Monday 23 September 2019

The Contemporary In The Cosmic II

See The Contemporary In The Cosmic.

Later, "contemporary" means 1986 when, after an objective gap of thirty four years, Time Patrol agent Manse Everard revisits Amsterdam where he sees:

scruffy youth from the Dam to the Central Station;
cafes and bars on alleys off the Damrak;
discrete sleaze shops;
extraordinary bookstores;
centuries-old houses along the canal;
a place that serves eel for lunch;
the Stedelijke Museum;
the Rijks;
the Museumplein;
the Singelgracht;
Vondelpark;
gleaming water;
sunlight on leaves and grass;
a canoeist, an elderly couple and a band of cyclists.

That is the contemporary description but there are two intrusions of a deeper perspective:

first, the gap has been longer for Everard because, since 1952, he has joined the Patrol and traveled through the ages, for example to the periods of Elizabeth I and Cyrus the Great;

secondly, he knows that all the past, present and future life of Amsterdam is like diffraction rings on unstable space-time.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The "extraordinary bookstores" would interest me, even tho I can't read Dutch! But I assume Manse would have no trouble quickly learning Dutch if he had a case requiring him to use that language.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

A few years ago I visited Britain for the first time since the 1970's -- London and Brighton, mostly.

The things that struck me most forcefully was how -clean- central London looked, how colorful, with the buildings stripped of most of the old grey-black coal smoke accumulated throughout a century and a half.

And how many East Europeans there were -- most of the service staff we encountered as travelers.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Mr Stirling,
That sounds really good. Unfortunately, people find ways to make it anything but good.
Paul.