Midsommer Part 1 - Arrivals

Kalle

There are a few arbitrary things able to forge an automatic kinship with a person, and a 13th Floor Elevators CD is one of them. A CD is a physical manifestation of interest, not songs stuffed in a playlist on Spotify. Kalle owned one, and it was no aberration. His was a wall sized CD collection with selections like Bird and Dizz at Carnegie Hall, Brit Pop, Shoegaze, some tasty old school hip hop, and a vast Jimi Hendrix collection. There were more modern offerings, but don't all CD collections peter out circa 1999? 

Above his piano there was an illustrated picture of Duke Ellington and a matching portrait of an unfamiliar Swedish jazz master. On top of his piano was a copy of "The Real Book." The only other person known to me on this planet who has one is not only considered a very best of friends, but he will testify--religious fervor--to the secret cult of, "The Real Book."

Kalle had a DVD copy of " A Fistful of Dollars," on his desk. "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," that's easy, Fistful is considerably deeper in the pocket. There were other instruments laying about not to mention the beautiful accordion he was outside delivering to Emilie affording appropriate time to snoop.

A little out of my element, something expanding exponentially since my journey began, when Kalle returned, I immediately rattled off my joy over his collection. And like the electric jug in "You're Gonna Miss Me," we were well into playing our unique little melody. We gathered our packs and headed to the bus station where we would meet Julia, take a bus to Hörby, catch another bus to Farhult, and there we would celebrate Midsommer.

Holidays

It all sprang from a singular ambition, go to Scandinavia and see the midnight sun on the solstice. After some light Internetting Google had the facts: the formal name for the celebration in Sweden is Midsommer, and it's probably the biggest party of the year. Not something you properly celebrate in the cities, but you go to the countryside, eat, drink, erect a Midsommer Pole, and indulge with all of your friends. 

It's like if you combined Memorial Day and Labor Day and 4th of July and added thousands of years of Pagan rituals. It's really no surprise such significance would be placed on the first day of summer in a country where winters are cloaked in brutal, endless darkness. In Austin, under a blanket of endless summer and forced growing seasons, we lose sight of what the absence of the persistent glowing orb overhead would really mean. 

In Texas we have the yearly calendar check to the tune of, "It's only March and it's already 100 degrees out?" In Sweden they anticipate the solstice and then adulate her passing with wine and beer and pickled herring and potatoes and a dance party that would please even the most indifferent Summer God.

When I retrace my steps to the moment where I ended up with Kalle about to head to Farhult in the Swedish countryside, it seems as finite as fate, but there is a lot of luck and coincidence with the world turning in between. In Marseille there was a friendly Swede named Pelle. We happened to be going to the same national park outside the city. We became fast friends. He offered his couch at some undetermined point on my trip. After a cursory, "what is this Midsommer thing? Is that something you do?" email, standing at the bus station in Malmö headed to Skona is a foregone conclusion. Pelle was going in his car with Emilie, the other host, and I was taking the bus with Kalle and Julia. 

Julia

When Kalle and I turned out of the hybrid bus station and convenience store, Julia was there in a turn of life's heavy handed staging. Thin but strong, ringlets of sandy hair falling around her oval face, a smile close at the edges, her Cumbia Queers shirt and maroon high waisted corduroy shorts all seemed a natural extension of the things Julia. With her oversized Ikea bag filled with food and camping gear clutched in one hand, she still managed to take Kalle around the waist and they kissed. 

For some unknown reason, their being a couple brought tremendous comfort. Gaunt musicians who wear gold round frame glasses perched below a wave of blonde hair fit with the Julias of the world. It was a happy thought to know these particular ones had found each other. 

Going Up the Country, Baby Don't You Want to Go?

The bus rode through the countryside. Vibrant chattered quickly sloughed off the layers of stranger down to comfortable acquaintance. Movies and music. Julia's time studying in Canada. The geographical differences between north and south Sweden. Malmö is very flat. 

Julia was delighted by the names of the small towns we rolled through, the humor in the word play lost in translation. Occasionally Kalle and Julia would have their asides in Swedish. A rural bus stop, a tiny kiosk, waived from its placement in front of a wide field crocheted to the edges with yellow flowers. The village name on the sign had an "ö" or and "ø", a unadulterated vision of the Swedish countryside. In Hörby Julia bought us an ice cream treat and pointed out the red brick church was an example of eclecticism. 

The final bus stop was unassuming, more a memorized landmark than anything else. From there a dirt road cut the countryside open and red barns and dairy cows and gentle rises flowed forth like a hobby painter's watercolor countryside scenes. Kalle had memorized the walk to the best of his ability, but Google Street View only goes so far into rural areas. Some of our walk would have to be feel.

 A bunny darted across a field. An old windmill, twisted at the base, was toppled over and left to rust, to stare at his replacement saluting the breeze. We talked about animal sounds. Most Swedish animals speak English, or vice versa, but pigs say, "nuft," which is crazy. Pigs say, "oink." Julia stroked the nose of horse in a pen with her colt. We took turns shouldering the Ikea bag, and as the walk began to weigh a ton, a nobly battered Volvo came over the rise. A perfect round head topped with signature pageboy cap and rectangular glasses all leading down to his permanent smile poked out the window, "You need a ride?" Pelle.

We piled in. At our first right turn, Kalle nodded and remarked, "I would have turned left there."

Hippie Houses

The world over, hippie houses are all the same. There is enough empirical evidence to move this from theory to fact. 

A sign bearing the name of the property hangs crooked on a post just up the road leading to the house. Flowers and weeds and tall grasses flourish in wild uniformity. Stones circle a fire pit set across from the house with remnants of a recent fire within.

 One  part of the house is always under construction. In the massive shed behind the house, there is a room filled with tools, there is a room filled with instruments, and at least one band practices or records on site. Bands are also provided one to two designated spots to perform. A guy lives in one trailer out back, and a girl splits her time between the city and country in a separate trailer. At least a one dog minimum must be observed at all times. 

Each hippie house then has a unique feature. Wether it is an organic garden, or junk cathedral, or treehouse, there is always a piece de resistance. At the Crows Nest, or Big Forest--depending on who you ask--theirs is an outdoor toilet.

"Separate the toilet paper," were Lasse's instructions as Kim, the man of the house, and his band of men held court on the porch. They were taking a break from building a new exterior to the room where bands played. 

"Maybe if the first one is really messy," Kim added. Lasse nodded and gave a conciliatory shrug.

There was once an old collection bucket with no handle. A couple of guys had to be paid in "lots" of beer, to remove said bucket. The collection bucket has since been improved.

Otto and Kim

Kim is a tower of a man, large in his size 46 sandals and barrel chest, his is the world encompassing grin. He's like a sacred rune planted into the earth of this Skona farm. If Kim was removed, his power and life, it's as though the forest would wilt and the intermittent streams would dry forever. He's not a loud man,  though a personable sort, but the weight of his presence has palpable magnitude. 

He has built his world by hand. His hands, broad and work worn, almost seem to be the vessel from which his entire form grew. Woodworker and drummer, beer can holder, a man who pulls his woman close, Kim's hands seem to cradle this tiny universe in the Swedish countryside.

Otto is his dog, but he's really just A dog. Otto and Kim don't seem to rest on any owner and pet ceremony . They care for each other, but Otto is left to his own devices as is Kim. A true farm dog, Otto can be trusted. Even as I was admiring Kim's farm nestled in the tall fir trees, he encouraged me to follow Otto into the forest.

"He'll just...like, lead me around?"

"Yeah," Kim replied. He set down the two by fours he was cutting on the table saw in front of the gaping mouth of his tool room and he called out to Otto. Otto looked at him and Kim motioned to the forest and Otto trotted down the trail and ducked into the woods. 

Trees as skinny and naked as skewers gathered overhead, their small skirts of evergreen needles swayed together diffusing the light. Soft, mossy earth couldn't but whisper even beneath my heavy foot falls. Like a wood spirit Otto's black trace would dart between trunks and fallen limbs only maintaining a presence in your periphery. I'd fall behind and Otto would pause, stone still--all four paws on the ground--and look back to ensure I knew the way. His way. Then, with his long dog gait unbroken, he made a hard right and we were right back on the trail where we began.

"I've taken my dog on lots of walks, but this is the first time a dog has ever taken me on a walk."

Terrible, groan worthy, it's true, but trying to get a chuckle out of an international audience is unsound footing. I'm not near as cute when my quiver of pop culture references and ten dollar words is rendered largely ineffective.

Snus

Emilie crossed the dirt driveway to Kalle. Her face is round and stitched with a small smile, hair close cropped with a natural wave fit to match her face, a face different from every angle. We met earlier in the day, but Emilie is not comfortable with English so most of our discourse was smiles and body language. This Midsommer party was also her and Pelle's birthday party. It was also a hat party. Two facts Pelle didn't want to burden me with. The guy with no hat and no presents who didn't bring beer.

Emilie stood in front of Kalle and they rolled off a few circular lines of mellifluous Swedish and Kalle nodded. He pulled a circular tin from his pocket and unsnapped a small compartment on the top. It looked like it was filled with wet, brown grubs swaddled in gauze. He worked his tongue into his lip and out fell another grub onto the pile. He shut the smaller compartment and unscrewed the lid and in the belly were packets of fresh snus. Emilie took one and pulled back her lip and nestled it high in her gum line. Julia took one as well and Kalle refreshed his.

"Dip?" My shock and revulsion hardly hidden.

Kalle pitched his head to one side and squinted his eyes in a show of non-conformation. 

"Dip, or, we call it dip in the States."

"Ah, snus!" He held out the can to me.

"No. No, thank you."

We sat in silence for a moment. The questions and near accusations couldn't be held in.

"In America snus is like... I dunno, it's like a cultural thing. Only rednecks," I arched my eyebrows at the phrase to see if it hit home. Kalle nodded. "Only rednecks dip and women, women never dip."

Kalle nodded at the facts in his stolid intellectual way. "This is like a friend. I'd say 95% of the man in this country always has one in. I always have one in. It's like a friend."

"We started to use them when they stopped smoking in the bars," Julia added. Emilie smiled.

Kalle made some commentary to the effect of rednecks being uneducated, or bad, or racist, and I reversed course.

"No, redneck is a bad example. It's a cultural divide. Okay," I had it, "it's like this, James Dean smokes, and John Wayne dips."

Our icons still towering over the vision of ourselves and forming the broad strokes from which the world has drawn us. It was immediately clear. 

They never spit.

Seven Flowers, Seven Fences

We unloaded Pelle's van. Food, camping gear, DJ equipment. Crate upon crate of beer and box after box of wine were hefted into Kim's shed. In Sweden, at the grocery store beer is either 2.8% or 3.5%. If you want beer with higher alcohol volume you can go to the colloquial "special store" and buy it warm. If you don't finish your beer, as long as it hasn't been chilled and you have a receipt, you can return it to the special store. Somewhere an American is shaking his head, sucking his teeth at the perils of a European nanny state. 

"Regular Swedish people don't need beer stronger than 2.8," Kim added.

The floor of the bar/dance hall/concert area was cleared. Mattresses and bass drums and twisted vines of speaker wire were moved to the attic above. Kim and his men were fastening the last of the boards to the exterior. Some had to be measured and remeasured, but they were all only cut once. The nail gun rifled through the softening summer air as the night which would scantly be approached. 

Another car, a white sedan, came to a stop and out stepped an olive skinned, dark haired woman. Sanna. She and Kim kissed. Kim's hands, like the jaws of an earth moving shovel couldn't help but envelop the slight, beautiful woman. 

Julia called dinner. She brought a huge pot from the kitchen filled with pasta, lentils, and red sauce. There was a nice garden salad on the side. We sat on the terrace outside the half painted, almost built room and ate off of tables made from giant, repurposed wooden spools. Pelle put the Dandy Warhol's 13 Tales From Urban Bohemia on the stereo he and Kelle struggled with for almost an hour and still never got up to his standards. The first box of wine, Black Cat wine, was opened. Skol.

"What do you know about Midsommer?" Sanna asked.

"There is frog dancing?" 

"Yes. There is dancing and singing, and lots of food. And there is a Midsommer  pole. And lots of drinking."

"I can do that."

"And tonight you're supposed to climb over seven fences and pick seven flowers and put them under your pillow. You'll dream about your true love."

"That's a very specific number. Seven."

"It's a very old tradition. It comes from when you lived in the village and knew every person you would know for your entire life."

"And the Midsommer pole is a big penis," Kim added.

We ate and drank and what would be an ongoing territory war over the playlist began to manifest itself. One of Kim's men, a weathered almost balding man with two long dreadlocks tacked to the back of his skull changed his pants at the table. Another box of wine was opened. Everyone began to favor their Swedish. Occasionally Pelle would turn to me to give a rough trade version of the discourse, or someone would apologize for being rude, and I reminded them I was but a grateful stranger. No apologies are required. Dusk hummed in striated bands of color for hours.

Silken billows of fog rolled into the field adjoining Kim's property. Kalle, Julia, Pelle, and I climbed over the stone wall and wandered into the earthbound cloud. Dense, almost impenetrable from afar, the closer you got, once totally enveloped, it was invisible. Nothing but a fine mist you couldn't roll between your fingers. I stood back from the group and they were silhouetted, three astral black cut outs silent against the scrim of undying twilight. Julia said something in Swedish and they laughed. We walked back leaving a trail through the young stalks of grain.

America

Lasse asked questions like they were a sharpened stick. His accent was thick and he had fewer English words at his disposal then those a generation younger. His pipe, filled with sweet, musty tobacco,  jutted out from under his push-broom mustache. Round bald head, round glasses, he wanted to talk about America.

From his somewhat hard to decipher English a few talking points emerged. America is dangerous. FEMA are murderers. Texas has guns and guns are ridiculous. Poverty in the states, the way the poor are treated is beyond his comprehension. He loves to watch documentaries. Snowden. Everyone in Europe wants to talk about Snowden as soon the words "I'm from America," are uttered. And the lusty grins on the corners of their mouths. Everything Lasse asked or said was punctuated by his tobacco pocked laughter. It got later and later, the beer flowed upward.

Why are you in Sweden?

Do you have a gun?

Your government spies on you, man.

How could they let people die in the streets?

America is dangerous, man.

Have you seen this documentary? Have you seen that documentary?

I've got no illusions about the shortcomings of the United States. But as his whole discourse seemed like an effort to upend my worldview, like none of is had occurred to me before, I--perhaps for the first time in my life--defended my country.

Well, why do you care so fucking much? No one in America cares what anyone in Sweden is doing, but all you want to take about is America. Yes, the US has tons, TONS, of problems, but individual to individual our country would shock you. The goodness of people, how open peoples eyes are, how worldly Americans can be. No other nation on earth gives more charitable donations, no other country on earth has a population like ours and dares to educate every citizen, and we invented the blues which is, like, the most important cultural advancement since..I dunno...electricity?

Lasse was pleased. We discussed the things we agreed upon. American music. The sham of a two party system. Natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and the redwood forest and the Rocky Mountains.

"I listen to this one guy on the Internet. This crazy guy, his name is Alex Jones," Lasse said. I was finally home.

Lasse arrived at a reasonable impasse relatively true in both directions. The good things in America are really good, and the bad things are really bad.

It got later and later, everyone had gone to bed except me, Lasse, Kim, and Sanna. Darkness, a veneer of blackness hardly obscuring a much deeper blue blotted the sky overhead. We were all a little loose.

"I'm extremely disappointed in the Obama administration." I said, because I am. "I voted for him both times, and I would never have voted for either one of the republicans, but he had a ton of goodwill built up after his first election and he squandered it on a healthcare reform. If he had been more diligent in at least trying to act like he could get the economy back on track, his health care reforms would have waltzed through. Now this NSA thing..."

Lasse, bent to one side, one eye almost shut replied, "Obama's a white nigger, man."

Kim and Sanna who had been absorbed in their own conversation for most of the night snapped to. Sanna looked at me, eyes wide.

"I wouldn't...I wouldn't say that, he's been a disappointment," I said taken aback, unsure of how to respond.

"He's a white nigger, man." Lasse sagged to the side.

"You shouldn't say that word. Ever," Sanna chided.

"White nigger, man," Lasse repeated beyond her reproof.

Midsommer Night's Dream

Midsommer's eve was over. Using Lasse's headlamp my tent went up in what little dark remained. The tent billowed and rocked as it was carried, fully constructed, across the yard into the camping field. Kalle and Julia, the way young lovers do, cooed inside their tent even though they'd retired hours before. Dawn broke a few minutes later at 3:30 in the morning. I sat cross legged in my tent contemplating the odd shape of the earth, and without realizing, fell asleep. 

There were no seven fences climbed nor seven flowers picked, but that night I dreamed of my family, a family in crisis. I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but perhaps I need to better understand my first true love before I can know the second.