there is a visitor #13

Flash Fiction and the Flaneur's Relation to Nature.

Experts agree upon the fact that Mikael Granlöf was born in 1960. However, on all other points, they seem to disagree. Some claim that he learned to walk and speak already in 1961 in a small village called Käckelbäcken in the north of Sweden, others claim that this is not true. He already – by then – knew how to crawl, both on all fours and on his belly, even backwards. In the archives, there is no mentioning of him ever having mastered fully the purposeful walk. It is an enigma in many ways how he became a man of some renown in the capital. Well, of course, many in the village knew him, and also in the school he attended for a few years, as well as in the provincial university, well, yes, sure, they knew him. “That’s Mikael Granlöf over there” one would say to one another, nodding discretely in collusion. Yes, there certainly was something about him, but what that really was eluded a more precise understanding. For many years, his walk was, to be true, pretty … nothing to brag about. It was a sort of tiptoeing at the same time pushed-around kind of clenched-fist-in-his-pockets kind of walk. But at times, all by a sudden, he would transgress into another state of walking, a floating sort of motion – away over the hills and the landscape and into nature. Nature. He spent a lot of time in nature. He liked animals, and they him, it seemed. There was a sort of mutual understanding. Well, he didn’t exactly hold any grudges against plants either. Or any other kind of multicellular organisms. And do not do the mistake of believing that he would hold any grudges towards unicellulars or minerals either. He really loved all those things. He spent nearly all his time there, among them, strolling about.

Mikael Granlöf ¹