A Case of Amsterdam Tap Water
Pose poem by Beatriz Seelaender
-Walk around the city, the canals, looking for the synagogue that Spinoza was banned from, not because you have read Spinoza, but because you once heard it in a radio play. Spinoza means thorny in Portuguese, kinda, if you really think about it. You bet he was thorny about many a thing. The Netherlands get the cool Portuguese heritage, while all we get is the inquisition and the subservience to English-speaking populations. Well, maybe they get that as well.
-Wonder upon windmills whether the ravens are aware of how whimsical their walking is; how much it undermines their gravitas (hopping in the grass, hiding stroopwaffels in the high branches)
-Drink tap-water from the hostel, which came back with a vengeance. Consider: dying here, how awful. The new-Zealanders on the bunkbeds are talking about everyone at home being jealous of them for backpacking through Europe, taking pictures for maybe two hours and deleting them. They’re telling their frenemies they’re staying at a three-star hotel and that they are having the time of their lives. They have bought Fanta-flavoured vodka and have been here all day talking about what other people might think of them, presently or in general.
-Do not: barf or growl. This place is odd. Too many drugs, but the drugstore is closed. They only take cards. The bicycles terrorize pedestrians and come out of nowhere. We get it, you can ride a bike. Rub it in, why dontcha? I see all these rainbows below windows, but the pot of gold belongs to individuals. It’s also just a PayPal certificate, because they all are going cashless. The rainbow has been privatized and they’re all throwing a party about it. I call it, deliriously in my headache-induced mental blabber, allegoric materialism. It sticks.
-Ask the performative party girls for Advil even though they’re strangers whose performative stance of Instagram coded vocabulary has made you question the viability of post-Covid high school. You’re contorting inside your migraine and it’s not their fault you are old and / or they’re annoying.
-Consider: who are you to criticize: you, too, are here, performing self-pity. You are always performing self-pity. The words are fancier, but you still fancy attention. They handed you the advil, which seems to be real advil, and that was not performative. Consider: it’s so easy to roll your eyes at the girls you could never be. Thank: the hostel Instagram girls who gave you Advil, sorry for the internalized misogyny if you happen upon this. It does not matter what Rebecca thinks of your pictures, she’s probably a bitch anyway.
-Think: it’s good that you’ve made it here before it’s all underwater and the Mecca of disaster tourism, brand-new Atlantic City, real-life Atlantis. Dam’s the breaks, man
Western Europe, man, and its quizzical subscription to neoliberal democracy. Do they really not see it? At the conference I got a little free with the liquor and told a German professor about Latin America. I don’t think he believed me. But this place is not safe either, was my point. It used to be that we could drink straight from the tap. No, no, this place is shifting. They did not read Raymond Williams, which made me stop hating Raymond Williams momentarily. That’s who you were writing for, I see, sir. They urgently need the obvious, though they are the opposite of oblivious.
-Stop: notice a shih tzu being walked on the way to the museum, the dog owner tells you his life-story. Shih tzus are so hard to come by here, you say. You tell her your shih tzu’s life-story. You feel a little better. There is a beautiful kinship between those who appreciate shih tzus. Maybe if they had more shih tzus in Europe, they would come to understand everything.
