August
Beneath the surface of the city, a quiet tension is bubbling. It leaks in through the cracks. I want to get closer to that liminal space, the porous border between the urban and the wild.
Old stories tell us that the dead wander with the living in the shape of birds. This old land holds old spirits within.
This is Helsinki of the living and the dead.
September
I start feeding the local crows. We have a meeting place along my daily commute.
In his famous Christmas carol, Topelius writes that feeding birds is a form of communication with our deceased kin.
At first they were wary, but slowly the trust between us grows.
October
I spent the month in Kainuu, surrounded by an old-growth forest. Under the canopy of pines, in the embrace of sparkling swamps, the forest gently wraps me within itself. As I return to the city, I gaze out of the tram window at the asphalt landscape and wonder if I have any real relationship with this place at all.
When the crows greet me in our usual place, something inside me flutters.
November
One rainy day, I cycled past our meeting place without stopping. When I arrived at my studio, I noticed the flock had followed me. The crows looked at me, waiting. Moved by their behaviour, I offered all the peanuts from my bag for them.
Crows are border dwellers — interacting with them is interacting with the untamed. They remind me that the city can never completely disconnect its roots from the wild.
December
I noticed I had started talking about the crows as my crows. But they are not my crows. They belong to themselves.
As I approached the border, it seemed more important than ever to approach it on its own terms. The most horrible thing you can do to wildness is to tame it.
Come, crow, or come not.
January
The bitter cold of January descends on the city and bites through my winter coat. On my way to the grocery store, I see a lone crow trying to stay warm, feathers ruffled against the cold.
I have no peanuts to offer. All I can find in the store are almonds, too big for its mouth. The crow desperately buries them in the snow. I break the almonds with my teeth, piece by piece, feeling like a mother bird feeding her young.
February
Seagulls, the ferocious gods of the city, have returned from their winter journey from the south. As I gaze into their red eyes, I see glimpses of the past, of a time before human memory. If I look closely, I can see the echoes of the ancient giants who inhabited this planet long ago.
One of them snatches a sandwich from my hand as I run to the movies. The audacity of the seagulls is the audacity of the wildness bubbling in the cracks of the city and I love it.
March
Some days I have waited at our meeting place with no response.
Some days a lone crow has watched me from a branch, not daring to come down.
I try not to look directly at them, because I know it scares them.
Some days the whole flock has fluttered around me, cawing with excitement, and I’ve laughed my joy out loud.
April
In the midst of an early spring, winter returns without warning and a sudden snowstorm sweeps over the city. Outside my studio, two crows hover in panic amid the storm.
I had already stopped feeding them, because the nesting season requires insects, not seeds.
But I fear that this unexpected winter will be the end of them.
This is a foretaste of things to come. Abnormal weather is already our reality.
I run out with my bag of peanuts and clear the corner of the loading dock of snow. The crows hover above me as I pour the contents of the bag onto it.
When I later return, the nuts are gone. In their place are two small pieces of broken glass. Are they perhaps gifts?
May
At the end of May, I spend some time in Joutsa. In the evenings, the birds’ disco drowns out all other ambiance. I look at the trees with my binoculars, but see no one. The birds are the locus, the spirit of the place making itself visible by remaining invisible.
Only a swallow glides under the eaves. From its eggs the world is created, with an iron rake.
On the lake, the loon comes closer, a messenger between the here and after.
June
Silence has descended on the city. From the news I read that birds have stopped singing because of the unusual heat.
The era of boiling has begun.
July
I find a small blue egg on my stairs. I hear a quiet voice inside, like a whisper. I gently lift the fragile creature to my ear.
“The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world altogether,” it whispers.
A lone crow is watching me from the rooftop of the building.
August
The nesting season for crows is coming to an end. I leave a pile of peanuts at our meeting place to signal that I have returned.
It is said that humans can’t see the difference between nature and culture because they themselves are that difference. To get closer to that porous border, I have to turn inward and face the animal in myself.
A familiar crow lands on the branch close to me. It says there is a path to the border. We agree to meet there later, when the time is right.
September
Every autumn, birds fly along the milky way towards the realm of the dead. There they spend their winter and return again in spring.
In the nest of my room I am incubating the small blue egg, a ghost of earth. It whispers to me stories of the past and the future.
One day, I too will become soil on earth. What will the world be like when I come back to haunt it?
October
A flock of crows have started to follow me all the way to my studio. Their silhouettes draw cracks to the asphalt, through which another world leaks in.
In the quiet twilight of my room, the egg begins to crack and a tiny creature hatches.
Together we gather our strength. We teach each other to fly, we do the wind’s work.
November
Winter slumber has begun.
The creature and I walk together along the path, we earth-windlings.
There, at the end, a familiar bird awaits. We step into the earth’s fracture, the time in-between.
Here we circle counterclockwise. Here we have more names than one.
Here we dance with ghosts in the streets.
Here we dance.