The Crack of Dawn #617

Volume #617

6/15/24

Newsletter #617

The Crack of Dawn

I’ve finally found a moment to write this.  I’m seated at Willie Wortel’s coffeshop, drinking coffee, and smoking a huge joint of great weed.  This place is about a block from my hotel.  I chose the hotel – which is beautiful, with a great restaurant – because it has balconies, and I can smoke.  Alas, the balconies are just facades, barely big enough to stand on.  Plus, I had to sign a separate waver alerting me that if I smoked in the room or on the balcony, I’d be charged an extra 150 Euros.

Although I haven’t been writing this newsletter, don’t worry, I’ve still been writing.  For most of my life, I carry around a leather-covered notebook everywhere that I go and write in my journal.  I was just thinking yesterday that I use writing as the point.  Ultimately, what’s written is completely secondary to the actual writing it.  My journal writing is different from writing while sitting in front of a computer.  The journal is on the go, and frequently in snippets, depending on how long I was wherever I was.  For example:

Tues, June 11, 2024

I leave today.

I’m a bit panicked now, but I think this trip will be good.  Air out my brain.

Bruce [S.] just took me to Dollar General for more cat food.  Dollar General is a perfect, bleak example of ugly urban sprawl and decay.  As well as a closed Checkers, a closed Burger King, and a closed Wendy’s.  McDonalds and Taco Bell still survive.

And this is a nice neighborhood.  We used to have a grocery store, La Rosa Market, but it went out of business years ago.  It stands vacant beside a vacant former bowling alley, Sylvan Lanes, where I got drunk a few times.  I knew the bartender, who was crazy.

I need a refresher course in “Civilization can be beautiful.”

Wed, June 12, 2024

I’m sitting in front of the Empire coffeeshop in Haarlem, smoking weed and drinking Fanta orange.  The shop is run by a beautiful blonde woman [named Nikki].  I haven’t even checked into the hotel yet.

It takes three movies to fly to Amsterdam from Detroit.  Since Detroit is the airport hub for Delta/KLM, I can get a direct, seven-and-a-half-hour flight.  So far, they’ve had three movies that I was interested in, and by the end of the third we’re coming into Schiphol Airport.

On this flight I liked all three films, which was surprising.  Ordinary Angels (2023) with Hillary Swank, whom I like, who often has good taste in the scripts that she chooses to star in.  This is a comedy-drama, based on a true story, and it wanted me to feel good, and I did.  The second film was kind of great, and I will watch it again.  Perfect Days (2023) directed and co-written by 78-year-old, Wim Wenders.  It’s a Japanese movie made by an old German guy.  Wenders has dispensed with plot, which is fine with me, and replaced it with a fabulous compression of passing time.  The lead character, a man of about 60, cleans city toilets in Tokyo.  Each city public toilet installation is a work of art in Tokyo.  It was a fabulous movie.

The other was Lo Captino (2023), a French-Senegalese co-production, that was beautiful, exciting, and moving.  And extremely well produced.

I’ve checked in and taken a shower and a Xanax.  The balcony isn’t real, and I can’t smoke on it, if I could actually stand on it.  It’s small.  A foot wide.

There are a lot of attractive women of all ages.  Mainly young, of course, but older too.  I’m having some Chinese food.  It’s a fast food place, Wok To Go, well-located on a boulevard, with good fresh vegetables.

You know, I must keep walking.

Haarlem is perfect.  Quiet, calm and wonderful.

More later.