I was on foot, with no fast getaway car—a dangerous
proposition. Appropriately, this street was once called Vleesstraat, the street of the butchers. The street of flesh, a slow river of
thighs and flagging desire commingling in the debris of morality and commerce.
Harder still to believe the alleys named Blood, Cow,
and Curtain in the Red Light
District.
At the confluence of Oude Zijds Achterberg canal and
the quay at Barndesteeg (Cow Alley), we sit at the English pub window watching
the men watch the hookers. I take notes. A tourist at the bar can't stand the
suspense; asks in couched terms if I'm a tourist, or a student studying
sociology while on holiday. I throw him a curve, saying, “I'm a writer.” Not
the right answer: wrong sex. “Gathering inspiration?” he asks. “No. Observing
human nature.” He leaves mumbling something about how tourists should get to
know each other, before I can tell him I'm annoyed by terms such as tourist and holiday, wondering how Hemingway would've responded. “Fucking six-toed cats!
Gimme another refill.”
A tourist is someone who travels along the well-worn
paths for the sake of pleasure. In my paperback American Heritage dictionary, travail comes before travel. Toil, tribulation, agony. A traveler journeys from
one place to another. Journal comes
before journey; the journey
becomes the traveler. I feel like I'm reciting singsong rules of grammar. As
for holiday, there is a holiness
in the daily act of writing. Appropriate that Holland follows holiness. So many churches here to worship in. My
eavesdropper tosses some German pfennigs on the counter and leaves, much to my
relief.
