Giants Again, a prelude (from another table, back in Amsterdam)

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I’VE WOKEN EARLY to blackbird song. I’ll be bleary until the coffee cuts in. Partly because it’s familiar, because I’m returning, the table at which I sit in this studio feels perfect. “Oh, you’re in the little one,” someone later remarks about the flat. It’s size hadn’t occurred to me; studio D may not have the commanding vantage of (my beloved) studio G, just above, it’s true. But what matters is that, somehow, I’m back.

I’m overlooking the garden again, taking in the early Dutch light.

There’s nothing going on in the adjacent flats, nothing doing either across their bedlam of balconies, though the couple, top left, have left out their laundry again. The bells of the Zuiderkerk will sound soon enough. And people will file solemnly into the meeting room straight across and fill the whiteboards with coloured scribbles. Daily rhythms will resume.

But for now it’s just the blackbirds and me.

When I lived here, in the first half of 2024, a predominant songster I named “Dirk” punctuated my days. He’d commence his singing before dawn and, with interruptions to see to his other urgent affairs, he’d still be at it in the evening.

I sensed he was checking in on me, on me and my pages.

“Dirk” the Blackbird looking in on Studio G. Amsterdam, NL. May 2024.

But fast forward to early summer of 2025: was the blackbird ruling the garden’s rooftops now, my beloved “Dirk”? And could that be “Bente,” too, browner in plumage, still doing most of the nest-work, swooping in more adventurously than her mate for food?

The average life expectancy of the Eurasian blackbird (turdus merula) in the wild is shy of two and a half years, I learn with a grimace. But, I read on, some individuals, have been known to live to twenty-one. What with his back garden and the succour of an occasional Indonesian meal, I reckon that my Dirk would be among the exceptions. The scars and chips on what was before his unusually resplendent orange beak suggest his endurance, turf wars nearly lost. Songs to sing, tales to tell.

SPEAKING OF SONGS and tales, I’m reading about giants at my table. Thinking about why and how and where giants exist and have persisted. The giants who were “discovered,” imagined and otherwise thought about in South America pertain to my historical writing. But as with most things related to my job, things turn out to be more complicated. The giants prove multitudinous, and more diverse of origin and trajectory than I expected.

I’ve soon expanded beyond the printed materials brought to Amsterdam in my suitcase. I’m combing sources online, in libraries and bookstores.

An excursion to the western highlands in Scotland with loved ones uncovers still more giants. Hill giants, valley giants, lowland mountain giants, piratical giants upon the sea, giants guarding island fortresses.

Back at my table in Amsterdam, serenaded by blackbirds and church bells, precious time becomes immeasurable again, and my affinity for giants can unfurl. One fragment of text and experience leads to another, each author in turn —just like me— reporting what they find and inventing what they need.

I start seeing people who look as if they could be the descendants of giants from long ago. By the window in the train,

sipping a cortado and checking his mobile in the café,

guarding the doorway into a first-floor pub,

playing fiddle at the craic,

off on holiday, a giant family — angst, irrepressible pets, over-stuffed luggage, and all.

Returning is a privilege that has re-ignited my imagination from work-a-day convalescence. Amsterdam is layered, old and relentlessly new,

sublime and slightly scatty, engaged with the world and retiring from it . . .

Bookseller. Oudemanhuispoort, Amsterdam, NL. June 2025

Tucked away, unbeholden for a moment, wondering about, reading in a chair turned outwards, observing humanity’s motley parade,

catching up with generous colleagues and friends, makes me feel different things at once.

I’m a misfit, to be sure, (seemingly always) just arrived, like one my wandering giants dropping in from the past. And yet my temperament and modos de proceder —my ways of being— match up perfectly here: I’m welcomed back and can scarcely believe that such a place seems like home.

Thanks for reading and listening in to Dispatches.

* Photographs, drawings, and watercolours by Kenneth Mills

1. This piece is adapted from another, written as a reflection for the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, where I was a research fellow in the first half of 2024. I’m grateful to my hosts.