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I went to the woods

I went to the woods

A Personal Climate Strike

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Posted on February 5, 2021February 14, 2021

On Reading and Writing Poetry

This is a blog post on my love for poetry and my fear of writing it. When it comes to writing, there is nothing I am more afraid of than poetry. I write essays and reportings and academic papers, proposals and pitches. I write blog posts and morning pages (What's that, you wonder? Unpaid link). …

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Posted on December 8, 2020February 27, 2021

Under The Weather

It started snowing early this morning. Not the thick kind of snow that covers everything from one minute to another. The snow of this morning is shy, the flakes small, almost as if they are in a trial phase. Do we dare? Half an hour later they stop, only to start again. Let’s try again. …

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Posted on September 13, 2020September 15, 2020

120 days of summer

Summer in Norway is no time for idle contemplation. The days are endless, the entirety of the season is short, however, and there is no time to lose. You do not sit down to reflect in summer, especially on a farm. Summer is the time of growth. All the small plants need to go into …

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Posted on May 26, 2020February 27, 2021

Tales of Dandelion Spaghetti and Seagull Serenading

It has been quiet on this blog for the last couple of weeks. So either "quiet is the new loud" as the Kings of Convenience stated – and they are Norwegian, so they must know. Or I got something cooking, something that is so completely and utterly occupying that no time could be found to …

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Posted on April 20, 2020April 22, 2020

On watering lettuce and letting go

There is nothing I find more soothing than to observe someone do work chores. The type of task that someone can do in their sleep, because they have done it for a long time, because they are good at it, or because it is a rather monotone type of work. When I am sick and …

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Posted on April 10, 2020April 12, 2020

I am exactly where I need to be

When I set out on this adventure I called a personal climate strike, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. Family, friends, colleagues kept asking about the plan – it’s a reasonable question and my answer was ready-made. I was on a mission and I used the big guns: the spiraling ecological crisis, …

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Posted on March 19, 2020March 23, 2020

It’s ok to feel vulnerable

I started this post listing all the facts and drastic measurements that were implemented in Norway in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. I wanted to give you a proper update on what is going on here, up north. Norway is just as much in crisis mode as all the other European countries, with …

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Posted on March 10, 2020March 11, 2020

Environmentalism and Eco Consciousness in Norway

Living in Germany for a lot of people means to look at the nordic countries – Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland – with a mixture of awe, jealousy and romanticisation. The usual comments go like this: "It's cold up there but have you seen their wellfare system?" "Look at the schools, they have a …

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Posted on February 5, 2020February 5, 2020

On manual work

Working on a farm lets me experience and consequently makes me think a lot about manual work. I once was sort of a manual worker, although you might not call it that way, and that was when I was in a training program to become a dancer. I spent some years of my childhood and …

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Posted on January 25, 2020February 5, 2020

On new beginnings

Two weeks ago today I started my first day of work on a small organic farm in Norway. The farms name is Skifterud and it is situated in the region of Tinn in the county of Telemark, up on the side of a mountain. The valley is wide and opens down to Tinnsjø, a large …

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I WENT TO THE WOODS ON INSTAGRAM

This last piece of blackout poetry is the obligatory note of hope. An overwhelming percentage of our media coverage on ecological issues is framed in negative terms. And although the situation is dire, there are roughly three million NGO‘s, community-based initiatives, associations and the like that work on global and local levels to improve the world we live in. Far less media attention is given to these often silent agents of change. If you struggle with eco-grief or anxiety there is a wonderful book, small but powerful. The Field Guide to Climate Grief by Sarah Jaquette Ray (unpaid ad). Ray teaches environmental studies in Arcata, California, and her book addresses the climate generation, born after 1990, that will experience the consequences of ecological disrupture. Her approach is hands on and positive, focused on resilience and engagement, without sugarcoating the severity of the situation. Most importantly, she is aware of the intersectionality of environmental issues, stressing climate justice. What I can say of my experience of morphing papers and articles into poetry is that it is hard and that I don‘t feel comfortable sharing often on Instagram. So I will retreat for a while. Looking forward to writing some real poetry. Thank you for your support and kind words over the course of this project. Stay well.
Day 18 with some new material for doomscrolling. This report from ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine looks at data and prognoses on the landscape of Northern America from 2040 onward. The data was provided by the Rhodium Group, and independent research provider. It looks at extreme heat and humidity, wildfires, flooding, sea level rise, farm crop yields and economic damages.
When the shit hits the fan Silicon Valley will gladly retreat to the epic waterfalls and the rolling hills of Lord of the Rings. This is a 2018 longread from the Guardian, named „Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand“. Day 17 of Blackout Poetry.
How will Kant help us trap carbon dioxide?
Day 15. I advise you to read this paper by Jem Bendell, „Deep Adaption: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy“. Bendell did a cross section of all the data available on the ecological crisis. The data say it is about time to come to terms with some dramatic changes that are likely to happen in our lifetime. No one can predict what‘s going to happen, but there are tendencies and we know the laws of physics. Just because we do not want to grasp the severity of the predicament doesn‘t make it any less urgent. Quite on the contrary, denial only worsens things. I understand that this is hard and uncomfortable and we are in for some dire emotions. Grief, anger, shame, despair, hopelessness, the hole package. This art project is not a way of making time pass. It is an attempt to create space for these emotions. Because they demand this space, and denying it to them does not serve my overall wellbeing anymore. I advice you to read this paper but also to seek a network of people to whom to talk to. There are wonderful groups and support networks out there and I am happy to share them with you. One of them is the Good Grief Network, a peer to peer group, focusing on climate emotions. And you can download Bendell‘s paper for free, following the link.
Day 14 of Blackout Poetry, where I take newspaper articles, papers and sometimes books on the ecological crisis and turn them into, well, poetry. Not the usual Sonnet kind of poetry but a way of digesting news by morphing them into another form. Perhaps closer to text marking. This article is an op-ed by an Indigenous educator and a doctor speaking eloquently about what Covid points towards. In their opinion Covid is a symptom of an exhausted planet. Only if we cultivate (or remember) a more healthy relationship to the very ground we walk on, the air we breathe, the water we swim in and drink and the food we eat, can we keep living here.
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