Wagon of Fools

Wagon of Fools by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot (Franz Hals Museum)

     It's not that I don't trust you. That would be nuts. I don't even know you. But my wife, well, she is convinced that if readers are aware when we go on vacation, then one will rush over and rob our house. Heck, she could be right. It is a crazy world. Things happen. And she does tend to be right. But even if she is not — and in this case, I suspect she isn't -- one secret to staying married for 33 years is to respect the  improbable concerns of your loved one. 

     So when we're away, such as our current jaunt through Denmark and the Netherlands, I try to draw the veil, and prop up the pillows of these posts to make it seem like there's a person here. 

     But now we're heading home. So unless you're very quick and grab your pry bar and your big sack and race over and start looting within the next few hours, we should be okay. (Not that I'm encouraging you to do that. We have a tight-knit, vigilant block of dog walkers and sharp-eyed, concerned people. My greatest protection is that there really isn't anything worth taking. A few nice Cooper lamps, maybe).

     That leaves me with the challenge of what to say. The past week was lined up before we departed.  But I carelessly left Friday unaccounted for, forgetting the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from marching around foreign capitals for a week. A few days ago, my wife looked at her FitBit and announced that we had logged 25,000 steps. More than 10 miles. Phew.

     So okay, writing. Mmm... There must be something, right? Observations galore, just waiting for me to blow a whistle and order them into formation. Tweeeeeet!  Line up!

     No? That didn't work. The perceptions just sprawl around the divans of the mind, gazing at me with languid torpor. 

     Can't have that. Not after biking around Copenhagen, climbing several tall towers, and seeing every painting in Amsterdam.

     Paintings like the one above, in the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem, It stood out, or at least will have to do until I can get home, drop my bags, and slide behind my iMac — provided you haven't stolen it — and organize my thoughts, which right now pretty much revolve around where to get the next herring sandwich.

      It's called "Wagon of Fools" by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot. Painted in 1640, the work is a commentary on the infamous tulip craze of 1637, when the Dutch went mad for the bright flowers, and fortunes were made ... and then lost ... on speculation in bulbs. You see the travelers drinking and counting their profits while hope — in the form of a bird — flies off. Notice the tulips on the flag, and being worn as crowns, or cuckold horns. 

     I was about to say "I hope this doesn't perfectly encapsulate our current political situation," but hope, as I like to say, is not a success strategy. And it kinda does.

      But even if it is apt, there is also a kind of comfort. Some reassurance in realizing that widespread self-destructive idiocy is not the sole property of America in 2023, though it sometimes does feel like that. We didn't invent it. Folly is a general characteristic of the human condition. The Dutch somehow muddled through their tulip craze, and managed to laugh at themselves later. Americans will somehow get past this, and even learn to laugh at ourselves. We might as well. Everybody else does.