Rottweilers, then Rowing

We'd only just reunited again after so long, but it was already time for my brother to go. I tried to give him an over embellished farewell hug, which he accepted to a certain extent but then proclaimed; "Get a hold of yourself girl, look at those mucky hands" as he brushed off a layer of painty dust I'd just ruffled over his immaculately ironed and highly formal attire. Feels a shame he had to go so soon, we were just getting used to each other's glaringly obvious differences again.

Got me down to some painting of the house that late morning after he left, with tenderly moving shadows from the surrounding forest flickering + speckling onto the sparkling new wet paint And when it was tools down, I hesitated only for long enough to start a stop-clock + peel on Mama's old running shoes from the 80s before legging it down the road. Some tropical rain started breaking up the closeness that'd been lingering in the humid air all day so I decided to extend my run into the woods; , leaping over puddles + Festing* riddled long grass, creeping under fallen pine trees + hurdling over others, pretending for a moment I could actually Parkour it.

Felt like I was making good time; somehow managing to resist heading up to Stor-Klyppingen to weep for the usual hour at the heart wrenchingly beautiful views and alternatively thinking about that stop clock ticking away back on the veranda. Trudging up the big hill, I soon became wary, as famously so the house at the top of the sharp incline own two slobbering and vicious Rottweilers who always seem to launch out at me just as I'm daydreaming my way past on my Mormor's red bicycle. And there they were, sitting down but panting all the same. If I walk calmly up, I compose to myself, then perhaps they'll stay perched on the ground like that. And as I lifted my arms up in a shamelessly pathetic surrender, they began approaching. Then some more. Then some barking. Then of course, I stood dead in my tracks + wished I believed in something that would enable me to drop down onto my knees + plead for some sort of miracle to escape from this tempestuous growling situation I'd found myself in. A gruff "Leg off"** broke my petrified immobility, as the jeering owner came forward + grabbed them by their menacing studded collars as I crept by whimpering a meagre "Tack" .

Stop watch said 00:23:12.

*****************************************************************************

It's 22:42 and I've just returned from a boat ride on a mirror.

Pops + I were gazing out at something quite spectacular as we slurped up the last of our dinner. The sea had evolved into some sort of near shear stunning expanse of fluorescent mercury, that swelled slowly in a sluggish sinister swirl around sporadic rocks that poked their noses above the surface of the mysterious depths that we soon found ourselves gliding through, in a less than graceful technique. My bro had made an alarming true point on last night's jaunt out into the iridescent Scandinavian twilight; "it's like you're rowing me about in a bathtub love" as he leisurely reclined on the passenger bench swigging gulps of red wine + forming a highly regal pose adorning a particularly fetching dressing gown that our Morfar had worn 30 years ago. He wasn't wrong though, compared to all the other boats in the bay, clearly owned by people that live out here all the time, our buoyancy machine appears comically closely related to a baked bean tin, but what can we say, it's a ticket to the boundless bundles of never ending liquid perfection.

It is just our clumsy oars that penetrate the motionless surface, with a few erratic introductory drips that spill from the approaching plunge of half rotten wood that cast their own unique circling patterns of infinity, and destructively so, just like that, we temporarily destroy the perfect reflection that surrounds us; an abomination to the stillness. But as soon as the tub chugs a little further down the bay to ruck up the next poor sleeping current that we approach, the small ripples soon disperse and return once again to their perfect peace, repeating a precise copy of the ever pinking sky that peers down and across the interminable waters.

Gasp.

Return to shore.

Then, read.

But continue to peer up at the undying light, every other page or so.