Before I came here I was in the south of Sweden, near the
city of Lund, in an art project about walking the pilgrim trails. I travelled
to Sweden in a three piece walking suit, a suit that was part of my art
project, a suit in which I walked the pilgrim trail from the west coast to the
east coast of Sweden. A suit in which I collected stories.
For the exhibition that was part of this project I brought
another suit, a suit from an earlier art project, a suit embroidered on the
inside with 108 drawings and texts. And during my stay I bought a third suit
for an upcoming project.
So I travelled up north with 3 suits in my suitcase. And I
laughed about it. Because there is no use for a suit in a pioneer life. At
least that is what I thought.
I had seen photos of the red house before I arrived. I heard
its sad story. It made me think of Tranströmer poem “The blue house”. A red
house, a blue house.
When I arrived in the house I was offered the upstairs room
in the back of the house. It is a lovely room. It smells of dried plants. It
has a window overlooking the forest.
In the room there is a closet. In the closet I discovered a
pair of old shoes. A white shirt. A woolen suit. It has been worn a lot.
The person who lived in this house was called the Captain.
Outside there’s a wooden boat. Nobody knows where he went. But he left his boat
behind. His boat and a shipload of empty rum bottles. And a big stain on the
kitchen ceiling resembling a galaxy.
All that and a suit.
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Tomas Tranströmer
The Blue House
It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.
It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush, from the inside.
On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.
Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create. . .draw. ..” In order to escape his destiny in time.
The house resembles a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind which the gilded frame cannot subdue.
It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.
A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.
The Blue House
It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.
It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush, from the inside.
On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.
Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create. . .draw. ..” In order to escape his destiny in time.
The house resembles a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind which the gilded frame cannot subdue.
It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.
A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.
