vday

It is a sunny, windy Valentine’s Day here in Amsterdam. No conventional valentines for me, although I met a cool Dutch guitarist named Maarten at a club the other nite, and he was pretty impressed I could spell his name correctly. Also a cute girl gave me a rose while I was checking my email this morning. She gave one to everyone. It was nice anyway.

For now I have given my heart to the city. I have all the symptoms of new love… I walk around dreamily and laugh for no reason, my stomach flutters and my mind wanders. Amsterdam is not the first place I’ve fallen in love with. (For Nikki, Amsterdam is not the first place with which I’ve fallen in love.) The list is long. But that does not make the new love any less intense. Does this happen to everyone? Maybe this is one of the main reasons I like to travel so much. Socially sanctioned, intimate love affairs that are always fresh and never end badly.
I’m a serial geographist.

Dutch guys are not really my type. They are tall, blond, and straightforward, whereas I prefer short, sharp, and quirky. But Dutch streetscapes! (straatbeelden.) These leave me breathless. Bricks and cobble. Pediments, cornices, tiles, stoops, gables. Rows of outdoor window shades pulled down when the sun is bright, transforming flat rectangular façades into checkerboards of orange and yellow. Canals! Wide green canals spanned with lit-up bridges, and narrow dark canals lined with patched-up rowboats.

I’ve known Amsterdam long enough now that I can’t be completely naïve. The honeymoon period had to end. In an unfortunate continuation of a long-running (and perhaps worthy of further analysis) pattern, I have once again ended up with a lover whose drug habits I do not share. And, despite its late nites and urban opportunities, I would not call Amsterdam passionate. It is, by necessity, a little too practical for the kind of impulsiveness that feeds passion.

Still I am, for the moment, head over heels. I know we can’t last. I don’t care. I am sitting at my desk, looking out my window at the gray sky and the red osier dogwood and the rows of slick wet roof tiles, and I feel chosen.

Love works in mysterious ways.