Holland

This post is a translation, a creative hiccup of my experience living along the Lange Muiderweg between Muiden and Weesp in the Netherlands. I was studying Dutch and Art at The University College Utrecht and commuted to my classes each morning. I experienced much in the sunrise of the flat land while transgressing the historical Lange Muiderweg.

“My bike creaks as I make my way through the morning twilight. The world is purple and blue, the sheep dot the fields like cotton puffs as I pedal past. The houses still, sleeping, a hush has settled over the fields in a thick blanket. I swoop into the sleepy fog, alert, eyes prickling. I meet others on their way to work. We pedal forward like concentrating soldiers, backs hunched in a silent cyclical march.

The rooster cries out piercing tranquility, a hand pulls the curtains back, another stokes the fire, early morning rebirth. The road carves through perfectly measured fields, divided by green shallow ditches. I set out from Muiden, an ancient Dutch fishing village, Amsterdam’s medieval armor, peddling away from and into History. The line of cyclists, heaving and sweat glazed, pull the blanket of night behind us, unveiling the day. Routine persists, a calculative existence, how even on the morning they dropped the bombs, or Napoleon’s men fired the canons, there were still the peddlers, farm hands pinching out the rooster’s rhythm and a steady hand that built the fire causing the loaf to rise.”