Dramatisch und zugleich leicht und spielerisch

With my mother turning sixty this weekend, I decided to head home to Kalmar for a few days. More than usual, it gave me a reason to reflect upon the passage of time.

While here, I had the chance to meet up with an old friend from school. It must have been twelve or thirteen years since I last saw her, and since then our lives have gone down very different paths. By now she has three kids, has settled down in a house and been in the same relationship for more than a decade. Beyond the courage, I realized how envious I felt of the continuity of memories such a life must offer. To me, that inner narration has all but broken down as my memories have become, if not inaccessible, so at least woefully compartmentalized.

Sometimes however the walls between the past, the present and the future collapse. Like tonight, when my mother and I celebrated her birthday with a classical piano concert by the young Hungarian Gergö Teleki in a small nearby town. Teleki truly mastered his art, playing mostly Franz Liszt and Béla Bartók, spinning my mind away not only to Szentendre but also to Brookline and Ehrenfeld.

Above the piano, on the wall, a large fresco painting. In its right corner, a house, one that with the help of the music talked directly to me. The dream of one day finding such a place, of (re-)establishing continuity and having a porch on which one can sit through summer nights, drinking a Krušovice or a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, knowing that it will last. I think I even like the fountain, especially if it occasionally will be covered in American snow.