Long Time Coming

I haven’t written on this thing in a while so it’s due time I write something new. The other day I’m walking down the street and I see Rembrandt asking for spare change. No shit, I thought, Rembrandt in Utrecht.

I’m living in the Netherlands with Kathryn. We’ve been here for almost four months and in less than two weeks we’ll be flying back home to Chicago and then to L.A. I really miss America, especially the California sunshine and unnecessarily large coffees. Yesterday we spent the day at Keukenhof Gardens with a friend of ours. The tulips were lovely and really worth the trip. Whenever we return to Europe it’s hard to imagine it once under Nazi control, that WWII was raging and shelling the hell out of half the world, planes falling from the sky by German artillery, men picked-off from treetops and telephone wire they’d mistakenly parachuted into…You travel by train and enjoy the countryside and windmills and long stretching canals flanked by grazing cattle and rows of flowers betwixt pasture and geese and farmers…and you wonder who these tracks transported more than half a century ago, what villages burned quickly or slowly to the ground, and how similarly quiet things must have felt with the war moving in full gear.

Everyone in the Netherlands speaks English very well, but beginning a conversation in English isn’t generally liked. Just try and say something in Dutch. Daag, hoi, hello…They do sell weed legally in coffeshops, offering pre-rolled joints half-mixed with tobacco and cheaply priced grinders with free papers. In the small town we live in, Utrecht, we have our own Redlight District, which is right next door to the neighborhood grocer. Also, mustard comes in tubes and the Dutch douse their French fries in mayo. I’ve grown to like mayo gooped all over my fries. It’s pretty good.

For the first time in my life I’ve been living life without having to go to work or school. While it’s sort of fun and a complete waste of time, I don’t think it’s worth it. I need something to do and am a happier person being productive. Maybe it’s a permanent sense of responsibility and duty the Marines Corps has drilled into my brain housing group that’s enabled me to not want to sit idling, or maybe it comes from growing up in the desert with parents who constantly kept you busy through childhood, like accompanying them to HUD home projects and weekends working for Habitat for Humanity.

Anyway, last month I found out I was accepted to grad school in Iowa. I nearly shit my pants hearing the news and had to confirm it by calling the main office that Monday morning. It was no mistake. I’m in. Since then we’ve watched Field of Dreams with an Australian friend of ours. She didn’t get it, especially the part where he asks,

“Is this Heaven?”
“No, it’s Iowa.”

Up until then I’d given up on the whole writing thing. I tried reenlisting, first as an officer and then as enlisted scum. But I was shot down, kindly though, by a nice female Marine recruiter who told me to enjoy my stay in Holland. I must remind myself that I am a broke-dick. A month later I was bent on going back to UCLA for a geology degree, which would take about five more years plus some change. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but when you come to the end of a long four-year journey—like with the Marines or graduating from college—you get cold feet and scared with what might happen next. I was also looking at the US Forest Service and the California State Parks, and actually received a nice reply from one of them. In the not too distance future I can see myself doing something like that, protecting the parks…

But now I’m going to writing school, and I’m writing and reading more than before, realizing that it’s not all that terrifying of a thing to do. I hung onto my short fiction books, even bought a few old novels I’d read In Iraq. It’s all been very helpful and Kathryn has been more than supportive with my move to Iowa; she’s actually considering coming herself. Who thought, L.A. woman in the Midwest, and for the second time!

I’ve been working on some new stories, some not even military related—I know, who would’ve thought? But it’s been nice to separate myself from that long ago life that’s always too eerily close to want to remember for the better of everything.

During the last two weeks I have in the Netherlands I’d like to explain this country a little more clearly throughout this blog. Today is the first day of Queen’s Day. It’s a giant nationwide weekend party that starts on Thursday and ends whenever. I’ll be taking pictures and making mental notes. Keep posted for the after-action report.

Well, thanks for reading whoever’s out there. I promise I’ll keep you posted on the new and the fun.
Daag