Paradise Lost

Such a long break, again…

In my previous text I said something about the tiny little crack in my otherwise fine summer. I’d be repeating myself far too much if I ended up writing about it again – but it does deserve a mention. It’s been two years since our summer cottage burned down and I strongly doubt I’ll ever get used to that. That simple, modest place was the closest thing to a paradise I’ve ever known. Every time our white, tiny boat reached the bank I was filled with deepest tranquility. I used to sit on the porch for hours watching the sun go down, listening to the night, I used to go for a swim early in the morning when the world was just about to awake. I’ll never have that again. What kind of constancy is there to believe in if even paradise isn’t eternal?

Well, there are paradises of another kind.

Yes, I’m a bookworm and enjoy books as such but I’m also an escapist. Some of the places I yearn for aren’t real, and here are the ones I hold dearest:

1. Gardens of Lórien in Valinor.

‘Irmo the younger is the master of visions and dreams. In Lórien are his gardens in the land of the Valar, and they are the fairest of all places in the world, filled with many spirits. Estë the gentle, healer of hurts and of weariness, is his spouse. Grey is her raiment; and rest is her gift. She walks not by day, but sleeps upon an island in the tree-shadowed lake of Lórellin. From the fountains of Irmo and Estë all those who dwell in Valinor draw refreshment; and often the Valar come themselves to Lórien and there find repose and easing of the burdens of Arda.’ (Silmarillion, 19.)

Spend the weekend admiring the Perseids. Always so wonderful.

2. Lothlórien

‘He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain.’ (The Lord of the Rings, 359.)

3. Ramandu’s island

Alas I don’t have the wonderful Voyage of the Dawn Treader with me right now so my plain description will have to do. Ramandu, an old man once a star that grew too old, landed on earth and dwelled on an island far in the east. This island was the last one of all, the last place before the end of the world. The song of the old man and his daughter is believed to cause the sun to rise, and every morning white birds from the valleys of the sun visit the island. I’ve always been particularly fascinated by islands, especially those associated with world’s end. Remote and unreachable, they preoccupy my mind and make me ache for the nonexistent, places not even real in the world as we know it.

I'm so happy to see this time of year arrive. I am fond of summer

but autumn is still my favourite.

Evanescence

Sometimes I’m just so sick of them. Computers. Phones. Technology in general. A coffee machine I can manage. Today my flash drive (or computer; my anger grows just because I don’t even know which device I’m supposed to be blaming for this shit) let me down in a way most unforgivable. I tried to re-send an essay (a fascinating one, it is the one I wrote about Tolkien’s poems) to my teacher since he wasn’t able to open the file I had sent him earlier but all of a sudden I noticed that the entire folder had disappeared. In that folder were all my literature essays, notes, presentations, everything.

I reckon it’s unnecessary to explicate the next step but in favour of the reader’s convenience I’ll do it nevertheless. I’ll move out of this God-forsaken sorry excuse for a city (that I called nice in my previous post; I do realise I’m slightly agitated at the moment) and find my dwelling in some distant, deserted area far away in the woods. I’d go to our summer cottage but oh, right, we don’t have it anymore thanks to  Thor god of Thunder. In fact life as a woodland loner has always been a dream of mine so saying any of this isn’t actually surprising. I’d live in a small hut or a cottage (or a treehouse, even better) deep in the woods or by a lake, I’d have plenty of books but apart from that very little belongings. There I’d dwell in unbroken serenity and grow old with the trees.

I may not be the brightes light in the harbour (at least when it comes to intelligence measured with mathematics) but I still realise this isn’t really a plan most likely to be put into practice. Hence I think I’ll just go and play with the only reliable device within these squares, that being the Moccamaster. Perhaps I’ll find comfort in caffeine.

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.