Sunshine and Stories

This week and next, I am on holiday, for the break between Term 3 and Term 4 of the school year. I had a rather stressful few weeks at work prior to this break, so I am very much enjoying a stress-free interval.

This particular stress-free holiday is entirely devoted to reading. Outside, when possible, inside when necessary, sometimes with a cup of tea, sometimes with pear juice, but always reading. I got an entire series of 10 books from the library, and have steadily progressed through them since Friday afternoon when I finished work. I am averaging slightly over one 400 page book per day, which means that I will soon be concerned about what I will do with my life once I finish the series that has taken it over. But for the moment I am just enjoying it. I love to submerge myself in a book - to tune everything else out and live for the discovery of what will happen next. It is both exhilarating and relaxing, and when the book is a work of art, as these ones are, and the sun is shining, as it has been, it is nothing short of perfection.

The following pictures are not exciting ones of the stunning NZ landscape, nor do they tell a particularly riveting story, but I hope that they communicate the glorious peace and contentment of beautiful days reading in the sun. The kind of days that make you wonder how you ever managed to do anything else.

This is my new outdoor chair. (I tried to ask for a lawn chair, and was treated to a particularly confused look, which it turns out I deserved, since I did actually know that they don't use the word "lawn" here. They say garden. However, it is also not a garden chair, but rather an "outdoor chair," which I didn't know then, but know now). 

The days started out fairly cool, which is perfect because I like to be able to soak up the sun through enough clothing that I don't have to worry about skin cancer. As you'll see later, the cool didn't last, but that's okay.

This is the view from my outdoor chair.

Spring flowers. So glad that the owners of this house are flower people!

I particularly like the lavender.

Beautifully blossoming trees along our driveway. J thinks that they're cherry trees, and I hope he's right! I love cherries!

These are blueberries grown on Mount Ruapehu, where J and I went snowboarding. They are so delicious!

I moved my outdoor chair all around to get the best sun, and eventually gave up on sun protection from long clothing and resorted to many layers of sunscreen. I love to be warmed by the sun more than almost anything!

This is the view from my outdoor chair in the above position.

I love these beautiful blossoms!

I managed, from time to time, to look up from my book long enough to soak in not only the sun, but the beauty of what was all around me. I'm not sure why, but the shadows expanding across the yard were particularly tranquil, and made me very happy.

In looking at these pictures, and reflecting on my joy in reading in the sun, I was reminded of something that I haven't thought of in ages. When I lived in France (almost seven years ago, already), I started writing a story in French. It began as an excuse to practice my French and have my teacher correct it, but I actually had a good time writing it, and quite liked the result. It was about a middle-aged man, and I remember that my teacher asked me if the man was me. I was surprised by the question and said no, which I believed to be the truth. Then, this week, I remembered that I wrote a section about reading in the sun, and I was entertained to find it rather consistent with how I've felt this week. I know that writers always put themselves into their work, but perhaps I was considerably less subtle than I thought.

The following is a short excerpt from what I wrote. It is a silly little story, and irrelevant to NZ, so feel free to skip it. It has also, in my opinion, lost much of the personality I thought it had when I wrote it in French, because I can't seem to get the ambience the same when I translated it into English. Perhaps that reflects my love of the French language more than any actual value in the words, but it's still a pity. Anyway, with no further disclaimers, and in case you find it interesting, here it is:

It was sunny when he left the school. It was the 91^st hour, and therefore the 4^th day, of cloudless blue sky, during the day. He didn’t know if there had been clouds at night, because he disliked being outside when it was dark, or even to look out at the night. As soon as the sun disappeared, immediately after the lovely colours of the sunset, which he watched every night without fail, he closed all the curtains. He only taught after 9:00am, such that he never had to wake before the sun. The sun was, to him, the ultimate image of perfection. A being that gave warmth to everyone, without exception, and who asked nothing from anyone. If he had been religious, he would have followed the path of the Mayans, with their deities of the natural world, but above all the Sun God, who reigned over everything. No one could dispute his power.
When he arrived at home, he barely paused to throw his bag on the living room floor before grabbing the book off the table and a pillow from the couch and heading for the balcony. He had placed his lawn chair right in the middle, in the sun, and he subsided into it, almost lying down, with the plump pillow behind his head. He closed his eyes and let loose a tranquil sigh. He was waiting for a call from a colleague, and he felt slightly impatient, but he believed that one should never wait, because there was always something to be doing. Hence, so as to avoid waiting, he began reading at once, even though he was not in a reading mood. The book was a crime novel, a genre that didn’t interest him at all, but he had found it on the ground in front of his house, and the title was captivating: It would be marvelous if you could accompany me. It wasn’t an ordinary title, and he noticed right away that it was not an ordinary book, either. After 5 pages, he had forgotten the awaited call, after 10 the world had ceased to have meaning, and after 15 the book had become the world.
In this world, he was nothing and everything. He cried with the little girl when the villain stole her mother, laughed with the villain when he had outwitted the police, despaired with the police when they lost the trail, and sighed with the mother when she escaped. He was in each of their heads, and all around them as well, and he knew everything. He was God, the only one who knew what was happening, why, and what must be done. But this ability, this knowledge came from another world, and it was only his as long as he remained in that other world, and therefore only when he remained apart from this one; up above like God. All powerful, but incapable of acting. Everything and nothing. So the little girl kept crying, and he cried with her, for her mother, and cried even harder because he couldn’t tell her that her mother was safe and she didn’t need to worry.
But finally, even without his help, everything came right, and he could breathe again. He looked down at his world, and he saw the little girl in her mother’s arms, the proud police (who had, in reality, done nothing), and the villain in prison where he belonged, and he was happy. He stretched his arms, realizing that it was exhausting to be God.

So... maybe he's me and maybe he's not, but I wouldn't argue with his feelings on reading a good book in the sun, that's for sure. The funny thing is, I would have asserted (before remembering that I wrote this), that my passion for reading in the sun had only developed in the last few years. Apparently, I would have been wrong.