When there is a choice,
you can endure a lot

I'm aware of this,
up in the morning bedroom,
in January 2023
at the farm
in the north,
tucked into my mountain sleeping bag
under a double layer of thick quilts,
dressed in my merino underwear,
a thick pair of polar socks
and the woollen sweater Anna knitted for me

The reason for this predicament
is Russia's insanities in The Ukraine,
and the raging cost of electricity in their wake

We simply cannot afford the electricity it takes
to work the geothermal heating we normally use,
and have used all the winters I've been up here with Anna

I don't HAVE to endure;
I can go back down to my apartment/retreat
south of Stockholm by the Baltic coast,
1000 kilometers due south,
where I can enjoy a steady +20°C
all day and all of the night
(like The Kinks would put it!),
and where I still have one more year
of a set low electricity cost, and district heating

However, there are reasons to endure!

In addition to the obvious - Anna and the animals -
there are the endless forests
with their neural pathways of snow scooter tracks,
and the many frozen-over lakes, ice covered with snow,
both instances perfect for skiing,
- and the spacious silence,
embellished with snow flakes creeping across the windows,
the sound of the wind in the pines and spruces
and your thoughts finally having all the space they need
to become poems or plans to realise,
or the spacetime you need to prepare for the inevitable,
which no one has yet escaped,
even though daft religious rumours says something else

Having to work some for the basics,
like carrying firewood from the shed,
kneel by the big burner in one of the outhouses
to fire up the system in – 30°C,
and feed the wood stove in the main room
downstairs in the main building, where we reside,
to finally get the indoor up to T-shirt level
around lunch time,
has a value unto itself

You never feel unconnected to the circumstances
or the surroundings
or the general living conditions
here on the farm

It fills your day, touches your body,
fires up your mind
and the planetary being inside,
and leaves a trace of reflections
and poems and ways of survival,
that you simply don't encounter
in city living,
and the birds flock around you,
the squirrels make visits,
the woodpeckers bang away
and at the outer perimeter
Yannis, the fox, strolls by,
having fetched some organic waste
from the compost behind the stable

- and at times you sense some of the feelings
left behind out here in this semi-wilderness
by earlier generations, hundreds of years ago,
with the difference that they had no choice
but to pull through or die,
without a supermarket forty kilometers away,
or a hospital with state-of-the-art care sixty kilometers off,
provided by the tax-paying citizens

- so through this forenoon I spend the pauses
between walks out to the wood burner
in the outhouse
and the feeding of the horses out in the meadow
in the warmth that starts to fill the house,
with the Persian ney player Hassan Kasaei
on Spotify,
physically quite aware of the elements
surrounding our house this cold and sunny winter's day,
leaving one of my choices unchosen

- and we can always be sure of a warm, soothing tiredness
by the end of the day,
when sleep will come, effortlessly and angelic,
the stars standing watch around this house on the hill