Holland, 2012

Amsterdam has the type of weather I like best: the sunshine is warm, while the air is cool–almost chilly– and the leaves rustle, and the days taste faintly of Fall; it's the type of weather that reminds me of my childhood. One afternoon, we spent an hour lazing at Rembrantpleine, and as I lay on the grass looking up the clouds slowly gathering high overhead, it was clear that Fall was coming soon, and I wondered if that was a profound metaphor or something.

Mike and I had met up in London, where we stayed at the Green Man Hostel, which was effectively just an all-hours pub with beds upstairs.  The pub/hostel seemed like a fantastic concept in principle, until I found myself lying in bed, kept awake by late-night drunken karaoke that sounded like the banshee ghost of Cyndi Lauper tearfully choking out a white-girl-wasted lament for her lost career.

Passing through Speaker's Corner, we saw a very impassioned dude deliver an incredibly xenophobic rant against the world at large.  He railed against Muslims, the Queen, and spoke of how Saddam was "A very brave man."  So I went over to the nearby Muslim outreach table to pick up a free pocket Qur'an, and got to feel "enlightened" in a self-satisfied white-college-liberal kind of way.

After the madness of London, and nearly a month of the hustle-and-bustle life of a tourist, Amsterdam was a nice change of pace. We stayed there for five days, and explored the city slowly, enjoying its beauty, the kindness of the people there, and lots of fried food and touristy photo-ops–

Stuck.

I was first introduced to Anne Frank obliquely, through the amazing album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, which was inspired after lead singer Jeff Magnum read her diary. If you haven't heard this album, why am I even friends with you?  Go listen to it now.

After seeing Dachau, Anne's house had added resonance, and after hearing the man at Speaker's Corner, it seemed that the lessons of her story were just as relevant today as they were 68 years ago.  I'm reading her diary now, and finding a lot of it unexpectedly pertinent to myself.  Not just because I'm basically a 23 year-old teenager, but also because of Anne's ongoing discussion of identity, her unending, merciless self-examination, and relentless efforts to improve herself.

As she reflects, "To be honest, I can't imagine how anyone could say 'I'm weak' and then stay that way. If you know that about yourself, why not fight it? Why not develop your character?" (July 6, 1944).  We all know people who are stuck in their ways, endlessly talking of some project they're perpetually intending to start soon–that screenplay, those salsa lessons, that blog entry–but which they never seem to get around to.  Who are stuck in the same job, or the same relationship, or the same city, apparently unable to take the first step in changing a situation they dislike, or to change themselves as they intend.

We found the beer.

Hell, for all my globe-trotting, and (occasional) indulgence in sweeping, grandiose philosophizing, I'm probably still one of those people.  My friends joke that most of what I do is perpetually in "pre-production."  But I'm actively seeking to change, and hopefully have finally taken the first step in that process.

I still haven't gotten around to reading that pocket Qu'ran...

Seduction eyes.

Anne further discusses how there seems to be an irreconcilable difference between the public and private self– the joker she pretends to be, and the serious, contemplative Anne within.  Kind of like the duality of Amsterdam itself, with its elegant Old Word charm pocked with gaudy rasta paraphernalia.  It's a dichotomy we all struggle with– for all the careful thought we put into how we act around others, the self we project usually isn't an accurate advertisement for the person we really are on an intimate level.  Who we wish we could be all of the time, instead of just when we're alone.

The search for one's true self is thus a complicated one that seeks to tune out the influence of others, yet is inevitably reactive to them. As Anne perfectly summates, "I keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if... If only there were no other people in the world" (final entry, August 1, 1944).