And that means that until I get new images of current cats, I am forced back on old memories for which I have random images lying around.
Like "what do you remember of Amsterdam?"
Sure, most people try to sidestep that question with "it's all a haze, actually" or "I dunno; window shopping mostly, I guess."
But for me it's all about indoors and outdoors, books and birds. The Netherlands, of course, is where we first got annotated editions, and as a result, Pope's Dunciad, which parodied the pedantry of critical annotation and commentary that made the mistake of privileging the commentary outside the margins to the text inside. The figure for such pedantry was, of course, the OWL, and the ASS, laden with books.
Which is why The Dunciad bore, as its frontispiece, an owl on top of pile of books, being carried by an ass:
When I think of Amsterdam, I think of such parody. But I also remember what I saw there: bookstores that were set up outdoors in stalls and outside brick walls.
But that also managed at the same time to be set up under a roof, even while being outside the brick wall.
And, of course, I remember with that special clarity that only accompanies the blurry Sunday morning when no one else is around, and there you are in an empty bookstore outside a brick wall, underneath a roof, looking desperately for coffee, please coffee, when an owl flies overhead and perches on the street light above the books.
I tell you: I NEED coffee.
It remains to this day the only time an owl has flown overhead while I was in a bookstore.
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