Between the lines.

The kids moved in

Lessons

2 months have passed, and the land has stretched to also become roof with the green all around. The grasshoppers have started to comment. So much life, and so much to spoil the senses with. Loads of herbs go straight from the garden into whatever´s for dinner every day. Having these circumstances is just wonderful. And at the same time there´s already a little sorrow for loosing all this in just a few weeks. The melancholic mind hates time these days.

It has finally been raining a little. That takes me back to a day last summer. Polarbear watched the shoreline with his february-coloured eyes as rain fell over Urbania. He talked about his car that he had gotten scrapped, and he said ..."Seeing it was fantastic. Everyone should experience that, the destruction of something valuable..." I wrote it on the back of a receipt, and it fell like a leaf from the space between the pages 68 and 69 a few days ago.

That same day I was baking with my neighbour, and in the evening me and Kalle, age 5, sat in the middle of the annual mosquito family reunion (everyone was there, it seemed) and waited for the rabbits to mate. A mosquito landed on the little fellows hand, and he slowly moved it closer to his face. Carefully and holding his breath he watched the animal as its mouth entered his body and the tiny parts started to turn red of the young human blood. The mosquito was just about to finish dinner, as Kalle lifted his finger and slowly squeezed the fragile insect into pieces. A mosquitos death is usually somewhat trivial, but in the head of the 5 year old something clearly happened. Just when the animal was about to succeed, he used his power. He was thrilled and excited over the squirted blood on his skin. Primitive zeal, - at this point in life still very spontaneous and utter.

There was a bit of the same enthusiasm in another local child when he described to me how he had caught a frog, rolled toilet paper around its trunk, lit it on fire and let the animal try to jump out of his burning suit. Most children get punished or taught not to do things like this, and grow out of it. Others have their perversions troughout life.



A whaling historian held a lecture in Húsavík last year, but he never got to finish his speach before he was stopped for his way to express himself. After the audience had left he said to a couple of us that stayed: "...Killing a whale is amazing. It might be more fantastic than seeing your own child be born. There´s an awe that everyone on board feels"...
He also felt that what we (in this case the ones working with conservation of whales) did to whale hunters (as a part of culture) was comparable to what the germans did to the jews.

Ethics. What a multi-faceted term. Is it an agreement to learn, or an unity to find?

Friday night fever

Long time, no writing. This weekend would also have been an urban one, but now this body is stuck to the bed because of a disease that has slowed down a part of this society. From an ecological point of view that´s probably just brilliant, - for a while we make less and feel more...

We spent the day in the heat on the lawn, - the winterdusty rabbit and I. Many tiny plants got new lebensraum in pots and jars. Later they´ll be placed in the garden. This is the first time in my life that I have a few hundred m2 to shape as I wish, - a territory where I get to do all decisions. (Suddenly a character appeared in my mind. It was some environmental artist that made new hills and reshaped the landscape in the wild, as he was convinced of that he should correct Gods mistakes. Interesting fellow...)


Last summer, before i moved to this mansion of mine, I worked with my material "needs" and dreams on a shore in the north of Iceland. Playing home as a little girl resulted in visions of what the nest of happiness would look like sometime in the future. The wooden house would have been located by the sea. Its mansard roof kept the rain out, at the same time as the huge windows framed a landscape of Sea. On your way to the terrace you could have walked through a greenhouse filled with grapevines, exotic fruittrees and herbes - the same scenery you would have seen through the round kitchen window. Lots of fireplaces, floors of oak, light and space, warmth and stability. Embracing beds, a big bathtub, working spaces...

I drew the bottom floor of this dream on a plate of concrete in a place that is about to change. In Húsavík, Iceland, there is a plan for building a stronger prosperity. The hope for the future is an aluminium smelter, and it will rise in an area that is by many considered very valuable as it is. Many welcome the smelter. Others don´t. In the spring my teacher said something about that it is difficult to exclude oneself from what the humans do to nature today. Therefore I included myself. The 103 puffin feet I had in my apartment made the ground for the work, they had to carry the concrete. Well, someone always has to. The images attached are from the place where the work was left.
Under the aluminium smelter a number of nests will be sacrificed to make nests for others. The area is beautiful, but that is of course a vague and subjective human concept...



Today I have great respect for the nomads in this world. Without the walls and windows one probably lives in peace with how fleeting life is. My need to arrange the calendula officinalis and coriandrum sativum is surely a way to create a feeling of safety and order in the wild. The mansard roof and oak floors fit in the same category. The satisfaction and happiness on that path is maybe quite different from what the nomad experiences...

Well, one more thing. In this thrill of categorising I´ll tell you what my gardening book salutes me with every spring. It lists above what we fulfil ourselves...

"A handfull of good garden soil contains:
100 insects (insekter, hyönteistä)
110 segmented worms (ledmaskar, nivelmatoa)
250 springtails (hoppstjärtar, hyppyhäntäistä)
25000 nematodes (trådmaskar, lankamatoa)
7500000 protozoa (urdjur, alkueläintä)
12500000 algae (alger, levää)
100000000 sponges (svampar, sientä)
125000000 bacteria (bakterier, bakteeria)"

(Gisela Keil, 1996)

Photos by Jyrki and s.t.

Of importance

Just shortly before night takes over...
Today one of the youngsters I get to borrow during the days sighed and said; "I´m so tired of saving the world. Can´t we do something else for a change?"

We just got an answer from the minister of the environment that we wrote a few weeks ago. In the classes for biology and geography there has been one environmental problem after another that we have tried to understand and come up with a solution for. Too many crises. And I see that the disasters that the western civilisation has built up are now thrown in the arms of the young generation. It rolls over them through every media, and it probably just makes them numb. Ok, but my intention was for once not to point out all the problems.

After young J said he was tired of saving the world I realised we have to work the other way around. Through learning to stop and give beauty time one probably saves the world a little. We all influence each other in so many ways, and especially when one has the ability to share what´s amazing and untamed in this world he or she plants a seed than can become a garden. All of you that are out there somewhere sharing what you feel is the good and beautiful of this life - I think you´re doing an oh so important job.

Tomorrow we´ll start the day on the island in the Baltic by taking a walk in the forest without analyses or reports. And guess what, fellows. The tussilagos already adorn the edge of the ditch.
Have a wonderful day!

Vie imaginaire

10 years ago I enjoyed shooting with a miniature rifle. I remember us drawing people and animals on cardboard, and then trying to hit them from 50 m or 100 or whatever it was. We used to practise behind the greenhouse, and the echo of the shots bounced back from the hills further away. There was a feeling of power and masculinity, and it felt good. Surprisingly I even did well in a shooting competition. Well ok, we weren´t that many in the womens class, but anyway... But I never felt like trying this on living creatures, so the charm of firing slowly faded away. Nowadays it´s highly unlikely that I would ever hit anything. Quite recently I´ve had to accept how much I suck at throwing snowballs...

But this with the feeling of power was what I wanted to mention. In many cases it´s the opposite of fear. You have control and strength. This can be physical or something completely different. There was lots of people with fear in "the Passion of the Christ" that I saw last night. Fear of the unknown. And I see it in the children in my work. Anger in fear of changes.
While I walked in the forest today I thought about religion. On one hand, we´re free to find our own truth today. The chains of forced religion are gone in big parts of the world. On the other hand, - there´s loads of people suffering from depression, loneliness or lack of meaning in life. We desperately build constructions that keep us safe from natures way, may it then be by shopping, drinking, organising or whatever manic hobbies, perversions or ways we have. Life is too big and complex to handle. Inside a religion we always have something to fall back on, - "It must be Gods will." Without "Gods will" life just becomes bigger in proportion to me, and it frightens. No control, no power.

Back to the forest. I met a moose-family. As the wind came from their direction, they didn´t notice me, and I could watch them for quite a while. As I stood there I came to think of something that Klaus the Whaling historian said after his lecture (that ended in revolt) last summer. With his words: ..."killing a whale is amazing. It might be more fantastic than seeing your own child be born. There´s an awe that everyone on board feels..." Interesting was how many emotions fitted inside the same walls that evening in july. I would say I recognised fear, anger and power, but also a mixture of these in something that looked like a religion. Fascinating human beeing.What strange forms our struggle takes...

Bits and pieces

The house is warm and smells of animal fat. I´ve been melting and cooking birdfood of sheepfat and seeds as it´s supposed to be between -20 and -30°C in some parts of southern Finland tomorrow morning. This day was also magnificent, but I spent it in a red and white shopping-heaven that took me over a frozen sea. Watching the ice break in the bow of the boat just never stops to fascinate. Mmh... and just some months ago there were dolphins under the bow. Not breaking, though...


Let us get back to the beast. I know my upbringing has much to do with why I´m writing this. It was as recently as the day before yesterday that my father reminded me of how much I appreciate his approach to life. He had been working for days and driving hundreds of kilometres for medicine to cure a sheep that was fatally ill. Few sheepfarmers would have done anything else than slaughtered the animal at that point. But the woolly lady seems to be getting better, and there still might be a chance that she gives birth next month.
Except for parents with respect for life there has also been a number of animals that have had an especially fine way of pointing out the differences between human and other beeing by taking their space and right and living out their individuality. It´s interesting – there has been so many sheep, turkeys, cats, dogs, lizards and snakes, geese and chickens, rabbits and doves,- but one that appears in my mind now is, or was, a magpie. He came as a dirty and injured youngster, got a new 180 cm tall mother with beard, and mainly grew up on dogfood (you would be amazed to see how much sausage can fit into the tunnel of a human ear). The bird gathered golden treasures that he found in the house (and my mother was looking for them for years) and was curious about all we did with our hands (it became almost annoying to have him between the fingers nonstop or rocking on the edge of the book as one tried to read). He certainly charmed the villagers, but was also fast to judge and show it if he disliked someone or something. What was special with him was that he learned to observe us humans and adapt our behaviour to what he learned of life. He was for example clearly trying out our way to laugh, and it became comical when he used it in situations like the cats tailpulling game. Who knows what happened to him, one morning he was just gone...

There was life, but also death. On the farm the whole family used to participate in the slaughter. I didn´t enjoy it, but learned to approve it and it became a process for thoughts concerning order of precedence, metamorphose and materia. At some point the sudden kill just felt too abrupt, and I started to work with leftover skin, the knife and the camera to deal with deconstruction. It became important to feel the change that happened as the living breathing perfect creature became pieces with accurate value. The process continues, and will appear here as well.


A girl who´s name I can not recall at the moment recently reminded me through her book that our confrontations with animals lay the ground for our understanding of their moral value. For me working with skin also feels like becoming a chain in a tradition that works meaning into material. The experience is very subjective, and I´m deeply fascinated with the form that these subjective experiences take.
I haven´t managed to get rid of my curiosity, so I will ask you what circumstances and incidents have effected your relationship to animals, may it then be fish, bird, cat, frog, cow or wolf...
How did you end up here?