Thursday

5 October 2017

— a glimpse of sky-blue pink in the east

Good Morning All,

By the way, this curious compulsion I have to write to as many people as possible, to keep them up to speed concerning my fascinating life of bird-feeding, shelf-building, and what not, is nothing new. For much of the late 1980s and well into the 1990s, I sent out once a month what I modestly called epic postcards.

They were real postcards purchased at the souvenir shops on the walking street in  Copenhagen. I’d buy 30 of the same card, the Little Mermaid, Tivoli, or some such, two for one kroner (about 5 cents apiece) and put a 5-kroner airmail stamp on each of them. Total cost per month: circa 180 kroner, just over $28.00.

Back home, I’d type up on my computer the month’s entry, keeping in mind my upper limit was 500 words. Typically, I came in around 650. Then came the editing down to 500, the goal being to lose no content, just fat. To this day, that proved one of the very best writing exercises!

After that came the shrinkage of the page down to obituary-sized type. I’d run off thirty sheets on the school’s photocopier, cut them down to size, paste them onto the left side of the back of the postcard, address all thirty of them by hand, and off they’d go.

Yesterday, out in the garage, poking around in one of the as yet unattended packing boxes, I unearthed one these artifacts from around—my best guess—1995. 

And now, because I have no shame, I shall type it out here, even though nearly all of you will not know any of the people mentioned, even though some of you have already gotten the damn thing once, and even though the contents  will have virtually nothing to do with your own lives.

Please forgive me.

Dear Family, Friends, Long Sufferers All,

DATELINE: a brisk 27th of June, Hultoften 27, 2630 Taastrup.

But back on the 23rd it was a balmy Summer Solstice for Elspeth’s, Ian’s and Selma’s 30-guest bash/bonfire at Selma’s sheep farm, Elspeth being our former art teacher, Ian her husband, and Selma Elspeth's daughter. Festivities were scheduled to commence at 8:00, which for the info of you sub-Artic Circlers—was two hours and a bit before sunset, close enough to call for sundowners all round. These nights around the solstice never do get so dark you can’t sit out in a lawn chair, a mint julep to hand, and read your International Herald Tribune. It’s more like a lengthy, leisurely sunset settling into a brindled dusk that gradually gathers again into dawn—a kind of celestial rhombus strip. Here in Denmark, we miss  only the fireflies. This is the time of year I used to phone and joke with my dad that we little kids over here in Denmark don’t have to go to bed at all. “Oh yeah,” he’d say into the blower, “does that mean on Winter Solstice you don’t have to get up at all?” Anyway, Elspeth affording us the adventure of an invitation sans map, compass, or bekilted Highland guide for the estimated hour’s trip, we planned to set out at 6:00 sharp, left just after 7:00, (better than usual), had a lovely drive up country lanes between the bright yellow mustard fields to North Zealand, and rolled in at a diplomatic 8:20. Selma had sacrificed one of her sheep, after which and much wine, we repaired to a lower field for the bonfire. Ian had piled brushwood around an old outhouse, the better—as happens ever year—to send the German witches back to Bloksberg. Other guests provided live violin and guitar music, we sent on hay-bale benches, enjoyed deplorable sheep jokes, good friends, good fellowship, and the sparks from the twenty-foot high flames provided the missing fireflies pirouetting up into the velvet air.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two Holly snaps: