Hello from Upstairs
Join me if you’re feeling insecure about anything in your life. Recently I’ve accepted a job offer in Amsterdam and had to change all those things that I thought were in a safe and also secure area. But then life happens and shows you that you probably don’t know anything about the world, yourself, and also about time.
Unpredictably this is where I am now, and because of Coronavirus, I was obligated to stay stuck inside for five long days in this corporate house that the HR arranged for me to live in during my first month.
Address of the first tourist highlight in Amsterdam: Nieuwe Leliestraat
The apartment has two bedrooms, one bathroom, and for the first time in my entire life, I could use a bathtub like the main character of one of the fancy TV shows that I watched on Netflix.
Now I invite you to see the view from my corporate house’s windows. Close your eyes and imagine a place where COVID is not a preoccupation anymore. Everybody is out enjoying the summer, on the corner, it’s possible to see a bar that is always full of people that, possibly know how to enjoy life by laughing, meeting friends, and having a glass or maybe a bottle of white wine during their lunchtime. Ops is that guy peeing in the street?
Nevermind.
The smell is great, I’m not a huge fan of weed, but it reminds me that we’re free to make our own choices. At least no one that has the same color as me would be arrested for smoking a joint unpretentiously.
There are really many bicycles, it is possible to see people of all ages at the same time, which motivates me to leave my sedentary lifestyle aside and buy a bicycle as soon as possible. The building across from mine is a little crooked, but nothing that activates my OCD.
The neighbor in front is absurdly large and every day he spreads his white blanket over the window. I don’t know if it’s true or myth that people here aren’t very fond of bathing or washing their clothes, but at least the neighbor is super methodical with his schedule. Punctually at 10:08 am he spreads the blanket at the window and collects it in the last breath of the day at 8:40 pm. Probably he has OCD too.
On the last day of my quarantine, I saw a mom leading her child to his first steps alone. The boy was constantly looking for another child that already knows how to walk by herself. This scene makes me think that insecurity of any kind has a way of mutating our perception, leading us to believe others are out to get us when in fact we’re only at war with ourselves.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this inadequacy as a kind of bias: one that stirs our inner peace, deludes us, and often leads us to false conclusions. This idea came to the fore for me when I read a column by art critic Dean Kissick that was published last month. Titled “The Downward Spiral: March ’20 Through August ‘21,” it was a sort of cultural record of what had transpired in New York over the course of the pandemic, concluding like this:
“Those who stayed in the city last year had a surreal, once-in-a-lifetime experience of stalking fear, collective mania and slow, gentle release, watching the hours come back, and those who fled to the country, many found they loved their rural idylls and didn’t want to return. So many of my friends, particularly those collecting unemployment, had one of the best years of their life, they say. We said it at the time and miss it now that it’s gone. I know people who had terrible things happen, but they’ll also say it was bliss to leave behind their old lives, and step outside of time, and now we’re returning to normal and that’s a shame; except I don’t think we are, because so much has changed and it’s not coming back.”
I’m in Amsterdam, this is my “new normal” and I’m facing my fears every single day. My insecurity is leaking out of my very pores, but I know that I’ll conquer this city, the fear of speaking English, and leave the house that I’ve been locked in, this time, for more than five days.
