Amsterdam, Sunday 5 june 2022 (sometime after 10 o’clock in the morning)

102 days later.

I hear the train screeching loudly on the tracks—I turn to look and I see familiar carriages clad in blue and yellow speeding eastwards, which happens about every ten, fifteen minutes.

Blues and yellows, they seem to be appear everywhere since February.

A few days ago I was sat outside a café somewhere in the centre of Amsterdam. A retired teacher from San Francisco approached me—she introduced herself as Blue (yes, really.) She asked if I knew the direction to a museum (she had no data roaming on her mobile phone, and had to rely on offline maps.) I told her to memorise the number of canals she passes by as a way to navigate.

She curiously enquired where I was from, and upon learning my situation, she repeatedly apologised—“I am so, so, so very sorry!”

“Can I say something?,” she asked; “Sure, go ahead,” I replied.

“F*** putin! F*** putin!”

I chuckled, and nodded my head (it’s not just his war, I told her—there are many, many others who support this unprovoked, nonsensical aggression) and we launched into conversations about collective and generational traumas, our shared medical conditions, and how she had wanted to learn the russian language as a kid (her grandparents were from Ukraine—she recalled how they extremely opposed russia.)

“So much pain, unnecessary wars, terrorism… and many, many more instances—they would be greatly reduced if the world worked on ending generational traumas…” I lamented. “Traumatised individuals and nations, the cycles keep going.”

“Yes indeed!” Blue replied. “I once worked with traumatised students and I instructed each of them take turns to shake a can of Coca-Cola to indicate the level of trauma they experienced. One by one they shook the can; and then what happens when you try to open the can at the end? All that built-up trauma…!”

Blue headed towards the museum after our long chat; and as she stood on the bridge of the first canal, bid me goodbye. After Amsterdam, she will continue on to Italy where, together with her girlfriend, they will explore the country for a month.

As I stood up to leave the café, I zip-up my jacket. I catch a glimpse of the little crocheted sunflower I had pinned on my jacket collar—striking with its yellow and blue colours against the dark black fabric.

Present morning, the trains continue rumbling past in the background, constant processions of blues and yellows. Sometimes they’re red and white (the German Deutsche Bahn), sometimes burgundy and grey (the French-Belgian Thalys.)

But mostly they’re blue and yellow, yellows and blues, blue and yellow, yellows, yellow, blues, blue…eastwards, westwards, northwards, southwards they go, and on and on they continue.