Derive

This entire past weekend was one giant derive. We went to Amsterdam, with no map and not much money which doesn’t get you terribly far in this age. We stayed outside Amsterdam in a tiny town in the middle of the woods which funnily enough was more comforting than the city, though it was bright and colorful and full of people all the time.

There is something nicely familiar about nature. Even when you’re lost, the birds sound the same and the trees are still trees but in Amsterdam the signs are in Dutch and streets aren’t where they were two hours ago and it’s all very complicated. Nature is much simpler, easier to deal with.

In cities, you definitely have to pay more attention and be more alert but it only helps so much when you’ve got a foreign lens. By simple virtue of being in an unknown city we had stepped out of our comfort zones and I suppose began deriving right then. It wasn’t so hard to get lost.

I suppose the hard part comes in keeping your eyes open and actually absorbing and engaging yourself in everything you’re seeing and are uncomfortable with. It’s easy to walk through the red-light district and say Well, that’s something now isn’t it. But to actually walk through those alleys (lit by red lights even) and to see the nearly naked women standing in the windows winking and waving, seducing as a business, that’s an entirely different matter. This is how they live. It’s not just a show for tourists, not a cinematic exaggeration. I think that’s the part that shocked me most about Amsterdam — how similar to stereotypes it actually is.

I remember debating about legalization of prostitution and marijuana in government classes in high school and I honestly could not understand what the problem was, free choice and all that. But actually going to Amsterdam puts things in an entirely different light. Not that my opinions have changed but maybe have just gotten a bit more comprehensive. Amsterdam is a well-run society, it’s not some sort of amoral hell hole. It’s really very lovely. But you can’t understand prostitution from a text book or statistics. This extended derive I think made me more able to look at issues of contention, prostitution just being one, with a curious, more human perspective, rather than a textbook Free Choice Because Duh perspective. Being lost and new to a place brings back that childlike simplicity of looking at things to understand them, without preconceptions of any kind. To observe and interpret what’s actually there, not what you want to see or think you ought to see; to have that blank newness and openmindedness I think allows you to understand more than going thinking you're all sorts of knowledgable, because you probably aren't anyway.