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4 July 2010

#185 Plant a tree

Take the opportunity to plant a tree that bears fruit while you’re at it. Banana trees are also quite pretty to look at. But dif

Take the opportunity to plant a tree that bears fruit while you’re at it. Banana trees are also quite pretty to look at. But dif

I am seven years old and sitting up in the crown of an old oak. Down on the ground a dozen people are calling me to come down. I refuse. I’m too scared. It all started with the bastards saying that I couldn’t climb all the way up. I started climbing. Although I wasn’t particularly tall or strong, I did it anyway. They shouldn’t think that they can bully me around. But when I get to the top, I look down. The ground is blurred. I hug the tree. Closing my eyes. The voices are calling me to come down. And I feel glued to the tree.

I'm ten years old and the janitors have torn down the hut we built in the tree in the meadow. I stand beneath the tree and cry. They have cut the branches so that we can’t build more huts. I stand and clench my fist. I don’t know what to do with all my anger. I’m Biting down hard. My jaw is cracking. I’m crying.

I'm nineteen, drunk out of my mind. I’m standing high up in a tree with a white plastic outdoor chair in one hand and a bottle of absinthe in the other. Below is Markus, laughing. I hang the furniture from a perch high in the tree. Jump down gracefully without spilling a single drop of the bottle. Watching Markus and raising the bottle into the clear night sky in southern Sweden. Then I take a sip. All around us there’s furniture hanging from every tree in the garden of the community college.

Bonus - If you don’t want to plant the tree yourself, you can pay a tenner or two and let people who are passionate about it to do it. http://www.viskogen.se/

Required time: 
1 hour or less
Cost: 
Less than €50
Cons: 
You get dirt under your nails.
Pros: 
You put life into the soil. It generates oxygen, fruit and maybe a nice view. Maybe in a few years it’ll be perfect for climbing or building a hut in.
Taggar: planting, hut, garden furniture, banana trees, absinthe, 365 things you can do
8 May 2010

#128 Build a hut

Today's guest blogger is Simon Gärdenfors, a cartoonist and rapper. He is pretty good at fooling people, has made a cartoon about Anna Lindh's suspected killer, and has lived with strangers all over Sweden.

Last time I built a hut, I was 20 years old. Perhaps I had turned 21 already. Me and my friend Victor set a small lamp and a pile of comic books under my desk and placed a blanket over it. We sat in there and played a game Gomoku. It was semi-fun. We mainly tried to seem spontaneous to one another.

What was exciting about the whole thing was that my neighbor thought I was a pedophile. We had just gotten to know each other and when she knocked on my door and I opened, I proudly pointed to our hut. Viktor looked out and waved. 
- Are your twelve-year old friends in there too?, she asked. 

The background to this question was that I used to gather a bunch of local artists to draw comics at home with me at the time. I got to know John, whose brother Sandro was a kick-ass cartoonist, despite being in his early teens. He brought a slightly younger friend to a "cartoon-jam". He was twelve. In the evening I had a party and saw him sitting and talking with my neighbor who was also invited.

Now she stood and looked suspiciously at me and the hut. I couldn't explain further, but only smiled in reply; my neighbor thought I liked little boys. I felt unsafe and special. 

Required time: 
Only takes a minute to throw a blanket over your desk.
Cost: 
Free.
Cons: 
Not so fun in itself.
Pros: 
Your neighbors may think you are a pedophile.
Taggar: hut, gärdenfors