Amsterdam Picture Quotes

During a recent trip to Amsterdam, she sent me a picture of her smoking marijuana for the first time just because I asked her to.

Barry Schwartz points out in his book, The Paradox of Choice, that this kind of sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing decision is more likely to come up the more options you have to choose from. The greater the number of available options, the greater the likelihood that more than one of those options will look pretty good to you. The more options that look pretty good to you, the more time you spend in analysis paralysis. That’s the paradox: more choice, more anxiety. Remember, if the only choices are between Paris and a trout cannery, no one has a problem. But what if the choices are Paris or Rome or Amsterdam or Santorini or Machu Picchu? You get the picture. THE ONLY-OPTION TEST For any options you’re considering, ask yourself, “If this were the only option I had, would I be happy with it?” A useful tool you can use to break the gridlock is the Only-Option Test. If this were the only thing I could order on the menu . . . If this were the only show I could watch on Netflix tonight . . . If this were the only place I could go for vacation . . . If this were the only college I got accepted to . . . If this were the only house I could buy . . . If this were the only job I got offered . . . The Only-Option Test clears away the debris cluttering your decision. If you’d be happy if Paris were your only option, and you’d be happy if Rome were your only option, that reveals that if you just flip a coin, you’ll be happy whichever way the coin lands.

Later, this desire will invade and overwhelm me. It will begin, in the classic way, with an urge to travel to new places, destinations selected from maps and picture postcards. I will take trains, boats, planes, I will embrace Europe, discover London, a youth hostel next to Paddington Station, a Bronski Beat concert, thrift stores, the speakers of Hyde Park, beer gardens, darts, tawdry nights, Rome, walks among the ruins, finding shelter under the umbrella pines, tossing coins into fountains, watching boys with slicked-back hair whistle at passing girls. Barcelona, drunken wanderings along La Rambla and accidental meetings late on the waterfront. Lisbon and the sadness that’s inevitable before such faded splendor. Amsterdam with her mesmerizing volutes and red neon. All the things you do when you’re twenty years old. The desire for constant movement will come after, the impossibility of staying in one place, the hatred of the roots that hold you there, Doesn’t matter where you go, just change the scenery,

I turn another corner. There thay are. In a heavy gilt frame too big for them, another pair of eyes. I'm aware of my own stare, embarrassed at standing so close. I step back and fix on the black pearl dangling from the red beret. Things could go either way. It's been a harsh career for a fragile spirit: conceived in Venice, born in Nuremberg, sold in Amsterdam; trafficked in London, given refuge in Berlin, forced to flaunt their wares for a few marks per head, and now trolled out in Milan. This picture changed sex, I tell a pair of passers-by, a shaven-headed couple. They move on

Amir Or The Orpheus Prayer Death and yet more death, sand and more sand We have stood in the square hungry to be and, like mountain shadows, covered the city with pictures of a waking sleep. Was she there or wasn’t she? A stranger in my body, able and yet unable, I tried the air: “How many more years will we walk these dead sands?” The mountain is glimpsed like a vision or a mirage. Sands move on underfoot like a memory with no beginning, and each place is every place. Does the way go up or down? Are you here, behind my gaze? Is my gaze there, ahead of me? Where have we come from? Alone, the two of us have crossed vast marshes on the slowly melting faces of the drowned. For years we’ve been immortal. In the attic, in Amsterdam, we saw terrible sorrow in the window. How much longer shall we walk between death and death, sand and sand? A new past give us, a new death give us. Give us this day the life of the day. #AmirOr

I ain't inspired any more, Sherm; there was this painting I saw in the museum in Amsterdam. It was called 'Christ Preaching in the House of Mary and Martha.' And the whole foreground of the picture, maybe three-fourths of the canvas, is a kitchen in one of them Dutch houses, and there's a cook plucking chickens. All around her there's dead rabbits, pheasants, turkeys, ducks, sides of beef, six kinds of fish, clams, oysters, potatoes, apples, eggplant, kohlrabi, rutabaga, carrots, Swiss chard, and God knows what else. Food, food, food. And where's Christ? Well, way back in a little alcove off the kitchen, there He is, with the women, preaching. Who cares about Him, when everyone wants to stuff their gut with rabbit and turkey? Who hears His sermon, when there's lots of roast duck and fried oysters?" "What in the world has that to do with our survey?" asked Wettlaufer. "Sherman, you and me and this survey and these people like Huguettte Roux and Willem Kruis--we're preaching way back in the corner to two people. But most of the world is in that kitchen drooling over those rabbits and geese!