Amsterdam 2016

Amsterdam and the full range from facilitating a handfasting to waiting as I write this in the OLVG’s emergency ward after tripping on the street. This last occurs just two days before setting off for the Midi with the plan to circumvent as much as possible petrol striking France and drive through Germany, Switzerland and Italy to reach Tellus et les Étoiles.

And the day itself is that of the California Primary with the foregone and, for me, disappointing realisation that Mrs. Clinton has already secured the Democratic nomination. My sympathies have been with Bernie Sanders, and while I feel that the Donald Trump would be a major embarrassment let alone disaster, I think the Clinton alliance with the feudalism of Wall Street will not encourage the social-political changes that at least offer the possibility of rectification and advance.

And as resigned as I am to the inevitable in America, I am equally anticipating the more immediate Brexit myopia and ending of the daring EU experiment. With regard to Brussels, I have no doubts that there are most unsavoury bureaucratic errors and poor decision-making facilities that have seemed to be more intrinsic than many would wish. But at the same time, despite Boris Johnson’s accusations of fascistic centralisation, there is the ‘dream of Europe’ whose championship is about to be lost and eradicated.

The world’s sorry mess remains with all its impossibility toward finding viable solutions. Personally I encounter the irony of possessing the treasure of love and happiness despite both the lack of global and individual peace and unthreatened security. After the endless Hurricane Sandy and Artic Freeze delays, my mother’s condo has finally been sold, and I even have managed to get four-fifths of the funds from the sales price out of the country and abroad. And even though I have since learned that Swiss banks, thanks to all the cumbersome American restrictions that have been enforced upon them, can no longer accept US citizens as clients, the freedom from Rhode Island itself is a great and joyous relief – however temporarily the situation endures.

Amsterdam has been brief, but loved ones both here and from abroad have been embraced, and much of the weather has been supreme. I long now and next for a re-grounding in the Midi with her magical Mediterranean beauty. The narrative yet continues despite the ephemeral fragility that daily tightens its ever-descending noose. Carpe diem!