Superhero Bureaucracy

[DAY 15 IN AMSTERDAM] 

In an attempt to save the world, our common superhero usually catches a few scratches. I slipped off my bike pedal today, but no one saw it when I rolled off the bike path into a creek of duckweed. The ducks were too terrified of my human size to start nibbling at me, so they quacked for a bit and drifted into other directions. I was slightly wet. But to get registered in a new country you need to overcome these kind of obstacles. Nothing is easy and you do need to eat shit sometimes, because it is all that they give you, otherwise you would starve. But enough with the metaphors, the truth is that I am a stranger in a strange new land. What are my options?
I am a European citizen, that is something you know about me now. I enjoy the advantages my Europeanity Europeness Europeism Europpp  EU citizenship entails. I was an enemy of the state when I went to the United States a few years back. Not in a dangerous criminal kind of way, no, I certainly am a politically correct person, at least I think I am. But if you go to the US as anything other than a tourist, you become THE ENEMY.

Compared to the duckweed incident earlier today, my first few weeks in New York City were an utter solitary nightmare. You are dependent on the system, yet the system is not dependent on you. It worked fine before you got there, and then when you leave it moves on as well. Your existence is a web of counterrevolutionary nonentities. You have no power. It's not the fact that I got mugged by a gang of underage crack addicts right in front of my house (where on other occasions I witnessed gang violence as its finest when somebody threw a bicycle at another person). It's also not the fact that I once got blackmailed by an unsuccessful gay actor with a bartending job who stole my identity. The citizens I encountered on my journey through New York are a different story. What kept me from becoming an accepted human being in the USA is the endless inane paperwork one needs to fill out and provide just to even walk one step on US soil. And I think that customer service employees yelling at me and connecting me to infinite loops of Old McDonald Had a Farm played their parts... There is a presumptuous emptiness to the bureaucratic hubris that this pseudo-democratic country exhibits to foreigners. I don't understand how I managed to survive those three years without ever biting the grass.

I walked into the tax office in Amsterdam today. I waited for about four minutes until I was called to the counter window, where I had to show my passport and fill out one (!) simple form. I had to wait three more minutes until my name was called to pick up my tax number. It took me 8 minutes total of being physically present in the building and it didn't cost me a penny. Now I can get a bank account, a gym membership, a phone contract, everything I need to start my life in the Netherlands. I never had any of those things in New York. I surely could have had those things, but to get there I would have had to jump through a bunch of burning hoops, and I am not that athletic. To have all these things, you must be rich, and a risk taker, and you must not care about being screwed over by government employees who speak worse English than you. One must think they do this for their own personal pleasure. There is no sense in it. US bureaucracy is the true enemy. Foolish games.

I fell of my bike today,because it is wet in Amsterdam, especially in September. My ass got some duckweed stains, that's fine. I managed to take my first successful steps into becoming an accepted person in this country, as somebody who can't be fooled, somebody who takes bureaucracy for what it is... assumed the bureaucracy I am fighting does have its intended purpose...

Die Hard (To Improve Procrastination)

This is my first essay. I will write more as soon as something bothers me. Today I am writing about books. 

When I was old enough to read, I immediately started to read books. I learned that reading a book could help you with adding information to your brain, which you later are able to use or not use, just as you please. I  also learned, that reading a book could simply be a form of full enjoyment. In the end it doesn't really matter if you read a book, because you will always forget what it said in a book unless you are truly interested in the matter of the book. That was the turning point for me, because personally, I am not interested in matters of books. Maybe I am rather interested in the sound that the dominoes make, that the old men play with in front of my house. I remember playing dominoes as a child but I rather was interested in the domino effect than the actual game (creating a domino effect with books turned out be a fun activity to me unawares).

In my free time I never read books, on occasions* I do, but most likely I wont read a book in my free time. But, as told above, I started to read books at an early age. Then, when I turned fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, I read most of the books. I read them all, you know, those novels they make you read, the ones you're supposed to read and the ones you desire to read at that age. But then I got tired of the stories and I didn't want to hear anyone's stories anymore. I thought they were lies, someone else's fabrications. I believed that I would like them much better if they were true, but what other does fiction have to offer, than just a collection of factoids and wishful thinking.

I started reading biographies instead, and although they offered me a good amount of real information, I realized very quickly that they have been written about people and events by other people, in most cases the authors were total strangers to the person they had been writing about. It was clear to me that I had to diversify my interests and I started reading autobiographies, because it crossed my mind, that only autobiographies could tell the ultimate truth. It didn't take much time for me to find out for myself, that autobiographies over all must be the biggest collections of factoids of all, because they are written by characters of the worst kind, the ones that create their own worlds within their lives, the ones that fabricate stories and fable like no other, just to remain in the world and to stay on top of it.

If I look at a book now, it has mostly only pictures in it and is some kind of work that is justified as a kind of art, that has been dealt with ad nauseam. Who cares? People will always like it. You know, I want Sylvia Plath's ghost to write an autobiography. There is a saying, that only children and fools speak the truth. It is too bad that the majority of children and fools don't write books. However after I came to that conclusion, I stopped reading books.

*M eaning that, if a book of extraordinary historical or literary importance that I haven't read yet catches my eye and/or innermost interest, I will probably read it, which CAN happen but most likely will result in disappointment. My favorite novels are "Franny & Zooey", "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and of newer work "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" and "The Hottest State". I am a fan of William Blake's prose and Noel Coward's plays. My favorite play of all time though is "Spring Awakening" by Frank Wedekind. I always have been a fan of British writers, but I love myself some Walt Whitman on a rainy day.