Recovery

Yesterday I walked through an orange city for hours. Today the sofa and I entered a serious relationship. #

Recovery. I woke up and my feet delivered their final report on yesterday. Sensible shoes prevented disaster but did not abolish anatomy. I went to work anyway because apparently King’s Day does not permanently suspend capitalism. The city looked exactly as expected, like the morning after a party when everybody has agreed not to discuss the state of the kitchen. Evidence everywhere. Cleanup happening. People moving with varying levels of energy. I cycled through it with coffee already inside me and felt surprisingly good once I was moving. Work was almost funny because everyone had some version of yesterday written on their face. Stories exchanged. Photographs shown. Nobody needed to ask whether anybody had seen orange. I did actual work too, eventually. By afternoon I had returned to normal human function. Then I cycled home and the moment I came through the door all ambition ended. Coat off. Shoes off. Comfortable clothes. Sofa. Yuri arrived and seemed to have reached the same conclusion independently. Dinner required minimal complexity. We compared our physical complaints like elderly people. «My legs.» «My feet.» «My back.» «We’re thirty.» «Exactly.» I am thirty. He is still the boy I met and also very much not the boy I met, just as I am not the girl he met. Sometimes the continuity of a long relationship is so strange. We carry all those younger bodies in memory while occupying current ones that make opinions known after King’s Day. I laughed about that while stretching my feet under the blanket. The orange accessory has been put away. I almost left it out because it looked cheerful, then decided one day of orange is enough for my aesthetic system. The vrijmarkt purchase remains on the shelf. Still like it. Vindicated. I went through more photographs but did not edit much. Tomorrow. Today can be soft. I called Mom from the sofa and told her I was tired. She said, with the complete absence of sympathy available only to mothers, that nobody had forced me to walk all day. Correct and unhelpful. Dad was more interested in whether the crowds had been manageable. Yes. Everything fine. Happy. Tired. Fine. After the calls I stayed exactly where I was. The windows showed a normal Amsterdam evening again. No sea of orange. No boats full of parties. Just the city putting itself back together. I understand the feeling.

Remember me, Eclipse.