The House in the Dunes
Early autumn wind wanders upon the timber planks.
I can feel it, perceivably colder now, on my skin.
Hear how it bends the beach grass, that surrounds me on all sides, how its thrown back and forth.
In the distance waves crush ashore, at last…
the wind has turned to south-west over night,
the North Sea, oddly calm the last few days,
finally is playing its rough song again.
I have arrived.
Here in the pleasantly calm North of Denmark.
Coming from the loud metropolis life, it always needs a couple of days to shift the inner clock,
turn the inner voices silent, make space for the veritable elements of existence.
While initially feeling a rumbling excitement, as the long anticipation is replaced by a fevered sense
of happiness, and wanting to see everything, feel everything, and don’t miss anything at all – after a few days I find myself and become quiet. And like the wind has turned, I too have transformed over night.
The curiosity yields to utter satisfaction, the wild chaos in my head gives way for quiet thoughts.
The senses recollect themselves:
I can hear more clear now, am acquainted with the screams of the birds, know the winds and the distinct silence of this place.
I smell the salt particles in the air, the ripe sea buckthorn in the dunes, the sunscreen on my skin, slightly heated by the Northern sun.
And I can see the tiny details, the slow change of the morning light, the green shades in the blue of the sea and the blue shades in the green of the grass.
I have arrived.
Know the state of things.
When I look to the Burnet Rose by the porch,
I can feel the haptics of its fruits in my hands.
Glancing at the gravel path to the dunes, I sense the tiny hard rocks under my feet, the tufts of grass, through which I try to avoid the sharpest of them – and finally the almost white, insanely smooth sand in the dunes and its coolness, that astonishes me time and time again.
I have arrived. Here in the house in the dunes.
It’s a place, that invites me to stand still and that itself is doing so.
The wind in the beach grass, the stormy sea,
the colourful kites, dancing in late September light:
Nothing has been any different last year, and nothing will be in the next.
The Silence, that surrounds me, emerges from the absence of change.
I think it’s called consistency.
Up here, the world is simply the world.
The North Sea is salty and madly cold at times,
the winds are stubborn and makes me seek shelter,
the sand is cool, but smooth and gentle underneath
my toes.
Everything is, like it has been and will be.
In the house in the dunes, content overlies everything.
And like the sand is flying into each open gap,
this content is crawling silently into me.
It shuts down the thoughts.
And makes me merge with this place.
The house in the dunes.
An ode to existence.
