Tactile Field - Petra Söör

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Image of white/gray lichens and brown pine needles taken close up with the light shining from behind - in the top left corner image showing in black and white the detail of an elderly persons hand lightly touching the fury ear of a dog

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A field of black text on white background covering the whole page and spilling over the edges, you can read some of the sentences of the story fully but not all.

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

Tactile Fields and love songs

Some kind of family portrait

When I miss you

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

 
Image showing in black and white the detail of an elderly persons hand lightly touching the fury ear of a dog (same as above) overlaid with the outline of a hand - Text: When I miss you

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

 

Perhaps breathing reminds me of still being with (within)

vibrating

humming

vitalities

sometimes called

you and you

and I

and that

sky soil skin mineral cell wall water pigeon 

porous membranes

bodies  

touch songs

like love songs 

 

Photo by Petra Söör, 2021

 

I smell petrol.)

Coming home I wonder how old the trees in the plantation might be. I fall asleep. As I wake up I have the feeling of wanting to spend a night in the plantation and a night on the other side of the track in the old forest. Sleeping, listening, dreaming.

Already in the imagining of sleeping with the young plantation trees I get a physical sensation of cold metal against the layers of skin of my belly. It’s like I anticipate not being able to sleep in amongst these trees without, as a body in amongst bodies, hearing the sound of the machinery cutting into them. I imagine at dusk that I can just about see through the efficiently spaced trees to the other side of the track and the old forest. From here I sense their witnessing and wonder how many times already their bodies experienced the vibrations of machinery and chainsaws. How might the winds have changed with the absence of this field of trees and habitat? Changed the snowfall and the rain? The sound and vibrating echo of the scooters on the track.

Below and above ground how might they have sensed the absence of the hum of these neighbours? The hum of the absence of these neighbours?

It’s March and I fall asleep under a tree just on the other side of the track opposite the plantation, under a tree who's branches is covered in usnea. I sleep through the spring equinox and with the spring sun softening the snow I slip and slide underneath a turned over tree into the opening of the ground where the roots are facing sky and there was once a rapture in the weave of the undergrowth. I’m still asleep but the soft thumping of my pulse is accompanying me in my dreaming. I sleep through summer the sonic summer feast of ants feet green growth and into autumn…