tales of places

3 december

Just like any other tourist, I walk the streets of Utrecht. Different that many tourists, I remember people walking with me, here. In this bridge we took photos with swiss comrades, visiting for a congress of the green party. In the terrace ahead, my Basel roommate laugh loud about the sound of dutch (it sounds like bad german, he said loudly to my embarrasment). At the cathedral I made my fellow spanish fencers climb the hundreds of steps of the main tower, yet they forgave me. There was here a bar where, one very late night, my companion flirted and flirted with a girl that ended up being the girlfriend of -another- friend of us. Walking the city is walking my memory. Stories that make sense in a place, and in a time.

But how many tales are in every corner? How many people has attached their own memories to the same place? And how many stories we will never know about anyway?

The center of Utrecht. Small streets, pretty houses build hundreds and hundreds of years ago, loads and loads of people around, looking and being looked at. International shops, MacDonalds and Zara’s, shops run by the same family for generations, houses. Who lives here anyway, who inhabit the streets where me and so many other turists come to stroll? Who could they be? I walk, I look at mirrors and balconies.

In here, a young woman is looking at her macbook. The room that I can see is sparingly furnished, as elegant people, or students, do. Is she trying to understand the last assignment of a university course? is she designing the inside of a villa for a very posh and very rich client? Her gaze is attent, or so it looks to me in the few seconds I see her, without stopping my walking. I know that if I look at her for few seconds more she will notice and rise her eyes, and we will see each other and whatever happens I will know more. But I do not want to know more. So I avert my eyes and walk on. I do wonder though. Student? Designer?

A few houses further, the curtains are fully closed. A book is to be guessed, resting in the windowsill. The Cantos, from Ezra Pound. I remember, even though I had to look it up: “And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away”. Utrecht is not at the seaside, but the dutch people are sailors. Or not. The Netherlands is a very conservative country, and then again, not. From here more jews were deported than from any other country. I look at the street floor, and in front of this house there are two of those pavement stones in metal, with names that remember jewish inhabitants of that house, who were deported and murdered in WWII. Coincidences, superposed narratives. Space, and time.

A well cared orchid. A resting cat. An emaciated face, smoking to outside. Fair away (from the window) shelves full of books. Two guitars, placed so that they are more decorations towards the passer by than useful instruments. And more, much more. In each house one tale to tell, a story to remember, a presence to describe. And then another, and another. Utrecht loaded with centuries of emotions and annecdotes and love and hatred and all, reallly all, in between.

I like to walk.