Amsterdam, Holland
When I was about thirteen, back in New York City, my mother gave me a notebook to write in. I don’t remember anything about it — how it was bound, whether the lines were narrow or wide — or even what I wrote in it. But I do remember that journal being the beginning of a habit that has lasted more than five decades. It wasn’t the kind of diary where one might keep a record of things done and people seen; it was a journal in which I recorded my thoughts. Or, more often, my fears and hopes. I seldom wrote when I was happy; I was too busy enjoying life to stop and write. More often, it was about something difficult — my mother’s drinking, problems with a boyfriend, my hopes and fears. I’ve lost most of the journals I kept between that first one and my mid-twenties — I moved around too much, from New York City to San Francisco and back, and either lost journals or (stupidly) threw them out. But I never lost the habit. That remained. Thankfully.
I’d been a great reader for many years by then, graduating from fairy tales to mythology and the Chronicles of Narnia in second grade, and by my early teens I was reading much longer and meatier books (the Dialogues of Plato; Mary, Queen of Scots; the Brothers Karamazov, Rimbaud’s poetry). But it was writing that gave me tools to look inside, to understand myself. Writing, for me, was a kind of mindfulness practice. It helped me understand what I was feeling, and why.
In this blog, I’ll write about the writing life, my favorite writers and books I’m reading, and about writing as mindfulness practice. About what it’s like to live in Amsterdam, and the differences between life in Europe and back in the United States. I’ll write about Buddhism and the Stoic philosophers I admire. About parenthood and marriage and friendship. I’ll write about what I learned about making a meaningful life from the botanical garden my husband and I planted and tended. And about our travels, of course.
As a scientist who worked in evolution and genomics, and as an identical twin, I have a lot to say about the perspective this background provides on what it means to be human and the old nature-vs-nurture argument. That life in science, and almost twenty years as a professor at UC Berkeley will also show up in this blog, with pieces about academia and life in the ivory tower, and what it’s like to be a woman in a male-dominated field. Life can sometimes be difficult, but it’s never boring!
One last note, about the title for this blog: Before New York City was taken over by the British, it was colonized by the Dutch and christened “New Amsterdam.” I’ve always said that you can take the New Yorker out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the New Yorker. And now, after four years of living in Amsterdam, I’m only beginning to scratch the surface of what the capital city of the Netherlands is all about. I’m a new Amsterdammer, and a New Amsterdammer, and I suspect I’ll always be.
Amsterdam canal, Jordaan district
Amsterdam rooftops with Noorderkerk
Westelijke Eilanden houseboats and 17th C. warehouses from the Dutch Golden Age.