The last few days have been getting a sort of autumn wind – with the windows open, you can hear the gustiness; it is a beautiful underlay to the day. Somehow a fresher, more sensual, more natural sound through the windows than the usual (though I live in a quiet neighborhood, not quite close enough to a park, so the normal sounds aren't city noises).
Perhaps it's like waves, or white noise; in any case, like waves on the beach, it tends to be calming and natural, and reminds you (as waves do) how big the world is, how slow and complex time really is, how trivial and really uninteresting most human endeavors and anxieties are. I did always think I'd be happiest, calmest, living on a beach – well, maybe someday if I'm fantastically lucky.
It also reminds me of a particularly beautiful time and place – when Gerhard and Kunsu had their house on the south side of Crete, away from the towns and resorts, and I went to stay with them for a week or so. I was in poor health – thin, shaky, frankly having some difficulty getting through the day; but the flight wasn't bad, and Gerhard and Kunsu were angelic as always. The other constraint was the book about Gerhard, which I hadn't finished – and still haven't finished, but I hope to do so this fall; it is very, very late indeed, but although the book itself has become a real millstone around my neck, Gerhard has always been kind about the long years of no work done on it.
So the time there was characterized by that kindness: by the wind in the Cretan hills, the fig trees bursting with late summer figs (whenever we would pass one we would stop the car, get out immediately and collect a bag of them – they are at their best on the same day, so a fig tree by the side of a dusty mountain road suddenly becomes a treasure to be immediately plundered). The room where I slept, with the winds always blowing around it; Kunsu and Gerhard putting together meals in the kitchen, light, fast, beautiful food that was incredibly fresh and heartening; and the mountain paths, the village where I could buy dried herbs (a shame I didn't buy a lot more – when I got home I realized that the perfectly ordinary tourist fare was far better than anything you would get at home).
Even the miniature frog in the courtyard – it had somehow chosen a small hole in the wall as its home; it would croak occasionally, a tiny sound, but content.
Comments