Amsterdam

07/12/07

Amsterdam. An inviting long weekend awaits me, renouned as much for its seediness as for its great museums. The only downside – rain. Well, not rain, RAIN.

I pull out the colorful airport map and circle a few must-sees for the day. First (nearest!) without question is the Rijks museum. I go inside and immediately stumble back into time some three hundred years. The entire first floor houses furniture from the 1600's and 1700's. Absolutely overwhelming whether you’re into this type of stuff or not. Giant antique cupboards, cabinets, grandfather clocks, awesome. And around a corner I bump into - of all things - doll houses.

Not little Barbie stuff. These things are phenomenal.

Miniature houses containing almost invisible porcelain settings on tables with chairs, and tapestry and tiny little hyper-intricate furniture. I stare at this thing for quite a while until my senses take over and I realize I’m a middle-aged guy staring at a doll house, so quickly, stealthily I move on.

The signs all around the museum carefully advise the onlooker when Rembrandt’s masterpiece ‘Nightwatch’ closes in. Walking into the room, half of the people in the entire museum happened to be in standing front of me looking at the great painting. It is arguably Rembrandt’s greatest work, certainly the most exceptional in this exceptional museum. I had the audacity to think that it was disappointing at first glance, wedged behind the spectators in front of me, until I took my turn and stepped in close and saw the vivid detail, the presence within the painting. Then a truly amazing thing happened.

I did. I stepped right in.

I closed my eyes and felt myself stepping inside the painting, entering the nightwatch, looking straight at the faces of the civic guards and speaking directly to the Captain at hand.

And according to my watch, somewhere around twenty-five minutes later I stepped back out and back into the real world and back into the museum. For a half hour I’d stared at a painting.

Never done that. So that’s what those people are doing when they sit and blankly stare like that at a painting - and now I’ve become one of them.

Cool.

Next on the Amsterdam list I find my way to Rembrandt’s house.

I walk in, the museum (like all in Amsterdam) is again almost for free, but unfortunately most the house itself is closed for remodeling.

Amazing man, this guy. He squandered his fortune on wild speculations and lost everything he ever owned, including his house. This was over three hundred years ago. The banker’s inventory of his possessions was so elaborately and accurately taken that today we know exactly what silverware and tea cup he used in the mid 1600's when he put down working on "Nightwatch" for a bite to eat. It’s a bit frustrating when eighty percent of a museum is closed, so I put it on the list for a return engagement.

I need to get over to the Ann Frank’s house sooner or later but now I’m burned out on museums and it’s raining and I’m cold and on the wrong side of town anyway. Since I’m on the Dam, the main drag in old town Amsterdam I pull out and unfold the city map. And this is where the real story begins.

As usual, I haven’t taken the time to acclimate myself for anything except a couple of sites I’d circled on the map. So I hold it out in front of me, stop, turn a three-sixty, and finally see a cross-street that I recognize and continue on. No hurries, no worries.

I’m standing far back out of anybody’s way on the sidewalk when I notice on my map a large area colored in green (Amsterdam is loaded with as many great parks as there are museums) so I find one of the many street-side cafes and sit down with the intent of grabbing a hot chocolate and Danish and take a little time to get my bearings and really study my map with.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot him for the first time. There’s a middle-aged Oriental guy that looks as though he is standing right in the middle of the street flagging down a bus. The bus comes right up against him and stops - and this Oriental guy steps aside and waves him past. I’m thinking, this asshole has made it to the big leagues. Whatever. I go back to my hot chocolate and my map and my own business. Whoa, here’s the guy again. He’s got a map out, turning it upside down and marches up the street, and then he turns the map right side up and walks back down the street. I’m thinking this stupid guy is high on something, and the dumb shit is gonna kill himself. He stops yet another bus with a wave and smiles at the driver.

The second bus comes right up to him and opens the doors just like the first one did, and he exaggeratedly waves the driver on. What a pure, unadulterated dick. I’m just sitting there from a distance drinking hot chocolate from thirty meters away and actually getting angry at this guy. But my chocolate tastes great, and now the Danish has arrived and I finally have an idea of what to do and where to hunt for - an affordable hotel room.

What in the Hell is going on? Now the guy pulls out a pair of heavy, dark sunglasses and out comes this telescope-like walking cane that he pulls from his pocket. Is the guy really blind? He’s exaggeratingly walking now like he’s blind and it finally dawns on me that he’s a street entertainer. Duh.

He performs a brilliant ten-full-minute rendition of a Charlie Chaplin / blind guy routine that draws an appreciative applause from a crowd of what has turned into over a couple hundred people. And the crowd keeps growing. And the crowd is awestruck. Businessmen stop, tourists stop. Cars stop. Buses stop. This Oriental guy has stopped traffic. In the middle of a wet, busy, sleazy downtown Amsterdam street, this guy has stopped everything.

He finally finishes his routine and does three things just as if he was doing them for my own personal instruction. And I would find out that my own perceptions of the world were about to turn upside down.

He takes his money from this hat he had placed on the ground between himself and the crowd (and which is now justifiably overflowing from the donations of all two hundred of the folks watching him) and walks over to a (real) blind man sitting about thirty feet from me and gives it all to him. Because I live my life with my head stuck well up my ass, and since my thoughts were clouded from being pissed at him anyway - and before I caught on to what he was doing - his comical farce of a blind guy during his act actually made me wish for an instant that he was blind himself. What would it be like for him to try those shoes on for size some day. I mean, how dare the bastard.

Well, the blind gentleman he gave the money to was obviously a relative or a close friend, and he IS in fact going through it every day. Well, I’ll be damned.

Next. My first impression of him in the middle of the street stopping traffic, in particular those buses really pissed me off.

How dare that bastard interfere with the more important people in society.

But in fact, and you had to be razor-sharp to get it, he was actually signaling the traffic and bus drivers that the shows about to begin. Knowing that every one of them would all want to stop to see his routine anyway. The guy’s mind idles at a higher speed than mine does at full throttle. Looking back on it, that was an act of pure brilliance.

Finally: I still hadn’t even figured out that I was the raw material, the fool, the straight man for his playing the lost, confused tourist.

He walks over to my table and gives me his map.

His prop.

How symbolic.

My offence and utter contempt aimed at him was turned full circle, straight back to me. Exactly where it belonged. In just a matter of seconds, this little, Oriental street-entertaining genius would force me to question my own self-righteous concept of those things around me. Question my notion of revulsion and admiration, or on a larger scale, of good and evil. On a cold, rainy, chaotic suburban street there came an understanding, a knowledge of what a truly uninspired perception of reality I had been carrying around day to day.

Now, what to do with it?