Dutch Afterlife

I thought seriously about leaving this blog untainted by stateside prattle, but it seems I can't stay away. It's been ages since I've written with any regularity, but I used to have a steady diet of at least 60 minutes a day - pure, unadulterated (and unedited) scribing. It started as a little girl's silly diary, filled with the inanities of what I'd decided not to eat, what dolls I'd decided not to play with, what classmate I had decided not to like. Even at that young age, I had very definite opinions. *laff'n*

This was replaced by what I righteously called a "journal," inspired more by my teenage infatuation with the Beat poets than a solid documentation of my daily experiences. Looking back, I'm sure the content wasn't vastly different from the schoolgirl diary, but I fancied myself a mature woman of the world, and - at any rate - my all-black wardrobe invariably justified the moniker, to my way of "being."

College - and all its academic ponderings - inspired a dedication to pen and paper such as I'd never known before. I still have several mail bins stuffed to overflowing proportions with the single subject notebooks I carried around with me at all hours of the day. I was deathly afraid of not being able to remember the random and not-so-random flurries of words and ideas that flitted through my head at a speed that left me physically dizzy. I don't know if any of it really meant anything, but it's all written down.

And now ... this blog. I suppose the nice thing about writing in cyberspace is the simultaneous possibility and impossibility to be anonymous. Perhaps no one will ever read this .... perhaps no one ever should. Eh .... heads or tails, that's a coin toss that works for me.

Random Tangent for the Day:
So ... I live in Brooklyn and, like any decent commuter, I ride the trains. The subways were the thing I missed the most while living in the Netherlands. I commuted by train every morning there as well, but it's just not the same experience. The trains don't have quite the same proximity to one another there. Sure, they sometimes come to that too-close side-by-side sprint down the tracks. But rarely do two trains approach a platform from different directions at the exact same time and speed, creating an almost symphonic "whoosh" as they slow to a halt. It doesn't happen all that often in NYC's underground, either, but when it does - pure, mechanical beauty. I know everyone hates the G, but tonight, the Smith-9th Street and Queens-bound G trains at Hoyt-Schermerhorn were.... perfect.