16 Passenger Terminal Amsterdam copies left!

The first limited edition of 200 copies of the novel has almost sold out. There are now sixteen books left. To purchase one, e-mail to passenger_terminal@yahoo.com

Passenger Terminal Amsterdam (a novel)

 

(…)

‘Why don’t you take your shoes off, what do you need them for?’, asks a young woman dressed up as a devil.

I take my shoes off, then my socks. It feels so good with bare feet on the grass!

‘Right!’, she shouts laughing, then she runs away, making pirouettes.

 I leave the shoes and enter the church. Psychedelic trance sounds emerge from the six big loudspeakers hanging on the walls, and about one hundred people do the dance. On top of a table, there is a man and a woman dressed as priests. They look around at the dancers and whisper in each other’s ear. At the right side of the entrance there is a bar. I grab a half glass of beer and drink it up. I’m thirsty. I turn on the water faucet for cleaning glasses and fill the glass with water. A guy comes to me and asks if I have coke to sell. I tell him I’m not a dealer. He asks me if I want a beer. I do want a beer. ‘Cheers, mate!’

 I feel that there is no connection between me and the people dancing. There are different films going on in our heads. I get close to the wall and lay my back against it. I walk a few meters to the bar and grab at random another glass sitting there. I drink half, then get back to the wall. The priest and the priestess still whisper. I think they’re whispering something while watching me. I exit the church and lie on the grass. After a few minutes, a short old guy stops in front of me.

 ‘Hi, I’m Olaf. I’m a poet. I’m the clerk. I’m high. Hippie! Yipppy!’, he shouts joyful in a high voice as if castrated, then starts fast as a maniac: ‘Hm… broom, broom-broom, my little motor my brain is too fast, I lock it in the confession room, I’ll leave it wait between the holy holes in the wall that separates the sinner to the saint! I’ll be walking around looking for the confession room, but won’t find it, I’ll check all the corners and still won’t find it! Broom-broom, confession room is maybe turned into a peep show room where you can insert two Euros and wank while watching a live short fuck, I’ll be wandering inside and outside the church, until I hear loud voices, I’m fast like on a rush, I fall off the control tower, I fall off the control tower of the System, I fall off the control tower of God, and it feels so good! Broom-broom, come on, let’s enter the church, the priests asked me to welcome you in. We heard you are a guest.’

We enter. The music volume is lower. Olaf grabs me by the hand and leads me to the priest, whose eyes look like he hasn’t slept since a few days. The priest is a short, forty year old guy, bald and wearing some sparkling decorations around his neck, a green fluorescent t-shirt under the  Catholic priest dress, and yellow rubber boots. He grabs me by the shoulders and starts:

 ‘Your awareness is in the field now, in the seeds. Sleeping in the earth, under the snow. With summer, you feel the earth warming, and you know without knowing that the sun is above you.’

‘I agree, father. But I feel like I’m in a theatre play, don’t you wanna tell me why you picked me? Did somebody here tell you about me?’

‘Very well, ha ha, you are in the theatre play of life! Nobody told me, you just pushed upward, toward the unseen sun, so I could see you. You send down a tap root to help push you up and to feed you, and in the other direction you send a shot with two leaf buds. Before long, you burst out into the sunlight. All around you are other plants. As the days pass, you grow with them. I can see it, I can see it! When the thunderstorms come, you feel that this rain is richer, and you feel blessed. Seeds drink rain and eat sunlight and grow heavy upon you. You cannot hold them up; they pull you down. You are oppressed, and at a standstill. You sense movement in the field, and then there is a sharp pain!’

The priest takes the T-shirt off me, looks at my body all around and continues.

‘You are cut off from your root!

(…)

Squatting ban leads to peanut butter shed

In the evening of 30^th September, at about 19.37 o’clock, Joos was drinking his second can of energizer while waiting for the strong coffee to get stronger inside the coffee machine, then spread thick layers of peanut butter onto two thick slices of bread.

Emma entered the kitchen of the squat and sat on the sofa they just picked up the previous night while street night-shopping, dumped by the people living next door.

‘Hey Joos, this is your third peanut-butter meal today, and it seems that it will be my second one, right? Anything else in that fridge?’

‘Nothing else in there, I might start using it as a drawer for my summer shoes.’

‘How come we’ve nothing else to eat since four days? Ah… I know why..’

‘You sure know why: because we’ve been working in the new squatted social center, and no time to keep jobs as waitress for the fucking yuppies. Want a slice?’

‘Sure.’

Emma left the kitchen and returned with a suitcase.

‘Did you pack all?’

‘Almost. Passport, bills, papers, letters, police fines, whatever has my name on.’

‘Welcome to the life of a criminal.’

Joos  took a piece of chalk and a towel, sat by the suitcase and erased the word nomad written on it, then wrote on top criminal.

‘That’s right…’, Emma whispered. ‘Starting midnight, squatters in Holland are criminals.’

‘I’m curious what it will be like from now on…’, Joos said.

‘Well, once a criminal, all doors are open. Free-style. Less selection when picking up a house. Squatting more spaces, that’s how I see it. More hassle from the city-hall and cops, but more squatting actions.’

‘More hassle…’

‘If the squat-ban law will cause civil-war scenarios, like it happened with Vondelstraat in the 1980, that’s the Government declaring civil-war.’

Joos sips out of his coffee.

‘Charging yourself with energy for the war?’, Emma says, looking at the empty cans.

‘Yes, and also creating empty dwelling for the mice in our kitchen.’

Knocks on the door. Wie is daar?

‘Politie!’

‘Fuck off, Mikael! This was the last time you’ll pull this idiot joke, and I won’t kick you just as we’ll kick the cops!’, Emma shouted.

Mikael entered in trembling metal noise, holding a bed spiraal.

‘Barricade division, two pieces of king-size bed. I got them from the rich neighbors on Prinsengracht, and left them one night on the balcony, to get rid of their farting smells through these spiraals. Now ready to be screwed in your windows.

‘Sweet. Thanks!’, Emma said, then picked up her suitcase.

‘Gotta go now, special delivery to do. I’m getting rid of my name… not to leave evidence at the crime scene. For fuck’s sake, what days we’re living… What a fucking progress humans are… See you later in here, or who knows – at the police station or somewhere in hell, we’ll squat the biggest oven with sauna and garden.’

Joos drunk up the coffee and grabbed one bed spiraal. ‘Let’s get over with it.’

In within ten minutes, about thirty long screws pierced the window frame through the bed spiraal.

‘What a beauty’, Mikael said, admiring the barricade.

‘Erect like Jesus on the cross‘, Joos replied.  

‘Like Jesus, the first squatter ever mentioned in a historic document, fiction or whatever that is.’

Coffee is set, the two squatters are now at the table, quiet, looking at the king-size beds fixed against the window.

‘We’ve got no choice than locking ourselves inside the cell. What a progress we are…  Better locked by our own hand than by the Government. As long as some peanut butter and coffee are on the table. We are the peanut criminals.

Living mobile device´s poooh

The second cigarette chain-smoked was coming to the butt-end, so I rolled the third and looked through the window inside the police station to see if the cops were still busy with the drunk guy who broke some law beyond the natural one tolerated by his own liver. It seemed he did break it – the first one – by the way he was bending forwards and backwards, and by the way one cop was sitting in front of him, with his legs spread, like a city cowboy ready to fornicate a cattle.

I lit the third cig while trying to reach, with my pray, the god of drunkards: ‘save him, but do it now, until his urine pushes out and he’ll start talking faster and faster, confessing all he did and all he didn’t do, just to get it over and set his leak free. C’mon, send your hangover angel upon this man’s fortune!’

‘Are you a friend of that man inside?’, a voice came out of nowhere. I almost pissed my pants out of emotions, as I thought god of drunkards has replied to me. I look upstairs towards the sky and what I saw was only a big surveillance camera.

‘Do you speak English?’, the same voice went on. I looked at my left and saw a cop.

‘Wow…’

‘I ask one more time: are you a friend of that man inside?’

‘No. I’m busy with my own thing..’

‘Do you have something to declare?’

‘Not to declare, but I have a question.’

‘Well…’

‘Officer, I was just wondering… I was walking on Damrak before, and saw two colleagues of yours, riding two other colleagues of yours, I mean riding two horses. Sorry if I’m wrong, but… am I wrong if I name police horses colleagues of yours?’

‘Yes, you are. They are called mobile devices, the same as with bicycles, motorcycles, cars.’

‘I see, the same as with boats, helicopters…’

‘You are clever. What’s your problem?’

‘No problem, just a question: I’m a journalist, and was trying to find out if there is a rule that forbids a police horse to… pooh on the public space. Like on the street. I’m asking this, since the dogs are not allowed to pooh.’

‘Hmm… I asee now you’re not that clever. There is no rule against dogs delivering fecal matters on the public domain, but there is a rule against the dog owners, if they don’t pick up that matter and don’t deliver it into a garbage collecting device.’

While the cop was talking, the drunk man went out the police station and walked away.

‘Oh, officer, you’re right. This is what I meant, actually. But… does the same rule applies to the horses? I mean, to the police horses, or to the living mobile device – is that correct to call them?’

‘Just mobile device. No. There is not such a rule. A policeman can’t get down to a horse to do that. A policeman has other important things to do when in a mission, and whatever extra interferes with the run for success of the mission, is unconsidered.’

‘Oh… I was just asking because half hour ago, on the Damrak, I saw two policemen on two mobile devices and the devices delivered fecal matters on the public domain. And the matters were really rich in quantity. So I thought…’

‘Are you sure you’re not a friend of that man outside? You seem talking in the same manner…’

‘No officer, we’re not.’

‘Do you carry a passport with you?’

‘Yes, but I must go now, I’m having a deadline for an article, I must return urgently to the newspaper office.’

‘I thought so.’

I walked away, and rolled my fourth cigarette. Down the stairs of Magna Plaza shopping center, a man with his pants down was laying his own private matters. And I thought the drunk man only needed to pee.

May I please intro…

At five years old I started learning to read and write, taught by my grandfather who shoot poetry at me, at six I was pretty good at reading and writing, and started experiencing with cigarettes smoking, together with friends of the same age, hiding ourselves in places where parents wouldn’t bump into us. At seven I first fell in love, secretly, and at eight I danced for the first time in a discotheque, with a Nigerian girl of about my age. At nine I wrote my first poem, something like Dan is a hooligan / stuck and bored on an island / When his cigarettes come to an end / Dan might be found dead.

At ten years old I had my first two punches, one received, one delivered. At eleven I first seduced a girl to kiss with me, our heads hidden under a dirty carpet her grandma was dusting her shoes off. At twelve I stole my first item from a shop, an ice-cream, and at thirteen I discovered wanking. At fourteen I sat for the first time in a pub, with a glass of Vermout in front of me, half ashamed of the adults around, half excited and proud. At fifteen I first left the classroom during the class, out of boredom and lack of interest, and at sixteen I started smoking and never quit since. At seventeen I first made love, or fucked against virginity, and at eighteen I first gigged on a stage with a punk band. At nineteen I started feeling utterly bored and out of interest about living in Romania, my home-country, but didn’t afford leaving it. At twenty I published my first article in a newspaper, and at twenty-one I fell in love with the girl I’ve loved the most. At twenty-two I first went abroad, and at twenty-three I graduated from university and got my journalist diploma. Two weeks later I could afford leaving Romania, and got myself a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. I don’t remember anything of my twenty four, I guess  skpipped that age. Oops, at twenty four I spent one night in a police cell, reading glossy magazines. At twenty five I had my first travel to South of Europe, and at twenty six I had my first rush on snow-white, in a sky resort in France. At twenty seven I first felt I would become a writer, and at twenty eight I published my first novel, and edited my first blog. Have a nice day…

…but stay tuned: for the next weeks, I’m planning to post a couple of stories about:

 the squatting ban in the Netherlands, spooky Romanian events, Transylvanian priests, BDSM  practice among politicians, judges and policemen, the extinction of Xelura snail from Himalaya, male/female prostitution in Amsterdam,  the digestive system of the Tasmanian devil, tricks & tips on how to wash your socks without wasting water, and many more.

 Now… have a nice day, which doesn’t necessarily means getting stoned and watching the walls in a poetic kind of way, while digging your toe-nails into the peanut-butter jar. Even though that maybe feels better than having a warm coffee with milk in your corporatist offices, may that coffee get stuck in your throat. There’s bad shit happening to the World, think of this each time you’re admiring your own shoes. They’re not special, nor are you, nor me.

Passenger Terminal Amsterdam (a novel) by Cristi Calugareanu

1. “Dancing naked underneath Aurora sky, or you’ll sink like a stone” (Laser 3.14)

 I entered the city with my jaw smashed and a broken front tooth, in a sunny morning of June, at the summer Solstice. The astronomical event that the tilt of Earth’s axis was oriented towards the Sun didn’t seem to affect my sleep in the dark cargo of the truck I’d been travelling in for about thirty five hours, laid out on a mattress. I slept all the way. During the whole ride I got woken up by a feeling of vomit, three of four times. I fell asleep right away after drinking from the bottle of tea that Henk – the truck driver who gave me a lift from Bucharest – made for me. The last time I woke up was when hearing Henk’s voice in the loudspeakers, just like a radio spokesman, talking from the truck cabin.

 ”Gooood morning, creatures of all over! A beautiful new day opens up on this spot of the world, and brings the news that at exactly 21:06 o’clock the Sun will be positioned directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. Light is bright now and we are driving 120 kilometers per hour on the E110 motorway. In just five hundred meters we’ll slow down at 90 kilometers per hour, as we enter the A10 motorway ring of the city. The traffic is busy, but we are in perfect control, equipped with a 450 horse power motor, eight pairs of tires, fresh air in the cabin supplied by two air condition radiators that filter cool breeze of Amstel canal. Heron birds fly smoothly in the blue sky, above the river. The thermometer shows seventeen degrees Celsius. According to the new Central European Time, it is now 10:16 o’clock, so you can set your clocks for the summer hour, then throw them away and stay awake as much as possible! Sooner or later, we’re gonna die. Here is Henk at the microphone, saying good-bye! I’m leaving you with Iggy Pop and <Lust for Life>! Untill the next time, have a good ride !” 

 When the first drum and bass beats of the song started kicking in the loudspeakers, the truck slowed down, then stopped. Henk got out of the cabin and opened the trailer door.

 “Hey kid, we’re here. I’m not driving through the center, so you can take a bus or something. This is my telephone number, in case you’re in trouble. There’s two pills for you, take them if you feel very tired or sick after the tea. Take care!”

”Thank you. You too, take care!”

 I grabbed my bag and stepped out of the trailer.

 I hadn’t seen the light for one and a half days, as the only times I got out of the truck was at  night. For the rest, I just sat in there, sleeping. The sunlight brought pain into my eyes. I closed them down and now my brain was giving some visual impulses of reds, oranges and yellows, with dark spots spread here and there. For a second I thought I could see a heart pumping slow, on which these colors were fading, then changing in violet and black, while increasing the rhythm. I kept my eyes closed for many seconds, until the heart turned white, then the shape of it disappeared, and it felt like watching a cinema canvas placed  in front of the sun. I opened my eyes and laid on the grass by the road, a few meters from the train tracks. The truck left, but the song was still running in my head. I laid down on the soil and spread my hands in the grass. Two wild rabbits were jumping few meters away, at the bottom of the sign that shows the South entrance to Amsterdam.

Passenger Terminal available in bookshops in Amsterdam & London:

The novel is available in the following bookshops:

AMSTERDAM:

Athenaeum (Spui),  Het Fort van Sjakoo (Jodenbreestraat 24), Evenaar (Single 348), Bruna (Van Woustraat, 90), Inkt & Olie (Ferdinand Bolstraat 151), Amsterdam Stadsarchief book shop (Vijzelstraat 32), Amsterdams Historisch Museumwinkel (Nieuwezijds Voorburgwall 357), Boek ‘n Plank (Vijzelgracht 11), Java Bookshop (Javastraat 145)

LONDON:

Housmans Bookshop (5 Caledonian Road, King’s Cross), Freedom Press (84 b Whitechapel High)