[id:$00000000] [ar:Mount Eerie] [ti:Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup] [by:] [hash:da61384eb521fddfd2d75ade8ae31aa7] [al:] [sign:] [qq:] [total:0] [offset:0] [00:00.02]Mount Eerie - Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup [00:15.43]I know no one now [00:22.47]Now I say you [00:33.84]Now after the ground has opened up [00:38.87]Now after you died [00:42.45]I wonder what could beacon me forward into the rest of life [00:55.49]I can glimpse occasional moments [01:00.50]Gleaming like bonfires burning from across the fjord [01:23.45]In a painting from around 1915 called Midsummer Eve bonfire by Nicolai Astrup [01:31.04]That shines on my computer screen in 2017 in the awful July night [01:39.93]The house is finally quiet and still with the child asleep upstairs [01:45.44]So I sit and notice the painting of bonfires on the hillside [01:49.81]And hanging smoke in the valleys [01:59.75]Wrapping back up through the fjords at dusk [02:03.19]Hovering like scars of mist draped along the ridges [02:09.36]Of couples dancing in the green twilight around fires [02:15.66]And in the water below the reflections of other fires from other parties [02:21.74]Illuminate the depths and glitter shining and alone [02:32.94]Everyone is laughing and there is music [02:35.85]And a man climbs up the hill pulling [02:38.24]A juniper down to throw into the fire [02:42.22]To make some sparks rise up to join the stars [02:46.90]These people in the painting believed in magic and earth [02:51.11]And they all knew loss [02:55.49]And they all came to the fire [02:59.87]I saw myself in this one young woman in the foreground [03:11.25]With a look of desolation and a body that looked pregnant [03:15.18]As she leaned against the moss of a rock soft to the side [03:19.85]Apart from all the people celebrating midsummer [03:23.88]I knew her person was gone just like me [03:28.40]And just like me she looked across at the fires from far away [03:32.79]And wanted something in their light to say [03:35.46]Live your life and if you don't [03:44.13]The ground is definitely ready at any moment to open up again [03:50.92]To swallow you back in [03:53.05]To digest you back into something useful for somebody [03:59.80]And meanwhile above the Norwegians dancing in the twilight [04:05.62]The permanent white snow gleamed [04:09.64]You used to call me Neige Éternelle [04:19.64]The man who painted this girl's big black eyes gazing [04:23.67]Drawing the fire into ourselves standing alone [04:27.93]Nikolai Astrup he also died young at 47 [04:34.69]Right after finishing building his studio at home [04:39.36]Where he probably intended to keep on painting his resonant life into old age [04:45.76]But sometimes people get killed before they get to finish [04:50.46]All the things they were going to do [04:57.84]That's why I'm not waiting around anymore [05:03.99]That's why I tell you that I love you [05:13.70]Does it even matter what we leave behind [05:18.23]I'm flying on an airplane over the Grand Canyon [05:22.35]Imagining strangers going through the wreckage of this flight if it were to crash [05:30.94]And would anyone notice or care gathering up my stuff from the desert below [05:38.01]Would they investigate the last song I was listening to [05:42.57]Would they go through my phone and see the last picture I ever took [05:46.29]Was of our sleeping daughter early this morning [05:50.19]Getting ready to go and I was struck by her face [05:54.14]Sweet in the blue light of our dim room [05:59.53]Would they follow the thread back and find her there [06:09.65]I snapped back out of this plane crash fantasy still alive [06:14.84]And I know that's not how it would go [06:17.67]I know the actual mess that death leaves behind [06:22.14]It just gets bulldozed in a panic by the living pushed over the waterfall [06:30.07]Because that's me now holding all your things [06:35.46]Resisting the inevitable flooding of the archives [06:43.00]The scraps distributed by wind [06:46.36]A life's work just left out in the rain [06:51.68]But I'm doing what I can to reassemble a poor substitute version of you [06:58.25]Made of the fragments and drawings that you left behind [07:02.45]I go though your diaries and notebooks at night [07:08.85]I'm still cradling you in me [07:28.61]There's another Nicolai Astrup painting from 1920 [07:34.55]Called foxgloves that hangs on the fridge [07:37.71]And I look at it every morning and every night before bed [07:46.56]Some trees have been cut down next to a stream [07:49.74]Flowing through a birch brow in late spring [07:54.74]And two girls that look like you gather berries and baskets [07:59.77]Hunched over like young animals grazing [08:03.52]With their red dresses against the white birch three trunks interweaving [08:10.22]Beneath the cluttering leaves [08:12.90]The three stumps in the foreground remind me that everything is fleeting [08:19.20]As if reminding is what I need [08:23.85]But then the foxgloves grow [08:26.05]And I read that the first flowers that return to disturbed ground [08:32.46]Like where logging took place [08:34.85]Or where someone like me rolled around wailing in a clearing [08:43.62]Now I don't wonder anymore [08:48.51]If it's significant that all these foxgloves spring up [08:53.40]On the place where I'm about to build our house [08:57.40]And go to live in let you fade in the night air [09:02.87]Surviving with what dust is left of you here [09:09.71]Now you will recede into the paintings