(yes, it is) 23 of May – 26 of June I’ll be one of three residents in the project Walking Peace in the Avian Kingdom in Sweden, organised by ARNA at the very spot where two pilgrim trails meet in Harlösa. Walking Peace is a green, slow and peaceful way of making new connections across cultural backgrounds and religions, creating art as a statement for peace while walking. Afterwards I'll be researching the pioneer life in Värmland.

29.5.13

Flädie and Rilke

It was the second day of walking the Pelgrim Route in Skåne, Sweden. We left from Flädie early in the morning. A small town with a big church. I never heard of it.
Back in Harlösa in the afternoon I went to the library to collect the English books I ordered. Only one of the four I requested had arrived. “Letters to a young poet” by Rilke. I’ve got a digital version in my computer but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a proper paper copy in the house.
After the artist talk in the evening, meeting loads of people and talking about many different things, I sit in the house with a glass of wine and open the book. I read it many times in the past years. Now I brouse through the letters. I arrive at the eighth letter. And read it is written in Flädie, Sweden, 12 August 1904.

“Were it possible, we might look beyond the reach of our knowing and yet a bit further into the past across the farmsteads of our ancestors. Then perhaps we would endure our griefs with even greater trust than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unfamiliar. Our feelings become mute in timid shyness. Everything within us steps back; a silence ensues, and the something new, known to no one, stands in the center and is silent. ... And this is the reason the sadness passes: the something new within us, the thing that has joined us, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer there either  -  it is already in the blood. And we do not find out what it was. One could easily make us believe that nothing happened; and yet we have been changed, as a house is changed when a guest has entered it. We cannot say who came; we shall perhaps never know. But many signals affirm that the future has stepped into us in such  a way as to change itself into us...”