On the same day, at the same time, perhaps in the same train, exactly a year later, just as I was expecting to find it: the same orange Dutch sun rises above the dusty blue clouds of dawn.

The canal houses, leaning ever closer, nod me on along Zeedijk to my hotel at Nieumarkt square. How long I have longed to find myself once again, now, in the graces of this surreal city.

After a light plate of hummus and sun dried tomatoes at Singel 404, just near Caffe Hoppe, I make my way over to the Plantage neighborhood. Playing the student, I wander into a bookshop next to the UvA and read Burrough's Junkie and a bit of Max Havelaar and afterward take note of this weekend's screenings (which tastefully include Happiness) at the Kriterion cinema. The hypnotic escalator of nearby Weesperplein metro turns round and round like a film reel. In a nearby sousplex I spy a black horse being groomed and just above in a salon a Harley dangling from the ceiling. Amsterdam.

Back at the hotel far from the deafening frequencies of a Parisian weekday, the afternoon light dispersed by the bedroom curtain lends itself perfectly to introspection. From the sill I observe the passer-by, pondering their pasts and problems and potential. Boys in the throes of youth clustered together, stoned, booze in tow. Oblivious to the sunset, sweating through their sweaters. There is always an odd one out, a little pudgy, to whom the others have been relentless. The American tourist with a sachet of tulip bulbs, discovering her ancestors' land. The French girl falling out of the neighboring coffeeshop. Lots of students in their salad days with dyed hair, heather grey sweatshirts, pleather bags and a high percentage of nylon in their clothes. And that ubiquitous leopard scarf - how reassuring to see others still wearing it, just to know that this is still the same moment, that there is still time to decide, to wholly accept or refute it. And a swan keeping watch over us all.

Below, the canal is a fine reflective membrane, smooth, then wavering into a nervous jitter, then succumbing to vertigo, sifting and stretching about the light. Folding into itself, then contracting. A parked car turns on its lights, sending a cascade of fireworks into the water.

All the churches chime together. The rosy golden light of the morning. The porcelain white fat of the arm on the wrinkled pillow smells of milk and ham.

In Zuidoost, a Dutch mother nestles her offspring in the pannier of her bakfiet, pedals through midday traffic and shows me into the haven of Sarphati Park, where children of every size and colour play together. A block away, at Albert Cuypmarkt, I buy a box of strong Dutch chaï and stroopwafels before lunching in De Pijp beside three Dutch blondes with delicious masculine rasps.

Back on wheels, I wander through the Vondelpark, where I cross an entire nursery aboard a bakfiet and a white dog, fluffy and rolling like a summer cloud. After a rain-induced stop at the Eye film library on the outskirts of the park, I am finally in the Jordaan, when I am overcome by a mad urge: to the sea! Up, up, up Prisengracht, past Haarlemmerdijk, through Westerpark, two 90 degree drawbridges later and I find myself before Silodam, a building seemingly made of stacked colourful containers navigating the port. After climbing the wooden slabs into the sky, I find myself on an immense floating balcony. The GVB ferries shuttle to and fro, the bright yellow Scandinavian vessel becomes ever lighter with each container lifted from it. The angular Eye film institute resembles Oslo's opera house. In ten minutes' time, a storm has brewed. I take refuge under a bridge, the rain beating down, when I feel an eerie warmth. Behind me a glossy-eyed tramp takes one step closer and, with a shiver, I start back on my way, eventually stopping for a screening of Detachment at The Movies.

Post-film, I manage to squeeze in the rush hour cycling commute, being on the same plane, bound by the same empirical laws, a shared conversation and one wrong move away from a mangled mess.

On Dam square, I contemplate workers who are paid so little to entertain fussy clothes worth so little and yet this is the way of the world.

Past the bust of Spinoza, up and over the drawbridges east of the city hall, across the matte cityscape, absinthe spills out from an œil de bœuf window onto the silky canal pulled ever higher by the moon. Appearing just like a vision, neon lines emerge from ink. I soar ahead into an expanse where everything is known, eventually stopping for a quick bite at the Bar Lempicka and then into the threshold of the Kriterion for a screening of Moonrise Kingdom. Falling out of the cinema into laughter, smoke clouds and the warm nicotine light, my heart catches in my chest as I taste the chilly September air.

Good pub conversation over a pint of Kilkenny, going higher and higher, each matching the other, onward. Suddenly feeling move inside what has been latent for so long. Passively inhaling a pack over the course of the evening, waving in the others to use our vacant tray. Where will you be when you are older? Sitting beside you on a bottle green bench, still peeling apart leaves of grass. That the debate about whether to pursue a creative profession really is not. In the end people will do whatever they are capable of doing. The truth needn't be furthered or marketed or dissected, merely pursued. Picking at beer nuts in a little porcelain ramequin. What do you want people to feel? Nothing less than the high of that conversation. Of that film, how the wind on your arm doesn't feel the same after. The bliss of permeating the soft porcelain belly of the idea and the warm rush of omniscience that follows.

After a farewell dinner at Frenzi (oude Kaas met brood en quince) and a bit of browsing vintage military parkas, I am once again in the Thalys with Phoenix (Rome) blaring in my ears. My crimson scarf matches the seats in composition, colour, texture, philosophy. So, Amsterdam. Like the autumn, I wait for it and conceptualize it all year and once back to the Gare du Nord and the cinnamon leaves turned brittle, how suddenly irrelevant it becomes, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

We are not per se nostalgic about places but about who we were at that given point of convergence with the representation. I had, knew I had, to be there, exactly then, to revel in that convergence, to fully exhaust that idealism, to bundle it, to see it laid bare before me, to finally hold it moist in my palm, unclench my fist and let it float away with the certainty that the pursuit can continue.