| De Kunst van Het Overbruggen III |
| Thank goodness, the ban has been lifted. Not that the dog would know or even care, but we need some outlet or other for our obsessive-compulsive neuroses. The relief is overwhelming, although it is of course true that abandoning an ideal implies ditching a concern, and vice versa. It's uncannily like realism in painting, where they've been parroting the same thing for the past several years, whereas the [channels? Canals?] remain blissfully unaware or just sit there glaring back at you in reproachful silence. And so we will need to remain tactful in our dealings with those wonderful clamouring laypersons according to whom it's okay once more until this has been carved in stone. I would suggest that a modicum of indulgence vis-à-vis illiterate dogs would be a good start. |
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Many moons ago, when I was still at university as well as making fledgling
attempts at getting what has since evolved into this gallery off the ground,
skips used to be most grateful objects of my explorations. To this day I've
continued championing the cause of knocking up one's own bucolic furniture
using those bare wide floorboards that keep being mercilessly tossed aside
in the endless renovations taking place in townhouses all along the
Amsterdam canals. As a concerned citizen I was very much aware of the legal implications the above even though the lectures I attended dealt with different aspects of the law. For starters there's the council regulations, which stipulate that title to any and all refuse left out in the street rests with the municipality: hands off, in other words. This probably explains how during my 25 years of purveyorship on Vijzelgracht, where an unforeseen aerodynamic phenomenon relentlessly caused every piece of litter from the maze of surrounding streets to be blown onto the outside steps to my basement, I developed a full-blown obsession which to this day makes it quite difficult for me not to shout out to drivers emptying ash trays through open car windows while waiting for the lights to change: "Careful, you've just signed over your butts!". Second, there's the aspect of it obviously not being the done thing to dump one's rubbish in a skip that someone else is paying through the nose for. Which brings us more or less to the third point: say you've spotted a splendid chunk of wood in a skip that you've just chucked a sackful of your own personal waste in, what would you say to the two constables inquiring what sir thinks sir is doing? Several options spring to mind, the most rational of which would be for you to explain that you are in the process of effecting a swap: fresh waste in, old waste out. Whether that would do the trick would depend on the officers' familiarity with council regulations, in other words: would they know what is and is not an offence? If they know that all waste belongs to the municipality, that leaves you empty-handed. If they take the side of the person whose skip it is, they will tell you to retrieve your waste and clear off. I decided to appeal to their community sense and said, It's such a waste to throw this stuff away, pointing at the rubbish I had just thrown in. But fair's fair, I continued, so I've just added this bit here, pointing at the object of my desire, hoping that this would enable me with an angelic smile to comply with the strong arm's curt order to remove same which this might prompt. Both constables heaved a weary sigh. In line with ancient Amsterdam tradition, I retraced my steps five minutes later. |