Looking out to Africa

Since my arrival, I have spent many moments listening to the wonderful music played by the trees. I am by the sea, so it is little wonder the wind whips in and catches the foliage of the stand of pines in the common area (over which my windows look). (At least, I think they are pines. I know less than nothing about trees. If anyone reading this has a clue as to what the trees in the extra photo are, can you leave a note in the comments?)
 
Every morning I am woken by the sound; a low moaning, a ghostly choir congregating in the tree branches, deep and mournful, whipping itself into a frenzy of disapproval. I manage to get to sleep through it – and there are moments where it stops completely, as if to emphasize the power of its melody. I find it quite soothing on the whole, but there are moments where it really is other-worldly and where you can’t help but wonder at some sort of supernatural involvement. I am amazed they have kept the trees, to be honest; I love them and think they are amazing – but you can imagine how a six-year-old child lies awake at night crying him- or herself to sleep at the the thought of an army of ghosts coming to get it. In Ottawa, they’d have cut down the trees at the first complaint and covered the area with big signs saying “LRT Phase 8 due here in 2227.”
 
This morning, as I was settling down to write, the sound of the wind through the trees was at its zenith. It sounded, in all honesty, as if I was in the middle of a hurricane (well, not the middle, obviously, or else it would have been completely quiet, but you get the drift). I looked outside half-expecting to see Dorothy and Toto hanging from one of the branches, but was amazed to see how the branches of the trees were hardly moving. Indeed, birds were twittering between branches without the slightest hindrance from a Force 10 wind. I was intrigued; so, I opened the sliding windows.
 
Silence.
 
All of the ghostly howling stopped. I could hear birds and the gentle crash of the Mediterranean against the shore in the near distance, I could hear cars on the highway and the sounds of Paco unravelling a pipe to water the rhododendrons in the common area, but that was it. No ghosts. No wraiths. No supernatural chorale. Now, either this is like the scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo stumbles into the ring of elves in Mirkwood and everything disappears through some elven magic OR the seal on the sliding windows is buggered and the majestic sound of the wind in the branches is actually due to crappy Spanish technology and not the Iberian equivalent of the mistral blowing through the pines (or whatever they are).
 
I am not sure what to think about this. Part of me is disappointed. Not in there being an absence of ghosts but in the fact this thing I had ascribed to natural beauty is actually due to human inefficiency. Also in the fact it took me five days to become curious enough to investigate it further. Some writer I am!
 
Oh well, there are things enough of beauty here, battling their way through human ineptitudes. Today was quiet, yet I still had a struggle with the word count. So I went for a series of walks to test my hips, which appear to be working much better than in Ottawa. I went away from the sea today, up the hill that leads to the Spanish residential area and away from the tourist area. It was very pleasant. I managed to walk for a good half hour before feeling a stiffness in my knee, so wandered back to find a flea market in the car park by the highway, which I looked at while having a coffee and uploading previous blips.
 
The weather is still warm during the day – but I am still glad I have graduated to long trousers on the whole – and cold at night. It still feels very strange being here by myself – away from the Ottawackers – but as Mrs. Ottawacker said as she shooed me out of the house, “it is the chance of a lifetime to do what you have always wanted to do.” There may or may not have been a roll of the eyes in there as she said it.
 
In the evening, I went for another walk along the front. The sunset was just beginning and there was a beautiful pinkish hue to the sky. I saw a couple sitting on the rocks looking out to the sea and to the land mass in the distance that may (or may not) be Africa. The night was clear and still warm – and apart from these two and an elderly man walking a Chihuahua, the beach and boardwalk were completely deserted. I walked past La Lucera, the café on the beach, and there was nobody in it. Not a single person. Just how ‘out of season’ is it at the moment? It is quite strange – and actually a little disconcerting.
 
The only thing left for me to do today is decide on whether I sleep with the windows open or shut: do I want the choir formerly known as ghostly to soothe me to sleep or not. If the seal is broken, how much warmer will it be with the windows closes? The things that preoccupy me.