I love summer: for me it is always a time of starting something new

It is hot. It is how I like it. I feel more alive when the sun is burning the heavy pot, and I inhale its rays through ozone holes. I am high, too. And my mind flies, capturing the uplift of those thermals. Summer is my happy place.

In my summery solitude, I hear distant echoes of conflicts and Babbel of politicians, business people and everybody who thinks it is worth publishing their thoughts in some way or other. I read old books, don't spend time on social media, and am mostly alone. Is this selfish behaviour? 

We need to distance ourselves from the hectic merry-go-round of the world to be sane. We need to focus, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Thousands of self-help books and gurus lure us into doing some yoga or another to relax, be, and breathe. But the best sage to listen to is the wind, the best coach for life skills is the flower on your way to the morning walk, and the best mentor is silence when you sit and watch the ocean (or the clouds, or your toes). 

I remembered how my late parents sat on the garden bench in the summer. I was a small boy, maybe 6 or 7 – not yet at school. It was a hot and humid summer late afternoon. 

My father had done the haystacks and was clean after a swim. My mother had milked the cows and had this sweet aroma of her hand cream to soften her tender fingers and tickle my sensitive nose. I sat between them, and they said nothing, but I still remember how perfect everything was, how they filled the silence with gratitude, love and belonging.

Today, I had the same feeling. I was sitting on a bench at the nearby Waiwhetu stream. Decades melted in the sun, and I felt fulfilled, grateful and happy. I had done some work to the best of my ability, I had been reading exciting stuff, and I had been learning new things. But now I remembered wind, flowers and the silence my parents once showed me, and I now saw them around me. My parents were everywhere in the summer heat, smells, colours and air. When that happens, angels sing.

Again, I was one and only, but all in one. It is my motto. Another one is that life is bigger than your intellect. 

A new chapter

I also started a new chapter in my creative life. 

I have long been thinking of writing some fiction, a novel that would be something so me that it demands to get out of my head. It's been a daydream, mostly.

Then came the first hot day a couple of weeks ago. I had a very short walk because I was still recovering from covid and all the shit it brought, but my mind was clear, and the sun was warm. Suddenly, I had to stop because I was so heavily pregnant from the emerging idea that I had to breathe in slowly and carefully so as not to scare the little idea away.

I saw the whole novel in my head as a 360-degree panorama around me. The structure was there; the main characters were there; the tone and theme were ready; and everything was so simple yet so interwoven intricately within the fabrics of three main storylines that I had to laugh.

And, like always with ideas, I had to jot them down. I sat on the bench at the stream and started to talk to my iPhone, which transcribed my funny accent surprisingly accurately. 

Now, I have been writing the novel every day and am more excited than ever. I will not reveal more about it because I don't want to lose the magic, but knowing my ways of working, it is coming. It takes maybe a year or two, but I don't care. I will fly on this carpet someday.

I learned that from my mother. She was hand weaving with a colossal carpet weaving machine, and as a small boy, I couldn't get enough of that sight. Little by little, the design patterns emerged, and the carpet that was only in her imagination at the beginning of the summer was ready when it was time to put new carpets on the floor to keep the autumn chill away from my toes. It took months, and when my mother said, "Jussi, not doing it takes way longer and is less fulfilling and fun than starting it without delay," I believed her. 

So, I am hand-weaving my flying carpet. I can give you the name, but that's all: 

(Who murdered) Archangel?

What is your hand-weaving method, and what have you been weaving? Do you like hot, or are you more of a person of chilled stuff? And what are your mottos in life? Do you have a nearby stream you can use to take you into your own worlds?

Enjoy the summer.

Ngā mihi

Jussi

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