Sitting on the porch of a tiny little cabin in a rural area of southern Finland. It is currently those days in June, The days of the midnight sun. So when I couldn’t sleep last night and looked out of my window at close to midnight, it was still light.
Now it is 10.30 in the morning and I sit, with my second mug of tea, in the warm sunshine and under blue skies grazed with the odd linear cloud and the sounds around me are huge.
Loud enough to be motorway nearby, or an airplane approaching a runway overhead, but it is neither of those things.
It is leaves on trees.
There is an occasional bird fighting for a moment in the sun and a bee whistling by.
But, truly, it is just leaves shimmering away, high in the air, swaying around in the wind.
There are apple trees in clusters in front of me. A grape vine being trained over a black trellis. An odd pine.
But the orchestral dance is being performed by the silver birches. That are left and right, behind and in front of me. Fifty foot up into the air.
And I am reminded that I am in a country whose closest neighbour is Russia. Which I am sure must weigh very heavily on them at the moment. Because for a hundred years they were Russian after Sweden had taken hold the previous two centuries. Sweden is the second official language in Finland. And for many of the areas, except in the east, all road signs are in two languages. Swedish first, Finnish second.
Circling back to Russia, the sounds remind of lines from those Chekhov plays that I read, saw, performed in.
Dear modest birches, I like them more than any other tree. I love living here.
And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: "God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?”
if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride .......
And I remember a production of the Cherry Orchard, that surely had Ian McKellen in it , where the set was just an army of silver birches, that the characters used to hide and weave and eventually some chose to escape from.
div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
I live in a relatively quiet place. I can sometimes hear the waves hitting the beach when tides are high at the end of a night. But there is often a hum of the motorway, or a car alarm. A plane. A crazy in the street yelling at no one. The crows making a plan for domination of the telephone wires.
I think it is quiet. But being here in this oh-so-green place. With millions of leaves chattering around me I know what diving into one sound means.
It has a purity. It will be always louder than any thought.
Love reading your blogs, sounds amazing. miss you
ReplyDelete