Land of the Daisy

Amsterdam's first move was to reveal that I somehow knew my way around.

Out of Centraal Station, I didn't open the map. I towed my suitcase toward the canal ring, turned left at the third corner, crossed a bridge, and stopped in front of a cheese shop with a blue storefront — my guesthouse was directly upstairs. The host later told me I was the first Asian guest who never once asked him to drop a pin.

I said I'd done my research. That was thirty percent true. The other seventy percent: these bridges, these crooked narrow houses shouldered together, these unreasonably straight canals — I had seen them all before. Where, I couldn't say. It was like logging into an old game on a new account: the map is fogged, but the muscle memory is lit.

Déjà vu. It's in the literature — a small bug in the hippocampus. I filed a ticket against myself, set the priority to low, and kept playing.

In the daytime I went to the Rijksmuseum. The book I'd pored over in a college library came alive page by page: Vermeer's light, Rembrandt's dark, and all those Dutchmen painting canvases that were half sea, half sky — a people who fought the water for land even inside their paintings. I stood in front of The Milkmaid for twenty minutes, watching the light come through her window until my eyes went sour.

Not crying. I've told you, I don't cry. Just sour.

At dusk I ate frites by a canal and studied the Dutch. Conclusion: this country's average height is a personal insult. Waiting at a crosswalk, I had a two-meter man on my left and a one-ninety-five woman on my right, and I stood between them like a rounding error 🧍‍♀️

Vivi texted: "How is it?? Are the men plentiful?"

I wrote back: "Plentiful. But all above two meters. Signal's weak up there, can't reach."

She sent a string of hahahas, then: "Have fun. DO NOT check email! I'm watching your Slack status. Go online and see what happens."

Back at the guesthouse that night, I pushed the window open. The canal held the far bank's lights stretched into long gold threads; a tour boat slid by, smashed the threads apart, and I watched them slowly heal. Wind came off the water, carrying a slight chill.

That wind is what gave me away.

It was the same wind as the dream. Same direction, same weight, same taste of salt. I stood at the window and the fine hairs on the back of my neck rose one by one — not fear. That jolt you get when an old friend claps your shoulder from behind.

My rational mind rushed in to smooth things over: it's the North Sea coast, the wind's like this everywhere. Normal. Totally normal.

But that night I slept impossibly deep — deep like finally sleeping in my own bed. The dream came, the grey sea again, and this time it had a compass in it, a direction as clear as a road sign:

North. Farther north.

I flew nine hours to a country I'd never been.

And found that the real destination had been waiting in my dreams — getting impatient.