Still jet lagged. Going back and forth between some sort of existential anxiety (after all, it’s extremely disconcerting for your whole life to be far enough away that you almost get the perspective of an outsider while you have long hours to roam a city by yourself) and excitement about some of the experiences here. For example, I felt very happy when it occurred to me to go to the Hortus Botanicus today to see the butterfly house. I hadn’t seen it in years and it’s one of the things I like best here in Amsterdam. I also like the walk from the Hortus to Amsterdam Centraal, the train station I’m fascinated with. I ended up walking a lot. I got dizzy and tired at times. I managed not to get hit by bikes – no small feat as they are everywhere and come at you fast! I also managed to create some semblance of inner balance to counter the effects of feeling too tired and out of context. A piece of a greater puzzle I’ve not only never managed to assemble, a piece of a puzzle I’ve never managed to name of identify in the first place. A piece of a puzzle that got placed into the wrong box. What’s weird is not so much feeling foreign in the place I am visiting, but rather being so far away that my own life seems foreign to me, an object whose contours are fading in the distance and whose solidity I’m beginning to doubt. This, by the way, happens to me often when I travel.
