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| The part of Rotterdam I can see from my window. |
This is a guest post by Barbara Haenen. She lives in Rotterdam. I'm very inspired by it but we can discuss that some other time. It's crucial that we take note of how we interact with the city in these extraordinary weeks. - Henry
In the opening of my first Getting Into Rotterdam article, Pigeon Tour, I wrote that I had known for months I wanted to write it, and that I always knew it had to be about Blijdorp, the zoo. Ever since writing that article- in April 2017- I have known I wanted to write a second one. I didn’t come up with an idea for the second article until a few days ago, while in social co-isolation due to the national measures imposed to prevent the spreading of the novel corona virus.
On the 14th of March Blijdorp announced that they would only remain open to people with membership cards- of which, as I have mentioned previously, I am one- and for one beautiful moment I believed I would soon have the zoo basically to myself. The day after, a Sunday, the zoo closed completely. Now I can’t go to the zoo which, fortunately for me, is the worst thing the virus has done to my life so far. I’m very grateful.
Soon after I decided to find a pen and write my second GIR article. The fact that it took until now for me to make that decision is either a really weird coincidence, or not a coincidence at all. The pigeons may have been trying to tell me something after all.
The day I started writing I was sitting behind my desk, in the spot where I live my whole life these days. I read a few of the articles which alleged that in the absence of humans, dolphins had appeared in the canals of Venice. They said that because there were no boats or people on the canals anymore, the water was clear and lively now. As soon as I finished the article my music was interrupted by a commercial for dairy. It said that dairy (zuivel) is what we eat and drink here, in this country. If we had never had dairy we might also have never had the energy to build our dams (onze dijken). So without dairy, Nederland would have looked different, the commercial explained. Without dairy, we wouldn’t have ‘field cows’, but ‘sea cows’. The implication being, I assume, that sea cows are inferior to field cows. It was fantasy. The dolphin story has since been disproven- there are no dolphins in Venice, but there are lots of fish and swans.
‘Nederland draait op zuivel’ the commercial concluded, and then my music continued.
I think the stories about Venicedolphins were probably an attempt at believing in the beautiful idea that if we made more space, nature would come back, claim it, and forgive us. The dairy commercial was, I presume, an attempt to convince us all that switching to dairy alternatives would compromise our inherent national identities and cause floods. I don’t think the commercial appearing right after I finished reading the articles about dolphins is a coincidence; I think the dolphin story and the dairy commercial are counterparts. The contrast between them also stood out.
In this GIR article we will not be exploring Rotterdam, because we cannot. It would be irresponsible of me to take you on an outside Rotterdam tour now. In these current circumstances, Rotterdam exists only in the form of the street between my apartment and my supermarket, and the view from my windows. This article is about exploring Rotterdam from inside. I am left to fantasize about what the rest of the city might look like now, or what might be happening in it. Maybe we believed (sorry to group you in if you didn’t believe) that dolphins might actually be swimming around in Venice because the fantasy of the outside world is all we have, and it is getting to us.
I forgot, when I started writing this article, that when I was in the zoo in April 2017 to follow a pigeon around, that at the time all the birds had been in social co-isolation. I remembered once I re-read it. To quote myself exactly, back then I wrote: “Then I found out I couldn’t enter any bird enclosure because they were all closed off as a result of national preventative measures against bird flu”. This sentence stood out.
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| The view of Rotterdam from my desk. |
This article is, in many ways, the sequel to Pigeon Tour. Exploring Rotterdam from within an apartment is surprisingly similar to pigeon touring. I didn’t know it yet at the time, but when I wrote Pigeon Tour 1 I was describing these current circumstances. I’m going to quote myself again- I wrote: “in order to carry out a Pigeon Tour effectively, you also need to learn to act like a pigeon, and distance yourself from the people around you. That might be the most challenging part; that pigeon touring is very isolating”, and “In the end I think you can learn the same lesson from both trying to behave more like a pigeon, and from attempting a Pigeon Tour. Which is, that things do not always go as planned”. I think I might finally understand what the pigeons were trying to tell me. This last Friday I was supposed to be at a conference, presenting. No one made it to the conference. During Pigeon Tour 1 I remarked a few times that the birds were in isolation, but I never provided any thoughts on that. I can speculate now that maybe, on some level, I knew then that it would become relevant three years later.
Of course it goes without saying that there are differences between exploring Rotterdam indoors and pigeon touring. Many things have flipped:
In 2017 I wrote that while pigeon touring, and searching for pigeons, I paid most attention to the floor and sky; that everything between the ground and sky became less interesting. The opposite is true now that I’m doing this kind of exploring. The most important parts of Rotterdam are now what is right in front of me (my window). The things I never paid as close attention to before now have to be re-evaluated. The pigeons are exploring Rotterdam still, while I can’t. There may have been a bird flu, but there is no bird virus. The pigeons are freer now, because I can’t fly out my window. But most importantly, the free wild pigeons of Rotterdam now have more room to roam, while we live in isolation. We are the zoo birds now.
Since this article is a sequel, I should pick up where the previous one left off. In the end of the last article, a blackblue bird led me to a closed door. When I looked through a crack in the door, I saw another closed door. Did it foreshadow the pigeons would change places with us this year? That we would become less like the pigeon, which-unlike all other birds in the zoo- does not have to be relegated to a specific place? Is the closed door behind the closed door the door of my apartment?
As much as that commercial may try to convince us that the Netherlands couldn’t exist without dairy, it could. The sea cow may be extinct, but the fish can still live in Venice, and I can live in co-isolation while the birds have the zoo to themselves. I hope to go outside into Rotterdam again soon, but I also hope that some things stay flipped.
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| A humming bird keychain dangling in front of the door of my apartment, |
