Mneme

As I wrote earlier, our summer cottage burned down in July as a result of a massive thunderstorm. In my opinion it was nothing more or nothing less than the best place in the world (probably alongside Braemar).  Everything save a few stones, a gas stove and a sauna stove was gone. For decades the cottage had been the dearest summer retreat for my family and some of my best memories are from there. Forty-five years of perfection, that’s what it was.

I don’t easily become attached to material things but significant places tend to be very important to me – I find it both strange and wonderful to stand on a certain spot and recall being at the very same place precisely one year ago. An experience like that gives time a completely new perspective; it includes both permanence and change, both time and timelessness. It is to see something that is the same and yet different but also to be the same and yet different. The feeling is similar to the one I have when looking up to the sky in November and seeing the same constellations that were invisible during the bright summer nights. They’re the same though the time and place of perception are different. That very feeling I also had every time I steered our little boat to the strand and saw our cottage for the first time after winter.

If I had to name a few things I consider the most essential about the cottage I would probably include at least my grandfather’s old fishing hat, the old-fashioned coffee jars and the sauna on the list. Those things among many others made the cottage what it was. However, there is one thing I think I value even more and that is the smell. The cottage was old and its smell was a mixture of humidity and warmth of the burning wood in the sauna. Funnily enough the one thing I consider most important is the one I cannot recall. If I close my eyes I see the cottage and remember exactly what it looked like but of the smell I have no memory. It is such pity for that particular memory I'd love to have and I think memories are an endless source for imagination – why else would one of the three muses be called Mneme?

Normally people attempt to choose pictures that are somehow consistent with the text. In this case, once again, there is no connection. Please don't waste your time trying to find one.