The silent kitchen

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It is now many years since I sat in the small village of Jonhål among the dandelions and painted my first painting, an oil painting on masonite.

The meeting with Astrid and Arvid was the beginning of my story. In Astrid’s isolation, I felt at home. As a lost teenager, I could identify with a person who was different and who, like myself, never fit into the usual norm. But in a different way, of course.

What was difficult to express with brush and paint instead found its form in the notebook. This is the story of how it all once began.

Here is the cottage. Like the aged nursing tree, blackened by snapping winters and dry summers. The sewing machine remains at the top of the gable room. A bundle of fabrics on a moldy cardboard. And the thimble. Evening mood in glass and frame. Curtains brushed with coarse cobwebs. The crossbar scrolls through the almanac. Someone has rushed through the sideboard and left the drawers limping behind. The brickwork is cracked, the wood stove, the kitchen’s rusty altar, stands there shackled by its weight, covered in snow from the ceiling’s paint flakes. The greenery smolders between the floorboards. Flowers that blooms for no one. Colors close next to each other. Iron objects brittle with time. Shards of light. Track. Sign. The blue sea smoke drifts between the houses. And the world disappears.

When she turns on the lamp, she meets her reflection in the window. She looks tired and the swollen fingers shine brightly. The porridge pot in a wet state. The sausage has cooked to pieces.