Midsommer Part 3 - The Next Day and Departures

Skona Blues

"Monte?"

"...yes?..."

"Me and Kalle are leaving. We wanted to say goodbye."

Julia and Kalle were on the other side of the unzipped tent door. The tent city was half gone and the rest was being packed up. Everyone ambled about, the anticipation of exit written in their packs and bundles.

"What time is it?"

"Almost noon," Julia said. 

"How are you getting back?"

"We don't know. We might try and hitchhike to the bus stop." 

"Give me a minute."

I collected myself and said a battery of goodbyes. I got lots of hugs and cheek kisses and felt unexpected pangs bidding farewell to my new friends. Anna have me a hug and held my hands and looked at me with eyes like the midday sky bent around her iris. She had something to say, it was practically half out of her mouth, but she didn't say it and waived to me as she walked down the road. 

Kim and his men had reassembled on the porch and were already drinking heavy beers. Kim was wearing very conspicuous aviator sunglasses. Psychedelic Mike appeared to have never gone to bed. Pelle wanted ice cream so he ate ice cream. He offered me some but I had to decline. I did have crackers and cheese and two cups of drip coffee and felt like a member of the living again. A shower would have been nice, but that sort of thing was out of the question.

We sat and talked for a while. Pelle, myself, Kim, Mike, Una--one of Kim's men, Lasse, and the girl with an incisor next to her front teeth. Nothing of any relevance outside of the immediacy of conversation, but reggae came to dominate the playlist. As I soon found out, Kim, his drumming, his studio, his practice space is all dedicated to the ambition of roots reggae. This was welcome news as reggae is one of the genres in which I take immense pride in knowing a useless, noteworthy amount. Oh, "Cool Breeze," by Big Youth? The session was DJ'ed by King Tubby, and the dub was of Keith and Tex covering the Spanishtonian's, "Stop that Train,"--that sort of thing. Kim and I talked passionately.

"Here in Skona, reggae is huge. The biggest music."

"I did not expect that," I replied.

"Yeah, one of the heroes of Swedish music is from Skona and he was the last of the real roots reggae guys. If you grew up in Skona, you love reggae. I even have a friend who plays roos reggae. He recorded here before and is having a concert for his new album in Malmö tonight. It's like, it's like the music of the region. Like the blues music in the south part of America."

"I've never even heard Swedish reggae, didn't know there was such a thing, but if I ever start a reggae band, I'm gonna call it Skona Blues." 

Kim smiled his broad smile, "Cool. Very cool ," and he reached his large hand across the table and I linked my thumb with his and we shook.

Pelle

Pelle will eat ice cream for breakfast. He understands the beauty of an outdoor toilet. He travels as much as he can. He reads books and owns his own apartment and loves his sister. Pelle is the man with the lust for life. With his glinting, unbroken smile and hugs for everyone and easy laugh, life may be too small a thing for this happy man. Even at 38, he has more genuine admiration for the gallery of things of life transcendent and the things fucked than I could ever claim. I'd say he's skinny as a rail, but it's more like an antenna. Pelle operates at some frequency where he can take the oft overlooked vibrations of life surrounding us and translate them into a broadcast powerful enough to bring people--en masse--out to the Swedish countryside. He isn't a loud man, though an intelligent one. He listens. Oh, the hugs, the endless amount of hugs. He doesn't struggle under the weight of some vain ambition, but he has ambitious hobbies, and he gets these things done. On a strict vegetarian diet, he doesn't smoke, and seems to drink just the right amount. He's an electrician, the deeper symbol of connectivity I'll leave up to you. Never cynical, but sarcastic, he'll tell stories of getting mad but no one believes him. He's kind. He'll invite swarthy Americans to his birthday party which doubles as the best Swedish holiday even though he's known them for maybe 28 hours tops. He'll even give this wayward American the key to his apartment. Pelle is my friend, or as the random circumstances that led us to know one another more appropriately dictate, I get to be Pelle's friend. And I'm grateful. Not just for my own petty ends, but for humanity at large. The world still makes a certain kind. The good kind.

Over Hill and Dale

After a half-hearted attempt to clean up, a thick and warm day announced the presence of summer right on cue. Kim passed out on the couch on the stage, his aviators askance on his face. Una, with his scrubby beard and curly hair and green pullover he hadn't changed in days, laid on a bench and stared into space. Psychedelic Mike had disappeared. The girl with the incisor next to her front teeth undid her raven hair and decided or take a nap.

Pelle  wanted to go for a walk through the woods. We were joined by Emilie, a short dark haired girl in red wellies and a tall blonde girl who hardly spoke a word, Swedish or English. The two girls, again, seemed to have appeared from nowhere as though the last few tents were generating random humanoids.

As is the way on Kim's farm, we followed Otto. He was out to impress his legion and led us on an extended walk through the forest. Extra spry on his pads, his coal black coat glistened in what faint threads of sunlight slivered between the tall trees.

We walked over pine needle scattered forest floor, crossed an itinerant stream reduced to a trickle, and occasionally called out to Otto who was certain to not leave us, but something in our human nature requires the affirmation. I stepped on a stump overgrown with moss and lichens and it crushed to bits. A felled deer blind rotted back into the earth. The three girls had fallen behind and as we scaled a gentle rise with somewhat precarious footing, Pelle called out to our guide, "Otto, where are you taking us?"

We waited for the girls to catch up, and within the next fifty strides Otto led us through a gauntlet of pencil thin pines back onto the road. When he saw we'd all made it to the clear, he lurched to the right--snout first--and began to trot. Pelle stopped him.

"I don't think that's the right way," Pelle remarked looking both ways with his hands on his hips.

"I trust him, he didn't steer me wrong last time," I added.

Pelle insisted it was the wrong way and Otto, like a good dog, followed. After twenty minutes or so spent wiling away the time by comparing knee and waist high anthills to towns in Sweden, the apparent, predictable truth was uttered out loud. 

"I think we went the wrong way!" Pelle said in his irrepressible, always smiling manner.

We continued in the wrong direction until we hit asphalt. Pelle pulled out his almost dead phone and checked Google maps. The words "Wow," and "we really went the wrong way," were uttered repeatedly, in no particular order, and in multiple languages. Pelle indicated we could follow the highway to another road and then back to the farm. We soldiered on for a bit, but the crowd fleeing the country after a holiday weekend was enough to force us off the road for fear of Otto getting hit. We found another path into the forest, an unfamiliar one, and ducked back into the woods. And this is where our adventure truly began.

Five shadowed figures and a dog rode high the shape of the Swedish countryside. Over hills and into gorges and along rock walls separating one field from another, they would occasionally stop, set their hands above their eyes, and stare into the thicket of woods or fields of waving wheat looking for directions. They offered none. The dog would stop, sit, hang his pink tongue out of his mouth and relish the results of his sound direction forsaken. Man made fences began to impede their progress, some strung around ugly electrified turnbuckles.

"It doesn't hurt, it's just...not nice," the one in the pageboy cap and glasses remarked as they began to host themselves over at the post.

Carving through farmers crops in long strides leaving their aimless trail, fumbling down rocky embankments, the group began to feel more lost than was readily comfortable. One girl remarked to the foreigner this was all reminiscent of a Swedish young adult novel about two boys and three girls and a dog. It gave the foreigner tremendous comfort as she hadn't spoken to him much. 

Over another rise, over more fences, the horizon finally broke in the shape of a farm. Not the farm they were after, but farms are on roads. Scaling two of his fences,the farmer's dog howled and barked at the strangers unwelcome presence. Back on the road, they showed the foreigner a nettle plant and said early in the spring was the best time to make nettle soup. The dog, bored with the adventure, charged under a fence and chased some horses. The five figures yelled and waived their arms, but the dog didn't return until he felt it was appropriate. 

The road came to a rise, the rise gave way to a bend, and on that curve the dog sprinted away from the five shadowed figures knowing he was back home.

Sanna

"Where have you guys been?" Sanna asked sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette. Kim was still asleep on the stage. Una and Psychedelic Mike had resumed their spots.

"We went for a walk and didn't listen to Otto." I replied. 

Sanna shook her head and smiled. We sat and talked for a while about words. Apparently kiss means piss in Swedish. Or is it the other way round? And then they talked about signs in Sweden that read "INFART," and how they even make Swede's laugh. Someone commented that there really is no such thing as an in-fart to which I added, "Unless you're on a date." I told them about how in France I would see signs everywhere labeled douche. Through various tangents I conveyed that a douche is something a woman uses to clean her vagina, but is also a guy who really sucks. Una loved it.

"Clean her vagina. I like your style, man," he chuckled in his voice as shaggy as his beard.

We all agreed it was dinner time, and the crowd decided to make vegetable skewers and cook them over the fire pit. I joined Sanna at a table set in the yard and helped her cut veggies and prepare the skewers. She loaded up the playlist with old, sentimental Swedish songs, her favorite.

"My father is a meat master, I got this recipe from him," she said through dark hair and dark eyes as she painted her marinade on the vegetables with an actual paintbrush.

"But you're a vegetarian?" I asked.

"Me and Kim are bad vegetarians, but we try."

"Honestly, this weekend, I've never seen such a high concentration of vegetarians in my life. My friends are very meaty."

"You make them sound fat. Like meat people."

"We do love our meat, it's the Texas way."

"Do you miss them?"

"Of course I do."

"Do they miss you?"

"They had better."

Sanna laughed as she forced a skewer through a few more vegetables.

"So you play guitar?" I asked.

"Yeah, and I sing."

"How long have you played?"

"Since I was a teenager. When I finished school I went to music school and my father was furious."

"What did he want you to do?"

"It's not that. My father is a musical genius who never did anything with it."

"Was he a failed musician?"

"No. He never tried and he sort of came to hate it."

"Hate music?"

"No, it's hard to explain. He hated the thought of his daughter becoming a musician. So I supported myself through music school."

"And you ended up as a nurse?" 

"Yeah. I lived in the UK for a while and tried to make music and traveled some. Then I decided to do something different."

"Well, you can still make music."

"I'll always love to make music. I did what I thought was right. I didn't want to do the same thing as everyone else. I did something I thought was different until I had to do something else." She poured the rest of the dark marinade onto the assembled skewers. Tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, and onion glistened in the hardening dusk light. "Just like you. You're doing something different, and when it's over, you'll have to do something else."

Fireside 

The fire crackled and a large warped grate was placed over the glowing embers. A foil sachet filled with leftover potatoes was placed over the cooler part and the veggie skewers were placed over the warmer part. We drank wine and after Psychedelic Mike played a few songs on a guitar missing its D string, Sanna went into the house and returned with her guitar. We sang songs. As a group. We had a hippie house campfire sing-a-long. We sang, "The Weight," we sang "By the Rivers of Babylon," then Mike led us in a version of Holly Golightly's "Don't Nobody Love Me Like the Devil Do." Una sang a song all by himself. Everyone seemed to be able to play guitar.

We ate, and talked, and all took turns trying to move out of the tower of smoke billowing from the fire. Most everyone else turned in early, and Kim finally roused from his day long nap. I joined him on the porch where he sat alone.

"Kim! You missed dinner, man."

"I think I made a big mistake last night," he said wearily. "I've got mosquito bites all over my ass and that means I had my pants off."

I had nothing to add.

"Oh, and don't tell anyone I have cigarettes," he said as he took out a crumpled pack and lit a smoke.

Pelle, Emilie, Kim, Sanna and I sat on the porch. We laughed and talked and drank the last of the wine. The next day, Sunday, I'd take the bus back to Malmö and then take a train to Stockholm that would be rerouted because of an accident. Pelle would return to his apartment and prepare for work on Monday. Emilie would do the same. As for Kim and Sanna, one would  continue to build, one would continue to heal, and all future judgements and transgressions would occur out of my view. The land in Skona would bake through the summer, be harvested in the fall, and return to a casket of ice and darkness as has happened in the margins around Midsommer for ages spread out in every direction reaching far beyond our own.

The next morning it rained and we were in a rush. I gave Pelle a hurried farewell in a parking lot as I raced off toward an idling bus. I didn't get to say the goodbye I wanted to, but we never do.