CONTEXT: A post about my visit to Europe in 2016. ‘The Night Watch’ mentioned here is one of Rembrandt’s greatest paintings, referred to in depth in other online posts (which I may re-post here later) from my trip. I’d decided to return to the U.S. via Amsterdam explicitly to see it, at the city’s Rijksmuseum.

How very ordinary this renowned building looked, as if to emphasize Fate’s apparent indifference to the desperate fear, wrenching malice and now sorrow forever it has seen. I got here soon after viewing ‘The Night Watch’; a summit and an abyss of human endeavor – creativity and calculated cruelty – separated by a brief walk, yet from different worlds.

The relative nearness of this poignant shrine of barbarism to Rembrandt’s sublime intimations of what it is to be human called to mind the grinding of the tectonic plate of the Self’s will to power against that of its will to create, and to love. Never in Europe was I more aware of that primordial friction than as I stood before this door.

I would have liked to go inside, but hadn’t made the needed pre-reservation to do so. Instead, sentiments like those above flowed out of me here as silent, unbidden prayers.