One for Sorrow
(2024)
This text and drawing project commissioned for an anthology entitled for Being Human Today. Art, education and mental health in conversation. Edited by J.J. Biesta, T.D. Bøe and L. Skregelid. Published by Intellect (2024)
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Your skin, so soft child
This text is inspired by my magpie friends, my seasonal hungry neighbours in Oslo.
One for sorrow
Outside, a magpie turns its head to get a better look at me. My mind grasps her eye. What is she looking at? Who am I to her? She sees the world differently. Her eye is different eye to a dog, or the worm or the microbe in my gut. We exchange glances for a while before she decides to fly off for no apparent reason. Is she flying because she has lost interest in the situation or is she frightened or did something I am unaware of catch her attention? I doubt I will ever know. “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.”
Your reading eye is reflecting, analysing the connection of these words, you are judging my thought and in that judgement you raise doubt! I fear your doubt upon these sentences.
Two for joy
My mind flies back to my piebald feathered visitor – did she take off because she doubted me, my intentions? In the great exodus from the Ukraine, humans are leaving their precious things behind them but taking their pets with them. Cats, dogs, hamsters are forcibly migrating from the conflict of another species. Those without a relationship to a pet can never understand that bond. It is one of joy, of connection, of safety but also of dependence. Perhaps, this is what I understand as being human today. Being human today is being in a state of ambivalence and longing for those connections to nature that we capture in our domesticity. Being human is to be intimately entangled with other beings and things and ultimately unable to doubt our own position and good intentions within that knot of connections.
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told
