1. Lay the casualty face downwards with head turned to one side and arms stretched up beyond the head.
2. Make sure that the mouth and nose are not obstructed.
Haul out the analogies between the body and the landscape, the female earth. You down there, trying to get in, hey you. Help, help, knocking. Shifted to an exercise in communications. Pilot to tower, repeat, pilote to tower, request landing instructions. Instruments, radar. Nerves and switchboards. Shift to an art history lecture, images move through her head like slides projected on a screen, illuminated from behind. Click. An old Egyptian drawing, the sky as man, stars on his chest, legs and thighs, arching over the female earth. Click. Art Nouveau, the excited line which is its own purpose, vegetable energy and proliferation. Click. Persian miniatures, warped space, and pattern warring with form for ascendancy. Click. Bosch. Click, click. Rothko, Stella, the modern colorists. Colors. Oh. Colors.
3. Kneel to one side of the casualty’s hips, facing hi& head.
4. Place your hands flat in the small of the back, over the lower ribs and just above top of the pelvic bone. Your thumbs should almost touch each other in the middle line, the fingers being over the loins.
Monumental sculpture. Two great pelvis pans pressed against each other. Picasso on the beach; a single eye in the center of the face, the warping of vision at close focus. Click. The body as earth, Henry Moore was right.
5. Sit on your heels, no weight being transmitted to the casualty, though your hands are maintained on his back.
6. Swing your body slowly forward from the knees your arms straight and hands in place all the time, so that a steady pressure is transmitted by the weight of your body. Maintain this position for two seconds. This action presses the casualty’s abdomen against the ground, forcing his abdominal contents up against the diaphragm, which is raised and expels some air out of the lungs—expiration.
7. Keeping your hands in position and arms straight, relax the pressure by swinging gently and steadily back on to your heels, counting three seconds before swinging forwards again. This allows air to enter the lungs—inspiration.
He looms over the horizon of her chest, drinking, great hills of breast. Lips, wet interior caves toothed and toothless, then the careful game with pace, form and time, equations of falling and acceleration, free fall, float, float, surface down from the air, up from the roiled water depths to the clear bubble of the middle space.
8. These swaying to-and-fro movements must be repeated regularly at a rate of twelve to fifteen a minute, and continue this, if necessary, by relays of helpers, until natural breathing begins. Even then, artificial respiration should be continued for another quarter of an hour. When apparent recovery has taken place, the casualty should be placed on his side in a warm bed, given a hot drink, and encouraged to sleep.
Now, the current off, the touches are neutral again. Peripheral parts, hair, the rim of an ear. Both have survived.
Jan van Eyck
Hieronymus Bosch
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Frans Hals Rembrandt van Rijn
Jan Vermeer
Vincent Van Gogh
Piet Mondrian
Wat is de Betekenis van het zien?
Leave me alone, shut up, just leave me alone.
She filled their hotel room with flowers. Finding the ageing flowers as beautiful as the fresh, she kept them for weeks, and the air smelled of the animal stink of the decaying blooms as well as the lighter odors of the new bouquets. He recognised some of the smells as cousin to those of their own flesh.
The colors of flowers as they decay grow hotter, pale yellows turn to bright yellow and golds, bright clear blues to redder blues and violets. (The hues in Cezanne’s paintings undergo this same transformation, early to late.)
In the Netherlands in 1963 there were 44,597.000 chickens, 3,645,000 cattle, 2,423,000 pigs, 468,000 sheep and 149,000 horses.
Bad news from America. Divorce, separation of friends. Death by drugs. Mistakes, wrong decisions, futile journeys, flawed plans.
FLOWER VIEWING
For flower-growing enthusiasts, or for tourists who simply appreciate the beauty of miles and miles of flowers, a visit to the flower-growing areas of the Netherlands is a must. At “tulip time,” particularly April through mid-May, a thirty-mile strip of land between Haarlem and The Hague is covered by a dazzling blanket of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths.
The most massive display of these floral wonders is found in a sixty-acre flower garden located near the town of Lisse, called Keukenhof, where there are greenhouses containing tens of thousands of tulips, vast areas of open-air gardens, a pavilion with photographic exhibitions of flowers, flower arrangement demonstrations, an information office, and all else a flower enthusiast could possibly desire.
Mirrors are water made abstract. They do not quench, nourish, flow. They simply reflect, reverse, reflect.
You’re welcome, (nothing to thank) Neits te danken.
Excuse me. (take me not badly) Neem me niet kwalijk.
So long, (“until see”) Tot ziens.
Do you understand what I say?
Verstaat u wat ik zeg?
What are the sounds a drowning man makes?
Things were falling apart. One day, coming back to the hotel, he found Jess sitting in front of the mirror cutting at her hair with the sewing scissors. The dark pieces lay all around on the floor, and she had left only a short, curling cap, which made her head look suddenly very small, her neck very long.
Why do you do it? His face hung white and quivering in the mirror above her.
She was sweeping the clumps of hair into the waste-paper basket. It was too much trouble, I was tired of it.
But I loved your hair. He was shaking.
Graham, it’s not important. It’s my hair. Don’t nag at me.
His bowels churned. It was such lovely hair.
Or for God’s sake can’t you leave me alone? Her voice went shrill.
He saw it as the severing of another of their connections.
When she went out of the room he bent, shaking, sick, he picked up one of the dark, separate pieces and stuffed it in his pocket to keep.
He was drowning in the multiplicity and lack of order in the world. Order is a lucky, rich, sexy, privileged, sought-after bird. She does not answer invitations to dinner.
Going to see the flowers in Holland had at first been rather a joke, like going to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the Statue of Liberty in New York. But having reached the gardens and finding themselves surrounded by the banks of glowing blossoms, the scent thick in the air, they became high with it, drunk, carried away.
What is it about flowers, he asked her, in bed, they had been fighting again, what is it about flowers which stuns and fascinates? Scent on a stalk, form on a stalk, color on a stalk. She lay propped up on pillows, her eyes still red and puffed with crying, the street light falling upon her face in spots, like the skin of a fawn. What makes a flower supremely beautiful, he continued, his voice taking on the juicy orotundity of his college debating team, is the fact that they are a paradigm of our own mortality. Their brief perfect lives are an example to us, a preparation for our own deaths. Bud, bloom, decay. These sights became for Graham so full of message, so supremely the case of the sensual wedded to the didactic, that he wondered why the other visitors to the gardens were not caught up in the grip of it along with him. They wandered casually through the massed fields of scent and color, seemingly indifferent to the enormity of the drama being played out there. Whenever he saw flowers now his eyes would sting, he was afraid he might break down and start weeping in the gardens or the parks some day, in front of Jess. Fug, fump, fook, fack, fub, fuck, feek.
Lovemaking in that sweet, stinking room. Things are falling apart. Alternations of light and dark, flashes of pattern, street light on the ceiling as they turn and swim through each other. Comes, and she, released, moves upwards to her goal, the progress is made in distinct steps, clear quantum
jumps of sensation until the strings are finally tightened to their limit, vibration, spilling, breaking, overflowing. Limp, companionable grunts, thank you, ok, yes, I’m ok, great, wow. Off, on. Sense again of body as landscape, connections, movements those of the natural world, ebb and flow. Marks us with the sense of movement towards a goal, life as a journey, life as a cycle, goop, oof, great hard rod, lovely loose balls; playing with the doorway, finger in, out, in, the tremoring of a pianist’s trill inside,, jokes in the ears suspended miles away, finger in the dyke, good Dutch boy.
Oh that involved, bed, the salty sheets and confusion of limbs in the stippled urban dark. In Ann Arbor the summers got so hot I wanted to strip off my skin and join the inanimate world, Jess, lying on her back, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling as she talks. In the partial, sporadic light her movements fall a bit behind her words like a movie out of synch. Showers four times a day, she chants, gallons of ice cream. Completely unbidden, some childhood trigger not yet dismantled, juices squirt, Graham’s mouth fills with spit. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, peach, butter pecan. Turning over on her stomach. There was a huge sign on the front of a bank, the time on one side and the temperature on the other. The sign would swivel slowly, all through the damned hot day; my mind too pulped with heat to think about anything else I used to fix on that sign. I used to wonder just how many calories the damned thing was adding to the atmosphere. Sweet entropy.
Good day! ghoeden-dach Goeden dagt
Good morning! ghoeden-MORghen Goeden morgen!
Good evening! ghoeden-AAvent Goeden avond!
How hoe hoe
goes ghann gaan
it Ghaa-et gaat het
with you met-uu met u
How are you? hoe-GHAAT-et-met-uu? Hoe gaat het met u?
Well, thank you ghoet dank-uu Goed, dank u
And (with) you? en-met-uu? En met u?
Quite well heel ghoet heel goed.
Graham grew fatter, little pouches of flesh hung in his cheeks and there were rolls of soft, white meat around his waist. He bought food for the hotel room now, on top of the meals; jars of pickles, sausages, chocolate, loaves of bread, just in case we get hungry in the night, he said.
One morning at American Express, the place was always filled with caricatures of their countrymen, a letter arrived from Graham’s sister. He put it in his shirt pocket first, then read it as they sat in the cafe. A thick envelope, there were snapshots, and the letter covered several pieces of that very thin airmail sationery. Jess could see through to the other side while he was reading, could see, backwards through the skin of the paper, the loopy ballpoint script, exclamation points, underlinings. His face flickered as he read the letter, shuffled the photographs. Blond newphews and nieces arranged on the front steps of a large house, freckles, missing teeth, and another of the family group spread out on a beach by a very blue sea, the tanned forms dark against the brilliant sand. Dear Linda he wrote to his sister that evening. It was very good hearing from you. The kids look great. I envy, in a way, the solid life you and John seem to have made for yourselves. Amsterdam is very fine, very polished by history, but things are somewhat askew. Jess and I haven’t been getting along too well, same old thing. I simply don’t seem to be able to hold things together. There are too many things to balance, too keep in repair. (Don’t tell Mother any of this, of course, it would just worry her.)
This is probably just the autumn getting to me, please don’t you worry either. By the way, do you remember whether there was a secret passage in the big closet in Grandma’s upstairs bedroom? I asked Mother, but she keeps forgetting to reply. Rachel is growing big and beautiful. Do you remember the autumn at home when we were kids, the giant molding heap of leaves in the back yard that we used to jump on? I find, curiously enough, that I am homesick, but for nothing that I can return to. It’s like being homesick for the past.
DENISTY OF HOLLAND
Holland is the most densely populated country of Europe. With its 11,938,000 inhabitants living in an area of only 13,514 square miles, it has an average density of 884 people per square mile, compared with 783 per square mile in Belgium and 794 per square mile in England and Wales.
Since the population of Holland has more than doubled in the last fifty years it is not surprising that the Dutch authorities are much concerned with the problem of overpopulation. Though fresh areas are constantly being dyked in to provide new land for farms and villages, there is a steady stream of emigrants especially to Canada and Australia.
TRANSLATE
What are you doing? How many fish are there? The blue house is next to the red house. Please speak louder, I cannot hear you. Why are you crying? Can you speak Dutch? New York was once called New Amsterdam. What is the divorce rate in Holland? About three-quarters of the surface of the earth is covered with water. I cannot hear you. Please speak louder. What is wrong? Why are you crying? Why are you crying?
They were fighting again, sitting in a restaurant, almost yelling in that public place, although he hated such scenes and she was weary of them. Accusations, disappointments. She was angry, she was shaking, and she didn’t want to hear the replies he gave because she knew it all, hadn’t they been through all this a hundred times before, they knew their parts. They could have changed places, changed scripts, and the dialogue would have been the same.
There was nothing to say but they kept on. In the mirror across from them, on the wall of the restaurant, they saw themselves, dark stiffened figures, leaning close together , gesturing, lifting and cutting chunks of air with the edges of their hands. Things were falling apart. Het zonlicht op je haar. Het zonlicht op je haar.
Springtime, especially April and May, is the most beautiful period in which the tourist has the opportunity to admire the Dutch bulb fields in full bloom, By then he large flat polders from Haarlem to Leyden and in the neighborhood of Alkmaar are a unique carpet of color from the roadside to the distant dunes, with mile after mile of waving tulips, hyacinths and daffodils.
At the house of some friends for dinner Rachel, climbing on a chair to reach a large, three-panelled mirror, fell, cut herself, and knocked over a bowl of four goldfish which lay, gasping, on the floor.
They were sitting on the bus which ran from their hotel to the museum, half dizzy from fucking through breakfast, no food, no coffee, too many cigarettes. On to the bus climbed a large, square Dutch mother with the number one pattern Dutch face; small straight nose, large, rounded eyes, round head, half-wide, even mouth. She had with her three children, of size increasing by regular intervals, and with faces exact copies of her own. So precise in fact was the rendering that it was as though no one else could have taken part in their making, no large Dutch husband full of beer braved those great pink thighs, she had seeded herself and given birth to these replicas.
Saskia, inflation, despair. Americans on a moral peninsula.
On January 15th, 1637, a bunch of tulips was worth 120 guilders, only a few weeks later 385 guilders, and on February 1st 400 guilders. For very rare examples as much as 10,000 guilders were offered, which in those days was equal to the value of 12 oxen, 24 pigs, 36 sheep, 6 bottles of wine, 12 barrels of beer, 6 casks of butter, 3,000 pounds of cheese, 3 silver beakers, 3 boats, and 20 tons of wheat.
Suddenly she saw that he had begun to save the bits and pieces they had accumulated on their journeys; pamphlets, guidebooks to places where he had lagged behind because his feet ached, matchbooks. Just to keep tabs, he said, stuffing the ticket stubs and the used Rittenkaart into a large manila envelope he had labelled with date and location. He dropped an ashtray he had been attempting to steal from a restaurant on the canal. Why?
The waiter came with a broom.
Don’t why me.
Why?
The new flesh beneath his chin quivered. Don’t you see it had a little map? It said just where we are. His eyes had moistened. He pointed at the glass, the waiter’s back, the broken glass under the checkered tablecloths. Right here.
MADURODAM
—NOT TO BE MISSED
Not to be missed is the miniature city of Madurodam, between Scheveningen and The Hague (street car 29, bus 22). A visit to Madurodam is both instructive and amusing, for it contains a typical Dutch town in miniature—4% of the normal size—with all the buildings, streets and squares as they are in reality.
Rachel, cranky and out of sorts, tried to kick the sides of one of the buildings of the tiny town, Jess was to tired to care, and Graham disliked it because, he said, it gave him an unwelcome glimpse into eternity.
There was an old friend, Richard, a friend of Jess’s, living in Amsterdam. An academic, he had just got back from some months in Germany. They had been to college together, had known each other, had, at one time, almost been lovers, but the occasion had passed, other things intervened, and a miss was as good as a mile in those things, in these times, with these people. They had, in a casual way, kept track of each other, through some friends in common, through a few long letters full of talk. They had always loved talking to one another, it had been their big connection, endless conversations of an indeterminate architecture.
Come and see us, he wrote Jess, I’m married to a Dutch girl and we’re going to have a baby, she, that is, come to dinner.
They brought flowers with them, red tulips. The apartment was large, greenly lit with the reflected light from a canal. Richard greeted them, effusive, louder and more jocose than she remembered, hawk Jewish profile growing blurred. He was an historian with the university, was going to live here forever, relished the city, loved the people. His wife, Anna? Anneke, very quiet, blonde, small nose, breasts and belly swollen but not yet fully extended, sixth, seventh month. They talked, had cocktails, talked. Civilisation, sweet sauce, a precarious prize. A fragile, delicious, delicate thing, a product of thousands of hands, always ready to tumble, fall, headlong, splashing, finally, without a trace, into the sea.
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