Sylvia's Journal

Sietske and Piet have one of those coffee machines that requires only the pushing of a small foil disc into a slot to produce a steaming cup of coffee in seconds. Drinking too much coffee is very easy this way. Axel reacts badly to too much coffee (caffeine) but loves it too much. Lucky for him I fed the machine red foil discs which, I did not know, are the decaf ones.

I suspect we are both gaining weight. There is simply too much good food to eat. For me this is also about catching up on foods I miss in the USA such as raw herring, licorice and cheese. It is only partially about taste. Eating is a social activity suffused with memories and associations.

My niece Emily is not allowed to engage in this activity but is fed, instead, by a small pump that, over a period of 15 hours pumps about 3000 calories of a nutritious proto-porridge directly into her bloodstream. After the visiting nurse comes in at night to hook her up she walks around with a backpack that hides the large plastic bag and the pump. Only the thin tube that ends in a port below her right shoulder is visible. We were a little hesitant to show up for dinner but our timing was off and so that is exactly when we arrived.

She said she didn’t mind, while her mate Hicham cooked for us, happy to have eating companions. She sat with us at the table, sipping a small cup of bouillon, one thing she can eat in a more traditional way and claimed to enjoy seeing us eat; she even likes to cook for others these days and fantasizes about fresh asparagus and strawberries – but this may not be in the stars for her, at least not this year, she fears. One operation and a dose of good luck is what she needs before she can enjoy the things we take for granted.

I dreamt last night of travel again and of going to Ethiopia. My dreams usually contain very vivid images but this was a dream of a concept, an idea, a feeling rather than a view. The dream may well have been triggered by Emily’s brother Daan who is an artist and has a project, worldtravelcard, that maps the whereabouts of holders of 500 plastic cards he handed out a couple of years ago. The small blue cards look like credit cards. You log onto the site whenever you arrive at a new place with your exclusive card number that is yours as long as you keep the card in your possession. Card ownership is temporary; you are supposed to pass on the card to others who you meet along the way. It is a bit like the audio tapes or books that have numbers on them that hook into a website. You are to give the tapes or book away and the new (temporary) owner is supposed to register the book and then pass it on. This allows you to trace its itinerary. Both are products of our new borderless world but also of the ideal of shared resources; that notion appeals to me. It contrasts starkly with the idea of borderpatrols and fences that scream mine and thine. It is about the itinerary of stuff. Stuff has, of course, always traveled as you can see at flea markets, especially in cosmopolitan centers. But now we can actually follow the journey from place to place and from hand to hand (foot, eye, ear, mouth).