If there is a word to describe my 2023, it is "daze". Most of the months moved by like a haze, dysfunctional after boring months. Troubled by a rogue thyroid, lost weight, lost direction, time consumed by social media, most days is a snafu.
Then a stay of a month and a half in Amsterdam and the Netherlands somehow brought back some order. Ah, Amsterdam, the city of canals and bridges, bicycles and cyclists, cannabis and museums. The city woke me up to the beauty, and ugliness of this world.
From there, I followed the routes that Vincent van Gogh took in the village of Nuenen, where he stayed for some months at his mother's house, where he painted the watermills, windmills and people. Later I will visit the new, sleek museum in Amsterdam where most of his paintings are.
I made trips to the battlegrounds of World War 2, to Arnhem, to Groesbeek and Nijmegen, to look at mangled pieces of metal, to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam,
where a teenage girl just wanted to live a normal life, to try to understand the inhumanity of man to man.
I underestimated the cold in Amsterdam during November/December, coming from the tropics, and had to get extra warm clothing. I saw the homeless sleeping on the sidewalks, underpasses, and understand how cold they must have felt.
On the day I was leaving for home, at the airport, I saw heavily armed police and military personnel around. Discreet, yet visible, they are there because of a terrorist threat. There is more or less the same presence when I landed. The world has changed, and has not changed much.
01/01/2024
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from a wall mural in Amsterdam, Netherlands
photo by dsnake1
daze
"I will do it today."
"Tomorrow, it will be done."
And so, another year passes...
01/01/2024
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We do not cherish the hours until we worry about the nanoseconds. - dsnake1
© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2024Labels: Amsterdam, ennui, New Year, the Netherlands, travel