Nina Ascoly and bart plantenga – Amsterdam Photos

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Nina Ascoly and bart plantenga
Amsterdam Photos

Nina Ascoly takes photos of plants, nature, and daughter Paloma to relax and to escape the stress of working for an international environmental organization.

bart plantenga is the author of novels Beer Mystic, Radioactivity Kills, and Ocean GroOve, short story collection Wiggling Wishbone, novella Spermatogonia: The Isle of Man, and wander memoirs Paris Scratch and New York Sin Phoney in Face Flat Minor. His books, YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World, Yodel in Hi-Fi, plus the CD Rough Guide to Yodel, have created the misunderstanding that he’s the world’s foremost yodel expert. He’s also a DJ and has produced Wreck This Mess since 1986. He lives in Amsterdam. He is currently working on a photo exhibition called ‘The Cone Brothers: Respecting the Unspoken Authority of the Traffic Cone’, featuring a selection of his and daughter Paloma’s 400 cone photos.

bart plantenga r. & l. photos, Nina Ascoly centre photo, IJ Triptych, photographs, 1996

Ascoly and plantenga used a 1984 Canon XA2 compact camera with a 35 mm 1:3.5-4-element lens. The triptych above was taken from the windows of a squat located between the Silo and Stenenhoofd public space to the northwest and the Centraal Station to the southeast. The building was razed 15 years ago. It was just north of the present-day IJdok peninsula, which now includes hotels and a courthouse. The photograph below was taken with the same camera along the Prins Hendrikkade in Amsterdam.

bart plantenga, Floating Amsterdam, photograph, 2010

Demi Anter – A Different Kind of Red

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Demi Anter
A Different Kind of Red

Demi Anter writes: ‘I began photographing as a means to document my other artworks, often ephemeral in nature. I quickly fell in love with the art form. Since moving to Europe, shooting on film has become an almost daily ritual that helps me feel awake to the world around me. This photo was taken on 35mm film with my Pentax K1000 in December of 2018, while I travelled alone to Amsterdam in order to get my first tattoos. The city in winter gave me equal doses of wonder and melancholy. This photo is an instance of wonder — oddity and delight — with thanks due to my best travel companion, the camera.’

Demi Anter, A Different Kind of Red, photograph, 2018

Nathan Beck – By the Canal at Night

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Nathan Beck
By the Canal at Night

In their forum the ducks like senators
Fear neither frost nor the future
But footsteps

Shortening on their turf
Trigger the rabble to exile themselves
From their precipice

Into the ink and in song
They’re gone
With tail-feathered salutes

And old parliamentarian chatter of me
Like a dog
Intent on their scattering

Ivan De Luce – The Strange History of Amsterdam Street Names

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Ivan De Luce
The Strange History of Amsterdam Street Names

My old street in Amsterdam, Pierre Lallementstraat, can hardly be called a street. It’s more of an open alleyway that leads to a courtyard. My old apartment building, a modern, pearl-white student housing behemoth, is one of only two addresses there. In fact, my building is so large it needs two separate front entrances.

Pierre Lallementstraat is named after Pierre Lallement, the inventor of the bicycle. This is highly appropriate considering the Netherlands is a land of bikes. But this tiny backstreet didn’t seem to deserve such a fascinating name. Then again, it seems as if every street in Amsterdam is named after someone. Coming from New York, with our numbered grid system, I’m not used to streets being named after anything. But in Amsterdam, there’s no grid. But there is a President Kennedylaan, a Churchill-laan, and even a President Allendelaan, named after the Chilean Marxist who was overthrown in a coup with the help of the CIA on September 11, 1973. As Social Democrats, the Dutch presumably saw him as a victim of injustice when they christened the street five months later.

There are other streets, too — ones named after Beethoven, Hans Holbein, Richard Wagner, Chopin, Rubens, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bach, Jan van Eyck, Titian, and Botticelli. And those are all within blocks of each other. My neighbourhood, in Watergraafsmeer, is composed of streets named after engineers. James Wattstraat runs along the front of my building. At least engineers are more interesting than grids of numbers.

Amsterdam’s street names started out like many old European streets — they were named after things that happened there, or after some unique feature about the location. But after the 1850s, as the city encroached on the countryside, the Dutch decided to come up with seemingly unrelated names. After 1870, cities began commemorating people by naming streets after them, especially in France.

While Holland was late to this practice, it made up for it by giving every conceivable figure a street named after them. There’s even a Lord of the Rings-themed neighbourhood in the town of Geldrop — take a right onto Laan van Tolkien, and soon you’ll walk along Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, and more dwarf streets than you can imagine.

But back to our friend Pierre. He seemed to have nothing to do with Amsterdam or the Netherlands, but they obviously owe a great to deal to him. He was born in France in 1843, and in his hometown of Nancy, in 1862, he saw someone riding a dandyhorse, an early version of the bicycle which had no pedals and required the rider to pedal with their feet, like a bike from The Flintstones. He added the chains and pedals soon after, and so the bike was born. He never received the recognition he deserved, however. A Frenchman named Pierre Michaux became known as the man who invented the velocipede, and he was the first to mass-produce them. Pierre L. was probably dismayed, so in 1865 he moved to Ansonia, Connecticut and filed a patent for his velocipede a year later. When he returned to France two years after that, bikes were all the rage, which must have infuriated him even more. Pierre Lallement died poor and forgotten in 1891 in Boston at age 47. Thanks to an investigation in 1993, Lallement, not Michaux, is known to have created the first modern bicycle. Thankfully, Michaux does not have any streets named after him. AQ

Mark Fiddes – Office Landscape with Chair

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Mark Fiddes
Office Landscape with Chair

‘Wait, I’ll print it out for you.’
Her hand darts across Van Gogh’s cornfield face
which is her mouse-mat glancing back every day
a little nervously, asking what she had for lunch,
telling her to go and dance in the rye if she can
still recall how to play outside the bedroom,
wondering if she’d like her own portrait painted
sitting on the stern ergonomic chair in the corner
below the poster that yells YOU DON’T HAVE
TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS!

He suggests she switch off the fluorescent light
because she will see more and further that way:
she may have missed the stars in the photocopier,
blossoms in the in-tray, the jasmine and crickets
drifting through the air-con, the crows nesting
in the waste bin, the haystack in the shredder,
and a window spinning with dusty olive trees.
She double-clicks his rough beard with her mouse.
A grassy rain falls like kisses from the sprinklers
as she types her resignation for the hundredth time.

Siobhán Flynn – Kindness to Crows

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Siobhán Flynn
Kindness to crows

       In memoriam John Downs

I keep seeing them here;
painted ones in the turbulent sky
of Vincent’s last painting,
plastic ones with synthetic feathers
for sale in the film museum
and real ones
attempting a murder in the Vondelpark,
Hitchcockian on branches
or on the railings waiting for you.

It’s all about the parakeets, you say,
no one thinks of the crows,
but, hoping for one to light
on your hand and eat from your fingers,
you bring them dog biscuits
whenever you are well enough to cross the city.

We talk to a man on the tram,
who went to Ireland once.
When you get off
with your stick and your dog
he asks if you are blind.
which makes you laugh when I tell you,
and made me smile as I watched you,
fearless and determined,
topsy-turvy through the traffic.

Anju Kanwar – Wax Man

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Anju Kanwar
Wax Man

Fat pigeons congregate early in anticipation like tourists in
transit looking for adventure and blue skies. Before that sunlit
square, a flash mob drew me towards the morning shade of a
cold plate glass front where a sliver of white lay crumpled
under a striped awning. Legs drooping, attenuated angry birds
in flightless mode, fingers feathering raw over a placard airfoil,
his gaunt face hung over that paper board cliff seeking god.

Who knew dreams can languish in cotton-wool spots in the
bluest of eyes?

Unveiled words blazed from mordant wick, patterning flames
breathing dragons about some bubbling hot wax tallow-melting
out of the museum. Grand masters all around were studying to
mould: heads twisted, hands braced, a shower of coins littering
the pavement with kindness and fear.

Thirty years gone, in some early morning December chill,
sunshine feels like a knife cutting. Those eyes slit open, silent
witness in the broken honeyed cast of a man marked by scars
we usually hide.

Sandhya Krishnakumar – Walking along Westerdok

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Sandhya Krishnakumar
Walking along Westerdok

I see you,
Pink and yellow flowers on the sidewalk,
The shimmering gold in the IJ,
Red amaryllis fallen on the cycle track,
And a little further away,
A baby shoe – single, black.

I see you,
Solitary tree clad in fall colours,
Impatient for summer to end,
While all around you
Are trees in their brightest green,
The seize-the-moment army.

I see you,
Man on the bench,
Huddled in your sleeping bag,
Living beneath the stars,
Serenaded by birdsong
And whizzing cars.

I see you,
Lady in red jacket,
With a ready smile when our eyes meet,
While our feet pass each other,
Unsure whether to stop and greet
The stranger we see daily on the street.

Friends of the morning,
Where did you come from?
Where are you going?
What is your story?
I don’t know, yet.
But I am thankful
That you are in mine.

Bryan R. Monte – Vita – An Interview with Susan Lloy

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Bryan R. Monte
Vita — An Interview with Susan Lloy

Susan Lloy is the author of two books of short fiction, But When We Look Closer (2017) and Vita: Stories (2019) both from Now or Never Publishing. Her fiction has been published in Avalon Literary Review; Lock Raven Review; Beecher’s 4 Magazine; Donut Factory; The Literary Commune, UK; Literary Orphans; Jumblebook; PARAGRAPHITI; Penduline Press; The Prague Review; Revolution House Magazine; The Roundup Writer’s Zine; Scarlet Leaf Review; Toronto Prose Mill; Transportation Press; The Writing Disorder; and Revolution House as well as in Amsterdam Quarterly and in The Neighbours Anthology, (Zimble House Publishing).

Bryan R. Monte: How does it feel to have two collections of short stories, But When We Look Closer and Vita: Stories, published in the last two years?

Susan Lloy: It feels like an accomplishment. However, my audience is very limited. It has proved difficult to find ways to broaden the scope of readers.

BRM: Well, you should be very proud of these two books, not only for their contents, but also for their design. Their typeface, cover art, size and bindings make them very attractive. I especially like both books’ eye-catching cover art. Were you also involved in these books’ design?

SL: Only with Vita. I chose the image for the front cover and the book’s cover font.

BRM: What is your academic and professional background, and how has this influenced you as a writer?

SL: I have a Bachelor’s of Design in Communication Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University. I did a study exchange at Parsons School of Design and Cooper Union for the advancement of Science and Art in New York. I studied graphic design at Parsons and the history of experimental film at Cooper Union

BRM: That must have been an interesting and educational semester.

SL: Obviously, New York was a great influence. It was an exciting, fruitful time and it fuelled me with a lust for creative endeavours. I have always been interested in the arts and originally wanted to be a painter, but studied graphic design instead.

BRM: Do you make your living as a writer and as a graphic artist?

SL: No. I work full-time as the unit coordinator on the Cardiac Surgery Unit at the McGill University Health Centre. This takes a lot of energy, so my creative output is quite dependent on what is going on at work. Working in healthcare is an entire trilogy on its own. Maybe someday….

BRM: How long have you been writing?

SL: As far as writing is concerned … I have written from an early age. But I took a long absence from writing when I had my son in the 1990s. I did, however, write a children’s story for him during this period. Currently, an illustrator and myself are seeking publication for this story. All of my work is dedicated to my son, Nicolas.

BRM: How long have you been writing short stories?

SL: Seriously, for about the last six years.

BRM: How long have you been sending them out?

SL: Since the beginning.

BRM: Would you call yourself a disciplined writer? For example, do you have a regular schedule for writing, editing and submitting your work?

SL: When I have an idea for a piece of fiction, I get busy with it immediately. Yet, if I’m in between stories, I can be unproductive. I do, nonetheless, keep a notebook of thoughts and ideas for future tales.

BRM: I believe that what Jacob Appel does with plot in his short stories, you do with character in yours. How do you ‘find’ these interesting characters that draw the reader in and power them through your stories — through experience, observation, or pure fantasy or perhaps a combination of two or three factors?

SL: A combination of all three, as I think this is true for most writers. We all reflect, subtract and bend reality to create.

BRM: Could you be more specific? For example, how did you create the voice of the main character from ‘Mean Waitress’ and some of your other stories?

SL: The voice for ‘Mean Waitress’ is my own. I was that mean waitress. Layla in ‘Layla Was Here’ is pure fantasy. I wanted the verse to portray the uninvited person in her head. The short story ‘Vita’ is an observation in the process of an individual’s death.

BRM: Do you share some of your characters’ obsessions with Amsterdam in your short stories such as ‘Dutch Lite’ in But When We Look Closer and ‘Invisible Matter’ and ‘The Little Bang’ in Vita?

SL: Yes, I can be obsessive. I like to expand on these traits. I find it makes the characters multi-layered.

BRM: How often have you visited Mokum?

SL: I have visited Amsterdam more than 15 times.

BRM: Have you ever lived here?

SL: Yes, from 1987 to 1990.

BRM: More specifically, have you ever sat in a Jordaan café as your character in ‘Invisible Matter’ in Vita waiting to meet an ex-?

SL: Yes. Every time I visit.

BRM: What originally drew you to Amsterdam from Canada?

SL: Initially, I came to Amsterdam to take part in a three-month internship with a renowned design firm. At the time I was at a crossroads in my life following the death of my parents in a car crash. I wanted a change geographically and personally.

BRM: What made you stay?

SL: Love and friendship. Although I knew no one when I arrived, I was fortunate to meet some very good people. From previous visits, I could imagine living in Amsterdam and I thought that I would stay.

BRM: What are three of your favourite places in Amsterdam?

SL: The first place would be the Café de Klepel on the Prinsenstraat, when it was a bar. This was the place where I met most of my friends. Next, would be the Jordaan. It’s the neighbourhood where I lived. I love its beauty and its village vibe. And lastly, the harbour. I come from the sea, so I am partial to ports.

BRM: What made you decide to leave?

SL: My younger sister. It was just the two of us and she was living in Montreal. She suggested I return to Canada as I had lost interest in graphic design and I was unsure of what I wanted for the future. Sadly, my sister died from cancer not long after my return. And though I have remained in this northern land, I travel to Amsterdam in my mind each and every day.

BRM: I am very sorry for your loss.

SL: Thank you, Bryan, for your condolences. They touch me deeply. I have had a lot of loss in my personal life. I often write about this theme. Loss is universal. Everyone gets it.

BRM: Mental health issues are very important in Vita such as in ‘That Screaming Silence’ (anti-social and homicidal behaviour), ‘Voices’ (suicide), and ‘Layla Was Here’ (a woman whose artistic identity was repressed both in her life and in the record she leaves behind) and ‘Mademoiselle Energy’ (schizophrenia). Could you share how and where you found the inspiration for the characters and situations for a few of these stories?

SL: I believe these often, marginalized individuals have a purer truth and also deserve a voice. Mental health is close to my heart. Something innate. In reference to ‘That Screaming Silence’, I have always lived in noisy, urban flats. I wonder what I would do if I finally invested in a home and discovered such noisy neighbours. As far as my other stories linked with mental disturbances, they are completely imaginary, although, I may have chatted with these characters somewhere along the way.

BRM: Rebellion is also a theme in Vita’s stories. To what extent were you a rebel in your teens, 20s or later, and to what extent are you still?

SL: I was a rebel in my youth. And yes, even though I’m longer in the tooth at present, nonconformity remains inherent.

BRM: Structurally, what is the function of the shorter, poetic vignettes between the longer short stories in Vita?

SL: I find that they serve as compact, cinematic breaks between the larger stories.

BRM: Was that arrangement your idea or an editor’s?

SL: This arrangement is my own.

BRM: You prove your versatility as a fiction writer in Vita not only in your shorter pieces, but also in the characters and situations of two longer stories, ‘Layla Was Here’ and ‘California Reelin’. Did they take longer to write than the others?

SL: Yes, longer.

BRM: How long?

SL: It took me a couple of months with each of these stories.

BRM: ‘Layla Was Here’ is written in the form of journal entries from two different people, one who writes the text and the other who finds the text buried in his back garden and his response to it. The story brings together the buried narrative of a seemingly failed, psychologically unstable, female artist and the man who unearths her diary in his back garden. When did you come up with the journal format for ‘Layla Was Here’, at the beginning, or is this something that came to you as you worked on the piece?

SL: The journal format was the idea from the get-go. I also knew the ending from the start. The concept was like the discovery of a diary.

BRM: ‘California Reelin’ takes your characters out of their usual Canadian or Dutch settings. Have you ever lived or vacationed in California in the middle of a cold, Canadian winter? How did you come up with this story?

SL: Yes, I have visited California a couple of times, long ago. It’s beautiful. The inspiration for the story came from a reality show where buyers pay cash for extremely expensive properties. I thought: ‘What sort of mischief could my character get into if she went to work for one of those brokers?’

BRM: In ‘California Reelin’, your protagonist meets a man who convinces her to break into the exclusive Bohemian Grove in Northern California to learn about its secret rituals. How close is this story’s setting and characters to your own experience?

SL: Bohemian Grove is a real place, so I planted my characters into a situation that only those in Bohemian Grove can know the outcome of, whether its based on fantasy or not.

BRM: Did you find it more difficult to write these two longer stories, or did they just seem to flow once you get started?

SL: Once I moulded my ideas for these stories, they flowed rather easily.

BRM: ‘Capture’ is also a departure from your other stories because it is an account of a kidnapped, baby elephant in the voice of that elephant. What inspired you to write this story?

SL: ‘Capture’ is inspired from a photograph I saw in the Guardian International. A young elephant was captured for a Chinese zoo. It broke my heart.

BRM: Do you think you will attempt other non-human narratives in the future?

SL: I can’t confirm that at this point.

BRM: With two books of short stories to your credit now, could you share with AQ’s readers perhaps a bit about some ongoing or future projects? What are you working on at this moment?

SL: Currently, I’m working on a themed collection of stories. These stories are about retirement. Yet, the characters find themselves in unconventional situations. One marries a polygamist. Another murders her husband on a sailing trip around the Mediterranean. Someone else moves to Abruzzo, taking up the violin only to spoil the olive harvest with her inferior playing.

BRM: Susan Lloy, thank you for taking part in this interview.

SL: Thanks, Bryan. I’m honoured you asked. AQ

Susan Lloy – End of Rapture

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Susan Lloy
End of Rapture

The gold-painted angel fell today. His ceramic limbs splayed all around. She should feel saddened by this, as it was given to her in a time of love when she lived in the Dutch capital. Handed to her by her former lover who had ripped it off the exterior of an Italian villa when he was playing there in a travelling quartet.

It has made her bitter. Staring at it year after year for more than thirty. She has many objects from Amsterdam strategically placed in her flat. Often a guest will inquire, ‘Oh, how lovely, where did you get it?’ ‘Amsterdam,’ she replied.

 
For many years she had boasted that she had lived there feeling like she had an edge up for the experience. She kept her Dutch language books on deck ready to brush up before travelling back more than twenty times, rolling her G’s and toning her tongue to Nederland standards. She constantly thought of her former lovers who became good friends, but of late, had wandered far from her.

 
Tourists always irked the Dutch. When she had inhabited its tiny streets more than three decades ago, they had annoyed them then. Yet, she had been able to blend in like an Amsterdammer. She remembered travellers that came for smack holidays. Seeing many a folk retching on cobbled streets. One doesn’t witness this now. On her last visit it made her nervous. Crowds tightly packed like little fish in a can. Tourists are more loathed now. Pouring into the small cafés, cluttering the squares. Boisterous Brits on bachelor stags.

When she had lived among the locals she had tried to absorb their mirth. Listening to them sing while riding their bicycles along the canals. Now bikes are full of danger. With cyclists roaring along texting, not a single eye on the road.

 
She felt a pride that she had retained her Dutch. And for the most part, Amsterdammers are happy to spar with her broken words. Still, during her last trip, when she sat at a small theatre café and left a decent tip, she had overheard the bartender turn the name, tourist, around like it was a cancer.

She has many framed photographs of her former lovers, but it pains her to hang them on the walls. They sit, hidden, in an old armoire waiting to be dismantled. Yet, she can never bring herself to complete this task. She immortalized them in print during their shared time in Amsterdam, but they never stole a peek.

So, when she looks around at hints of her Dutch past it is as if a knife sears her heart. She can’t imagine strolling the streets, sitting on a sidewalk terrace, seeing the ghosts of her past. And besides, she would be just another tourist in Amsterdam. AQ