In Albert Camus’ novel The Fall, the
protagonist says: “ Are you staying long in Amsterdam? A beautiful city, isn’t
it? Fascinating? There’s an adjective I haven’t heard in some time.”
Amsterdam, most people will have trouble
labeling the city under a single category.
It is a dilemma, a mystery that is not easy to
explain, but at the same time it is charming and welcoming. It is the welcoming
nature of the city that makes it one of the favourite destinations for any kind
of traveller.
Amsterdam has more than one hundred kilometers
of canals. The three main canals, Herengracht,
Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht, dug in the 17th century during the Dutch
Golden Age, form concentric belts around the city, known as the Grachtengordel.
The canal ring area were listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010,
contributing to Amsterdam's fame as the "Venice of the North".
The protagonist in The Fall says about the
canals: “How beautiful the canals are this evening! I like the breath of
stagnant waters, the smell of dead leaves soaking in the canal and the funereal
scent rising from the barges loaded with flowers. No, no, there’s nothing
morbid about such a taste, I assure you. On the contrary, it’s deliberate with
me. The truth is that I force myself to admire these canals.”
Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands
although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam's
name derives from Amstelredamme, indicating the city's origin around a dam in
the river Amstel.
The Dam Square lies in the historical center
of Amsterdam, its notable buildings and frequent events make it one of the most
well-known and important locations in the city and the country. Dam Square is Amsterdam’s beating heart.
Nowadays Dam Square in contrast with the old days it is now a very peaceful
square which is home to scores of pigeons and street performers.
It is
roughly rectangular in shape, stretching about 200 meters from west to east and
about 100 meters from north to south. It links the streets Damrak and Rokin,
which run along the original course of the Amstel River from Centraal Station
to Muntplein (Mint Square) and the Munttoren (Mint Tower). The Dam also marks
the endpoint of the other well-traveled streets Nieuwendijk, Kalverstraat and Damstraat.
A short distance beyond the northeast corner lies the main red-light district:
de Wallen.
On the west end of the square is the
neoclassical Royal Palace, which served as the city hall from 1655 until its
conversion to a royal residence in 1808. Beside it are the 15th-century Gothic
Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) and the Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.
Today the square is also a venue for mass
events, fun fairs and pantomime artists. Join the locals and relax at the base
of the National Monument while listening to street organs. Chase the pigeons
and dodge the many cyclists when you cross the square to go shopping or explore
some of the historical buildings.
He stays in Hôtel
du Poirier on the rue Ravignan on top one of Paris’s Montmatre hills. The site
is one of the most picturesque in Paris, however his hotel room is dark and
empty, it has only a table to write on.
It is is easy to
understand how in this dark room, “ one feels like a stranger, hearing the
sounds of a city that has suddenly become strange. I am not from here—not from
anywhere else either. And the world has become merely an unknown landscape
where my heart can lean on nothing”, so he wrote on his notebook.
That morning he
looked relaxed and greeted me with a warm handshake. The television broadcasted
loudly the celebration of France World Cup Team at the Champ Elysees. The crowd
seemed to be excitedly drunk in paradise with France flag waving seen
everywhere. It seemed that he had been watching the celebration on the
television before I knocked on his door.
Knowing him as a
passionate football fan, I then said to him:
“ Congratulations
for France winning the World Cup for the second time, you must be very excited
about it.”
His big eyes
gleamed and he smiled broadly:
“Indeed I am so
proud of them. I can see the diligent planning, the hard work, the relentless
discipline and the brilliance of the young striker Kylian Mbappé, the fast
midfielder Paul Pogba and the unwavering defense of N’Golo Kanté, Raphaël
Varane and Samuel Umtiti. Great team work, that’s what football is all about.And also as what their trainer Deschamps
said:“We did not play a huge game but
we showed mental quality, and we scored four goals anyway.” Good job.”
I said:
“ I heard of your
great enthusiasm with football, once you were asked to choose Football or Theatre,
you answered football without hesitation.”
Albert:
“Yes when I was
young I played as goal keeper for the Racing University of Algiers, we won the
North African Champion Cup that time. I learned from football about the sense
of team spirit, fraternity and common purpose, it is a great way to learn.
After many years which I saw many things, what I know most surely about
morality and duty of man I owed to this sport.”
I said:
“Well said
Albert,I can feel your intense enthusiasm
and engagement with football,your great
appreciation of football, which is in such a striking contrast with the feeling
of emptiness, alienation, indifference in most of the novels you wrote. For
instance in contract with your euphoria
of the World Cup, listen to what you wrote in the opening of The Stranger which
became one of the famous opening in literature: “Mother died today, or maybe
yesterday, I don’t know.”
Albert:
“I spent many
summer days at the popular beach Les Sablettes, in Algiers. I lived in
destitution during my childhood but also in a kind of sensual delight, enjoying
swimming, sunshine, sand and football. I am a Mediterranean man, with a healthy
body worshipping beauty and the body like the ancient Greeks. I was placed
midway between misery and the sun. Misery stopped me from believing that all is
well under the sun. and in history; the sun taught me that history isn’t
everything.
My teenage
exciting life were cut short when, at the age of 17, doctors diagnosed
tuberculosis. Constantly short of breath, I was forced to abandon a promising
football career, and would suffer relapses throughout my life.
At the age of 27
I left Algiers for Paris after losing my job when the Alger républicain
newspaper ceased publication. I had a job at Paris-Soir newspaper that paid
three thousand francs a month for five hours of work a day, all in an unfamiliar
setting. My work at Paris-Soir newspaper was uninteresting, I was in charge of
laying out page four, organizing a mish-mash of columns and typeface. Whether I
worked a day or a night shift, I would come back to my dark hotel room in
Montmartre. One day, from atop Montmartre I saw Paris as a monstrous fog
beneath the rain, a city that felt both crowded and empty, and where my heart
could lean on nothing. I would always look at Paris with a stranger’s eyes.”
I said:
“ Nevertheless in
that dark hotel room in Montmartre you wrote your famous novel The Stranger,
the novel with the famous opening, about Meursault who experiences the detached feeling
from reality making him feel as a stranger in his home town in Algiers. The story
has a very strong absurdism flavour, the
feeling of entirely cut-off from others, listless, affectless, alienated, and
the lack of meaning of life. What is absurdism to you?”
Albert:
“On the day of
his mother’s funeral procession in Marengo, the most intense feeling he has is
the strong heat, the unbearable glare from the sky, which made him feel the
blood veins pounding in his temples. His mother’s funeral itself does not have
any meaning, he doesn’t weep, he doesn’t care to see the body of his mother in
the casket for the last time.
The return
journey to Algiers after the funeral seems almost like a relief for him. Back
in Algiers he decides to go to swimming and met Marie Cardona at the pool, then
they swim together, in the eveningthey watch
a Fernadel comedy movie and make love in bed later in the night.
However, the next
evening he says from his balcony: “Another Sunday gone, mother buried, tomorrow
back to work, and, really, nothing at all has changed.”
I said:
“This “Mediterranean”
outlook anchors your views to the place you grew up and to evoke its sense of
harmony and appreciation of physical life. Sun tanned bodies enjoying the beaches and the
sun of Algeria, swimming, playing football, drinking and girls. In contract to that sunny life of Algiers, Meursault says about Paris as “a dingy sort of
town, to my mind. Masses of pigeons and dark courtyards. And the people have
washed-out, white faces.”
Yet the same blinding
sun as on the day he buried his mother, which gave him pain especially in his forehead
, and all of the veins pulsating together beneath the skin, the same brightness
and heat of the sun like that caused him to shoot an Arab to death for no other
apparent reason than the unnerving brightness and heat.
It gives the
impression that while Meursault while enjoying life under the Mediterranean
sun,on the other hand the intense
blinding sun caused him to fail to make him make sense of his mother’s funeral,
and the same blinding sun gives him no other reason to shoot the Arab to death.
Is this why you
titled the novel as The Stranger, living the Mediterranean life intensely, enjoying
the sun, brown bodies naked on beaches, dancing girls with perspiration, yet detached, indifferent and outcast from
life? ”
Albert, citing his
novel The Fall:
“ I am here
without being here: I was absent at the moment when I took up the most space. I have never
been really sincere and enthusiastic except when I used to indulge in sports,
and in the army, when I used to act in plays we put on for our own amusement.
In both cases there was a rule of the game, which was not serious but which we
enjoyed taking as if it were. Even now, the Sunday matches in an overflowing
stadium, and the theatre, which I loved with the greatest passion, are the only
places in the world where I feel innocent.
But who would
consider such an attitude legitimate in the face of love, death, and the wages
of the poor? Yet what can be done about it? I could imagine the love of Isolde
only in novels or on the stage. At times people on their deathbed seemed to me
convinced of their roles. The lines spoken by my poor clients always struck me
as fitting the same pattern. Whence, living among men without sharing their
interests, I could not manage to believe in the commitments I made. I was
courteous and indolent enough to live up to what was expected of me in my
profession, my family, or my civic life, but each time with a sort of
indifference that spoiled everything.
I lived my whole
life under a double code, and my most serious acts were often the ones in which
I was the least involved.”
I said:
“At the closing
of the The Stranger, Meursault facing his death penalty under the guillotine acknowledges that
existence is meaningless, yet he now rejoices in the sheer sensation of being
alive.”
Albert, citing
Meursault:
“ And I, too,
felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger
had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky
spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my
heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like
myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I
was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all
that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a
huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of
execration.”
THE END
This is an
imaginary interview in memory of Albert Camus.
The Ding Jia He Park located in front of
the government building of Huangdao is a reflection of Feng Shui principles
that is the traditional Chinese art that determines the placement of objects to
enhance the natural yin/yang balance.
Feng Shui which literally means
"wind" and "water" emphasizes general geographic
orientation, such as the relationship to nearby mountains or bodies of water.
The principle of Feng Shui relates to
the flow of energies in nature. The ideal orientation of a building, is facing
out to sea, lake or river with a mountain behind , which also gives the best
view and a cooling breeze.
Indeed the beautiful Ding Jia He park with
the flowing river water and cooling breeze, gives the feeling of the flowing nature
energies to the Government Building.
The Ding Jia He Park design, expressing the
Chinese art of landscape design, focuses on the careful blending of nature with
man-made structures. The delicate balancing of four main elements of Feng Shui to
create a harmonious environment where yin and yang energies compliment and
contrast in beautiful results in a sensual and spiritual experience for the
visitors.
The Four Elements of Feng Shui incorporated
in Chinese garden and park design are:
Water - Represents the Yin energy (cool,
soft) that is the living pulse of the
Garden.
Stone - Balancing the Yin Energy of the water, rock formations represent
mountains and Yang Energy (warm, hard).
Plants - Symbols of human qualities such as
endurance (pines), flexibility (bamboo) and purity (lotus) are incorporated
into Chinese Garden Design through careful plant selections.
Architecture - Arrangement of the buildings
within the Chinese Garden is focused on creating spaces that enhance the garden
design, plants and beautiful views.
We can see the four main elements
above in the Ding Jia He park and enjoy the beauty expecially in spring and summer.
This park is one of the best park in Huangdao. Huangdao which means "yellow island" in Chinese is a
district of Qingdao, Shandong province, in China.
Spring is one of the most popular times to visit China, and
it’s easy to understand why. The weather is warming, the leaves are budding on
the trees, and change is in the air.
In late March to April Sakura is blooming in many places in China,
including Huangdao. The splendid sakura always impress visitors with its
beauty, in variety of collors which range from white to pink.
In China, the sakura flower is associated with female beauty
and dominance, as well as feminine sexuality. It ultimately symbolizes power
and strength. The flower also symbolizes
love, which is known as maintaining a feminized emotion.
So if you come to Huangdao in spring you will be able to
enjoy the beautiful sakura blooming in the city.
Huangdao which means "yellow island" in Chinese is a
district of Qingdao, Shandong, China, located southwest and west of the main
urban area of the city on the western shore of Jiaozhou Bay.
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