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thin ice

IMGP0071_2on an early winter’s day a small girl is contemplating the fine layer of ice that, over night, has been glazing over the surface of the fjord. the fine glass is firm enough to carry a duck sliding more that waddling on her webbed feet, making towards the dark canal of open water a fisher boat has left in its wake this morning. it is a comical sight to watch the duck struggling to make progress on the polished ice, the bird looks like harpo on skates.

a little further off the shore a small lake has been kept open by another group of water birds continuously swimming to keep their hole from freezing over, among them two swans who for the time being have resigned themselves to the company of the more common water fowl as their attempts at escape have been defied by their weight.

the girls narrows her eyes as she tentatively put one foot out on the ice, holding on to the orphaned pole the boat upon its return will bet tied to. a large bubble of air that somehow has been trapped underneath the ice near the pole displaces itself under the weight of the child’s feet and causes the ice to sigh. the child smiles with appreciation.

she is old enough to realize that the surface that will not carry a swan’s weight will not carry her own. furthermore, she has been firmly instructed to never walk on the ice before being told that it is safe to do so.

but no ones knows that she is as fast as lightning. they don’t know that she can make herself as light as a feather by breathing just so. with her eyes she follows the path her light foot would take, by a split second faster than the breaking ice. she would reach the other shore before the fjord could ever hope to claim her, she can see it now, can see herself running out there, triumphantly, defying nature and convention in one glorious run.

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the earth itself, underneath my body, was a breathing organism, like a gigantic whale you find yourself stranded on

How hard my mind had to work to keep control, to still try to make sense out of a wealth on information that had long stopped to be apprehensible by any rules I had been led to understand applied. But only submission to the world of grown-ups would have you believe that they were – in general – truthful about the world. I didn’t believe this anymore but tried to rely on my own senses instead. It was treacherous ground.

For example that night. As I lay in the dark, eyes closed though wide awake, the surface of my bed felt soft as was to be expected, but it felt soft in the way I had experienced and shied away from before. It seemed to be soft in an organic, breathing way. I tried to distinguish between my own breathing pattern and the breathing of that soft, pliable surface I felt underneath my body.  It was an uncanny feeling – but just ask yourself how many sensations you can really clearly distinguish besides soft and hard, warm and cold, pain and pleasure. Truth is, you constantly rely on additional sensations and context to tell you about the thing you are experiencing through just one of your senses to make sense of something.

What was it that I was feeling? Something that I feared, but I didn’t know why I feared it or whether I had reason to fear it in the first place as I was completely unaware of its nature. All I knew was that last time I checked my bed had not been breathing. As before it felt actually – and it made perfect sense to think those words as irrational as they might seem – that the earth itself, underneath my feet, my body, was a breathing organism, like a gigantic whale you find yourself stranded on. It didn’t make sense and I couldn’t explain to myself where that strange idea actually orginated. Nothing I had read or talked about lately had pointed in that direction. Remember, there was no internet and but little TV. None in our house, by the way.

And yet, I just felt it, right there and then, the surface underneath me belonged to something alive, and I knew I had to open my eyes to find out what was going on, but I was entirely too scared to live up to my own imaginative ability. All I could manage to do, pathetically,  was to continue breathing slowly just as I had done during those long ago nights when I had led some non-existing intruder to believe that I was asleep. And with each moment the sensation of a sighing, breathing surface underneath my body was getting stronger.

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page 176 – still in the library

I took out my small compact powder out of my jacket pocket. I clipped it open and looked into the little mirror in the lid. My face glowed sickly pale under the fluorescent lights. Winter pale.  I clipped the lid down, got up from my chair and stepped into U – Z. As I had expected, there was no one there. Velasquez, Varese and The Venetian School, gigantic volumes, with soft, yellow pages lingered pompously yet with a limp attitude between smaller books, waiting to be released from the boredom of their shelf lives. This is what immortality means, I thought, sitting on a shelf as an afterthought to your own life. Maybe to be lifted down every few years to be perused briefly for some kids’ art assignment.  I touched the laminated, slightly deformed backs with my fingers. Books do not endure lamination well, a laminated book resembles a plastic covered sofa. One cannot enjoy it. I apologized to the volumes that were sighing with age and discontent …

I have been working on this novel for a while now. There are passages that I really love, snippets, impressions that convey the atmosphere I want to create. There is also, almost surprisingly, some real plot (unusual for me) and a couple of protagonists I can vividly picture like I can picture friends. The novel could be read as science fiction – or it could be an account of a delusion. I don’t quite know which one it is, but so far it could coherently be read as either and it will depend on the conclusion to point in one direction or the other. Any kind of science fiction could of course be an account of the protagonist’s delusions if one chose to read it like that. This is one reason I chose the genre for this particular coming-of-age story in the first place. Another one is that I have been craving for a playing field for my interest in ephemeral science and have been having a ball researching and reading up on all kinds of science projects with marginal news interest from marine bioluminescence to quantum physics to astronomy.

 

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12 nights – a favorite drawing

IMG_5366If I was to choose one drawing that I liked particularly in the flood of drawings of those nights it would have to be this pretty simple one. There were some much more sophisticated pieces, but this one, conceived towards the end of the 12 nights, is playful and relaxed in a way that convinced me that in the end there was a point to my practice. I wish I could hold on to that for a while longer, at least when I am drawing.

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12 nights – more drawings …

 

 

IMG_5358 IMG_5359 IMG_5360 IMG_5362 IMG_5365 IMG_5366 IMG_5367 IMG_5368 IMG_5370 IMG_5371

 

I guess my illustrations to some degree could either be read as a successful attempt to ban those thoughts that are accosting us when we try to engage in meditation by giving them form, or as a document of failure because all those thoughts that in meditation are to be let through were instead allowed to manifest themselves in a permanent form. One of the amazing aspects of art is surely that is demonstrates that our mind is always, ALWAYS, generating images and thoughts unless we dedicate some time to some sensual deprivation and allow the void to fill the crowded space of our anxious minds. As an artist I live by generating images, not necessarily by letting go of them. And yet there is a peaceful, non-goal oriented quality to these drawings and I can conjure up the spirit of those nights just by looking at them.

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12 nights – samples

End of December I observe a yearly time of night meditation, roughly in sync with some old traditions but not necessarily bound by them. To keep awake 12 nights in a row and in quiet meditation is much easier when the mind is allowed an activity – and drawing is my very personal way of quieting my mind. Night after night I produced two to three drawings, taking a photo at the end of each night, recording the creatures of fancy accumulating … As a side-effect I switched back from painting to drawing to prepare an illustrated history of some sorts that I am starting these days.