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At the end of a two-week sojourn in Paris, my journey would continue in Amsterdam, where I’d meet two of my dearest friends in the world. A pair of Californians who make me laugh to the point that it is socially inappropriate and physically painful. Total jerks. My arrival was waylaid when my train to Amsterdam became a train to Brussels and the conductor announced that there would be no getting to Amsterdam that night. My seatmate—a 60-year-old Dutchman with tiny, circular spectacles—concocted a plan for us. We would get to Amsterdam that night! His simple scheme involved several local trains and buses and a brisk jog to Platform 11 the moment we arrived. I nodded vaguely as my gaze drifted over his shoulder and out the window. Ramshackle farmhouses and blurry fields of green. A few puffy white things grazing. It would be idyllic if I weren’t in the midst of a logistical nightmare. I thought of my two heavy bags and my aching shoulders and knew, whatever the cost, I would get a hotel in Brussels.
I thought bitterly, Belgium strikes again. The last time I was in that country, twenty years ago, I was hospitalized for 12 days with a mysterious condition that made me unable to walk. I fought sleep in a sweltering, unairconditioned cell. I had an MRI. I bought a caterpillar keychain in the gift shop. I got adept with my wheelchair: I could turn a smooth 180° in a crowded elevator. I was prodded with needles. The doctors said I could keep all the plastic syringes if I wished. Some of the kids who lived like to collect them—as toys or trophies, I am unsure. I left with two gallon-sized Ziplocs of them. I mused that they might make for decent, albeit tiny, water guns. After one painful test, I arose from a sheet of crinkling paper to notice that my puddle of tears formed the shape of a whale.
I didn’t feel particularly close to death, but I wanted to have a priest perform the Anointing of the Sick on me, so I could be one sacrament closer to collecting all seven. I was still running on the high of my First Communion. No one told me that the doctors were concerned it might be cancer, and I might have been in deeper waters than I realized. They wouldn’t perform the rite on me, but my parents’ inquiries convinced a priest to come to the hospital for a Sunday Mass—a boring turn of events that didn’t exactly live up to my sacramental aspirations.
I got better, we went back to California, and I vowed never to eat a Belgian waffle again.
This time in Belgium, I lugged my luggage down the cobblestone streets to a humble Hilton twenty minutes from the station. I saw enormous, striking structures, either civic or saintly, as there seem to be in every European city. In America, our town halls, churches, elementary schools, and prisons all have the same puritanical blueprint. I asked the concierge for recommendations. He inquired how long I would be in town, and I gave him a mirthless smile, explaining I was never supposed to be in Brussels in the first place. May I? he said, and I handed him my phone where he typed a string of suggestions into my Notes app.
I wandered around the quiet, darkening streets. I wove through a crowd of spectators surrounding an electric violinist. I drank a Leffe from a ridiculously large chalice. My French was met with English. I tried to eat a hamburger, thinking the iron would be good for the particularly gruesome menstruation happening beneath my ambitiously white dress. I ate a few bites with distaste. Eating meat has always felt like a vulgarity. I easily polished off my fries. Back at the hotel, I slept like the weary traveler I was.
My train arrived and departed without fanfare. As soon as I stepped outside, I broke into a goofy grin. Bicycles and canals. Our hotel was in an area that my Dutch friend described as (*gulp*) the Times Square of Amsterdam—a dirty Disneyland mere steps from Centraal station. I saw my friends before they saw me. My joy and overwhelm reached a fever pitch. I broke into a little jog and met them with hugs and incoherent high-pitched noises. I wept and hiccupped quietly as we dropped my things upstairs. I had arrived.
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Over the course of my reunion with these friends, I became aware of something that I do, which could either be described as a recurring joke or a verbal tic. In moments of beauty, I pretend to be appalled. Ugh! Bleck! I’ll exclaim while walking down a particularly magnificent tree-lined street. In a recent Instagram story, I posted an image of my eyes squinting in the sun with the caption, Aw shit another beautiful day.
Why do I do it? A first stab is because I think it’s a little funny. It belongs in the echelons of corny Millennial meme culture. A kid saying: Is this allowed? And even worse. An adult quoting a kid saying: Is this allowed? I’ve never claimed to be a humorist. At most, I’ll cop to sometimes being the funniest person in a given hallway. While this joke is not my best work, it’s palatable enough, so I’ve gotten a little stuck on it.
Paper cups of wine at a dusky picnic, bicycling merrily in Vondelpark, allowing our jaws to drop at the decadence of a rijsttafel, sifting our fingers through bowls of delicate beads, standing on a bridge with a view of seven other bridges, being welcomed to a stranger’s birthday party, replete with dripping candelabras and mischievous games. This is unbelievable. I’m disgusted, I repeated time and time again.
And yet, what do I make of the times I do this in solitude? Scoffing and sighing at all the glory unfolding before me. Just this morning, I caught myself muttering, This is ridiculous, as I walked upon a tiny park overflowing with yellow roses.
It seems I’m not fully joking. Is there a part of me that is genuinely repulsed by beauty? Or, do my protective mechanisms run so deep that I require outbursts of cynicism to intrude even moments of private enjoyment? I wouldn’t want anyone to catch me stopping to smell the flowers. Sometimes I look at my greyblue eyes in the mirror and wonder, Who hurt you? (There are answers to this question that I will elide here).
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Whether self-myth or true, I believe that I’m a person who is afraid of being as tender as I’m naturally inclined to be. I like to catalog my moments of sensitivity because I perceive them as rare. Despite feeling frequently moved by the beauty of life, I am also troubled by a certain numbness in my heart.
There are days when I turn down all the wrong streets. When my stroll takes me past nothing but jackhammers and police stations. When the things I would sometimes find touching make me sad. The sight of an old woman considering a bright array of doughnuts in a window and slowly walking away. Where I once would have noticed sweetness deferred, I see restriction and denial. The archaic grin of a child too old to be holding his mother’s hand in public. Where I once would have seen a special, transcendent bond, I think only of the ways that the world will hurt this little boy. Sometimes everything is senseless and incoherent and for sale. I grimace at a sign that says, Make pizza not war.
There’s an image that recurs in my mind. I’m reluctant to discuss it here, because it’s dear to me and makes little sense whenever I try to explain it. I call it the crumpled napkin. The napkin—square, white, pristine—represents those precious affects which I consider to be useful and delicate. Vulnerability. Earnestness. Openness to love. Sensitivity to beauty.
I test their fragility by crumpling them up and stuffing them away for alleged safekeeping. Seeing what they can absorb. I don’t discard the crumpled napkin in the bottom of my bag, but I let it get tattered with friction. I hold on to these values, yet I don’t treat them as valuable.
✩
I’m at the precipice of an ending. In 9 days, I’ll be home in my little, green, American apartment. In truth, I’m terrified of leaving the dream. I anticipate the dew of depression that might descend when I return to my real life after considering it with a thousand-mile stare. Am I foolish for wanting to snooze the alarm? Just rest a few more minutes…
I could do what I always do. Pretend I don’t give a fuck. Scoff at the beauty in front of me while quietly scrunching it into a size that will fit in my pocket.
But, maybe I’m at a turning point. I never died in Belgium. I may return to London. It’s only two years or a lifetime. It’s just today or the rest of my days. There are sirens in the distance but I haven’t truly committed a crime. Lily, Daisy, Poppy, Rosie. Green, blue, red, and black. There is something like God in the details. There is something like autumn in Islington.
🫖 Thanks for reading! Mixtape linked above—I didn’t feel like explaining my music choices today, but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless. Linked also is the archival Insecure Tea playlist here. 🫖
Where to begin. No one is writing quite like this; no one writes like you. Even without being fully described, that napkin imagery is incredible. Your writing is haunting. Thank you; take care.
Its all part of the journey.