November 2023 Update

November 2023 Update

Amsterdam has been another lowkey whirlwind. What is not these days? I managed to collect my Dutch passport which despite the election results at the end of November has made me proud and happy to have a Netherlands citizenship. I voted for D66 on the 22nd. Our social moments in Amsterdam were dinners with Santima and Jimmy at La Caramba on the 27th of October, at Café WG on the 4th of November, at Divan on the 9th of November and with Jim at Isola Bella on the 17th. We had dinner with Stephan & Koen at Shiva on the 1st of November and then attended Stephan’s 80th birthday celebration on the 11th of November. There was also an evening of drinking whisky with an enjoyable Erdem on the 10th. We have been to both the Van Loan and Foam Museums on the 6th and to the Rijksmuseum on the 7th where we ran into Magriet.

Richard has not been terribly well and becomes ill almost every time we dine out if not more often than that. This last continues as I write this. We did get blood tests while in Amsterdam. Richard’s results were good ones. My iron is still low though a bit higher than a year ago, and my PSA is at 0.6. Mostly for my painful right arm and left side of my neck, I have seen our physiotherapist Hans three times.

And that has been our Amsterdam visit for the most part. I can no longer remember whether my talk ‘Fun in Infinity: Angels, Giants and Humans’ for the Nephilim Anthropology Conference was the recorded version or a live delivery on my part, but there was no time for questions. I have worked on my keynote ‘Festival Calendars and Sacred Places: Confronting the Holiness of Time and Space’ for the “Sacred Dichotomies: Time and Space in Contemporary Pagan Rituals” University of Glasgow Hybrid Workshop that I gave yesterday and also on my ‘Development of Earth Spirituality in Europe’ for Bron Taylor’s “Dark Green Religion in Europe: History and Impacts, Dangers and Prospects” conference in Mainz for next April. The Cherry Hill Seminary teaching progresses, and I enjoy all the students I have. My reading has been Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which I have found about as depressing as anything I have read and not enjoyed, and I have almost completed Ian McEwan’s Lessons. This last is occasionally captivating, and McEwan’s writing is well above average, but this is again something I have found to be depressive.

After the Nephilim conference I connected with only the end of the Soteria session on “The Morality Tale that dares not speak its Name.” But today’s Soteria was the intriguing 1887 novel “She” or “She Who Must Be Obeyed” by Rider Haggard. Maybe I shall follow McEwan with this. The only cinema for us this stretch has been Oppenheimer which for me was an incredible story and film.

We took the Eurostar from Amsterdam to London on Thanksgiving and got to our dinner booking at the Sloane Club in time, but Richard being ill could not eat the meal, and we had to ask to take it home. Two days later we took buses after the Sacred Dichotomies workshop to Tate Britain for the Members Night, but we waited nearly an hour between the buses, and when we arrived finally, there was a line at least halfway around the museum. Richard was too cold to wait any further, so I immediately flagged down a cab and got ourselves home. I have a computer session with Scott for tomorrow evening Monday at 21:00, “The Time Traveller’s Wife” at the Apollo on Tuesday, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Cadogan Hall (Sibelius’ Violin Concerto & Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony) on Wednesday, and the Comedy Night at the Sloane Club for Thursday. December is looking to be no less full.

It all still feels for both of us that it’s one day at a time. And all feels stunningly precarious. But when we consider our world between the Midi, Amsterdam, London and occasionally Paris and extensions in the UK with what is happening elsewhere, we realise how incredibly and incomparably fortunate we are. Loneliness is a terrifying prospect, but so far neither of us has that yet.