The sun does not shine quite often, and when it does, it has no power. It fills up a space in the sky for beauty, as vanity, but it does not fill your heart with tender warming. Usually your day starts before the sun has even had its morning coffee, and at 7am you open your cream curtains, wondering what’s taking it so long. It is late, it is stubborn. And it decides to show up at the most inappropriate times: when you’re in class trying to focus, for example. It knocks on the window and all you can do is wonder if you’re worth enough for it to wait for you to get out. Probably not. Or during the weekends, when you’d like to sleep more, it wants to play, when all you want to do is dance slowly with the bedsheets.
The sun does not shine quite often on the street I used to live, and when it does, you fall for it; like a passionate lover, struggling in a platonic relationship.
This is why, people here have learned to create their own lights and atmosphere.
Just picture it: while wondering around the streets, your violet fingers have no more power over the phone’s touchscreen. So you just give up, and decide to take a route of your own. And that’s when you see them, bright and wonderful, the lights in others’ homes.
Geometrical shapes host an early royal banquette of cinnamon buns and filter coffee. Sat at the wooden kitchen table, he is reading big news on a small screen as she walks barefoot around the house, wearing a perfume stronger than coffee’s. Their mess seems designed: bills overflowing in a corner, piles of books on the side of an empty library, empty cups of tea in the sink, candle wax on the window sill*, as all they can think of are the cuddles after sex.
*Candlelight is an important component for the ‘hygge’ (cozy) lifestyle. Fused and warm, usually is the preferred source of light at any time of the day. The relaxing atmosphere is best for studying or during a calm night on the couch with friends or family.
On a little blue bike, she rides. She goes as the wind brings her home. The cold does not matter as the idea of sitting by the fireplace and drinking cocoa warms her heart. And she pedals and pedals and her long hair creates waves in the air, feeling free and dreamy. She’s unaware that the front door is wide open, as at home they’re all waiting in the living room with a homemade cake*, to wish her a happy fifth birthday.
*A Danish birthday tradition is to decorate the birthday cake with Danish flag sticks. Same applies to presents’ wrapping paper.
Hidden by green leaves, as the afternoon is close by, a secret garden glows behind gate number 145. And I do not refer to the alley outside the house, but to the botanic greenhouse spaces around the bedrooms or the bathrooms*. Sneaking my head past the gate, I see an old man watering the pots hung from the ceiling.
*Plants are a danish design signature.
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