Liberty it ain't. Independence, neither. After a confused and fearful day, losing my iPhone, I went back to my old neighborhood, the once Jewish section of this strangely caring city, and re-found Imke, the very bright, twenty-nine year old who started a coffee shop but is very much someone who should do something creative, artist that she is, and innovator. Less than an innovation is her love-life, or more accurately, sex life, as people here go online as a matter of course, for intercourse.
Imke was later in the day to break up with her fiancee of six years with whom she'd bought a house, or maybe it was an apartment, but as she was cheating on him with a lover she'd met online as apparently many if not all in Amsterdam do, I don't feel I am revealing anything intimate. Then I slept (not well) over one more night, and then took the train to Bruges.
Why Bruges? Haven't a clue. It just struck me that this was the place to come for reasons I hoped would reveal themselves to me, creatively. For the first time in many a moon I slept through the night-- didn't see the moon but trust it was out there-- then got up and started to explore this beauteous little village, cobblestoned and people-crowded. There is a convent in the center of it, with tree houses built by some Japanese artist, and one overpriced restaurant I managed to find in between everything reasonable, even cheap. But as it is delicious, and Grandpa Lew had to die after many a year so I could inherit it eventually via the cruel and heartless Selma, I guess it doesn't matter what the moules cost. Still, tomorrow I will go to one of the sidewalk places that are everywhere, less than costly and lovely. This hotel, too, I suspect is overpriced, and I should probably move to someplace reasonable. But my windows open onto a canal, as probably many if not all windows in Bruges do or could if they wanted to, if windows had wills instead of sills.
As for the convent, it is the one place in this charming village where groups are not permitted to go, allegedly haunted by a long ago heartbroken heroine. I am thinking of having a man ghost come here and be in a story, as soon as I get over my lagging jet-lag and my thickness of mind that I hope with all my soul is weariness, and not my finally having lost my quick-think.
Maybe I will take a nap now that I have learned to sleep again. It's very hard work being an insomniac. Especially when the teenage children of a scampish fellow you admire for reasons that are probably teenager-y as well have spent hours watching bad television just to have something on. It's like being alive only not to be dead.
