Last sunday my mind decided against the will of my body and despite one night dancing out I was ended up biking from Amsterdam to Marken and back. Fifty kilometers and a few sunburns later, I felt strangely relaxed, surprised again by the merits of exercise on my psychological sanity.

Besides the experience of serotonin, a quite distinct memory lingered after my stride around North Holland: the acute realization, twenty kilometers down the way and after crossing a few bakfietsen full with children, of the psychological imprinting that riding bikes has on most Dutch people, at the same age where I was spending most of my time building lego sets or playing around in a fine dry sand, a shy six hundred kilometers from the equator. I found it interesting to note that while the first memory of a lower water level at one side of a dike than the houses on the other blurs here with those of the first playground, my first memories often bring up the ruins of days long gone by. (And yes, I still recognize what's on that picture, although it has been nearly twenty years…)

There is a lot to recall and to tell about growing up as a third culture kid, especially when the only “consistent social unit” ends up imploding with emotional abuse — although deprivation may suit better the situation here — at the most unfortunate point in time, that is, the narrow window where one should learn models for a social identity. That's a quiet story I usually keep to myself, since demons of the past are best left lurking at the back of one's consciousness, carefully acknowledged regularly during the day so that they can stay reasonably quiet at night.

And yet, I was lucky and I could rejoice when fate, in an ironical twist, kicked me out of my own ignorance onto a world where I had to shed the scales I was given previously and grow my own. It was an unexpected but invaluable opportunity to deconstruct, and then reconstruct — a much-needed second adolescence during which the emotional turmoil proved to be a fertile ground for a new self: while I was fed vodka in nursing bottles by the woman who first handled me as a real person, I would imprint durably — like an inside tatoo overlaid on a fading pattern — the combined effects of friendship, ethanol and melodious rythmic sounds and let them replace gradually my fears of an autonomous identity in society.

Alas, location-based friendships built during the final period of a cosmopolitan education system are due to disintegrate when individuals go on with their personal development, often at very different locations at the surface of the globe. What survives is indeed invaluable — those few friendships that span frontiers, oceans and continents — but their distribution is precisely what prevents them from pushing a missing sense of “geographical belonging” into the unrooted, floating young adult now mostly out of the common flow.

But this is merely a minor concern. While some rawness makes me sensitive, it also makes me more receptive to certain feelings.

Tonight, I watched Shelter.

The recent months have kept me more busy than usual with work, but meanwhile my position in a University has altogether increased my consumption of news items, both on paper and in bit arrangements. One would assume that the flurry of world events would call for a steady stream of comments from even the least energetic academic; that is, assuming also that said academic should not feel powerless and insignificant next to the intimidating momentum of mass inertia — or, in many cases, hysteria. And I do, more and more often as I get more informed.

Nonetheless, free speech and ideals are like sex performance: they tend to dwindle away when not used for extended periods of time.

So here we are. Today, I read that some sickos on the other side of the Atlantic call for censorship and some for burning the books — burning the f...ing books ! This is no national-socialist germany of the 30's, nor any kind of dystopian government policy attempting to keep its masses inert nor a new leader clearing its kingdom of impure thoughts.

The issue is terribly simple: in a society where the right of “respect of family values” is fundamental but also individual, i.e. where every parent can decide on their own, without checks and balances, what is “best for their children”, even the intellectually challengend and religiously contaminated folk can initiate expensively time-consuming processes to discuss how to hide from children books which, ultimately, only disturb their parents.

We want parents to decide whether they want their children to have access to these books ... and we want the library's help in identifying [them through labeling and moving]," Maziarka said. "It's just common sense."

Slightly more enlightened discussions on the topic were quick to call for Godwin's support, albeit remarkably pointedly:

"All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming. That's not balance," she said.

Yeah and all the books in the History section are anti-Hitler.

And alas, since any ill-driven social tumult operates as a gravity well for the crazy and troublemakers, alternate parties quickly lowered the debate to the sewers of humanity.

But why bother to care about a local phenomenon that will likely quickly dissipate? After all, previous historical records of similar events are widely available, not to mention that fire has often been a convenient way to cleanse populations due to perceived social “issues.”

Why care? I would propose at least one reason: public disinterest in this story will be justified by utterances of the form “this is the country of free speech, the crazy have as much right to it as everyone else — although nobody will listen to them, or not for long”; meanwhile, even the casual herbalist or seasoned sociologist will notice that the seeds of intolerance are like those of mistrust and stupidity — of a thousand seeds cast in a fertile ground, only one needs to grow to cover the entire field with a vine of hatred. Social responsibility mandates the outmost care in unrooting the signs of decadence, or at least singling them out.

“It's just common sense.”

There is a quality to the urban sidewalk at night after a rainy day nowhere to be found otherwise, except maybe on a very quiet night with bright moonlight on a lake border.

This quality is the reflection of city life in puddle pools.

The eyes of the casual observer looking up in a city at night while walking or biking would see buildings, trees, city lights and only somewhere in between patches of dark sky where the stars become invisible, by contrast. When looking down, most urban surfaces have a texture and color that will make them appear dull in dry weather, but somewhat bright and sparkling with reflections of city lights when wet. The more remaining surface water, the more reflections of city lights are to be seen; areas with running water become particularly noticeable through the luminosity of the combined reflection of many light sources.

That is, except around areas where the surface water is sufficient to create a still pool, i.e. an area with no apparent texture. There, unless the angle is right and the inverse path of reflected light from the observer's eye crosses a city light source — an unlikely occurrence in moderately dense European cities, given the relative rarity of city lights — there is perceptively nothing to be seen in the pool's reflection.

Only the Universe, through the small frontier of stars created by the pool's borders. At day, these patches of whater would appear white or blue from the sky colors... At night, they make reality vanish, and make the city darker.

Next time you go walking or biking at night after a rainfall, please take a few seconds to look at the ground. Look at the bright areas, and notice how the pool in the middle of the bright area is more black than any other surface in the city landscape. Then consider, as you would with reflective surfaces otherwise, what the world “on the other side” looks like.