School of Light

“Once… we first found ourselves abroad—in Amsterdam. We left the train-station building and saw a row of old houses above the canal—an orderly line of drunks serving fifteen days for petty hooliganism. The oldest houses were even leaning sideways, bracing their shoulders against their neighbors and—like hangover sufferers—trying to fall out of formation, face-first, onto the road.

In short, we fell in love forever with those huge windows, greedily catching the scanty northern light; with the anxious shivering of reflections in the waters of the canals; with little ships and boats emerging from the double-thick bridge piers, duplicated in the water. We fell in love with our first freedom abroad, our moneyless madness of expensive coffeehouses on Damrak Street. And ever since, we have remained faithful to our first wandering—turning into this city whenever we could: whether on the way, whether the journey was seven miles of jelly to cross, we still went to this city at the first opportunity.”