text and image britt-arnhild
As so often my feet took me down to the canal.
It is quiet there now during the short days of winter. A perfect place for strolling with thouhts and dreams.
This New Year´s Day, like every New Year´s Day of my life, at least since I learned to write at the age of five, I am going to make lists. Not that I necessarily follow my lists, but making them is so much fun anyway, and a great help to think back on my life, to set the course of days, weeks, months to come.
I am almost always the only woman down by the canal. Old men are working on their boats, chatting, sharing a cup of coffee, fishing, walking like me. A few middle aged men. No young ones. No women.
I walk with my own thoughts. Never saying hi, never talking to anybody, though sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to start chatting with one or two of the old men. Listen to their stories, may be be invited over to their boats, share their coffee.
This will never happen I guess.
Befriending one of the fishermen.........yes, while walking and dreaming and reflecting I knew I had made a first bullet point on the list of things I want to do but don´t have the corage to, or lack the ability to, or...........
Several of the old boats along the canal are for sale. Next bullet point - buy a boat, move in there, at least for part of the year.
I start to play with my list as I walk, and dream and reflect. Soon the list is long. Some of it might come true, some will not. Never in a hundred years.
The list makes me wonder about the limits we set for our lives. And how we easily live inside the borders which line the limits.
Now I know what the headline of my New Year´s resolution lists will be: Climb the fence which frames my life, at least once.
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On my way home from the canal I passed an East Europen accordion player. His music was happy and quite good. I stopped, took out my purse and gave him some money. Not because he begged, just because he brightened my day. "Thank you and New Happy Year" he smiled in broken English. Walking on, a thought stuck me. My husband´s birthday is coming up in a few days and I am giving him a party. What if I ask this accordion player to come and entertain the guests................but then the doubt came.....what will the guests say, is the man clean, is his playing good enough, may be he is a criminal and will come back later to rob our house..............
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I am not going to invite him. May be I am wrong. May be I am a coward. Or what?
