room

i was standing on a chair on a meadow, looking at the sea

i’ve been dragging the chair around for the last couple of days

and whenever i get a bit anxious, being in this crazy, wonderful process with 5 other people

i stand on the chair and stare

sometimes i see other people stand on the chair

i leave it behind at odd places

i found the chair a few days ago

when i collected things i liked

the things turned into a room

i set the room up outside the abandoned house where i was collecting things

an outdoors room

later on i moved the room inside another room

inside the salon

the social space for the people in the Folkshochschule

there is a library in the basement

it has mainly swedish books and a small collection of english ones

they are all donated books

inbetween mainly not very interesting reads i found vriginia woolf’s “a room of one’s own”

i put the book on the table in my room

i put the chair in front of it, to sit on it while reading

i liked the shape of it, it fitted

but the writing on the seat annoyed me

“en stol att klivå pa”

i didn’t know what it meant

i thought i could sandpaper it to get rid of it

the morning after i had set up my room a woman approached me in the breakfast room

she told me she liked the room i had set up and especially the chair

“a chair to stand on!” she said and i didn’t get it at first

my puzzled look made her explain

en stol att klivå pa, a chair to stand on

i was delighted

so now i own a chair to stand on

and while standing on it today, i looked out over the white waves

the sea was dark today, a blueish stale grey

there was a cake in the oven, a chocolate cake

and i was wearing a t-shirt with a green heart, a heart of green leaves

it was a windy day and i turned around to have the wind in my back

to look at the clouds

above the round shape of the school there was a heart shaped cloud

i stared at it until it started to change its shape

ran inside to catch the moment that had already passed

i stood at the chair once more and looked at the other clouds and suddenly they all looked a bit like they could have been heart shaped only minutes earlier

and when it got colder i put on the shirt i found on the streets in barcelona

because it is warm and the inside is soft, it has a hood and a big pocket in the front

so your hands can touch while they rest, while they warm up

it also has a text and a big heart printed on it

the heart has a hole in it

i guess that is why it was thrown away

but i like the hole best

it makes me think of a quote by one of my favorite writers:

Christian Bobin, The very lowly. A meditation on Francis of Assisis.

“... love does not fill anything, not the hole you have in your head, not the abyss that you have in your heart. Love is an absence much more than a fullness. Love is a fullness of absence. This is, I grant you, an incomprehensible thing. But this thing that is impossible to understand is so very simple to live.”

and it is.

meet my new collaborators. partners in crime. inspirators, idea providers. dance partners. meal sharers. soundboards, sparring partners.

meet therese, who shows us the sea and will take us to the forest.

meet joakim, the mad professor.

meet judit, who makes us stroke soft fabrics and joins our hands.

meet valeria, who moves us.

meet balint, who collects our sounds and comforts jellyfish by letting them listen to the sounds of the waves.

they don’t fill the hole in my barcelona heart. they create new ones, new holes, they create space. endless space.

 chocolate cake with swedish cream, a sweet-sour fruit and a love soldier (from the jewellery collection by Heidi Seppälä)