A Dream of Boserup Skov: Part IV

My voice didn't seem to work properly, so that when I finally started to speak it came our raspy and thinner than usual. "I--I am sorry, Spirit." I coughed in an attempt to clear my throat. "My friend--the friend who showed me this place--she too...well, she and I were close for a long time. And it so happens that when I went to visit her I was not in good place in my life, shall we say." 

I felt Spirit's eyes on me, which proved uncomfortable enough that I turned instead to the moon as she had, and spoke to that high lamp above the forest as though I were addressing her. "The thought of scarcity can make a body frightened and stressed, I think. That's how it felt to me, anyhow. And what's worse, it makes us fearful that everything we think we have will suddenly disappear, or turn against us, or prove false, or whatever. We become jealous, and suspicious, and fretful as a mother hen without a mother's warmth to compensate us for all the fuss incurred.

  

"My point is that when I came to visit this forest with my friend, I was seeing the world in terms of scarcity--of money, of job-opportunities, friends, partners--you name a good thing, and I would fret of its shortage. It was not a happy state of mind, Spirit, and when I saw that my friend perhaps no longer felt the same way for me as I felt for her, I responded by trying harder so she would; because when you believe you're about to lose something important, and you think it's your last opportunity to ever have anything like that again--you become as desperate as a person trying to save themselves from a rip-tide."

Spirit's eyes widened at that. "But you can't fight a rip-tide," she said, as though remembering something from long ago. "You need to relax, and swim with the current until it subsides. I had an uncle from the mainland tell me that once."

"And he was right," I said, "so far as saving your life is concerned. As for my situation, I should have backed away when I finally realized the gist of her feelings--though they were never totally clear--and been a good friend and not crowded her space with my desperate pleas. I wanted her to like me as she once had, you know? As a friend, certainly, but also as someone she could love and be loved in return. Is that such a bad thing? I think no, but then so long as we're alive, Spirit, we're always changing--different people then we once were. 

"And maybe it was that the girl I had loved--and the boy she had loved--had each become different people over the years, so that when we met again under those trees, the spark that once was had become something else. And no desperation on my part could change that. And so, much like your fiance, Spirit, my friend elected to break contact with me and provide no explanation other than that it was necessary." 

I paused, blinking at the moon, it's light causing my eyes to water. A breath of wind carried over the cornfield, rattling the dried stalks and wiping what remained of my tears from my cheeks. I turned toward Spirit, whose tears had also dried, and who looked on with quiet focus. I swallowed hard, and let out a long breath. "Which is why," I said, "when you asked if I knew what she thought of me I couldn't tell you. She didn't say before she left, or give any indication of her feelings so far as I could tell. Yet if I had to guess, I think deep-down she wants me to be happy--to look out upon the world and see abundance, not scarcity; to be generous and patient and trusting--open to new things, flexible, creative, and kind. Because while I don't believe she loves me as she once did, I do believe she cares for me on some level; and that maybe, as we are different people than when we first met, so perhaps as different people in another time we might meet again as friends."

I found Spirit at my side then, and there was a hopeful expression in her eyes. "You miss her," she said.

"Yes," I said, nodding, "I'd have to be a machine not to. But I respect her choices, Spirit, and want nothing but good things for her. That is all, even if I never see or speak with her again." 

Spirit nodded, and made a sweeping gesture. "Come, the sun is rising." 

We stood upon the crest of the knoll, under the branches of the tall, old beech tree, looking out toward the town; the fjord on the left, and a horizon of purple clouds changing to pink, red, and orange to our front.

"Time for you to leave," Spirit said.

"Aye," I replied, then thought a moment. "This isn't really the Boserup Skov, is it?" I asked.

Spirit smiled. "No," she said, turning her gaze back toward the rising sun. The brighter the sky became, the more she faded. "Though it might be, in your mind. For what is a dream, if not a sketchbook for puzzling out the contents of our own hearts?" 

I couldn't think of a response to that, so I nodded and closed my eyes. I could still make out the morning sun through my eyelids, and suddenly I felt as though I were tumbling through a wide, empty space. "Goodbye, Spirit, and thank you," I whispered to the air, while a powerful wind began to blow across my ears. Through the din I heard her voice--distance, yet familiar and friendly: "Selv tak. Farvel, min ven." 

And when they opened again to find light shining through the blinds of my bedroom window, my eyes were awash with tears of joy. I let them fall and settle where they would, and then standing before the window I pulled back the curtains and watched the blossoming of a new day. A new day, I thought to myself, and breathing deeply, let a smile come to my lips. It felt strange after going so long without one, but in that moment a smile--like a sunrise--seemed like the start of something new; something wholesome and full of possibilities. Not scarcity. 

It was a happy moment, that, when the sun rose and warmed my face that morning. I felt like a new person, and someone that made all the difference. 

A Dream of Boserup Skov: Part III

The night deepened, and the moon rose higher into the sky. We came to another break in the trees, and before us ran long thin dirt-trail that cut through another cornfield of withered, worn-out cornstalks. We followed it awhile to the crest of a hill, and there the ghost stopped. "Let us rest here," she said, and motioned toward the base of a tall beech tree with thick, sweeping branches. I made no inquiries regarding the resting habits of ghosts, and walked toward the tree and sat.

Spirit stared at the stars as I sat, and for a while said nothing. Then, as I felt my eyes growing heavy, she asked, "Who was she?"

"Who was who?" I asked, even as I knew too well what the apparition meant.

"The woman who showed you this place?"

"How do you know it was a woman?"

She smiled at that, and turned her bright, glimmering eyes toward me. "I may be the transparent one between us, but your mind is more like a ghost than you realize." 

Well, how does one argue with that? "Fair enough," I said, and with a shrug concluded that nothing could be kept from this most-discerning of spirits. "She was a friend of mine, who grew-up in the town nearby. I knew her for a long time before she showed me this place."

"But no longer?"

"No, she's since moved away," I said, a cornucopia of images flashing across my mind--a long bridge...a bar of chocolate...a circle of stones... 

"I'm sure she's happy where she is," Spirit said.

"Aye, she seemed it, when last I saw her," I said, and closed my eyes. A tear inexplicably formed in the corner of my eye, which I blinked away. The ghost seemed not to notice, but I would bet much that she did. 

"Maybe she will come and see you here," Spirit said, running a pale hand through her ghostly locks. 

"That is...unlikely," I said, choosing my words with care. 

The ghost did not seem surprised by my words, "Oh, but you are a foreigner, and she a native, and your friend. Why would she not come and see you?"

"I'd rather not speculate, Spirit. Her home is many hours away now, and for all I know she's busier now than a beehive in spring."

"Something happen between you?"

I mislike this line of questioning. "Meaning no disrespect, Spirit, but that is between her and I, and you need know nothing more than that I hold her as a friend in high regard."

"And does she hold you in the same regard?"

My mouth opened, but no words came forth at first. "I--that is--no, I cannot say. I'm sorry."

"Cannot? Or will not?"

My eyes hardened at that, and said more harshly than I meant, "Tell me, Spirit, were you turned into a ghost for asking too many questions, or did you only get that way after haunting the forest for too long?"

Immediately I regretted my words, as the face Spirit assumed then carried with it a burden of anguish that seemed as heavy as the world itself. "No," she said, almost at a whisper. "I did not ask many questions while alive, so that when my fiance left me I was the only one surprised. And when I finally asked him why he left, he refused to give me any answer." She turned from me then, gazing toward the full moon with upturned eyes and hands clasped as if in prayer. "I asked again and again, hoping for something to help ease my loss--that the time was not right, perhaps, or that he had met someone prettier. But he would not say, and never answered my letters." She floated over to the beech tree where I sat, and stared mournfully towards the canopy. "I grew frantic--desperate to get his attention, and with it maybe some closure to what our relationship had been. And so one day I wandered into the Boserup Skov, and on a night like this, with the moon full overhead, I stopped beneath this very tree, and drawing a rope from my pack--" 

There was a flash, and instead of Spirit before me I saw a young girl--barefoot and dressed in white--swinging lifeless from the branch above my head. I cried out and fell to the ground, eyes wide with terror, my hands shaking as they covered my head. And then the tears came, a sudden flood of them that drenched my cheeks and sent shudders through me so powerful that I felt them even in my fingernails. The shock of it hit me in a thousand ways, and so potent was the dose that I knew I would never be the same after that moment. There I was on the ground, for how long I could not say; a nervous-system gone completely and utterly out of control. But when the tears had finally subsided and I managed a peak through the slits of my fingers, the moon had moved far across the sky, and the luminous form of Spirit had returned. She was speaking quickly in a language I recognized but could not understand. She whispered awhile longer, and then turned her own tear-soaked eyes upon me.

"It was the only way I could speak to him anymore," she said with a smile that faded as quickly as it had appeared. "And it worked, so far as it goes. Later he confessed to my mother that he had been seeing another woman in the capital, but that he could not bear to tell me about her. He was a good man, but not so good at describing how he felt. And I--well, I did not always help matters. I insisted that we get engaged quite early, for fear of losing him to someone else. But he wasn't really ready to make that commitment, and hinted as such on several occasions. But I did not listen--did not understand the clues he left, as others did. And at some point the strain must have become too great, and he left me without giving a single reason why."

Had Spirit not been a ghost, I might have given her shoulder a pat, or at the least an encouraging squeeze. As it was, nothing of the sort was possible given her condition, and so I stood there like an awkward idiot feeling as though something like this had happened once before. What could one say to a ghost suffering from such melancholy? 

A Dream of Boserup Skov: Part II

It approached along a winding path, at a pace that could have been measured or sinister, depending on your state-of-mind. I wanted to shout--to cry out in fear--or barring that, at least run away down the trail and forget what I had just seen. Instead I did nothing, save gape and tremble, my imagination galloping away with a hundred horrible things that might soon happen. As it is, none of them did.

The figure had the form and face of a female, with bright eyes, flowing hair, and a frail look as though a gust of wind would disperse the apparition like foam to the air. It spoke--no, she spoke, saying something I did not understand. "Du snakker engelsk?" I asked, and the spirit closed her eyes a moment.

"As you wish," she said, her voice pure and touched with only the slightest of accents. Despite my fear, I chuckled a little inside. Even the ghosts of this country speak English. 

"Thanks," I said, still wary. "I'm sorry, I--I didn't catch what you said before. The language here is foreign to me."

"I see that now," the ghost said with a smile that felt somehow both happy and sad at the same time. 

Silence hung between us, so I said, "Yes, well, my name is--"

"I know who you are," the ghost said, and with a hand gestured toward the path. "Will you walk with me?"

Can a ghost walk? I wondered, but decided against asking. It's said that a man shouldn't say all that he thinks, but should always think about what he says.  

The trail climbed a rise, and several times I tripped on an unseen branch or rock or root. It might have been an easier climb by the light of day, but the ghost seemed not to notice, and drifted along at whatever pace I could manage through the dark wood.

At length, she spoke again. "What brings you to Boserup Skov?"

"It is a special place for me," I said, and left it at that.

"You've been here before?"

"Once, aye." The path turned out of the trees, and before them was a farmer's fence, beyond which stood a steep hill that rose toward the starry sky, clad in the tattered remains of old corn-stalks. The stalks rustled even at the lightest breath of wind. 

"You know someone in town?" asked the ghost, looking toward the hill's crest, where no doubt one could make out the spires of Domkirche, and the lights of the town. For the second time that night my innards turned cold.

"For a ghost, you know, you ask a lot of questions," I said, chewing at my lower lip. We followed the fence-line for a time, before the trail turned back into the woods. 

"For a foreigner, you ask so few," the ghost replied.

"Could be you're right," I said, then added, "do you have a name?"

"No," she said, "not anymore."

"All right," I said, "how about Spirit?"

"As you wish," she said.

"Right, Spirit. So, Spirit--where are we walking?"

"You will see," said Spirit, and I cursed under my breath. It might have been my imagination, but I reckon she stifled a laugh at that. Damned ghosts.

A Dream of Boserup Skov: A short story

By: JC

Part I:

There was a marina of sorts, and a trail that led off along the shore of the lake. No, this one's not a lake, I realized, recognizing the place now--the chatter of people walking here and there; the swans ambling out upon the water; and far off, a brace of wind turbines peaking over hills and trees. This is a fjord. 

Now oriented, I strode off down the path, paved in spots and sandy or gravelly in others. In places the grass climbed high and waved in the wind that carried over the water. In others, I felt the crush of pebbles and silt underfoot mix with the splash of gentle waves that lapped the shore. The air felt clean and warm; the sky clear and bright, with a hint of waning light that suggested the coming of evening. Still I pressed on, passing swans and runners, and a long-limbed hare that bounded away into the underbrush. 

Ahead there loomed a forest upon a rise where the dirt-trail now led. The trees grew thick here, heavy and shaded with summer foliage. As it entered the forest the trail turned away from the fjord, so I stopped in the shade and found a place to sit and gaze at the water through the trees. It seemed to me that I was waiting for something, though for what I could not say. All I knew was the name of the forest, echoing through my memory like the chorus of a catchy tune: Boserup Skov.

The hours passed slowly, and with them came hikers and runners and bikers in plenty, not to mention the occasional deer. Some greeted me with a wave or some words I did not understand. Others walked or ran stiffly by, their eyes looking at everything about them except me. I nodded to those who acknowledged me and ignored those who did not. Whatever my purpose was in being here, I figured I might as well be friendly.

Dusk descended, and then full-on night. A full-moon filled the sky, illuminating the forest floor in patches with its pale light, glimmering light. The wind lessened, and a mist began to rise from the water and spread among the trees. The scene reminded me of something out of Hamlet, just before the appearance of the ghost of the recently-deceased king. I smiled at that, turning the irony of it over in my mind. The country is right, if not the location, I mused, and stood for the first time in several hours to stretch my legs. Turning from the water, I let my eyes wander over the dark forest that rose before me--and then felt the breath catch in my throat, and an icy chill descend the length of my spine. For there upon the rise, moving among the trees was a pale floating figure, glowing with a light all its own. 

Part II
Part III
Part IV

Quote of the Day

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

-Mark Twain, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Retrieved from here

Thanksgiving (2014)

Another Thanksgiving has come to the mountain, which means it's time to reflect on those things in life for which we are thankful. This is a wholesome exercise for any day I think, but Thanksgiving in particular provides a useful opportunity to spell them out, and remind ourselves of how awesome our lives are most of the time.

This past year has been a very interesting one for me, full of adventure and challenges; high points and low. Some days have been really great, and some days I would rather forget. In the end though, I'm grateful for all of them.

I'm grateful for my family and friends, especially those who helped me through the lower moments of the past year. I'm also thankful for my friends abroad, including those who shared their homes and lives with me this past summer. Going overseas on my own was a big step for me, and I hope some day I'll get to do it again. Living abroad--even for the short time I was there--was uncomfortable in many ways, but I feel as though I learned a great deal from the experience, met some pretty neat people, and came back a little more resilient and experienced than I was before. 

And the more resilient and experienced I become, the happier I find myself to be. So thanks, tak, and happy Thanksgiving.

I'm also grateful for my new job, and my colleagues, and all the new challenges that have come with it. I would have never guessed five years ago that I would ever work in the plumbing industry, but that is the way things work out sometimes. As it is, I'm looking forward to the challenge of educating myself about the field, and doing my best for those who have been so generous to me.

The same could be said with regards to my coaching job, which started this year in the form of  a local CYO cross country team. I had never coached a team before, and no doubt my lack of experience showed at times. Still, I am thankful for having had the opportunity to try my hand at the craft, and by practice and study come to a fuller understanding of the art. Perhaps in the year to come we shall have other opportunities to learn still more!

In the end, I suppose I am most thankful for the tools, experiences, and relationships that have made my life what it is today. Good health is a big one, as are adventures outside of my comfort-zone. Novel perspectives are similarly a great boon, as are relationships that nourish us in good times, and keep us afloat in bad ones. 

I don't know what next year will bring, but in the end I hope I can come back next Thanksgiving and say, that while we had some rocky times, there remains so much to be thankful for. 

So in the coming year, let us endeavor to look on the bright-side of things; to forgive ourselves and others; to make of each day a fresh start; to plant seeds for the future; and to look upon with gratitude all that comes our way. 

Happy Thanksgiving, friends :)

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote

"Even if I used a thousand reams of paper to write down all the accidents that have happened to me in learning this art, you must be assured that, however good a brain you may have, you will still make a thousand mistakes, which cannot be learned from writings, and even if you had them in writing, you would not believe them until practice has given you a thousand afflictions."- Bernard Palissy (1510-1590)

Life is not a contest

"Life is not a contest, and we get more out of it by cooperating wholeheartedly with each other rather than beating each other’s asses at everything." -MMM

Quoted from here 

A nice quote

"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best."
-Henry van Dyke, poet (1852-1933)

Image retrieved from here