Amsterdam, Schiphol, Sunday January 24th
When I was sitting in a Dutch pub last night, eating dinner, the ambient music piped in for our pleasure was disco. It seemed a bit jarring and dissonant to my settings. Disco is alive and well in Holland. Alive to me with all its sweaty, hairy, ebullient escapism.
I don’t think they remember it as real as I do. With the drugs and sex and dirty desperation of a nation freed by the cultural turmoil of the sixties but bloodied by a stupid little war and lost in a new wilderness.
It would seem that it is to them more music, without the visceral associations. Tribal beats from a far away island. Innocent and free, a sort of cultural celebration. Maybe I just remember it wrongly?
I sit here in the food court of Schiphol airport greedily slurping a Starbucks coffee. I’m waiting. Killing time. A flight back to Boston in four or five hours. The rich humid Sumatran brew is a godsend. The hotel coffee was that freeze-dried instant coffee, and awful paltry substitute.
This is a good spot for people watching. I’m lost in a crowd, part of the scenery. There is nothing threatening about me in the swirling mélange of international travelers. “In the shuffling Madness…”
There are many families here. Kids and babies. We are a fruitful race.
These are long distance travelers. There is a dull buzz of conviviality in many tongues – Lingua Mundo – Not the frenzied cell phone spattered silence of domestic travel. Extended family members take turns coddling the baby while mother and husband gulp down Burger King.
It seems we are successfully exporting our obesity. We have through Darwinian capitalism discovered that perfect formula of salty fat to fit our evolutionary drive and convenience.
What if we were to add balance to the fast food equation? I say we set up exercise machines in the queues of the restaurants. Make it so you have to earn your calories. For a Whopper Meal that’s 2,000 calories…so three hours on the bike before you can order. That might hurt sales, eh?
Eastern Europeans definitely interbred with Neanderthal. I’m just saying… It makes you necessarily an evolutionary anthropologist to sit and watch the grand tableau of humanity.
These shiny tiled floors have seen the wayward footprints of generations of travelers. Vagabonds, hopefuls, wanderers and in-transit miscreants alike. These are the high passes, the caravan stops, the oases of our time. Pack my cases, gather my servants, make ready. I’m off abroad to seek my fortune.
How long since the lone despondent ape furrowed the flood plains of Mesopotamia? Encumbered by a too-large a brain, tracing figures in the dirt. To build a boat that flies? The thing is let loose now. Form to imagination. Diaspora!