Thirty minutes’ drive from the city, there is a village. It stands by the riverbank. There are no fields or gardens. Surrounding it are bushes, trees, and a dam along the river. A narrow road runs along the dam. On the slope of the dam, sheep are grazing. All of them are white, clean, and happy. The grass is green and lush. The sheep are enjoying life.
The house needs a capacitor replaced in the air conditioner. It’s a bit of a puzzle. The house runs along the street and is practically made up of rooms that are joined together, one of the walls being the property line. There’s a brick wall topped with tiles. Part of the house has a second floor, an attic. Another part is an office. Then there’s a veranda-living room, followed by the kitchen, and then another living room, but this one has a TV instead of a fireplace. From there, there are passages to the basement, the lower bedroom, and the attic.
From the fireplace lounge, the floor-to-ceiling windows and glass doors offer a view of the lawn with a pond, which is bordered by poplar trees.
The walls are adorned with framed poems. Two cats are wandering around. They are clearly related. One of them is very old, has poor eyesight, gets startled by sounds, and feels uncomfortable in our presence.
The house, the surroundings, the nature around, the lawn with a pond, a little bridge, and poplars, the silence—all of it creates such a ringing sense of comfort that you just want to drop everything and stay here forever.
The roof. A view of all the beauty around, of a large, colorful bird that has long been dead, and of a broken air conditioner. Sometimes it feels like the only sound you hear is the sound of grass being chewed by the jaws of sheep.
But there are other sounds. The sheep sometimes bleat. The frogs in the pond croak. The birds sing. The leaves on the poplars rustle. A cyclist rode by on the dam. Oh, a plane. I realized there was no noise from cars at all, and the sound of the plane was clearly an exception. I took a photo of the view from above.
They were fixing it. A couple of times, they ran back and forth to the roof to turn the air conditioner on and off. I walked past a sheep and reached out my hand. It jumped back: “I don’t know you, man!” I walked on. It called after me: “Baaa.” And it looked me in the eyes. It never figured out if it should have jumped back or not.