Boring Island

Page 1

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Kรถnig, Kรถln

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Kรถnig, Kรถln


Today, on day 3, I woke up very early. The sun tickled me on the nose and my sleeping bag was soaking wet from the dew. The other three slept in the shack, which already has two floors and a cellar. There the sun doesn’t tickle so ticklish and there you sleep longer.




So I headed off alone with a chunk of bacon and the green fishnet from Josephine to the eastern shore of our island, where I sat on a rock. And now I’ll continue to write in another time. It was very calm early in the morning and the sun was already very high in the sky because sunrise is really early, at ½ past three. With a chunk of bacon as bait I lured small fish. And whenever a shoal of them quarrelled over the bacon I slowly and silently moved the net underneath them. A shoal like this is small, because the fish are really very small. A fish is roughly this large or this small: When the net was underneath the shoal I lifted it up and whoosh 10 small fish were in it. I caught a pail full, around 100 fish and even more. Now they are swimming in the soup.


Just back from the soup. Fish soup with carrots, mushrooms, algae, and thick, white Udon noodles. It was OK, but not really that exciting considering that 140 fish had to be cooked. By the way, I used my veil to strain the fish out of the soup.


Lots of large, small, and quite big boats and really giant ships sail, pitch and toss, chug, and drone their way around our teeny-weeny island. Every evening the ferry sails past us on the way to Tallinn in Estonia. And early in the morning it passes by again on the way to Stockholm.


But we don’t wave because it’s too far away. Yesterday (by the way we don’t have a clock on the island, only Wolfgang has one and sometimes has a look), it was definitely after sunset, two seals swam by. Pretty far away, but the sea was really smooth and there wasn’t a single wave, and I could see them very clearly through the binoculars. They were dark grey and had black noses.


Seagulls live with us on the island. They’ve just had chicks and yesterday evening a seagull chick sat all alone on a rock and I fed it salami. There are also lots of flowers here. Lots and lots of daisies, which stink quite a bit, and nettles. Others too, but I don’t know what they’re called. And two swans come to visit every day.


Today, on day 4, I finally managed to hang up my hammock. Which is really hard to do because they aren’t any trees on the island. It now hangs between a concrete block and a stone above, or more precisely, in a crevice which divides our island in two.


Just like the crack in your bum. And it was in this bum crack that I took my nap today.


But now we have to be really quiet. The black-and-white birds want to feed their young, who live next to our shack underneath a rock. Sometimes you can hear them call, but we haven’t seen them yet. The birds, roughly 8, feed the young together. I don’t know what they’re called, but maybe you could take a look in a book on animals with animals which live by the sea and on the coast. They look roughly like this:


Tobias is all red on his nose, neck, ears, shoulders and back. When he undresses he looks something like this:

I almost think he’s got sunburn. Today I’ve rebuilt our woodstove and cooked on it. Wolfgang’s making a chopping block and Ali’s sleeping in a little. Tobias is pumping drinking water.


We’ve got a pump that can turn saltwater into drinking water. You’ve got to pump for at least 2 hours every day. I haven’t manned the pump yet. Maybe tomorrow. I’ve already been for swim today though. And now it’s got really hot again. I’ll go for another dip and write again later.

Back again! Anyway, I was in the water with my wetsuit, goggles, snorkel and flippers. Not a fish in sight, not even a crab. Only these really tiny fish, these teeny-weeny fish that don’t taste that good. I’d swum around about half the island when Tobias suddenly called out: “Where’s the bandages? Wolfgang’s hacked up his hand!” And that came about like this: Wolfgang’s chopping block was finally ready. He placed the first piece of wood on it and with the very first blow hacked pretty deeply into his left hand. A long cut gaped between his thumb and forefinger, blood spurting out. The blood was everywhere, on the chopping block, on the rocks and on Wolfgang’s white wedding dress. I got out of the water quickly but was stuck so tightly in my wetsuit that Ali had to help me out.




Tobias fixed a thick, tight bandage for Wolfgang. Then we decided we had to stitch the wound. Tobias was the doctor while Ali and I were the nurses. First we gathered our instruments together. Sewing needle, scissors, nylon cord from our fishing gear, drops of sedative, a swab (linen) and a bottle of rum. We boiled the needle and scissors in hot water for 10 minutes. We gave Wolfgang a big dosage of sedative drops in a glass of water with sugar and rum. Tobias and I scrubbed our hands with soap down at the beach while Ali got the operating room ready. Before we started we practiced sewing buttons and decided on 3 stitches. Wolfgang sat down on the mattress in the operating room and Tobias jabbed the needle through the wound cleaned with rum. I pulled the first knot. It made a tiny dull, cracking sound when you jabbed through the skin. We made 3 hooks and eyes or whatever they’re called. We kept dousing with rum and finally covered it with a thick linen bandage. Now Wolfgang is lying in bed, Ali is pumping and Tobias is building his boxes. We still don’t know how we’re going to pull out the 3 hooks and eyes from the hand, but for the moment it looks okay. Luckily he didn’t hack into any tendons or nerves.


They’re all still sleeping on day 5. But the loud seagulls, ducks, terns, swans and the black-and-whites woke me up. I lay in my sleeping bag a little longer and watched 2 fishermen haul in their net. They had cast it yesterday evening right in front of our shack. Before that they had motored around the island once, stopped in front of us and said: “You haven’t got a boat.” We said: “That’s right, we haven’t got a boat.” “Did you swim to the island?” the fishermen asked and cast their net. In any case there wasn’t much there early this morning, in the net. But I’ll still cast my fish trap later tonight and hope for a big fish. It’s evening now, we’ve just had dinner: herrings, onion, squashed avocado with spicy oil and baked bananas. Except for my work on the fish trap today was a lazy day. We sat around and in the afternoon I slept like a rock in the sun and walked around and picked flowers. Watched the tiny fish and got bored and really slow. As evening fell I slipped into my wetsuit and swam with the buoy, which I’d nailed together beforehand, out to sea. It’s bobbing up and down out there now in the quite bright night and waits for the fish we want to eat early tomorrow. Hopefully it’s still there when we wake up tomorrow.



Good morning on cloud day 6. Haven’t seen much of the sun yet today, but there are incredibly beautiful grey-blue, white clouds across the sky. The sea is very quiet and there aren’t any waves and there’s not a puff of wind. My fish trap is still swimming out off the island. Haven’t taken a look yet to see if a fish has been caught. We were up late last night and sat around the campfire. We’ve brought along one cubic metre of birch wood. We’re burning it piece for piece. The woodstove is already fired up and red turnips are simmering away. It’s really small, the stove. Ali’s still asleep, Wolfgang’s at the pump, Tobias is walking around aimlessly and I’m writing a letter to you. Now I’m off to stir the turnips and see if a fish is in the trap. There wasn’t a single fish. They hadn’t even nibbled on the bacon. Damn jam! I then went for a swim. Naked around the island. It’s a long way and the water’s cool, not cold but nippy. I smeared my chest with Nivea cream before going swimming. Then your lungs don’t cool so quickly. A motorboat is passing by right now, very slowly and coming really close. There’s a man sitting inside and he’s looking at us. And he’s gone again, didn’t say a word. Ali and Tobias have started to build a bridge over the crack. They want to build a stone bridge but now they’re building a jig made of wood. Maybe I’ll join in tomorrow.



Hooray! Finally we’re going to throw a party, today is namely not a weekday, day 6, but already day 7, and we’re going to celebrate. We’re having tea with rum and honey and wasabi HOT MIX by the campfire and cigarettes, and Wolfgang will play on his drum, tinkered together out of timber and stones. Tobias will juggle a few stones and Ali and I are still working on our game of memory stone. The whole island will be the playing field. Yippee, it’s about to start – until tomorrow then.


URGH! Was that a dull party! We drank a glass of tea with rum and all at once we fully crashed. But today I’m up early again and went to catch some tiny fish with the green net. Couldn’t sleep in because the wind was whistling. The tiny fish are being cooked into a soup and then tossed into risotto. It’s hot today and we’re sitting in the shack counting the waves. Which is really hard to do because they’re always on the move, surging back and forth, taking over one another, and the wind shifts direction and they run, roll, backwards, back out again in the other direction. Suddenly the two swans popped up again and watched us while we ate, begging and hooting in Swanswedish. I’ll go and fed them something, be back in a minute…they don’t want any crisp bread. Stones are hanging in front of me, and by the way stones and rocks are everywhere here, we sit on them, our table is a rock, the sink is out of stone, so too the washing machine. We’re living in the Stone Age. Wolfgang’s drum is also made of stones.



breakfast, dark clouds gathered It rained today. All of a sudden, after we still didn’t have a proper roof and in a flash the rain was there. And n and it pattered into the shack finished. So we were left out in the rai to finish building the roof in and everything was soaked and we had r the shack when the angry the rain. We had barely got the tarp ove iling sun again. But now we’ve at cloud moved on and out came the sm l the enormous front facing the least got a proper roof and we can rol sea up and down like a roller blind. loo. This is what happened: And to top it off, Ali then fell into the with seawater. We don’t have any we poop in the sea and wash our bots really ghastly if loo paper was loo paper because that would be really floating around in the water. if you’ve got the runs, then You see, the poo-poo sinks, except for brown streak. Anyway, Ali it swims away on the surface as a giant loo stone (another stone!) and went to the loo and was sitting on the when a wave came and flushed dumping his third turd into the water the middle of his three turds him off the loo stone. He fell right in the wave rolled away. and swam around a bit in the loo until


As he tried to climb out he slipped from the slippery rock back into the water, and then again. But he eventually managed to get out and his poo-poo was stuck between his toes and on his knee and even on his ear. Ali thinks that there was a poo-poo from Tobias, who went to the loo before him. Because what was stuck on his knee was definitely not his.




I also tried out my harpoon today. But the fish are so small they don’t even fit on the tips of my harpoon. Over the last few days Wolfgang has often talked about going home. Talked about the boat that will come and that he will then leave the island. And today he started to blow up an air mattress, build a wooden crate around it, and sew a sail. We really thought he wanted to skedaddle. But he only built a small, neat sailing boat to go around the island. He can’t swim that well because of the stitches in his hand. We were all invited to the maiden voyage. Wolfgang shoved the boat with its dagger and rolled-up sail out into deeper water. Once he got there he raised the mast and crawled onto the boat. It wobbled to the left, it wobbled to the right, the wind blew into the sail sown out of towels and the boat headed out to sea. Wolfgang the Nudie crouched down and tried to hold the mast and keep his balance, while a crashing noise sounded out and the boat and its dagger crashed against a rock, and then another rock and it all tipped over into the water – Wolfgang, the boat and the sail. Tomorrow we’re going to turn the boat into a catamaran. Then it doesn’t need a dagger. We’ll also rig the mast really tight and then sail around the island. Tonight I’m sleeping in the shack for the first time because it’s rained and my bed between the rocks (there they are again) is very, very wet.


Hello, it’s already afternoon. They’re all sleeping. Again! They’re always so, so tired and take midday naps like babies. Haaugh, now I’m feeling really tired, too. I’ll have to lie down and then write again a little later, maybe I’ll have a great dream I can write about… Slept long and then the whole night through as well. Dreamt crazy things, Vikings who raid our island and beat us up, and I also dreamt about my grandpa. I sat in the cemetery in front of his gravestone and cried and then people kept coming and sat down in front of me and glued posters over the gravestone. When I woke up early this morning I was as hungry as a giant bear. For breakfast we had oatmeal-millet porridge with raisins (about to run out) and the second last apple, boiled in water with powdered milk. Then we chattered a bit and hung around in the shack.


A cool northwest wind is blowing outside. After lunch – pumpkin, carrots, onions, eggplant in coconut milk and chilli peppers with basmati rice – we went to the funeral. A small seagull died a few days ago and today we built a small raft with a cross and flowers and sent the small seagull out to sea on it. It rocked gently over the blue and green waves and drifted away from the island and we stood there in our white dresses on the outermost rocks of our island and waved to it for a long time. We kept waving until the raft with the little seagull vanished over the horizon. We had coffee and biscuits for the funeral banquet.


Today we having a 2/5 party. Whatever that is. Tobias worked it out. It’s already evening and we spent most of the day building a chimney for the shack. The pipe of the small stove is only 180 cm in length, while our shack is 350 cm high. We finally came up with an idea for the chimney at breakfast. It’s really very simple, it’s made of wood. Because our planks are a little too narrow for a fireplace, Tobias built an elegant, five-sided pipe. The joint was planed down. We cut a hole in the roof and I climbed up to glue and nail the roof, the tarp, to the wooden pipe. Now it’s warm and a pot of potatoes is on the stove. At the moment the odd drop of rain is falling and tomorrow is full moon. The waves are high and a cold wind howls the whole day. We’re rugged up, wearing thick jumpers and stuff over our white dresses. Mine is already really dirty and has lots of holes in different sizes. Today I tore a few new ones while doing the building work.



You see, I’m building a sauna and cementing a half-circle stonewall. We’ve brought along sacks of powdered cement. I add the powder to water in a tray and then you have to mix them together, mix, mix, add some more, mix again, on and on for a long time. With this cement sludge I glue the stones together, one on top of the other, until it becomes a wall. Now we’re having potatoes and herrings again and then cuddle into our sleeping bags. Kisses and see you tomorrow.


It’s raining and raining and raining on day 13/30. Last night we wrote a nice poem and it goes like this: 1/30, 1/15, 1/10, 2/15, 1/6, 1/5, 7/30, 4/15, 3/10, 1/3, 11/30, 2/5, 13/30, 7/15, 1/2, 8/15, 17/30, 3/5, 19/30, 2/3, 7/10, 11/15, 23/30, 12/15, 5/6, 13/15, 27/30, 14/15, 29/30, 1 Except for 2/15, 4/15, 8/15 + 12 + 14/15 there is always a prime number in the denominator. That was great fun, how we laughed! Now we lying in our beds and giving our stomachs a rest. For lunch we had pumpkin, parsnips, carrots, ginger, garlic and polenta in milky powdered milk and cheese. Outside a wild wind is howling and the shack is shaking like the caterpillar ride at a funfair. But I have at least already had a wash today, soaped up from head to foot I jumped into the cold sea, did a few gymnastic exercises, and then cooked. Tobias is stoking the oven. Wolfgang is asleep, he’s a bit bored because he has to look after his hacked hand and can’t tinker around and do crazy things.


Hopefully some visitors will call by soon. Our provisions are getting paltrier. All we’ve got left is 4 kilos of rice, 3 kg of potatoes, 3.5 kg of beans, 3 kg of pasta, 2 large pumpkins, 1½ kg of cheese, a small piece of bacon, no chocolate, 1 kg of gado-gado sauce, 1½ packs of miso paste, dried mushrooms, a couple of carrots, red turnips, 1 celery, 10 lemons, lots of garlic, cough drops, 2 kg of bread, 7 jars of herring, 4 cans of tomatoes, 1 jar of pickles, 1 jar of red turnip, 2 cabbages, 1 zucchini, 2 dried artichokes, 1½ jars of marmalade, ¼ jar of honey, 8 onions, 2 tubes of mustard, 1 tube of mayonnaise, 1 tube of fish paste, 1 kg of flour, ¼ tube of reindeer paste, 2 packs of biscuits, dried tofu, ¼ pack of millet, ¼ kg of sugar, ¼ coffee, lots of tea, red kidney bean paste, no salt, 2 packs of peanuts, 1 bottle of soya sauce, just a few porridge oats, ginger, 4 litres of rice milk, powdered milk for 8 litres, shrimp chips, bamboo shoots, kimchi, 3 packs of crisp bread, milk. Slowly but surely I’m almost always hungry, and we don’t have any more cigarettes either. If nobody comes and brings us something, then we’re going to run out.




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Ali and I jumped up on the beds and were emptying water into the small hole in the chimney, when I noticed a hole in the roof tarp and the saw the funnel out of which the flames flared. I stuck the pot of water in my hand through the melting hole and poured it from above into the funnel. The fire was still blazing. Tobias and Wolfgang run to fetch more water while I leaped out of the shack to climb on the roof. Tobias handed me a pail – and down the burning chimney! The fire was extinguished. Now we’ve got a hole in the roof. For tonight we’ve opened an umbrella over the hole. It’s raining again. Then we washed the floor and finished eating the rice and artichokes. Because we were all so scared we started to stupidly fight and Wolfgang stomped off into the rain, offended. We won’t be building a chimney funnel out of wood any time soon again. Not a good idea. Now it’s time to go to sleep. Kisses and good night.


And Good Morning to ½ time. Today will probably be the hardest day on the island. Luckily it’s already roughly midday, but who knows with this weather. It’s stormy and from the east the rain is pelting down horizontally on our villa. Everything is flapping, shaking and clinkering. Wolfgang is lying in bed, sulky, and refuses to speak to anyone. And it’s his birthday. Tobias and me have carried firewood from the other side of the island and stacked it in the cellar. We’re drenched. Ali’s yet to open an eye and is sleeping like a baby. We’ve still got a hole in the roof and Tobias is fixing the umbrella so that it doesn’t get wings and takeoff. I don’t dare go to the loo today, the waves are too big. I just won’t eat anything. What I need now: a taxi to the loo.


The rain has eased, but it rained so much and there was so much wind that the sea level has risen 30 cm. SPRING TIDE! Parts of our island are flooded and have formed individual islets. We’re bobbing up and down in our beds and writing and drawing until its time for lunch. Earlier today I was wrong about the time. We haven’t got a clock and only know what the time is from the sun. And other things as well,



For example Lotte. Lotte is the small car ferry that sails by us every morning. And really early in the morning the ferry TALLINK from Tallinn in Estonia passes on its way to Stockholm, and at dinner time the TALLINK bobs up and down on its way to Tallinn. Today I wore my full rain outfit for the first time: yellow plastic pants, yellow rain jacket and yellow wool cap. I looked like a yolk. Hopped around the island, from rock to rock because I couldn’t stand it any longer in the villa. Now the rain is pelting down again and we’ve still got a hole in the roof. It’s stuck together pretty good and the umbrella’s over it, but slowly, really slowly it’s starting to trickle in at a couple of spots. Now I’m off to cook some spaghetti with potatoes and pesto. The birthday dinner… Back again, the coastguard had just called in to visit, but they didn’t get off their ship. I chatted a bit with the captain and told him what we get up to during the day and how long we’ve been here and why, and what are we eating, he wanted to know, and how things are going after 2 weeks in the wild. I told him this and that and a few things else, that we’re nice and well-behaved, and he was glad and sailed away with his crew and ship. Today was a long day and I’m feeling so tired I just want to lie down like an old stone. Good night, until tomorrow. Now it’s time for miso soup for dinner and then sleepy, sleepy. Kisses and again best wishes for your birthday.


The last 2 days were very stormy. The wind whistled in from the southwest and chucked giant waves on our island. If you went for a walk outside you could really lean into the wind.



Yesterday it wasn’t as stormy and we had visitors for the first time. Tobias’ dad and his wife were here. They came with the water taxi, AMORE, and brought bread, butter, cherries, bananas, strawberries and a tube of Kalle’s caviar paste. Tobias’ father has eight kids and is married for the fourth time. Tobias got his wedding dress from her. After that Henrik called in. His family has a house on a neighbouring island. He didn’t bring anything with him, but maybe he’ll come again and bring us some chocolate and a new gas battle for our stove. Our bottle is empty and we can only cook on our small woodstove. But because it involves a lot of work we’re building a small kitchen where we can then place the oven out of the wind. That’s why we’re erecting a small stonewall on the southeast corner of our villa, with a slanting roof, and this is also where the new entrance will be. So much to do, so little time left. By the time the house is finished it will be time to leave. But what will happen to the house? We have to dismantle it again and take it with us when we go. Wolfgang now has a small green tent. He sits there often alone and writes in his book or sleeps. Sometimes he’s really nervous, but tries to calm himself down. You see, he’s run out of cigarettes and perhaps he’s a little homesick. I’ve had an awful earache from all the wind. Stuck a knob of garlic in, like grandpa, and kept this garlic plug in my ear for a full day and night and it disappeared. Swans are always with us on the island now. Somehow they manage to cuddle up out of the wind and pull their long necks right in.



Today is a beautiful day! The sun is shining, Henrik came over again for a visit and brought along lots of food and a new, full gas bottle. Wolfgang is in a good mood again, cooked lunch, lentils with vegetables and tinkered on his boot “Erling King”. My catamaran is making great progress. Today I built my seat, the footrest and a t-beam for the mast, which I’ll mount tomorrow. For a t-beam you have to saw a plank lengthwise, which takes a long, long time. I cut my thumb and it’s still bleeding. But it doesn’t hurt. Tobias has built a clock. He calculated and calculated and calculated and because we know when and where the sun rises and set, he was able to draw a small sundial on a piece of paper. It’s now stuck onto a board and has a nail in the middle. The shadow cast by the nail approximately shows the time. That’s why we’ve called the clock “approximately”. Now it’s precisely approximately 7 in the evening, in half an hour the TALLINK will sail by. The bow wave of the TALLINK needs approximately 8 minutes or 485 seconds before it slaps onto the beach in front of our shack.

It was Tobias who calculated or counted that as well. Ali is cooking potatoes for dinner. Otherwise he stacks stones into a wall until it topples over, or he repairs the blinking signal. The blinking signal has to be repaired every day, just like our villa. Tobias is again sowing the roof and Wolfgang is holding the ladder.




Anyway, it’s just occurred to me that I made a water pipe today out of the little soya sauce bottle and the metal of a fish paste tube we’d finished eating. Now we’re smoking the infused dried tea with fennel and nutmeg. You place the tea in the funnel of the pipe and on top of it a piece of glowing charcoal from the oven. Finally we can smoke again although we ran out of cigarettes a week ago at the 2/5 party. Gosh, I’m bored today! Yesterday was exciting because my sailboat was finally ready. The boat is fantastic and called JOG 247. J stands for Josephine, O for Olivia, G for Gundula. 247 stands for day and night the whole week. It’s over 4 metres in length and two metres wide. The mast is 2.30 metres, the boom 1.80 metres long. This afternoon, after the last details were finished, I took to sea on the west side of the island. Everyone was really excited to see if the boat would float. And it floated. It floated fantastically, gracefully and swanlike. I set sail and the cruise began. Along the west coast to the north cape. There I tried to tack. The boat didn’t respond. I steered, shifted from starboard to port, nothing. I/we sailed, the wind at our back, away from the island in a northwest direction. I steered and gibed and tacked, but the boat didn’t know where back and front are, where the stern and bow are. I jumped into the water and swam, dragging the boat behind me, back to the island. Ali came to help me and together we pulled and shoved the JOG 247 back to the harbour. It’s on our east coast. It’s moored there now and awaits a dagger and a bigger sail. But today I’m feeling really lazy. Anyway, a strong wind is blowing outside. I’m soooo bored. I just want to lie in bed and eat chocolate, but there isn’t any left. Wait, there is one block left, in the kitbag, but it’s for Tobias for his birthday.


Photocopiers, personal computers, mobile phones, communication satellites, storage batteries, trolley cases, skateboards, snowboards, Rubik’s Cube, silicon chips, CT scans, 1mm cutting discs, Teflon, breathable synthetics, the internet, faxes, colour television, video, digital photography, digitalization, organ transplantation, tomato cream, microwaves, AIDS, lead-free petrol, roll-on deodorant, LED (colour), aerosol nozzles, CERN, STEALTH technology, light barriers, cash machines, GPS, Reality TV, MTV, hip hop, discotheques, rave, ski stoppers, milking machines, post-it stickers, punk, computer games, disposable nappies. Tried yesterday to make a list of inventions from the last 40 years or so, but today we had visitors. The neighbours came over with a motorboat and Ali and Wolfgang went with them back to their island to fetch some fresh water. Pumping is becoming really boring. Today I’m dismantling my boat. And building another, a smaller, proper sailboat. I’ve also got a new dress. Sowed a skirt out of swan feathers yesterday. I’ll take it with me for Gundula. I also carved a hammer and a cooking spoon. Today, on the last island Sunday, I converted my catamaran into a small, elegant sailboat. Tomorrow, kids, it’ll go down, tomorrow the sailboat will take off. Sail around the whole island like a swarm of cheeky seagulls. Once there, once back, round about, that’s not hard. Today is Tobias’ birthday. Now he’s as old as me. Nobody’s come to visit and our food provisions are getting low again. I’m tired now because I got up very early and worked on the boat for the whole day. Good night, till tomorrow.



Have a great longing for you. Want to smooch with you, play, scuffle, kiss, tickle, laugh, tinker, cook, eat, draw, watch films, go shopping, tease you, be dear to you, tell stories, search for mushrooms, catch butterflies, go hiking, climbing, be lazy, pat cows, do everything. Have dreamt for the last 4 days to fly to you on a large, cute, wonderful cloud. Today we had visitors. 12 people and a baby, really tiny, 2 months old, called Jim and really cute. They drank lots of beer, ate herring and hamburgers, went swimming and chatted and the girls had really high high heels and stumbled over the stones, the boys laughed a lot and said little. Now it’s early in the evening and they’re all gone again. It’s very quiet and our stomachs are full to bursting. Today I’ll saw another plank from the shack and add it to my sailboat. I want to go sailing tomorrow, hopefully there’ll be a good wind. Yesterday at breakfast we saw another seal, really close this time. Its head peeked out of the water and I saw the nose, eyes, whiskers. The 2 swans are also always there and the black-and-white birds. They’ve had a chick. It lives under a stone next to our shack. I saw it 2 days ago. It’s fluffy and bustling, grey-white. The TALLINK is there now and I’m already tired. Ate so much cheese that my stomach’s about to burst. I’ll drink a cup of tea and after that saw the plank from the shack.



Gelitin on Boring Island 25 / 6 – 24 / 7 2009 Genomfördes på uppdrag av Mossutställningar. Uppdraget gavs 2005. Fyra år senare hittade de fyra brudarna till ön Rödko (N 59°21‘8” / E 18°48‘11”), i Värmdö kommun, Stockholm. Gelatin on boring island fick stöd från Stiftelsen framtidens kultur, Stockholm läns landsting och Värmdö kommun.

Team Mossutställningar: Verksamhetsledare: Stella d’Ailly T.f. verksamhetsledare: Beatrice Ehrström Projektledare: Erik Berg Ö-hittare: Finbar Krook Rosato Tack till: Finbar Krook Rosato, Henrik Schmidt, Jan Olsén, Mariana Silva Varela, Andreas Blom, Petter Johansson. Grannarna från Södermansskäret som kom med vatten. Kustbevakningen som varnade oss för stormar, men som inte hade cigg. Tobias Urbans far, för att han tog med sig grönsaker. Besökare som Mossutställningar kom med till Boring Island: Carl d’Ailly Jim Auwlm d’Ailly Stella d’Ailly Erik Berg Beatrice Ehrström Christian Halleröd Diana Orving Ksenia Pedan Niklas Ren Vera Sjunnesson Linnéa Sjöberg Jasmine Trabichler Anna Uddenberg Familijen Urban Cajsa von Zeipel Segerberg Mossutställningar Tel + 46 8 603 89 83 Address: Birger Jarlsgatan 18 A 114 34 Stockholm, Sverige. www.mossutstallningar.com



Kolofon 2013 © gelitin und Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln Editor: gelitin Editing: Anne Rossberg Translation: Paul Bowman Editorial Office: Lisa Kusebauch-Kaiser Lithogaphy: Lena Deinhardstein, Rosmarie Ladner Print: remaprint Design: Thomas Kussin Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln Ehrenstraße 4, 50672 Köln Tel. +49 (0) 221 / 20 59 6-53 Fax +49 (0) 221 / 20 59 6-60 verlag@buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Printed in Austria Distribution: Großbritannien & Irland / UK & Eire Cornerhouse Publications 70 Oxford Street GB-Manchester M1 5NH Fon +44 (0) 161 200 15 03 Fax +44 (0) 161 200 15 04 publications@cornerhouse.org Outside Europe D.A.P. / Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. 155 6th Avenue, 2nd Floor USA-New York, NY 10013 Fon +1 (0) 212 627 1999 Fax +1 (0) 212 627 9484 eleshowitz@dapinc.com ISBN 978-3-86335-297-4


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