All winds whizzing not

The slow travel had become a part of existence itself, to travel slowly to catch up with himself. Understanding that life not flowed faster than he could quietly enjoy travelling or hiking along the trails, which had become his own, for some fine years. It was also so he had slowly taken control of himself again, and collected all the shards into a whole of more harmony within oneself.

Below the cottage flowed a stream that gave fresh water, but the severe winter of 39 when everything froze. So said anyway the person from who the man bought the house.
The man also had a goat, two pigs and some chickens that he was looking after.

There was no one in the world that did to the little cottage, except the man himself of course.
The man was quite happy with this. But - mail he could get. It was mostly his good friend Ephraim who sent them.
Ephraim was co-pilot on a plane, the Boeing 737 and flew mostly anchovies, lingerie and obese Germans between Frankfurt and Barcelona. How he would make it, after a crass observation of general cargo contents.
It was perhaps typical also of Ephraim to have a highly personal approach to the order of things
Ephraim lived only a few days of walking away, even he in an own house.
He had been a support and a source of power sometimes, but also a life-giving spark in one, sometimes dry and boring existence.


The house was convenient to be an old house in the country. They had self-subsistent household, in the old days, and there was root cellar and a large fireplace in the kitchen, where you could cook for how many people anywhere. It was wood, but there was also a more modern variant when one would cook his breakfast.
The kitchen was of just the old-fashioned kind that was extra roomy, and where the whole family could gather, if we had one. It was certainly thought so when the house was built, and certainly there had once been many children who had tumbled about in the space around the stove.
The cooker also had a large cooker hood above, where you could make ornaments.
Some thing he had collected himself, but he dreamed of more polished kettles.
Not that it filled any real function today, but all the hands that had dealt with them, gave a feeling of old unity and hard work, close to life itself, and with so much joy and even tears rubbed into the shiny surface.
It was like an Aladdin's lamp, when rubbed on the shimmering metal, came memories and people out of deep corners of mantelpiece, a reflection of the dim copper plate, and he began to hear the paw of the tiny infant feet and the sound of the rocking chair creaking on those late winter evenings. One felt vapours from kerosene and saw the long shadows along with the furniture and the large kitchen table.

The stove had also served as heat when the cold biting in de corners of the house.
It went into a lot of wood. It had been fired so that the smoke was like a plume from the chimney, and from the thick chimney wall felt heat like a scorching stove, and made the family drew closer to the steamy wall.
It crawled it together, along with the cat, witch rarely left the chimney corner for trips to distant parts. There, she carefully guarded its part of the house, and curled up on an old wool jacket that belonged to great-grandmother.

The old life flashed before him, and he lived so close to this and the past. They were there somewhere in the deep shadows and the worn floorboards.
The heat in the kitchen, spread like a pleasant friendliness throughout the house. A heat that lasted all night, until you, again made the fire in the fireplace. Wood was also in abundance for those who wanted to work and chop it. The forest had a rich store of everything one could need in the way.

The house was simple, but practically furnished. There were some comfortable furniture in the first floor, along with bookshelves, a large sofa and a couple of armchairs. The floor was thick, planed pine planks that the man had painted. Soft, thick mats that lay here and there, much to keep the cold away from the floor.
But they also gave a feeling of a softer and cosier existence. Warm, beige tones mixed with bright pastels in yellow and white, brown and blue, much pine, own production or handicraft.
There were paintings with simple motifs, some drawings, and then an entire back wall with one big painting.
It gave the living room a new dimension to, a greater sense, dancing fairies in the meadow and a fiddler in an old style. Where his eyes could wander along the grass edges and his thoughts hide in the edge of the forest pines, a secret hikers' timid gaze out towards the magical nymphs playful and alluring stage.

On the wall hung also a violin and a few hangings, along with old photographs from the past, or from a beloved relative. Small things were lined up on the shelves, things from the scattered memories, ones or melancholy. They gave a fund of memories wallpaper for scattered thoughts. Some small evidence that he still had lived, small built-in feelings of longing and regret, which he carried with him, somewhere, deep in his heart.

The bookcase was full of books from a collection, which sometimes aimlessly, but sometimes had captured something important interests of art, antiquities or just practical things. It was therefore one of the house's major assets. A world to look forward to when the cold went around the corner and loneliness crept too close.
A source to draw from when the man thirsted for knowledge and wanted to fill their tanks with new perspectives and new ideas about the world and about the future. It gave the desire and hope of life and gave imagination of the future and of bold projects once.

The man would often sink into a corner of the room. Either in an old armchair with thick, padded frames and covered with large floral fabric, or a large sofa in the same style.
There, he was able to put his feet up, or pull his legs in under him, leaning back against the cushions of the sofa corner, when darkness fell outside.
It was strange how the books could catch him and how soft couch and chair clasped him in his arms, a sense of travel, both within himself and in the world, to travel in several dimensions at once, both in the present and past time, both in this world and the worlds that did not exist.
Or in the worlds he created within himself, when thoughts wandered between books and his own imagination. This meant that he sometimes took the leap and bridged all the usual laws of nature.
Just as they were able to give him an incredible melancholy when heavy clouds came up or when the dark and the cold was the only companion he had.

In these gloomy moments he could disappear into himself in a way he had never before experienced. It could sometimes be just as long trips in himself as in the deep forests around. Maybe there was a still greater depths inside the soul. A depth that also attracted him to explore and wonder. Where we saw no end to the long thoughts, and its labour to pursue over the next hill to see over the next crest.
The endless trek around the riddles of life, about memories and about what could come of everyday life and of happiness. Being able to see opportunities and ideas, that small flares that blazed to, and being able to capture them on their journey towards infinity.

But also that he suddenly saw all those relations more clearly than he had ever done before. All the experiences and fragments that had gathered with him for many years, could now have its full purport and its true meaning.
All the pieces, including monuments and ruins, deep in a worn soul, was slowly be assembled to new buildings of meaning and of desire. New bridges over the lost water and new journeys where roads had previously been cut off from relations with the world and with the continuation of life.
There was silence, books and thoughts within himself that had begun guide him forward again. A source of life and at the same time the experience of himself and the certainty of his own importance to a meaningful life. A feeling that he was important to the future. That the future could not be anything without him.

Earlier, he had perhaps forsaken himself for other goals that you said was important or that he thought must be put first. All told that everything else was important, but no one spoke that he was important.
It was a nasty feeling that no one saw just his role in a larger context.
That he slowly erased from life and that he does not really mean something to the outside world. Then disappeared spirit of community, then disappeared involvement in what happened.

Viewers who saw through him, with there own money and their own goals.
No one asked why they ran, or where you ran. In the end, everyone would run astray, but there he did not come, he refused.
A professor told me recently that, for a number of years, depression and stress-related illnesses would be the second largest public disorder in the world. This then becomes a greater threat to our survival than environmental pollution.

It only went to a certain point, he knew that now. Somewhere there must be his own ego included, to be a meaningful dialogue between himself and the outside world, to be a response within himself and the world around him. Only then could the world also be important to him.
It was also important for him to be able to ask new questions to himself, wherever he wanted and what was good and bad and what was black or white.
But somewhere started all this with the idea and with the desire and dream. Somewhere started all this with the belief in the possibility. That there was a possibility and that there was a future for him.