CUCO ’88 I was walking down Calle Gerona in red high heels, a short red dress, my hair long down my back. My hotel was tucked in the old quarters and I was heading toward the center—girl on a mission. Traffic crawled, thick and impatient. The catcalls were just part of the local weather, but…
Tag: The Holographer’s Atlas
The Holographer’s Atlas
Richard Costa Blanca, 2012 Coffee with Irmy and Hans, the neighbours. Stroopwafels, Dutch television, the particular furniture of people who brought their country with them intact. I was comfortable in that atmosphere the way you’re comfortable in a language you grew up in but no longer speak every day. The doorbell announced a bridge friend…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Daan de Vylder ’98. Eight months back in the country where I was born. Not the coast—no bridges, no coffeehouses, no salt on the windows. A border village instead. Meadows, woods, a low sky that made everything feel provisional. I was in a one bar- town. For men. Jan had redone his backyard in honour…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Jan ’98 The coast I knew turned green. The disco drum turned to doves. I put my bikini in a drawer and borrowed a fur coat. I learned the village map like a religion. My sunny frontline apartment became a big old house from before the war. Empty rooms make loud ghosts. My daughter stopped…
The Holographer’s Atlas
B. Z. Projan Anima ’94 I heard him before I saw him. Not him, exactly—his acceleration, the particular growl of his engine. In a chorus of scooters, with the occasional Harley and Ducati, his Honda cut through differently—lighter, but still roaring as if it carried his spirit inside it. The blue handkerchief at his throat…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Swiebertje ’81 The first time I saw him I was ten, maybe eleven. Wild. Dark eyes. Long white mane. Tall in a way that made you reconsider your options. They said he wasn’t made for riding. I showed up anyway, with a saddle, a bridle, and no particular respect for what other people thought was…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Early Crown Benidorm / The Netherlands, 1990/91 I was walking through the garden of Arte when a waiter came to tell me there were girls asking for me. In the main hall stood Anja and Chantal, sunburned and peeling, backlit by the entrance. Arte sits past the discothèques, outside Benidorm proper — not the…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Henk en Cees — Benidorm, winter ’89 By the time Henk and Cees arrived at the Sunset, I already had a name in town. La chica de los sombreros — the girl with the hats. It had started in Ibiza, with a purple one, and grown its own legend the way nicknames do when nobody…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Maurice ’85/’91 In 1985 my mother left with Kahlil Gibran, her piano, and the ice-cold brain food she had served on a daily basis. What remained was my elderly father, a smaller house in the village, and suddenly — space. I stopped cycling thirty kilometres to school. I was tired of doing what was good…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Constant There are men who loved you and failed you in the exact way that you have others, and you file them under known coordinates and navigate accordingly. Decades pass. Children grow, postcodes change, land numbers too, bad decisions, good ones, everything in between. Coasts remain. You teach yourself to call it nostalgia whenever…
The Memory Cartographer 