Every day is a rich experience

Every day is a rich experience, full of beauty and people and places and new learnings.

I'm presently staying in a beautiful corner of Amsterdam. It's actually a vast squat on an unused industrial site. Two large factory buildings are now a gigantic living art installation. Strange metal sculptures adorn the green spaces that surround the factories. People here love to weld. The canals of Amsterdam surround the green spaces, including the great long one that leads to the sea. And yes, there are dikes everywhere. I'm sleeping on one tonight.

Welcoming Mongolian yurts (a type of round tent that you can live in all year round) are made here, and a handful stay to be lived in. Yurts have become my favourite kind of tent to live in.

There's a large dock with several piers on one side of the site, right next to the gardens. Some people make their own boats here, and there are many other boat-dwellers docked here for repairs or just living here. There are quite a few caravans, buses and trailers dotted about. And not a few home-made wooden shacks, some hidden among the trees.

Tiny windmills provide electricity on the boats, and large windmills provide electricity for the city. Live music is played on violins, guitars, clarinets and a saxophone, some by passing boat-dwellers.

I came here to learn about Chinese medicine. Meridians, acupuncture, pressure points, herbs, that sort of thing. Doc is an American-Indian doctor of oriental medicine, who is teaching is much as he can to us over a series of meetings.

I also came to learn about how to handle medical emergencies - along the lines of First Aid, with an implied emphasis on what to do when you can't call an ambulance or the nearest treatment is hours away. Or the police and/or soldiers won't let you get to proper medical facilities. (Shocking, but I have a friend this happened to recently).

On the first night, I watched a man die.

From the bar, we heard the sound of police sirens. My first thought was to run out and follow the sound - were we going to be attacked and perhaps evicted tonight?¹ I wanted to witness things unfold, and to fetch and protect my own posessions if necessary.

I saw an ambulance and a couple of police cars. (Inexplicably, a fire engine turned up some time later.) The presence of an ambulance made it clear this was a medical matter, and not an eviction.

Rushing to the scene of action, there was a small crowd gathering around a man on the ground, lying on his back, the contents of his stomach leaking through his mouth and nearby on the ground. The medical crew were inserting syringes and tubes, and heart sensors were quickly in place. Much time was spent with medics taking turns to do CPR - that thing where you press on a person's chest repeatedly to stimulate the heart and maintain blood pressure to the brain.

Eventually he died. We all saw and heard the heart monitor flatline. The change to his colour which was already beginning at his hands and lips spread through his chest. His limbs flopped, grey and lifeless, as his body was covered.

At first it looked like perhaps a drug overdose, but the prevailing explanation soon became that he jumped off the roof of the factory, and landed on his back. He was bleeding through his mouth (although that was cleaned by the time I arrived) and had signs of impact injury behind his head, apparently, although there wasn't any blood around him.

It will be a few weeks before people here know for sure how he died. It is clear that he committed suicide, though, from the note he left in his trailer.

Didi, 36, was a troubled soul of late. He was also known for his cheerfulness and support, and much loved in this community. There is now a beautiful shrine where he died. A fire which will be kept burning there for 49 days, in the Tibetan tradition to help a soul makes it transition to the next world (particularly a suicidal soul). A prayer from the Tibetan Book of the Dead is said daily. A garden has been planted with flowers and fresh soil close to the concrete where he lay. Candles and oil lamps light the many vases of flowers which are laid near the fire. His picture, and it is a very pleasant picture, rests at the centre of the shrine.

I ponder the significance of life and death.

I ponder the significance of life and death. Of mortality, and how it brings people together and illuminates the important things in life.

Of the many thoughts I've had since then, this comes to mind: Out here, in this place where people live without the amenities of city life, without houses or shops, and without the security of believing they can stay indefinitely - a man dies, and everyone brings flowers, creates a special place to remember him, makes sure all his friends and family are told, and comfort one another.

There are ceremonies, especially drums as he taught drumming, and pictures of him in happier times are projected.

If I were to die, at home in Bristol, or travelling, there would be no shrine. My closest family - my sister, mother, grandmother, uncles and perhaps father would come to pay their respects and dispose of my body. But they wouldn't know how to honour my beliefs, because they don't know what they are.

Most of my friends would not learn of it for weeks, months, perhaps years. Most of my friends don't know each other or have contact details, and my family doesn't know how to contact my friends. Even my friends who have been lovers wouldn't be told - and these are the people who've meant more to me than anyone.²

I was once asked to imagine my own funeral. What would I want people to say? It's clear now: people being there at all, other than my immediate family, would be a great achievement. If anything would touch me in my dead state, that would. Anything more is a bonus.

At the pinnacle of achievement, far beyond what I could expect, I'd love my friends to talk with each other, and to listen to each other's stories, and to comfort one another as they came to lay their candles and flowers, and to gain something from each other of value to their lives. To remember my spirit between them and weave the best of it into the fabric of their futures.

It is clear that me and my friends, all of whom I do not see more often than occasionally, do not comprise a community. I see community here on a long-lived (yet temporary) squat in Amsterdam, and compare it with my irksome, lonely city life in Bristol. The setting is new, but the comparison isn't.

I am told the paradox of this beautiful place is that, because people know it is not permanent, they do not build fences. If they knew they could stay for 20 years, they would begin laying fences immediately. One man said that he has only found the magic that is here on squats.

Perhaps the universe is giving me a hint again. :)