Loose Cans

Strange, to think that after octopus, fried pig's foot, pig's trotter (ostensibly the same thing but I have my doubts), two types of liver, numerous meats of unknown provenance, black pudding and god all knows what else, it was an innocent baozi, or steamed pork bun, that blew me out. I've never felt so betrayed. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I had meant to post more regularly from Europa than I did, of course. But I have excuses on top of excuses. First, in Barcelona, we were far too busy eating. We did a lot of eating. We were five, counting Marie, and in some instances, that meant we could simply order everything a restaurant had on the menu. "Bring us everything." Because food is relatively dirt cheap there. Dishes that in New York or Paris run over $30 one finds in Barcelona for under �10, and with no less freshness or artistry involved. I don't know how they do it. We went to one place, it had just opened a few days prior, very small, and the kitchen consisted of just two people. The chef was Argentine, but God knows where he trained. We ordered everything on the menu, and most of it came out in the "tower" style favored by New York icons like Alfred Portale. And was delicious beyond belief. This was dining on a level we could never afford in New York. And so we gorged ourselves. It was spectacular. When we weren't eating, we were inhaling all the Gaudi we could get. Papa was off in his own little fantasy Disneyworld half the time.

They have an archery bar in Barcelona. A bar where you drink intoxicating substances and rent bows and arrows, and you get drunk and shoot the arrows, the very sharp arrows, at targets. America has known nothing so brilliant.

I ate on my last day at a place called El Quim de la Boquieria. They did not serve clam; I had to settle for mussels.

And to Dublin then I came. Seven hours into my first day I went to a shiny new Chinese restaurant on Moore st, the heart of the African and Asian communities. Now, when I go to Chinese restaurants in New York, wherever they are, I speak English. This I do because chances are, their English is better than my Chinese, and it's just not worth anyone's time or money for me to flounder embarassingly I can only stumblingly speak. But in Dublin it's different, for the simple reason that they really don't speak English. And compared to, say, Joe's Ginger on Pell St, they're far less likely to have a Chinese-speaking baigui walk through the door. So from the first Ni Hao they get all excited. Over the next hour and a half, I proceeded to conduct myself entirely in Chinese, making conversation with a fluency and confidence I'd never had before. It was sensational. And I realized something. I had just found out Michigan had rejected me, no surprise there, and was gradually facing up to the fact that there was a very real possibility that I might have to return to Dublin next year, chastened. Because if Columbia didn't take me, no one was. I haven't heard from Hopkins or NYU yet; I don't think I'll get into either. This was my first day back in Dublin, and my chief mission was figuring out ways to make the place tolerable. What I realized at the Chinese place was that thanks to the Irish tendency for xenophobia (the prime example, from overheardinDublin.com, is the anecdote of the two girls at the bus stop on O'Connell st, conversing in Irish, and a Dublin knacker walks by, hears them, and yells out, "Oi! Go back to yer own fookin' country!" This actually happened), there is no cultural or social interaction whatever between Dubliners and immigrants. And therefore it would be possible, by spending my time on Moore street with Chinese people, to remove myself from Dublin whenever I chose. And this was huge. When I felt like the Irish were driving me crazy, I could sequester myself in Chinatown. It was a huge boost. For a moment, I really felt like maybe it wouldn't be such a tragedy, to have to return. And then they tried to kill me.

I don't care what the doctor says, that the effect was too instant for it to have been the food, and that there must have been something bubbling down there before. It was the damn baozi, I'm convinced. They were not the right color at all. They're supposed to be fluffy white. These were yellowed, like smoker's teeth. Tasty, though. So I ate two. One, I might have been fine. Two, plus blah Gongbao, and I was heading for the back with an unmistakeable case of la duzi ("spicy stomach"). Motherfuckers tore me apart. In and out of the bathroom all night. It's nuts, you know? I lived through 5 weeks in China with nary a hiccup. Drinks and dinner that night with Sadie, Stephen, Caitriona and Duncan didn't help, either. By the time I made it home to Stephen's I was running a fever, which, strangely enough, broke with an audible "pop" at about midnight. It was strange. The next day I felt a little better, so I threw for a few hours with people at the Pav. That was a miserable error. The next day, recognizing in my effluence all the tattletale symbology of the rechute, I dragged myself to the emergency room of St. James' Hospital, and after sitting for seven hours in this waiting room (unpleasant plastic bucket seats, no reading material outside of pamphlets on blood transfusion; unless you've got an open brain wound, and even then, the wait is always this long, and I cannot for the life of me understand why they don't give you at least something to read), I was admitted to the hospital at 1:30am with a relapse of Colitis.

Yes, I know. Sucks. Happens. At least the bed I slept in was far more comfortable than the one at Stephen's (though the company was not nearly so charming). They got me all flooded with stereoids, which are really a palliative, and pointless without direct treatment of the afflicted area. This I had to take care of myself, directing them what medicines to prescribe. It was ridiculous. At least it was cheap. Socialized medicare, gotta hand it to them. They never even got a gastroenterologist in to see me, after claiming to be the best GI facility in Ireland (whoop-dee-fucking-doo...). I submitted to their quackery for three days, after which I was only to glad to coax them into discharging me. I would have stayed longer, but my roommates left something to be desired in the company department. When one is a young man whose ailment is invisible on the surface, and placed in a room with the aged and death-eyed, one is not likely to get any sympathetic smiles. Not that I blame them. So I stayed over the weekend, despite a deplorable poverty of reading material, and by the time I got out, had used up much of my time left in Ireland, to say nothing of missed the Dublin Ultimate tournament, which I'd been looking forward to. At least I got to see TCD trounce, utterly trounce our bitter rivals UCD in Colours.

My last night was a certain measure of mania. After Colours, we adjourned to the buttery to watch Arsenal beat down Villareal and move on to the Champions' League final. There, Qiang, my old bartender buddy from the Morrison (but for whom, I would have never made it out of Dublin last year, and to whom I owe more than I can ever render), finally called me back. I had gifts for him (measly shirts, but with a message: Superman for him, a big red star for his girlfriend Jun), but had to run back to Stephen's, then leap into cab and recross all Dublin to get to his house. By this time it was what, 11:30? No one has ever been so happy to see me. He nearly took my head off when he hugged me. It was his plan to drink, and prednisone and dodgy bowels or not, who was I to refuse him? This boy, whom I first taught to flip a bottle a year and a half ago, now gives flair bartending demonstrations throughout Dublin. And it seems they pay him in weird flavored vodkas. 42 Below honey and mango flavors, something like that. We had a lovely time, really lovely. I completed what has to be my most complicated spoken Chinese sentence to date: "If next year I am not able to attend American college, then I think I should go to Ireland college." (I can't say "return") He would have liked we should have stayed up till the morning, talking of nothing, but I had a 9am flight to make, and one more stop to make.

I have never known anyone who hated his job more passionately and vocally than Jacob, the Polish former Morrison night manager. The man holds a degree in Astrophysics from a well-credited Polish University, and is none to pleased to be relegated to the absolutely thankless duty of night management in a city like Dublin. He was one of my closest friends when I worked there, and I'd frequently stay hours after my shift ended keeping him company. Because his partner, Ahmed, was an utter dolt. He left the Morrison for slightly more pleasant work at the Davenport, which is a little more stately, and certainly less likely to be invaded by drunken clubbers at 3am. Plus they let him drink behind the bar, and drink anything he wants. Had this only been the Morrison's policy, a lot of people might have been a lot happier. Bear in mind, of course, that I harbor no illusions about my time at the Morrison--I loved it almost unconditionally. But still. They could have been looser with the liquor. In any case I walked into the Davenport at 2am. Belvedere vodka. Great to see Jacob again. Walking home was hell. I'd walked across the entire city twice that day.

Went to sleep at 3:30, woke up at 6:30. Packed, eyes bloodshot and bleary. Made my teary goodbye to Stephen and headed for the airport. Cabbed it, because after the previous night I simply couldn't be arsed schlepping into city centre again. No wind left in the sails. Meanwhile buzzing about in my mind is the realization that Sadie and I, who are supposed to meet up in Amsterdam, never set a meeting time or place. And I have no idea where our hostel is, or even what it's called.

The flight is brief and I am asleep for most of it. Schiphol airport is massive, and not at all a bad place to spend a few hours, as I will learn when I fly out of it. The Central Station, the only place Sadie mentioned as a possible meeting point, is also fairly large. I have of course no conviction at all that Sadie, who arrived on an earlier flight, will be there. When I get there at about noon, I walk though and see no sign of her. I am in a bit of a state. I don't know where to go, and I have no way to contact her. I find an internet cafe, sent a blizzard of emails in case she checks, and ransack the hostel listings online for a name I might remember. Nothing. I consider letting a room of my own for the night. I go back to Central station, and browse the magazine shop where they sell �20 Lonely Planets. Nothing. I go and stand outside the station wondering what the hell do I do now? And then there she is.

I consider it nothing short of miraculous that we found each other. As it was, it wasn't the last bit of serendipity we'd have. We found our hostel and bummed around the rest of the day. Ate Italian food. Saw The Inside Man. Good movie. Crashed.

The next day was art day. We were not in Amsterdam to get mashed and silly, as it turned out. My prednisone and touch-and-go intestines kept us in checkThe Rijksmuseum is not entirely open, but they still had their dozen-odd Rembrandts and three Vermeers, which were well worth the price of admission. From there it was on to the Van Gogh museum. Phenomenal. It's arranged simply and chronographically, and the effect is that you start rooting for the guy. He starts out fairly average. Early on, he goes on bonanza with The Potato Eaters, the only big chef d'oeuvre he ever attempted. It's quite a work, but it goes unnoticed, of course. You can understand why: it's mighty ugly to look at. From there he moves to France and comes under the narcotic influence of Seurat, Pissaro and the Ukiyo-E. The attempts at pointillism are simply shabby. He churns out some qualifiable clunkers, but then things start to come together. He gets this dynamism working, these sweeps of movement pulling every which way. He paints some extraordinarily ghastly Japanese-style stuff, complete with genuinely atrocious calligraphy, but at the same time you feel like he's beginning to get it. He really had no education, no background in theory. He became a painter because that's what he felt he should be. He didn't know whether he'd be any good or not. And he desperately wanted to sell, not that he ever did. His work stabilizes a lot when Gauguin shows up, that stupid native-girl-schtupping tosser. I don't like Gauguin, especially not the Tahiti stuff. After he leaves, and Van Gogh starts going downhill rapidly (he died at 37, and only painted for a few years), the painting really takes off. And then you get to the Almond Blossoms.

Picture doesn't do it the slightest justice. It's a gobsmacking piece. He's not actually painting the thing (past what Stevens said about Not ideas about the thing but the thing itself), but the relationship between the thing and the ambience and absence surrounding it. The push and pull of dialectic forces. He's as much painting what isn't as what is, and somehow has succeeded in bringing what isn't into inelucable relief. It's just a breathtaking painting. And from there you get to the cornfield with the crows when he's just about to die, and all we could think was What, exactly, can you do after this but die? Even he felt like he'd hit the plateau, like he just wasn't going to get any better. So he died.

And from Van Gogh, where can the viewer go? Only Caravaggio--from which point there is, unfortunately, nowhere left to go. At the Van Gogh museum, there was a Caravaggio-Rembrandt show. Basically all I have to say about that is, Caravaggio won. Just throttled poor Rembrandt. I mean, it's just not fair to put anything up against this:

Except maybe Artemisia's. But certainly not Rembrandt's Blinding of Samson. It looks like a cartoon by comparison. It was just sad to see poor Rembrandt get so stuffed on his own turf. But what a show. We were slightly dazed by the time we left.

Next day rose at 6:30am to hit the flower market in Aalsmeer. This is not like a market with stall. This is a building the size of the Pentagon uncoiled where they do millions of euro in flower sales every DAY. Pretty awesome. Smelled nice, too. The rest of the day was spent trying to find a place to sleep. See, we hadn't planned this well. We managed to hit Amsterdam right on the weekend of Konnigendag, or Queen's Day, which is this colossal garage sale/party, for which every hotel, hostel and hole in the ground fills up weeks in advance. We only had our room for two nights. Friday and Saturday nights, there was literally not a room left in the city. We were going to stay in one place, the Hotel de Filosoof, which when we called said they had two beds for €150. We called back ten minutes later after more futile efforts, only to find that in those ten minutes two people had walked in and swiped our room from under our noses. We did serious research into sleeping at the airport, but scrapped that idea when it became clear that Schiphol was only good for sleeping if you'd cleared security already. We looked up every tenuous connection we had. Called in favors left and right. Nothing. We were effectively resigned to sleeping in the park (and it was getting colder all the time). Then, just as we were about to leave the hostel and walk around the train station with a sign reading "WE NEED A PLACE TO SLEEP," in hopes someone would take pity on us, I checked my email one more time. I had written to virtually every one of the 56 globalfreeloaders in Amsterdam, including the Korean transsexual, and had received only apologies. And then there he was, our knight. Jeroen Wijlkamp. A couch and a floor. It was stunning. Saved at the last minute. We completely wigged out.

We met up with him later that day, and we have nothing but good things to say. Right, Sadie? Even if perhaps he was a bit too fond of bananas? What kind of guy only has one photo in his apartment, and it's of him holding up a banana? Nothing but good things to say. A little starched, maybe. Bald, glasses, mid-thirties. Works in IT. Listens to jazz, spent a year in Australia (clearly the high point of his life), watches the news. Likes tea and oatmeal. He sang his didnt he danced his did. Nothing but good things to say. He had grout cleaner and four types of aftershave, including "Denim." Nothing but good things.

That night the Red Light District. I just want to say that the red light district is whacked. Not only do you really have the real whores in the real windows with the real red lights, with an immaculately made single or double bed behind them, to say nothing of people casually walking in, but you actually have a Prostitution Information Center, with brothel information and--I swear--guided tours.  And yet it's interestingly desexualized, unerotic.  Doesn't give you that feeling in your lower gut that the possibility of sex usually does.  Some are twisting listlessly in their lingerie (which is all they wear), some are talking on cell phones.  They come all sizes, large, slim, youngish, oldish.  Not hot, per se, nor pretty.  Just sex-objects, to a one.  You try to avoid feeling like you're in a zoo.  Everyone walking around has his or her--and there are just as many gawking women--hands in his or her pockets.  Because to take them out and gesture would be somehow too much.  One does not want to feel too comfortable here.  You are on a narrow canal with bobbing ducks, and rows of 17th-century homes.  Vermeer might have disembarked from his bark here. And so you walk by, casting sidelong glances, trying not to be affected.  And then one of them catches your eye and it's like getting hit in the balls. (written previously; still true)

The next day was Queen's Day. Mostly this was the biggest garage sale the world has ever known. It's called a "Vrijmarket," or free market. Meaning anyone can sell anything (except food), anywhere, all day. So the streets are lined with people who've cleaned out their closets. I got a Superman shirt for €2. Haven't had one since I was little. The best thing was the party boats in the canal. Everyone wearing the royal orange, dancing and drinking on these boats.


I am getting tired of writing this. You are getting tired of reading. It's nap time. Amsterdam was charming. Go there. Don't go there on prednisone. Don't eat yellow dumplings.

"Dear Mr. Ashworth:

On behalf of Dean Peter J. Awn and the Committee on Admission, I want to congratulate you on your admission to the school of General Studies (GS) of Columbia University for the fall semester of 2006. For more than half a century the faculty of Columbia University has recognized that an Ivy League education should be available to talented women and men whose education and career paths have been different from those students who begin college right after high school."

Bet your ass. Hold on, I have to go check something...wait just a second...

...yes. I still rule.

COLUMBIA!! WHAT!!

I am such a fucking rock star right now.

Home tomorrow evening. HOO-AH.