I had wanted to check out Ruigoord after having read about the history of radical housing projects in Berlin and having been part of its dying history with B183. I'd also recently been to Christiania in Kopenhagen, one of the most famous free-zones in the world, and I was interested in how radical and alternative living spaces had survived for decades and the process by which squats had resisted eviction and/or gained autonomy. I was also just interested in the lifestyles and cultures that came out of such places and how they changed with their legal situations.
Despite its fair share of shipwrecked hippie flotsam and jetsam, still spewing up superstitious seaweed, there were a few genuine pirates among the villagers. Specifically, cheers to Roland for letting me stay at his place, and his never-ending-supply of free weed. There's not much to do there in the same way there's not much to do if you go to any village and just sit around, but it's pretty good for just chatting to people and getting the history, even though you know they're probably a bit tired of tourists like myself poking their nose around and asking the same predictable questions. They do weekly parties every Sunday in a sort of psy-trance vein and bigger parties more sporadically. This provides a small economy, controlled tourism and a regular focal point for organisation. By the time Sunday came i wasn't even up for partying much and hippy parties weren't my jam anyway. It's also really draining travelling by yourself, which at this point i'd been doing for a while.
After a few hours of feeling pretty out of place at the party (crap music and no drugs: i can do each without the other but both at the same time is a no-go), I slipped back to Roland's place and planted myself on the sofa with a joint just in time to catch the beginning of what would turn out to be an hour-long feud between Roland and his girlfriend, of course, in Dutch, so i have no clue what it was about. However, I have a sneaking suspicion it might have had something to do with letting randomers sleep on the sofa without consultation. yikes. Consequently, I didn't sleep much that night, partly due to the obvious tension that was now thick in the air putting a distinctly paranoid twist on my high, and partly due to a post-argument rebellion of banging gabba that was drowning out anything else with a vibration. the argument had been fucking loud, and im talking angry at the love of your life loud, but this gabba was louder.
In the morning I waited around until some people were going to the next place over that had a train station. Completely fulfilling the stereotype, they all had long hair and/or dreads and took me in a converted van painted every colour imaginable and completely without discrimination or taste. The van was filled with doodads and whatsits; plenty of shit to gawk at. plenty of dreamcatchers and mandalas. It just needed the word groovy written on the side. Further completing the stereotype, they were all bloody lovely.
http://www.ruigoord.nl/
I had started my stint in Am*dam helping barricade a new squat, which within 72hrs had a bar and gig space set up coz they be hot-on-the-squat in holland. they crack places completely differently here than in the UK. Instead of going in the dead of night and as stealthily as possible, they basically go for the complete opposite here. They go in like it's a whole demo and just march down the street with like 50-100 people in broad daylight and just crowd out the route of entry while the crackers work their magic. the cops, if they got on the scene fast enough just watch from afar. It's a pretty cool tactic. with the crackers hidden behind a crowd of people it's a case of no one saw nothing. plus you've got 100 people there to help you set up, even if it's just to pile in, secure the place and carry some furniture. For example the famous "table, chair, bed" as decreed by the Supreme Court decision in 1914 which ruled that in order to show residential use in a property, all that was needed was a chair, a table and a bed. Still, I didn't actually know anyone involved in the squats though. I was just bumming it. Actually, by the end of my stay I'd end up having some really shit nights sleep at a homeless shelter, on a frozen canal and in an igloo. i shit you not.
Moli had hooked me up with this dude Derek, an artist student from America, who had just got back into town in time for me to get back from Ruigoord. he was alright, but i don't like lingering in people's homes, u know? A week is already pushing it if you don't really know them and you're not actively hanging out with them or contributing to their enjoyment in life or whatever. you stop becoming a visitor at some point and begin merging with the bad odours and stains on the carpet. Actually, Derek locked me out of his apartment one night when he was blind drunk and forgot about my existence, which was pretty annoying, especially when i broke back into his apartment and we argued; him angry and confused how i had broken into his flat, me that it had taken me like, 2 fucking hours to concoct a way to break into his apartment without smashing windows, and secretly I was quite pleased with my workmanship. this is part of how i ended up in the homeless shelter, coz i'd rather take my chances on the street than overstay my welcome, even in the middle of winter. the other part was pure happenchance. I wasn't looking for it or anything, it was just there all of a sudden, at exactly the right time. It was kinda weird and institutionalising, but it was ok. They didn't try to give me a bible or shake me up and down to make sure i didn't have secret change in my pockets like i'd read George Orwell talking about in Down and Out in Paris and London.
Before i found the shelter, i had spent a night so drunk that i fell asleep on the frozen canals/grachten and woke up not knowing where i was, completely tripped out, both physically and mentally, by the frozen floor. I squeezed out a shitty poem about it, which you can read below if you want. In such circumstances, the coat i stole from my first full-time job as a baker at Sainsburys came in real handy. It was one of those enormous coats for standing in -20 freezers for hours at a time. it was better than a sleeping bag and would keep me safe on many occasion over the next few years. That same night as the frozen canal bed, i had earlier stumbled across a sort of makeshift igloo that some people had built from the snow in a small park amongst snowmen and snow angels. I had crawled into it and passed out there for a few hours. Honestly, it wasn't really big enough to do anything but sit upright so when i woke i felt like my neck was breaking and there was a distinct claustrophobia. still hotboxed it though and tbf it did keep me warm. i did have photos of all this shit but I would later lose my camera in the first few weeks back in Berlin, which is still one of the more tragic episodes of my life. I can take being homeless, being beaten up, rolling around in my own vomit, whatever, but I've never quite gotten over having lost that camera with 3 months worth of photos during a period of such hilarious gonzo journalism.
I really struggled to dumpster dive in holland - they seem to hide them in their basements (wtf?), however, i did manage to steal some enormous GM carrots down some dodgy back alley, behind a rest-or-rant, providing some vitamins which id been totally deprived of for weeks. I was getting sick of peanut butter sandwiches, which had been 90% of my diet at the time coz bread's all i can afford and honey and peanut butter go a long way so i could keep stealing to a minimum. Every day i pretty much repeated the same pattern of securing a 5-finger discount on a pack of stroopwaffels and a few cans of double strength beers from Albert Heijn and consuming them until i feel sick.
Yeah, actually i had really deteriorated during my month in Amsterdam. I had started with Derek trying all these weird belgian beers at Joe's Garage that get you drunk as a fish after 2 bottles (Joe's is an alternative bar/freeshop. 10 years later it was still there so check it out if you're ever in town. Obviously the Zappa reference immediately endeared me to the place). Those tasty Belgian beers had really kept a smile on my face, especially as the bar-lady seemed to sympathise with my empty wallet and kept sneaking me another glass. Still, the bar was the reason i also had an empty wallet in the first place as living like a real person costs a lot of money. That, and i was in fucking amsterdam so obviously i had bought myself a bag of weed and some quality hash - getting far too stoned in the super cool coffee-shops that are actually not super cool at all, but rather: rude, expensive, and often downright creepy (except for hill street blues - that place is great). yeah, i had been living beyond my means in those first few days and it meant i was out of pocket pretty quick. i think i blew like 10 euros in that first night in Joe's while listening to Momo's girlfriend doing an academic style reading of a paper on "squatting capital" and informal hierarchies of privilege that form in squats. Then i had made my last 10 euros last almost 2 weeks.
Amsterdam is for liberals and Berlin for radicals. i started to yawn and look back east.
but first a detour to visit Melissa in Leiden. there is nothing left here, i thought, and another night in the homeless shelter will piss me off, so now - to the train station, spliff in hand, knowing that warmer times and friendly people await. on the way i stop for a piss in the street and am so high i momentarily forget that i was carrying a bag of my clothes and only realise i've lost them when i get to Leiden, so now there's a bag of my dirty undies just sitting there curbside. It wouldn't be the first time. I decide to stay in Leiden a few days to recuperate - then back to BLN.
I Amsterdamned (and all i got is this lousy poem)
it trickles through the veins down the social strata,
because they know that it’s smarter not to make a martyr.
4 days and 4 nights of only beer and bread:
underfed, no bed and a throbbing head.
i take to the icy grill, and stay
sparked on parked benches in bunches by the bars.
seeing red and yellow stars: struck
by light: the tilted sight of a shimmering night
by the frozen canals.
the blocked up channels of warm blooded mammals
with nowhere to go, and a slowing blood-flow.
i even test the rink bellow, and walk on water, heel to toe.
seeing double in a solid puddle,
my face muddles and warps, from magician to corpse,
and the mirror of my miracle twists and slips.
the air hits my lips and they summon an eclipse.
as i wake i try to clutch a statue,
of a saint whose name i cannot read
and whose cold body I don’t care for,
other than as a crutch,
waiting for the world to settle,
like i’m in a snow globe that’s all shook up.
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