Friday, June 07, 2002

It’s 10.30 pm, and the sun is setting on the veranda where I sit, computer in my lap. The light reflected off the fjord is golden and pink with sunset, the ferries cut shimmering lines through the water. Kept apart by the deep, lush green of the mountainsides, sky and water are light and reflection. From the gardens along the quiet streets there are careful voices or happy laughter. It’s too late in the evening for barbeques, but there is the occasional tinkle of glasses meeting for a toast. It’s summer, filled with a rare and unexpected heat which makes the days a burden but the light, warm nights a luxury such as children will remember when they grow old. The fragrance of the flowers, hurried into frantic bloom, the warm asphalt slowly cooling, the salt of the fjord and the delight of that feverish chill as sunburned skin meets the light breeze off the water; it will all make for those nostalgic attacks of longing for childhood, for early puberty or for that year you fell in love, that year which was all different from every other year… And through the silence of the evening the sound of a boat-engine pours its exuberant vibrations into the perfumed, purple evening of future nostalgia.

No comments: