Scheveningen, Oprah, Deepak and Ezra


Today was a day of taking other people’s suggestions to heart. This morning, I read an email that my friend Alice Tropper forwarded about a 21-day meditation organized by Oprah and Deepak Chopra. I barely read the forwarded email before I came to my conclusion; sure, why not? I could use some meditation. Click

Then I went to work for a few hours even though I’m technically still on vacation. I had heard that a handful of reservation requests had come in while we were away that had not been confirmed. Seeing as I can be a bit, um, fastidious at times, I wanted to send out confirmations and get them entered into my system so I could relax that part of my brain that would worry about it during the last few days of my vacation. I’ll just go over, spend a little time on the computer getting things in order, have a cup of coffee and then head out; low-key, mellow. I told myself.

But when I arrived, it was kinda hectic over there; a lot of volunteers were busy cleaning the church–working really hard scrubbing the luxaflex that hadn’t been cleaned all year, repainting walls, fixing things. After the third person asked me why I was there, I explained that if reservations aren’t confirmed in a timely manner, sometimes clients move on and look for another location. That shut them up from trying to protect me from myself! And then my little guy came by, looking bored. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and we were supposed to be on vacation.

“You should go to Scheveningen today,” suggested Jan, a church member from Scheveningen.
“That’s a good idea,” I responded. And so we did.

Scheveningen is a touristy beach town in the Hague that comes to life in the summer months when hundreds of strandtenten, temporary restaurants, are constructed for the season in the sand. Each strandtent (literal translation is beach tent) has its own upscale theme with music, decorations, plush cushions and quite often beach chairs further down the sand where you can lounge.

My husband was relieved to learn we were headed to the sea. He awoke at 4am with a brutal tooth ache, and since dentists also go on vacation, he wasn’t able to schedule an appointment until 4pm. His best medicine to endure the wait, besides popping ibuprofen, was time to himself. That left Ezra and I on our own. We packed our bags, caught a tram to Central Station, deftly changed to tram 1 and arrived in Scheveningen.

We hopped off the tram and walked through a passageway between tall buildings to the beachfront. Ezra was in great spirits. We dug a sandpit together, splashed in the water, played tikkertje (tag) and buried each other’s legs in the sand. Now that I was relaxed, the idea of the meditation wended its way into my thoughts. Can you imagine how many people Oprah and Deepak could pull in to meditate and how powerful that could be if hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people were all meditating each day? Perhaps they had a secret plan to bring about World Peace in 21 days. I wanted to participate as well, even if for a fleeting moment or two. While Ezra was busy sculpting reptilian shapes, I retrieved the small paper bag where I had scribbled the Deepak-Oprah 21-Day meditation centering thought for day one:

Today I am open to the presence of miracles.

I breathed in this thought along with the fresh sea air. This elixir bounced around in my mind and lungs. My lungs suddenly realized their potential and took in a deep, rather than shallow breath. Considering the vreselijke spring we had in Holland, this beautiful summer day was a sort of miracle in itself. I’ll be launching my first novel this November. What if I could channel my energy over the next 21 days into that novel being a miraculous success?

My thoughts wandered to my husband, at home and in pain. Where was the miracle in that? I tried to imagine all of his pain disappearing and the root in that one bothersome tooth experiencing instant bliss. Since I was at the beach with my little boy, I wasn’t in a position to do a 30-minute meditation, but I did keep returning to the idea of being open to the presence of miracles, over and over again, almost like a breathing meditation.

I chased my son through the shallow edges of the North Sea, splashing and being splashed, and the meditations on miraculously blissful teeth and successful novels flitted away from my thoughts. Not a bad thing at all, considering I was entirely in the moment. If I lost the thought, I would pull out the crinkled paper again and re-read it.

I was stretching, my legs thigh deep in the shallow warm water caught between the beach and a rise in the sand at the ocean’s edge. A Dutch woman walking out for a swim stopped and talked to me. We talked about the water, about swimming. Within moments she knew by my accent that I wasn’t Dutch, and began the usual rounds of questions, which led to further topics. I am originally from California; she has a sister who lives in Woodland Hills, California. While we talked, Ezra made a game of splashing me. I think he was annoyed that my attention had shifted away from him. After the woman moved on into the sea for a swim, I realized the significance of the moment; this stranger, an older Dutch woman had stopped and chatted with me and held her attention on our conversation. It was a simple, yet beautiful exchange.

Earlier, Ezra and I had waded into that same shallow water and made a game of picking up pieces of floating plastic. We didn’t see anyone else on the beach playing this game. One girl found a broken pair of sunglasses in the shallow water, laughed at how silly they looked with one plastic lens and promptly threw them back in. They ended up in our sack along with approximately 7 icecream wrappers, 5 plastic bags, 4 candy wrappers and 1 waterlogged chip bag. On our way out, we found a beer can, a beer-can’s-throw from the trash can.

I picked it up and went into drama mode. “Oh. It is so heavy. I couldn’t possibly put this in the trash can over there.” Ezra started laughing. He found half of a small plastic container that had probably held a single serving of potato salad less than a foot from the trash can and did his own one man act as he tossed it in the garbage.
“I’m sue-per lay zee!” he slowly enunciated. “And I can’t find the trash can right in front of me!” We cracked ourselves up.

When saying our simple prayer before eating dinner this evening, Ezra had the following to say:
“I wish everyone in the world was Arie Jan’s friend.” (He’s given up on calling us mom and dad.)
“Why?” I asked, completely perplexed. Did he think Arie Jan was in pain because he was sad, or that he didn’t have enough friends?
“Because if everyone was his friend,” Ezra explained, “then they would all want him to feel good and if they all thought that, his pain would go away.”
“Wow. Where did you learn that?” I asked. I hadn’t shared the world-wide meditation concept with Ezra and I don’t think we’ve talked much about the power of group prayer.
“I just have this feeling,” he said. And there it was; my miracle of the day.

Eiffel Exhilarated!


Eiffel Exhilarated!

Climbing the steps of the Eiffel Tower last week gave me a sense of accomplishment, as if the Eiffel was on a bucket list I hadn’t even written, but was somehow ingrained in my system as an American.

What does the Eiffel Tower have to do with being American? Structural engineer Gustave Eiffel also worked on the Statue of Liberty, which was given to us (the U.S.) by France as a commemoration of the alliance between France and the U.S. during the American Revolution.

But clearly, people from around the world also have it on a subliminal or active bucket list, as we heard accents from around the world as we summited the Eiffel.

I felt safe in this massive structure until I overheard a tourguide saying the Eiffel Tower receives 58 million visitors per year. Say what? That’s like 20% of the American population, or three times the population of the Netherlands. Wouldn’t the metal steps and the cables of the elevator be worn out with the coming and going of so many humans?

Yet an online search says its only 7 million per year. Seven million is no small feat; that’s about 1 visitor every 4 seconds, 24 hours per day. Perhaps she was saying 5 to 7 million. If said quickly, that could sound like 57 million.

My recommendation: a must-do. Don’t stand in the main line for the elevator that goes straight to the top, but go to the shorter line to climb the first few stories and then catch the lift to the top. Climbing the steps gives you a much more hands-on sense of the structural detail of the tower and you can watch the people on the ground turn into ants (get smaller) at a much more gradual rate.

Tip two: Unless you enjoy the sensation of being mildly squished by throngs of other sweaty tourists every step of the way, don’t go in July!

Dappled with rainwater


I subscribe to a blogger called Kristin Noelle because 1) she writes about living with trust in your life and 2) I share her name, Kristin Noelle (my first and middle name and I suspect her first and last name). My second reason is a little silly, but I think there’s something interesting about us walking around in the world with the same name, even if expressed differently.

A while ago, she sent an email entitled “Dappled Things.” If I could have a love affair with a word, this would be it. Dappled reminds me of light summer rain, of nature, of sunlight through trees, of thoughts transitioning in front of you, and of a distant poem I love about dappled rainwater.

I started writing a response to Kristin Noelle’s email, eager to share my thoughts with her, and I yarned on about an E.E. Cummings poem I loved so much that had the word “dappled” in it. I couldn’t remember the title of the poem, so I started searching through E.E. Cummings’ works, soon realizing his poems have very little to do with dappled sunshine and a lot to do with sex and his most-likely-made-up last name.

I had thrown my love affair word to the wrong poet. Then William Carlos Williams popped in my head. Oh, that’s it! I thought confidently. And I pulled up a poetry website and quickly found that beautiful poem from all those years ago. And without much further ado:

The Red Wheelbarrow
by
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Glazed with rainwater? Not dappled with rainwater? So much for my dappled tryst; it’s not even in the poem.

This leaves me to believe, that like Robin Williams in the 1994 film The Final Cut, my brain had somehow misremembered a crucial piece of information from my past.

Perhaps crucial is a bit strong, but I feel cheated by my own memories, and I have to agree with William Carlos; glazed with rainwater works much better.

But back to my namesake. Kristin Noelle’s email, the one that caused me to expound upon the virtues and amorous nature of dappled, also made me slow down and ponder her words:

Life is a dappled thing. The contrasts are *everywhere*. And since my goal is to learn and practice a worldview of trust – that is, a softening into, rather than a constant resistance to, what is – then my invitation is to practice saying yes to these contrasts. Practice watching for the gifts in them. Practice listening for what they’re calling me to learn or remember or do…or to release and let go of.

What if the dappled things, the many startling and confusing and even horribly troubling contrasts, are a deep sort of kindness, and learning to trust is the process of waking up to that kindness? Of learning to welcome it, and soak in it, even when we can’t yet recognize its outlines? (excerpt from an email sent out by Kristin Noelle to her subscribers on Dappled Things)

And now you can see why I subscribe to her blog; these are the sort of thoughts that make us contemplate our lives and perhaps see goodness and lessons of growth in a place where we only once saw trouble.

I often think of the internet as this wonderful, horrible thing, a dappled thing; it offers up an incomprehensible amount of information, and like an expanded Wikipedia, it represents a superhuman collective of our history, thoughts, experiences and beliefs; some horrible and dark, others refreshing and insightful.

The internet is knowledge. Harkening back to a famous story of a snake, a woman and an apple, some say knowledge is evil. But I disagree–it’s what you DO with the knowledge that makes all the difference. We can handle knowledge if we have trust in our lives–trust in our own ability to reason and differentiate, and to make decisions based on our core beliefs.

How do you live with trust when betrayed by your own memory? I can fact-check the author of a poem online or in a book, but how can I fact-check that experience I had when I was nine years old when one of my best friends betrayed my trust? I can’t.

If I got back in touch with that long-ago friend and asked for her version of the experience, would she have the same story, or something completely different? Whose version would be right? Would our interpretations be based on feelings as much as facts? Can we trust our own ability to recall an event objectively and in that moment, or do we reshape our memories with layers of new experiences?

Trust is also the ability to realize you can be wrong once in a while, and to do so with grace.

Love Stories


When I was little, like eight or nine, I played piano. I had a songbook of popular hits and one of the songs I enjoyed was called Love Story. It had this haunting, sad melody. If I was feeling distraught about something or just moody, playing this song seemed to pull me deeper into my emotions. I didn’t know at the time that Love Story was the theme song to a really sad romantic movie of the same title. My mom must have known, must have seen the movie even, but she never told me about it. Or if she did, it didn’t hold my interest.

So just a few weeks ago, I rented the 1970s film Love Story as a bit of research on the romance genre. It was on multiple lists of all time best romantic films. I recognized the Love Story theme immediately when I was trying to turn off the subtitles, and as the melody connected me with that childhood melancholy, I knew I was in for an emotional rollercoaster.

When the film was over, I immediately went to my husband. Teary-eyed and sniffly, I hugged him, telling him how happy I was to have already had ten wonderful years with him. In other words, this movie played an e minor concerto on my heart strings, rendering me sappy, emotional and aware of the love and happiness in my life.

Is this what we want in a romance? To connect to the love in our own lives? Absolutely. A tragic ending? Occasionally, when done well (Romeo and Juliet for example). As far as tragic love goes, I would never change the ending of Love Story. It is a perfect composition, from the moment they meet in the university library to the father and son passing each other in the turnstile door of the hospital.

But is this what we want most of the time? Um, no. We romantics prefer a happy ending. In fact, if you read through articles and posts on the romance genre, people expect a happy ending. I’m not saying we always want fluff, but we want romance, a good story and happiness.

Talking with authors


A handful of you may know that I’m almost finished with my first novel. This would be a great time for me to mention the title of my book, but unfortunately I’m like a floor fan on a hot summer day when it comes to determining the best title for my debut novel–oscillating between one corner of the room and the other. A title, after all, is crucial to marketing your book and conveying what the potential reader can expect from the content nestled between that compelling cover design and the great quotes (from your mom) on the back cover.

The title isn’t the only delay. I’ve been reading online about marketing and it is clear to me that if I hope to sell more than a handful of copies, I better get my marketing p’s and q’s in order. Because after all, people have to know our books are out there before they can purchase them and a book will not likely go “viral” unless you’ve done your time promoting the heck out of it.

Even though there is an overabundance of advice online on how to self-publish, I tend to lend more credibility to the advice that comes from people I know who have already gone through the experience.

Thus my morning coffee date with Carolyn Vines, author of Black and Abroad. I met Carolyn at a Connecting Women gathering in The Hague and discovered that she had self-published a book a few years back. Seeing as the point of these monthly Connecting Women gatherings is to connect with others, I got up my nerve and approached this beautiful, well-spoken, self-published author to admit that I was; 1) working on a book, and 2) would greatly appreciate it if we could get together for a cup of coffee and discuss her self-publishing experience. And instead of saying she was too busy, or that I needed to be further along in the process, or a more crushing response (get lost! for example), she replied “Yeah. I’d love to get together with you for a cup of coffee.” And so today was the big day.

As two American women who have chosen to live in the Netherlands with their Dutch husbands, Carolyn and I unanimously picked a table in the sunshine, determined to catch some rays while we could. As she sipped her coffee, Carolyn graciously tolerated my flow of consciousness style of questioning, and did her best to answer along the way.

First off, she confirmed what all the online sources say; you need to be ready to self-promote through multiple channels of social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, an Amazon author page, if you’re going that route, and a website designed for your book or books. Good news is, most of these sources are free or low-cost–unless you have a premium LinkedIn account or go for a fancy website design.

But no process is ever entirely free. A book launch, for example, can be where the expenses begin to add up. I learned from Carolyn that if you want to do a book launch as a self-published author at a bookstore, you need to order and purchase the hard copies of your print-on-demand books (at cost) and sell them to the bookstore. The bookstore will then determine for how much they will re-sell them. I’m assuming because of overhead like rent, employees, etc, bookstores need to make more than a buck on the exchange. Thus they mark them up quite a bit–sometimes as high as 19.99.

This kind of mark up can be quite problematic for a self-published author. Imagine you are attending a friend’s self-published book launch. Your loyalty is with your friend, so even though the sticker price for her novel might shock, you’ll most likely bite the bullet and pick up a 19.99 (plus tax) copy of her book. But let’s say the book launch is over and you’re another customer browsing the bookshelves who doesn’t know the author personally–would you purchase a novel that costs 19.99 from an unknown author, or get the latest work from a world-renowned bestselling author offered for 25% to 50% less? The competition is steep enough without having to deal with this sort of inequity. It’s not the fault of the bookstore; it’s just a byproduct of supply and demand economics.

Adding insult to injury, it’s quite possible that the bookstore will ask you to “purchase back” the books that aren’t sold within a reasonable amount of time. No problem, you say. I can sell them from the back of my car, or from the basket of my bike (for my Dutch readers). But once again; you have to prove yourself.

But back to Carolyn Vines. The most fascinating part of our discussion was about Carolyn’s book, Black and Abroad.

I purchased it as an e-book and was blown away by her natural writing style. This memoir is far more than a fun journey about falling in love with and moving abroad with her Dutch guy. It spans twenty years of her life and deals with topics of race, poverty, transition, depression, prejudice, culture and finding your strength to grow beyond tragic situations, rather than letting these situations make you a lifelong victim. But words from her website can sum it up much better than me. In her online bio, I pulled the following:

black and (A)broad: traveling beyond the limitations of identity, Carolyn’s memoir, spans her twenty years’ living and traveling abroad and shares how she found the inspiration to transcend the limitations of her identity as a black woman.

And to top it all off, she brilliantly describes humorous situations and isn’t afraid to laugh at herself–a quality I’ve always admired in people. Seeing as I’m only a handful of chapters in and already hooked, it seems clear I’m recommending it to you as well. Although the book was written for a black female audience, you do not have to be black or female to appreciate it. In fact, I think the honest portrayal of racial issues is important for everyone, regardless of race or gender, to read about. I got the kindle edition here. If you read it, let me know what you think!

If any of you are interested in knowing when my as-of-yet-untitled novel is coming out, please subscribe to this blog by pressing “follow” at the top of the page, and you’ll be sure to hear more.

Multiple Realities


Explosion
When I woke up it was sunny. By the time I got breakfast on the table it was sprinkling and overcast. My son was apparently under the spell of the weather, transforming from happy and cooperative to feisty and unbearable within a 15 minute time frame. He exploded. I exploded. Words were exchanged. We muddled forward.

Bubble
The walk to school was pensive and gray, filled with big, calmly presented questions designed for my son to analyze his outrageous behaviour. He tried a similar technique on me. I used my superior vocabulary, height and stature as parent to maintain the alpha order. He heard me. I listened to him, giving him room to express himself. Even though there were other people on the sidewalk, bike path, riding the tram or driving up the street, they were rendered background noise as we bobbed along in our own little bubble of recovery.

Chaos
As we entered the school grounds, our bubble popped, and we were absorbed into a larger bubble–that churning chaos of child energy that crescendos moments before the bell rings. We pushed through the doors with the sea of children and parents around us. Even though the hallways in the school seem impossibly narrow and there is no order to speak of, we all worked our way through the maze, getting to the right classroom, hanging the jacket in the right section while little bodies maneuvered around us followed by their parents.

Familiarity
This press of bodies and jackets and lunch boxes and parents of all different colors and scents used to wear on me, making the morning drop-off seem like a major cultural undertaking. Now that sea of chaos has been tamed by familiarity; I have collected names to go with the faces and shared experiences with them–even if it is as simple as waiting for our children after school, or attending a school event. These daily acts have made some parents lose their exotic qualities. Others are not so easily tamed and remain illusive and foreign to me.

Shared Society
Walking home I became not a mother dropping off her naughty child, but a woman on her way to work. Each step took me further away from the 200 or so children filling the school of knowledge, wiggling in their seats, or passing notes to one another, and closer to the day of work ahead of me. I passed others in business attire on their way to their prospective positions in our shared society.

Sensations
Once inside the church building, I was completely alone. The silence was both welcoming and startling. A few rays of sunlight shot through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the ground floor gathering hall before receding behind darkened clouds. I started the coffee, luxuriating in its powerful aroma. I walked through the building, checking that all was in order before unlocking the large wooden doors.

Thread
Shortly thereafter, students for the 9:30 course started wandering into the building. They slowly gathered around a table in the hall, chatting politely with one another. These are no ordinary students, but seniors between 70 and 80 daring enough to learn about the computer. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but these folks seem different from most senior citizens I meet. Maybe I’m making assumptions about their shared sense of adventure and a desire to learn, but it goes beyond assumption; they think differently about little things; I haven’t overheard a single complaint about the weather or ill-health; I have overheard people making jokes and talking about current issues. I wanted to figure out what the common thread was between these people-who-dare-to-learn so late in life and put it on a spool for my future.

Commiserating
Later, a friend dropped by with his toddler, who emitted another reality of energy into the church and my day. His laugh, his big eyes, the way buttons on machines, such as the dishwasher’s start button, intrigue him. I gave my friend the lowdown on the morning house explosion and he gave me some very wise parenting ideas.

Sexy
I had a pause between clients and headed to the gym. The sun was out, but I kept my resolve to head indoors for a quick work out. I entered the modern gym. Music pumped through the overhead speakers. Fit people moved in rhythm to the beat. I changed into my work out clothes and before long I was powerwalking on the treadmill, my steps also in rhythm with the song blaring through the speakers: “I’m sexy and I know it.”

Sorry
When I returned home from work, my husband and son were both in the living room.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” were the first words out of my son’s mouth when he saw me. I had given my husband the low down, and wondered who had been the first to bring up this morning’s emotional fireworks display. When little man tried out some tests (not coming to the table when asked, for example) to see if I was really the no-nonsense mom I seemed to have morphed into, I implemented tips given to me both by my friend who stopped by with his toddler, and my husband’s non violent communication tips. What does this translate to? No dessert as a consequence. Amazingly, the tips were effective, but met with a crying fit and lots of calming conversation.

Independence
Now as I sit in relative silence once again, the only sounds an occasional tram or the tapping of my fingers spilling my day into the computer, I realize that over the pond people are celebrating America’s Independence. Perhaps I should have claimed this day as a holiday on the grounds of being American. Oh well. It’s illegal to shoot off fireworks any other day but New Years over here. At least I got one fireworks show today, and a whole stream of multiple realities.

Fancy* Nancy


Mom. I love so much, there’s not even words for it. So how do I write a post about how important you are to me? I suppose the easiest thing is to make a list of things you do that have positively shaped me and informed who I am.

First, you have a crazy sense of humor. You can tell a joke that’s not even funny, but your full rolls of laughter that follow the punch line make us all laugh so hard that our eyes water. Further, you say flippant things, followed by that gut busting laugh, and suddenly a world that seemed serious and foreboding is shot through the middle, rendered wobbly and no longer able to take itself so seriously.

Second, you love nature, animals, living in the country. Because of you, I grew up loving trees and tall grass. After having two boys, you were so happy to finally have a girl. You got your girl, but one that loved, not surprisingly, trees and tall grass. You tried so hard to put ribbons in my hair, send me to modeling class, get me interested in dolls and hair brushes and dresses. It paid off in the long run. I have a dress section in my closet and I do brush my hair once in a while. I gave my Hotwheels and G.I. Joe’s away at least a few years ago now. Because of you and dad, I love nature, being still, listening to night descending upon the countryside.

Third, you are the illustrated dictionary example of Hope Springs Eternal. You never give up on people close to you (or on animals or plants). You ALWAYS try to see the good side in situations, even when things are rough. Yes, this can have a down side. But, whether its the Pollyanna Principle or positive thinking, it has played a positive role in my life.

Fourth, you can call it for what it is. I remember one break up with a very handsome boyfriend. I was heartbroken. You listened to me for a good half hour and then you asked what seemed the obvious.
“Well, why don’t you give him another chance?”
“Because he broke up with me!” I responded forlornly.
“Oh! Well, then. what’s the problem? Forget about him. If he can’t see how precious you are, he’s not worth another tear!” That was almost 15 years ago now, and I don’t know if I got the words exactly right, but the message was clear; I am absolutely valuable, and if this guy doesn’t get that, then he’s not worth it. I wanted to argue, but there was no arguing. Why would I ever want to be with someone who didn’t appreciate me? Her simple words seemed to break the spell that was keeping my heart bound to a place it didn’t belong.

Fifth, you value stories and you pay attention. As a retired librarian, you know how important stories are. You told us stories throughout our childhood, emblazoning a love for stories both real and imagined. You created a biography about your father. You developed a family tree and are working on your own biography. Further, you clip articles out of the paper and send them to us, wherever we may be, to let us know what is going on with our long-lost high school friends, former teachers and home town characters.

Sixth, you make an awesome cheesecake.

Seven, you are my mom and my friend. The list goes on of course, but for now, this is my message to you, mom! I love you!

*Even though you gave up the big city years ago to go live in the countryside, you still have a fancy side to you; the part that grew up playing violin, going to balls in fancy gowns, spending your Saturdays in the library devouring knowledge.

Anti-Graffiti Man


Yesterday, one of the volunteers opened a side door to the church and pointed.

“Shit!” I exclaimed before I could push the edit button. Someone had tagged the side entry with the word Gus spray painted in black loopy letters. Gus must be tall, because the letters were above my head and the whole tag was longer than my arm when fully extended.

Clients just arriving in their business suits at the main entry (the church rooms are rented out for gatherings during the week), glanced over at us, taking in the graffiti with mild concern. Perhaps that wasn’t concern, but judgment, I thought; “Do we want to gather in the type of place that draws graffiti?”  I was pissed and somehow taking it a little personally that the building had been tagged on my watch.

Luckily, this didn’t have to be the headache it could have been, because the City of the Hague has an anti-graffiti program.

I called the hotline and a woman answered the phone in a pleasant, upbeat voice. Her friendliness and eagerness to help completely caught me off guard. (Whereas the Dutch are world-renowned for many things–quality cheeses, tolerance, a legal drug culture–customer service is not one of them.) This polite city employee was also efficient in her message; someone would be out to clean up the graffiti within five business days.

After work, I took our son to Natuurspeelplaats Robin Hood (Robin Hood nature play area), a playground in the middle of The Hague’s forest with a child-oriented ropes course including rope bridges, zip line and climbing walls. The weather was perfect and we almost had the place to ourselves. My son pointed out that the birds were chirping, remarking how pretty of a sound it was and how much he liked being surrounded by green. I was so absorbed in playing with my son in the beautiful forest, that I’d forgotten all about the morning graffiti incident–until we reached the climbing wall. The entire wall had been tagged in curvy black and red spray paint, a few profane remarks mixed in with other inanities. A look of disappointment clouded over my son’s face.

“Oh man!” he declared. “That’s totally not allowed! Why do people do that?” I wanted to say because people are stupid and mean, and have no respect for beautiful public places. Or, based on the lack of artistic style, maybe it’s because they’re bored and have nothing better to do.

“I don’t know,” was my simple response. Because, really, I didn’t know and I hadn’t Googled it yet.* I wondered if this was the work of the same person or persons who had tagged the church. But, considering I had no background in literary forensics, I decided to forego any handwriting analysis and focus instead on the good guys-bad guys game my son had created for us. On our walk home, I saw other small tags on electrical boxes and street signs, as if someone had gone on a graffiti rampage throughout our neighborhood. When we got back to the church, I found more graffiti on the church tower. Part of me wanted to be open to the idea of graffiti as art. I’ve seen beautiful graffiti art and even appreciated it. But this was not art, or artistic expression. It was just vandalism.

The next morning, I dressed in a business skirt and summer shirt, eager to celebrate the two days of summer weather that had been thus far correctly forecast. I cut open a melon we had received in our Kievit fruit packet, discovering perfectly ripened flesh of the fruit presenting itself in a bright shade of salmon orange. As my family devoured the melon I had divided into three bowls, our breakfast was interrupted by blaring music that drowned out the soulful words of the Bob Dylan song currently playing on our iPod.

“Where is that coming from?” I asked my husband. He walked to the front balcony, peering out the window.

“From outside. It’s a city worker cleaning up the graffiti.”
“Already? Wow. That was fast!” I remarked. “I want to see it.” All three of us stepped out onto the balcony and waved to the man in worn blue overalls by the church.

As he started to work on the graffiti, I remembered the small tag I had seen on the church tower. I headed outside to talk to him while my husband finished getting our son ready for school.

After thanking him for coming so quickly, I asked him if he could remove the second small tag. It wasn’t on the reported list, he informed me, but he said he’d take a look at it. We discovered a much larger tag on an electrical box just by the tower, and since he would need to take care of that one, he agreed to remove the other small tag while he was at it.

I asked if he’d like a cup of coffee and he nodded heartily. When I returned with a steaming hot cup, he thanked me, pointing out that not many people offered him a cup of coffee these days.

“Maybe they don’t see you,” I suggested, imagining him cleaning up the side of an office building or a random utility box, out of view of the building’s occupants.

“No. They see me. I’m right there in front of them,” he explained. I remembered the loud music that had pulled us from our breakfast. Yes, he was not one to go unnoticed. A wise tactic, I thought; best to let someone know you’re there cleaning up the mess.

“What’s in that fluid?” I asked as he effortlessly removed the graffiti from the utility box.
“No chemicals,” he responded, practically reading my mind. “It’s all natural, made out of fruit extracts.” He explained that the City wanted to eliminate use of toxic substances, and this was just one example.

“That’s great that the “Gemeente” is thinking that way. There are so many toxins we are exposed to every day,” I started. Little did I know I was preaching to the converted.

“I’ve been to India three times now,” he said, “and when I get back to the hotel, I wipe a wet cloth across my face and it’s black from all of the pollution. And people think because it’s in India, it doesn’t matter. We all share the same air and the same environment,” he went on.

I realized that I had shoved the anti-graffiti man in a little box the first moment I saw him–just a hired hand doing his manual labor job to the soundtrack of whatever happens to be on the radio. Based on my surprise that he too thought about the interconnectedness of the planet, and the importance of using nature-based cleaning solvents, I had also boxed up his awareness and intellect into a cube much smaller than appropriate.

I suppose we are meting out judgments onto ourselves and others just about every nanosecond of every day without even realizing it. Well, maybe a little aware. But it’s when our judgments are proven wrong that we wake up to this not-so-subtle undercurrent shaping our views on the world.

Anti-graffiti man not only cleaned up the graffiti, but helped me clean up my own internal acts of graffitying others with preconceived notions. Speaking of which, what is your preconceived notion of the “type of person to graffiti?” See the Goodbye Graffiti link below for one account or consider this quote from Alex Salvador’s thoughts taken from the website Amsterdam Street Art:

“Ah, finally, someone else gets it. They think the same way. There is hope – for art to return to the hoi polloi, the voiceless, the oppressed. Or so I thought.”

* According to Goodbye Graffiti, people, more specifically males between 15 and 25 with problems fitting in, graffiti because they’re bored, frustrated, want to rebel or mark their territory.