MIGRATORY BIRDS

Twenty-three times I will have moved in my life now.

I had to write all the homes down on a piece of paper and count.

From my very first one, - that big turn of the century flat in Sweden,

where I was born {the very same my parents only got because of my mama balancing

heavily pregnant on a door handle to be able to peek in and find it empty.

«I especially love the stucco in the hallway,» said mama.

«And how the hell do you know there's stucco and what it looks like..?» said the owner.

«I climbed.» said mama, with me; nine months internal luggage.

«Yes. You climbed. Bloody hell, the flat's yours..!» said the owner. 

A man who swore a lot, but apparently was on top of his yes's and no's.}, - to

the turn of the century flat that we now packed up and left, here in England.
So there were the twenty-something houses in between.


There was the one with the crazy man upstairs, still referred to simply as
TheGeezerUpstairs among family and friends. He who always stood watching us play
down in the garden from his window, with one sphynx cat on each shoulder.
 He who was the reason I couldn't go straight there after school for a long time

if no one else was at home. Instead, I would spend my afternoons

with papa's best friend, the boatbuilder, across the street. 

There was the scent of tarred twine & bergamot earl grey and that's also
what we drank together, steaming from a Japanese cast iron kettle.
He served seeded homemade crispbread warm from the oven, with intense
french cheeses and tomato marmalade with vanilla pods still in it.
    He played opera; Maria Callas singing Puccini, had books from floor to ceiling and
big Climbing Jasmines in intricate hanging baskets his hands had weaved.
  I loved those afternoons.


There was the monstrous nineteenth-century house, embedded by the forest's edge.
That with the round budding tower room we turned into the film room,
A room on a time schedule as we weren't allowed too much television.
There were so many perfectly timeworn and winding wooden bannisters,
too tempting not to forever straddle and slide down,
- & a dark railroad, skirted with luminous Giant hogweeds, taller than
any human we knew, but that we knew very well to be poisonous.
They carried both seductively soft petals and stern
'play throughout all of the forest but stay away from those' - admonitions.
We weren't too troubled by the limited screen time schedule.


There was my first apartment which I shared with my best friend
and a schizophrenic lady living in the flat downstairs.
We laid pasted to the floor on many burning summer nights,
with water glasses between us and the floor,
listening downward and squeezing each other's damp palms.

Shaky and futile we called the police a few times during those nights

until we understood the various voices belonged to one and the same person,
threatening to do away with the other. But those homes are stories on their own
and nowadays I'm a migratory bird with my own family.

cassius 0.5 and 2.5

With my move number 23, we now left almost dizzying space with close to
five metres ceiling height, just a few more to reach the sea, - & Pink Floyd's David Gilmour
as the luxury creator of the soundtrack of our daily life a.k.a closest neighbour.

At nights we could hear the waves crashing and during the days the

seagulls squalled along with the ex-boxer's sons {who was also forever smoking

so much weed out on their balcony, that those particular windows had to be

quite consistently pulled down}. This was where we became a family.

His very first home. And that will most likely be what I scribble down in the margin

next to date and time, if I one day in the future have to write all my homes down

on a piece of paper again, - that this was the home where I was born a mother.

Now we're gonna make a home out of something a lot smaller.

Here it's the Blackbirds and the Song Thrushes that stand for the chorus,

in the overgrown garden of our backyard, echoing chirp between the

courtyards, houses and helical fire-escapes. They seem to never have left 

for the winter. I read in the Guardian that they get confused by mobile

phone masts and wireless networks. They can lose their bearings,

fall straight into the sea, never reach their destination. I can relate.

I feel quite stressed and a bit pinioned in the digitally social today. Lost.

But maybe there's room still, like this. Here. Pockets of spiring wild
in between concrete squares and luminous screens. We'll see.