msterdam is a city where cultures crash and politics swirl and art is made. It is a precarious balance between orderliness and total chaos, a place where the ratio of consequence to nonsense never really swings too far toward zero or one — cuz something is always bumping into it. Amsterdam is occasionally invaded, conquered, and then liberated. It is a place where some people briefly make a stand, and then they're forgotten, ignored, or murdered. Amsterdam is moist, there's a lot of water in it. Amsterdam is shaped like half an onion. 
Amsterdam is under construction. Amsterdam is sometimes starving to death, but at the moment it's well stocked with food, and beer, and yes, weed.
Amsterdam is also theoretically the capital of the Netherlands — a smallish, flat country perched at the northwest corner of Europe, above Belgium, to the left of Germany. Sometimes also known as Holland. (A special note for my compatriots: no, Holland is not a Scandinavian country.)
And this is not about the Netherlands. I'm not writing about Amsterdam as a key to the Dutch cultural experience or something. For me the Netherlands can be sniffed in oh let's say an afternoon train ride to Enkhuizen, and then you can extrapolate from there. But that's just me — I'm a city lover and not a nation lover. People ask if I'm American, I'm like "well not exactly, I'm from Boston." So my apologies to the beautiful sensible Dutch with their glorious maritime history, startling modern architecture, world-renowned civil engineering, their groovy windmills and endless fields of tulips and cabbage and 4.8 million cattle and 96 million chickens. I just prefer Amsterdam. Amsterdam you could explore for a thousand years — assuming it lasts that long.
My hypocrisy isn't lost on me. I know very well that the comforts of this city are mere foreground constructs of the landscape behind it. And that if this were the Hunger Winter of 44-45, I would be singing a whole different tune.
I was first smitten at 17, just out of high school and floating around Europe on the cheap. I was zigzagging by rail all over the continent and kept snapping back to Amsterdam. This place just felt right to me. When I went home, I left part of my mind here. Then I went on a 27-year tour of being a grownup. I had work, art, adventures, relationships. But I kept wanting Amsterdam. I took so many little trips here that people began to think I liked travelling. I hate travelling. Finally I ran out of excuses and just moved here. Here I am.
Whenever my friends came to visit me here, I would email them with some tips on what to expect. After awhile I figured hmm this is silly, I should really just write it all down in one place. So here we are. I'll tell you what I know, what I don't know, what I sense, and what I guess. And I'll tell you some things that particularly bewilder me because of where I came from — so it may often seem specially written for visitors from America.
I am by no means an expert on Amsterdam. Maybe nobody is. The more I learn about being here, the more ignorant I feel. But I do know more than someone who's never spent time here, so I reckon there's no harm telling you what I know.
My grateful acknowledgements to all those who have helped me try to understand this place, including Henryk Gajewski and Marcin Gajewski, Kees Huyser, Stephen Otto Keizer, Jane Lang, Irene Lucius, Anna Pytlowany, Barrie Redfern, Daniel van Reijen, the rest of the family van Reijen, and the illustrious Nantko van Vlymen ... just to name a few.