My Contact Lenses - or - Remembering Amsterdam

My contacts need to be changed.  Or at least removed from my eyeballs.  That has been the ever-present thought of my day.  Things are not, shall we say, clear.  Are they ever?  You may be thinking.  And the answer to that would be, I am not entirely sure.  However, I do know they are usually at least a little clearer than they are at present.  Which leads me to a memory I have of the trip that Lily and I took to Europe back in 2006. 

Towards the end of our journey, which lasted a little over three weeks, we found ourselves in Amsterdam with very little money, as usual, but a lot of (perhaps foolish) adventurousness, as usual.  After deciding we would take a ferry from Amsterdam to England the next day, and then discovering that a ferry left pretty early in the morning, we came to the conclusion that we did not need to waste 20 Euros on a hostel.  We were in Amsterdam after all, the city that never sleeps of all cities that never sleep.  And so we would never sleep as well. 

It began well enough, as many strange ideas often do.  I remember being excited by the prospect of an entire night of wakefulness, of the myriad adventures it could entail.  Now, however, the memories of that day come and go like strange snapshots taken by an exhausted brain.  I can clearly see a bald, limber street performer in a striped shirt juggling in a cobblestone square.  I remember the lighter I bought that had “Amsterdam” written on it, since I thought it was fitting.  I remember the Rembrandt Museum, and the pretty grounds that surrounded it.  A café comes to mind, a little place close to the main square, and I think we had a nice dinner there while we surreptitiously watched with astonishment as a group of middle aged men smoked their “herbal” cigarettes at the next table.  And the canals, the endless stretch of concentric loops radiating out before us.  They were beautiful, but utterly confusing.  I remember dodging many bicyclists as they zipped by us, often when we were least expecting it.  I can see Lily’s face as she demanded to know if I realized none of the little children, hanging precariously from their parents’ handlebars, were wearing helmets.  I can also remember the red light district, which was supposed to be shocking, but which at that point in the night was just another destination where we had to pry our eyes open and keep moving to keep our sleepiness at bay.  I remember being unsettled by the sight of children with their parents, their faces bathed in the glow of the crimson light emanating from behind the prone bodies of the nude women in the display windows.  And I remember feeling sad about the apparent commercialization of the sinful arts for the benefit of gawking tourists, like ourselves.

But eventually, we began to grow tired.  We wound up in a bar, stacking coins and counting the hours.  We got into a political discussion with two Dutch men, who each knew at least six languages, or something astonishing like that, and bemoaned the ignorance of Americans.  But anyway, the clearest memory I have of that ordeal is climbing on the ferry the next day and discovering the air was heavy with smoke.  We looked around, blinking, as we realized we had just boarded a giant casino on water, which was a bit garish in the early morning light.  My already over-worn contacts dried out instantly, and the world became a fog.  I remember stumbling around the strange seating formations until I found a place I could stretch out and sleep.  And so we slept there, next to the slot machines and the full service bar, in a smoky ship headed across the English Channel.
 
Anyway, that’s sort of what my eyes feel like today, to a lesser extent.  All in all, though, I would rather be on a boat in the English Channel right now, having an adventure. 

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