August Nights and Newton´s Head

This year my apples have a special character and a specific interest. They are looking for Newton´s head. In the dark and warm August evenings you can hear a soft ´thummmp´ when they drop themselves down one by one. After that they hide among the grass. That makes it impossible to mow the lawn.

It is not normal to have empty apple trees at the end of August. Letting the grass grow wildly under them is normal, but unreasonable. The amount of work gets multiplied. However, simultaneously the undone work is bridgeing the empty space between the present and the future. You know that one day you have to take measures and mow the lawn - or cut the grass.

If we think that the present needs to be bridged via concrete events with the future, then it is not unreasonable to accumulate predictable matters as a bridgeing material. The only risk is that there might be some other events wanting to enter your life and these delayed activities might push them aside and prevent their materialization.

Anyway the garden smells apples and the falling apples make a nice and soft ´thummmp´ when not hitting Newton´s head. If you were a composer, you could have a theme and variations: Darkening August Nights in Finland a) Apples hiding in the grass, and b) The apple hitting the head.

Today I got a phone call that hit my head. Normally we bridge the empty inexistence between the present and the future with concrete every-day obligations and maybe spice and decorate the path with some dreams. Some of us prefer big dreams to normal obligations. Maybe most of us are content with obligations only, until they - slowly and surely - become boring. When we have accumulated enough of the boring items we might realize - suddenly and surprisingly - that life has reached a Wendpunkt, a turning point. All you need is a sparkle to intitatite a change. Sometimes the sparkle is you. I´ll give you an example of this:

A friend of mine called in spring to ask if I knew somebody who could come and teach German in her school for a while. Of course I knew somebody. I had just recently met an old friend of mine and heard that he had started studying German at the university. Of course, he was happy to work as a subsitute teacher. Of course, he enjoyed the job. Like all fresh teachers - he is fresh, but not exactly young any more - he started to re-develop the educational system, or at least the language teaching part of it, and especially German language teaching. And equally of course, he fell in love with the person he was substituting.

Here you can add another layer of of-course-events: the reaction of the wife, moving away from home and moving back again etc. However, the present situation may perhaps not be classified among the most frequent solutions.

Normally they are the children who are in the focus of the mutual time sharing and practical life arrangements of a divorcing couple. In this case it is different. What my friend tells me is this:

"In my household the time sharing arrangements are not focused on the children, but on the newly arrived partners. Now it´s my turn to spend the night with my lover. Your turn will be tomorrow. - There is also another special feature in this situation. Instead of having one black sheep and quilty person in the family, we now have two. It means a kind of balance."

They say that it is never too late to have a happy childhood. Any of your bright and feasible ideas may have consequences that may or may not be revealed to you. In spring I felt happy helping my friend to find a subsitute teacher in a two days´notice. I was especially happy, because the school was content with his work. But what should I feel now, when we have four middle-aged adults listening to the soft ´thummp´of the falling apples in the warm and darkening August nights? It is totally out of the reach of my imagination to think of all these events may - or may not - ignite and be a sparkle for.

We can pretty exactly track the consequences of the apple having hit Newton´s head. But the absolute majority of apples fall on the grass just saying ´thummmp´.