Things - Blogabond

Polly’s purple lump is moving south, descending towards her left eye, and I harbor ignorant concerns about what happens when they collide. We head north to Giethoorn, tourist mecca. The day is hot and sunny, and I will end the day with the sunburn I never got in the Sahara.

At Jonen we run into two American couples on matching foldable tandems, hop a tiny ferry, and discover a fabulous little café out here in what feels like nowhere. The inhabitants would no doubt disagree.

Coffee, pastries, ice cream, hot chocolate with whipped cream: we treat the kids and ourselves to a moment of gluttony, and with cholesterol levels satisfyingly elevated, wave goodbye to the storks and continue our travels.

Giethoorn, the touristy part in any case, lies amid a network of canals and a lake.

We rent two little electric motor boats and skim through the canals and onto the lake, my younger brother steering competently from the start while I ram banks and other boats until I get the hang of things…emblematic, emblematic…

Some purchases are next, trip remembrance beckoning at the pottery place or the stone place next door. The ceramic that catches my eye is not for sale however, and as we ponder the issues of carting some fragile piece back home, we uncharacteristically dissuade ourselves from a purchase. Its easier somehow in Ayacucho or Oaxaca or Cotonou, where artifacts speak in stranger tongues, to find something indelibly intertwined with your experience…something to hold and protect and give back to you in future years that experience.

Modern industrial objects it seems, servants to repetition and abstraction, remember little and speak even less. They seem reflective, not absorptive. Even handmade objects produced in modern, industrialized cultures have the same problem, infected no doubt by that infatuation with abstraction. It is difficult to find a trustworthy repository for your memories.

The ride back is uneventful, though the kids are noticeably tiring and require a boost here and there. When I trade bikes with one of my younger nephews and race clown-like on the tiny bike to catch up with the faster crowd up front, the humor falls flat. They band together though, these seven kids, and I am heartened both by their fortitude and there easy affection for each other.

Dinner at the boat is wonderful, as always, and so is chess with my sister. We take back our stupid moves and debate our strategies, fighting fatigue to finish the game finally at 1:15am.

Say THAT 10 times fast.

written by

roel krabbendam on June 24, 2007 from Vollenhove, Netherlands

from the travel blog: Heaven

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