An interesting theory:
An old woman sat herself beside me
on a bench at a tram stop in Helsinki the other day.
She started talking.
First the usual stuff: her health -- or lack thereof,
and the poorly weather we've been having in Finland all summer,
and if the summer can be granted it's title at all
"It's prolonged winter", she said.
I then replied that I had just been to Iceland
"And
there's a bare piece of land with raw & rugged climate
if there ever was one", I added.
(I would have continued by saying
that Iceland is also the most bewildering,
miraculous and beautiful piece of faith's creation on this earth
-- but she interrupted my thought.)
She told me an anecdote about a women's choire from Iceland
that performed in Helsinki, Finland, several years back.
(Well, if this ancient woman said it was some years back,
it is more likely that it happened several decades ago...
But anyway.)
She said the choire sang beautifully
and were pleasant to look at and so on,
but that they didn't smile at all.
The old woman presented to me
this theory, according to which
the rough climate in Iceland
has worn off the smiles from their faces.
Erosion.
The wind has just swept it away.
To further justify this theory
she gave a counter-example:
the children on the Southern Hemisphere;
they smile a lot.
It's because of the warm & sunny climate.
"And
they eat out of dumpsters", she added knowingly.
Then, like in the middle of the sentence
she rushed off to catch her tram.
Mine was yet to come,
so I remained sitting and pondered this theory.
Hmm.
I recently got to know some very nice bunch of people
from Iceland,
and they DO smile,
and they do know how to have FUN
and how to express it.
(Some of them go looting the dumpsters too,
though only for kicks & fun, not for survival...)
So maybe the theory needs refining. Or updating.
Well, you can't dispose of a theory
until you've been able to proove it
wrong.
Right?
Labels: poem
