I went to the Rai Center this morning to help my new friends Chris and Ben install their booth at the International Broadcasting Conference. We started the day building a table. Chris had mocked up the design on a computer program, and they had the wood pre-cut at the hardware store. Assembly went fairly quick. The boys went out to buy a projector to display video in the booth, while I stayed behind to work on signage. I was given the task of making a 3-d logo. I walked around the trade show and picked up scraps for the other vendors trash piles. I came up with corrugated and non corrugated cardboard, as well as some quarter inch MDF. I thought MDF would look best, so I set to applying the logo to the board. Chris had a template already drawn on paper for the logo, so I applied double stick tape to the back, and fixed it to the MDF. From there I began cutting through the MDF layers with a blade and a handsaw. It was slow work and by the time Ben and Chris arrived back, I'd only finished cutting about a third of the logo out. We switched from MDF to the non-corrugated cardboard with good success. It came time to paint the cardboard letters, so I took out my gouache. I realized I'd made a mistake when I saw an example of their logo- it was green. The night prior, Chris was painting another logo, which we didn't end up using, and I perceived the paint color as yellow for one reason or another. I brought my set of gouache, but made sure to leave out blues and greens, as I thought not to even risk mixing that hue. The mistake realized, I decided to make a dash to the art store to buy yellow-green, lemon yellow, and sky blue gouache. Back at the Rai, Chris and Ben had the projector working. I mixed the logo color and painted their 3-D sign, then Chris projected the logo on the wall for me to trace, and paint. We were flirting with the clock towards the end, and we wrapped it up right on time. I was happy with the way I painted today. Ben introduced me to the vendors next-door as Kemeys, the artist, which felt good.
Dunia, Anna and I went for a long walk. I brought several candles and a box of matches. Outside of the house we met a gentleman and his lady friend who were looking for Dam Square. Dunia and I pointed them in the right direction. While we were talking, I was playing with a match in my pocket, casually dragging the sulfuric end across the strike strip on the box. The Gentleman, his lady friend and I realized that the match had lit at about the same time. I jolted my hand out of my pocket which I believe introduced some more air into the mix. Black smoke trailed out from my jean pocket. I beat at the pocket until the burning sensation subsided. I felt like a cartoon, but my burned finger did not.
Injuries aside, the walk was beautiful. We lit candles along the way, leaving them strategically in areas that might invoke wonder or romance in passers by. I lit one for a couple at a cafe, who were enjoying a bottle of wine. Dunia lit one on a lonely bench. Anna lit one and placed it in a recession in a sculpture. We must have visited a dozen playgrounds throughout the city, which unlike american playgrounds felt wholesome and made with genuine materials. It seems that I harbor some bitterness towards American plygrounds because of years of static shocks from ployesther and plastic slides, splinters from cheap wood, and burns from metal exposed to too much sunlight.
We got lost in the outskirts of the old city, and spent a couple hours finding our bearings. We found a sandbox playground and built an alter out of sand. We lit our last candle together as an offering for guidance home. We called out to Vla, which is a delicious puding-like food, (and a staple for dutch junkies we later learned). We arrived back home safely.
