wed 25 nov 2009 06:58:46 — witte de withstraat
lots of details
things that have been happening which i may have failed to write down.
mon 9 nov i noticed a letter from the deurwaarder, saying i had not paid an outstanding dwangbevel, so they would be coming on the 16th to inbeslagnemen. that evening i took garcia to nachtwacht, then we went to mulligan's and talked with daniel and a guy called raimundo.
tue 10 nov, the next morning, i phoned my accountant. he said the b-dienst had it wrong, because he'd estimated my taxes for this year to be less than i'd already paid. so he phoned the ontvanger and convinced him put off the deurwaarder. that day pani left on a trip to poland to see her family. that evening i had dinner with micheline and her mom christiane, at a chinese restaurant on bilderdijkstraat called "pagode".
wed 11 nov i finished final revs for sig4/aagl and sent out five invoices.
wed 12 nov i had dinner with paul cupido from c72, did some catching up, talked about wanting to work on a creative project together.
i started doing some research and notes for an article i wanted to write for mental shoes, which i figured would end up being called "the joy of cruelty", about why people think some mean things are so funny.
sat 14 nov i went to see garcia play at café schaper, off of hugo de grootplein. this is in the hood where n lives, and she came by with a boy, i forget his name now, seemed pretty nice.
that weekend i also did some design work for three short graphical movies for rsna09. they needed to be delivered by wednesday, but i got them finished and shipped on tuesday the 17th. if i remember correctly, i went to de nachtwacht that night, by myself, sat at the bar talking to nico, and he told me more stories of his childhood after the war.
thu 19 nov, in the evening bazek arrived in ams to attend some seminars in the IDFA docu festival context. he was tired so didn't wanna come out. i went to mulligan's, saw mark gilligan play out with a guitarist/singer named robert pfeiffer, and i enjoyed that. met jk there. he and i decided to try hypnotherapy on me, to help me remember some details of things from my childhood, which are kinda salient to things i've been writing. made a date for that friday afternoon.
as mul was closing, i walked to the cave. lately some smaller bars in amsterdam have left off the law, and just put out ashtrays and let people smoke if they wanna. those bars that don't wanna, don't. so the situation for the moment is a bit more natural: there are some nonsmoking places and some smoking places. this is my first exposure to gedoogbeleid in action (or inaction). i saw tommy and giuseppe, had one pint, walked home.
fri 20 nov i was still up around 05.00, when g showed up with a croatian guitarist friend. they'd been playing at wilhelmina pakhuis. trying to get him home to wibautstraat on her fiets, they somehow ended up at haarlemmerplein (quite the opposite side of town), slipped and fell off her bike, then walked all the way here. she treated his cut finger, put him to bed, then and asked me if he could crash here. this kinda upset me, not as bad as last time, but i was disturbed. i dislike being asked for permission, like i'm somebody's dad. and i dislike being made into one who decides whether to throw someone out on the street. more than that, i just don't like it when someone who walks into my flat needs to be introduced to me. i prefer people who come here to already know who i am. to clear my head a bit, i went out for a walk. i walked to the dam and back, then i was tired and went to sleep.
i postponed meeting aleksandra who wanted to come by and give me some food. slept till the mid afternoon.
i met jk at around 16.00 and he hypnotized me. i think that was productive and revealing. wrote more detailed notes about it elsewhere.
when we were finished, i was sposed to go meet hg and helena at a thai restaurant in nieuwmarkt. i was late because my phone was off, i didn't get the message about when he wanted to meet. after that we went across the square to a bar they like, a slightly divy local for locals, on a corner a couple doors away from the "cotton club". nieuwmarkt was actually quite busy that evening.
now ok. hg and his penchant for alternate names. he had told me to meet him at the thai restaurant "purple elephant", which is really named "song kwae", but it has the image of a purple elephant on its sign. after dinner he says we are going to the "breughel terminal bar", because that's what he calls it, for his own private reasons. in fact the name of the bar is "café de vriendschap". i dunno why he doesn't like using the real names of things.
after a while bazek came to meet us there at the "breughel terminal", just as our energy was ebbing. he perked things up a bit and we had more fun, and too much beer. i ended up talking to helena in dutch quite a bit, because she has more dutch than english and i can't speak polish. henryk wants to start holding movie nights at his house, small filmmakers he knows will show their clips.
the next day, saturday 21, while making notes about the hypnotherapy, i suddenly remembered one of the things i had been trying to remember about that day when i was 10. the answer is "bowling ball finger".
that evening i went to mulligan's again. artery was playing a little show there. ianko's voice is damaged and he can't sing his songs very well, so i didn't pay too much attention to the music. saw jk and n fly. huby said he was having a lot of fun, being away from work and home, playing out with the guys. i also talked to vasil, the cook, who told me about the fancy burgers they are serving at barney's uptown now, over on haarlemmerstraat. also djox and joana were there, and robert van teeseling, and hidde ter poorten. i remarked to hidde about how interesting and entertaining a writer ella has turned out to be, now that she's blogging from indonesia. he said he too was amazed, didn't know she had it in her. so it's not just me.
i talked very briefly to ianko. he was thinking about two russian girls sitting at the end of the bar.
later i walked to the cave, hung out for a while with djox and n fly. then walked home.
sometime over the weekend i worked on business card designs for marina brekova and for myself.
also sometime that weekend, maybe sunday, there was a big fire at a warehouse near amstelveenseweg. a bunch of antique "keep em rolling" vehicles from world war two were destroyed in the fire. the people who passionately maintain them were very sad. i slept through all this, heard about it later from chatter on fb, then saw news. lots of smoke i guess, people had to keep their windows shut and/or leave the area.
sun 22 nov i met fly and bazek at de nachtwacht at six. baz had the ribs, which he thinks are better there than anyplace outside of the USA. then he went off to see another film. fly and i went over to mulligan's and had a couple pints. we got talking to a young woman named tiffany, from washington state, who is doing the young-person-bumming-around-europe-before-college thing. she's planning to go to umass boston in january, but hasn't decided what to study. i got confused about that, because i thought you decide what to study and *then* pick the school. i told her i knew some people in boston, could maybe introduce her.
leaving there, i phoned g to see if she was planning to do the maloe melo session that night. i had my doubts because her guitar was still at my place when i left the house. she said "oh you didn't get my email?" she was sick from a bad fever and would be staying at liv's for a while longer. so i didn't go to maloe melo. but now i kinda regret that, because i found out later that nieke and djox and joana had all gone there. i like to see nieke!
there was an email from g from that day, but i haven't seen or heard from her since. i hope she is okay.
also over the weekend i saw a note on facebook from my brother, that their former pastor at their church had died from brain cancer. they were sad about it.
mon 23 nov pani returned to ams. that day, aleksandra and grzesiu dropped by to bring me a big box of food, which apparently would otherwise go to waste. i'm sposed to save the containers and wrappers and give them back after i've consumed all this stuff. i dunno how i'm gonna eat it all though. three pints of kwark?
late that night i managed to write my "amstergasm" article for issue 008, which is kinda about gluttony versus privation. this kept me up till the morning.
tue 24 nov i got to sleep maybe around 09.30, with the intention of getting up at 14.00 for a phone meeting with the client about a new project. the call actually happened at 15.30. while i was on the phone, jane came by to bring me the five tickets i'd bought to her choir's show next friday. she had a cup of tea and we talked about sounds and stuff.
then i edited the "postbode" interview from nieke. i heard some meows in the stairway, so i opened my door. the kitties from downstairs came up to visit for a while.
in the evening i went to rembrandtplein and met up with baz and pani. this was bazek's chance to buy me a meal. we went to a japanese place called "ken-san" on the korte reguliersdwarsstraat, that little diagonal street from rplein where café bolle jan and the van dobben kroketten place are. ate lots of makis and gyoza and teriyaki chicken and stuff.
as i was leaving there, i contemplated checking out bolle jan which was just opening, but then i remembered i needed to go get some tobacco. so i walked over to the maria minimarkt and got two packs of drum and a small package of douwe egberts aroma rood koffie, cuz i was totally out of coffee here at the house. then i figured it would be smart to just go home.
back at wdw i stopped in to chat with jk and marina for a while. because i'd had very little sleep tuesday, i crashed pretty early and hard, but woke up again at about 04.30 ...
... with the idea that i would now do something productive. instead of which, i sat here for almost three hours writing in my journal!
sheesh.