M Train - Patti Smith

I arrived early to Schiphol Airport so after going through passport control I sat on a cafe, had coffee, ate a sandwich and texted my boyfriend I love him a thousand times.

I miss Tesco's sandwiches. Cheap and good. This one was a "Dutch Special" with hard bacon and dry "artisan bread". It did the job anyway... I was starving and anxious.

I made a quick stop at the ladies toilet to freshen up and I walked to the gate while taking snaps of the airport with my phone. God I love airports. The landscapes I love the most from the modern world are festival crowd views and airports.

I was randomly assigned a window seat on the plane. I felt lucky.

After leaving my bag I opened "M Train". Patti was taking a plane to Mexico. She described a stressful situation during check-in when a member of staff insisted in her using the kiosk to get her boarding pass. Patti was growling about the 21st Century while searching for her reading glasses and hoping the machine would be more reliable than what she assumed. It wasn't.


I felt it is right to read M Train at the speed I am reading it. Here seating on a plane, I accompany Patti on her first visit to Casa Azul, former home and resting place of Frida Kahlo. I thought it was a sign. My Mom always tells me that I see signs everywhere and I interpret them as I wish. But aren't signs exactly that, and Life nothing more than what we make of it?

So I read and looked out the window and I cried a little:

"I sat before nearly two hundred guests in the garden. I scarcely could say what I talked about, but in the end I sang to them, as I had sung to the birds on my windowsill. It was a song that came to me while I lay in Diego's bed. It was about the butterflies that Noguchi had given to Frida. I saw tears streaming down the faces of the director and the women who had administered to me with such tender care. Faces I no longer remember.

Late that night there was a party in the park across from my hotel. My headache was completely gone. I packed, then looked out the window. The trees were strung with tiny Christmas lights though it was only the seventh of May. I went down to the bar and had a shot of a very young tequila. The bar was empty, as nearly everyone was in the park. I sat for a long time. The bartender refilled my glass. The tequila was light, like flower jouice. I closed my eyes and saw a green train with an M in a circle; a faded green like the back of a praying mantis." 

M Train - Patti Smith

This cafe reminds me of mornings in Paris. I can't believe that's a thing in my life already. I do remember the smell of the sunrise and the traffic mixed together in the air while I drank coffee on a table on the side walk facing the street.
There are many cafes that look like the Parisian ones but very few feel indeed like them. This one does. The truth is I rather be almost anywhere than here in Amsterdam, a city that just doesn't talk to me, but instead, provides the perfect silence in which deep thoughts are born. So I observe myself better than anywhere else I have ever been. I see your changes as well as a window that opens itself roughly and undeniably, killing you softly with the view it reveals. The heavy thoughts of pointless efforts through the years. This is the future you foresaw, but did you want to be here?
I hope you write again. At least about those sad evenings when you discovered that you lost yourself.
I hope you write again. Because as many things as you may lose, you could never lose me.

This is my favorite bar in Amsterdam. The only favorite spot I learned to love during this 3 months of living here. The only place I covered in scribbles and hours of reading M Trains, and lingering observations of pedestrians and bold cyclists. The trees are finally turning greener and in the mornings we hear nothings but birds and screaming cats.

So the bar... I think the candle holders are as old as the building. And the heating is so strong sometimes I can't stand seating inside. The curtains are made of red velvet and burned by cigarettes. It's dark and it smells of old wood and unnecessary heat. God I need the dive feeling... A place with a hidden soul. Small windows that release the darkness and balance the spirit of the rusty and worn dining room.
The ornaments on the wooden chairs seem worthy of a Patti Smith polaroid. The Beatles come out the speakers while the regular customers talk lively with the always-white-shirt owner in Dutch.
"Falling, yes I am falling. And she keeps calling. Me back again"
The once black and white pictures on the walls are now light brown with black stains from the candle flames.
This place has life, it has past, and it's the best runaway spot from the always impecable city of Amsterdam. I wish they never change this torn velvet curtains. 

And just like that I'm back to Blue. The spring is blooming and I don't need to rush anymore, or ask myself questions like why am I here, what have I done?

The perfection of the Universe is again evident and nourishing. 

Our love was not dragged by crisis and now we know it never will.

So wait, and learn, and move on. Life unfolds and we are here and it's alright.