Module 1: Creative (Re)Presentations of Home

by | Jun 3, 2022 | 5: Summer Course 2022, 5a Course Preparations, X_Uncategorised | 5 comments

Time flies

The wave softly touch the pier

The wind blows my thoughts away

The sun softly shines my face

The cold concrete under my feet

The smell of ocean

The noisy flagpole

The flowers slowly taking a last gasp

The fighting flowers withered

Time flies on a pier far away

Blobb, tikk, svjosj

Blobb, blobb, blobb

Havet smeiger brygga                  The ocean softly touches the pier

Blobb, blobb, blobb

Tikk, tikk, tikk

Flaggstanga slår i tankene                 The flagpole slams my thoughts                                                                             

Tikk, tikk, tikk

Svjosj, svosj, svosj

Vinden blåse tankene bort         The wind blows my thoughts away

Svosj, svosj, svosj

Jeg får fred her                             I get peace here

By the ocean and aboud the poems

Some thoughts came and went away while I was sitting on the pier. Here is two poems. English is not my strongest subject and because I am Norwegian my brain thinks best in Norwegian. I have tried to translate the one I had in Norwegian to English. The poem is also affected by my dialect.

Why the ocean

My best childhood memories are from hiking from the cabin in the mountains with my dad, and just walk whatever place the trail took us and back another way by map. It is not easy to get to the cabin now, so I took a walk to the ocean. I have great memories from the ocean to, and as time went by, I have moved closer to the ocean. It is only a short walk from home, so I find my self down here more and more often to take a deep breath and recharge my energy. Is is maybe because of the summer and memories from the ocean during that time. This time there was a bouquet places in a hole in the table. It got me thinking, and that would be something I could have done to let something nice left for the next viewer. Instead of taking up just sound, I took a video of this bouquet. A couple of days later I went down to the same place. This time it was less wind, but the flower was withered. I took a new video. Both videos are taken approximately on the same time during the day with a couple of days between.  

5 Comments

  1. Anja Nilsen

    Dear Tomine
    One of my best childhood memories is from the pier at the family cabin at Stokke in Vestfold. I fished beach crabs on my stomach for hours with string and clothespin with mussels at the end. I bathed every day. Although I often burned myself on jellyfish. The sun was shining. The warm wind was blowing in my hair. The bread truck came pinging with fresh cinnamon sticks 2 days a week. It’s the only place I’ve fished and eaten hvitting. In the evening, I played yatzy with Grandma.
    Natural forces leave traces in humans. Rain, wind, sun, hail, waves, rockslides, stick bushes, sand grains etc. affects us and creates memories.

    • Jennie Gubner

      Anja this is such a wonderful description of childhood thank you. The description of fishing on your stomach, the stings of jellyfish, the homemade fishing line, the wind, the cinnamon rolls. It reads like a film or a painting and brings back so many of my own memories of playing on the beach by our cabin, days full of adventures collecting shells, picking up rocks to find small crabs, exploring tide pools to look for anemones, taking small nets to try to catch tiny fish along the shore with my brother, learning to skip rocks into the sea, going out in our dads boat with a box with glass on the bottom to try to look for starfish under the water, the salty sea breeze, the big rubber boots, coming inside to warm up and have fresh seafood pasta cooked by my mother, then dancing to old cassettes, the sound of my dad’s guitar, board games, and going to bed listening to the waves.

  2. Eleni Gkrilla

    Very interesting how differently we write the sounds in each language! And how we say the sounds with words. Also, the ocean and the flowers together makes me feel how time flies but at the same time nothing changes. Thanks for your post!

  3. Jennie Gubner

    Tomine, you have taken us all to our own memories of the sea. Such a gift. Thank you. I love the flowers as well, and the way you were able to show us the passing of time with your videos. Such a nice thing to leave the gift of flowers for a visitor like yourself. Looks like a beautiful place.

  4. Annagrazia Graduato

    Thank you for cradling us with these sounds and words so foreign to me, who know nothing of Norwegian, but now a little more familiar when I imagine them accompanied by the images you evoked from your childhood.

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