Twig of Ore

Sand, ice creams and salt

It always smelled of sand in Trouville. Sand, salt and sea. The sky was blue, clear blue and the sand a matte yellow, almost beige. The smells of sand, of the stingy salty Atlantic water and of butter biscuits crumbles from Brittany lost across my towel tickled in my nose. Burning skins and sun creams, crisp sand corns under my nails, between my fingers and my toes and the constant back noise of screeching seagulls with their raspy voices, sometimes intense, but at this moment relatively calm.

I was digging in the sand, relentless work, from the top dry, warm and soft sand, deeper, one shovel at a time, reaching pleasantly cold, humid sand. The new sand, the one that I found deeper beneath my feet, was a dark brown colour and so compact, it was different from the wet sand that the waves could reach. I poured out some water from my pink bucket and enjoyed the sight of a single stream of it breaking its way through the fluffy sand, creating a small path, a mini river. To make this more possible, we would, my brother and I, create the path of the river before pouring the water out of the bucket and watch it reach a lake that we had created at the end of the water’s path.

I was feeling warm and restless, long days on the beach throughout the summers of the 1980s, I must have been around five that day. Daddy’s girl, yes I was his princess and he was the king of my world, wanted an ice cream and a walk on the wooden path along the beach in what felt like exclusive time with my dad. We followed the wooden path across the sand towards the swimming pool and the ice cream vendors. Children at play shouting here and there, fun, dogs yapping and people walking and talking, old people sitting on the benches observing and commenting, continuous whispers and grunts, sticks bumping the wooden support. Every step on the wood racks, rubbing the skin, the sand and the wood together, were not comfortable. Thinking about the moment I would have the ice-cream in my hand, smell its sweetness, taste the soft creaminess and looking ahead at the small colourful carousel near the swimming pool, maybe I can ask daddy to let me and my brother go on it before dinner tonight, and then a sharp strong pain across my right cheek. Left with a tingle, a shock and then tears running down my cheeks. Looking up at my father in bewilderment and then at the culprit, hastily disappearing down the wooden path. An old wrinkled women, almost as tall as my father but frail and skinny with a bitter and dry face as I remembered her walking towards us before giving out a formidable slap across my unsuspecting round face.

On a nearby bench some of the old people were talking to my father, to us, about that women, no surprise in their voices, she often slapped young girls on her walks on this beach, and she had simply struck again. Their voices contained some amusement but their smiles also some comfort. My dad was irritated but calm and I was glad that he was on my side. We walked back to our towels and explained the situation to my mother and brother. The surprising feeling of her cold hard fingers against my soft skin lingered as I sat on my towel feeling the soft sand beneath and slowly enjoying the taste of vanilla and chocolate. My father had gotten me the ice cream.

Forget Me Not – 1

Dark days. Dark and cold days. No ever after, only a finality and the path that leads to it. A path filled with mistakes more than it does with hope.

Their mother had died and the land was frozen, the crop was lost and their father at a bewildered loss. Even in these hopeful times of the spring, when the swallows soared and the forget-me-nots broke through the hard soil, the land of the North allowed the White Queen of the Icy Winter to return, to rummage and to break, to despair and to have her reign not forgotten. Death was always looming, the air was grey. This was the North and life in the North was unforgiving. The Winter had been harsh and this beginning of the Spring, which had lured with short spells of sun and intentions of heat, had retreated and now even the howling wolves were gathering closer to the villagers’ homes, scratching at the first houses’ doors, with hunger nagging in their empty stomachs, as empty as the forest they came from was. Begging, threatening to take the only flesh that was available.

If she did not hurry the beast, or whatever it was that ruffled and snuffled and scurried behind her, would take her, she was sure of it. As she ran, faster faster, and stumbled on treacherous tree roots she could hear herself begin to sniffle, her cheeks moist from salty tears. As she ran and hurried, she soon realised that there was only silence pursuing her but her pounding heart urged her to continue her pace, not to stop just yet. It was not just silence, it was complete and engulfing silence, one expected only when death is reached. She listened in to the nothingness and hastened her small feet. Even her steps had lost the sound of their echo on the ground but she continued to hurry and felt a twinge in her stomach, forcing itself up, would she vomit, fall and lose herself?

Snow & Music can dance

And then she looked outside and saw
That snow and music could dance together
And then she looked inside and saw
That her fingers and heart had lost their pace

The rainbow, it called out, it dropped sharply
Lost rhythm and it let go
Of the colours, the grey, the black
Together they could dance
And then break down.

Bubbles break

A long time ago, no rather a short time ago, let’s say in 2007, it was a good year for the Riesling wine in Germany but that summer it rained too much in London. In Paris, the most romantic city, a majestic city where love cunningly lures in every corner, two people met and… No, let this love story not become obvious nor cheesy. Moreover Paris is not 100% romantic, maybe 65% at the best. This is actually set in Stockholm, a city where the winter brings such cold that the lake freezes over and people avoid looking strangers into the eyes, where the autumn doesn’t have time to exist much and where the spring rushes to reach the summer when blueberries grow easily. There was this girl and there was also this boy. The girl was cute, her nose was Roman and she had happy freckles in her eyes. The boy was cute too, but boys often don’t like to hear that, his smile was contagious and he had laughter in his eyes, but also something soft and warm, those eyes to get lost in, maybe lost forever. But being lost in his eyes forever would be something good, very good. When the winter came they liked to walk underneath the falling snow holding each other’s hands warm, although the fingertips would have this nagging cold stinging to them, they enjoyed allowing snowflakes land on their lips and then kiss, they liked hugging when the jealous wind would sneakily blow coldness through any unguarded entry to the skin, and they particularly loved each other. In the summer they enjoyed holding hands whilst lying next to each other lost in freshly cut grass, they liked to feed each other strawberries and then kiss the red juice off each other’s lips, they enjoyed swimming naked in the calm lake when no one would see and let the still water caress their skin, and they still loved each other. The autumn and the spring were convenient and short times of the year because they could usually do all of the above. They could also step on perfectly crunchy new-dead leaves together and welcome the wonderfully enlivening smell of newborn flowers. And of course continue to love each other.

The girl, her name was A., and the boy, his name was B., met in the most unoriginally non-passionate circumstances. They didn’t run into each other at a busy train station where people ran in all sorts of directions heading for their dreams, ambitions or nowhere particularly interesting, a train station where he would have disturbed her grasp of a worn out copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, him picking it up for her at the same time as her surprised hand reached for it, softly touching his fingers while his eye noticed the cover, his mind realising it must be her favourite novel too, their hearts understanding that they must be soul mates as their eyes excitedly searched and fondly found each other’s. Nor did her pipe one night break so that she had to call a plumber, any random plumber (why would she have a specific one when she had never had this problem before?) as he turned up and worked on it, she firmly handed him a cold beer as she swallowed her own, the heat from their lust palpable in the air, the lust, with a hint of drunkenness, it felt so urgent that he had to have her, and she had to have him, right there on the floor. No, they had been in school together as long as they could remember, which meant forever. There was no first memory, no defining moment anchored in their minds as an ethereal homage to their perfect love. But they would never forget the time when their love was so strong that they thought that they might burst, burst into bubbles, so many bubbles in so many different colours, colourful bubbles that would fly freely everywhere in the sun and maybe join a rainbow somewhere over a beautiful place, or maybe become part of the magical and ephemeral northern lights. Because when they realised that they were in love was at the age of 16 when the school had dragged their class to the far North of Sweden where the trolls covered in moss haven’t stopped sleeping for a thousand years and the snow never really wants to leave, where particles wildly play in the sky disguised in different colours – Aurora Borealis. They had always been certainties in each other’s lives; they had always existed for and with each other, and would continue to do so until the oceans dry up and the stars fall down from the sky, which means forever.

In school they weren’t very happy because they weren’t like others, or so they constantly were reminded of by those others. But they didn’t care where they were, they only cared about each other and where they were going. They waited and waited for Graduation to come. When it pompously and drunkenly arrived they packed some clothes, grabbed each other’s hands and left for the airport. They were heading somewhere happy and sunny, somewhere different where their own difference would be good.

The plane was settling into departure mode, the engines loudly chattering away in excitement, the body of the machine holding itself back in pressured and thrilled anticipation, it seemed as if it couldn’t wait to sprint off and throw itself up in the sky that was now welcoming the rising sun; filled with the soft peachy colours of the morning. The passengers were lost in a half doze, some in a hurry to get this dreary journey over with, others looking out the window through a sleepy haze and then there were those so eager that they couldn’t help but smile loudly. Announcements were made, the air hostesses danced some rituals and the plane took a leap, upwards, higher and higher; some bellies felt a soft tickle inside. A. and B. looked out, sometimes looked at each other and sometimes kissed, a sense of calmness had washed over them as the plane was now flying straight, cutting through shimmering thin clouds and the world beneath was just a miniature.

“How does such a heavy thing like a plane stay up in the sky? How come such a heavy thing as a boat does not sink through the water?” A asked S with a sudden sting of fear.
“I am not sure”, S hesitated as his knuckles clenched a bit.
“Aren’t planes heavier than air, aren’t boats heavier than water? What if we stop believing that they can fly and float?”
“Then they’ll stop”
And so they lost the belief for a fraction of a second. As the plane soared downwards through the intangible lighter air, heading towards the tangible lighter water, all became silence except for a few birds and angels calling each other, some others singing. The seagulls sang badly, the angels sounded like… angels, beautiful and otherwordly. S tangled his fingers with A’s smaller fingers and told her;

“I love you so.” So did she to him. Their heads turned outwards and he pulled her with him, outwards, they passed through the window, breathed in some of the air, became almost as light as feathers and hopped onto a delicate cottony cloud. They looked down, they were up so high, far away from Earth and knew that they were here to stay, on the clouds, in the sky, they would be happy and together, they didn’t want to come down and so they kissed joyously.

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