roommate pros and cons

The good part about having a roommate is she might be Chinese so she might have a big dinnerparty one night where she invites over all her friends and you eat dish after dish of Chinese food and you hear Chinese music on the huge stereo system that the one guy has brought along and you get a lesson in Chinese characters from the two girls who giggle a lot and lay their hands casually on each other’s arms.

The bad part about having a roommate is she might invite one guy to the party who gets a little too drunk a little too early and then proceeds to open up all the wine that you keep for your own parties and then you, watching all that wine you bought be consumed in front of you, decide to drink your share and then you get so drunk you go out dancing until five in the morning and then your roommate who is slightly more compelled by cleanliness than you (a characteristic that, to be fair, you have quietly reaped the benefits of for months) decides to do the dishes at NINE A.M. THE NEXT MORNING ONLY SHE CLEARLY KNOWS YOU ARE SLEEPING BECAUSE SHE IS TRYING TO DO THE DISHES “QUIETLY” CLENK, CLENK, CLENK, SPLASH, SPLASH, SPLASH FIVE METERS FROM YOUR BED AND ASIDE FROM THE EXHAUSTION AND THE WINE HEADACHE THIS IS THE ONLY DAY YOU GET TO SLEEP IN AND YOU PRETTY MUCH WANT TO GO BREAK ONE OF THE BIGGER, MEANER LOOKING DISHES OVER HER HEAD.

(But instead you stoically brush your teeth and lay on a pillow on the floor of your trashed apartment in front of your laptop and put that one particularly calming Elliott Smith song on repeat in your headphones, the one with the line “you feel like shit the morning after,” and you try to think about the dreary optimism of the lyrics and not about how Elliott Smith died of a self-inflicted stab wound to the chest, and you drink lots of water.)

pesach

Some things just go better together. Movies and popcorn. Strawberries and chocolate. Campfires and marshmallows. Passover and moshing.

After a morning of running from the supermarket (plastic plates, horseradish), to the computer center (haggadahs), to the Noordermarkt (parsley, eggs), I spent the afternoon converting our dorm room into a banquet hall and crafting fake matzah ball soup from potato dumplings. Just before sundown my eighteen guests arrived, representing seven countries.

Most represented country at my seder: Turkey.

Most represented religion at my seder: Islam.

Christianity, Catholicism, and Atheism also made a showing, and in the end there were two other Jews: Elisa, a friend of Natalie’s who I heard was Jewish, and Aylin, a Turkish girl with Sephardic ancestery and only vague memories of Jewish holidays from when she was small. I had invited Aylin a week ago and not heard back from her, and I had assumed she was not coming. Then, five minutes before guests began arriving, I got a text message from Hoske, who was supposed to come. He was still hung over from the night before and he wouldn’t make it. I was really angry, having spent a lot of time preparing plates and places for each guest. And then, just like that, Aylin came to the door. She had tried to find me all week with no luck. And there, a very small but sweet blessing, was a place waiting for her at the table where Hoske would have been.

There were red tulips and red plastic cups of wine and dishes of soapy water and salt water. There were cushions for reclining, and candles, and a big glass for Elijah.

At one point in the seder, after the part that read, “The sea’s salt not only reminds us of life’s start, but also of the brine of tears shed by our people and by all people striving to be free,” the boy sitting next to me – a friend of one of my Turkish friends who I had never met before – leaned over to me and pulled up his sleeve and said, “Look, that part made my hair stand up.”

Later after explaining that my seder plate differed from the norm by having a beet instead of the typical shank bone, and also an orange to represent women in Judaism, one of the guests commented, "So this seder is vegetarian and feminist." At this point the boy leaned over again. "My religion has a saying, 'Heaven lies under mother's feet.' The mother is the most important. So I can go with this."

Another Turkish boy I hadn’t met, who was in town for two days on vacation, quietly passed the first time it was his turn to read. “My English is bad,” he said softly. But the next time around, and after that, he read out loud. That was really something.

My Dutch friends made macaroons and my Venezuelan friend made tsimmes and my German friend made latkes, and everyone was nervous and everyone was brave. And when it came to the four questions I asked Elisa to sing them, and she said, “I haven’t been the youngest in a long time!” And when we sang Da’yenu everyone joined in. And Canan hid the afikomen, and since there were no children we all looked for it when the time came. Seventeen grownups drunk on sweet red wine and stuffed with charoset and eggplant, poking around under napkins looking for the afikomen. Renske found it. “I was always the best at finding Easter eggs,” she said.

Long after sundown we lingered over wine and maccaroons, discussing religion and blonde jokes and Belgians.

And then Nati and Elisa and I went to Bitterzoet for Rock n' Roll Picnic, and moshed.

...

Italy cancelled. But Iceand and Belgium are in.

ahhh!

20 april 2005

I am a little excited right now.

I am not excited about my lab work, which is predictably repetitive, lonely, and not particularly relevant to my landscape architecture life. Try as I did to make my intentions clear to my supervising professor, he either did not understand me or did not choose to listen. I just wanted to learn about contaminated soils. But instead I am learning lots of other things about soils, and nothing about contamination. Sigh.

Instead I am excited about Passover. Passover is my favorite holiday. It is the only Jewish holiday I have brought with me into my nonreligious adult life. It is a holiday of feasting and drinking sweet wine and telling stories and singing, and I love it. Admittedly I have tweaked the holiday a little, so that for me it has become more of a politically geared Thanksgiving, but hey. Cultural adaptation.

Passover also has a big neat-o factor. As in, I think it is a cool holiday for non-Jews to attend because it is full of ritual and symbolism, but it is also (at least in my incarnation) friendly and positive. At least, as friendly and positive as a day marking the slaughter of first-born children can be. So it is also thought-provoking.

Beth and I hosted Passover at our house in Eugene. It was a lot of fun, especially last year when the early spring allowed us to move the dinner to our backyard, surrounded by candles and our garden. It gave us a chance to invite people together who we knew from many different contexts. There were always one or two Jewish friends who enjoyed celebrating with us.

When I realized I would be away from Eugene for Passover this year, I was sad. I felt how I imagine people feel when they can’t get home for Christmas, but without any of the ambiguity about seeing extended family in close quarters. Eventually I decided to host a Passover dinner here. And now it is in three days.

My guest list so far has at least one person each from Spain, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Venezuela, and Turkey. My guest list so far has no Jews. My guest list so far has no one who has ever been to a Passover Seder before, or even, I think, even heard of one.

My guests are being very brave. They are cooking tsimmes and haroset and kugel and macaroons, and they have no idea what these things are or what they should taste like. There are no Jewish sections in Amsterdam supermarkets, so I tried to find recipes with no matzah or matzah meal or farfel. In emergencies I will just tell them to use breadcrumbs. No one will know.

I am worried if everyone will like the Seder. I think it might be confusing, because the English is strange and antiquated, and English is not the strong suit of all my guests. I am worried that this single event will be, for many of them, their only impression of Judaism; that this contextless and heavily adulterated Passover seder will expand for them to become their entire idea of a whole religion.

I am worried about feeling a little ridiculous singing Da’yenu by myself as twenty people watch. What if you went to a Christmas dinner and one person sang the carols solo while everyone else listened quietly? That would be very, very strange.

s'morgens

Biking home through the streets of Amsterdam at six in the morning is one of the best feelings I know, weaving between the taxis and the police vans and the other swerving bikers, and I want to know the stories of every person I pass, especially the ones going home alone. Most people going home at six in the morning are going home alone; the newly paired migrate at three or four to enjoy those few remaining hours of darkness and anonymity, but the six a.m.ers are the ones that held out for something better that never came along. Which would all be sadder except for the gripping beauty of the pilgremage, the stillness of the water and the tentatively changing colors of the buildings, the predawn that makes sleep seem like a terrible decision, a trading of sacredness and anticipation for the wholly knowable next day.

This is when I want to live my whole life: between two and six a.m., when there are so few distractions that breathing seems like enough.

12 april 2005

I am having a lonely evening, not the kind where I feel lonely but the kind where I want to feel lonely, so I went to see a movie by myself. It is a movie about Louis Kahn that I wanted to see in the states, but missed, and there it was in the weekly listings for the Filmmuseum in Vondelpark: Monday to Wednesday 7pm. I would have gone alone even if I hadn’t been in the mood, because although I have friends here none of them are quite the kind of friends who would willingly see a documentary film about an American architect just because. But there I was craving loneliness so it all worked out.

I got on my bike, newly painted mint green from a weekend project and newly squeaky from an unfortunate accident with a pedestrian on a mobile phone. I squeaked around the Prinsengracht and right through Leidseplein, on into Vondelpark. The steps of the Filmmuseum were covered with people sipping coffee, but inside it was empty.

I bought my ticket, walked through the deserted exhibit halls and into the theater. I was expecting the type of video space typical of museums – bland and open and overlit, with stacking chairs – but instead it was dim and warm and plush red, an intimate old moviehouse. Up until one minute before seven I was the only one in the theater. It felt beautiful and romantic and European. If my life were a movie this is the point when the single guy with the irrepressible interest in documentary film and /or architecture would have walked in, and we would have smiled as the film started, and ended up chatting at some café about art and beer and secret plans. But quietly I was hoping to watch the movie alone, just for dramatic effect.

Instead a few pairs of older Dutch couples turned up, which was ok too.

I biked home in the last little bit of light, over the canals among all the other bikers finally giving up on the day. It wasn’t warm in my sweater, but it wasn’t cold either.

5 april 2005

I left Amsterdam in the winter, and came back in the spring.

The Amsterdam I left was gray and cold. It was a chilling wet cold that blew through sweaters and numbed fingers during late night bicycle rides. It was crispy and beautiful in its own way, and even when it was spitting and shivering it was beautiful.

But.

Now that I have I returned, only two weeks later, the ice skating rink in the Dam square has been replaced with a Ferris wheel. The already narrow sidewalks are now crowded with café tables. In the evenings the pubs spill out milling crowds to the curb.

In winter Amsterdam felt like a city full of history. In spring it feels like a city full of promise.

2 april 2005

This morning after sleeping until 10 and drinking minty licorice tea I went to the Noordermarkt. I successfully acquired, in Dutch: goat cheese, six eggs, yogurt, 500 grams of rice, 250 grams of couscous, 250 grams of popcorn (mispronounced but understood), a kilo of oranges, and a loaf of seedy bread. I forgot the word for carrots.

I also asked which apples were not too sweet, which would have been a real triumph except I forgot the verb. I could have asked properly but the guy selling the apples was really cute and it made me nervous.